Will this increase or decrease the likelihood of terrorist actions in America, Europe and the rest of the world?

If you were a member of a family murdered in this conflict, would you be seeking revenge?

Should Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert, be tried for war crimes if or when this conflict comes to an end?

What will the price of oil be in 4 weeks time?

For a minute I got excited!

Gausie getting removed.the eleventh commandment

The fightback has started-wonderful speech.

http://polipundit.com/?p=28172

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12218809

Palestinian bid to take Israeli settlement row to UN

Arab nations have formally submitted a resolution to the UN Security Council that condemns Israeli settlement building in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, which the United States will almost certainly veto if it is brought to a vote.

"The American administration is of course aware that a veto wouldn't be a good solution," says a UN diplomat. "They'd be vetoing a resolution which is saying what the US administration has been saying for the last 18 months."

What the Palestinians have is a fair bit of international support. An independent monitoring group, the Security Council Report, predicts that upwards of 100 nations would co-sponsor the settlement resolution, and most of the Security Council members would support it.

haycrapper released into Care in the Community again.

"With the stalemate in the American-led negotiations, Palestinian officials have indeed begun to pursue a more internationalist approach, lobbying for widespread recognition of their state. The plan is to request full membership at the UN when support reaches a critical mass. "

"Given such global backing (seven Latin American states have recognised a Palestinian state in the last month), many Palestinians think their leaders should ditch an ally that they believe has protected Israel far more than it has them."

"The bottom line is that to bring the settlement resolution to a vote, the Palestinians would have to be ready to confront not only Israel, but the United States. It would be a real problem for the West Bank leadership to alienate its closest ally and main financier.

But polls show most Palestinians oppose a return to negotiations without some action on settlements, so it may be an even bigger problem for the leadership to do nothing."

Pretty picture, parrot.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12212907

Russia reaffirms recognition of Palestinian state

The Russian president, on a rare visit to the West Bank, has reaffirmed Moscow's recognition of an independent Palestinian state.

Dmitry Medvedev said Russia had recognised the state in 1988 and his country's position remained unchanged.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is seeking the country's support for a tougher stance towards Jewish settlements at the UN Security Council.

"We remember that Russia was one of the first states in the world to recognise the state of Palestine in 1988," Mr Abbas said at a news conference, held in Jericho, with Mr Medvedev.

The Russian president replied: "Russia made its choice a long time ago... we supported and will support the inalienable right of the Palestinian people to an independent state with its capital in East Jerusalem."

"We made our decision then and we have not changed it today," he added.

Palestinian diplomats say they are about to seek a UN resolution against continued settlement expansion in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, the issue which prompted the Palestinians to leave the negotiating table. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Russia has the power to veto resolutions.

The Russian leader agreed that "without some sort of reasonable [Israeli] decision concerning their settlement activity, there will be no progress".

Post 4112,

That could put the fly in the ointment!

Apartheid Wall on schedule

The segregation wall which Israel is embarking on building now around the occupied city of Jerusalem will isolate about 100, 000 Palestinian natives living behind the wall from their holy city.

In a press release on Wednesday, the ministry stated that the Israeli occupation authority (IOA) will finish building the wall within one year according to the plan approved by deputy chief of staff Yair Naveh.

The ministry warned that if this wall was completed, no one would be allowed into the holy city or the 1948 occupied lands without permission from the IOA, noting that the Israeli municipal council in Jerusalem is trying to play down the Palestinian natives' fears by claiming the wall is intended for their protection.

It added that the suffering of more than 100, 000 Jerusalemite citizens living behind the wall would increase, especially since the Israeli municipal council and its institutions do not provide them with any services.

Tuesday, January 18
Paul J. Balles: Grains of sand: perspectives on roles of Israel and USA in Middle East

Gilad Atzmon

Paul J. Balles
In an article entitled "Weapons of mass deception", I suggested that there has been too much control of the mainstream media by too few people.

The result? Much gets left out, covered up or distorted to suit special interests like those of Rupert Murdoch.

In a subsequent article, I suggested reading writers in the alternative media, a facility that has grown significantly on the Internet.

As might be expected, a few knowledgeable commentators suggested that they had better choices of both websites and authors than those I offered. No doubt.

My pick of both writers and venues is based on several criteria: (1) they're honest and reliable, (2) they often provide information unavailable in the mainstream media and (3) they focus on political, social, environmental, aesthetic or educational issues that concern me.

Thus, other readers' different interests will naturally lead to different writers in different places.

In my article Grains of sand: highlights from the alternative media, I quoted a number of my favourite authors on a variety of issues coming through my lens: the establishment press, international relations, wars and threats of war, Palestine and Israel, American weaknesses and WikiLeaks.
Israel and the role of America in the Middle East
This week, I'd like to share my interest in writers who have brought important perspectives to one major issue: Israel and the role of America in the Middle East. Incidentally, six of my choice authors (three here) are Jewish.
Uri Avnery

The country [Israel] is embracing the racist demon. After millennia as the victims of racism, it seems as if Jews here are happy to be able to do unto others what has been done to them."

Franklin Lamb

The 522 hour indiscriminate carnage, Cast Lead that killed 1,417 Palestinians, mostly civilians, 352 of them children, injuring for life more than 5,300 , indicts Israel as well as those countries that continue to supply it weapons, diplomatic cover and to enforce Israels illegal siege on sealed Gaza."

Debbie Menon

"There will never be peace in the Middle East unless the US, the major force which sustains Israel, withdraws its support, and Israel loses its most important and essential crutches for its survival, the money of the American people and the lives of American soldiers!"

Mike Whitney

US foreign policy doesn't change. It is immutable, relentless and vicious. America owns the world and demands that foreign leaders obey Washington's directives. Follow orders, or else; that's all one needs to know about US foreign policy."

Jeff Blankfort

"...thanks to the unconditional backing by the US for all its crimes, and given its arsenal of nuclear weapons, I consider Israel to be the most immediate threat to the future of the planet."

Alan Hart

"If it is the case that American presidents are frightened of provoking Israel, the conclusion would have to be that the Zionist state is a monster beyond control and that all efforts for peace are doomed to failure."

Gilad Atzmon

"Israeli Behaviour should be realized as the ultimate vulgar biblical barbarism on the verge of cannibalism. Israel is nothing but evilness for the sake of evilness. It is wickedness with no comparison."

James Petras

"We are a people colonized and directed by a small, extremist and militarist ally [srael] which operates through domestic proxies, who, under any other circumstance, would be openly denounced as traitors."

Richard Falk

"We have witnessed the carnage of 'pre-emptive war' and 'preventive war' in Iraq, but we have yet to explore the moral and political imperatives of 'pre-emptive peace' and 'preventive peace.' How long must the peoples of the world wait?"

http://www.redress.cc/global/pjballes20110116

yawn fahel-oh dear same old garbage spewed out again and again and again.

yep, crapola propaganda, crapola propaganda, crapola propaganda zzzzzzzzz................

ITLOTB
And I thought it was your silly socialist nutters that had the propaganda.

It is quite simple. Israel is someone else's country and stealing their land day by day, torturing their residents and indulging in ethnic cleansing.

The Israeli army acquitted an Israeli soldier who Killed Omar Al-Qawasmi, 65, in his sleep in Al-Khalil two weeks ago and discharged another who joined in the shooting of the old man.

The media sources that published the report did not mention the fact that the soldiers did not alert Qawasmi, who was sleeping, before shooting him.

in simple terms what we have in this manipulated shambles in israel/gaza is the application of deuteronomic law

Rather it is the attempted use of deuteronomic law.

by both!
today's saudi paper made interesting reading, for the letters page was very balanced on this subject and surrounding aspects - which is more than can be said for this thread

An Israeli organization has compiled many statements by Israeli soldiers confessing to war crimes against unarmed Palestinians in a book that will be released soon and sold in Europe.

Breaking the Silence will release this month details of torture and murder incidents committed by 180 soldiers from 2000 to 2009.

Testimonies, tapes and images have already been in circulation, but the soldiers who testified will for the first time ever reveal their identities and faces.

Breaking the Silence founder Yehuda Shaul, who is an ex-soldier, said he aimed to launch debate in Israel about the country's army.

"[The Israeli army] is corrupting the youth," Shaul said.

The book, containing first time ever released details, is expected to spark controversy in Israel and the world over.

Breaking the Silence has a membership of 700 former soldiers and activists.

January 20, 2011
Palestinians, America and the U.N.
By HANAN ASHRAWI

Palestinians are well within their rights to bring the issue of Israeli settlements and their illegality before the United Nations Security Council. Our decision to do so follows both Israel's refusal to cease all settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and America's failure to ensure Israel's compliance with international law and existing agreements. The United States should support such a move, not block it.
It is universally recognized that Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, and that without a full cessation of all settlement activity, Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and the two-state solution are both doomed. In spite of the dilution of American public statements, the United States still recognizes settlements as illegal. Not only are they a violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention; under the Rome Statute, they are considered a war crime.
With America unwilling to hold Israel accountable to international law and existing agreements, Israel has remained intransigent in the face of international efforts to revive genuine negotiations. A Security Council resolution would reaffirm today's international consensus in support of the two-state solution by recognizing the threat posed by illegal settlements.
This is not rocket science. Settlements are built on occupied Palestinian land. They also entail the exploitation of Palestine's natural resources, including water. Both belong to a future Palestinian state. Without them, no Palestinian state can be viable.
The true impact of Israeli settlements is measured not only by the way they undermine the two-state solution; it is also the enormous damage they inflict on countless Palestinian communities.
Settlements superimpose a colonial grid over the West Bank, including East Jerusalem. They constitute an illegal exercise of Israeli extraterritoriality in Palestine. Built on the expropriation and theft of Palestinian land, they dominate the surrounding hilltops of the occupied West Bank, encircling and besieging Palestinian towns and villages below.
They stand at the heart of an ever expanding web of checkpoints, walls, roadblocks and settler-only bypass roads that marginalize Palestinian realities and render all normal life impossible. Palestinian farms, businesses and homes have all been destroyed to make way for settlement expansion, while Palestinian lives and livelihoods have been shattered in the process.
The rights and protections enshrined under international law apply as much to Palestinians as to anyone else. Indeed, at the very heart of the Palestinian struggle is a determination to win back these very rights and protections long denied us by Israel. This applies as much to the rights of Palestinian refugees living in exile for the last 60 years, as it does to the many Palestinians who have suffered for over four decades under the brutality of an Israeli military occupation.
Settlements are a fundamental part of this. Given that they continue to expand in flagrant violation of international law, it is perfectly reasonable for Palestinians to turn to the United Nations as a forum in which to pursue their legitimate rights.
The question is not whether or not Palestinians should approach the United Nations. We have every right to pursue all legal avenues available to us, whether in the absence of or parallel to negotiations, just as the African National Congress did in its struggle to overthrow apartheid in South Africa. Rather, the question is why the United States should oppose such a move, particularly given that its own attempts to revive Palestinian-Israeli negotiations have been thwarted time and again by Israel's refusal to stop building settlements.
Negotiations are not a substitute for international law. Rather, they should be guided by international law, which alone establishes the benchmarks for a just peace. Nor are settlements a bilateral issue whose illegality is up for discussion.
It is just such a message that the Obama administration is in danger of sending by opposing a Security Council resolution reaffirming the illegality of Israeli settlements. It sets up a false opposition between negotiations and international law, substituting one for the other. And it closes down what few avenues are open to Palestinians, in the absence of negotiations, to continue our national struggle through nonviolent means.
The U.N. charter explicitly references its "faith in fundamental human rights" and the need to uphold "conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law" be respected. What could be more applicable than the damage done by Israeli violations, in particular unilateral measures like settlement activity?
Hanan Ashrawi is a former Palestinian peace negotiator and an elected member of both the Palestine Liberation Organizations executive committee and the Palestinian Legislative Council.