In a move that is not at all surprising, the Iranian government has proposed an alternate meeting.Iran said on Tuesday that it had invited Palestinian militant factions to a meeting in Tehran aimed at countering a US-hosted Middle East peace conference seeking to kickstart the peace process.
From this opening statement in this very short article, most intelligent people can effectively surmise that the meeting Iran is proposing will not have peace as a long-term objective."These groups are planning to come to Tehran within the next week or two and they are all the Palestinian groups that are struggling for the freedom of their land," government spokesman Gholam Hossein Elham told reporters.
Translation: These groups are planning to come to Tehran within the next week or two and they are all the Palestinian groups that are struggling to destroy Israel.In other words:The strip of land in question (which was once barren and fruitless before 1948) belongs to the Palestinian people and there is no process or deal that is acceptable, short of all Jews vacating it permanently, so that the Palestinian militant groups can turn it back into a barren and fruitless war zone, once again. Iran is one of the most vocal backers of Palestinian militant groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad and pledged millions of dollars in 2006 to the then Hamas government crippled by a Western aid cut.
The Islamic republic does not recognise Israel and its President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has provoked outrage by calling for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
As much as I would like to applaud the efforts of the Annapolis conference, I cannot get very optimistic. As long as the current government in Iran is in power, there will be no peace in the Middle East. Pledging millions of dollars in 2006 is nothing new. Ask them about the billions that have been pumped into Hezbollah and others, since the regime was installed in 1979.
As long as oil is a necessary commodity throughout the world, these people will have funding for terror operations. As long as states such as Iran and Saudi Arabia use their huge oil revenues to finance this hatred, it will not go away anytime soon.
From the JP comes this gem:The United States, Israel and the European Union must end their policy of favoring Fatah over Hamas, or they will doom the Palestinian people to deepening conflict between the rival movements, former US President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday.
Why am I not surprised? Chalk this up to another Jimmy Carter moment that defies reason.
For all of you that see nothing wrong with his stance, consider this:
No one made Hamas extract Fatah from Gaza by the use of illegal force. They chose their own path. Now they must be dealt with, however President Abbas chooses to do so. And it is the right of the EU and the US to choose whom it will support and whom it will not. Mr Carter had no trouble choosing to support the Sandinistas (by withholding support from Somoza), boycotting the 1980 Olympics due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and supporting the Shah over the radical elements that were to become the power structure in Modern-day Iran, all because he made a value judgment.
Besides that, it makes good military and political sense to isolate Hamas, because they are not legitimate. When they behave as they have done over the last couple of weeks, they have lost their claim to legitimacy. This would be like the Democrats or the Republicans running out the other, by force. Isolation will now become Hamas' worse enemy, which is something they should have considered before they took their illegal actions.
But, Mr. Carter and I have a different opinion here. He says that no matter what, both sides should be treated equally. That means Hamas can do whatever they want, right or wrong, and expect to receive the same benefit of a doubt as the side that did NOT kick the other out. Just label Mr. Carter the Dr. Spock of politics, I guess.
Once again the weather is warmer, birds are singing, flowers are blooming, and the rockets are being fired at targets within its borders.Hamas militants fired a barrage of rockets and mortar shells toward Israel on Tuesday and said they considered a five-month truce with Israel to have ended.
The rockets fell after nine Palestinians were killed in fighting with Israel over the weekend. Most of the dead were militants, but Palestinians said at least two civilians, including a 17-year-old girl, were killed.
There's always innocents killed when Israel strikes back, because the militants choose to operate in areas where civilians live and work. They launch their strikes from those areas, so as to invite retaliation, whereby innocents can and will be killed for propaganda purposes. No real surprise here.A spokesman for Hamas' armed wing said the group considered the truce to have ended.
"The cease-fire has been over for a long time, and Israel is responsible for that," the spokesman, Abu Obeida, told the Voice of Palestine radio station.
Once again, Hamas breaks the truce, but somehow it's all Israel's fault. Israel sent rockets into Gaza completely undetected by a hostile world media? Now, the "peace loving" people that comprise the terror group Hamas want us all to believe that they were defending themselves, again? How can the anti-israel lobbies reconcile this?If you read the rest of the article, you may reach the same conclusion on this situation, as me. Infighting among the Palestinians is usually best settled by drumming up a crisis with Israel. Fire rockets, invite an almost guaranteed response, and blame Israel more, that is the formula so often used by Islamic terror groups. It keeps the attention diverted from the real problems the Palestinians face, daily.
