Jimmy Carter: "The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved"

i'm watching an interview with jimmy carter in jerusalem conducted a short while ago by al jazeera...

Jimmy Carter, the former US president, has called for Hamas to be included in peace negotiations, saying they are willing to "live as a neighbour next door in peace" with Israel if Palestinians approve a deal.

Carter said on Monday that Hamas leaders told him they would accept a negotiated peace agreement, if voted for by the Palestinian people.

His comments, delivered in an address to the Israel Council on Foreign Relations and a subsequent news conference at the King David Hotel in West Jerusalem, came after he met several Hamas leaders, including Khaled Meshaal, the group's exiled political bureau chief, in Syria last week.

Carter said Hamas leaders had told him they would accept a peace agreement negotiated by Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president whose Fatah faction controls the West Bank, if Palestinians approved the deal in a vote.

carter doesn't beat around the bush when describing the worthless duo of george and condi, who coupled with israel, have zero intention or desire to seek peace...

Carter, who has angered Israel by meeting Hamas, also said the peace efforts had "regressed" since a US-hosted conference in Annapolis, Maryland, in November.

"The problem is not that I met with Hamas in Syria," he said.

"The problem is that Israel and the United States refuse to meet with someone who must be involved."

and that's to say nothing of the fact that israel continues to flip the middle digit to palestine, despite the agreements of annapolis a few months ago...

The Israeli Housing and Construction Ministry yesterday [April 18] published construction bids for 100 homes in two Jewish settlements, one of them deep inside the West Bank, in violation of its pledge to freeze settlement expansion.

Palestinian officials said the new construction in the settlements of Ariel and Elkana is undermining US-backed effort to reach a peace deal by the end of 2008. According to the bids, 52 new residential units will be built in Elkana and 48 in Ariel.

The Housing Ministry said that the 52 housing units in Elkana would replace the old ones built there when the settlement first began, while in Ariel 48 units would be built within an existing neighborhood. Ariel Mayor Ron Nachman said the residential units had been approved for construction eight months ago.

According to Nachman, the plots are in the center of the settlement and some of them are intended for the construction of permanent residences for settlers evacuated from Gush Katif settlement in 2005.

Since a US-hosted Mideast peace conference in November, Israel has announced several new building projects in areas of Jerusalem claimed by the Palestinians for their future state. However, yesterday’s announcement marked the first time the Israeli government approved construction deep in the West Bank.

i'm increasingly of the opinion that, after he passes on, jimmy carter should be considered for sainthood...

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Israel's response to Annapolis

f.u. AND the horse you rode in on...

Israel said Tuesday it is seeking bids to build more than 300 new homes in a disputed east Jerusalem neighborhood, drawing Palestinian condemnations that the move is undermining the newly revived peace talks held last week in Annapolis, Md.

A Housing Ministry spokesman said 307 units would be built in Har Homa, a Jewish neighborhood in east Jerusalem.

Israel captured the eastern part of the city in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed the area. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

as gary kamiya says in today's edition of salon...

Annapolis will fail to make peace between Israelis and Palestinians because it was not intended to succeed. It was a charade. And in the Middle East, charades don't just leave things the way they are -- they make them much worse. The tragedy is that Olmert seems to realize the urgency of cutting a two-state deal. But there is a giant gap between seeing the goal and achieving it, and only the United States can fill it. Olmert can take the politically explosive yet necessary steps only if the United States clearly states in advance what needs to be done and then forces both sides to do it. Bush completely failed to do that. He called for the conference almost in passing. He never set an agenda. He refused to outline what the U.S. vision of peace is. Going forward, the only thing he offered the two beleaguered leaders, Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, was a promise to monitor the process -- which in these circumstances is like promising a dying man that if he calls you on your cellphone, you'll be sure to check the message.

yep... charade... that says it all...

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"No collective punishment:" Israel prevented from cutting electricity to Gaza

Palestinian officals say Israel already cut
fuel supplies by 30 percent on Sunday, though
Israeli officials say supply was only reduced
by between 5 and 11 percent. Palestinians rely
on Israel for all of their fuel and more than
half of their electricity.

i've been posting about my ever-increasing upset with israel (here and here), an upset recently aggravated by israel's plan to cut fuel and electricity supplies to gaza (see previous posts here and here)... evidently, i'm not alone...

Israel Criticized for Power Cuts to Gaza

Israel's attorney general has thwarted government plans to cut electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip on humanitarian grounds. The EU and UN are warning Israel not to impose "collective punishment" on the Palestinian people.

Israel's attorney general has prohibited the government from cutting electricity supplies to the Gaza Strip, arguing that there needs to be a full evaluation of the humanitarian consequences first.

The ruling by Attorney General Menahem Mazuz came late on Monday after 10 human rights groups petitioned Israel's supreme court to stop the cutbacks, arguing that they amounted to collective punishment. Israel had announced Sunday that it was cutting back fuel supplies and electricity to the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory.

this story came from germany's spiegel online... no surprise, a quick search only turned up one u.s.-based media source reporting on it, an ap story being carried on newspapers outside the u.s....

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When is the U.S. going to censure Israel for crimes against humanity?

Municipality of Gaza

i've been getting increasingly pissed with israel (gratuitous, horrific, and totally unwarranted violence against palestinians and carpeting lebanon with cluster bombs, among other things)... it's not like i've exactly been happy with them before but, goddam it, when is there going to be some accountability for punishing an entire people, the elderly, women, children, the disabled, the poor...? and, yes, i know the palestinians have done their share, although nowhere near as systemically as the israelis... and, yes, i totally understand that the israeli government is no more representative of the israeli people than the u.s. government is of the american people, but that doesn't mean i can't be just as torqued off with the israeli government as i am with our own...

i posted just the other day about israel's plans to cut off fuel and electricity to gaza, and, sure enough, they've gone and done it...

Israel began cutting vital fuel shipments to the Gaza Strip on Sunday, following through on a promise to step up pressure on the area's Hamas rulers in response to months of Palestinian rocket attacks.

Dor Alon, the Israeli energy company that sells fuel to Gaza, confirmed it had received instructions from the Israeli Defense Ministry to reduce shipments. The move drew harsh condemnation from Palestinians in Gaza, which relies on Israel for almost all its fuel and gasoline and more than half of its electricity.

"step up pressure on the area's Hamas RULERS...?" that's a goddam friggin' LIE... you and i know damn good and well that it won't be the RULERS that are going to take the brunt, it's going to be the ordinary schmoes - kids, women, the elderly, the disabled, the poor - that will be hurting the worst...

let's also keep in mind that, as of LAST DECEMBER, this was already how bad things were in gaza...

89 percent of the population is poverty-stricken, living on less than $2 a day. Over 60 percent are unemployed, and since the election of the Hamas government in January, international aid has dried up. It had been used to pay the salaries of public officials. Now, even those who have jobs have been thrown into poverty, meaning that over 860,000 people in the Gaza Strip are now living on food parcels distributed by the UNRWA. Over half of the population.

this is wrong, dead wrong...

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Israel to worsen an already critical human rights disaster in Gaza

Municipality of Gaza

following the hamas victory in the january 2006 election in palestine, the strategy of israel, supported by the "quartet" - US, EU, Russia and the UN - has been to punish the ordinary people of palestine so severely that they would move to overthrow their government... when fatah leader mahmoud abbas dismissed the hamas-led government in june and began ruling by decree, hamas seized control of gaza, leaving fatah in control of the west bank... the israeli "punishment" strategy toward gaza continued and is now being ratcheted up... it's criminal and nobody is moving to stop it...

Israeli military experts have formulated a plan to gradually cut off electricity and fuel to the Gaza Strip in response to ongoing rocket fire from the Palestinian area, officials said Wednesday.

The plan, formulated by a senior team lead by Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, is expected to be approved by Defense Minister Ehud Barak on Thursday, the officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media. It was not immediately clear when the decision would take effect.

"It's clear that we have to cut off ... the supply of electricity and the supply of fuel," Vilnai told Army Radio. "We will dramatically reduce the flow of electricity from Israel over several weeks."

Israel's government last month declared the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip a "hostile territory," clearing the way for Israel to impose sanctions against the territory. The cutoff in power is part of Israel's hardening stance toward Hamas, which violently seized control of Gaza in June.

Israel has severely restricted the flow of cargo and people through Gaza's borders since the takeover by Hamas, which Israel, the U.S. and the European Union consider to be a terrorist group.

the strategy of punishing the people is clearly articulated by noam chomsky...

There was a free election in Palestine, but it came out the wrong way. So instantly, the United States and Israel with Europe tagging along, moved to punish the Palestinian people, and punish them harshly, because they voted the wrong way in a free election. That's accepted here in the West as perfectly normal. That illustrates the deep hatred and contempt for democracy among western elites, so deep-seated they can't even perceive it when it's in front of their eyes. You punish people severely if they vote the wrong way in a free election.

cutting off electricity and fuel will only exacerbate the already serious situation, a situation that was already critical as of last december...

89 percent of the population is poverty-stricken, living on less than $2 a day. Over 60 percent are unemployed, and since the election of the Hamas government in January, international aid has dried up. It had been used to pay the salaries of public officials. Now, even those who have jobs have been thrown into poverty, meaning that over 860,000 people in the Gaza Strip are now living on food parcels distributed by the UNRWA. Over half of the population.

keep in mind, the number one u.s. client state relationship is with the israeli goverment...

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