The King warned us before 9/11 that the Palestinian issue was unstablizing all the the moderate governments in the middle east and he was right. I suggest Bushco listen now. Cheney was told last December but choose to ignore warnings just like he did the summer of 2000 of possible terrorist attacks against America. More incompetence.
From Woodward's State of Denial:
In may, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabian publicly refused an invitation to the White House, saying the United States was blind to the plight of the Palestinians, "Don't they see what is happening to Palestinian children, women, the elderly---the humiliation, the hunger?"
Snip
The situation in the Middle East was getting worse, Bandar said. "The continous deterioration will give an opportunity for extremists on both sides to grow and they will be the only winners. The United States and Arab mutethila"---friendly moderates--"will pay a very high price."
Snip
Bandar final meesage was: "The region is boiling and it's building and it's building."
All the Bush and Cheney have accomplished is higher oil prices and an unstable Middle East.
And now Israel true motives come out:
His leaked testimony to the Winograd Committee -- investigating the government's failures during the month-long attack -- suggests that he had been preparing for such a war at least four months before the official casus belli: the capture by Hizbullah of two Israeli soldiers from a border post on 12 July 2006. Lebanon's devastation was apparently designed to teach both Hizbullah and the country's wider public a lesson.
Olmert's new account clarifies the confusing series of official justifications for the war from the time.
First, we were told that the seizure of the soldiers was "an act of war" by Lebanon and that a "shock and awe" campaign was needed to secure their release. Or, as then Chief of Staff Dan Halutz -- taking time out from disposing of his shares before market prices fell -- explained, his pilots were going to "turn the clock back 20 years" in Lebanon.
Then the army claimed that it was trying to stop Hizbullah's rocket strikes. However, the bombing campaign targeted not only the rocket launchers but much of Lebanon, including Beirut. (It was, of course, conveniently overlooked that Hizbullah’s rockets fell as a response to the Israeli bombardment and not the other way around.)
And finally we were offered variations on the theme that ended the fighting: the need to push Hizbullah (and, incidentally, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians) away from the northern border with Israel.
http://electronicintifada.net/...
Saudis are pushing for a resolution to the Israelis Palestinian problem, NOW.
And if Israel thinks the status quo is acceptable, listen to your own soldiers:
Mr. Manekin is the director of Breaking the Silence, a group of former Israeli combat soldiers and some current reservists, shocked at their own misconduct and that of others, who have gathered to collect their stories and bear witness. Since 2004, the group has collected testimonies from nearly 400 soldiers (available in English at www.shovrimshtika.org/index_e.asp).
He spoke of how some soldiers humiliate or beat Palestinians to keep crowds in line and how soldiers are taught to be aggressive, but how most behave within decent moral limits — and of how the fear that hundreds of people could erupt in anger wears on the soul and turns young men callous.
"I don’t think this is a problem of the military," he said. "It’s a problem of the society. We’re sending these kids in our name. And there has to be a space to talk of bad things. It’s not enough to say, ‘But there’s Palestinian terrorism,’ which there is, but that’s too easy."
http://www.nytimes.com/...
UPDATED:
Leaders of the 22 countries in the Arab League decided Wednesday night to approve the Saudi peace plan and called on the Israeli leadership to adopt the initiative as soon as possible.
The decision was made unanimously during the Arab League summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
http://www.jpost.com/...
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