a cease fire !!! Yes I was not that far from reality last week ;). As you can read pretty much anywhere on the medias (like here) Israel and the Hamas signed a cease fire deal to start tomorrow morning, with gradual improvements which if everything happens well will end up ... well forget about that, we'll see tomorrow how it starts.
Anyways Israel is talking to Syria about peace and giving the Golan back, makes truce deals with Hamas in Gaza, and since today seems also to open the door to talks with Lebanon, all at once! Something's definitely happening, it seems that with the US presidential elections coming the stupid "we don't talk to the Axis of Evil" is finally gone and diplomacy is restarting.
Showing posts with label middle-east. Show all posts
Showing posts with label middle-east. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Friday, June 13, 2008
Playing with explosives
Can be dangerous...
Ref: Le Monde, Photo : REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA
As said in the article (but in french) a group of Hamas activists was playing in their basement with firecrackers they were planning to use to protest peacefully the Israeli aggression. Unfortunately they had smoked way too much and someone dropped a match on the magic box and blew the whole place up. They obviously first blamed Israel for the explosion, but then reverted to declare them as martyrs in an almost finished heroic operation. OK the article doesn't say that and I am being slightly sarcastic but the meaning is preserved.
At the same time the same Hamas is negotiating a truce with Israel, which is clearly not being enthusiastic about it but had postponed yesterday military operations to try to "give the truce a chance". With a little bit of chance if they keep postponing it, all Hamas military wing members will self detonate in an act of martyrdom with more results than the past 8 years of peace talks and military operations combined ?
All this to say that things aren't looking great with the neighbors and that escalation keeps going... Maybe one day someone will realize that having the biggest one is not that important.
Ref: Le Monde, Photo : REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA
As said in the article (but in french) a group of Hamas activists was playing in their basement with firecrackers they were planning to use to protest peacefully the Israeli aggression. Unfortunately they had smoked way too much and someone dropped a match on the magic box and blew the whole place up. They obviously first blamed Israel for the explosion, but then reverted to declare them as martyrs in an almost finished heroic operation. OK the article doesn't say that and I am being slightly sarcastic but the meaning is preserved.
At the same time the same Hamas is negotiating a truce with Israel, which is clearly not being enthusiastic about it but had postponed yesterday military operations to try to "give the truce a chance". With a little bit of chance if they keep postponing it, all Hamas military wing members will self detonate in an act of martyrdom with more results than the past 8 years of peace talks and military operations combined ?
All this to say that things aren't looking great with the neighbors and that escalation keeps going... Maybe one day someone will realize that having the biggest one is not that important.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
When will it be ?
I haven't written much about politics here for quite a while. I probably was just too depressed about it or something like that, but something really changed with last summer's war. By then I was more hearing questions about how to make peace happen, last, or at least manage to live a reasonably safe life.
Last year there were still people believing that Israel disengaging from Gaza was one step towards peace with Palestine, Israel's foreign ennemy were not very vocal and the only obstacle towards peace in here was finger pointed as the Hamas by most of the western world. So what happened?
I still remember showing lots of hope when the "prisoners plan" (full text here) was getting signed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah (representing most of the parties then). You know that plan that everybody forgot about, that was prepared by Palestinians from various factions in Israeli prisons, and where most factions were agreeing among things to cease arm struggles outside of the 1967 green line (point 3), forming a unity government (point 6), and that was speaking of Israel as a state and not as "Zionist entity" as usual, and finally talking about negotiations and diplomacy to solve the problems.
So what about this? It ages back to may 2006 and in the past week (9 months later then) Fatah and Hamas agreed in Mecca to form a unity government to try to stop the civilian war that is raging between them in Gaza for almost 2 months. Well, when this plan was getting agreed upon by political wings, Hamas military wing abducted an Israeli soldier within Israel which triggered a (unfortunately usual) large military operation by Israel in Gaza. The plan was dropped and forgotten almost immediately as peace was not an immediate objective anymore. Some blame the Hamas military wing to have done this because they do not want to cease armed struggle versus Israel inside Israel, some say that Israel made sure the answer was big enough so the plan would be dropped and they could stay the ones imposing unilateral moves. Anyways, it was just the start.
Two weeks later the Hezbollah abducted 2 more soldiers in Israel and triggered the second Lebanon war between Israel and Lebanon. Many believe it was in an attempt to divert Israel’s focus on Gaza, many other believe it was taken as an opportunity by Israel to start a long planned war against Hezbollah, but now the reason why it happened don’t really matter anymore. The war happened (and you can find a few entries of this blog about it), civilians were murdered, soldiers died, and it ended under a very strong international pressure.
It ended up in a state that Israel disliked badly, and despite having tactically won the war, it ended up being considered as a defeat (and claimed as a victory by Hezbollah which anyways doesn't know the word for defeat :). Why a defeat ? Because Israel didn't succeed in protecting its civilians from rocket fire despite saying it should take only a few weeks, defeat because a few well trained Hezbollah fighters resisted them for weeks while in previous wars Israel was winning within days, defeat because the abducted soldiers were not returned despite all the UN resolutions signed, and defeat because most of the people stopped believing in peace.
This year was also the one where Iran grew as the number 1 bad guy (western world perspective), and their president started to be more vocal than usual, promising destruction to Israel, promoting holocaust denial and developping nuclear technology. This was one more year of civilian war in a US occupied Iraq without any sign of progress towards peace.
I could continue to point at the multiple political assassinations and bombings that keep going on in an unstable Lebanon, the civil war in Gaza for the past 2 months and in general the various signs of a rising tension between the western (christian) world and the middle eastern (muslim) world.
Israel is at the confluent of all these tensions, and the question in most minds is "When will it be ?", the next war...
Last year there were still people believing that Israel disengaging from Gaza was one step towards peace with Palestine, Israel's foreign ennemy were not very vocal and the only obstacle towards peace in here was finger pointed as the Hamas by most of the western world. So what happened?
I still remember showing lots of hope when the "prisoners plan" (full text here) was getting signed by Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Fatah (representing most of the parties then). You know that plan that everybody forgot about, that was prepared by Palestinians from various factions in Israeli prisons, and where most factions were agreeing among things to cease arm struggles outside of the 1967 green line (point 3), forming a unity government (point 6), and that was speaking of Israel as a state and not as "Zionist entity" as usual, and finally talking about negotiations and diplomacy to solve the problems.
So what about this? It ages back to may 2006 and in the past week (9 months later then) Fatah and Hamas agreed in Mecca to form a unity government to try to stop the civilian war that is raging between them in Gaza for almost 2 months. Well, when this plan was getting agreed upon by political wings, Hamas military wing abducted an Israeli soldier within Israel which triggered a (unfortunately usual) large military operation by Israel in Gaza. The plan was dropped and forgotten almost immediately as peace was not an immediate objective anymore. Some blame the Hamas military wing to have done this because they do not want to cease armed struggle versus Israel inside Israel, some say that Israel made sure the answer was big enough so the plan would be dropped and they could stay the ones imposing unilateral moves. Anyways, it was just the start.
Two weeks later the Hezbollah abducted 2 more soldiers in Israel and triggered the second Lebanon war between Israel and Lebanon. Many believe it was in an attempt to divert Israel’s focus on Gaza, many other believe it was taken as an opportunity by Israel to start a long planned war against Hezbollah, but now the reason why it happened don’t really matter anymore. The war happened (and you can find a few entries of this blog about it), civilians were murdered, soldiers died, and it ended under a very strong international pressure.
It ended up in a state that Israel disliked badly, and despite having tactically won the war, it ended up being considered as a defeat (and claimed as a victory by Hezbollah which anyways doesn't know the word for defeat :). Why a defeat ? Because Israel didn't succeed in protecting its civilians from rocket fire despite saying it should take only a few weeks, defeat because a few well trained Hezbollah fighters resisted them for weeks while in previous wars Israel was winning within days, defeat because the abducted soldiers were not returned despite all the UN resolutions signed, and defeat because most of the people stopped believing in peace.
This year was also the one where Iran grew as the number 1 bad guy (western world perspective), and their president started to be more vocal than usual, promising destruction to Israel, promoting holocaust denial and developping nuclear technology. This was one more year of civilian war in a US occupied Iraq without any sign of progress towards peace.
I could continue to point at the multiple political assassinations and bombings that keep going on in an unstable Lebanon, the civil war in Gaza for the past 2 months and in general the various signs of a rising tension between the western (christian) world and the middle eastern (muslim) world.
Israel is at the confluent of all these tensions, and the question in most minds is "When will it be ?", the next war...
Friday, August 18, 2006
Peace now ?
So the few questions going around me are : is this peace now? and who did win that war ?
To the first one, it is a cease fire, not peace. Countries like Lebanon consider themselves at war with Israel despite an armistice in 1949 and various cease fires since. Now the question is how long will this cease fire last ? The previous one lasted around 6 years with monthly violations mostly located arount the Sheba farms. I can only hope that this one will last longer but the first days of cease fire are not very promising.
France which is supposed to lead the UN interposition force in south Lebanon already said it would not participate to the implementation of some parts of the cease fire, by not working on disarming Hezbollah. The Lebanese government agreed with Hezbollah that they would keep their weapons, just not show them in public (which itself is a violation of the cease fire conditions which say that the only weaponry in south Lebanon has to be the army's). On the other side Israeli army is still in south Lebanon, with less soldiers but still there.
Annan is supposed to start a taskforce to figure out according UN who do belong the Sheba farms to (currently it's supposed to be Syrian territory occupied by Israel, but Lebanese say it's theirs). This is a very good initiative, but there has already been words by the US that whatever the decision would be, Israel would not have to remove their troops from there. So we can assume that whatever the answer is Hezbollah will also stand on their positions. My personal opinion on this issue is that neither Hezbollah nor Israel really care who it does belong to, it is just a convenient excuse.
So is it all that bad ? Well, the only change compared to last month is that now the Lebanese army is in south Lebanon, and will assume responsability over the border with Israel. In the long term this could lead to more responsible behaviour in the area.
Now the question who did win ? Each time there is a war there has to be a winner right ? Reading the medias it seems to be the case... I find it sad that this is even a matter of discussion but well it is. Modern wars seem to have mostly loosers and no winners. Some say that Israel by weakening Hezbollah, destroying all Lebanese infrastructure, killing a larger number of ennemies than their loss won (US claim it 's a victory in the "war over terror"). Some say Israel lost because a small organisation caused it more harm than anyone ever did before, negated their high tech weaponry, sent rockets farther in Israel than anyone ever did in the past 50 years. I am leaning towards the second option.
Now does that make Hezbollah a winner like they and Iran have been claiming everywhere ? Definitely not, they resisted well, but killing 2 dozen of civillians by sending over 3000 rockets towards them looks pretty sad to me. A good exemple of katyusha accuracy:
Their role is to protect Lebanon, have I heard. What did they protect that is still standing undamaged ? If it wasn't for the international community pressure, what would be the state of Lebanon 1 month from now ?
Finaly everybody is in such a hurry to claim victory that it really is obvious that everybody did loose.
To the first one, it is a cease fire, not peace. Countries like Lebanon consider themselves at war with Israel despite an armistice in 1949 and various cease fires since. Now the question is how long will this cease fire last ? The previous one lasted around 6 years with monthly violations mostly located arount the Sheba farms. I can only hope that this one will last longer but the first days of cease fire are not very promising.
France which is supposed to lead the UN interposition force in south Lebanon already said it would not participate to the implementation of some parts of the cease fire, by not working on disarming Hezbollah. The Lebanese government agreed with Hezbollah that they would keep their weapons, just not show them in public (which itself is a violation of the cease fire conditions which say that the only weaponry in south Lebanon has to be the army's). On the other side Israeli army is still in south Lebanon, with less soldiers but still there.
Annan is supposed to start a taskforce to figure out according UN who do belong the Sheba farms to (currently it's supposed to be Syrian territory occupied by Israel, but Lebanese say it's theirs). This is a very good initiative, but there has already been words by the US that whatever the decision would be, Israel would not have to remove their troops from there. So we can assume that whatever the answer is Hezbollah will also stand on their positions. My personal opinion on this issue is that neither Hezbollah nor Israel really care who it does belong to, it is just a convenient excuse.
So is it all that bad ? Well, the only change compared to last month is that now the Lebanese army is in south Lebanon, and will assume responsability over the border with Israel. In the long term this could lead to more responsible behaviour in the area.
Now the question who did win ? Each time there is a war there has to be a winner right ? Reading the medias it seems to be the case... I find it sad that this is even a matter of discussion but well it is. Modern wars seem to have mostly loosers and no winners. Some say that Israel by weakening Hezbollah, destroying all Lebanese infrastructure, killing a larger number of ennemies than their loss won (US claim it 's a victory in the "war over terror"). Some say Israel lost because a small organisation caused it more harm than anyone ever did before, negated their high tech weaponry, sent rockets farther in Israel than anyone ever did in the past 50 years. I am leaning towards the second option.
Now does that make Hezbollah a winner like they and Iran have been claiming everywhere ? Definitely not, they resisted well, but killing 2 dozen of civillians by sending over 3000 rockets towards them looks pretty sad to me. A good exemple of katyusha accuracy:
Their role is to protect Lebanon, have I heard. What did they protect that is still standing undamaged ? If it wasn't for the international community pressure, what would be the state of Lebanon 1 month from now ?
Finaly everybody is in such a hurry to claim victory that it really is obvious that everybody did loose.
Monday, August 14, 2006
Cease fire
Sirens woke me up this morning minutes before the cease fire took place. There were no alerts since, and activities are resuming. Let's hope it lasts and the conditions for a lasting peace with Lebanon settle.
Monday, July 31, 2006
1st day without sirens
Just as the title says, there has been no sirens over Haifa today. I suspect this is not going to last much as there is no sign of a cease fire in the coming weeks despite the frenetic diplomatic activity by France (ok I didn't choose this article randomly).
Some friends told me that "charlie Hebdo"'s editorial from the 28th was a nice reading. I can't buy it, but if any of you could have a look for me I'd love it.
Besides that I read an interresting opinion from a Lebanese journalist (from the reading he's probably a christian close to Aoun's side). I can't post it as it isn't (yet ?) public domain but I'll forward it to the ones that spam my mailbox and want to have a look.
Some friends told me that "charlie Hebdo"'s editorial from the 28th was a nice reading. I can't buy it, but if any of you could have a look for me I'd love it.
Besides that I read an interresting opinion from a Lebanese journalist (from the reading he's probably a christian close to Aoun's side). I can't post it as it isn't (yet ?) public domain but I'll forward it to the ones that spam my mailbox and want to have a look.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Images of war
Here are a few pictures of Haifa under the katyushas. I didn't take them myself as I do not go much out, they are just among the large number I recieve in my mailbox.
As you can see schrapnel is not enough, Hezbollah adds metal balls to make their rockets more efficient at injuring a maximum of people.
This one shoked me when I saw it, I am not sure this is the way to educate your kids, but well it's there and I still prefer bad words to metal balls.
As you can see schrapnel is not enough, Hezbollah adds metal balls to make their rockets more efficient at injuring a maximum of people.
This one shoked me when I saw it, I am not sure this is the way to educate your kids, but well it's there and I still prefer bad words to metal balls.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Why ?
am I staying in Haifa ? Many of you have been pressing me in the past days to leave the country for a safer place, so I'll try to explain you why I am still here and am not planning to leave unless the situation worsens significantly.
The geographical position of my house combined with my current lifestyle makes it very safe for me to stay here for now. I am in a non targetted area, a pretty hard to target area, spending most of my time in a safe room so I just cannot reasonably get hurt.
Still, life isn't fantastic in these conditions with the sirens the explosions, the deads in the news, the situation getting worse hourly on the other side of the border :(...
But I am solidar with all my friends and collegues that live here, I believe that me staying there is doing something to comfort and strengthen them. Add to that the fact that I would hate fleeing under Hezbollah fire, it would just give me the feeling that they are winning something while they are actually just unable to harm me.
I am not suicidal, and I do not want to have people concerned about my security, that is why I seriously thought about it before taking this decision and balancing various options like going to work abroad for some time. Believe me if the situation were to worsen and put my life at risk, I would leave the area by the minute. I do not intend to risk my health for Israel, and noone around me would expect me to do that to support them.
Maybe I am just behaving to proud, but I would have serious self confidence issues if I weren't doing that.
I had planned a trip to France for vacations somewhere by the beginning of August and I still intend to do it around that period and visit my family in the alps and the Narbonne-Plage little monkey.
The geographical position of my house combined with my current lifestyle makes it very safe for me to stay here for now. I am in a non targetted area, a pretty hard to target area, spending most of my time in a safe room so I just cannot reasonably get hurt.
Still, life isn't fantastic in these conditions with the sirens the explosions, the deads in the news, the situation getting worse hourly on the other side of the border :(...
But I am solidar with all my friends and collegues that live here, I believe that me staying there is doing something to comfort and strengthen them. Add to that the fact that I would hate fleeing under Hezbollah fire, it would just give me the feeling that they are winning something while they are actually just unable to harm me.
I am not suicidal, and I do not want to have people concerned about my security, that is why I seriously thought about it before taking this decision and balancing various options like going to work abroad for some time. Believe me if the situation were to worsen and put my life at risk, I would leave the area by the minute. I do not intend to risk my health for Israel, and noone around me would expect me to do that to support them.
Maybe I am just behaving to proud, but I would have serious self confidence issues if I weren't doing that.
I had planned a trip to France for vacations somewhere by the beginning of August and I still intend to do it around that period and visit my family in the alps and the Narbonne-Plage little monkey.
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Is this blog dead ?
No, well not really. I have been pretty busy with work and travels and also I started to get pessimistic about politics in the middle east and didn't really felt like making long posts to try to express these feelings, hoping secretly I would be wrong (despite hating being proved wrong as those who know me would tell you).
So what's been going on ? A few monthes back new governments were elected on both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.
In Palestine Hamas was elected partially because of it's agenda, partially as a protest against the corruption of the ruling Fatah and the never-improving situation. I was expressing some hopes that this new government would lead to positive changes but until now, a combination of international and Israeli pressure and refusal to act for change ended up in a serious degradation of the situation. Palestine is on the edge of a civil war, the strong disagrements between 2 heavily armed factions that do not manage to converge their opinions are a serious risk. And on the other side the western world by indirectly stopping the salaries of the security forces knew they were going to increase the instability. What are unpayed policemen ending up doing to feed their families ? Begging or shutting up ? No way...
In Israel, Olmert was elected with Sharon's aura and program, but not with the expected majority. He ended up building a government that seem to work for now at least. His agenda is to leave some settlements in the west bank and keep some others without negotiating with the palestinians, because supposedly of the Hamas presence at the government. Gaza withdrawal was unilateral and could be so because it was a withdrawal to the green line, the internationnaly "recognized" border for gaza. So it was kind of OK to not negotiate the conditions of the withdrawal. The story for the west bank is very different (the problem is very different also). They have to negociate at some point, just because they will fondamentally disagree on the withdrawal line. You can see this plan in at least 2 ways: by removing the most frictional outposts Olmert will only improve the situation in the area. At least he is giving back some things. Or, he is doing that to keep the rest of the west bank forever, which is what he claims (he would not get wide support in his country if he was saying otherwise).
In the end evacuating the 400000 israelis living in the west bank is not going to happen that easily, whatever the palestinian militant groups (like Hamas) want. I do believe that by negociation they could manage to get progressive and further disengagement from the west bank by steps, instead of refusing to deal with Israel and getting Olmert to remove a few hard to defend outposts and fortify massively the rest and define it as "permanently" in Israel.
So, Palestine is getting worse, and is also loosing more and more support from the international community and public opinion. I am convinced that if they don't get ready to drop a few things from their requests, they will end up even worse than today, but courage and pride will probably keep blocking many peace efforts there, and I do not expect Israel to be the one that will have to make concessions seeing how the situation evolves.
So what's been going on ? A few monthes back new governments were elected on both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.
In Palestine Hamas was elected partially because of it's agenda, partially as a protest against the corruption of the ruling Fatah and the never-improving situation. I was expressing some hopes that this new government would lead to positive changes but until now, a combination of international and Israeli pressure and refusal to act for change ended up in a serious degradation of the situation. Palestine is on the edge of a civil war, the strong disagrements between 2 heavily armed factions that do not manage to converge their opinions are a serious risk. And on the other side the western world by indirectly stopping the salaries of the security forces knew they were going to increase the instability. What are unpayed policemen ending up doing to feed their families ? Begging or shutting up ? No way...
In Israel, Olmert was elected with Sharon's aura and program, but not with the expected majority. He ended up building a government that seem to work for now at least. His agenda is to leave some settlements in the west bank and keep some others without negotiating with the palestinians, because supposedly of the Hamas presence at the government. Gaza withdrawal was unilateral and could be so because it was a withdrawal to the green line, the internationnaly "recognized" border for gaza. So it was kind of OK to not negotiate the conditions of the withdrawal. The story for the west bank is very different (the problem is very different also). They have to negociate at some point, just because they will fondamentally disagree on the withdrawal line. You can see this plan in at least 2 ways: by removing the most frictional outposts Olmert will only improve the situation in the area. At least he is giving back some things. Or, he is doing that to keep the rest of the west bank forever, which is what he claims (he would not get wide support in his country if he was saying otherwise).
In the end evacuating the 400000 israelis living in the west bank is not going to happen that easily, whatever the palestinian militant groups (like Hamas) want. I do believe that by negociation they could manage to get progressive and further disengagement from the west bank by steps, instead of refusing to deal with Israel and getting Olmert to remove a few hard to defend outposts and fortify massively the rest and define it as "permanently" in Israel.
So, Palestine is getting worse, and is also loosing more and more support from the international community and public opinion. I am convinced that if they don't get ready to drop a few things from their requests, they will end up even worse than today, but courage and pride will probably keep blocking many peace efforts there, and I do not expect Israel to be the one that will have to make concessions seeing how the situation evolves.
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Lebanon - 1 year
There was half a million persons in the streets of Beyrouth yesterday, for the 1 year anniversary of Rafic Hariri's assassination. 1 year after the Syrian influence they were protesting against is still there despite the disengagement of the Syrian army. The 3 main leaders of the opposition were in the middle of the crowd and among other requests were asking the pro-syrian president Emile Lahoud to leave and the Hezbollah to disarm.
The U.N. probe on the assassination is currently stalled as the main witnesses retracted their testimony against Syrian security officers. Now they are looking at an Al-Qaeda driven assassination which looks to me like a decoy to lower the tension between Syria and the west.
The U.N. probe on the assassination is currently stalled as the main witnesses retracted their testimony against Syrian security officers. Now they are looking at an Al-Qaeda driven assassination which looks to me like a decoy to lower the tension between Syria and the west.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Tension
In the past weeks the tensions have been raising all over the middle east. The Hamas that won the Palestinians elections is still not governing it and the Fatah armed wings are preparing their future political failure by resuming terrorist activities.
A few bad drawings published 4 months ago were used to start unrest versus western europeans interrests. Most of the manifestants burning embassies never even saw those drawings, and destroying humanitary infrastructure over those was not the most clever thing to do either. In western countries there are legal ways of protesting versus diffamation and insults and you do not ask governments to excuse about private newspapers, you just ask the justice to force the newspaper to do so if it is justifyed. The sad thing about all this is not the embassies burnt is that there has been over 10 deaths already.
Iran-Europe talks about nuclear activities have reached a dead-end and despite not being against the development of civil nuclear energy in Iran like the NPT allows them to, I start to fear what the US and Israel have been repeating for years, which is that the reason why they want to do Uranium enrichment themselve is because it will allow them to build nuclear bombs.
And in Israel the government and the army are struggling between a massive restart of terrorist activities which they answered to by a massive number of targeted assassinations, and evactuation of extreme right illegal outposts that turned violent (in Amona). Obviously all this results in the closure of the territories.
So currently in Palestine:
-humanitary workers leave because of cartoons violence
-taxes money is not coming in because Israel didn't want to give it to Hamas
-territories are closed so no export and no jobs out
-airstrikes and raids almost daily to capture militants with common collateral damages
-humanitary help money decreasing because of Hamas fear.
All this does not let me see a bright near future...
A few bad drawings published 4 months ago were used to start unrest versus western europeans interrests. Most of the manifestants burning embassies never even saw those drawings, and destroying humanitary infrastructure over those was not the most clever thing to do either. In western countries there are legal ways of protesting versus diffamation and insults and you do not ask governments to excuse about private newspapers, you just ask the justice to force the newspaper to do so if it is justifyed. The sad thing about all this is not the embassies burnt is that there has been over 10 deaths already.
Iran-Europe talks about nuclear activities have reached a dead-end and despite not being against the development of civil nuclear energy in Iran like the NPT allows them to, I start to fear what the US and Israel have been repeating for years, which is that the reason why they want to do Uranium enrichment themselve is because it will allow them to build nuclear bombs.
And in Israel the government and the army are struggling between a massive restart of terrorist activities which they answered to by a massive number of targeted assassinations, and evactuation of extreme right illegal outposts that turned violent (in Amona). Obviously all this results in the closure of the territories.
So currently in Palestine:
-humanitary workers leave because of cartoons violence
-taxes money is not coming in because Israel didn't want to give it to Hamas
-territories are closed so no export and no jobs out
-airstrikes and raids almost daily to capture militants with common collateral damages
-humanitary help money decreasing because of Hamas fear.
All this does not let me see a bright near future...
Thursday, January 26, 2006
Hamas wins palestinian elections
According reports on haaretz, Hamas has won over 70 sits on 132 in the Palestinian parlementary elections. There are a lot of implications to this, Hamas is shared between politics and armed confrontation with Israel and most of the western world doesn't want to support a palestinian state that vows for the destruction of Israel and uses terrorism.
Something has to happen within the next few days or weeks, something that can be terribly bad, or a big step forward towards peace, but something. I just hope it will go in the right direction as noone needs more suffering.
Something has to happen within the next few days or weeks, something that can be terribly bad, or a big step forward towards peace, but something. I just hope it will go in the right direction as noone needs more suffering.
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