'Ceasefire not an option'

[questionmark]

'Ceasefire not an option'

Islamic Jihad says Hamas did not ask group to join reported ceasefire efforts. 'Truce is not on the table in light of Israeli aggression' says Jihad spokesman

Associated Press

Published: 12.22.07, 19:00 / Israel News

The Islamic Jihad announced Saturday that despite the reports the Hamas is drafting terms for a temporary hudna – a Ceasefire – with Israel, there has been no discussion between Jihad and Hamas about a truce with Israel.

"We don't think the priority should be talking about a truce," said Islamic Jihad's Nafez Azzam.

"Talking about a truce should be directed first to the part that continues the killing and airstrikes. Truce is not on the table now in light of the Israeli aggression."

Shortly before the Jihad made the statement, the London based Arab-language Al-Shark Al-Awsat newspaper reported a senior source in Hamas as saying Hamas is considering offering Israel a non-conditional truce.

Al-Shark Al-Awsat further reported that the matter was still under deliberation, stressing no such offer has been made to Israel yet.

"Hamas is seriously thinking about a hudna and is trying to gain support from other Palestinian factions to accept it… if we are successful there will be no terms just a ceasefire on our side and on Israel's part," continued the report.

Full story, Source: Ynetnews

[ships-cat]

Cat is speechless.

I've criticsed HAMAS in many a post... but.... if they can pull this off. If they can persuade their diverse groups to stop firing rockets, stop provocation....

If there was a Paws..... the IDF would have to follow suite.....

... if HAMAS could ignore the voices from Iran etc, and actually carve their OWN destiny....

Cat will fall silent, lest by speaking the words he hexes the whole thing...

Nevertheless... it IS the Season of Miracles.

Meow Purr.

[Bob26003]

You watch ships. Even the talk of a potential ceasefire will do nothing but invoke a brutal Israeli offensive.

Peace is the last thing the Israelis want.

[bee]

You watch ships. Even the talk of a potential ceasefire will do nothing but invoke a brutal Israeli offensive.

Peace is the last thing the Israelis want.

What a ridiculous thing to say....peace for Israel/Palestine may not suit YOUR political agenda...'Bob26003'

but if Palestine and Israel can create a mutual, peaceful co-existence...this can only be a good thing

for the people who live there.

[chaoszerg]

What a ridiculous thing to say....peace for Israel/Palestine may not suit YOUR political agenda...'Bob26003'

but if Palestine and Israel can create a mutual, peaceful co-existence...this can only be a good thing

for the people who live there.

Actually even though I really hate to admit it Bob may have a point.

I don't really think it is going to work. I hope it does but I doubt it. I think if they did achieve a cease fire it would be a uneasy one and I think there are factions or those who would not like it because both hate each other so much. All it would take is one shot again to kick it off again. I think none of them will be truly happy until the other is wiped out.

[Bill Hill]

Is there point talking to a group called 'Islamic Jihad', I don't know why they're complaining.

"So... do you want a cease-fire with Israel?"

Islamic Jihad- "er NO....wait...that was too rash..let us think about it...(pause 2 seconds) nah, the answer is still, NO.

So to conclude...It's a No... NO... and NO."

"Oh ok..no surprises there..then."

[Bob26003]

Israel rejects Arab peace plan

Palestinian leaders hope Israel will accept the Arab League offer [Reuters]

Israel has refused to accept a revived Arab peace initiative, saying more negotiations are needed.

The plan, put forward after an Arab League summit in Saudi Arabia, offers Israel full diplomatic ties if it withdraws from all land seized in the 1967 war, allows the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.THURSDAY, MARCH 29, 2007

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DC2...D97C325EB4E.htm

[Bob26003]

Read this ships cat..........

http://chomsky.info/articles/20060819.htm

The consistent rejectionism can be traced back to the February 1971 Egyptian offer of a full peace treaty with Israel, in the terms of official US policy, offering nothing for the Palestinians. Israel understood that this peace offer would put an end to any security threat, but the government decided to reject security in favor of expansion, then mostly into northeastern Sinai. Washington supported Israel’s stand, adhering to Kissinger’s principle of “stalemate”: force, not diplomacy. It was only 8 years later, after a terrible war and great suffering, that Washington agreed to Egypt’s demand for withdrawal from its territory.

Meanwhile the Palestinian issue had entered the international agenda, and a broad international consensus had crystallized in favor of a two-state settlement on the pre-June 1967 border, perhaps with minor and mutual adjustments. In December 1975, the UN Security Council agreed to consider a resolution proposed by the Arab “confrontation states” with these provisions, also incorporating the basic wording of UN 242. The US vetoed the resolution. Israel’s reaction was to bomb Lebanon, killing over 50 people in Nabatiye, calling the attack “preventive” – presumably to “prevent” the UN session, which Israel boycotted.

The only significant exception to consistent US-Israeli rejectionism was in January 2001, when Israeli and Palestinian negotiators came close to agreement in Taba. But the negotiations were called off by Israeli Prime Minister Barak four days early, ending that promising effort. Unofficial but high-level negotiations continued, leading to the Geneva Accord of December 2002, with similar proposals. It was welcomed by most of the world, but rejected by Israel and dismissed by Washington (and, reflexively, the US media and intellectual classes).

Meanwhile US-backed Israeli settlement and infrastructure programs have been “creating facts on the ground” in order to undermine potential realization of Palestinian national rights. Throughout the Oslo years, these programs continued steadily, with a sharp peak in 2000: Clinton’s final year, and Barak’s. The current euphemism for these programs is “disengagement” from Gaza and “convergence” in the West Bank – in Western rhetoric, Ehud Olmert’s courageous program of withdrawal from the occupied territories. The reality, as usual, is quite different.

The Gaza “disengagement” was openly announced as a West Bank expansion plan. Having turned Gaza into a disaster area, sane Israeli hawks realized that there was no point leaving a few thousand settlers taking the best land and scarce resources, protected by a large part of the IDF. It made more sense to send them to the West Bank and Golan Heights, where new settlement programs were announced, while turning Gaza into “the world’s largest prison,” as Israeli human rights groups accurately call it. West Bank “Convergence” formalizes these programs of annexation, cantonization, and imprisonment. With decisive US support, Israel is annexing valuable lands and the most important resources of the West Bank (primarily water), while carrying out settlement and infrastructure projects that divide the shrinking Palestinian territories into unviable cantons, virtually separated from one another and from whatever pitiful corner of Jerusalem will be left to Palestinians. All are to be imprisoned as Israel takes over the Jordan Valley, and of course any other access to the outside world.

All of these programs are recognized to be illegal, in violation of numerous Security Council resolutions and the unanimous decision of the World Court any part of the "separation wall" that is built to “defend” the settlements is “ipso facto” illegal (U.S. Justice Buergenthal, in a separate declaration). Hence about 80-85% of the wall is illegal, as is the entire “convergence” program. But for a self-designated outlaw state and its clients, such facts are minor irrelevancies.

Currently, the US and Israel demand that Hamas accept the 2002 Arab League Beirut proposal for full normalization of relations with Israel after withdrawal in accord with the international consensus. The proposal has long been accepted by the PLO, and it has also been formally accepted by the “supreme leader” of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei. Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah has made it clear that Hezbollah would not disrupt such an agreement if it is accepted by Palestinians. Hamas has repeatedly indicated its willingness to negotiate in these terms.

The facts are doctrinally unacceptable, hence mostly suppressed. What we see, instead, is the stern warning to Hamas by the editors of the New York Times that their formal agreement to the Beirut peace plan is “an admission ticket to the real world, a necessary rite of passage in the progression from a lawless opposition to a lawful government.” Like others, the NYT editors fail to mention that the US and Israel forcefully reject this proposal, and are alone in doing so among relevant actors. Furthermore, they reject it not merely in rhetoric, but far more importantly, in deeds. We see at once who constitutes the “lawless opposition” and who speaks for them. But that conclusion cannot be expressed, even entertained, in respectable circles.

The only meaningful support for Palestinians facing national destruction is from Hezbollah. For this reason alone it follows that Hezbollah must be severely weakened or destroyed, just as the PLO had to be evicted from Lebanon in 1982. But Hezbollah is too deeply embedded within Lebanese society to be eradicated, so Lebanon too must be largely destroyed. An expected benefit for the US and Israel was to enhance the credibility of threats against Iran by eliminating a Lebanese-based deterrent to a possible attack. But none of this turned out as planned. Much as in Iraq, and elsewhere, Bush administration planners have created catastrophes, even for the interests they represent. That is the primary reason for the unprecedented criticism of the administration among the foreign policy elite, even before the invasion of Iraq.

In the background lie more far-reaching and lasting concerns: to ensure what is called “stability” in the reigning ideology. “Stability,” in simple words, means obedience. “Stability” is undermined by states that do not strictly follow orders, secular nationalists, Islamists who are not under control (in contrast, the Saudi monarchy, the oldest and most valuable US ally, is fine), etc. Such “destabilizing” forces are particularly dangerous when their programs are attractive to others, in which case they are called “viruses” that must be destroyed. “Stability” is enhanced by loyal client states. Since 1967, it has been assumed that Israel can play this role, along with other “peripheral” states. Israel has become virtually an off-shore US military base and high-tech center, the natural consequence of its rejection of security in favor of expansion in 1971, and repeatedly since. These policies are subject to little internal debate, whoever holds state power. The policies extend world-wide, and in the Middle East, their significance is enhanced by one of the leading principles of foreign policy since World War II (and for Britain before that): to ensure control over Middle East energy resources, recognized for 60 years to be “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “one of the greatest material prizes in world history.”

The standard Western version is that the July 2006 invasion was justified by legitimate outrage over capture of two Israeli soldiers at the border. The posture is cynical fraud. The US and Israel, and the West generally, have little objection to capture of soldiers, or even to the far more severe crime of kidnapping civilians (or of course to killing civilians). That had been Israeli practice in Lebanon for many years, and no one ever suggested that Israel should therefore be invaded and largely destroyed. Western cynicism was revealed with even more dramatic clarity as the current upsurge of violence erupted after Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, on June 25. That too elicited huge outrage, and support for Israel's sharp escalation of its murderous assault on Gaza. The scale is reflected in casualties: in June, 36 Palestinian civilians were killed in Gaza; in July, the numbers more than quadrupled to over 170, dozens of them children. The posture of outrage was, again, cynical fraud, as demonstrated dramatically, and conclusively, by the reaction to Israel's kidnapping of two Gaza civilians, the Muamar brothers, one day before, on June 24. They disappeared into Israel's prison system, joining the hundreds of others imprisoned without charge -- hence kidnapped, as are many of those sentenced on dubious charges. There was some brief and dismissive mention of the kidnapping of the Muamar brothers, but no reaction, because such crimes are considered legitimate when carried out by “our side.” The idea that this crime would justify a murderous assault on Israel would have been regarded as a reversion to Nazism.

The distinction is clear, and familiar throughout history: to paraphrase Thucydides, the powerful are entitled to do as they wish, while the weak suffer as they must.

We should not overlook the progress that has been made in undermining the imperial mentality that is so deeply rooted in Western moral and intellectual culture as to be beyond awareness. Nor should we forget the scale of what remains to be achieved, tasks that must be undertaken in solidarity and cooperation by people in North and South who hope to see a more decent and civilized world.

[ships-cat]

Thats a tricky one. I suspect the hang-up here is the "Right of Return". This would permit arab palestinians previously living in the territory that is now "Israel" to return there as Israeli citizens, complete with their offspring and extended families.

With several hundred thousand people potentially able to claim this right, we would see a dramatic demographic shift throughout Israel. It is likely that these 'returnees' would be encouraged and organised by external influences to use their voting rights en-block. Effectively, this could result in Iraels democracy being used to 'vote' Israel - or portions of it - out of existence, under the influence of external powers.

Regardless of the niceties of "international law", .no country on earth (with the possible exception of the UK under its current government) is going to passivly commit demographic suicide like this.

The arab palestinians SHOULD have a "right of return", but it should be the right to return to a brand new country - called Palestine. (e.g. the two-state solution). I would argue that Israel has a duty to compensate these people, and subsidise the construction of the new state's infrastructure for a period, but that's as far as it goes.

Meow Purr.

Edited December 23, 2007 by ships-cat

[Bob26003]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...6112400696.html

Israel Rejects Palestinian Peace Offer

By SARAH EL DEEB

The Associated Press

Friday, November 24, 2006; 7:09 PM

JEBALIYA, Gaza Strip -- The Palestinian prime minister said Friday that militants were prepared to stop firing rockets at Israel if it would halt all military action in Palestinian territories. Israel rejected the offer, saying it would respond positively only to a total truce.

Similar proposals in the past have failed to curb fighting, and a spokesman for the ruling Hamas group quickly stepped back from the cease-fire talk, which came as fighting between militants and Israeli troops in Gaza claimed the lives of a 10-year-old Palestinian boy and a militant filming the clashes.

A third Palestinian died Friday of wounds sustained in earlier violence. It wasn't immediately known whether he was a militant or civilian.

Israeli launched a military campaign in Gaza five months ago, in an unsuccessful attempt to curb militant rocket fire on Israeli border communities.

Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said armed factions had agreed Thursday to halt rocket fire in exchange for a complete cessation of Israeli military operations in Gaza and the West Bank.

"The ball now is in the Israeli court," Haniyeh said. "It (Israel) must stop its aggression and escalation against the Palestinian people, then there will be no problem according to what the factions agreed in their last meeting."

[Bob26003]

Israel's Premier Rejects Peace Deadline

Sunday, December 02, 2007

By MARK LAVIE, Associated Press Writer

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Sunday that Israel is not bound by a December 2008 target for a peace agreement set at last week's U.S.-hosted Mideast summit, telling his Cabinet that progress will depend on the Palestinians' ability to rein in militants.

The comments reflected Olmert's internal political weakness. Hard-liners have threatened to bring down his coalition government if he makes too many concessions in peace talks with the Palestinians. Olmert spoke a day before Israel was set to release 429 Palestinian prisoners in a gesture to moderate President Mahmoud Abbas, a step that has drawn criticism from the same hard-line members of Olmert's Cabinet.

In a message that could further anger Israeli hawks, Olmert's defense minister, Ehud Barak, said he supports a measure to give compensation to Jewish settlers in the West Bank who leave their homes voluntarily, according to the Defense Ministry.

The measure would apply to settlements outside Israel's separation barrier along the West Bank. The contentious barrier is meant to enclose main settlement blocs Israel plans to retain in a peace agreement, where two-thirds of the settlers live. The others, about 80,000, could claim compensation if they leave.

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2007Dec02/0,4...tinians,00.html

Settler leaders condemned the proposal. They oppose any building freeze or evacuation of settlements, even unauthorized outposts that dot West Bank hilltops.

[Bob26003]

Israeli FM rules out peace talks with Syria due to Damascus' "current conduct"

www.chinaview.cn 2007-12-14 05:35:19 Print

JERUSALEM, Dec. 13 (Xinhua) -- Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Thursday that Syria's current conduct prevents Israel from engaging in negotiations with it.

Livni made the remarks at a meeting in Tel Aviv with European Union ambassadors, according to local daily Yedioth Ahronoth's website.

Syria's role in the Middle East was "unconstructive" as it continued to supply weapons to Lebanon's Hezbollah, meddle in Lebanese politics and support terror organizations, including the Palestinian Hamas, Livni was quoted as saying.

However, Livni urged the EU envoys to help push Syria away from the "Axis of Evil" and bring it closer to moderate Arab countries.

Syria expressed interest in renewing peace talks with Israel earlier this year, but Israel has rejected the overtures, saying Damascus must first end its support for Lebanese and Palestinian militants who attack Israel.

The latest round of peace talks between Israel and Syria broke down in 2000.

Before last month's U.s.-sponsored Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Syria had requested to raise the issue of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights at the conference.

The issue was not addressed at the summit, but speculations has been raised that the peace process between Israel and Syria could be discussed in meetings following the Annapolis summit.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-12/...ent_7245981.htm

[Bob26003]

Israel rejects Franco-Spanish peace initiative

Foreign Ministry officials: Interference by international officials will only complicate matters’ of five-point plan proposed to resolve Israeli-PA crisis. Livni: Israel will fight terror with full determination

Attila Somfalvi

Published: 11.17.06, 01:13 / Israel News

Foreign Ministry officials rejected the initiative proposed by France and Spain to resuscitate the peace process and renew negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority on Thursday.

“The European Union initiative is not supported by the international community as a whole,” the officials explained Israel’s rejection of the plan. In addition Israel prefers direct dialogue with the Palestinians over mediation by foreign elements “that will only complicate matters.”

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3329242,00.html

[Bob26003]

Israel Rejects Baker's Plan for Mideast Peace Talks

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN,

Published: May 16, 1991

Israel today rejected Secretary of State James A. Baker 3d's proposals for bridging the differences between Israel and Syria on how a Middle East peace conference should be organized and on what role the United Nations should play in it, American and Israeli officials said.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...756C0A967958260

[Bob26003]

Israel Rejects Abbas' Proposal for Peace Conference

By VOA News

26 April 2006

The Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, is calling for an international peace conference that would include direct negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis.

Israel has rejected the idea.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/lib...60426-voa05.htm

[Unlimited]

the bottom line is Hamas and the islamic jihad dont recognize israels right to exist...why are you sided with terrorists bob?...

[Bob26003]

Israel rejects Peace and Palestine's right to exist

Saturday, 24 March 2007

Following nearly 21,600 days (60 years) of non-stop violence towards the Palestinians, Israel has once again refused Palestinians their Right to Return and Just Compensation as required by international law under UN Resolution 194. According to Nobel Prize winner, Vice Premier Shimon Peres, "the Palestinians should forgo their demands for the right of return for Palestinian refugees."

“Right of return means only one thing - turning Israel into a Palestinian state,” Peres claims.

Shortly after the Zionist government was founded, Israel agreed to the terms of Resolution 194 as a basic condition of their legitimacy as a nation. Instead, they have spent 60 years denying Palestine's Right to Exist, despite the fact that it has existed since at least the ancient Persian Empire over 2,500 years ago, as maps of the empire demonstrate.

To insure that Palestine won't exist in the future, Israel has changed Israeli maps, renaming all of Palestine as part of Israel. Since 1967, Israel has also exercised a brutal siege over the population. Also known as, The Occupation, the Israeli government has waged non-stop violence against Palestine which includes, but is not limited to, the erection of a concentration camp Wall that allows them to starve and bombard the population at will.

http://www.aimislam.com/news/news/israel-r...-right-to-exist

[Bob26003]

Israel rejects Arab peace plan

Israeli officials have refused to accept the revived Arab peace initiative as it stands, saying more negotiations are needed.

Shimon Peres, the Israeli deputy prime minister, told Israeli radio on Thursday: "There is only one way to overcome our differences, and that is negotiation."

"It's impossible to say: 'you must take what we offer you as is.'"

The plan, endorsed at the Arab League summit on Wednesday, offers Israel full diplomatic relations if it withdraws from all land occupied in 1967, allows the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.

Arab states called on "the government of Israel and all Israelis to accept the Arab peace initiative and seize the opportunity to resume the process of direct and serious negotiations on all tracks."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/055...ED669535280.htm

[Bob26003]

the bottom line is Hamas and the islamic jihad dont recognize israels right to exist...why are you sided with terrorists bob?...

Israel certainly does not recognize their right to exist.

IMHO, Israel has been engaged in state terrorism of an entire population for quite some time.

The recent starving and preventing vital medicine from reaching Gaza is a prime example.

Edited December 23, 2007 by Bob26003

[bathory]

doesn't Gaza have a border with Egypt and the ocean?

why are all the Palestinians problems always the Israelis?

[Unlimited]

so you agree that the indiscrminate shelling is good for peace?...your hamas argument is full of holes here; they dont want peace..

[Bob26003]

doesn't Gaza have a border with Egypt and the ocean?

why are all the Palestinians problems always the Israelis?

Israel controls all access in and out of Gaza. They control the airspace, the maritime access, and the land routes.

They determine whether or not the Palestinians get food and water and medicine.

[Bob26003]

Israeli and Palestinian Children Killed Since September 29, 2000

119 Israeli children have been killed by Palestinians and 971 Palestinian children have been killed by Israelis since September 29, 2000. (View Source)

==============

Israelis and Palestinians Killed Since September 29, 2000

1,027 Israelis and at least 4,345 Palestinians have been killed since September 29, 2000. (View Source)

http://www.ifamericansknew.org/

Edited December 23, 2007 by Bob26003

[Bob26003]

As you are well aware Israel rejected these Peace talks.

Hamas offers peace talks for 6 months

By Nadia Abou El-Magd, Associated Press Writer | November 25, 2006

CAIRO, Egypt --Hamas' leader said Saturday his group was willing to give peace negotiations with Israel six months to reach an agreement for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, but threatened a new uprising if the talks fail.

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeas...s_for_6_months/

Edited December 23, 2007 by Bob26003

[Bob26003]

PM rejects Hamas offer of Gaza Strip cease-fire

By Barak Ravid, Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondents

Tags: Hosni Mubarak, Hamas

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday rejected Hamas' offer of a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, saying the government would not hold talks with the Islamist group until it recognizes Israel.

Last update - 13:35 23/12/2007

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/937196.html