PALESTINIANS HAVE TWO CHANCES AT SOVEREIGNTY: UNDER OLMERT; FAT CHANCE, AND UNDER NETANYAHU; A SNOWFLAKES CHANCE IN HELL!

Benjamin Netanyahu and the extreme right-wing Zionist Likud Party are champing at the bit for Olmert to resign and call an election. If an election were held tomorrow Netanyahu would be able to form a government with reasonable ease and it is generally accepted that in that event any notion of peace between Israel and Palestine can be kissed goodbye.

What Olmert and Bush would like the world to think is that, with Olmert staying on as Prime Minister, there is hope of a two-state solution being realised before the end of Bush’s presidency. However, the notion of peace between Israel and Palestine is as much a hopeless cause with Olmert running Israel and Bush running the US as it would be with Netanyahu running Israel and whoever else running the US. The bottom line is; no matter which of these Israeli prime ministers, Palestinians are never likely to see a proper Palestinian sovereign state.

I’m not sure what it is that so many people do not understand about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. The garbage about a ‘two-state solution’ as espoused by the likes of Bush and Olmert does noting but provide a false hope of peace with this hope being far more for their benefit to make them look good in the eyes of their people as they falsely present themselves as men striving for peace. Let’s be quite clear about this, neither of these men are men of peace. Bush’s armies have invaded, destroyed and occupied two nations that were of no threat to the US and have caused the deaths of well over a million humans in Afghanistan and Iraq. Olmert and his IDF thugs continue to murder Palestinians in the Gaza and West Bank, occupy the West Bank, the Golan Heights; they invaded Lebanon under false pretences and bombed civilian areas there that resulted in the deaths of over a thousand civilians including many women and children.

Olmert and Bush are not men of peace.

Olmert is playing for time, both for his own political survival and for time to resolve the Palestinian issue in a way that reflects the reality of the Zionist dream – a Greater Israel at the expense of a Palestinian state. Olmert knows that there will never be a truly independent sovereign Palestinian state and talk of such from him is merely a distraction while the real barrier to the Zionist dream of a Greater Israel, Iran, is dealt with.

Both Olmert and Netanyahu know that a final confrontation with Iran is the only way that either will realise their dreams. When Iran is attacked it will be the trigger for Israel to launch an all-out attack against Hamas in the Gaza and the West Bank, and against Hizbollah in south Lebanon up to the Litani River. Iran is the patron of both Hamas and Hizbollah. Israel must first confront Iran before it can deal with Hamas and Hizbollah. Time, however, is running out for Olmert. Bush will not be president for much longer and Bush’s successor is unlikely to take on Iran, and, knowing that, Israel would not make the first strike. But both Olmert and Netanyahu know that if Israel makes the first strike against Iran while Bush is still president then the US will finish off the job of pummelling Iran into submission for the Israelis while the Israelis deal with Hamas and Hizbollah by a massive aerial strike against Syria and a full-on invasion and occupation of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and south Lebanon.

All they are waiting for now is a casus belli – and, no doubt, if they don’t get one soon, they’ll simply have to invent one.

IN STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS PRESIDENT TAKES ‘NOTHING OFF THE TABLE’ ON IRAN AND THE ZIONISTS INVOKE THE ULTIMATE CHUTZPAH.

The President in his 2008 State of the Union address gives us the usual propaganda and rhetoric about Iran, which is exactly the same propaganda and rhetoric he gave us about Iraq, and he has made it abundantly clear that he will not hesitate “to confront those who threaten our troops”, adding that, “we will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf.”

Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert once again cynically taints and insults the memory of those European Jews that perished under the Nazis by invoking the Holocaust for purely modern political motives. To use the memory of the Holocaust as part of a propaganda campaign whose aim is to bring about a change in government of a sovereign nation just so that Israel can create a Greater Israel in the same way as the Nazis attempted to create a Greater Germany is the ultimate Chutzpah and insult that deserves nothing but the contempt of all of the peoples of the world and especially of those survivors, descendants of survivors, and descendants of those that perished.

The tragedy is that the people of America are being forced by their dictatorial President to support the crimes that the Israeli Zionists are committing. These are the very same crimes, the crime of waging unprovoked wars, that were committed against the people of Europe by the Nazis and Fascists, the very same crimes that 408,000 Americans gave up their lives for in the effort to put an end to these kinds of crimes. Now Bush and Olmert want to lie us into yet another war which commits those same crimes.

The world must stand up to these criminals and say ‘Never again!’

‘AUSTRALIAN GENERAL TOGETHER WITH SEVERAL OFFICERS AND CIVILIANS BLOWN UP IN TARGETED KILLING IN CANBERRA.’

NO, IT HASN’T ACTUALLY HAPPENED, BUT IF IT DOES WE’LL KNOW WHY!

One can only assume that if Australian forces don’t mind murdering civilians as they set about murdering Taliban leaders in Afghanistan then they won’t jump up and down and get too upset if the ‘enemy’ comes over to Australia and does the same thing here.

If we wake up one morning to hear that one of our political leaders or a senior military leader and his or her entourage have been blown to bits together with several dozen civilians in a targeted killing in say Canberra then we’ll know exactly why will we not?

It’s been revealed that Australian Special Forces have been directly involved in targeted killings in Afghanistan, killings in which many civilians have also been killed. It’s all too easy to simply write these innocent civilians off as ‘collateral damage’ and ‘unintentionally killed’ but it doesn’t excuse the fact that these soldiers weren’t actually facing their enemy in battle when they murdered them. If ‘they’ did the same thing to ‘us’ then we would call them ‘murdering cowards’ or some such but when we do it to them its somehow OK despite the fact that the vast majority of Australians have never met an Afghani, and there would be many that couldn’t even find the place on a map, yet they’re quite content to think that its OK because it’s just ‘our boys doing what’s asked of them’.

One could argue that ‘all is fair in love and war’ but then if that’s the case we shouldn’t be complaining when the ‘enemy’ (they’re not my enemy, incidentally) find a way to do the same here in Australia or, indeed, in the US, or any other NATO country that’s currently murdering the Afghan people in their own country.

When ‘they’ kill ‘us’ we call them ‘murdering terrorists’ but when ‘we’ kill ‘them’ we call it eliminating the enemy by targeted assassination and those that do it are hailed as heroes.

One has to wonder who the real terrorists actually are.

WHAT IF 500,000 GAZANS MARCHING INTO ISRAEL TRIGGERED A SIMILAR MARCH BY WEST BANK PALESTINIANS?

One can’t let Abraham Rabinovitch’s piece in The Australian titled: “’Breakout into Israel’ ahead” go by without comment. He says that the “next breakout from the Gaza Strip could be into Israel, with 500,000 Palestinians attempting to march towards the towns and villages from which they or their parents fled or were expelled 60 years ago.”

I guess Abe’s talking about the lands that the Israelis ethnically cleansed 60 years ago. When one ‘expels’ a people that have lived in a land for thousands of years it’s called ‘ethnic cleansing’. The alternative for many Palestinians who did not ‘flee’ their towns and villages was to run the risk of being murdered by David Ben-Gurion’s thugs, as so many of Palestine’s townsfolk and villagers actually were, or be forcefully removed from those towns and villages.

So, one needs now to ask; what’s the problem with 500,000 of those Palestinians that survived that ethnic cleansing and their descendants demanding they return to those towns and villages? What can the Israelis do if the Palestinian people from both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank collectively decide to get up and move in to Israel en masse to reclaim their towns and villages? It’s not like its 1948 when Israeli terrorist thugs could literally get away with mass murder during their ethnic cleansing operations. This time the eyes of a very communicative world would be firmly fixed on them. Their misdeeds would be known and reverberate around the world in minutes; not trickle out forty years later when some murdering soldier’s conscience gets the better of him.

Could it be that those peace-loving Israelis would rally to help the Palestinians create a new binational one-state?

Or would the Zionist thugs who would prefer not to share the land with the Palestinian people use force to stop them? And if the Palestinians resist that force to stop them? What then?

If the Palestinian people do decide to march home then the world must support them.

MORE BUNKUM FROM CONDI OVER IRAN.

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice seems to think that the US can have ‘normal relations’ with Iran if Iran gives up its nuclear ambitions. Since she knows that Iran has no nuclear ambitions beyond wanting to generate electricity, she can rest assured that Iran and the US will never have ‘normal relations’ until the US has forced regime change in Iran and there is a puppet Western-friendly government installed. Condi’s ploy works because she knows Iran will not be giving up its peaceful nuclear program and, once the Iranians have told the US yet again that it has no nuclear weapon or enrichment program for nuclear weapons and never has had, then Condi can turn around and say ‘Well, don’t say we didn’t give you the opportunity’ just prior to attacking them.

Condi claims: "If Iran would suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities - which is an international demand, not just an American one - then we could begin negotiations, and we could work over time to build a new, more normal relationship". Her claims that there is an ‘international demand’ for Iran to ‘suspend its uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities’ is totally misleading. Iran, under the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, have every right to enrich uranium for use in power generation and the UN has no legal right to ‘demand’ that the Iranians stop. It is the US that has blackmailed, bribed and cajoled other nations to create the illusion that this so-called ‘international demand’ was a spontaneous call from the international community. In reality billions of dollars of handouts and favourable deals were needed to get the UN on side in order to create this ‘international demand’.

The extent of the strength of this ‘international demand’ can be seen by the pathetically weak UN resolution that has recently been agreed upon. The new resolution does little more than endorse the last one and will have no affect whatsoever on Iran’s economy. The Russians clearly only agreed to the new resolution knowing that it would further delay any military action that the US may have been planning against Iran; the US could hardly attack Iran while the resolution the US worked so hard to get had just been agreed to and not been given a chance to see if it would work.

All Condoleeza Rice has done is set up the strawman for the next round of Iran bashing when Iran tells the US that it won’t be suspending its nuclear plans to enrich uranium to the levels it’s legally entitled to for the purpose of power generation.

Can anyone really believe that there would be ‘normal relations’ between Iran and the US and Israel while the Mullahs and Iranian President Ahmadinejad are governing the country – even if they did give away their ‘nuclear ambitions’? Of course not! It’s just more bunkum from Condoleeza Rice and the Bush/neocon administration.


…AND HOW’S THIS FOR ISRAELI ARROGANCE!

Ha’aretz is reporting that the Israel Defence Minister, the international terrorist Ehud Barak, is furious that Egypt has allowed Gazan Palestinians to flood into Egypt. The report goes on to say that Israeli security sources have said “that Egypt's conduct raises the concern that Cairo is purposely ignoring Israel's demands.”

Who or what gives Israel the right to demand anything of another sovereign nation? And since when has Israel been able to dictate to Egypt who they are allowed and not allowed to let into their country?

For more on the Great Escape see here.

THE BIGGEST PRISON BREAK IN RECORDED HISTORY?!

THE BREAKOUT HAS LEFT ISRAEL DUMBFOUNDED AND HAS GIVEN HAMAS A GREAT VICTORY.


The break-out from the Gaza prison of some 200,000 Palestinian prisoners has got to go down in the Guinness Book of Records as the biggest ever prison break.

As the Palestinian people flooded out from their prison through a massive breach created by Palestinian fighters in their prison wall, they were greeted by their brother Arabs on the Egyptian side with welcoming arms. Egyptian authorities had little choice but to stand back and let them through.

The US and Israel are furious that the Egyptians made no effort to stop the flood of Palestinians through the breach saying they have grave concerns that the breakout provides an opportunity for Palestinian fighters to bring arms back into the Gaza.

It was inevitable, however, that something had to give in the Gaza. The pressure on the Palestinian people caused by the deprivations initiated by the Israelis attempt to starve and generally make life as unbearable as possible for the Palestinian people were just too much for them to bear any longer. The breakout was clearly the last thing that the Israelis expected and it will be seen around the world as a considerable propaganda victory for the Gazan people.

Already Palestinians laden with food and fuel supplies are beginning to trickle back to their homes inside the Gaza. Furthermore, they are returning home without being molested or searched by Egyptian authorities wanting to check people back in. This is a significant turning point in Israeli-Egyptian relations because it means that the Israelis have lost control over access to the Gaza and, if the crossing does remain open on a more permanent basis, it also means that the Israelis will no longer be able to put pressure on the Gazan people by collectively punishing them via deprivation of fuel, food and medicines. What happens next will be crucial for the Gazan people.

There are a number of scenarios which the Israelis could follow up with. If they can’t get the Egyptians to shut down the crossing, the Israelis may consider invading the Gaza in order to, first, close down the crossing from the Gaza side and, secondly, to seek out the arms that have been brought in during the breakout. This would be bound to upset world public opinion, but, one needs to ask, since when have the Israelis been concerned about public opinion? Such an invasion would not happen without a fight however. Hamas have now taken over control of the border and any invasion by the Israelis would be met with stiff resistance.

Other consequences of the breakout have been a massive groundswell of popular support for Hamas. This is also bound to have some effect in the West Bank as Abbas could see this as a threat to his own powerbase if Palestinians in the West Bank divert their support to Hamas.

The breakout has also rekindled support for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt who are in alliance with Hamas and support the Palestinian cause. This, in turn, is putting domestic pressure on Egypt’s leader Hosni Mubarak who has already arrested hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members and supporters.

The breakout is not something that had been scripted in to Israel’s game plan and how they react will be of crucial importance in many ways to the future of the Middle East.

IS THE ‘FINAL CONFRONTATION’ FINALLY UPON US? ONE HOPES NOT, BUT THE SIGNS ARE NOT GOOD.

I have for some time been warning of the impending final confrontation between the US-Israeli alliance and Iran. The pointers indicating that the moment of that final confrontation may have almost arrived are now too irresistible to ignore. I hope I’m wrong.

Here are a few of those pointers; some obvious, some not so obvious.

First off, of course, is the obvious; if it’s going to happen, then it has to happen soon because after next November Bush won’t be around and it is doubtful that his successor would even dream of it, let alone actually do it. So, as every day goes by, the reality of the final confrontation draws closer.

Other pointers are as follows. About eight weeks ago, toward the end of November last year, the US Navy put out tenders to charter extra ships to carry over a million barrels of ship and jet fuel for their warships and aircraft in the Straights of Hormuz off the coast of Iran. Before the end of January the carrier USS John C. Stennis will join the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower which is already cruising Persian Gulf waters. This extra fuel order comes on top of last August’s massive order from Israel for millions of litres military JP-8 jet fuel and military diesel fuel. Allowing time for the various House and Senate committees to approve the order, the fuel has either been recently delivered or is also on its way.

This activity comes atop an increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the US and Israel particularly after Bush’s recent visit to Israel and the region where he has unsuccessfully attempted to garner support among the Arab nations of the Middle East to put pressure on Iran over its so-called nuclear weapons program. However, because the other Arab nations know full well that the only nation in the region that has an interest in nuclear weapons, and actually has them, is Israel and because the other Arab nations also know full well that there is no evidence whatsoever of Iran wanting or having, or even having had, a program to obtain nuclear weapons, despite US and Israeli assertions to the contrary, and because the other Arab nations have heard all of this exact same rhetoric and lies before when the US and their allies invaded and destroyed Iraq, the other Arab nation declined to offer their support to Bush. Unfortunately, the Arab nation’s failure to support Bush is unlikely to stop Bush and his neoconservative cronies, together with Israel, from attacking Iran.

Heralding Bush’s visit to Israel and the region, which began on 9 January, was the bizarre and rather too conveniently well-timed episode of the five little Iranian outboard speedboats supposedly ‘harassing’ huge US warships in the Straights of Hormuz just prior to Bush’s arrival.

As soon as Bush had left Israel, Israeli terrorists resumed their slaughter of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip saying that the killings were in response to Palestinian fighters launching rockets into Israel. Since Bush left, some thirty-nine Gazan Palestinians have been murdered by Israeli terrorists including a number of civilians. Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, has warned of increased Israeli terrorist actions in the Gaza. While Israeli attacks against the Gaza have increased, the threatened all-out invasion has not yet come. Could it be that an attack against Hamas in the Gaza could come at the same time as an attack against Iran? Come to that, could it be that such attacks will also be coordinated with simultaneous attacks against Hizbollah in Lebanon and even Syria?

The Winograd report is likely to be released on 30 January. It is unlikely to be kind to Olmert thus raising the spectre again of Olmert being forced from office and the possibility of an election being called. Olmert survived a vote of no confidence by the skin of his teeth when the preliminary Winograd report was released at the end of April last year. It remains to be seen whether or not he’ll survive any further calls for his resignation when the full report is released. The extreme right-wing Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu Party recently resigned from Olmert’s coalition where he was deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Strategic Threats. It is likely that he will now join forces with Benjamin Netanyahu in an effort to oust Olmert. Olmert desperately needs something to distract Israelis from his problems and bring Israelis back under his influence. What better than a war against your favourite enemy – and then resign as a hero rather than the loser of the Second Lebanon War.

And last, but not least, we still have the pleasure to come of Bush telling the world about the State of the Union. Who knows what he has in store for the world on 29 January. One can only hope that he doesn’t think a war with Iran will be something exciting to talk about and a fitting finale to his Presidency.

As I said, I do hope I’m wrong!


HOW DOES THE WEST LET THIS GO WITHOUT OUTRAGE?

If Hamas or Hizbollah publicly called for the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert there would be outrage from the governments of the West. Yet when Israeli politicians call for the assassination of Hizbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah the West says nothing at all.

The values that ‘they’ hate about ‘us’ are arrogance and hypocrisy. Who can blame them?

IF A JEWISH-AMERICAN BUYS UP YOUR BLOCK OF FLATS, CAN IT BECOME A PART OF ISRAEL?

Or if a rich Jewish-American bought land in, say, South Australia and then invited Australian Jews to come and build their homes on that land, would they then be entitled to say that the parcel of land that the new Jewish community has established itself on now comes under the governance of, and subject to, the laws of the state of Israel?

Is that a resounding ‘NO’?! Is such a notion too ridiculous to even consider? Because, if it is, why then do we accept Jewish-Americans being able to buy land in Palestine and East Jerusalem who then invite Jews – and only Jews – to come and build their homes on that land thus establishing a Jewish community and then accept that the community and the land that it’s on then falls under the governance of Israel?

Yet, for some reason, the world accepts without question that it is OK for Israelis to just move into pockets of land in Palestine and then claim it as Israeli territory subject to Israeli law.

Its one thing for a Jewish community to want to maintain its heritage, rites and customs in a small enclave within another nation but it’s quite another matter if that community then decides that the land it is living on should become part of the sovereign state of Israel simply because they don’t like the laws of the people that they are surrounded by.

Where will it end?

THE GOVERNMENT’S OF THE ARAB WORLD MAY BE ON SIDE WITH THE U.S. AND ISRAEL AGAINST IRAN, BUT ARE THE PEOPLE?

There is an interesting piece in the Washington Post today by Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institute. Telhami gets it partially right when he writes:

“Many Arab governments are of course concerned about Iran and its role in Iraq, but not for the same reasons as Israel and the United States. Israel sees Iran's nuclear potential as a direct threat to its security, and its support for Hizbollah and Hamas as a military challenge.”

Telhami is on the right track inasmuch that Israel’s concerns are for Irans support for Hizbollah and Hamas (and also Syria which Telhami neglects to mention). However, Israel, contrary to Telhami’s assertion otherwise, does not see Iran’s nuclear potential as a direct threat to Israel’s security. Israel is very much aware of the reality that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and that the allegations against Iran with regard to its so-called nuclear weapons program is purely part of the propaganda and rhetoric that is being used as part of the effort to drum up support for an attack on Iran in order to bring about regime change. Regime change in Iran will isolate Syria which, in turn, isolates Hizbollah and Hamas and this is the endgame that Israel is after.

But here’s the other interesting bit that Telhami says: “Arab governments are less worried about the military power of Hamas and Hezbollah than they are about support for them among their publics. They are less worried about a military confrontation with Iran than about Iran's growing influence in the Arab world. In other words, what Arab governments truly fear is militancy and the public support for it that undermines their own popularity and stability.”

This is what the west doesn’t understand. When the media talks of this and that Arab nation being worried about Iran, most ordinary folk think that the media are referring to the entire nation without realising that in fact they are only referring to the governments of those nations, not the peoples of those nations. Most governments of Arab nations are not democratic. In fact, in many ways Iran is more democratic than many of the Arab countries that are close friends of the US and Israel. Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt, for example, all have governments in which ‘democracy’ plays no part. So when we read and hear of Bush travelling around the Middle East trying to drum up support from the Arab ‘nations’ to put pressure on Iran over its ‘nuclear weapons ambitions’, what we are really getting to know about is Bush talking to the governments of Arab nations – not the people of Arab nations. In other words, quite simply, the western world is being conned into thinking that the entire Arab world is against Iran when in reality it is only the non-democratic governments of the Arab world that are with the US on this and then only because it is in their commercial and political interests to side with the US. In this regard Telhami gets it right when he says:

“And even though Gulf Arab governments need the US military umbrella for their security, their publics view the United States as a far greater threat than Iran. It is a challenge for these governments to have to continually depend on an America whose foreign policy is rejected by their own publics and whose record in recent years has been more of failure than of success.”

Iran is not a threat to the Arab peoples of the Middle East; it is a threat to the governments of the Arab nations of the Middles East. Iran has already shown its support for the oppressed and persecuted peoples of Palestine and Lebanon. What the Arab governments of the Middle East fear is Iran being an inspiration for the peoples of the Middle East. For the US and Israel there is no choice but to ensure regime change in Iran but, while this may placate the governments of the Arab nations, it will do nothing except incur the wrath of all of the peoples of the Arab nations around the Middle East and with them Muslims around the world.

The final confrontation is yet to come – and it may well be a confrontation that doesn’t just involve the US and Israel against Iran, but one that could engulf the entire Middle East.

THE HOLIDAY SEASON IS OVER AND IRAN SUDDENLY BECOMES A THREAT TO WORLD PEACE – AGAIN.

We barely heard a murmur about Iran over the holiday period but now they’re back in the news again for no apparent reason other than a few of their young guys had a bit of a day out in their new toys on the water near a few of the US navy’s warships – or, at least, that was what we were told. Suddenly the Iranians are a threat to world peace again. Never mind that the US battle fleets are in waters threatening Iran over non-existent nuclear bombs. It’s not as though the Iranian speedboats were racing around US warships on the Atlantic seaboard off New York; the US warships, armed to the teeth with attack aircraft, Tomahawk missiles and atomic weapons, are in the Persian Gulf to deliberately intimidate Iran yet for some reason we are being told that it is the Iranians that are a threat to world peace.

Now the western mainstream media are regurgitating the entire propaganda and rhetoric repertoire that the neocons and the Israeli Zionists used to get the world to support an invasion of Iraq to support an attack on the Iranians. But what’s really sickening about this whole affair is the fact that the world seems to be just sitting back and doing absolutely nothing about it despite the fact that everything the neocons and Israeli Zionist warmongers told us about Iraq turned out to be nothing but lies. Now we’re being told exactly the same lies all over again and still the world does nothing.

The world should make no mistake about this; Iran will sooner or later be attacked. It is not a matter of ‘if’, only of ‘when’. The US and Israel are not in the slightest bit concerned about Iran’s so-called nuclear weapons. Both know that Iran has no nuclear weapons. While they use the propaganda and rhetoric of nuclear weapons as the excuse to attack, their real aim is for regime change. With a western-friendly pseudo-democratic puppet government in place, Iranian support for Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Israeli Zionist aspirations for a Greater Israel that takes in the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and southern Lebanon up to the Litani River will evaporate. And without Iranian support, Syria too will no longer be a threat to Israel thus ensuring that the Golan Heights remain in Israeli hands.

The neoconservative/Israeli Zionist plan for the Middle East will be well on the way to realisation if the world allows itself to be taken in again by these liars and warmongers.

And, so far, it looks like the world is going to fall for it again.

IRAN AND SYRIA ARE BACK ON THE FRONT BURNER.

Yet again it seems, Iran has returned to the front pages of the mainstream media with Bush yesterday sounding out Arab support for ‘containing’ Iran. However, some Arab countries are now asking why Iran actually needs to be ‘contained’. The last National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) showed that Iran hasn’t been involved in the nuclear arms game for some time now; and, on top of that, the UNs International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) has not produced any evidence to suggest, indeed, that Iran ever was.

It comes as no surprise then, to learn that Syria has also returned to the front page as well. This time it is because it has since rebuilt (at least, so we are told) something (we don’t know what) at the place where something (again, we don’t really know what) was possibly bombed (though nobody seems to be really sure) back in September 2007.

One thing is really sure, however, and that is; whenever Iran stuff hits the headlines, Syria stuff seems to as well.

The reality is this: If Israel and the US are going to attack Iran – and attacking Iran is going to be the only way that Israel and the US can achieve regime change – then they will have to do it before Bush leaves office. But since the US cannot make the initial attack against Iran, because it has painted itself into a corner following the release of the NIE, it has to be Israel that strikes the first blow – unless, of course, Iran attacks the US or, for example, threatens its ships in the Gulf. Naturally, Iran’s ally Syria, supporting Hamas and Hizbollah, will also be targets.

Whatever it is that’s brewing, one can be sure that it will benefit Israel and their neoconservative supporters and that Arabs and Muslims will die.

BUSH’S VISIT TO ISRAEL AND PALESTINE HIGHLIGHTS REASONS WHY THE BINATIONAL ONE-STATE SOLUTION IS THE ONLY SOLUTION.

The media around the world today are full of the news about Bush’s call for Israelis to withdraw from the West Bank. The story is surrounded with other stories; like Bush asking that Israelis keep Olmert in power and that the Palestinian state shouldn’t end up looking like ‘Swiss cheese’, a reference to the pockets of Israeli settlements that are inside the West Bank.

Problem is; Bush’s statements seem to be full of contradictions. On the one hand he’s saying that the settlements should be withdrawn from the occupied territories and on the other he’s saying that he appreciates that Israel shouldn’t be asked to hand back all of the lands it conquered in the 1967 invasions. Neither of these two statements is going to impress both sides at the same time. Israeli Zionists are not going to be leaving their settlements in the West Bank and the Palestinian people are not going to be signing up to any agreement that allows Israelis to stay on pre-1967 Palestinian territories. The reality is that Olmert is only just clinging to power as it is what with the Winograd Report about to be released, and he will be facing an uphill battle with the Israeli right-wing, including the all-powerful Likud Party under Netanyahu and their allies, if he even hints at dismantling the settlements in the West Bank or allocating bits of Jerusalem to the Palestinians.

It’s time for a reality check. Bush is on a crusade that is doomed to failure. Olmert too will be unlikely to survive the impact of the Winograd report even if he defied Bush’s demands for a Palestinian state by the end of the year. And, on the other side of the fence, or, perhaps one should say; the other side of the wall, Abbas does not have either the support or the mandate of the Palestinian people – not in the West Bank or the Gaza – to negotiate away one inch of Palestinian dirt to the Israelis.

The world knows that this ‘effort’ for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians is as much a waste of time and effort as all the others have been over the last sixty years. The only real answer has to be a state where Jew and Arab live together under one secular democratic government in a nation that has no walls or restrictions as to where its citizens can or cannot live and the job that any citizen has is not dependent on that citizens religion, culture, blood or biology.

There are no other options. Bush’s way will never happen. Or Israel could crush the Palestinians and send them on their war to Jordan but will spend the rest of time looking over their shoulders waiting for the day that the Palestinians strike back. Or the Palestinians could launch attacks against the Israelis in a doomed attempt to drive them into the sea and which would end in disaster for all.
The one-state solution is the only solution. Enough time has been wasted already. Far too many have died. How many more need to die before the world realises that there is only one answer.

ISRAELI ZIONISTS OPENLY DEMAND PALESTINIANS LEAVE THE OCCUPIED TERRITORIES SO THAT PALESTINE BECOMES PART OF ISRAEL.

The leader of the right-wing Israeli Zionist National Union-National Religious Party (NU-NRP), Benny Elon, is openly calling for the dismantling of the Palestinian Authority, the removal of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza by the simple expediency of granting them a Jordanian passport, and the abandonment of any ideas about the Palestinians having a state of their own.

What makes this most recent call for the transfer of Palestinians and the take-over of their lands really frightening is the fact that the NU-NRP is closely allied to the Likud Party led by former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The call from Benny Elon reflects the reality of what the Israeli Zionists in all of Israel’s Zionist parties really want – a Greater Israel that absorbs into it the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and the transfer of Palestinians to Jordan.

The end of January will see the release of the Winograd Report into the failures of the Second Lebanon War of 2006. Once released, and if the backlash is powerful enough, it could well see the end of Ehud Olmert and his Kadima Party in power. If Olmert is forced to step down and call elections then there is a strong likelihood that Netanyahu and his Likud-led coalition would come to power. This time around, Netanyahu will be ceding nothing to the Palestinians as he did in 1998 when he ceded territory to the Palestinians in accordance with the Wye Accords. The current so-called ‘talks’ of a two state solution would be disbanded entirely. Netanyahu has recently made it clear that if he were Prime Minister he would not be pulling Israel out of what he calls Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) claiming that if Israel did leave then Hamas would immediately take control.

And in an election year in the US there will be no one game enough to say ‘NO’ to the Israeli Zionists in their quest for a Greater Israel at the Palestinian peoples expense.