Israel’s plans for Jerusalem will create a large Jewish city but will have harsh consequences for the Palestinians, on both sides of the barrier.

IN THE twilight of a Bethlehem evening, Jerusalem shimmers on a distant hilltop like the Wizard of Oz’s Emerald City, its floodlit walls giving it a surrealist glow. Except that these are not the fortifications of ancient Jerusalem as seen above, but the appropriately named Har Homa (Wall Mountain), one of the new Israeli settlements that now ring the city.

After millennia of violent conquest and reconquest, Jerusalem, centre of pilgrimage, crucible of history and the world’s oldest international melting-pot, is changing hands once more, but with a slow and quiet finality. Israel redrew the municipal boundary after the 1967 war to enclose some of the West Bank land that it had occupied, a de facto (though not internationally recognised) annexation.

Settlements like Har Homa gradually encroached on the empty spaces. In 2002, as the second intifada raged, and central Jerusalem took the brunt of suicide bombings, Israel started building the West Bank barrier or wall, supposedly to keep out Palestinian bombers. But its route, enclosing Palestinian as well as Jewish neighbourhoods of Jerusalem (see map), suggested another purpose too.
economist.com

Ingathering
From left to right, the manifestos of all the Zionist parties during the recent Israeli election campaign contained policies which they claimed would counter the ‘demographic problem’ posed by the Palestinian presence in Israel. Ariel Sharon proposed the pull-out from Gaza as the best solution to it; the leaders of the Labour Party endorsed the wall because they believed it was the best way of limiting the number of Palestinians inside Israel. Extra-parliamentary groups, too, such as the Geneva Accord movement, Peace Now, the Council for Peace and Security, Ami Ayalon’s Census group and the Mizrachi Democratic Rainbow all claim to know how to tackle it.

Apart from the ten members of the Palestinian parties and two eccentric Ashkenazi ultra-Orthodox Jews, all the members of the new Knesset (there are 120 in all) arrived promising that their magic formulae would solve the ‘demographic problem’. The means varied from reducing Israeli control over the Occupied Territories – in fact, the plans put forward by Labour, Kadima, Shas (the Sephardic Orthodox party) and Gil (the pensioners’ party) would involve Israeli withdrawal from only 50 per cent of these territories – to more drastic action. Right-wing parties such as Yisrael Beytenu, the Russian ethnic party of Avigdor Liberman, and the religious parties argued for a voluntary transfer of Palestinians to the West Bank. In short, the Zionist answer is to reduce the problem either by giving up territory or by shrinking the ‘problematic’ population group.

None of this is new. The population problem was identified as the major obstacle in the way of Zionist fulfilment in the late 19th century, and David Ben-Gurion said in December 1947 that ‘there can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60 per cent.’ Israel, he warned on the same occasion, would have to deal with this ‘severe’ problem with ‘a new approach’. The following year, ethnic cleansing meant that the number of Palestinians dropped below 20 per cent of the Jewish state’s overall population (in the area allocated to Israel by the UN plus the area it occupied in 1948, the Palestinians would originally have made up around 60 per cent of the population). Interestingly, but not surprisingly, in December 2003 Binyamin Netanyahu recycled Ben-Gurion’s magic number – the undesirable 60 per cent. ‘If the Arabs in Israel form 40 per cent of the population,’ Netanyahu said, ‘this is the end of the Jewish state.’ ‘But 20 per cent is also a problem,’ he added. ‘If the relationship with these 20 per cent is problematic, the state is entitled to employ extreme measures.’ He did not elaborate.

THE American military is planning a “second liberation of Baghdad” to be carried out with the Iraqi army when a new government is installed.
Pacifying the lawless capital is regarded as essential to establishing the authority of the incoming government and preparing for a significant withdrawal of American troops.

Strategic and tactical plans are being laid by US commanders in Iraq and at the US army base in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, under Lieutenant- General David Petraeus. He is regarded as an innovative officer and was formerly responsible for training Iraqi troops.

The battle for Baghdad is expected to entail a “carrot-and-stick” approach, offering the beleaguered population protection from sectarian violence in exchange for rooting out insurgent groups and Al-Qaeda.

Sources close to the Pentagon said Iraqi forces would take the lead, supported by American air power, special operations, intelligence, embedded officers and back-up troops.

Helicopters suitable for urban warfare, such as the manoeuvrable AH-6 “Little Birds” used by the marines and special forces and armed with rocket launchers and machineguns, are likely to complement the ground attack.

The sources said American and Iraqi troops would move from neighbourhood to neighbourhood, leaving behind Sweat teams — an acronym for “sewage, water, electricity and trash” — to improve living conditions by upgrading clinics, schools, rubbish collection, water and electricity supplies.

Sunni insurgent strongholds are almost certain to be the first targets, although the Shi’ite militias such as the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr, the radical cleric, and the Iranian-backed Badr Brigade would need to be contained.
timesonline.co.uk

what a strange term…pacification

U.S. arming of Iraq cops skates close to legal line
WASHINGTON — U.S. officials are doling out millions of dollars of arms and ammunition to Iraqi police units without safeguards required to ensure they are complying with American laws that ban taxpayer-financed assistance for foreign security forces engaged in human-rights violations, according to an internal State Department review.

The previously undisclosed review shows that officials failed to take steps to comply with the laws over the past two years, amid mounting reports of torture and murder by Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces. The review comes at a time when the U.S. military emphasis in Iraq has switched to training and equipping Iraqi forces to replace American troops.

As Iraq slides deeper into sectarian violence, the performance of U.S.-supported Iraqi units could be crucial, because some are infiltrated by militias believed responsible for much of the current strife.

The laws in question are called the Leahy Amendments for their author, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). Unless the administration reports to Congress that “effective measures” are being taken to bring abusers to justice, it is supposed to cut off support for any unit in a foreign security force whose members commit serious human-rights violations. Units also are supposed to be vetted before receiving assistance.

But the internal memo suggests that U.S. officials believe it is not possible to comply with the laws in Iraq, noting the “burden of following the usual State Department procedures as they are practiced at other posts would vastly overwhelm [the Baghdad embassy’s] available resources.”

Dozens of Iraqi Police Still Missing Days After Night Ambush
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 15 — Dozens of Iraqi police officers caught in a deadly ambush north of Baghdad on Thursday were still missing on Saturday, and their colleagues feared that some had been captured by insurgents or killed, police officials said.

The American military command said 9 police officers were killed and 7 wounded in the attack, which began after nightfall as a convoy of more than 100 police officers was returning to Najaf from an American base in Taji, a trip of about 110 miles. The Iraqis had visited the base to pick up several vehicles.

A major in the Najaf police force, who was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said Saturday that Iraqi authorities had accounted for only about 60 officers, including 1 dead, 18 wounded and more than 40 survivors who had returned safely to police headquarters.

The rest were missing and presumed to be kidnapped, dead, hiding or to have not yet reported for duty in Najaf, officials said.

Police officials at the Najaf headquarters said that when they tried calling the cellphone of one of the missing officers, an unidentified man answered, laughed chillingly and said, “If you are brave, come and get him.”

Dust Bowl Uncertainty Grows in Iraq

UMM AL GHAREEJ, Iraq — Like hundreds of villages that dot the Tigris River south of Baghdad, this cluster of cinder block-and-mud dwellings draws its livelihood from small farming plots cultivated by hand and crude machinery.

This is the heart of Mesopotamia, the biblical land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where one of the world’s first civilizations thrived on the bounty of the land.

Today that land is sick.

Qassim Mohammed, 20, whose family has farmed here since 1980, has left more than half his 30 acres unplanted this year. The harvest was so poor last year, he said, that he couldn’t recoup the cost of seed and fertilizer.

“This land is weak,” he said, strolling in a flowing robe through a field where the salt-crusted earth offered only a scruff of dead weeds.

Mohammed’s acreage is typical of much of the farmland south of Baghdad.

Reliable agricultural statistics have been unavailable since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. But the level of wheat imports, which surged during the United Nations oil-for-food program in the late 1990s, shows the extent of the decline of agricultural production.

Three years after the invasion, Iraq still imports about three-quarters of the wheat its population consumes, said Jamil Dabagh, economist for the Ministry of Agriculture.

The agricultural decline began under the centrally controlled economic system of Saddam Hussein’s Baath regime. Neglect of the intricate system of irrigation canals that crisscross Iraq aggravated centuries-old problems with salt buildup and poor drainage. As the land deteriorated, free fertilizer and guaranteed prices kept farms going, Dabagh said.

Yet agriculture, which has provided the primary means of support for more than a third of Iraq’s population, was an afterthought in U.S. rebuilding efforts, which concentrated on oil, electricity and municipal water systems.

“Everybody looks at Iraq as an oil country,” said Col. Randy Fritz, the former agricultural counselor to the U.S. military.

IRAN has formed battalions of suicide bombers to strike at British and American targets if the nation’s nuclear sites are attacked. According to Iranian officials, 40,000 trained suicide bombers are ready for action.

The main force, named the Special Unit of Martyr Seekers in the Revolutionary Guards, was first seen last month when members marched in a military parade, dressed in olive-green uniforms with explosive packs around their waists and detonators held high.

Dr Hassan Abbasi, head of the Centre for Doctrinal Strategic Studies in the Revolutionary Guards, said in a speech that 29 western targets had been identified: “We are ready to attack American and British sensitive points if they attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.” He added that some of them were “quite close” to the Iranian border in Iraq.
timesonlone.co.uk

Obviously, the way to cement civilian support for this folly is to have stuff blowing up at home.

U.S. strike on Iran could make Iraq look like a warm-up bout
WASHINGTON—On the ground, more terror.
Poison-laced missiles raining down on U.S. troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, the downing of a U.S. passenger airliner, suicide bombers in major cities, perhaps unleashing their deadly payload in a shopping mall food court. It could be 9/11 all over again. Or worse.

On the political front, more anti-Americanism.

Renewed venom aimed at Washington from European capitals, greater distrust from China and Russia, outright hatred in the Arab and Muslim world. Oil prices spiralling out of control, a global recession at hand.

In Iran, a galvanizing of a splintered nation. An end to hopes for political reform, a rally-around-the-leader phenomenon common among the victimized, an ability to rebuild a nuclear program in two to four years.

These are the potential costs of a U.S. military strike in Iran.

“It would be Iran’s Pearl Harbor and it will be the beginning of a war, not the end of a war. It will set back American strategic interests for a generation,” says Joseph Cirincione, the director for non-proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“The war will take place at a time and location of Iran’s choosing. It will make Iraq look like a preliminary bout.”

U.S. backup plan: invade iran by land, air, water strikes
Washington, April 16: The United States began planning a full-scale military campaign against Iran that involves missile strikes, a land invasion and a naval operation to establish control over the Strait of Hormuz even before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, a former US intelligence analyst disclosed on Sunday.

William Arkin, who served as the US Army’s top intelligence mind on West Berlin in the 1970s and accurately predicted US military operations against Iraq, said the plan is known in military circles as Tirannt, an acronym for “Theatre Iran Near Term.”

It includes a scenario for a land invasion led by the US Marine Corps, a detailed analysis of the Iranian missile force and a global strike plan against any Iranian weapons of mass destruction, Mr Arkin wrote in the Washington Post. US and British planners have already conducted a Caspian Sea war game as part of these preparations, the scholar said.

“According to military sources close to the planning process, this task was given to Army General John Abizaid, now commander of Centcom, in 2002,” Arkin wrote, referring to the Florida-based US central command. But preparations under Tirannt began in earnest in May 2003 and never stopped, he said. The plan has since been updated using information collected in Iraq. Air Force planners have modelled attacks against Iranian air defences, while Navy planners have evaluated coastal targets and drawn up scenarios for keeping control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Former officials warn against U.S. attack on Iran
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A U.S. conflict with Iran could be even more damaging to America’s interests than the war with Iraq, former White House counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke wrote in Sunday’s New York Times.

In an op-ed article co-authored with Steven Simon, a former U.S. State Department official who also worked for the National Security Council, Clarke wrote reports that the Bush administration is contemplating bombing nuclear sites in Iran raised concerns that “would simply begin a multi-move, escalatory process.”

Iran’s likely response would be to “use its terrorist network to strike American targets around the world, including inside the United States,” Clarke and Simon warned.

“Iran has forces as its command far superior to anything Al Qaeda was ever able to field,” they said, citing Iran’s links with the militant group Hezbollah.

Iran could also make things much worse in Iraq, they wrote, adding “there is every reason to believe that Iran has such a retaliatory shock wave planned and ready.”

President George W. Bush might then sanction more bombing, Clarke and Simon said, hoping Iranians would overthrow the Tehran government. But “more likely, the American war against Iran would guarantee the regime decades more of control.”

The authors concluded by warning that “the parallels to the run-up to the war with Iraq are all too striking: remember that in May 2002 U.S. President George W. Bush declared that there was ‘No war plan on my desk’ despite having actually spent months working on detailed plans for the Iraq invasion.”

Congress “must not permit the administration to launch another war whose outcome cannot be known, or worse, known all too well,” they said.

Last Monday, the Taliban offered Islamabad peace — from within Pakistani territory. From Waziristan, a mountainous tribal area on the Afghanistan border that’s just a bit bigger than Tripura but that has become the epicentre of the USA’s War on Terror. It’s also become another war against the Pakistani state from within, joining Balochistan, Gilgit, and Karachi.

And despite Islamabad having sent six divisions of the Pakistan army — pulling several from the India border and equipping them with helicopter gunships, jet fighters and heavy artillery — to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda, Waziristan continues to slip out of its grasp. Another six months, say government sources in New Delhi, and the war in Waziristan would have a momentum of its own. “Azad Qabaili” (Free Tribals) would become a reality, and the Taliban would have found a new country of their own.
hindustantimes.com

N’DJAMENA: Chad broke off diplomatic relations with Sudan on Friday, accusing it of arming rebels who tried to storm the capital N’Djamena in an attack that killed 400 people. Rebels fighting to overthrow President Idriss Deby Itno said the capital was still within their reach, denying government claims that the rebellion had been crushed.

“For the moment there is calm, but that does not mean that we are not in range of N’Djamena,” rebel United Front for Change (FUC) spokesman Abdel Maname Mahamat Khattat told Radio France International. “It is a tactical withdrawal,” he said.

The rebel offensive has triggered alarm in the international community and comes just weeks ahead of presidential elections in the oil-rich but impoverished state in sub-Saharan Africa.
jang.com

sfbayview.com/mp3

Iran said it could defeat any American military action over its controversial nuclear drive, in one of the Islamic regime’s boldest challenges yet to the United States.

“You can start a war but it won’t be you who finishes it,” said General Yahya Rahim Safavi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards and among the regime’s most powerful figures.

“The Americans know better than anyone that their troops in the region and in Iraq are vulnerable. I would advise them not to commit such a strategic error,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a pro-Palestinian conference in Tehran.

The United States accuses Iran of using an atomic energy drive as a mask for weapons development. Last weekend US news reports said President George W. Bush’s administration was refining plans for preventive strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“I would advise them to first get out of their quagmire in Iraq before getting into an even bigger one,” General Safavi said with a grin.

“We have American forces in the region under total surveillance. For the past two years, we have been ready for any scenario, whether sanctions or an attack.”
breitbart.com

Rice hints at Iran attack
THE United Nations must consider action against Iran which could lead to the use of military force, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said last night.

Iran’s leaders this week crowed they had defied the UN by enriching uranium — the first step to making nuclear weapons.

Rice said in Washington that Iran continued to defy the world and there “will have to be some consequence”.

She said the UN should “look at a whole range of options” including a resolution under Chapter 7 of its charter — the move that led to the bombing and invasion of Iraq.

Rice: US seeks enforcement power against Iran
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the UN Security Council’s handling of the Iranian nuclear issue will be a test of the international community’s credibility.

“This is going to be an issue of credibility for the international community. If the UN Security Council says, ‘You must do these things and we’ll assess in 30 days,’ and Iran has not only not done those things, but has taken steps that are exactly the opposite of those that are demanded, then the Security Council is going to have to act,” she told an interviewer April 13.

Britain took part in mock Iran invasion
British officers took part in a US war game aimed at preparing for a possible invasion of Iran, despite repeated claims by the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, that a military strike against Iran is inconceivable.

The war game, codenamed Hotspur 2004, took place at the US base of Fort Belvoir in Virginia in July 2004.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman played down its significance yesterday. “These paper-based exercises are designed to test officers to the limit in fictitious scenarios. We use invented countries and situations using real maps,” he said.

And then we have animal crackers and chocolate milk.

WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran is several years away from being able to produce enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear weapon, the nation’s chief intelligence analyst said Thursday.

The nation’s 16 intelligence agencies haven’t changed their view of Iran’s capability, said Thomas Fingar, chairman of the National Intelligence Council.

That’s despite Iran’s announcement Tuesday that it had mastered the ability to enrich uranium for a civilian nuclear reactor, raising the possibility it could make a bomb.

“Our timeline hasn’t changed,” said Fingar, a top analyst for intelligence chief John Negroponte.
usatoday.com

Not that Negroponte is a peacenik: a couple weeks ago he came out with a host of new reasons to attack Iran.

By the end of the year, the government plans to select the design of a new generation of nuclear warheads that would be more dependable and possibly able to be disarmed in the event they fell into terrorist hands, according to the head of the National Nuclear Security Administration.

The new warheads would be based on nuclear technology that has already been tested, which means they could be produced more than a decade from now to gradually replace at lower numbers the existing U.S. stockpile of about 6,000 warheads without additional underground testing, said Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the NNSA, which oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, and other government officials.

The warhead redesign is part of a larger, multibillion-dollar program to refurbish the nation’s nuclear-weapons stockpile and to consolidate nuclear plants and facilities in nearly a dozen states, including California, Florida, Texas, Tennessee and New Mexico. The next-generation warheads will be larger and more stable than the existing ones but slightly less powerful, according to government officials. They might contain “use controls” that would enable the military to disable the weapons by remote control if they are stolen by terrorists.

Brooks said in an interview Thursday that, by November, his agency will choose between two competing designs submitted by teams at the Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories. Brooks said the November timetable for the submission of the design plans would give his agency time to develop preliminary cost estimates that could be included in the administration’s fiscal 2008 budget, to be submitted to Congress early next year.

The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, as it is called, was first proposed two years ago by Rep. David L. Hobson (R-Ohio). It has been adopted as part of a major restructuring of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex being proposed by the Bush administration in light of the findings of its 2002 Nuclear Posture Review.
washingtonpost.com

CAIRO, Egypt – Worshippers at three Christian churches came under attack from knife-wielding assailants during Mass Friday.

Police said one worshipper was killed and more than a dozen wounded in the simultaneous attacks in the northern city of Alexandria.

Police were searching for three men, one in each attack.

Hundreds of Christians gathered in angry protest outside the Coptic Christian churches, and witnesses said clashes erupted between Christians and Muslims.

Initial police reports said a total of 17 people were injured: 10 at the Saints Church in downtown Alexandria and three at the nearby Mar Girgis Church. A third attacker wounded four worshippers at a church in Abu Qir, a few miles to the east.

One worshipper was killed and at least two others were in serious condition, a police official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

The attack comes on what is Good Friday to many of the world’s Christians. However, Egypt’s Coptic Christians, and other followers of the Greek Orthodox church, celebrate the holiday a week later.
msnbc.com

So if Orthodox Good Friday is not till next week, why didn’t they wait a week?