For the first time since Sharon accompanied by his soldiers stormed into the courtyard of Al- Aqsa Mosque back in September, the Israeli occupation repeated its actions yesterday. The Islamic Wakf condemned this provocative action and warned of the sequences of such intrusions by Israeli occupation forces into the third holiest places of Islam in Arab Jerusalem. Palestinians demonstrated in Jerusalem yesterday protesting the Israeli continuing occupation of the Palestinian city.
The destruction, the agony, and suffering is reaching each and every Palestinian home. Sharon's occupation soldiers, tanks and bulldozers are spreading death to people, to plants and to animals. Sharon is killing life in the occupied Palestinian territories. The Bush Administration gave Sharon the green light and he used it most efficiently. American money, American weapons and American political support. Some say, the American people are not supporting Israel's barbaric actions, some say it is the Jews who are pulling the strings in Washington, some say Bush is not all there. The problem is, Sharon feels that he has a green light to wreak destruction on the Palestinian people in the occupied Palestinian territories. Who is going to stop him?
The Israeli occupation troops stormed Al- Aqsa Mosque yesterday and tightened its siege on Arab East Jerusalem. Two babies one 20 days old boy and a six-month-old baby girl died yesterday from suffocation. The Israeli occupation troops fired poisonous gas bombs into Palestinian homes in Shufat refugee camp north of Jerusalem where the baby girl died and into Al-Khader towns where the family of the baby boy lived.
The Palestinian leadership considers the escalating Israeli aggression on the Palestinian population as a crossing of all red lines. The Palestinian leadership condemns the dangerous political and military adventures of the current Israeli government, and calls on the world community to stop the Israeli on going murderous attacks on the Palestinian people.
The so-called easing of the siege on Gaza is not felt by the Palestinian population of Gaza. Gaza is still divided into sections and people find it very difficult to move from one section to another. Israeli troops hinder the traffic and search all cars, in the process delays of up to three hours can take in order to cross from one point into another.
Secret talks said to be taking place within the UN framework to deescalate tension in the Middle East and to return to the negotiation tables. France is not optimistic that peace talks can be resumed soon. Russia says, the situation in the Middle East deteriorated to its status before the Madrid Conference ten years ago.
Sharon reiterated his objections to a return to peace negotiations, refused a call from President Arafat for a joint address to both peoples to stop all forms of violence, and refused a solution on Jerusalem.
An Israeli plan to expand Jewish settlements in Arab East Jerusalem plans to build more houses for Jewish settlers in the old city of Jerusalem, in Silwan and other neighborhoods in the Arab city. The Palestinian leadership calls on the international community to stop Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories and to stop the continuing Israeli aggression on unarmed Palestinian civilian population.
An Israeli opposition leader describes Shimon Peres as a handbag carrier for the Israeli Prime Minister Sharon. Yossi Beilin, a justice minister in the government of the previous government of Ehud Barak says: Living by the sword isn't the solution for Israel. Yossi Beilin article with this title can be read in the opinion page on this home page.
An American official says: The Bush administration is increasing its intervention in the Middle East in order to defuse an escalating situation.
An American LawMaker says, Sharon turned down a proposal made by President Arafat to issue a joint anti violence statements by both President Arafat and the Israeli premier to their peoples.
The real trouble with Israel's position and that of its new prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is not its military response to attacks but its preclusion of all other, nonmilitary options.
Everyone, including Mr. Sharon, pays lip service to the idea that there is no military solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Yet Mr. Sharon in the past week has gone out of his way to rule out concessions that might make negotiations attractive to the other side. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz , Sharon insisted that he would not withdraw a single settlement from the occupied territories. He said he regarded the 1948 war of Israeli independence on going. He said he envisioned no final agreement with the Palestinians but only a long-term non-belligerency arrangement in which the Palestinians would rule pockets of territory. In recent days he has announced expansions of settlement activity.
These are the words of a man who does not want negotiations. Instead Mr. Sharon's words suggest that he has explicitly returned to the failed Israel strategy of the 1980's, which aimed at containing and waiting out Palestinian resistance, perhaps for decades, while vigorously expanding Israeli population and control in the territories. That underlying strategy, more than the continuing violence, may explain Mr. Sharon's contemptuous dismissal of a Jordanian - Egyptian mediation proposal. The plan, which focuses on calming tensions, implementing past interim agreements and renewing final status talks, is not perfect, but it offered at least a possible way forward.
Mr. Sharon's insistence that he will not negotiate with Mr. Arafat while the violence continue may sound reasonable to Israelis and Americans angered by the Palestinian rejection of a final peace settlement and subsequent encouragement of a new uprising. But the violence will never stop without some kind of talks, at least about the terms of a cease-fire.
The Bush administration has criticized Mr. Sharon's tough military tactics, but it has aided his deeper and more dangerous hard-line strategy by refusing to actively encourage such negotiations. The Egyptian president and the king of Jordan recently visited Washington and urged President George W. Bush to get behind their mediation effort, only to be turned away. The Middle East can not afford such U. S. inaction much longer.