Mr. Samateh the Israel Palestinian conflict is very unfortunate. Why Israel don't understand that their Liberty and long term security is directly tied to that of the Palestinian people is beyond comprehension! 



I think the UN should still go ahead and grant a Palestine sovereign state  followed by opening diplomatic offices in Gaza. This can serve as deterrent against continuous Israel assault.



The enemies of both Palestine and Israel interest are extremists from both sides.



Just out of curiosity, do you or others think the conflict would have been different if Palestine were in Israel's position?



Thanks for sharing.



Demba      

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile



-----Original Message-----

From:         Fye samateh <[log in to unmask]>

Sender:       The Gambia and Related Issues Mailing List <[log in to unmask]>

Date:         Thu, 8 Sep 2011 17:24:14 

To: <[log in to unmask]>

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              <[log in to unmask]>

Subject: [G_L] Israel makes military preparations for UN vote on Palestinian state.....



Israel makes military preparations for UN vote on Palestinian state By Danny

Richardson

8 September 2011



On Tuesday evening, the Israel Defence Forces killed a commander of the

Popular Resistance Committees’ military wing in a fire exchange and air

attack on an alleged mortar unit in the Gaza Strip. The attack by the IDF is

only the latest development in a stepped-up offensive against Gaza and the

Palestinians, as Israel prepares for a possible full-scale military

intervention.



The IDF is training settler “security squads” in the West Bank and preparing

to arm them with stun grenades and tear gas ahead of an expected yes vote

for Palestinian statehood in the United Nations General Assembly later this

month.



The IDF claims that it is training and arming the settlers in preparation

for a potential eruption of Palestinian mass protest, as happened in May on

the anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel—called the

“nakba,” or catastrophe, by the Palestinians—and in June on the anniversary

of the 1967 war. In truth, its actions suggest it is seeking to provoke a

military confrontation.



Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah movement

controls the West Bank in collusion with Israel and the United States,

announced last year that he would go to the UN to seek membership for a

state of Palestine. But he has insisted that the move is not in place of

negotiations, but rather in addition to them. Even should the UN vote to

recognise a Palestinian state, he will continue to seek a negotiated

settlement with Israel.



“Our first, second and third priority is negotiations,” he said on Monday.

“There is no other way to settle this. No matter what happens at the UN, we

have to return to negotiations.”



Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu rejected these conciliatory

statements, saying that a Palestinian bid for statehood would “set back

peace, and might set it back years.”



Netanyahu has no intention of negotiating a deal with the PA. Israel has

just approved plans to build some 300 new housing units in Ariel, one of the

largest settlements in the West Bank, and 1,600 new housing units in East

Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want as the capital of their future state.

This provocative move comes despite the demands of Israel’s massive social

protests for affordable housing in Israel itself. The government has for

years refused to construct low- and moderate-income housing within the 1967

borders in order to force people to live in the West Bank and East

Jerusalem.



Abbas, who for decades has staked everything on reaching a negotiated

settlement with Israel that would establish a truncated Palestinian entity

in the West Bank and Gaza, has been thoroughly discredited by Netanyahu’s

refusal to engage in negotiations or comply with an insincere request from

US President Barack Obama for a temporary freeze on settlement expansion.



The publication by *Al Jazeera *of the “Palestine Papers” in January exposed

the Palestinian Authority and Abbas as utterly subservient to US and Israeli

interests, ready to reach a deal that would jettison every historic

aspiration of the Palestinian people, including the loss of East Jerusalem

and the right of return for exiled Palestinians. Abbas was ready to agree to

mass transfers of Palestinian Israelis to a future Palestinian statelet, a

form of ethnic cleansing designed to meet Israel’s goal of a demographically

secure “Jewish state.”



Abbas sought to secure a deal with the Islamist movement Hamas, which

controls Gaza, to establish a national unity government—which months later

has still not been formed—to provide some credibility to his bid for a

Palestinian state.



Washington has vowed to use its veto power at the Security Council to stop

the PA’s bid for statehood going ahead, leaving Abbas no option but to go

straight to the General Assembly, where there is no veto. With only observer

status, the PA is reliant on other nations to push through the statehood

resolution, but is expected to win the required two-thirds majority, or 128

votes. The PA claims that more than 100 countries have endorsed the

declaration of independent statehood. The US, Germany, Italy, the

Netherlands and the Czech Republic are the only Western countries so far

committed to vote against it.



According to documents seen by *Ha’aretz, *the IDF claims that a yes vote

will lead to a public uprising “which will mainly include mass disorder,”

including “marches toward main junctions, Israeli communities, and education

centres; efforts at damaging symbols of [Israeli] government.”



 The Palestinian Authority has repudiated any suggestion that it is planning

or supporting any mass demonstrations.



*Ha’aretz *states that the IDF has already held training exercises with the

settlements’ chief security officers at a military facility near Shiloh and

trained “readiness squads” at a command centre at its Lachish base. The

readiness squads are made up of settlers, mostly army reservists who already

know how to use automatic weapons.



An IDF spokesman said, “The IDF is holding an ongoing professional dialogue

with elements in the settlement leadership, with the routine security

personnel, and is investing many resources in training forces from a

defensive standpoint and in readiness for possible scenarios. Central

Command has recently completed much training for the emergency response

squads, and this training is ongoing.”



The military preparations, known as “Operation Summer Seed,” include the

determination of “red lines” or boundaries for each settlement in the West

Bank. Should Palestinian protesters cross the red line, troops will be

authorised to open fire, just as they did during the years of confrontation

with Syria before 1973.



Israeli troops shot and killed 23 unarmed protesters, including a woman and

a 12-year-old boy, and wounded about 350 during the demonstrations last

June, when protestors from refugee camps in Syria approached the border with

the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights on the anniversary of the start of the

1967 war. They followed larger, coordinated protests three weeks earlier on

four fronts—Syria, Gaza, Lebanon and the West Bank—and attempts on two

others, in Egypt and Jordan, that were thwarted by those governments.



The US State Department came down firmly on the side of Israel, saying that

the protests were provocative and Israel as a sovereign state had the right

to defend its borders.



Israel has long permitted settlers to carry weapons. Since the beginning of

2011, B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organisation, has called for the

police to investigate 42 cases of Jewish settler violence, including the

murder of two Palestinian teenagers.



In a clear indication of Israel’s preparations for warfare, the IDF has also

drawn up contingency plans to call up reservists. It has also strengthened

its border with Egypt, following the attacks near the southern Israeli town

of Eilat last month that claimed the lives of eight people and injured

dozens more. The IDF has deployed highly advanced technology in the area

pending the completion of a border fence sometime in 2012. It has also

closed Highways 10 and 12.



The Obama administration has threatened to halt its annual financial grant

of $470 million to the PA if it proceeds with its plans to ask the UN for

recognition. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said that US Secretary

of State Hillary Clinton made the threat in a phone conversation.



Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, head of the House of Representatives Foreign

Affairs Committee, is also seeking to block funds to any UN member who

supports the vote for a Palestinian state. She is proposing as well to

withhold a portion of Washington’s UN dues and stop altogether its

contributions to the UN Human Rights Council. Citing a similar threat to the

UN member states that supported the PLO’s push in 1989 for a Palestinian

state, she boasted that “the PLO’s unilateral campaign was stopped in its

tracks…. The UN was forced to choose between isolating Israel or receiving

US contributions. They chose the latter.”





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