| Topic: |
Religions > Atheism |
| User: |
"Fredric L. Rice" |
| Date: |
14 Feb 2006 09:41:57 PM |
| Object: |
Israeli and Bush terrorists hate Democracy |
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-mideast.html
February 14, 2006
U.S. and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Feb. 14 — The United States and Israel are discussing ways to
destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas
officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to
Israeli officials and Western diplomats.
The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and
international connections to the point where, some months from now, its
president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is
that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will
return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.
The officials also argue that a close look at the election results shows
that Hamas won a smaller mandate than previously understood.
The officials and diplomats, who said this approach was being discussed at
the highest levels of the State Department and the Israeli government,
spoke on condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak
publicly on the issue.
Today, Israeli and American officials said there was no "plan" or "plot" to
destabilize a Hamas government.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, was quoted by The
Associated Press as saying "there was no such plan," and a State Department
spokesman, Sean McCormack, told reporters in Washington that "there is no
U.S.-Israeli plan, project, plot, conspiracy to destabilize a — or
undermine a future Palestinian government." He said that the United States
continues to work with Mr. Abbas and the existing caretaker government.
Scott McClellan, the White House press secretary, said "there is no plot,
there is no plan."
But in the outline provided earlier by the officials and diplomats who said
that the approach was under discussion, Hamas would be given a choice:
recognize Israel's right to exist, forswear violence and accept previous
Palestinian-Israeli agreements — as called for by the United Nations and
the West — or face isolation and collapse.
Opinion polls show that Hamas's promise to better the lives of the
Palestinian people was the main reason it won. But the United States and
Israel say Palestinian life will only get harder if Hamas does not meet
those three demands. They say Hamas plans to build up its militias and
increase violence and must be starved out of power.
The officials drafting the plan know that Hamas leaders have repeatedly
rejected demands to change and do not expect Hamas to meet them. "The point
is to put this choice on Hamas's shoulders," a senior Western diplomat
said. "If they make the wrong choice, all the options lead in a bad
direction."
The strategy has many risks, especially given that Hamas will try to secure
needed support from the larger Islamic world, including its allies Syria
and Iran, as well as from private donors.
It will blame Israel and the United States for its troubles, appeal to the
world not to punish the Palestinian people for their free democratic
choice, point to the real hardship that a lack of cash will produce and may
very well resort to an open military confrontation with Israel, in a sense
beginning a third intifada.
The officials said the destabilization under discussion centers largely on
money. The Palestinian Authority has a monthly cash deficit of some $60
million to $70 million after it receives between $50 million and $55
million a month from Israel in taxes and customs duties collected by
Israeli officials at the borders but owed to the Palestinians.
Israel says it will cut off those payments once Hamas takes power, and put
the money in escrow. On top of that, some of the aid that the Palestinians
currently receive will be stopped or reduced by the United States and
European Union governments, which will be constrained by law or politics
from providing money to an authority run by Hamas. The group is listed by
Washington and the European Union as a terrorist organization.
And today, Mr. McClellan renewed Washington's warning that it may cut aid
to the Palestinians if Hamas does not renounce violence against Israel.
"We've made it clear that we do not and will not fund terrorist
organizations. Hamas is a terrorist organization," he said.Israel has other
levers on the Palestinian Authority: controlling entrance and exit from the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip for people and goods, the number of workers
who are allowed into Israel every day, and even the currency used in the
Palestinian territories, which is the Israeli shekel.
Israeli military officials have discussed cutting Gaza off completely from
the West Bank and making the Israeli-Gaza border an international one. They
also say they will not allow Hamas members of the Palestinian parliament,
some of whom are wanted by Israeli security forces, to travel freely
between Gaza and the West Bank.
On Sunday, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert announced after a cabinet
meeting that Israel would consider Hamas to be in power on the day the new
Parliament is sworn in: this Saturday.
So beginning next month, the Palestinian Authority will face a cash deficit
of at least $110 million a month, or more than $1 billion a year, which it
needs to pay full salaries to its 140,000 employees, who are the
breadwinners for at least one-third of the Palestinian population.
The employment figure includes some 58,000 members of the security forces,
most of which are affiliated with the defeated Fatah movement.
If a Hamas government is unable to pay workers, import goods, transfer
money and receive significant amounts of outside aid, Mr. Abbas, the
president, would have the authority to dissolve Parliament and call new
elections, the officials say, even though that power is not explicit in the
Palestinian basic law.
The potential for an economic crisis is real. The Palestinian stock market
has already fallen about 20 percent since the election on Jan. 25, and the
Authority has exhausted its borrowing capacity with local banks.
Hamas gets up to $100,000 a month in cash from abroad, Israel and Western
officials say. "But it's hard to move millions of dollars in suitcases," a
Western official said.
The United States and the European Union in particular want any failure of
Hamas in leadership to be judged as Hamas's failure, not one caused by
Israel and the West.
The officials say much now depends on Mr. Abbas, the Fatah-affiliated
president who called for the January elections, has four more years in
office and is insistent that Hamas has a democratic right to govern.
But Mr. Abbas has also threatened to quit if he does not have a government
that can carry out his fundamental policies — which include, he has said,
negotiations with Israel toward a final peace treaty based on a permanent
two-state solution. The United States and the European Union have strongly
urged him to stay on the job and shoulder his responsibilities, the
officials say.
Western diplomats say they expect Mr. Abbas to repeat those positions in
his speech on Saturday when the new Parliament is sworn in, laying the
groundwork for a future confrontation with Hamas.
In preparation for a Hamas-led government, Mr. Abbas is also said to be
insisting on reinforcing his position as commander in chief of all
Palestinian forces, even though the prime minister and the interior
minister also have control over them through a security council that the
prime minister chairs.
On Monday the departing Parliament made an effort to boost Mr. Abbas's
powers by passing legislation giving him the authority to appoint a new
constitutional court that can veto legislation deemed in violation of the
Palestinians' basic law.
Mr. Abbas would appoint the nine judges to the new court without seeking
parliamentary approval. Hamas immediately objected. "The Parliament has no
mandate and no authority to issue any new legislation," said a Hamas
spokesman, Said Siyam, adding that Hamas would try to overturn the
decisions once the new legislature convened on Saturday.
Hamas will control at least 74 seats of the 132-member Parliament, and it
is likely to have the support of six more members on key votes. But more
than 10 percent of the new legislators are already in Israeli jails: 10
from Hamas, 3 from Fatah and one from the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine.
The United States and Fatah believe that the Hamas victory was far less
sweeping than the seat total makes it appear, said Khalil Shikaki, a
pollster and the director of the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey
Research.
In an interview in Ramallah, Mr. Shikaki said that if Fatah had forced
members to withdraw their independent candidacies in constituencies where
they split the votes with official Fatah candidates, it might have won the
election. Half of the 132 seats were decided by a vote for a party list,
and the other half by a separate vote for a local candidate.
Hamas won 44 percent of the popular vote but 56 percent of the seats, while
Fatah won 42 percent of the popular vote but only 34 percent of the seats.
The reason? "Fatah ran a lousy campaign," Mr. Shikaki said, and Mr. Abbas
"did not force enough Fatah independents to pull out."
If only 76 "independent" Fatah candidates had not run, Mr. Shikaki said,
Fatah would have won 33 seats and Hamas 33. In the districts, Hamas won an
average of only 39 percent of the vote while winning 68 percent of the
seats, Mr. Shikaki said.
"Fatah now is obsessed with undoing this election as soon as possible," he
said. "Israel and Washington want to do it over too. The Palestinian
Authority could collapse in six months."
New Hamas legislators were unimpressed. Farhat Asaad, a Hamas spokesman,
and Nasser Abdaljawad, who won a seat in Salfit where two Fatah candidates
split the vote, gave the United States "a year or two" to come around to
the idea of dealing openly with Hamas.
Mr. Asaad, a former Israeli prisoner, said: "We hope it isn't U.S. policy.
Because those who try to isolate us will be isolated in the region."
Hamas will move on two parallel fronts, he said: the first, to reform
Palestinian political life, and the second, "to break the isolation of our
government." If Hamas succeeds on both fronts, he said, "we will achieve a
great thing for our people, a normal life with security and a state of law,
where no one can abuse power."
Hamas will find the money it needs from the Muslim world, said Mr.
Abdaljawad, who spent 12 years in jail and got a Ph.D. while there. Hamas
will save money by ending corruption and providing efficiency. Hamas will
break the Palestinian dependency on Israel, he said.
Mr. Asaad laughed and added: "First, I thank the United States that they
have given us this weapon of democracy. But there is no way to retreat now.
It's not possible for the U.S. and the world to turn its back on an elected
democracy."
---
"I did not have *****-fucking relations with Jack Abramoff" - George W. Bush
Christian Republican Family Values: "If they're too young to vote, ***** 'em!"
"***** Cheney - you ARE the NRA!" --
.
|
|
| User: "David Rice, Esq. desertphile@ hot mail.com" |
|
| Title: Re: Israeli and Bush terrorists hate Democracy |
15 Feb 2006 10:26:02 AM |
|
|
On Wed, 15 Feb 2006 03:41:57 GMT, (Fredric
L. Rice) wrote:
http://nytimes.com/2006/02/14/international/middleeast/14cnd-mideast.html
February 14, 2006
U.S. and Israelis Are Said to Talk of Hamas Ouster
By STEVEN ERLANGER
JERUSALEM, Feb. 14 — The United States and Israel are discussing ways to
destabilize the Palestinian government so that newly elected Hamas
officials will fail and elections will be called again, according to
Israeli officials and Western diplomats.
The intention is to starve the Palestinian Authority of money and
international connections to the point where, some months from now, its
president, Mahmoud Abbas, is compelled to call a new election. The hope is
that Palestinians will be so unhappy with life under Hamas that they will
return to office a reformed and chastened Fatah movement.
Yeah, look how well that worked in Cuba.
.
|
|
|
|
|
Related Articles |
|
|
