This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/510
Paid Assassins shoot Israeli police and soldiers - Jews wearing skullcaps are kept out of Sharon event for 'security reasons'
March 21, 2005
MIM: Nothing like violence to mar a 'truce' ... or "deadlock" the handover of a terrorist enclave to terrorists.
MIM continues to post the lastest Israeli news on the satire page because the insane behaviour of a country which has forfeited it's self defense and self interests in a suicidal pact with terrorists hellbent on their destruction has become a case study in collective pyschosis and denial as opposed to just news. 'The world' has bought into a gigantic hoax (similiar to the unchallenged facts behind the German claim of being an Aryan race) that a fictitious people has rights to a non existent country and the media have become propagandists in this exercise. The reporting of party line 'facts' without critical analysis of the implications of the texts has turned mainstream newpaper articles into unintentional parodies .
The headline below says it all and the article is a case in point.
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" In the first of Sunday's violent incidents, three Israeli soldiers were wounded, one critically, in the al-Omri refugee camp near Ramallah, when Palestinian gunmen opened fire while the troops were escorting Israeli police searching for stolen cars, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. One policeman was lightly wounded, she said.
The spokeswoman said the timing of the attack indicated it had been carried out by militants. She said the force was fired on at the outset of the operation, rather than after it got underway, reducing the possibility that it was criminals responding to the police search, she said.
However, there was no claim of responsibility on the Palestinian side, indicating that criminals might be behind the shooting.
Violence Mars Palestinian Israeli Truce
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2005/03/20/international/i021503S93.DTL
Three Israeli soldiers and a Palestinian were seriously injured in two separate shooting incidents in the West Bank Sunday in the first major challenge to an expanded cease-fire between the sides.
Also Sunday, an Israeli newspaper reported that an Israel Defense Ministry aerial photography operation has revealed extensive new building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank, an apparent violation of Israeli obligations under a U.S.-backed Middle East peace plan.
The developments reflected the fragile state of Israeli-Palestinian relations as the sides attempt to put more than four years of violence behind them. Last week, Palestinian militants declared a cease-fire, extending an informal truce reached by the Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Feb. 8.
Israel has said the cease-fire will be tenuous without Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas moving quickly to disarm the militants — a step he has rejected — while Palestinians demand an immediate end to Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank.
In the first of Sunday's violent incidents, three Israeli soldiers were wounded, one critically, in the al-Omri refugee camp near Ramallah, when Palestinian gunmen opened fire while the troops were escorting Israeli police searching for stolen cars, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. One policeman was lightly wounded, she said.
The spokeswoman said the timing of the attack indicated it had been carried out by militants. She said the force was fired on at the outset of the operation, rather than after it got underway, reducing the possibility that it was criminals responding to the police search, she said.
However, there was no claim of responsibility on the Palestinian side, indicating that criminals might be behind the shooting.
Several hours later, a Palestinian man was shot and critically wounded by an Israeli border policeman in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Border Police spokesman Oren Goanias said the Palestinian had attempted to steal a weapon from a border policeman conducting a routine patrol near a checkpoint leading to Jerusalem.
The report on new building in Israel's West Bank settlements said aerial photographs carried out for the Defense Ministry showed that between the summer of 2004 and early 2005 there had been major settlement construction, including in the large settlements of Maale Adumim, Ariel and the Gush Etzion bloc.
The internationally backed "road map" peace plan calls for a freeze on settlement construction, including that resulting from natural population growth. Israel and the Palestinians accepted the plan in 2003 but its implementation has stalled amid violations by the sides.
The report, which appeared in the Haaretz daily, said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had ordered the photography operation following a complaint by former chief state prosecutor Talia Sasson that without detailed aerial photographs she would have difficulty completing a report on unauthorized Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank.
Sasson's report was published earlier this month. It said Israeli governments have helped build and expand 105 illegal West Bank settlement outposts in a flagrant violation of official policy and promises to the United States — confirming long-standing complaints by the Palestinians.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv said
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=599161&page=3
Israel, Palestinians Deadlock on Handover
Israelis, Palestinians Deadlock on Handover of Second West Bank Town to Palestinian Control
By ALI DARAGHMEH
The Associated Press
Mar. 21, 2005 - Israeli and Palestinian commanders were trying to iron out the last disputes over the handover of a second West Bank town to Palestinian security control, but disagreements over security issues signaled trouble ahead for peacemaking efforts.
Israeli officials doubted whether the town of Tulkarem would revert to Palestinian control on Monday, as originally planned, after a meeting of security commanders broke up Sunday in disagreement. Talks were to resume on Monday.
Similar disputes held up the transfer of the isolated desert oasis of Jericho last week. A temporary compromise solved that, but similar disputes appeared in talks about Tulkarem, in a much more sensitive location on the Israel-West Bank line.
The handovers were part of a truce announced at a summit last month in Egypt by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and reinforced last week at a meeting of Palestinian factions in Cairo.
Violence has dropped considerably in the last five weeks, but two incidents on Sunday underlined the fragility of the situation.
Palestinians opened fire on Israeli police and soldiers searching for stolen cars in the Amari refugee camp next to the West Bank city of Ramallah, the military said, wounding two, one critically.
Several hours later, a Palestinian man was shot and critically wounded by an Israeli border policeman in the West Bank town of Bethlehem. Border Police spokesman Oren Goanias said the Palestinian tried to steal a weapon from a border policeman.
The violence threatened to upset last week's truce declaration by Palestinian militants. The militants pledged to halt attacks on Israel for the rest of the year an important boost for Abbas as he tries to resume peace talks.
But Hamas and Islamic Jihad conditioned their support on Israel's stopping all military operations against the Palestinians. Israel has promised to honor the truce if quiet continues.
Despite the incidents, talks about the handover of Tulkarem proceeded. Last week Israel turned over the isolated desert oasis of Jericho to the Palestinians, the first of five towns to revert to Palestinian control under the Feb. 8 summit understandings.
"We handed Jericho over last week and tomorrow it is expected that Tulkarem will be transferred to Palestinian responsibility," said Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz. He said plans were underway to transfer a third town, Qalqiliya.
Israeli officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, were not optimistic that the talks on Monday would lead to a handover the same day.
Tulkarem is on the line between the West Bank and Israel opposite Israel's narrowest section nine miles from Israel's coast on the Mediterranean Sea. Before Israel erected a section of its contentious separation barrier around three sides of the town, several suicide bombers infiltrated into the nearby Israeli city of Netanya and blew themselves up, killing dozens.
On Feb. 25 a suicide bomber from the Tulkarem area exploded in Tel Aviv, killing five Israelis, in the most serious breach of the truce.
Palestinians want control of all seven roads leading into Tulkarem, a regional market hub, officials said before the Sunday security meeting. However, Israel was balking about two of the roads, officials on both sides said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Israeli officials said the two roads lead to towns where those involved in the Tel Aviv bombing came from.
Similar disputes held up the Jericho handover for several days.
In another development, Israel Radio reported late Sunday that Mofaz approved construction of 3,500 housing units in and around the West Bank's largest settlement, Maale Adumim, east of Jerusalem. The approval would be an apparent violation of Israeli obligations under a U.S.-backed Middle East peace plan.
Defense officials said they were aware of the plan but could not confirm that Mofaz had signed it.
Also Sunday, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that aerial photos taken for the Defense Ministry show considerable construction in three veteran Israeli settlements in the West Bank, violating Israel's commitment to stop such building under terms of the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan.
The report said Mofaz ordered the photographs at the request of former chief state prosecutor Talia Sasson, who recently completed a report on unauthorized Jewish settlement outposts in the West Bank.
A Defense Ministry spokeswoman confirmed the ministry is seeking to expand its knowledge of settlement construction in the West Bank.
Sasson's report said Israeli governments have helped build and expand 105 illegal West Bank settlement outposts in a flagrant violation of official policy and promises to the United States confirming long-standing complaints by the Palestinians.
A spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv said the United States expected Israel to abide by its road map commitments.
Meanwhile, Israeli settlers protested bitterly after Sharon's security detail barred young opponents of his Gaza pullout plan from a public event Sharon attended in the Red Sea resort of Eilat, then extended the ban to all young men wearing the skullcap of the observant Jew, citing security concerns.
The settlers' hardline ideological leadership is predominantly religious and has vowed to disrupt Sharon's pullout plan. Security chiefs have warned that some of the most extreme could be plotting to assassinate the prime minister.
In 1995 a religious-nationalist Jew shot dead Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin to stop the handover of land in Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/510