AFP – A UN human rights inquiry into Israel’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla started on Monday a probe in Jordan where investigators interviewed four Jordanian activists.
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AFP – A Lebanese aid ship for Gaza was postponed on Sunday to await a green light from a third country as a transit point for the mission to the Israeli-blockaded Palestinian territory.
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AFP – A Lebanese aid ship aiming to reach Gaza in defiance of Israel will “probably be delayed,” organisers said Saturday, on the eve of its planned departure, after Cyprus denied use of its waters and ports.
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George Will says a two state solution is dillusional. He is right but for the wrong reasons. As for the statement above (title), I believe Will needs immediate medical attention!
“… Rocket attacks from Gaza increased dramatically after Israel withdrew. ….The closest precedent for that bombardment was the Nazi rocket attacks on London, which were answered by the destruction of Hamburg, Dresden and other German cities…. Moshe Yaalon, strategic affairs minister and possible future prime minister — says “our withdrawals strengthened jihadist Islam,” adding, “We have the second Islamic republic in the Middle East — the first in Iran, the second in Gaza: Hamastan.”
Israel’s withdrawals include the one that strengthened the Iranian client on Israel’s northern border, in southern Lebanon. Since the 2006 war provoked by Hezbollah’s incessant rocketing of northern Israel, Hezbollah has rearmed and possesses as many as 60,000 rockets. Today, Netanyahu says, Israel’s problem is less the Israel-Lebanon border than it is the Lebanon-Syria border: Hezbollah has received from Syria — which gets them from Iran — Scud missiles capable of striking Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. A leader of Hezbollah says, “If all the Jews gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”
Because upward of a million immigrants have come from the former Soviet Union, today one-sixth of Israelis speak Russian. Israel has Russian-language newspapers and television. Russian Israelis are largely responsible for Avigdor Lieberman being foreign minister. Yoram Peri, professor of Israel studies at the University of Maryland, says these immigrants “don’t understand how a state that can be crossed in half an hour by car would be willing to even talk about relinquishing territories to its seemingly perpetual enemies.” These immigrants know that Russia’s strategic depth — space — defeated Napoleon and Hitler.
Netanyahu, who is not the most conservative member of the coalition government he heads, endorses a two-state solution but says that any West Bank Palestinian state must be demilitarized and prevented from making agreements with the likes of Hezbollah and Iran. To prevent the importation of missiles and other arms, Israel would need, Netanyahu says, a military presence on the West Bank’s eastern border with Jordan. Otherwise, there will be a third Islamic republic, and a second one contiguous to Israel.
So, again: Negotiations about what?”
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Reuters – A Gaza-bound ship carrying women activists and aid for the blockaded Palestinian territory will leave Lebanon’s northern port of Tripoli for Cyprus on Sunday, an organizer said on Thursday.
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AFP – Organisers of a Lebanese women-only aid ship which plans to break the Gaza blockade announced on Thursday they will sail to Cyprus on the first leg of their journey this weekend.
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A UAE charity will distribute free Iftar meals to 1,500 families in Gaza during the holy month of Ramadan.
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Egyptian security forces said Wednesday they discovered 17 tunnels used to smuggle construction materials into the Gaza strip, security sources said.
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Reuters – The United Nations sought to head off any potential clash with Israel over a U.N. inquiry into a deadly Israeli assault on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, as a panel began work on the task on Tuesday.
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