Biblical countries, in the news.

[Shammu]

Saudi religious leader blasts Hizbullah
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Cairo, Egypt

A top Saudi Sunni cleric, whose ideas inspired Osama bin Laden, issued a religious edict Saturday disavowing the Shi'ite guerrilla group Hizbullah, evidence that a rift remained among Muslims over the fighting in Lebanon.

Hizbullah, which translates as "the party of God," is actually "the party of the devil," said Sheik Safar al-Hawali, whose radical views made the al-Qaida leader one of his followers in the past.

"Don't pray for Hizbullah," he said in the fatwa posted on his Web site.

The edict, which reflects the historical stand of strict Wahhabi doctrine viewing Shi'ite Muslims as heretics, follows a similar fatwa from another popular Saudi cleric Sheik Abdullah bin Jibreen two weeks into the conflict with Israel.

"It is not acceptable to support this rejectionist party (Hizbullah), and one should not fall under its command, or pray for its victory," bin Jibreen said at the time. That fatwa set off a maelstrom across the Arab world, with other leaders and people at the grass roots level imploring Muslims to put aside differences to support the fight against Israel.

There have been daily demonstrations in support of Hizbullah around the region, including in predominantly Sunni and generally pro-western countries like Jordan.

Even the Saudi government, which initially condemned Hizbullah for sparking the fighting by kidnapping two Israeli soldiers in "uncalculated adventures," backed down and said it warned the United States the region would be headed toward war unless Washington halted the Israeli attacks.

Last week, al-Qaida deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri issued a videotape that urged all Muslims everywhere to rise up in holy war against Israel and join the fighting in Lebanon and Gaza.

Mohammed Habib, deputy leader of Egypt's largest Islamic Sunni group, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, immediately rejected al-Hawali's new religious edict, saying Hizbullah is defending "the whole Islamic nation."

Al-Hawali is receiving medical treatment in Jeddah and could not be reached for comment.

In remarks published Saturday, Kuwait's prime minister, Sheik Nasser al-Mohammed al-Sabah, also warned that if the conflict does not end soon, it could give rise to new radicals.

"I believe that if this Israeli war on Lebanon goes on, it could contribute to creating new terrorists, and that of course would pose a new danger in the area," he told Egyptian magazine el-Mussawar.

Saudi religious leader blasts Hizbullah

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Hizbollah will cease fire when Israel leaves land
05 Aug 2006 16:17:21 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIRUT, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Hizbollah is willing to cease fire when Israel stops its assault on Lebanon and all Israeli soldiers leave Lebanese land, a Hizbollah cabinet minister said on Saturday.

Mohammed Fneish told reporters the Lebanese government would discuss on Saturday the draft U.N. resolution agreed by the United States and France calling for an end to fighting as a first step toward a political settlement of the conflict.

"Israel is the aggressor. When the Israeli aggression stops, Hizbollah simply will cease fire on the condition that no Israeli soldier remains inside Lebanese land," he said.

Hizbollah will cease fire when Israel leaves land

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Peretz: Iran wants to combine nuclear threat with northern front

In Channel 10 interview, defense minister says Hizbullah is Iran's commando unit in Lebanon. If events would have taken place in one year things would have been more complicated, he says
Ynet

Defense Minister Amir Peretz said Wednesday that Israel 's military offensive against Hizbullah "exposed what Iran really planned."

Speaking to Israel's Channel 10 TV Peretz said if the offensive were to have been launched a year from now it would have been much more complex because "they (Hizbullah) would have been combined with a nuclear threat which is being developed in Iran."

He said Iran would be willing to send troops to Lebanon, which would make it more complicated for Israel to fight Hizbullah.

Peretz stressed the importance of the operation.

He said Hizbullah made a strategic mistake when it executed Iran's orders to attack Israeli soldiers on July 12, an attack which claimed the lives of eight soldiers and led to the capture of two others, because it didn't expect Israel to launch a large-scale operation.

Turning point

Asked about Hizbullah's seemingly unharmed rocket firing capability with the Shiite group managing to fire over 210 rockets into Israel on Thursday, Peretz said the intensity of the attack proves that Israel is fighting for its existence but promised that a turning point in the battle is closer than ever.

Peretz said that Israel will not be pressured to end the operation despite intensifying international calls for a ceasefire, adding that the United States is fully backing Israel.

"I believe that the United States is giving us all the support, but we will not make decision about our military offensive based on pressure – be it the Americans or the Europeans," he said.

Peretz said the success of Israel's military operation against Hizbullah will create the necessary conditions for the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon.

He said Israel's strategy of "turning a blind eye" to Hizbullah's rocket arsenal and belief that the group would not jeopardize years of economic growth and reconstruction in Lebanon by provoking Israel proved erroneous as the Shiite proved it is indifferent to the country's economic interests.

Peretz: Iran wants to combine nuclear threat with northern front

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Scrud peace deal with Israel

Egyptian judges ask government to cancel peace accord with Israel; Strike scheduled for Sunday
Roee Nahmias

Judges in Egypt called upon the government to dissolve its peace agreement with Israel, on the grounds that it is inconceivable for Egypt to coexist peaceably with Israel while the IDF operates in Lebanon. The judges expressed support of popular resistance against Israeli advances, which, in their eyes, is the only way to protect the Arab ummah (greater nation).

In a statement issued Thursday, Egyptian judges censured "the barbaric Israeli attacks on the Palestinian and Lebanese people." They also warned of American attempts "to rearrange the Middle East, based on the 'Greater Middle East' plan, via Israeli pride and American hegemony, in whose eyes the lives of hundreds of Arab children are not worth the wounds of one Israeli child."

The judges expressed their belief that the popular resistance is the only way to protect the Arab nation and their honor, and stated their support from "the bravery of Lebanese resistance fighters and the stance of Lebanese people of all denominations." The statement declared that it is inconceivable that the US will continue to be considered a friend or strategic ally of any nation in the region, after having proven itself to be the primary instigator of attacks on the Arab nation.

According to the judges, the US incited this attack, encourages it, and is the main beneficiary from it. They censured those trying to bring about war between Sunni and Shiites and labeled them "an agent with malicious motives." Likewise, they condemned anyone trying to provoke war between Muslims and Christians and anyone expressing doubt that an entrenched nation in the area (implying Iran) has nuclear know-how.

The Egyptian judges called upon judges from around the world to do their duty and aid in imposing values of justice and equality between human beings.

Sunday: General strike

The Egyptian union of professional associations, boasting seven million members, announced that they intend to hold a general, hour-long strike on Sunday, including all members of the union with the exception of emergency medical workers.

Granted, it will not be the first public condemnation of Israel in Egypt. The London-based al-Sharq al Wasat newspaper, reported that Egyptian lawyers conducted a general strike on Thursday against IDF operations in Lebanon.

Member of Parliament and chairman of the Egyptian Physician's Association, Hamdi al-Sayyid, announced that Hizbullah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, had told him that the organization required only moral support, not volunteers. Al-Sayyid announced that Egyptian armed forces agreed to transfer airborne aid to Lebanon.

The Egyptian reform movement, 'Kafia', is also pressing on the Egyptian government. In the last presidential and parliament elections, the movement protested against the continued leadership of Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

This time, they focused their criticism on Israel and demanded a cessation of gas exports from Egpyt to that country. Newspapers also reported that popular anti-Israeli sentiment was growing, including among organizations, political movements and factions of the population that had previously not actively expressed such views.

These accounts come on the heels of similar reports in Egypt and other Arab countries. Several days ago, it was reported that Egyptian opposition sources demanded the removal of Israel's ambassador in Cairo, Shalom Cohen.

Comparable demands were voiced in Mauritania and Jordan. Abdullah, the king of Jordan, was asked, in an interview published Thursday, if he intended to comply. Skirting the issue, the king responded that: "We will do everything in the best interest of our homeland and our brothers in Lebanon and Palestine."

Scrud peace deal with Israel

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'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - After almost four weeks of fighting between Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and Israel, the US administration's ambitions to transform the Arab Middle East into a pro-Western, more democratic region are fading fast.

Not only is Washington's thus far staunch support for Israel losing Arab "hearts and minds" at an astonishing pace, but the "moderate" governments and non-governmental forces the administration had hoped would act as catalysts for reform are increasingly isolated across the region, according to Middle East specialists.

"I have never seen the United States being so demonized or savaged by Arab commentators, by Arab politicians," Hisham Melham, veteran Washington correspondent for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper, told a conference this week at the Brookings



Institution, an influential think-tank.

"People are clinging to Hezbollah, clinging to Hamas, because they see them as the remaining voices or forces in the Arab world that are resisting what they see as an ongoing hegemonic American-Israeli plan to control the region," he said.

Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the University of Maryland, observed at the same meeting, "Right now, the United States is the kiss of death.

"If you really are trying to empower the ruling elites and nudge them to reform and be more representative, you have to deliver policies that are going to empower," he said. "What we see in Lebanon is a policy that is not empowering them. It is widening the gap [between the moderate elites and the people], and people are moving toward the militants."

That point was echoed by none other than King Abdullah of Jordan, who, in the early days of the current round of fighting, had joined the Egyptian and Saudi governments in denouncing Hezbollah for "adventurism" in attacking across the Lebanese border, thus provoking Israel's devastating military campaign.

"A fact America and Israel must understand is that as long as there is aggression and occupation, there will be resistance and popular support for the resistance," Abdullah, arguably Washington's closest Arab ally, said on Thursday. "People cannot sleep and wake up to pictures of the dead and images of destruction in Lebanon and Gaza and ... say 'we want moderation'. Moderation needs deeds.

"Unfortunately, Israeli policy ... has contributed to the rise in the wave of extremism in the Arab world, and this war has come to weaken the voices of moderation," he went on, warning that even if Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon - an increasingly unlikely prospect - "a new Hezbollah would emerge, maybe in Jordan, Syria or Egypt" unless a comprehensive peace settlement were reached.

Even before the outbreak of this latest war between Israel and Hezbollah, Washington's hopes of regional transformation appeared to be dimming fast.

Besides Lebanon, whose "Cedar Revolution" last year was repeatedly cited by the administration US President George W Bush as vindication of its domino theory of democratic change, the two other Arab polities in which it has invested most of its hopes for transformation - Iraq and the Palestinian Authority (PA) - were already in deep trouble.

In the PA, not only had Hamas, the Islamist party on the State Department's terrorism list, won last January's parliamentary elections, but a subsequent US-led aid and diplomatic embargo against its government only strengthened its popularity at home, partly at the expense of Washington's preferred interlocutor, the Fatah Party's Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA.

Moreover, Israel's US-backed military campaign against Hamas, now in its sixth week, does not appear to have reduced its hold on public opinion.

In Iraq, where Washington is currently spending nearly US$7 billion a month, a series of US-organized elections appears only to have hastened the country's descent into a brutal sectarian civil war, a scenario conceded by two of Washington's top generals on Thursday as having become increasingly possible.

"Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," General John Abizaid, the head of Central Command, told a Senate hearing in Washington. "If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war." His remarks were echoed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace.

Meanwhile, another leaked memo, this time from Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that "the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy".

Now, Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah, which has included the destruction of key infrastructure throughout the country, as well as Shi'ite strongholds in southern Lebanon and south Beirut, has quite possibly dealt a lethal blow to the government of the moderate, pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, even as it has boosted the popularity of Hezbollah - contrary to the initial expectations in both Washington and Jerusalem.

Even Hezbollah's fiercest Lebanese foe, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who during the Cedar Revolution praised Bush's transformation strategy as "the start of a new Arab world" comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, told the Financial Times this week that he was forced to support the Shi'ite militia against "brutal Israeli aggression" that would result in the weakening of the central government and the strengthening of Hezbollah and, through it, Syria and Iran.

"All American policy in the Middle East is at stake because their failure in Palestine, then failure in Iraq and now this failure in Lebanon will lead to a new Arab world where the so-called radical Arabs will profit," he said, adding that "this is ... not the new Middle East of Ms [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice".

Moreover, the situation in Lebanon - particularly the devastation wrought by Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah and Washington's support for it - increasingly threatens the US position in Iraq by further alienating its majority Shi'ite population and its leadership, many of whom have close ties to their Lebanese co-religionists.

While faction leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, which battled US forces in 2004, has been holding big anti-American demonstrations in Baghdad since the Israeli offensive began in mid-July, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the single strongest and most influential voice for moderation in Iraq's Shi'ite community, warned last Sunday after a particularly deadly Israeli air strike in which dozens of civilians were killed in Qana that "dire consequences will befall the region ... if an immediate ceasefire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed".

According to Juan Cole, a Middle East expert at the University of Michigan and president of the US Middle East Studies Association, Sisanti's warning was aimed directly at the United States. "Sistani could call massive anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations," noted Cole.

"Given Iraq's profound political instability, this development could be extremely dangerous," he wrote on his weblog, www.juancole.com. "The US is already not winning against a Sunni Arab insurgency ... If 16 million Shi'ites turned on the US because of its wholehearted support for Israel's actions in Lebanon, the US military mission in Iraq could quickly become completely and urgently untenable."

Meanwhile, Washington's most loyal Sunni-led allies, as noted by King Abdullah, also feel under growing threat by popular support for Hezbollah and the radicalization among their subjects provoked by the current Israeli campaign.

"Arab leaders are seen by the public as American puppets who have no standing of their own," said Hassan Barari, a senior researcher at Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies, writing for Bitterlemons-international.org.

"The Americans and Israelis are once again giving victory to extremists, thus critically emasculating moderate forces and their allies," he wrote, noting that Hezbollah "has managed to expose the weakness and docility of Arab leaders".

At the same time, however, the very weakness of these regimes, combined with the fact that the gap between the rulers and the ruled has now widened to such a dangerous extent, means that the Bush administration's pressure on Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian states to implement political reform has come to abrupt halt.

'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world

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Hezbollah's Nazi roots
Across the Middle East, radical Islamists yearn for a new Holocaust
 
Daniel Johnson
The New York Sun

Friday, August 04, 2006

This is the first Middle East war in which the main threat to Israel comes, not from secular Arab nationalism, but from Islamism.

Both Hezbollah and Hamas draw their main inspiration, armaments and funding from Islamist sources, ranging from the Sunni ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood to the Shiite demagogues of Iran. What unites them all is a fanatical dedication to the destruction of Israel.

Sounding like a modern-day Hitler, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad this week repeated his call for the "elimination" of Israel, home to six million Jews. Hezbollah, Iran's proxy army in Lebanon, shares that objective. Its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has urged the world's Jews to collect in Israel in order to facilitate the task of exterminating them.

In this regard, there are parallels between the present war and previous campaigns waged against Israel by Arab nationalists. One thing that Arab nationalists and Islamists clearly have in common, though it is usually ignored in the Western media, is their explicit debt to the Nazis.

This extends even to overt Nazi symbolism. I am indebted to one of the most seasoned observers of the Middle East, Tom Gross, for a photograph of a Hezbollah rally on the Lebanese side of the border fence, shortly before the present conflict. With houses in the Israeli town of Metullah in the background, hundreds of uniformed Hezbollah terrorists are raising their arms in a Nazi-style salute. This obscene ceremony, complete with yellow standards and mullah commanders taking the salute, was happening in full view of Israeli civilians. Mr. Gross asks pointedly, "Are all those now attacking Israel around the world even capable of imagining what an elderly Holocaust survivor who happened to glance across the fence might have felt?"

Hezbollah's Nazi salute evokes memories of Hitler's support for Arab agitators such as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and the leaders of a pro-Nazi coup in Iraq. The Nazi legacy also manifests itself in Holocaust denial or revisionism, a Middle Eastern obsession that unites the most extreme Islamists, including Iran's president, with "moderate" secularists such as Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The Arabs appropriated anti-Semitic ideology directly from the Nazis and have recycled it ever since. In the 1950s, the Baathist parties in Syria and Iraq modelled themselves on Hitler's heady brew of nationalism and socialism. Charismatic dictators from Nasser and Gaddafi to Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat turned themselves into little Hitlers, weaving anti-Semitism into their political agendas. However, the Nazi connection is usually mentioned by Arab nationalists and Islamists sotto voce, because they constantly identify Zionism with Nazism in their propaganda.

A second key similarity between today's Islamists and past Arab nationalists relates less to ideology than to geopolitics. As the British historian Efraim Karsh convincingly shows in his new book, Islamic Imperialism, the pursuit of empire through ruthless military conquest has been a constant theme from the time of Muhammad till that of Osama bin Laden, whose jihad is aimed at creating a timeless, universal Caliphate.

Yet the dominant historical narrative stands this on its head, portraying the Arabists and Islamists as anti-imperialist. Even as Gamal Abdel Nasser dreamt of what John Dulles called "an empire stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Atlantic Ocean," the Egyptian dictator posed as the champion of the "non-aligned" nations, struggling against European colonialism and superpower hegemony.

The whole issue of imperialism is invariably accompanied by much hypocrisy. Today, for example, America is criticized because of its refusal to intervene to stop Israel from retaliating against Hezbollah. America's critics are demanding that a superpower should intervene to prevent a sovereign state from defending its population against bombardment by proxies of a government that has declared its intention of wiping that state off the map. What could be more imperialist than such an intervention?

The classic example of Arab exploitation of the West's confusion over imperialism was the Suez crisis of 1956. Fifty years ago this week, Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, thereby precipitating an international crisis. The British prime minister, Anthony Eden, decided it was his duty to reject appeasement and stop Nasser. But President Eisenhower, campaigning for re-election, refused to have anything to do with it. And American and Russian pressure eventually forced the British and their allies to back down.

So Nasser snatched victory from the jaws of defeat, and the Arab war against the West began. Fifty years on, it is by no means over. Indeed, if those Nazi-saluting Hezbollah thugs are anything to go by, we may have seen nothing yet.

Hezbollah's Nazi roots

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Sakka says fighting Jews is Muslims' duty
Saturday, August 5, 2006

ISTANBUL - Turkish Daily News

  A man alleged to be a senior al-Qaeda operative told a court on Thursday it was the duty of all Muslims to fight Jews, the Anatolia news agency reported.

  Louai Sakka, a Syrian jailed in Istanbul over botched plans to blow up an Israeli cruise ship off Turkey's southern coast last year, said he had planned the attack after witnessing atrocities in the Iraqi city of Fallujah.

  If the enemy attacks a Muslim country, Jihad (Holy War) becomes an obligation for every Muslim,� Anatolia quoted Sakka as saying. �The Jews have occupied the Al-Aqsa mosque (in Jerusalem) and therefore it is my duty to fight these brutal aggressors,� he said.

  But Sakka, who faces a life sentence, denied prosecution charges that he was the mastermind behind four suicide bombings in Istanbul in 2003 and that he was the courier who brought the money that helped Turkish bombers organize the attacks.

  Sixty-three people were killed and hundreds were injured in the bombings that targeted two synagogues on Nov. 15, 2003, and the British Consulate General and the Britain-based HSBC bank five days later.

  I absolutely disapprove of these attacks. ... One cannot achieve legitimate aims by killing civilians,� he said.

  The judge later expelled Sakka from the courtroom after he refused to stand to answer questions, Anatolia reported.

  The prosecution has described Sakka as a senior al-Qaeda member personally tasked by Osama bin Ladin to organize the attacks in Turkey.

  Sakka was arrested in August 2005 after a fire that broke out in a flat in the popular Mediterranean resort of Antalya sparked a major police operation. The blaze reportedly began when Sakka and a Syrian accomplice, Hamed Obysi, were preparing explosives for an alleged plot to ram a bomb-laden boat into an Israeli cruise ship carrying tourists to Antalya. The pair managed to escape, but were arrested several days later -- Sakka at an airport in the southeast and Obysi at a border crossing with Syria.

  Four Israeli ships carrying 3,500 tourists were scheduled to dock near Antalya at the time but were rerouted.

  Sakka had purchased a seaside villa, a yacht and a jet ski to use in the attack, the indictment said, and had undergone facial plastic surgery to avoid recognition.

  The case of the two Syrians has been merged with the trial of 71 other people in connection with the Istanbul bombings. It was not immediately clear when the next hearing would be held.

Sakka says fighting Jews is Muslims' duty

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Vatican newspaper denounces horrors of 'undeclared war' in Middle East

The Vatican's newspaper on Saturday denounced the horrors of what it called an undeclared war between Israel and Hizbullah in the Middle East, pressing Pope Benedict XVI's campaign for dialogue to resolve the conflict.

"The images of every day which arrive from the martyred Middle East regions are the dramatic testimony of the horrors of an undeclared war, of a recourse to the language of arms which has always shown itself to be inadequate for resolving conflicts," wrote L'Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Holy See.

Vatican newspaper denounces horrors of 'undeclared war' in Middle East

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Lebanon cabinet says too early to discuss UN draft
05 Aug 2006 19:26:23 GMT
Source: Reuters

BEIRUT, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Lebanon's cabinet said on Saturday it would not compromise on the country's sovereignty but that it was too early to discuss a U.N. draft resolution calling for an end to fighting between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.

"Even this draft is not final ... we will not discuss the intentions of this side or that," said Information Minister Ghazi Aridi after a cabinet meeting.

Responding to a question, Aridi said the government would not compromise on Lebanon's sovereignty or accept any Israeli occupation of Lebanese territory.

"None of us will give up anything to do with national sovereignty, rights, dignity," he said, adding the government was committed "to Lebanon's territory, Lebanon's liberation, the withdrawal of the occupation from Lebanese land".

The draft distributed on Saturday calls for an end to the fighting as a first step towards a political settlement. Israeli troops have been fighting Hizbollah guerrillas inside southern Lebanon in a 25-day-old conflict.

Lebanon cabinet says too early to discuss UN draft

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Time running out in Lebanon campaign-Israeli minister
05 Aug 2006 18:57:36 GMT
Source: Reuters

 By Jeffrey Heller

JERUSALEM, Aug 5 (Reuters) - A draft U.N. Security Council resolution on a cessation of fighting in Lebanon puts pressure on Israel to complete its military operation quickly, an Israeli cabinet minister said on Saturday.

"We have the coming days for lots of military moves. But we have to realise the timetable is getting shorter," Tourism Minister Isaac Herzog, a member of the security cabinet, said on Channel 1 TV in Israel's first response to the draft resolution.

"It is a fact that we have to accept and act in accordance with," he said.

Herzog spoke after the United States and France completed the draft resolution on an end to fighting between Israel and Hizbollah that began when the Iranian-backed group seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.

The full 15-member council has to review and accept the text, which also calls for a framework for a political settlement between Israel and Lebanon.

A second resolution is envisaged a week or two after the first is adopted, setting down conditions for a permanent ceasefire and authorising an international force for southern Lebanon.

Hizbollah leaders have sworn to fight as long as Israeli soldiers remain on Lebanese soil. At least 10,000 Israeli troops are inside Lebanon trying to dislodge Hizbollah fighters from the border and stop them firing rockets into Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that Israel would stop fighting when an effective international force deployed in southern Lebanon.

Olmert was due to consult late on Saturday with senior cabinet ministers and meet in Jerusalem on Sunday with Assistant Secretary of State David Welch. The U.S. envoy held talks with Lebanese leaders on Saturday on ways to end the conflict.

10,000 ROCKETS

Herzog said the Israeli military could in the next few days "very significantly weaken" Hizbollah's ability to continue to pound northern Israel with rocket fire.

But he said: "The problem is (that Hizbollah has) 10,000 rockets. These rockets are hidden in houses, in warehouses. They set the timer for launching 20 Katyushas, and they flee within 30 seconds."

Israel warned residents of Sidon to evacuate south Lebanon's biggest city ahead of planned air strikes on what it said were Hizbollah offices and rocket-launching sites located there.

An Israeli army spokesman said leaflets dropped on Sidon, whose normal population of 100,000 has been swollen by refugees from fighting further south, had warned all residents to leave.

In the television interview, Herzog questioned whether a deeper Israeli push towards the Litani River, some 20 km (13 miles) into Lebanon -- a move Israeli media reports said Defence Minister Amir Peretz supported -- would be wise.

"Hizbollah has trained for years for the scenario of the Israeli military reaching the Litani," Herzog said.

The conflict has killed at least 734 people in Lebanon and 78 Israelis. Hizbollah has fired 2,600 rockets into Israel.

Time running out in Lebanon campaign-Israeli minister

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Russia reignites feud with Japan by investing £350m in disputed islands

· Snub from Moscow stirs 500-year-old conflict
· Dispute prevented signing of second world war treaty

Tom Parfitt in Moscow
Saturday August 5, 2006
The Guardian

Russia is to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into developing a group of small islands seized from Japan at the end of the second world war, in a calculated snub to Tokyo. The decision will aggravate a dispute that has kept the countries technically at war for more than 60 years.

Moscow denies the huge funding boost for the Kuril Islands is political, but it is sure to antagonise the Japanese who want to regain control of them.

Article continues
The Kurils, situated off the north-eastern tip of Japan, were ceded to Tokyo in 1875 in exchange for Russia taking a larger island nearer its coast. But in 1945 Moscow annexed them, forcibly deporting Japanese residents.

Fewer than 20,000 Russians now inhabit the foggy, volcanic islands, which Japan calls the Northern Territories. Half of the inhabitants live below the poverty line, and in recent years many islanders have left for the mainland or abroad.

The islands have a crumbling infrastructure and their main airstrip is too short - apparently, because it was built only for the take-off of kamikaze planes that never had to land again.

Russia's economic development and trade minister, German Gref, told a cabinet meeting the islands would be revived by investing £350m in building a new airport and transport links, promoting tourism and boosting the fishing industry.

The development programme - which represents a twentyfold increase in infrastructure spending over the next two years - had nothing to do with politics he said. However, it means Russia is unlikely to hand back the islands to Japan. In the past Moscow had indicated it might be willing to give up the two smaller islands in exchange for keeping the larger two.

"The Japanese are being told to forget about the four islands, while Russia's foreign ministry must forget about a peaceful settlement with Japan," said the Moscow-based Gazeta newspaper.

Russia and Japan have been at odds over the islands which have rich and undeveloped deposits of precious metals for more than half a century. Because of this dispute, no peace treaty was signed between them after the second world war.

In recent years, the islands have struggled with crippling unemployment and isolation, frequently being cut off for weeks at a time because of bad weather preventing flights.

In a televised meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, the country's defence minister, Sergei Ivanov, highlighted the difficulty of delivering supplies to the main island because of its short runway.

"If pilots complete flights to South Kuril then they deserve the title Hero of Russia, seeing as the infrastructure of the airport was designed by the Japanese for the take-off of kamikazes," he said.

Hundreds of aircraft were kept on the Kurils and Japan's northern Hokkaido island during the war, and suicide missions were flown from the area.

Mr Gref said that a major aim of the funding increase was to stem the exodus of Russians and boost the islands' population by 50%. That would also bolster Moscow's legitimacy in continuing to control them.

Japan has yet to comment on the development plan but its foreign ministry maintains the Northern Territories are illegally occupied.

Russia reignites feud with Japan by investing £350m in disputed islands

[Shammu]

Rebel troops clash with army in eastern Congo
05 Aug 2006 12:34:34 GMT
Source: Reuters

GOMA, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Troops loyal to renegade general Laurent Nkunda clashed with the Congolese army in a town in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, leaving at least one government soldier injured, officials said on Saturday.

The gunfight on the streets of Sake had stirred fears among aid workers and ordinary Congolese of an advance by Nkunda's troops on the provincial capital Goma, some 20 kilometres (13 miles) to the east.

"The firing has stopped. There are fears and apprehensions. There was a small misunderstanding but there is nothing to worry about," Brig Gen GV Satyanarayana, commander of United Nation's forces in North Kivu, told Reuters from Sake.

With Nkunda's fighters billeted in the same town as the army's 9th brigade, tension has been running high in Sake this week.

Congo celebrated its first multiparty elections in more than 40 years on Sunday, aimed at cementing peace after a 1998-2003 war during which Nkunda rebelled against Kinshasa's government.

U.N. peacekeepers -- part of a 17,000 strong force in Congo -- were patrolling the town to prevent further hostilities, said Jacqueline Chenard, U.N. spokeswoman in North Kivu. Isolated fire fights continued in the hills around the town, she said.

Nkunda, from the Tutsi ethnic group that exists in Rwanda, Burundi and Congo, is the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Congolese government for alleged atrocities against civilians committed since 2004.

He said last week he was willing to negotiate with the winner of Sunday's historic elections to end his insurgency, but also warned he would fight back if a new elected president tried to defeat him militarily.

Rebel troops clash with army in eastern Congo

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Well Fox news just reported that, Gamaa Islamiya is joining the al-qaeda terror network.  As soon as I can find something, I will post it.  Below is what I know and can find on Gamaa Islamiya.  Several of us older people remember Gamaa Islamiya.

Gamaa Islamiya is a terror organization from the late 1970s.

The group issued a cease-fire in March 1999, but its spiritual leader, Shaykh Umar Abd al- Rahman—sentenced to life in prison in January 1996 for his involvement in the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 and incarcerated in the United States—rescinded his support for the cease-fi re in June 2000. The IG has not conducted an attack inside Egypt since August 1998. Senior member signed Usama Bin Ladin’s fatwa in February 1998 calling for attacks against the United States.

Unofficially split in two factions: one that supports the cease-fire led by Mustafa Hamza, and one led by Rifa’i Taha Musa, calling for a return to armed operations. Taha Musa in early 2001 published a book in which he attempted to justify terrorist attacks that would cause mass casualties. Musa disappeared several months thereafter, and there are conflicting reports as to his current whereabouts. In March 2002, members of the group’s historic leadership in Egypt declared use of violence misguided and renounced its future use, prompting denunciations by much of the leadership abroad. In 2003, the Egyptian Government released more than 900 former IG members from prison.

For members still dedicated to violent jihad, the primary goal is to overthrow the Egyptian Government and replace it with an Islamic state. Disaffected IG members, such as those potentially inspired by Taha Musa or Abd al-Rahman, may be interested in carrying out attacks against US interests. First designated October 1997.

Group conducted armed attacks against Egyptian security and other government officials, Coptic Christians, and Egyptian opponents of Islamic extremism before the cease-fire. From 1993 until the cease-fire, al-Gama’a launched attacks on tourists in Egypt, most notably the attack in November 1997 at Luxor that killed 58 foreign tourists. Also claimed responsibility for the attempt in June 1995 to assassinate Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Gama’a never has specifically attacked a US citizen or facility but has threatened US interests.

Location and Area of Operations are mainly in the Al-Minya, Asyut, Qina, and Sohaj Governorates of southern Egypt. Also appears to have support in Cairo, Alexandria, and other urban locations, particularly among unemployed graduates and students. Has a worldwide presence, including in the United Kingdom, Afghanistan, Yemen, and various locations in Europe.

[Shammu]

Hamas barred Red Cross from visiting Gilad Shalit
JPost.com Staff, THE JERUSALEM POST    Aug. 5, 2006

Hamas did not allow representatives of the Red Cross to visit kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, sources said Saturday.

The humanitarian organization had requested last week to see Shalit in order to assess his health condition, and were denied the visit by Hamas.

"We will not allow visitors to see the soldier while the families of thousands of jailed Palestinians cannot see their loved ones," Hamas officials said.

Hamas barred Red Cross from visiting Gilad Shalit

[Shammu]

 Damascus writes to UN on Israeli "massacre" against Syrians, Lebanese
www.chinaview.cn 2006-08-06 06:24:51

    DAMASCUS, Aug. 5 (Xinhua) -- Syria on Saturday sent two letters to the United Nations on the "massacre" perpetrated by Israel Friday in the Lebanese northern Bekaa town of al-Qaa against Syrian and Lebanese workers.

    According to the official SANA news agency, Syrian Foreign Ministry sent the letters, identical in contents, respectively to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and the rotating chairman of the UN Security Council.

    The letters denounced that Israeli warplanes "intentionally" killed 33 Syrian and Lebanese civilians and wounded 14 others, who were having lunch after a day long work in loading food stuff to the Lebanese.

    "Among those victims were 26 Syrian civilians," the letters added.

    The letters attributed the cause of "mass killings" in Lebanese villages, such as Qana and Qaa, to "preventing the UN Security Council from shouldering responsibility, failure to punish the killers of the UN soldiers in south Lebanon.

    The letters also described the act of blocking the UN Security Council from stopping Israel's state terrorism and war crimes as "systematic destruction" of the UN Charter and international laws.

    "Syria supports the call that a fact-finding mission on Qana massacre carry out its duties immediately and expand its mandate to investigate into the Qaa massacre," the letters added, demanding full compensation for the Syrian victims.

    The letters called for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire and the Israeli withdrawal beyond the blue line in south Lebanon. Earlier on Saturday, the 26 killed Syrian civilians, including six woman, were buried on the orders of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who called those killed "martyrs".

    On Friday, the Israeli warplanes pounded the village of al-Qaa, which is close to Lebanon's border with Syria, killing at least 30 farm workers and wounding over a dozen others. Most of the dead were Syrian Kurds from poor villages in northern part of the country.

    It was one of the highest death toll in a single strike since the start of Israeli aggression on Lebanon on July 12. The deadliest Israeli strike was that in another Lebanese village of Qana last week, which the Lebanese government said killed up to 54 civilians.

Damascus writes to UN on Israeli "massacre" against Syrians, Lebanese