The speech was boring and Biden did not say anything new or intriguing. He talked about his father, about his friendship with Israel, mentioned the building plans in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem and condemned it (which was appreciated by the crowd, no wonder at TAU). He did not say anything you would not have heard by Americans or Europeans for the last 10 years.

The suspect tried to flee but was quickly apprehended. His identity was not clear. Such attacks were once common in the West Bank, but have become relatively rare as Palestinian forces have increased security over parts of the territory.

JPost gives this information:

Khatib was sitting in his Sufa jeep with the window open when the PA police officer, who was wearing civilian clothes and was later identified as Muhammad Hatib, approached, pulled out a knife and thrust it into Khatib’s chest. (…) IDF sources said the attacker was the head of bureau for the PA’s Ramallah police chief. IDF sources said that the PA police were trained by a European Union organization, based in Ramallah, called the EUPOL COPPS (the EU Police Co-ordinating Office for Palestinian Police Support). EUPOL COPPS representatives were unavailable for comment.

And Ynet:

Palestinian sources in the West Bank town of Jenin reported that a large IDF force raided the home of the terrorist who murdered Sergeant-Major Ihab Khatib (28) at the Tapuach junction on Wednesday. The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit confirmed the report. (…) The terrorist reportedly served as a senior officer in the Palestinian security forces.

Hence, according to the Guardian the story must be like this:

Palestinian forces are securing the West Bank. In the meanwhile an unidentified officers of these very forces kills an Israeli soldier (an effort to secure the West Bank???). And the evil evil Juices rade the very home of this officer of whom it is not clear who he is, but only where he lives, what he is doing for a living and who his close family is.

Just a few weeks ago members of the Palestinian forces murdered an Israeli civilian.

UPDATE:

Haarets:

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad on Wednesday condemned the stabbing of an IDF soldier at the Tapuah checkpoint by a Palestinian police officer. (…) However, one emerging trend is difficult to ignore. Most of the fatal attacks in the West Bank in recent years were carried out by members of Palestinian security forces.

Everybody is enraged and warns that now Israel is risking the fragile peace. Yaacov Lozowick has it in details: here and here.

What is surprising about the terrorists/murderers: they were part of Fatah’s (that are Abbas’ buddies) military wing. Apparently nobody is irritated by that.

True, they signed an agreement they would give up armed struggle for which Israel granted them amnesty. Apparently they had second thoughts.

Moshe Elad argues that Abbas was involved, in some way.

While the journalist let you in the dark about the killed Palestinians affiliations and actions (that would be a murder and an attempt to murder more), they have to tell you that the Israeli who was killed was a settler. Why does that matter? Is killing a settler something else than killing a non-settler?

the forgotten palestinian refugees

there’s only one way to stop iran

But the questions remains: How can they declare a state without having sovereignty? Gaza is under the control of Hamas, and most of the West Bank is under the control of the Israeli Army.

In 1948 there was a chance to declare an Arab state in Mandatory Palestine. It was rejected, because the Arabs could not accept a Jewish state in Palestine. Eventually Gaza was ruled by Egypt and the West Bank by Jordan. No attempts by Palestinians were made to gain statehood, or even independence from these Arab states, not even some sort of autonomy. In the war of 1967 Jordan and Egypt lost these territories to Israel and Israel has now the problem that they bring with them.

The PLO can declare a Palestinian state. But what do they gain if this declaration will not be transported to reality?

Therefore I prefer to call it “International Moral”. In moral systems the violation of the moral code is not followed by sanctions sentenced by a body.

Now there is the Goldstone Report, a commission to do fact finding about alleged war crimes in Gaza, whose report just shows how bad the situation of international law really is. It is used in a political struggle to gain the upper hand.

Moshe Halbertal has written an extraordinary article about the Goldstone Report, summarizing all the biases and putting it into the big picture (found on Yaacov Lozowick’s blog, a blog recommended to start the day with).

The Goldstone Report as a whole is a terrible document. It is biased and unfair. It offers no help in sorting out the real issues. What methods can Israel–and other countries in similar situations–legitimately apply in the defense of their citizens?

But even better is Yaacov Lozowick’s essay about the Goldstone report. I really should not say anything and just recommend to read his article.

The methodology chosen by the Fact Finding Mission can be compared to a hypothetical fact finding mission wandering between Vietnamese villages in 1976, trying to understand the events of the war by asking villagers under the watchful eyes of communist handlers. The result would have been intellectually worthless, but most people wouldn’t have read the report anyway, convinced they knew the truth anyway. This is exactly what’s happening to the Goldstone Report. Its findings are useless and most people aren’t reading them anyway, but they’re being embraced or rejected according to political camp.

And here is an article about one of the alleged crimes in particular.

In Yericho there is not so much to see. They have an old city, but that is not more than a few humps of sand and stones. Maybe interesting for archeologist. There were two Americans (I guess archeology students) who looked intensely on all that sand and apparently saw something in it. I heard one saying something about stairs….

But there are two things that are definitely worth to see in Yericho. One is the Umayyad palace and the other one is the Greek-Orthodox monastery outside in the hills, which is definetly worth a visit. Especially because of the view you have from up there. The monk – with perfect American English – tells you a little bit about the history of the monastery. That it was built there, because there is the cave were Jesus supposedly fasted for 40 days.  And that it was destroyed by the Persians and only rebuilt in the nineteenth century, since it was forbidden for Christians to build religious sites under Muslim rule untill the Ottomans liberalized.

And then he tells you what you do not expect, but may should expect: “This land is ours, we where always here.” Well, “always”, what a term to talk about existence of social groups.

Our cab driver Abu Umar was much more pragmatic and said that the land belongs to whomever who lives on it (I did not ask him – we were tourist from Europe – if that also refers to those who lived on it) and that he justs wants peace to come and does not understand why the Arabs and Israelis just make peace. He cursed Abbas because he only “does what the Israelis tell him to do” and praised Arafat because everything was better under him, he thinks.

The situation I saw in the West Bank does not really fit is opinion. The economy is doin quite well and you do not get any impression, that the people are suffering.

All the time in the West Bank we were using the same transportation like ordinary Palestinians, using highways build by Israel that are also used by Israelis. We were not stopped once. In fact there were only three checkpoints on the way. One was right after Ramallah. The driver had to slow down (but only on the way to Ramallah), but the soldiers did not check the cars. Then there was a checkpoint on the way to Yericho, that I did not recognize (although we passed it twice; only thanks to the friend traveling with me I know about it). And there was a third checkpoint at the entrance of Yericho which was guarded by Palestinians soldiers.

The only time when I had to show my passport, was when I went back from the West Bank to Israel. And I should stress here again, that I was all the time using public transportation with Palestinians and for them it was the same.

]]> http://zionistjuice.wordpress.com/2009/07/26/a-trip-through-the-west-bank/feed/ 0 Zionist Juice http://zionistjuice.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/george-2u-bush/ http://zionistjuice.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/george-2u-bush/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 15:06:32 +0000 Zionist Juice http://zionistjuice.wordpress.com/?p=186 ]]> Found this on the Freunde der offenen Gesellschaft blog.