Posted in: Israel-Palestine
Friday Jun 15, 2007
The Results From Deliberately Missed Opportunities
The latest from Palestine: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas dissolved the Palestinian government Thursday and declared a state of emergency after rival Hamas forces took complete control of the Gaza Strip in what the Islamic movement called the territory's "liberation."...
permalink
emailMonday Jun 4, 2007
Bush Continues to Prevent Israel-Syria Peace
We learned last August that in September 2004, Dubya directly undermined attempts to forge peace between Israel and Syria. In January, we learned that despite Bush's attempts, secret negotiations between Israel and Syria occurred anyway, between Sept. 2004 and July...
Wednesday May 23, 2007
Promoting Region-Wide Sectarian Violence
ABC News' The Blotter yesterday broke the news that Bush has given secret authorization to "mount a covert 'black' operation to destabilize the Iranian government." And on CNN International, Seymour Hersh re-broke his overlooked New Yorker scoop from March, regarding...
Tuesday May 8, 2007
Bipartisan Government Fails Israel
Atrios asks today, "How much attention has Unity08 - the stupidest idea in history - been given already?" Unity08 is trying to nominate a presidential ticket made up of one Republican and one Democrat. To do what? Apparently, it doesn't...
Monday May 7, 2007
We are caught up in a worldwide war against an irreconcilable enemy who seeks to destroy us and will use nuclear or biological weapons if they can get them. And they mean literally destroy us ... whether it's Afghanistan, it's...
Tuesday Jan 16, 2007
Undermining Israel-Syria Peace Talks
Air America's Sam Seder today pointed to a blockbuster piece in Ha'aretz, "Israeli, Syrian Representatives Reach Secret Understandings," which reports; In a series of secret meetings in Europe between September 2004 and July 2006, Syrians and Israelis formulated understandings for...
Wednesday Nov 22, 2006
Failing Lebanon, Abandoning Democracy
At the end of the summer's Israel-Lebanon war, LiberalOasis concluded: ...this does appear to be a poorly constructed cease-fire resolution. Why? None of the actual root causes of violence are addressed. Neither Israel nor Lebanon get anything. The resolution punts...
Tuesday Nov 14, 2006
Over on Bloggingheads.TV, The Forward's Gershom Gorenberg confirms what I argued on MSNBC's "Tucker" back in September, that this past summer, the Bush Administration actively thwarted attempts from Hamas to moderate and implicitly recognize Israel. (The response from my conservative...
Tuesday Aug 15, 2006
Annan, Olmert, Siniora: Act Fast
The cease-fire held for the first day. Good. That means there's some time to work out a deal to address the remaining issues. And both Israel's prime minister Ehud Olmert, and Lebanon's prime minister Fouad Siniora, have a strong political...
Monday Aug 14, 2006
How are the neocons reacting to the UN cease-fire resolution? They're pushing for the downfall of the Israeli government. Here's Bill Kristol on Fox News Sunday: I'm afraid the truth is that a terrorist group launched an attack across an...
Tuesday Aug 8, 2006
Golan Heights: The Key To Peace?
Editor's Note: Short post today. Regular posting will resume tomorrow. Last month, LiberalOasis said that any deal to resolve the Shebaa Farms dispute would probably have to involve Syria, even though that would be complicated: Syria, like Hezbollah, isn't motivated...
Monday Aug 7, 2006
Secretary of State Condi Rice went on ABC's This Week and NBC's Meet The Press to discuss the draft UN resolution about the Israel-Lebanon war. And it was a classic, pathetic Condi performance, again indicating that the insincere, foot-dragging diplomacy...
Wednesday Aug 2, 2006
This week was supposed to be the week in Dubya and Condi's plan when they'd " target="_blank">stop faking diplomacy - in a transparent effort to give the Israeli military time to finish its missions - and start working towards a...
Tuesday Aug 1, 2006
Shebaa Farms Withdrawal: No Prize for Hezbollah
Editor's Note: Short post today. Full-length columns will resume tomorrow. LiberalOasis has been stressing that a key reason why Hezbollah provoked Israel by abducting soldiers was to scuttle progress towards resolving Israel's occupation of Shebaa Farms. Just in case you...
Monday Jul 31, 2006
In the wake of the Qana, Lebanon attack, the Sunday shows generally featured predictable, counterproductive finger-pointing from U.S., Israeli and Lebanese "leaders." But a couple of comments are worth calling attention to. First is from U.S. Undersecretary of State Nick...
Thursday Jul 27, 2006
The Bush Administration's strategy on resolving the Israel-Lebanon crisis reached a new level of idiocy yesterday. It appears that the Rome meeting, despite not resulting in any concrete agreements, did move the international community -- possibly including the US --...
Wednesday Jul 26, 2006
Shebaa Farms: Twists and Turns
The Shebaa Farms issue appears to be heating up in advance of today's foreign ministers' meeting in Rome, with some twists and turns to straighten out. Yesterday, LiberalOasis cited a Guardian report that Israel had "signalled its readiness" to withdraw...
Tuesday Jul 25, 2006
Yesterday, LiberalOasis flagged the calls from Lebanese PM Fouad Siniora to get an end to hostilities by resolving the Shebaa Farms dispute. Chances are you won't find out about it from any US media outlet, but there may be significant...
Monday Jul 24, 2006
On NBC's Meet The Press, Dubya's Chief of Staff Josh Bolten repeated the White House's main talking point, that the "root problem" is "Hezbollah." Which means that the White House won't support a cease-fire, because that would mean Israel would...
Saturday Jul 22, 2006
LiberalOasis in the Star Tribune
Saturday's editon of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune includes a op-ed of mine, on how this round of Middle East violence could have been avoided: if Bush and the Israeli government strengthened the pragmatists of Hamas looking to move towards...
Friday Jul 21, 2006
During Monday's "open mic" lunch chat, British Prime Minister appears to have " target="_blank">urged Dubya to dispatch Condi Rice to the Middle East "quickly, otherwise this will spiral out of [control.]" To which " target="_blank">Dubya responds, "Yeah, she's going. I...
Tuesday Jul 18, 2006
As Ezra Klein, Juan Cole and Billmon have already noted, the real news in the overheard Bush-Blair lunch chat is not the profanity, but the comments about Syria: BUSH: See, the irony is what they need to do is get...
Monday Jul 17, 2006
Last week's neocon Iran Fever continued to spread on Sunday. Newt Gingrich, on " target="_blank">NBC's Meet The Press, and Bill Kristol, on " target="_blank">Fox News Sunday, continued the right-wing effort to pressure the Bushies for accelerated action against Iran, if...
Friday Jul 14, 2006
The neocons outside the White House are quite antsy that we haven't yet spread the bloodshed and instability from Iraq to Iran. And this week, they see an opportunity. Michael Ledeen writes in the National Review: It's war, and it...
Thursday Jul 13, 2006
On June 20, the AP reported that "Hamas is drawing close to a compromise on a document that would implicitly recognize Israel" for the first time. That did not make the militant faction of Hamas happy. They did not want...
