Mideast News Digest
Crumbling Iraqi Council Calls for Ceasefire
The U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council is losing members, as the military conflict, particularly in Fallujah, reaches "genocidal" proportions. The IGC membersto whom the occupation will "transfer" power on June 30have been totally discredited by their de facto acceptance of the U.S. military operations against civilians. One IGC member called the operation against Sunni Muslim militants in Fallujah "genocide," after doctors there reported 450 deaths and 1,000 injured this week. The IGC was consulted about the military operation against Sunni insurgents in Fallujah and Shia militia elsewhere in the country, according to the April 10 report by BBC's Caroline Hawley in Baghdad.
One Sunni Muslim member of the IGC, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawer, said he was ready to resign if the U.S. did not seek a peaceful solution to the crisis in Fallujah. "How can a superpower like the U.S. put itself in a state of war with a small city like Fallujah? This is genocide," he told Agence France Presse news agency on April 9. The Iraqi interim Human Rights Minister, Abdel Basit Turki, and a member of the Iraqi Governing Council's rotating presidency, Iyad Allawi, both resigned on April 9 without giving a reason for their decision.
Fallujah Ceasefire Collapses in 90 Minutes
Iraq occupation viceroy Paul Bremer held a press conference about noon Iraqi time, on April 9, announcing a unilateral ceasefire, to allow for delegations to enter Fallujah for talks, for humanitarian aid to be taken in, and for wounded Iraqis to be taken out. However, though one American-appointed Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) member said the ceasefire would last for 24 hours, it barely lasted 90 minutes, and Al Jazeera reported from Fallujah that the city was still under heavy bombardment, with civilians fleeing the city for their lives.
The ceasefire attempt came after leading IGC member Adnan Pachachi denounced the U.S. military actions, in front of Bremer. Pachachi said the American forces have exerted "collective punishment" on the city's residents, for the killing of four Americans and the mutilation of their bodies, the previous week. Collective punishment, a hallmark of Nazi policies, is outlawed under international law.
Bremer agreed to the idea of a ceasefire, and the leader of the Fallujah city government announced it in a statement. The negotiations were to deal with compensation for damages, as well as how to deal with those responsible for the killings last week.
Bremer did agree, but Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt reportedly was opposed, and for some reason, the planned meetings seem not to have taken place. Indeed, newspapers in the U.S. were quoting U.S. soldiers in Fallujah April 9, who said they received no order for a ceasefire.
Several other negotiations are being reported. One set of talks is being led by Mohammed Mahdi al Mudarisi, a member of the Marja (the religious leadership of Shi'ite Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani), who has received delegations from Muqtada al-Sadr's group and from the IGC. Presumably, one the issues being discussed is the arrest warrant for al-Sadr. Leading Iraqis have insisted that such a matter should be taken up by a future, legitimate Iraqi government.
Iranian news outlets are playing up the negotiation efforts led by Shi'ite IGC member Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, in Najaf, with the followers of al-Sadr. A wire from the Iranian news service, IRNA April 9, reported that a team of elders had been assigned by al-Hakim, to seek a negotiated solution. The leader of the team, Sheikh Hamid as-Saedi, told IRNA that progress was being made. "We hope that the current negotiations which will go on in the next days will lead the country to tranquility," he stated.
Powell Confesses: False Intelligence in Pro-War Speech
Secretary of State Colin Powell has finally acknowledged that the intelligence he was fed for the February 2003 UN Security Council speech, where he made the case for an imminent threat from Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was garbage. Talking to the press on his way back from the NATO meeting on April 2, Powell pointed to the evidence of mobile chemical and biological labs as "the most dramatic" element of his speech. He said he'd been told there were four independent sources for the story, but "now it appears not to be the case that it was solid." He said that the commission set up to examine this "will look into these matters to see whether or not the intelligence agency had a basis for the confidence ... placed in the intelligence at that time."
Hamas, Palestinian Authority Draft 'National Plan'
Following weeks of discussion within the leadership of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), almost all Palestinian factions and groups drafted an unprecedented "national plan" aimed at defining cooperation among the groups, especially in the context of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan for Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip in the Palestine occupied territories, Ha'aretz reported April 8.
Drafted at a meeting of the "Monitoring Committee of the National and Islamic Organizations," which included among its participants: Abdel Aziz Rantisi of Hamas, Ahmed Halas of Fatah, and representatives from the Islamic Jihad and other, smaller armed political factions, the plan is a significant move to dispel fears of a civil war breaking out among Palestinian factions. Indeed, the document comes at a time when Palestinian President Yasser Arafat has called for Hamas to be brought into new leadership body encompassing all Palestinian groups.
Commenting on Israel's so-called disengagement plan, the document states, "Any unilateral withdrawal won't bring about stability so long as it is not part of an overall process of ending the occupation and evacuating the settlements.... The national and Islamic forces regard the withdrawal of the occupation forces and the settlers from any part of occupied Palestinian land as an achievement for our people's struggle and its Intifada.
"The forces support acceptance of security and administrative responsibility by the PNA in evacuated territories in the context of 'an agreed national plan,' but they vehemently oppose, and warn against, any attempt to pay Israel for the withdrawal or to turn [the withdrawal] into an alternative to the fulfillment of Israel's international obligations, or granting false legitimacy to the separation fence, or to the annexation or expansion of Israel's presence in the West Bank, or avoiding full withdrawal from all the territories occupied in 1967."
The plan calls on the Arab states and international community not to deal with Israel over the disengagement plan "since it is completely contradictory to international legitimacy and its foundations."
The National Plan is described by the sides as "a unification of all the forces, to translate the achievements of the intifada into political facts and to deal with the unilateral steps of the Israeli government."
The document defines the joint strategic goals of the organizations as "ending the Israeli occupation of the territories captured on June 5, 1967, and evacuation of the settlements and settlers from those territories, the establishment of an independent state with full sovereignty, and its capital in Jerusalem, on the areas of the aggression of June 5, and full sovereignty in Arab Jerusalem's neighborhoods, and over the Christian and Islamic holy sites." The document refers to the right of return as "preservation of the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes according to UN Resolution 194."
The document calls the Palestine Liberation Organization the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and "the national framework unifying the Palestinians in their homeland and outside it."
The document details joint tactical goals for the Palestinians in the coming period, including halting construction of the separation fence and removing those sections already built; Israeli redeployment to pre-intifada lines; lifting of closures on the Palestinian cities and villages; dismantling the checkpoints; ending the siege of Yasser Arafat; freeing Popular Front leader Ahmed Sa'adat and Fuad Shubeiki from detention in Jericho; reopening the Palestinian institutions in Jerusalem; and seeking international protection for the Palestinian people.
For further background on this story, see this week's InDepth.
Israeli Police Desecrate Mosque in Jerusalem
Israeli police fired tear gas into a crowd of hundreds of people who were seeking refuge in al-Aqsa mosque on al-Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem April 2, and then blockaded the doors so that no one could leave. This followed an incident where hundreds of Israeli forces, using rubber bullets, riot batons, tear gas, and stun grenades to drive several hundred Palestinians into the mosque, ostensibly because they had thrown rocks at police. Initially, the police even barred the removal of wounded from the mosque by paramedics.
Between nine and 14 people were arrested, and more than 20 were wounded by the Israelis. The Islamic Trust, which administers the Al Aqsa Mosque compound, negotiated with police to release the Palestinians, who were held for two hours by the police.
The police claimed that one of the reasons for their actionthe most violent in recent history at this the third-most holy site in Islamwas that the worshippers were stoning people trying to pray at the Western Wall (sometimes called the Wailing Wall). But statements from religious authorities and witnesses indicate this was a police riot: Shmuel Rabinovich, chief rabbi of the Western Wall, said police rushed in and evacuated the plaza after a single stone fell in the plaza below the compound. Adnan Husseini, director of the Islamic Waqf, which oversees the compound, said "No one threw stones" until after police had stormed the compound. They [the police] started doing this every Friday to scare elderly worshippers as younger ones are already banned. This is a flagrant violation of freedom of worship."
Tsoris Plagues Sharon's Washington Visit
A stormy Israeli Cabinet meeting April 4, indicates that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has not succeeded in quelling opposition from the far right wing in his own government to the Gaza withdrawal plan, and to his upcoming meeting with George W. Bush on April 14, which is still scheduled.
Sources close to Israeli intelligence told EIR last week that Sharon believes that his assassination of Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, and his expectation that Bush will deliver a "gift" to Sharon in the form of a written agreement that Israel will not have to return to the 1967 borders in any final agreement with the Palestinians, had silenced the right wing and settlers' movement critics of the Gaza withdrawal.
But, at the April 4 Cabinet meeting, Tourism Minister Benny Elon, the lunatic who works most closely with the American Christian Zionist fundies and neo-cons, demanded that Sharon reveal the terms of the Gaza withdrawal immediately, so that Elon of the far right National Union Party, could decide whether to leave the coalition. Effi Eitam of the National Religious Party joined in, saying that Sharon's behavior is "unacceptable," because his Gaza plan has not been approved by his own government. Sharon blasted Eitam for criticizing him, and said, "if you don't like it in the government, you can get out."
Ha'aretz reported on April 9 that Sharon is expecting that his coalition with the National Religious Party and the National Union will collapse, but has been in secret talks with the right wing of the Labor Party to join a new coalition government.
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