EGYPTIANS THREATEN WAR!
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EGYPTIANS THREATEN WAR!

June 4, 2001

APPROACHING THE ABYSS?

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 6/04: When the American Secretary of State cancels long-planned foreign travel and publicly warns of the "abyss" from which "there may no return" you can bet the situation behind-the-scenes is far more dangerous and explosive than is publicly realized. And just in the past few hours, for the first time in memory and possibly the first time since Egypt's peace treaty with the Israelis more than 20 years ago, top officials in Egypt are publicly talking of possible war with the Jewish State.

As for the Israelis, who knows what Sharon and the Israeli Army and Mossad he now commands are really up to at this point. Maybe they actually do want to provoke a regional war; one in which they would pulverize the Arab armies, terrorize more Palestinians across the Jordan River, and then mid-wife creation of a "Palestinian State" in today's Jordan. This is in fact the scenario Sharon himself was personally best known for not that many years ago -- "Jordan is Palestine". And this is the ideological position Sharon's mentor, Vladimir Jabotinsky the founder of Revisionist Zionism, insisted upon throughout his lifetime -- "Jordan is Palestine." And it was none other than Jabotinsky's picture on the wall behind Sharon the day he took office as Prime Minister.

Or maybe the situation as it approaches the abyss is just out of control, as has also happened before in the Middle East, with no one really able to control events anymore and predicting the short-term and long-term outcomes impossible. After all, as the anniversary of the "Six Day War" more than 30 years ago now approaches again, just what happened then is still being debated by the experts. But however it started then it was Israel's triumphant victory, made possible with considerable covert American help at the time, that created the occupation and the settlements which are at the root of today's impending reignition of what could prove to be a horrendous confrontation, now possibly looming.

EGYPT WARNS MILITARY RESPONSE IF ISRAEL ACTS AGAINST P.A.

Newswires - Jerusalem Post - 6/4/01: Senior aides to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak have threatened military response if Israel attacks Palestinian Authority targets, according to a report published in 'The Middle East News Letter.'

"The Egyptian armed forces [are] ready to deter aggression," Defense Minister Hussein Tantawi said. "They are ready to carry out instructions."

The aides asserted that the Egyptian military is ready for any prospect, including a war with Israel, the report said.

The state-run media in Egypt quoted officials as vowing that Cairo will not be again defeated in a war with Israel.

Ibrahim Saada, editor-in-chief of Al Ahram, and regarded as a spokesman for Mubarak, said in an article entitled 'War or Peace,' that Egypt is ready to confront any danger to its borders and any operation ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

The escalation in rhetoric began last week on the eve of the commemoration of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war in which Egypt lost the Sinai peninsula to Israel.

"The Egyptian army is constantly kept in excellent shape in terms of training and armaments. It is prepared for any eventuality.

"The 1967 defeat is blamed on the then military establishment which was distracted from its key role by the pursuit of personal gains. The situation is entirely different now," Samir Ragab, another confidante of Mubarak, averred.

"The recurrence of the 1967 debacle is remote for a host of reasons," he added.

"The crushing Egyptian defeat in 1967 was because of the rivalry between the military and government," Ragab said, concluding, "Under Mubarak, that rivalry has been eliminated."

In a related development, Egypt and the United States launched a military exercise yesterday.

The maneuvers, entitled 'Eagle Hunter 2001', were to last several days, diplomatic sources said.

The exercise would focus on training and an exchange of combat expertise and methods, according to the Al Ahram daily.

The United States cancelled military exercises with Israel and Yemen last month amid threats to US troops in the region.

The Israeli Air Force launched a massive air exercise yesterday.

The maneuvers, held every few years, puts nearly the entire IAF in the sky in a simulated war situation, military sources said.

MIDEAST CLASH THREATENS CEASE-FIRE

JERUSALEM (AP - 4 June 2001 9:13am ET) - A brittle cease-fire was endangered Monday by a gunbattle in the Gaza Strip that followed a dramatic drop-off in the number of shooting incidents since Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat called a truce.

Ten Palestinians were injured, two of them seriously, hospital officials said. One Israeli soldier was lightly injured, military officials said.

Palestinian witnesses said Israeli soldiers fired rockets on a group of Palestinians at the Rafah refugee camp who had gathered to watch the soldiers erect concrete blocks near the border with Egypt. Palestinian gunmen took up positions and fired back, the witnesses said.

Israeli military officials said the Palestinians had opened fire first with anti-tank grenades during a routine patrol to repair a fence. The officials said the Palestinians also threw Molotov cocktails at a bulldozer.

Abu Said, a spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committee, an armed group working in the Gaza Strip, said the Israeli side started the clash. ``We are defending ourselves right now and this shows that the Israeli side violated the cease fire.''

The gunbattle marked an escalation since a dramatic dropoff in shooting incidents following Arafat's call Saturday for a cease-fire.

Prior to Monday's firefight, there had been six shooting attacks by Palestinians since Saturday. A mortar shell was fired at a Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip late Sunday. On Monday morning, a bomb exploded in an industrial area along a major West Bank road. There were no injuries.

An Israeli government spokesman, Cabinet minister Danny Naveh confirmed that if the cease-fire collapses, Palestinian Authority facilities will be among the targets to be hit in an Israeli air strike to retaliate for last week's deadly suicide bombing at a Tel Aviv disco. Twenty young Israelis were killed in the blast for which the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility.

Arafat convened leaders of his Fatah movement late Sunday to deliver his orders to activists. In the past eight months of Israeli-Palestinian fighting, more than two dozen Israelis were killed in shooting ambushes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many of the gunmen are Fatah members.

``We completely support President Arafat,'' Hussein Al-Sheikh, the Fatah leader in the West Bank, said Monday of the orders to cease fire.

However, many regional Fatah leaders were unable to attend because of Israel's stringent travel restrictions, reimposed after the bombing, which confine Palestinians to their communities.

Participants said it was agreed in the meeting to stop shooting, but to continue with other protests against Israeli occupation, such as demonstrations and stone-throwing on Israeli soldiers.

Hamas also hinted that it wouldn't challenge Arafat's order.

``Hamas will never ever clash with our brothers in the Palestinian Authority,'' spokesman Abdel Aziz Rantisi said. ``Hamas will be the guards of the Palestinian national unity, because we are facing the same enemy.''

However, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said Monday it didn't back Arafat's cease-fire. The group's secretary-general, Abu Ali Mustafa, said in a statement distributed in Damascus that it would continue the uprising with all its means, including an armed struggle.

Palestinian officials said Arafat would not meet Israel's demand to arrest Islamic militants who have carried out more than a dozen bombings in Israel since September, including Friday's blast in Tel Aviv.

A senior Israeli security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Israel had planned a ``very severe airstrike'' in retaliation for the disco bombing. He predicted the cease-fire would collapse and the plan would be revived: ``I am sure that you will see it. It will happen.''

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told Likud lawmakers Monday that the army had a free hand in defending Israelis and vowed that Israel wouldn't resume peace talks ``until there is total quiet, the cessation of violence, including the cessation of incitement.''

On Sunday, Sharon, a lifelong hardliner who has been criticized for his relatively mild response to a string of attacks, defended himself after a hospital visit to victims. ``You have to see the whole picture. Even restraint is part of strength,'' Sharon said.

The high toll of the Friday night suicide bombing had raised fears of a dramatic escalation that might spread the bloody conflict to other parts of the region, and it brought foreign pressure on Arafat.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who canceled a trip to Costa Rica to deal with the situation, issued a warning to the Palestinian leader on CNN Sunday, saying that ``this is the time to bring the violence under control.''

He wouldn't confirm Israeli radio and television reports that CIA Director George Tenet planned to visit the region, where the EU's special Middle East envoy, Miguel Moratinos, was already shuttling between the two sides.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer - who helped mediate the cooling-down on Saturday - held a second meeting with Arafat Sunday night in the West Bank and urged him to enforce the cease-fire.

Russian special envoy Andrei Vdovin traveled to Israel on Monday, the first stop on a Mideast tour intended to encourage Israelis and Palestinians to end the cycle of violence, Russia's Foreign Ministry said.

Since taking over parts of Gaza and the West Bank in the mid-1990s - the Palestinians now have autonomy in just under half the territories, with almost all of their Palestinian population - Arafat has from time to time rounded up militants at Israel's insistence. But this did not stop attacks altogether.

Many Israeli officials are now convinced that Arafat has been working hand-in-hand with the militants and signals them when attacks would be tolerated.

On Sunday, the military wing of Hamas, Izzedine al Qassam, claimed responsibility for the attack and identified the bomber as Hassan Hussein Hotari, 22, from the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

Since fighting erupted last September, 484 people have been killed on the Palestinian side and 108 on the Israeli side.


June 2001


Magazine



TURKEY HEADING TOWARD "SOCIAL EXPLOSION"...i.e., "REVOLUTION"
(June 30, 2001)
In geostrategic and military terms, the unnamed U.S.-Israel-Turkish military alliance that emerged full-blown during the last decade -- of course with the Turks using the "peace process" as the excuse for such close relations between Turkey and Israel -- was one of the most important developments.

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTIONS EMERGING
(June 29, 2001)
In a sense there is an arms race under way at this time of a different kind -- a race for whether weapons of mass destruction will be used in a serious and ongoing way should a new war break out first in the Subcontinent over Kashmir or in the Middle East over Palestine.

LABOR AND LIKUD MORE ALIKE THAN DIFFERENT - MER FLASHBACK
(June 29, 2001)
Long before what was to happen with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (remember him?), MER was informing who he really was and what to really expect. Same with regard to Shimon Peres. Expect the same cutting-edge information and analysis in the months ahead.

Washington Scene: THE HISTORICAL MOMENT
(June 27, 2001)
The Middle East region totters now between further repression and oppression, terrorism and war. The outcome in the short term is indeterminate of course. But the winds and directions are clear; however much camaflouged by the politicians and the usually gullible mass media.

THREATCON DELTA ORDERED TODAY
(June 22, 2001)
One day they will probably get Osama bin-Laden, former confident of King Fahd in Saudi Arabia, former CIA asset against the once mighty Soviet Empire, now arch nemesis of the American Empire.

"ALGERIA IS IN CRISIS"
(June 22, 2001)
"The Battle of Algiers" left North Africa biggest country terribly bloodied and traumatized. This time it was French imperialism and the French military that did the dirty horrifying deeds.

EGYPT ARMING WHILE REGIME IS SHAKING
(June 21, 2001)
Arab States, including Egypt, are arming at a growing pace. Even combined they are still no match to defeat Israel. But their detterence capabilities are growing, they might be able to seriously bloody Israel in years ahead...

ARAFAT'S FLUNKIES
(June 20, 2001)
There are many reasons the Palestinian people are suffering so terribly, worse by the year in fact, and are now endangered by the possibility of a second "nakba" (disaster).

"THE SECOND HALF OF 1948"
(June 20, 2001)
Official declarations and many reports in the Israeli media indicate that the Israeli military and political leadership are aiming, eventually, at a total destruction of the Palestinian authority, and, with it, the process of Oslo, which is now dominantly considered by them a 'historical mistake'.

TELEGRAPHING WHAT I S TO COME
(June 19, 2001)
Arafat had two roles he had been assigned. That's why none other than former "terrorist" Arafat was the most frequent visitor to the White House during the years 1993 through 2000.

SHARON'S LONG MARCH: NEXT TO WASHINGTON THEN TO THE ATTACK
(June 19, 2001)
Ariel Sharon is proving what others before him, including Generals Patton and MacArthur of American legend, learned about modern warfare. There's a heavy messure of political theatrics and personal legend involved in making war, more so now than ever in this age of instant TV and the Intenet.

SHARON Coming To US Again To Coordinate War Plans
(June 19, 2001)
Sharon is coming to the States again next week. Only a firm "absolutely not" from the Americans is likely now to prevent much further brutal subjugation of the Palestinians; quite possibly the exiling again of Yasser Arafat.

SON OF IMPORTANT ISRAELI FAMILY REFUSES OCCUPATION MILITARY SERVICE
(June 17, 2001)
Coordinated non-violent but serious civil disobedience -- there in the Middle East, in Europe, and in the United States -- that is what today's situation desperately calls out for.

ARIEL SHARON - WAR CRIMINAL?
(June 15, 2001)
Years ago the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim, was brought before a mock international court through a joint effort of Home Box Office (HBO) in the USA and a major British TV network. The question before the court was whether Kurt Waldheim was possibly guilty of war crimes ...

PREPARING FOR DESTRUCTION
(June 15, 2001)
"If a cease-fire does indeed take hold, then all the better... If Arafat rejects the document or professes to accept it, but does not fulfill his part of the bargain, Israel will win more points in the court of world opinion and a more conducive political backdrop will be created for a military response to Palestinian violence."

ALGERIANS FIRE INTO DEMONSTRATING CROWDS TODAY
(June 14, 2001)
The Berbers in Algeria, the brutal civil war in Sudan, the Palestinians in the once Holy Land, the Kurds in Iraq and Turkey, the ongoing Kashmir crisis -- all conflicts exploding throughout the greater Middle East region today in 2001, all conflicts the legacy of Western colonial policies of yesteryear and American imperial policies of today.

MARCH TO WAR CONTINUES: ISRAEL WARNS IRAN AGAIN
(June 14, 2001)
There are major historical and military reasons why Ehud Barak and Bill Clinton (representing of course huge constituencies who at the time pushed them to pursue the policies they did) pressed Yasser Arafat so hard to sign an agreement at Camp David.

THE SO-CALLED "AGREEMENT"
(June 13, 2001)
There is no real "agreement". There is a dictate. Yasser Arafat is in no position anymore to do much other than what his American handlers tell him to do; a day of reckoning he brought on himself by so many mistakes and so much corruption over such a long time.

Another Muslim Rep Foolishly Plays To The Cameras On Behalf of the Regimes
(June 13, 2001)
A week ago outside the State Department one of the latest Muslim organization reps to grab for the cameras -- Khalid Turaani -- declared in loud tones how the time had finally come for "civil disobedience" and how he and the other leaders of the assembled Muslim "client organizations" were going to get arrested in a peaceful protest ...

HASHEMITE KINGDOM CLOSES BORDERS TO PALESTINIANS
(June 13, 2001)
The Hashemite Regime has always, right from the start, been in deep collusion with the Israelis and since World War II with the CIA. This latest step to close off Jordan to Palestinians -- to essentially put a seal on the jar which now contains the Palestinians ...

CIA TELLS ARAFAT WHAT HE HAS TO DO AND WHAT IT WILL DO FOR HIM
(June 12, 2001)
When the Director of the CIA is himself involved so extensively, goes on site half way around the world for a lengthy stay, and the situation is so critical he has to publicly acknowledge his role ...

CLOVIS MAKSOUD DID IT TWENTY YEARS AGO, APPEARING WITH SHIMON PERES
(June 11, 2001)
Those who know Raghida Dergham know what she is, and its certainly not a truly independent journalist. She's been an opportunist for a very long time, and she's used her sexuality to climb the ladder with backing from one influential Arab diplomat or royal along the way for a long time now.

CALAMITY AHEAD
(June 10, 2001)
"A whole nation is now huddled around one tribal bonfire to lament its bitter fate, mourn its dead and ignore the dead of the other side. As usual, it views itself as the victim, turns the enemy into Satan and waits, inactive and bravely unthinking, for the calamity that is about to befall it and for which it is in no small measure to blame."

WAR POSSIBLE WARNS TOP SAUDI
(June 10, 2001)
Normally one of the last places one would turn for truthfulness, integrity, and information would be the Saudi royal family. Currently headed by a former playboy who drank, gambled, and womanized his life away in Beirut and London -- before assuming the throne -- it is the Saudi "royal family which epitomizes the "client regime" realities that have so fractured, weakened, and prostrated the whole region once known as "the Arab world."

CHRISTIAN LEADERS: WRONG TIME, WRONG ADVICE, WRONG REASONS
(June 8, 2001)
"Be assured of our prayers for you and the President and all others in the Administration as you seek to forge a fair and just policy for the two peoples and three faiths who share a common religious heritage in the land we hold as holy."

THE CRUEL REGIMES OF ARABDOM
(June 7, 2001)
There are huge cultural gulfs between East and West, old world and new world. And of course the West is extraordinarily dominant these days not only it terms of financial and military might, but also in terms of cultural influence and "moral" standards.

SHARON'S RISE
(June 7, 2001)
"In reality the Zionist and Hashemite leaderships continue to plot how to control and repress the Palestinians in ever more crafty and ever more duplicitous ways."

ARAFAT 4 YEARS AGO - MER FLASHBACK
(June 6, 2001)
Last year MER first carried information about the increasingly close CIA, Shinbet, and Mossad connections with Yasser Arafat's "Palestinian Authority".

MUSLIM ORGS EMBARRASS THEMSELVES AT STATE DEPT
(June 5, 2001)
With much press fanfare (they just love to play to the cameras) leaders of half a dozen Muslim American groups held a press conference gathering across from the State Department today.

DESPITE THE LULL, WAR CLOUDS LOOM
(June 4, 2001)
Despite the lull, there are many ominous signs of impending major attacks against the occupied Palestinians about to take place; and there is a real possibility of regional war.

EGYPTIANS THREATEN WAR!
(June 4, 2001)
When the American Secretary of State cancels long-planned foreign travel and publicly warns of the "abyss" from which "there may no return" you can bet the situation behind-the-scenes is far more dangerous and explosive than is publicly realized.

SHARON'S HAWKS PLAN FOR WAR
(June 3, 2001)
Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor, reports on Israel's growing mood for full-scale hostilities in the aftermath of 17 deaths in a nightclub suicide bomb attack

24-HOURS AND COUNTING
(June 2, 2001)
"Americans should not travel to Gaza at the present time and those who live there should depart to a safer location when they can do so." U.S. Embassy, Israel

HATED RAJOUB GETS READY
(June 2, 2001)
With the days of Yasser Arafat maybe coming to an end one way or another, with Feisal Husseini passed from the scene, with the other Palestinian tough guys bottled up in Gaza, the frontrunner strong man to "control" the Palestinian people throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem appears to be Jibril Rajoub.

ARAFAT'S LEGACY
(June 2, 2001)
Yasser Arafat was hired, courted, and well-paid to control his own people and lead them, however much they tried to resist, to the Apartheid-style arrangement the Israelis always had in mind with the so-called "Oslo Peace Process".

ISRAELIS PLANNING BLITZKRIEG?
(June 1, 2001)
For a long time now we have been desperately warning about what the true Israeli intentions are. We have also been warning that the Palestinians are not at all prepared for these eventualities, neither with the terrible leadership provided by the "Palestinian Authority" nor for the world-wide information and public relations battle that accompanies all major developments in our world these days.




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