BOMB BLAST IN ISRAELI COASTAL CITY
Latest | Recent Articles | Multimedia Page | TV | Search | Blog

Email this article | Print this article | Link to this Article

BOMB BLAST IN ISRAELI COASTAL CITY

March 4, 2001

JERUSALEM (AP - 2:50am ET) - A powerful bomb exploded during morning rush hour Sunday in a crowded open-air market in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. Two people were killed and at least 25 wounded, including two seriously, paramedics said. The blast went off at about 8:55 a.m. in the center of Netanya. [Initial reports indicate 2 Israeli dead, 35 wounded, and the Palestinian who set off the bomb dead.]

ISRAELI ARMY MORE IN CHARGE PALESTINIANS TO BE EVEN FURTHER TORTURED INTO SUBMISSION

"...The need to "make the Palestinian ask himself each morning: 'why the hell did we start this intifada? What have we gained from it?'"

The Arab regimes are far too weak and co-opted to do anything serious. The Arafat regime is far too corrupt and incompetent to do anything serious.

The Americans are far too under the thumb of the Israeli/Jewish lobby whose strength remains overwhelming in the U.S. -- the Arab American groups still far too confused, innocent, and self-centered to have any significant impact (a situation their own handlers, the Arab regimes, encourage to stay this way for their own reasons).

And so the Palestinian people not only suffer terribly; but the craven world watches, the long-discredited United Nations orates, the laughable Arab League gesticulates, and the ridiculously manipulated Muslim groups submit -- all claiming of course to be so concerned but in reality all collectively doing little useful and hardly anything serious.

And now the Israeli army (supplied and backed of course by the American army), gets ready to clamp down even further until the Palestinians are forced once again into submission. These two articles in today's Ha'aretz help set the new stage:

IDF DEPLOYS FORCES ALONG W. BANK ROADS

By Amos Harel

Ha'aretz Military Correspondent

[Ha'aretz 4 March 2001]: Two more terms have been added recently to the acronym-studded, voluminous lexicon of Israeli rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: Badatz and Tigbatz.

The first refers to blocking off roads to close escape routes for terrorists after gunfire attacks. The second alludes to beefing-up security deployments on roads in the territories. Anyone who has traveled recently from Hebron toward Jerusalem during the afternoon is likely to have observed the policy for which this second acronym stands: soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces can be seen at each junction, and there are several armed personnel carriers parked along roads.

Current Israeli defense tactics in the territories reenact a policy followed more than a decade ago, when Yitzhak Mordechai served as IDF Central Commander. As was the case then, makeshift IDF holding posts have sprouted up in numerous West Bank flash-points. Some ten new IDF posts have appeared in the Hebron region alone; most have been set-up on the rooftops of Palestinian houses that are located alongside Route 60, the road which leads to Jerusalem. The IDF has put up other posts in locales such as the "Tunnel Road," which runs between Al Hader and the Gilo neighborhood.

The new policy has been implemented in the Ramallah area as well, with an IDF post newly assembled at the "British Police junction," where a Jewish resident from the Ateret settlement was wounded about a week ago. The army has established another three posts, some featuring tanks, on route 433, which runs between Jerusalem and Modi'in.

The practical security utility of these new roadside posts is questionable. IDF soldiers stationed at them have themselves become the potential targets of terror attacks. Yet the IDF is responding to perceived siege conditions, in which the sense of safety felt by settlers and other Israelis is almost as important as actual security. Given the current situation, in which thousands of Israeli citizens feel threatened on the road, the IDF believes that its new policy is an appropriate and necessary measure.

While the IDF General Staff prepares for various scenarios which might be realized after the Sharon government takes office, it remains possible that one major shift in the conditions in the territories could generate a faster flow of events than top planners are anticipating.

As the Al Aqsa Intifada rages on, IDF commanders in the field are speaking in an increasingly militant vernacular. These lower level officers have started to adopt a tougher stance toward the Palestinian Authority. Possessing considerable power to shape the situation, these IDF officers could be creating facts which will be impossible to reverse should Israel and the PA resume talks.

When the violence erupted in October 2000, these brigade commanders came close to sounding like civil administration officials, voicing moderately-phrased interpretations of economic and political realities in the PA. Officers in the territories were often heard expressing such beliefs as: "A Palestinian who gets up to work in the morning won't go off and throw rocks."

Five violence-packed months later, the same officers have lost interest in social-welfare aspects of relations with the Palestinians. Our job, they say, boils down to one objective: to prevent attacks against Jews. Originally skeptical that the confrontation was even serious, these officers have returned to viewing the Palestinians as enemies.

"Our problem is that we started to think too much like politicians," one high-ranking IDF officer explains. "I don't need to be good to the Palestinians. That's an option which the political leadership has."

Changing their thinking, other officers now talk about the need to "make the Palestinian ask himself each morning: 'why the hell did we start this intifada? What have we gained from it?'"

Fortifying its presence alongside West Bank roads, and planning new strategies to clamp down on the current intifada, some IDF officers regard recent PA statements as confirmation that the army has been involved in a genuine confrontation with the Palestinians all along. They interpret a new disclosure by PA Telecommunications Minister Imad Faluji in this light - Faluji said that the PA planned the Al Aqsa Intifada in detail after the Camp David summit.

BEN-ELIZER BACKS SHARON'S LINE ON END TO VIOLENCE BEFORE TALKS

By Yossi Verter and Nadav Shragai

[Ha'aretz - 4 March 2001]: Designated defense minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer promised he would make every effort to ensure that the Palestinians quickly conclude that the only battlefield for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the negotiating table. Speaking after his nomination as the Labor Party's candidate for the defense post, Ben-Eliezer said he supported Prime Minister-elect Ariel Sharon's position that talks between Israel and the Palestinians could resume only after a cessation of the current violence.

"There must be rigid and clear rules," Ben-Eliezer said. "I am opposed to collective punishment because I think that the majority among the Palestinian nation wants to reach a settlement. There is a need to go after specific targets - those carrying out the terror strikes and those who send them. ... The [current] situation, in which they are killing us every day, cannot continue."

Meretz leader Yossi Sarid said that Ben-Eliezer was the natural choice for the position of defense minister in Sharon's government. "If a government is supposed to operate on the basis of complete agreement between the prime minister and his defense minister, then, from my knowledge of both of them, there is no doubt that they will find a common [and] militant language."

The head of the Council of Jewish Settlements of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza District (Yesha), Benny Kashriel, welcomed the choice of Ben-Eliezer as Labor's nominee for the position of defense minister.

"Minister Ben-Eliezer is an old friend of the settlement enterprise in Yesha," Kashriel said, adding that the long personal relationship between himself and Ben-Eliezer was a basis for an understanding on all matters related to the security of Israel and the settlements.

"The Yesha Council expects Ben-Eliezer and Sharon to bring about the desired turnaround in Israel's security policy, replacing the soaking up [of violence] and capitulation [of the outgoing administration] with initiative and victory," Kashriel said.


March 2001


Magazine



SHARON UPSCALES VIOLENCE TO UNPRECEDENTED LEVELS
(March 31, 2001)
Yesterday, on Palestinian Land Day, the Israeli army killed five Palestinians in Nablus and one in Ramallah during civilian demonstrations protesting the Israeli occupation. 150 Palestinians were injured, several of them in critical condition.

CHOMSKY ON THE MID-EAST CONFLICT
(March 31, 2001)
Well, just how dangerous is the crisis in the Middle East? There is a UN Special Envoy, a Norwegian, Roed-Larson. A couple of days ago, he warned that Israel's blockade of the Palestinian areas is leading to enormous suffering and could rapidly detonate a regional war.

FIVE PALESTINIANS KILLED AS WAR OF WORDS FLARES IN MIDDLE EAST
(March 30, 2001)
Clashes raged across the Palestinian territories Friday, killing five Palestinians, as Israelis and Palestinians exchanged fiery rhetoric on the traditionally violent anniversary of a 1976 Israeli crackdown on Arab demonstrators.

CLASHES ERUPT AMID WAVE OF ANTI-ISRAELI PROTESTS
(March 30, 2001)
Israeli troops opened fire with live rounds on Friday to try to halt Palestinians marching in cities across the West Bank and Gaza Strip to demand civil rights and an end to Israeli occupation.

AN ISRAELI OFFERS HOPE AMIDST THE DARKNESS
(March 30, 2001)
In the past two weeks, we are witnessing the beginning of a new phase: Israelis and Palestinians are extending a hesitant hand to each other, across the IDF's barricades and checkpoints.

A CONFLICT SINKING TO NEW DEPTHS
(March 29, 2001)
The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has sunk to appalling new depths with several days of intensified violence that left children on both sides to form the bulk of the dead.

ISRAELIS STRIKE, NOBODY RESPONDS
(March 29, 2001)
The Egyptians and Jordanians could and should totally suspend their relations with Israel; but they do not. The Arabs could collectively demand Israel be suspended from the U.N. General Assembly; but they did not decide to do so at their little summit just ended where they in fact did nothing serious.

ASSAD & SADDAM "ATTACK"
(March 28, 2001)
Lot of rhetoric, more than expected in fact. But mostly a smookescreen for never-ending impotence and inexcuseable weakness. So much for the Arab Summit in Amman. Until those Arab "leaders" who have squandered the wealth and heritage of their countries, and indeed of their once powerful civilization, are replaced; until the "client regimes" of the Arab world are no more; this tragic spectacle known as Arab "summits" will continue to be a deep embarrassment and a historic tragedy.

ARAB SUMMITS - RIDICULOUS SPECTACLES
(March 27, 2001)
Arab "leaders", the "client regimes", and Arab "summits", have been ridiculous spectacles for a long time now. Last time they met like this the American armies were descending on Arabia, getting ready to destroy Iraq and put one of their own, the despicable British-created Emir, back on his oil throne in Kuwait City.

ARAB SUMMITEERS AND CROCODILE TEARS
(March 26, 2001)
"They will talk and talk and talk and look important and remain as always, impotent, indecisive and inactive. They might pledge a few pennies to the Palestinian dying or the mortally wounded, they might voice support of the 6-month-old Intifida, but nothing but pomp and ceremony will come of it all."

TIME TO FORCE A U.S. VETO AND TAKE SERIOUS ACTION AGAINST ISRAEL
(March 25, 2001)
What the Arab States meeting in summit in Amman on Tuesday should do is not a mystery: First they should insist on a U.N. Security Council resolution that has teeth; and if the U.S. vetos so be it.

THE U.N. AND THE ARAB LEAGUE CHARADES
(March 25, 2001)
The U.N. and Arab League charades have gone on for so many years now. Never has either body taken serious action when it comes to Israel. Always the U.S. is there to block the way, to twist things from potentially useful to impotent, to manuever so that the U.S. remains dominant internationally and Israel remains dominant in the region.

ISRAELI ARMY BRUTALLY ATTACKS PEACEFUL CIVILIAN PROTEST MARCH
(March 24, 2001)
Today at 1:00 p.m., the Israeli army fired sound bombs, tear gas, and rubber coated steel bullets at thousands of peaceful protesters at the Al-Ram checkpoint.

SHARON MOVING FAST
(March 24, 2001)
haron and company are now likely to move quickly to further "control" the Palestinians and establish their hegemonic and war-threatening policies in the Middle East.

Today in Occupied Palestine
(March 23, 2001)
Amr Moussa and the Arab political elite representing the "client regimes" have been deceived and acted foolishingly, as well as selfishly, for quite a long time now.

AL-JAZEERA - ARAFAT STILL TWISTS TO ISRAELI AND U.S. TUNE
(March 22, 2001)
Al-Jazeera satellite TV now feeds a hungry Arab world, one starved for so long that even this carefully-controlled Qatari-financed TV news and pictures source has met with considerable success.

WHAT SHOULD BE WITH ISRAEL
(March 22, 2001)
If the Arabs regimes were serious, indeed if they were truly independent, they would institute a Arab and Muslim regional boycott of Israel at this point, at least suspend all diplomatic and economic relations with Israel, and forcefully move to have the U.N. General Assembly suspend Israeli credentials (as was done with South Africa in the days of Apartheid) as soon as the U.S. again prevents the Security Council from acting in the days ahead.

ARAB AND MUSLIM GROUPS IN USA WORSE THAN EVER
(March 20, 2001)
We were wrong in our analysis earlier today. The Arab and Muslim groups did not even manage a few hundred protestors at the White House today -- the number was closer to a few dozen at most, including the handful of fanatical bearded and side-curled Naturei Karta Jews who are encouraged by these groups to show up these days.

WASHINGTON SCENE: ARAB AND MUSLIM GROUPS PROVE IMPOTENCE ONCE AGAIN
(March 20, 2001)
It's depressing, almost pathetic, to watch the Arab and Muslim American groups "protest" these days. Leaderless and strategyless, though as usual feverishly combining all of their capabilities together to create even this, the groups managed to bring maybe five or six hundred persons to the sidewalk across from the Washington Hilton last evening for a carefully self-controlled demonstration.

WHAT ISRAEL IS DOING IS "FORBIDDEN"
(March 19, 2001)
"What is being done in the territories is simply forbidden. To safeguard against such acts, people have established laws and norms; those who wish to return to the norms current a century ago ought not to be surprised when they are treated as pariahs - indeed, as ghosts from bygone days."

ARABS URGE U.N. TO SEND INTERNATIONAL FORCE TO PALESTINIAN
(March 16, 2001)
The Israelis will insist on a U.S. veto of any Security Council resolution involving any serious observer force. And Shimon Peres willingly serving Ariel Sharon as his Foreign Minister makes it much easier for the Israelis to deflect international pressures.

WE DIDN'T SEE; WE DIDN'T KNOW
(March 15, 2001)
The Palestinian people have many symbols, and one of them is Bir Zeit university near Ramallah - the secular intellectual center of the society.

SHARON COMETH
(March 14, 2001)
Monday in Washington the various Arab-American groups will stage a protest demonstration outside the Washington Hilton where now Prime Minister Ariel Sharon will be talking to the lead organization that makes up the Israeli-Jewish lobby in Washington.

U.S. MEDIA ESTABLISHMENT HELPS PREPARE SHARON'S WAY
(March 13, 2001)
Sharon's PR people are working hard preparing his way for a triumphant visit to the USA in a few days. They choose Lally Weymouth, long a "friendly journalist", for one of his first major interviews -- published in Newsweek this week.

ISRAELI CONCENTRATION CAMPS
(March 12, 2001)
If barbed wire were used, the symbolism would be too much like concentration camps of old.

BIR ZEIT UNIVERSITY CRIES OUT FOR HELP
(March 11, 2001)
As usual these days, the Palestinian people are being collectively tortured into submission with still expanding forms of bondage, oppression, and brutal force.

PERES FRONTS FOR SHARON AS ISRAELIS PUSH FORWARD MAJOR PROPAGANDA
(March 10, 200198)
Who is more despicable is debateable these days. But surely Shimon Peres is deserving of nomination. As Israeli army snipers pick off Palestinians and as Israeli army bulldozers dig trenches around Palestinian towns and cities, Peres fronts for the new Sharon regime telling the world the Israelis are going to "make life better for the Palestinians"!

TRENCH AND SIEGE WARFARE
(March 8, 2001)
The words, and the acts, go back before the bible itself -- trench warfare and siege. The Romans built walls and laid siege to Jerusalem and Masada. Trenches, though for a different purpose, became synonymous with World War I.

CRIES FROM PALESTINE AND CRIES FROM ISRAEL
(March 6, 2001)
My sister-in-law just called crying - about 4 hours ago Al-Bireh had about 3 minutes of heavy gunfire..... her neighbor, Aida, was walking back home on the Friends road from Ramallah after shopping for the Eid holiday.

OH MY GOD! CLINTON WON'T LEAVE THE WORLD ALONE!
(March 5, 2001)
They came to Washington -- the two-for-one power couple -- with the campaign promise to bring health care to all Americans; they left (but Hillary is already back on Capitol Hill) with the dangerous corporate for profit HMO's in power and more uninsured than ever despite the economic juggernaunt.

MIDEAST CONFLICT TEARS AT BROTHERLY BOND
(March 5, 2001)
Hostilities engulf West Bank siblings, who remain close despite their split between Jewish and Muslim faiths.

BOMB BLAST IN ISRAELI COASTAL CITY
(March 4, 2001)
A powerful bomb exploded during morning rush hour Sunday in a crowded open-air market in the Israeli coastal city of Netanya.

ISRAELIS LAY SIEGE TO PALESTINIAN CITIES
(March 3, 2001)
Sometime in the future there will be a day of reckoning for the Israelis. But that day is not yet here while the suffering of the Palestinians is, literally, more and more as each day dawns.

FIELD OF THORNS
(March 3, 2001)
The Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which in late September 2000 began as a wave of popular protest against Ariel Sharon's belligerent incursion into Jerusalem's sacred Haram al-Sharif, has developed into a full-fledged war of attrition against the Israeli occupation, which rather ironically paved the aggressive right-wing leader's path to power.

REGIONAL WAR PREPARATIONS AND PUBLIC OPINION MANIPULATION ESCALATE
(March 2, 2001)
Iraq responded to U.S. air strikes on Feb. 16 by deploying thousands of troops from six divisions to positions near the Jordanian border, triggering military alerts in Tel Aviv, Washington and in several Gulf capitals.

SHARON AND PERES TEAM UP
(March 2, 2001)
It was a massacre. Not since Sabra and Chatila had I seen the innocent slaughtered like this. The Lebanese refugee women and children and men lay in heaps, their heads or arms or legs missing, beheaded or disemboweled.

SHARON GETS READY TO ACT. ARAFAT GETS READY TO LEAVE?
(March 1, 2001)
Arafat and regime are about collapse -- i.e., the money and capabilities provided by the U.S. and Israel to keep the PA going are being cut off if Arafat doesn't shape up!

BLEAK FUTURE FOR BOTH PALESTINIANS AND ISRAELIS
(March 1, 2001)
Shimon Peres has many secrets to try to keep, and that explains his desperation to stay in power practically at any cost. Ariel Sharon knows this.




© 2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved