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.

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.

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.

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/6/229.htm