5 April 2004
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TORTURED GAZA SQUEEZED FURTHER

SHARON PUBLICLY DECLARES NO
PALESTINIAN STATE, ROADMAP DEAD

IRAQ EXPLODING IN FRUSTRATON AND ANGER

" In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state"
                                      Ariel Sharon - 5 April

MER - Mid-East Realities - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/05/2004:          

    While Bush is now being likened to Nixon, and Iraq to Vietnam, in a major speech by Senator Ted Kennedy, all the lies and deceptions about what the U.S. is doing in Iraq, as well as about the 'roadmap' and the 'peace process' in the areas of increasingly brutally occupied Palestine are being rendered more naked for all to see.
    After being dragged to Madrid with false promises in 1991, the Palestinians were enticed to sign the 'Oslo Agreement' with a promise of Statehood in 5 years - that was in 1993.   Then they were pushed and cajoled to sign this and that and maybe the State would come...    Then to get Tony Blair and others on board for the Iraq War the further lie of the 'roadmap' was put forth by Bush who loudly declared the Palestinian State would be established by 2005.   Now everything is being exposed for total political treachery, the condition of the Palestinian people is terribly worse than it was before 'Oslo', and Ariel Sharon now publicly declares no Palestinian State and still further brutal worse-than-apartheid suffereing.   Now even UNRWA - see press release below - is being forced to suspend operations in Gaza where the Palestinian population now faces a majority of unemployment, impoverishment, and virtual imprisonment.
     As for Iraq, we've said from the get-go that the 30 June date was total deception... another false attempt to put a controlled Iraqi face on the perpetual American occupation.  Not only are the Americans planning to keep more than 100,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely for decades into the future, that's in addition to the special forces, to the 'private contractors', as well as to the CIA and the Mossad and other 'coalition forces'.    The fortress Baghdad Embassy being rushed to completion will be the largest in the world staffed in total by from 3 to 4 thousand CIA, State Department, DOD and secret personnel in total.  The American Ambassador yet to be selected, though rumors remain that none other than top neocon Paul Wolfowitz wants the job, along with the top Pentagon and CIA Generals, will in effect be in charge of Iraq for the foreseeable future if the Bush Administration gets its way.  Oh yes, the ever-compliant Kofi Annan at the U.N. is again being cajoled and badgered to provide more political cover, 'legitimacy', and a false U.N. facade to this ongoing American occupation; and the illegally spied upon Security Council is going to be tried again by the Americans as well.
     Meanwhile in the U.S. the 9/11 and Iraqi War Commissions are hard at work covering-up far more than exposing that has really happened and why.


UNRWA PRESS RELEASE
1 April 2004

UNRWA Suspends Emergency Food Aid In Gaza

Gaza - The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) today stopped distributing emergency food aid to some 600,000 refugees in the Gaza Strip, or approximately half of the refugees receiving UNRWA food aid in the occupied Palestinian territory, following restrictions introduced by Israeli authorities at the sole commercial crossing through which the Agency is able to bring in humanitarian assistance. Stocks of rice, flour, cooking oil and other essential foodstuffs that UNRWA provides to refugees reduced to poverty, or otherwise affected by a humanitarian crisis now in its 42nd month, have been fully depleted.

Efforts to persuade the Israeli authorities to lift the restriction on the transport of UNRWA’s empty food containers out of Gaza have so far failed, forcing the Agency to suspend the delivery into Gaza of 11,000 tons of food from Ashdod Port to avoid a bottleneck which would result in prohibitive costs. Under normal circumstances, UNRWA delivers some 250 tons of food aid per day in Gaza alone as part of a wider programme of emergency assistance to refugees, initiated shortly after the outbreak of strife in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in September 2000. Since then, the Gaza Strip has been locked into a deep socio-economic crisis resulting from the prolonged closure of its border with Israel, the destruction of thousands of homes as well as of agricultural and local industrial assets. Almost two out of three households in Gaza live below the poverty line, and more than half its workforce is unemployed.

UNRWA is not alone in facing chronic obstacles to the flow of humanitarian assistance. These have been experienced by all UN agencies operating in the West Bank and Gaza, whose Agency heads in a joint statement on 26 March called, without success, on the Government of Israel to loosen the restrictions currently in force in Gaza.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Peter Hansen said: “The suspension of UNRWA’s emergency food aid in the Gaza Strip will further distress communities already struggling to cope with unrelieved economic hardship and malnutrition. If the new restrictions in Gaza continue, I fear we could see real hunger emerge for the first time in two generations. Israel’s legitimate, and serious, security concerns will not be served by hindering the emergency relief work of the United Nations. I appeal to the authorities to lift these restrictions and enable us to resume our food distributions in Gaza.”

For more information call Christer Nordahl at 08-677-7266, or Sami Mshasha at 050 317-094          http://www.un.org/unrwa/news/releases/pr-2004/hqg06-04.pdf



Sharon defers Palestinian state

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has said his
plan for a withdrawal from the Gaza Strip may
delay the creation of a Palestinian state.

BBC - 5 April 2004:  In interviews with the Israeli media, Mr Sharon said: "In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state".

He confirmed that Israel would evacuate all of the 17 Jewish settlements in Gaza and gave more details about the unilateral disengagement plan.

He refused to guarantee the safety of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

"Whoever kills Jews or orders Jews and Israeli citizens to be killed... is a marked man," Mr Sharon said, indicating that he was not bound to US suggestions not to take action to harm the Palestinian leader.

"I am not vouching for his physical safety," he said.

Mr Arafat said on Monday he would welcome an Israeli withdrawal, but reminded Mr Sharon that "he has to withdraw also... from the West Bank".

'Blow' to Palestinians

Mr Sharon was speaking in interviews for the Israeli media to coincide with the Jewish Passover holiday beginning on Monday.

Israel has banned all Palestinians from entering Israel as the security forces remain on high alert for the holiday season.

" In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state"
Ariel Sharon

During his three years in power, Mr Sharon has often preferred to speak in generalities to keep everybody guessing, but this time he is unusually specific, says the BBC's James Reynolds in Jerusalem.

Other details of the plan included:

no Palestinian control over any ports;

Israeli control over a patrol road in the south of the Gaza Strip on the border with Egypt;

handing over the homes of more than 7,000 settlers to an international organisation, not destroying them.

Mr Sharon said the US administration wanted an indication of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank as well as from Gaza - hence the planned removal of four small settlements in the north of the West Bank.

"In my opinion, it would be best to disconnect from all the territory," Mr Sharon told Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

"In the unilateral plan, there is no Palestinian state. This situation could continue for many years," Mr Sharon said.

The prime minister told Maariv that his plan "will bring their [the Palestinians'] dreams to an end".

"When you fence areas and communities in the West Bank, you end a lot of their dreams," Mr Sharon said, referring to the controversial security barrier Israel is building.

"My plan is tough on the Palestinians. A mortal blow."

Mr Sharon has not said this in public before, our correspondent says, but it does confirm what most people in Israel have already guessed.

Fatal shooting

The Israeli army says three Palestinians killed in the Gaza Strip were fired on because they had approached the border fence with Israel in the middle of the night.

Palestinian medics who recovered the bodies after daybreak on Monday said they were impossible to identify because they had been so badly damaged by tank shells. They had reportedly been wearing civilian clothes and no Palestinian armed group has said they were part of its organisation.

Human rights groups say that in the two weeks since the assassination of the Hamas leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, more than 20 people have been killed in Gaza. Some of those were the targets of continuing Israeli military operations against alleged militants. Many, say the Palestinians, were innocent victims and bystanders.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3601593.stm

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