Hi, folks!
I am still alive, Kim;o), just "lazying" around. They dragged me along on a tour to the Dead Sea and to the King Herod's castle palace Masada (or Metzada), which I appreciated most. That Rome-educated architect-tyrant-statesman Edumean had been quite a person. Water reservoires had been holding water enough to sustain the 1000+ inhabitants for 6 years, because Herod proved to be a remarkable chemist (my assumption, because he might have, actually, had used some others' invention, but, anyways ...), - a mortar-like lining of the reservoires had been preventing bacteria and algae growth in the water held. The chemists still are not sure about the mortar lining composition, and they tried ... . The picture-taking opportunity was a grand failure, like a "peace process", - the camera was loaded with a 400 fast film - four times that was enough for a bright day.
"You cannot drown in the Dead Sea". Well, one, actually, can, because it doesn't tolerate swift movements, normal for a "normal" sea, something vaguely similar to the absence of gravity, seen in a space video footage, and an unprepared, unsuspecting swimmer may turn up head-down under water and, startled, gulp loads of that "obscenity of a water", that tastes worse, than a hundred grapefruits:o))
Two more attractions along the road were: a would-have-been palace of the King of Jordan and the Jordanian Army barracks. They started building the palace before 1967, but couldn't finish it due to known circumstances. The barracks are no palace, so they were finished, - rectangular one-storeies. Both are used as anti-terrorist training bang-bang-bang range.
Another far-away attraction, that used to be an attraction, is the Jericho casino, that used to be the largest in Europe, operating 24 hours, untill their stupid Intifada brought tank shells on its rooftop to squash Palestinian firing positions. It was no sense driving there, of course, so, the abandoned "grandeur" was viewed from afar. The driving force was Tuchek, an energetic and charismatic (and a loser too) Austrian. Israelis used to spend 2 bln. sheqs a year there ($1=4.15 NIS). The casino profit used to run at $280 mln./year. 99% were Israelis with 3.000-4.000 a day. 20% used to go to "poor 'n robbed" Arafat personally, 25% - to Fatah and Force 17, 40% - to "salary" PA officials. The casino used to provide jobs for an army of locals. Sorry Palestinians are masters of killing hens laying golden eggs, never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
I hope this enterprise is never reopened. The "gambling bill" is now under consideration. $200-$300 mln./year can be better spent on financing free University education, prolonged schooldays with hot meals throughout Israel, than on financing stupid allahakbar terrorist "nation-building".

Konichiwa, Kisako!
Mornin', mum!
1115am edt
====
missed you, K-san...
====
Mum, for easter i whipped myself up a fragrant
batch of vindaloo curry.
tasty stuff, even tastier as
leftovers...mmmm-boy...
but it's really not the same to do such feasting
alone...
===
been battling up a storm at USC, lately; moi vs
the usual rejects =wait, i meant _subjects_=
or maybe 'rejects' was correct. -_-
====
wishing the best of days for miladies....

(please be safe, K-san)
==

{+3sk}

* Last week the leader of the ultra-religious Shas party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, called for Arabs to be killed with missiles.
Israelis consider him an a....le at all times. But ... Palestinian mullahs have been shouting this same (doesn't matter what with) all along - noone cared to notice. A language barrier, I guess;o)

* The Palestinian leader rejected far more generous terms from Sharon's predecessor, Ehud Barak, last summer.
Isn't he a proven idiot?;o)
But he cannot accept anything, anyways, only the destruction of Israel, otherwise all the Islamic world fight against Israel will go down the drain, they will lose a convenient scarecrow to blame all their idiocy on and they cannot afford it, - there will be too much of uneasy questions to address home.

* Ask the people of Khan Yunis about the intifada and they - like the Islamic Jihad zealots in Rafah - will swear their readiness to die.
A good idea, but why are they asking for help in this undertaking?;o)

* Though the Arab world has pledged financial support for the intifada, only a trickle has got through.
What, Palestinian morons expected a money shower? Morons.
No, those Gulf fats are poor fighters, but excellent bean-counters, and seeing money go down the drain with no visible (destruction of Israel) result in sight is a bad investment, add that, Palestinians themsleves are treated by their brethren like camel crap unworthy of the effort.

* 'We are alone, we are alone, we will fight on because we are alone.
Good luck.

Hi, L'-san.
That post was, in fact, an e-mail for You and Kim, but I posted it to show Mr. Chorny Volk the attractions of my country and that, I am an innocent civilian;o)

Lmx - when was the last time some @g">f@g on the cape raped u?

"They dragged me along on a tour to the Dead Sea.."
Is it because there is a very high probability that u would come back in a caskett?

Bagel. Ill i want to know about ur little trip is how many times u p!ssed ur pants while crossing PALestinian territory and worrying this is the day i get decapitated by an allaheakeber sword. lol...

nothing like a nice 'tour' of ur country... lmao...

* "They dragged me along on a tour to the Dead Sea.."
Is it because there is a very high probability that u would come back in a caskett?
Wrong guess.
Yet again, Tizballah never misses an opportunity to make a fool of himself;o)
It was, because we have a good time.:o))))

* Ill i want to know about ur little trip is how many times u p!ssed ur pants while crossing PALestinian territory [...]
Wrong expectation.
I use toilets, You know, toi-lets. And, because there were no PAL(LOL)estinians around, I assume they were busy looking for ones of their own so as not to wet their pants:o))))))))

* [...] and worrying this is the day i get decapitated by an allaheakeber sword. lol...
Wrong hope.
Bringing a knife to a gunfight ... . LOL. The ones around carry automatic weapons.
P.S. Wrong guesses, wrong expectations, wrong hopes ... a dream is a reality, a reality is a dream ... a perfect WWW Arab;o))
P.S.S. Aren't they tired of advertizing of their stupidity on the Web? Probably, not, since it requires an understanding of stupidity.

If one day I succeed in reading the news at the same pace I download them, maybe I will find the time to post here.

Anyway Hi to all!

good evening ladies...
==
there's a nasty stink in here;
tsk, tsk, tsk -_-

why,it's FAKE AMERICAN GROSS PIG FARIS HOMOUD!

what happened to your 'passover tidings', as*hole?
i knew it was only a matter of time, and FAKE
AMERICAN FARIS HOMOUD would be back to the SOS.
how predictable.

did you have a good time at your imaginary hotel
in Boston, CREEP?

hock-PTUI!

===
{+3sk}

Mornin'! L'menexe, Delennne, Fred....

For a while there I thought Mr Sligar was doing his job, but the WWW-stink proved me wrong. (Funny he doesn't seem to want me to do his job for him either. No reply to my emails. How uncivil!)

Oh and Marie's accussing me of being a Muslim now??!!!!!

Anarchy in the USA

John Zerzan doesn't have a car, a credit card or a computer. He lives a quiet life in a cabin in Oregon and has sold his own blood plasma to make ends meet. So why does corporate
America think he is the Antichrist? Duncan Campbell meets an improbable guru

Wednesday April 18, 2001
The Guardian

John Zerzan is sweeping the porch of his small cabin-style home in the university town of Eugene, Oregon. It is a glorious, spring, cherry blossom day, and it is hard to imagine that the slight, bearded soul in khaki
shorts and a T-shirt bearing the legend "What goes up must come down" is really the bete noire of technology and capitalism, the man regarded by the Wall Street Journal as a cross between Fagin and the
Antichrist.

Zerzan is an anarchist author who believes that our culture is on a death march and that technology in all its forms must be resisted. He corresponds and sympathises with Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. He
believes that civilisation has been a failure and that the system is fast collapsing, and he has been blamed by some for the mayhem at the Battle of Seattle in 1999. This weekend, when it hosts the Free Trade Area
of the Americas talks, Quebec City becomes the latest magnet for international protest and a focus for many who are attracted to Zerzan's views.

Zerzan seems puzzled by the attention that he and his beliefs, encapsulated in his books Future Primitive and Elements of Refusal, are now receiving. The spotlight first shone on him in 1997 when it emerged that
he had visited the Unabomber in jail and that the two shared many beliefs. Kaczynski is serving three life sentences for mail-bomb murders over a 17-year period and is now in a maximum-security prison in
Florence, 100 miles south of Denver.

"Unless the revolution gets there, he's there for ever," says Zerzan. "He is in very restricted quarters. For one who found his happiness in nature, you've got to assume that it's awfully hard to live that way. Will
there be other Kaczynskis? I hope not. I think that activity came out of isolation and desperation, and I hope that isn't going to be something that people feel they have to take up because they have no other way to
express their opposition to the brave new world."

Interest in Zerzan and his own opposition to that brave new world intensified after Seattle and will doubtless do so again if there is trouble in Quebec City this weekend, although he will not be there personally. "We
got some some credit - or notoriety - over Seattle and a number of us were there, but it's not our priority to be dashing around. I think the question now is whether mass street protests have a big future. Will we go
through the ritual of these pre-planned situations in the streets where people get arrested or should we put our energy elsewhere?"

Of Czech origin on both sides of his family, Zerzan grew up in Salem, Oregon. He took degrees in political science at Stanford and history at San Francisco State, then, after a stint as an organiser with a union of
social services employees, took postgraduate studies at the University of Southern California. He was active in conventional leftwing politics and was arrested in 1966 for demonstrating against the Vietnam war.

Nearly 20 years ago he moved north to Eugene, which has since become something of an anarchist stronghold, with fierce battles fought against gentrification and development. In June 1999, not long before
Seattle, a march following a two-day anarchist conference in Eugene led to a bloody riots and arrests. One anarchist was jailed for seven years for assaulting police with a rock.

As one would expect there is no car outside Zerzan's home - he cycles. There are no credit cards in his wallet, nor computers on his desk. He has financed his writing by selling his own blood plasma, but now
makes his living doing odd jobs and babysitting. He is working on a "mini memoir". His books are accessible, his frames of reference encompassing everyone from Robert Louis Stevenson and William Morris to
Jean Baudrillard and Euclid.

He does volunteer work with disabled people in the weights rooms of the local YMCA and has a programme on KWVA, the local campus station, on which he plays everything from classical to hip hop. He lives in a
housing cooperative, of which he is currently the president: "I get a lot of grief for that - 'Mr Anarchist President'." He was married and has a daughter, whose picture sits on a shelf in his modest front room with its
chess board and shelves of books.

Zerzan has been described by critics as one of those anarchists who "carry a black flag in one hand and a welfare cheque in the other", to which he replies that he doesn't know anyone on welfare. He is also
often portrayed as part of the "hunter-gatherer" wing of anarchism, so how would he describe his views?

"It's the effort to understand and do away with every form of domination, and that involves questioning very basic institutions, including the division of labour and domestication upon which the whole edifice of
civilisation and technology rests ... If you took away division of labour and domestication you might have something pretty close to what obtained for the first two million years of the species, during which there was
leisure time, there was quite a lot of gender equality and no organised violence - which doesn't sound too bad. They say: 'Oh, you want to be a caveman.' Well, maybe that's somewhat true."

He says that he got used to "the whole primitivist thing" being used in quotation marks and that it makes him cringe. "Now I guess the quotes are off, but all of these labels seem like the same old 'I'm a this and I'm a
that'. In America it's very, very popular to be 'anti-ideological'. Everyone says: 'Oh, I'm not ideological.' When Americans say they're not ideological, it just means they accept the basic system or that they're not
political."

Some of the protesters at Seattle took issue with Zerzan and the young, black-clad Eugene anarchists who smashed windows. One liberal Seattle commentator said he would have spat in Zerzan's face after the
riots if he had seen him because the wrecked shop fronts had detracted from the main business of closing down the World Trade Organisation talks. Zerzan replies: "It took Seattle to break the ice. The fact that
people got out there and rumbled. You can hold up signs at demos and little rallies and that'll do nothing. I wish good ideas would just wonderfully work their magic but good ideas are worth nothing if you can't back
it up."

But it is specifically his voicing of opposition to new technologies that has brought him prominence, with detractors and admirers. "The idea of technology being a neutral, discreet thing and whoever is in charge can
use it this way or that way, that's really missing the point. It's inseparable from the system, it's the incarnation of the system and it's always been that way. You can't take a totally alienating technology and use it for
anything except more alienation, more destructive impact on every level from the psyche to the rest of the biosphere. Globalisation is a kind of buzz word at the moment and once again the lefties have come up with
a soft core thing. Globalisation is nothing new; what's happening now is just the latest round of excesses."

Zerzan says he objects to being portrayed as someone leading an army of young anarchists into battle. "People think I'm trying to push everybody into wild stuff but I'm more worried about people staying out of jail.
This is not a game. There has been some heavy stuff already and there will be more." He always disagreed with Kaczynski on the issue of violence against living creatures and says that the same is true of his
fellow anarchists in Eugene and of the Earth Liberation Front, which has recently been burning down properties built as part of an urban sprawl. "Property destruction as a tactic is a totally different thing and we're
way in favour of that, but that is not violence."

But if Zerzan has been the butt of attacks from the conservative media, he also has few friends on the organised left. "One of my pet peeves is that the left shows no interest in these things. It deserves to go extinct. It
is never going to extend or deepen its critique and that's fine with me because it's kind of an albatross and it's failed so deeply."

He does not, he says, "throw out all of Marx, the class struggle, all that we take for granted". But he includes in his condemnation "liberals, Marxists, members of left parties, Noam Chomsky, the anarchist left, the
syndicalists, the Wobblies, all those people who think technology is fine and it just depends on how you use it and that there's nothing wrong with development and the industrial system, it just depends who's running
it."

He is aware of the contradiction of a movement that despises hierarchies having one figure who is becoming as prominent as he is. "I'm not handling this well - if you have one person all over the place that really is
in contradiction to the anarchy idea, so we're trying to get away from that, but here we are! I'm always speaking for myself - I'm not speaking for all anarchists."

But is it not the case that much of the protest movement now is fuelled by communication on the internet in a way that would otherwise be impossible? "That's another of the contradictions. It is true, for example, that
many more people have read my stuff [on the internet] than have bought the books, and that's fine ... Many people I know do use it for instant communication, for coordinating things. You can get anarchist news
daily in 12 languages on what is going on today in Greece or wherever and that is an obvious service. I don't even have a computer, but I think you can use it without succumbing to it." He does have a television
set, and contributes to the underground Radio Free Cascadia and cable access shows. "Everyone needs to veg out at times and television's not as bad as hard drugs."

There is an ongoing debate, he says, about whether one should even bother talking to the media. Three years earlier, he says, the Wall Street Journal had come to Eugene and talked to everybody, including the
parents of many of the younger anarchists, and had then written "the most scurrilous, inaccurate article. I still marvel at it. All false stuff about how these kids were all runaways and how they were going to set
bombs, just nutty stuff ... Some people wouldn't talk to you or anyone from the straight media, just wouldn't do it. Some of us argue that people can read between the lines and if they cut the thing or if it's somewhat
spun, people understand."

He has recently been in Europe, in Spain and England, and the trip has enthused him. "More and more people are ready for some movement that is pitched at a deeper level. I was kind of surprised at how many
people wanted to talk about Seattle ... I don't want to dwell on Seattle and yet that was an inspiring thing around the world, the opening battle of a new movement, so to speak."

He sees the spate of school shootings and the the vast increase in teenage suicides in America as a sign of a system reaching breaking point: "There are even higher incidents of homicide at work; that didn't
happen when I was a kid. My dad was an NRA [National Rifle Association] lifetime kind of guy and we had all kinds of guns in our house, but no one dreamed of taking a gun to school ... Travelling around, boy, I
think people are so fed up with things. On the train last August I was overhearing all kinds of things. People were talking about how bugged they are - they've got their beepers and their cellphones, they don't have
a second's rest any more - and these were just straight people." He abhors what he sees as a world in which much of someone's day is spent gazing through a screen - a TV screen, a computer screen, a car
windscreen.

But while it is not hard to imagine returning to utopian simplicity on a gorgeous day in Eugene, where the Red Barn Organic Grocery noticeboard offers handmade moccasins and didgeridoo sound therapy, what
relevance does all the theory really have for someone living in the middle of Detroit or east Los Angeles?

"It's a huge challenge," Zerzan admits. "You 've got these great grandiose ideas, but the rubber has to hit the road somewhere, and we know that. I don't know how that's going to work." He cites small movements
such as Food not Bombs, guerrilla gardening and Cafe Anarchista, and praises magazines such as Adbusters, Anarchy Magazine, Fifth Estate and the Earth First Journal.

"But we are a long way from connecting with that reality and we have to face that. You start off with questioning things and trying to enlarge the space where people can have dialogue and raise the questions that
are not being raised anywhere else. But we don't have blueprints as to what people should do."

He is not alone in his disquiet. Last year, in a fascinating treatise in Wired, Bill Joy, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, one of whose friends was a victim of Kaczynski, said that although he believed that the
Unabomber's actions had been criminally insane, there had been some merit in the case he made against a headlong technological rush to the future. He and Zerzan have since corresponded.

Zerzan comes to the porch to bid farewell. A cat is chasing a squirrel. The squirrel escapes. "They always get away," says Zerzan admiringly as the untamed, free-spirited creature runs rings around its
domesticated pursuer.

Israel forced to pull out of Gaza after outcry

Special report: Israel and the Middle East

Suzanne Goldenberg and agencies in Beit Hanoun, Gaza Strip
Wednesday April 18, 2001
The Guardian

Israel's hardline prime minister, Ariel Sharon, was last night forced to order out his tanks from territory recaptured from the Palestinians in Gaza, in the face of unprecedented international condemnation.

Only hours after a senior Israeli army general promised that the military occupation could last for weeks or even months, news agencies reported that the withdrawal had started.

Mr Sharon's spokesman, Raanan Gissin, claimed that this was according to plan: "We always said that it will happen when the military operation ends," he said.

The apparent about-turn followed an unusually out spoken intervention by the American secretary of state, Colin Powell, who accused the Israeli army of an "excessive and disproportionate" response to
Palestinian mortar attacks.

Mr Powell said that Israel was failing to uphold its commitment under the Oslo accords of 1993 which awarded Palestinians control of designated areas of Gaza.

"The situation is threatening to escalate further, posing the risk of a broader conflict," he said.

The operation to reoccupy the Palestinian-controlled territory around the town of Beit Hanoun - in northern Gaza - had commenced before dawn yesterday when Israeli tanks began shelling outlying Palestinian
border posts north and east of the town.

A Palestinian border guard was killed by a direct hit from a rocket, and 36 people were hurt.

Later in the day, two Palestinian youths, aged 10 and 14, were killed in separate shooting incidents in Gaza involving Israeli soldiers.

At Beit Hanoun, Palestinian officials said Israeli troops thrust a kilometre inside Palestinian territory, bulldozing or rocketing four police posts.

They razed houses and citrus trees in the most fertile part of a pitifully overcrowded and parched territory, and dug a trench to seal off the northern hinterland from the town centre.

The move was met by instant outrage. The Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, said peace efforts were dead. "I don't see any possibility of success this way," he said.

"What happened was an unforgiveable crime," Mr Arafat said, arriving in the West Bank city of Ramallah from Jordan. "These raids are not just an escalation but they are dirty and are intended to bring our people
to their knees."

Israel's stated justification for the action was to protect Israeli citizens from mortar fire from inside Gaza.

Brigadier General Yair Naveh - the commander of the army's Gaza brigade who predicted the occupation could last months - said it was a defensive operation. "Its aim is to create and stabilise a line that will enable
our citizens, in Sderot and other communities in the area, to sleep peacefully," he said.

On Monday night, five mortar shells had landed on the edges of Sderot, a development town inside the borders of Israel which lies just up the road from the farm belonging to Mr Sharon. Israel said the mortars
were fired from Beit Hanoun.

From yesterday's events, it had appeared the army was intent on widening its security perimeter inside the borders of the Gaza Strip.

Under the Oslo accords, Palestinian security forces cannot patrol within 500 metres of Gaza's borders with the Jewish state without Israeli army permission. But that security cordon does not provide protection from
long-range mortars.

The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed the attack on Sderot but Gen Naveh, echoing previous Israeli charges, said the strike bore the "fingerprints of the Palestinian Authority".

The attack, the latest in a spate of mortar strikes, caused no damage or injuries, but Israel said the targeting of a town within the borders of the Jewish state was unacceptable.

"This is unjustified and crosses the line," the foreign minister, Shimon Peres, told Israel radio. "There's a limit to everything."

Israel had threatened repeatedly in recent weeks that it would retake some Palestinian-controlled areas if the escalation in violence continued. Israeli troops entered Palestinian-ruled areas in Gaza three times
during the last week, and its bulldozers regularly razed farm land and houses.

It has shelled Palestinian police posts - as it did in Beit Hanoun yesterday morning, and in Gaza City overnight on Monday, where eight security installations were hit.

For the last six years, the people of Beit Hanoun have lived under the Oslo agreement and under autonomous Palestinian control. They have had virtually no contact with Israel, or its army, unless they tried to
leave the territory. For several hours yesterday they were back under occupation - indefinitely as it then seemed.

As the troop withdrawal began last night, it was still unclear whether the Israeli army would quit other strategic parts of Gaza that it had captured yesterday.

Soldiers sealed off the road at two junctions, effectively slicing the territory into three pieces and cutting off Gaza City from its hinterland. They also closed the Rafah border crossing to Egypt.

"The Israeli soldiers are trying to get as close as they can to the Palestinians, and to cut off as much of their movement as they can, without putting themselves at risk," a foreign diplomat said.

"They do not want to go back to the first intifada in the 1980s when they were holding on to densely populated Palestinian towns."

Hi!
Kim, Ultra Nationalist's MB looks quite deserted. It can be used as a kind of a reserve "pasture".
Volk fished R. Fisk's silly babble, I commented on it, no replies on it, so far. Maybe, because it is long and out of "action" in a form of an exchange of shots and volleys between the members of the happy organized imbecile trio and a happy disorganized ragtag militia. Wham-bam-boom! Funny, who is tailing who, - the imbecile trio tailing others, or others tailing that trio?
Congratulations, You are a Moslem now. You would make quite a splash in some costume party in this matreshka Moslem lady Iron Maiden (+pun, no offence:o) outfit. But I suspect You would sooner choose a Jewish conservative/reformist observant lady garb;o)
You remember that exothermic-endothermic model of hell? So, there is nothing to worry about, as, eventually, everybody goes to hell, as promised in religions to followers of other religions;o)
Will there be holy wars in hell? - That's what worries me most. I don't want terrorists, turning all hell into hell.

The Unabomber Ted is a bright mathematician, if my memory serves. But bombing ... .
Hey, Kim, do You "terrorize" others as well, - the Zerzan material is enough for a Nobel Prize with a "provocativeness" of the same volume?!:o))
Anarchy and communism. With communism as a superset of anarchy, but returning back to its roots, i.e. chaos, with time.
Freedom and discipline. Equality and hierarchy. Technology and its rejection. Technology becomes more complex and is broken apart for manageability, that further obscures the place of technology and its impact as something whole and complex.
Brooding over new ideologies, or old, but forgotten ones.
"He abhors what he sees as a world in which much of someone's day is spent gazing through a screen - a TV screen, a computer screen, a car windscreen." A pager & a cellular.
The Cold War left a lot of propaganda bomb craters on both sides.

I like ideas, Delenne :0) - Just not so sure about the labels!
I am thinking of declaring myself a member of Earth Liberation Front -(article to follow:0)- and blow up French petrol stations(Exxon in France trades as ELF!).

....Look I was just kidding all right!!
(for the CERN censors and paranoid government agents everywhere!)

Apparently the economist charge for their articles on the Web -that says it all.
For those that have the most recent edition check the article "evil elves in the woods", for details on how to declare yourself a member of ELF"

* [...] in the face of unprecedented international condemnation.
That reminds me of an old T-shirt slogan "They want to buy us" on the front and "We are not for sale" - on the back. Maybe, it is just an issue of the price amount?
The bigger the bully, the less of sorry "condemnations".
Anyways, there is, sure, no use of staying there.

* Mr Powell said that Israel was failing to uphold its commitment under the Oslo accords of 1993 which awarded Palestinians control of designated areas of Gaza.
Hipocricy on rampage.
Oslo failed, when Arafat started on a terrorist "nation-building", blowing up people and stuff in between.
Same happened to Russia-Chechnia, - a "peace accord" of 1996, a gangsterization of Chechnia, an attack on Dagestan, Russians intervening. Doesn't matter how foul they cry "Foul!", Putin does not care.

* [...] "excessive and disproportionate" [...]
Pot, calling kettle ... .
I think, there exists some universal template, some "rapid BS development environment", with a set of buzzwords, like a fit puzzle, so that, one can compose responses, accusations and other BS with a minimum effort.

* "What happened was an unforgiveable crime," Mr Arafat said, [...]. "These raids are not just an escalation but they are dirty and are intended to bring our people
to their knees."
Who's talking ... .

* Under the Oslo accords, Palestinian security forces cannot patrol within 500 metres of Gaza's borders with the Jewish state without Israeli army permission. But that security cordon does not provide protection from
long-range mortars.
Poor Powell;o)
"Oslo, Oslo ... ";o)

* The Islamist militant group Hamas claimed the attack on Sderot but Gen Naveh, [...]
With Arafat - "I haven't had sex with that woman."

* "The Israeli soldiers are trying to get as close as they can to the Palestinians, and to cut off as much of their movement as they can, without putting themselves at risk," a foreign diplomat said.
But the way broader picture is: Israelis are trying to get as far as they can from the Palestinians and their stinking PA and want to be left alone, but Arafat (and his brothers-in-terrorism) is like a chewing gum, stuck to the shoe sole.
If he personally wanted a state unilaterally,- he would have got it, and, I suspect, Barak would have helped him.
But the fact is that, without Israel Arafat is worthless, together with his sorry "nation", which is to the Arabs the same, as the Chinese to NIKE.