Thousands Swarm Central Beirut after Qana Deaths

BEIRUT (AFP) 1 hour ago — Thousands of demonstrators have flocked to downtown Beirut to join angry protestors, who broke into the UN headquarters following Israeli raids on the Lebanese village of Qana that killed at least 51.

A Lebanese man smashes a window with a Lebanese flag at the UN headquarters in Beirut. AFP/Ramzi haidar

Large groups of people converged from all sides of the capital toward Riad Solh Square where the UN House is based. A UN employee told AFP that the UN staff in the building had sought refuge in an underground basement.

Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri appealed to demonstrators to disperse and not attack any building.

"I call on my people and brothers and on the youngsters demonstrating outside the ESCWA (UN building) to desist from any demonstration and any attack on any building and to return from where they came and to give the whole world a chance to stand by us without any distortion (of Lebanon's image),"

● Rice Postpones Trip to Beirut After Attack

Just a brief overview of the internal politics of Israeli democracy, where a peace settlement is the joker in a stacked deck of cards, the right-wing extremists holding all aces.

When confusion reigns

(Al Ahram) Nov. 2002 -- Sharon offered his rival the Foreign Ministry, while offering the position of minister of defence to former army chief-of-staff Shaul Mofaz, who retired last July and has now completed the three-month interim required by law before a retired official can be readmitted into political life.

Mofaz immediately accepted the offer, while Netanyahu asked for an opportunity to think it over. Netanyahu accepted the post, but only on condition that Sharon agree to early elections, force President Arafat out of Palestinian land and reject the American roadmap.

Lieberman is unlikely to have entered Sharon's coalition without first sounding out the advice of Netanyahu. It was, after all, the former prime minister who first suggested to Lieberman that he leave Israel B'Aliya to form his own, Yisrael Beitenu Party. Which suggests that Netanyahu's plan is to contribute to the failure of Sharon's policy from within and springboard to the leadership of Likud.

...
The Labour Party, meanwhile, is in the middle of its own crisis, a result of the on- going erosion of its earlier mid-left orientation. The crisis first came to a head following the assassination of Rabin by a Jewish extremist on 5 November 1995. Since then the Labour Party has lacked any genuine political leadership, operating without any clear vision as to how to secure peace.

Following Rabin's assassination Shimon Peres temporarily assumed leadership of the party, making a series of disastrous mistakes, including the Qana massacre. These resulted in the loss of Israeli Arab support and in the May 1996 elections he lost to Netanyahu.

Barak, the next Labour prime minister, was elected on a Rabinist platform. Yet he moved the party ever closer to Likud and the Zionist right, a tendency embodied in the Camp David II negotiations, which amounted, according to some American participants, to "a trap set up for Arafat". It was only logical that Barak should then lose the elections to General Sharon: when candidates try to outdo one another in the extremism of their views the most extreme will win.

Lebanese images of Qana massacre - 18 April 1996

● Israeli SpecOps plant booby-trap bombs inside the U.N. zone - led to Qana bloodbath
By Robert Fisk - The Independent - 1 June 1996

● U.N. Report on Qana Shelling - by Dutch Major General van Kappen
Van Kappen's report dismisses Israel's outrageous claim about not being aware of civilians, reminding that a UN compound was not a legitimate target, whether or not civilians were in it. Moreover, the report stated clearly that "The distribution of point impact detonations and air bursts makes it improbable that impact fuses and proximity fuses were employed in random order, as stated by the Israeli forces" and that "Contrary to repeated denials, two Israeli helicopters and a remotely piloted vehicle were present in the Qana area at the time of the shelling."

● Palestine Calender - April

Playing Skittles with Saddam

The gameplan among Washington's hawks has long been to reshape the Middle East along US-Israeli lines, writes Brian Whitaker

LONDON (The Guardian) Sept. 3, 2002 -- A fifth member of the team was James Colbert, of the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (Jinsa) - a bastion of neo-conservative hawkery whose advisory board was previously graced by Dick Cheney (now US vice-president), John Bolton and Douglas Feith.

One of Jinsa's stated aims is "to inform the American defence and foreign affairs community about the important role Israel can and does play in bolstering democratic interests in the Mediterranean and the Middle East". In practice, a lot of its effort goes into sending retired American military brass on jaunts to Israel - after which many of them write suitably hawkish newspaper articles or letters to the editor.

Jinsa's activities are examined in detail by Jason Vest in the 2 Sept 2002 issue of The Nation. The article notes some interesting business relationships between retired US military officers on Jinsa's board and American companies supplying weapons to Israel.

...
Richard Perle is also a managing partner in a venture-capital company called Trireme Partners L.P., which was registered in November 2001, in Delaware. Trireme's main business, according to a two-page letter that one of its representatives sent to Khashoggi last November, is to invest in companies dealing in technology, goods, and services that are of value to homeland security and defense. The letter argued that the fear of terrorism would increase the demand for such products in Europe and in countries like Saudi Arabia and Singapore.

The letter mentioned the firm's government connections prominently: "Three of Trireme's Management Group members currently advise the U.S. Secretary of Defense by serving on the U.S. Defense Policy Board, and one of Trireme's principals, Richard Perle, is chairman of that Board." The two other policy-board members associated with Trireme are Henry Kissinger, the former Secretary of State, and Gerald Hillman, an investor and a close business associate of Perle's who handles matters in Trireme's New York office. The letter said that forty-five million dollars had already been raised, including twenty million dollars from Boeing; the purpose, clearly, was to attract more investors, such as Khashoggi and Zuhair.

● Political Analysis: What I Think We're Seeing ◊ by BooMan
● Riverbend is back: Qana Massacre ◊ by Steven D
● CONDI: 'Midwife From Hell' -- A Photo Diary for a Resignation ◊ by STOP George