I am not sure of this but I sense something weird going on between Israel and Jordan, just out the sudden Israel is campaigning against Jordan.
A week ago an Israeli military official said:
Abdullah is the last Hashemite king.
Jordan said that Israeli officials contacted king Abdullah to apologize but that wasn’t true, it’s turned out that the king himself called asking for apology which he never got it, only after some negotiations the Israelis managed to arrange the military official apology.
First I thought it was just a slip of a tong but yesterday there was a weird article on Ynet:
Al-Qaeda plans to kill Israelis in Jordan
Intelligence reports reveal terror group nearing Israel’s borders, planning to abduct, murder Israelis in Jordan. According to documents, Al-Qaeda planning mega attack near Jordan-Israel border
I am not sure of this but my doubt is the Israelis are cooking something behind the scenes, Do the Israelis creating enemies to blackmail the western world?.
Interesting angle on the map. No matter.
If you erase the line separating the two countries, you are left with what was once called the “Palestinian Mandate.’
It got split up. Trans-Jordan became Jordan.
By a mysterious quirk of fate, a terrible mistake was made.
Trans-Jordan should have been called Palestine.
The rest is tragic history…
Charles said
You mean occupation changed the map
The Palestine Mandate was mandated.
It was then mandated to split it up with jews being given a small part, and calling the rest Trans-Jordan. The latter then became Jordan.
‘Palestine’ IS Jordan.
Hamas’s new Prime Minister, Ismail Haniye: We do not wish to throw them into the sea:
Hamas is living a myth. The last 4–5 decades the myth has been perpetuated and brainwashed into Palestinian kids.
The land was never theirs. There was no such political entity as ‘Palestine.’
The occupied territories were either Egyptian, Syrian, or Jordanian. They were never ‘Palestinian.’
The occupied territories existed for 20+ years before Israel ever took control. Egypt, Syria, and Jordan never financed terrorists to blow people up to pressure themselves into granting a Palestinian state. It is a completely made up myth. It is a political tool of arab leaders.
The Palestinian mandate was split into 2 parts — with the vast majority of it becoming Jordan. THAT IS PALESTINE. The arab countries did not want a jewish state so they ganged up on it and tried to annihilate it. They lost. It happened several times. That happens in war.
This is a terrible tragic farce.
The arabs have succeeded in creating an almost intractable situation. A completely radicalized Palestinian population conducting acts of violence against Israel, with Israel retaliating, and then the Palestinians complaining that they were retaliated against…
Unless palestinians want to assimilate into Jordan, the only way to resolve this is to give the Palestinians a state. Fine. But Jordan shares a larger geographical burdon than Israel. All sides must give.
Until the disingenuous arab leaders and the mythical fantasy land PA finally recognize Israel as a legitimate indfependent state, there will be no resolution. It will either continue as low level war that the PA can’t win and will only lead to their further degradation, or it will end in annihilation for one side or the other. By other I mean most major arab populated areas. Or maybe both.
Blah Blah Blahh… „
history is always in the eye of the beholder… My advice to all Israelis is to make peace with palestinians now before it is too late.. Power and empires are fleeting„ before you know it you can find yourselves on the other side of the equation with no one around to help.. the Oil in the middle east will run out. All that nice Jet fuel gas and diesel will not be available for ever.. What will you do then„ fight off the whole of the middle east.. Trust me, when the time comes, all the arabs will turn on you, Friend and Foe.. and when the Jewish state is no more. they will get back to business of fighting amongst themselves for the right to establish the new Caliphate..
We live in the golden age of almost free power.. But dont let that blind you to the facts that this will in all probability not last very long.. Real life is not science fiction and Startrek.. WE ARE NOT ALL GONNA GO LIVE AMONGST THE STARTS AND ESTABLISH HUMAN GALACTIC COLONIES» wake the fuck up..
Blasts Rock Holy City
Reuters
March 9, 2006
Cities across India were on alert after three bomb blasts ripped through the country’s holiest Hindu city, Lucknow, killing at least 23 people and wounding 68 at a temple and a railway station.
Police in the northern city of Varanasi also found two other bombs near a cremation site on the banks of the Ganges River.
There was no claim of responsibility for the Tuesday night bombings.
Authorities fear the attacks – days after a state visit by US President George W Bush – could trigger violence between majority Hindus and minority Muslims.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh called for calm.
Prime Minister John Howard, who is winding up an official visit to India, was on the other side of the country in the southern city of Chennai.
The first blast tore into the Hanuman Temple – one of the oldest and most-loved shrines in the ancient city – when it was packed with people for Tuesday night worship.
“The blast was so powerful that it could be heard across the town, and we have moved five or six badly-burned dead,” a witness said.
“Everyone was running. There were corpses lying around,” another witness said. “There was almost a stampede.”
A marriage ceremony was taking place at the temple when the blast occurred.
Rescue workers struggled in Varanasi’s narrow lanes to cart out the victims. Many had leg injuries and wounds on lower parts of their bodies, people on the scene said.
Within 10 minutes, two more bombs went off in the city’s main railway station, city deputy administrator Kamlesh Pathak said.
One went off outside the station master’s office while the other exploded inside a train carriage jammed with travellers preparing to go on holiday ahead of the annual Hindu festival of colour, Holi, next week.
“Ten people have died at the (Hanuman) temple and 11 more at the railway station. Eight of them are women,” he said. “We are counting the bodies as they are coming in … There is confusion everywhere and all I can say of now is that three of the eight (females) are young girls.”
Internal Minister Shivraj Patil said all states had been placed on alert and Varanasi had been sealed off.
India‘s Nuclear Journey
By Kaushik Kapisthalam
March 8, 2006
The recent visit of President George W. Bush to South Asia heralds a watershed in India-U.S. relations. The highlight of the visit was the agreement on India’s nuclear separation by the U.S. This sets the stage for the Bush administration to work with Congress to change U.S. laws to facilitate civilian nuclear commerce with India. The U.S. is also committed, under the July 18, 2005 Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement, to work with the Nuclear Suppliers Group cartel to carve out an India specific exception.
The hype surrounding the nuclear aspect should not cloud the fact that the Indo-US agreement is only peripherally about accommodating India’s atomic program. Why?
The current global nuclear order is basically a reflection of the world power structure when the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty came into effect in 1970. The five “recognized” nuclear powers under the NPT basically negotiated a farcically light set of responsibilities for themselves while subjecting the rest of the states to a life of permanent servitude. Bill Epstein, a United Nations arms control official noted that one of the American negotiators of the NPT privately conceded that the treaty was “one of the greatest con games of modern times.”
The 1960s, when the NPT was being negotiated by the big powers, was a bad decade for India. The nation saw a disastrous war with China in 1962 followed by an inconclusive tussle with Pakistan in 1965. Two of its statesmen, Prime Ministers, Jawaharlal Nehru and Lal Bahadur Shastri died in quick succession. The psyche of the country was in tatters following a near-famine and food shortages that affected even its upper classes. To top it all, the father of its nuclear program, Dr. Homi Bhabha — a man who interacted as an equal with the likes of Enrico Fermi and Niels Bohr — died in a horrific airplane crash in 1966. India was thus in no position to react to the NPT’s formation.
Shut out of the nuclear club, Indian leaders were determined not to be part of a discriminatory system. India knew that behind the egalitarian slogans of the NPT lay a structure that was kept up by the big powers through machtpolitik and deal-cutting. Countries like Canada, Japan, and Germany negotiated the provision of a NATO nuclear weapon umbrella as an unstated condition for their joining the NPT as Non-Nuclear Weapon States. In fact, even today the U.S. has some 450 nuclear warheads in the territory of European NNWS. Those nations that pontificated about the strategic irrelevance of nuclear weapons apparently could not do without them as long as they could outsource warhead deployment. India, however, never had the luxury of a nuclear umbrella and had to fend for itself.
Once India regained its breath, it tried to knock at the nuclear club’s doors by conducting a “Peaceful Nuclear Explosion” in 1974. However, Nixon administration’s obsession with wooing China and the desire to thwart new power centers led to a fierce backlash against New Delhi. The US led efforts create the NSG and formulate nuclear laws to punish India and deter threats to the NPT order. Meanwhile, China was busy transferring soup-to-nuts atomic weapon technology to Pakistan.
In the 1980s, India continued its weapons program refusing to be cowed down by its international isolation. Frequent reports of large scale Chinese help to Pakistan only speeded up the process. America for its part tried to pretend everything was normal in order to preserve Pakistan as the base for the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. However, as Gary Milhollin, an expert on nuclear proliferation once noted, “If you subtract Chinese assistance from the Pakistani nuclear weapons program, there is no program.”
With The end of the Cold War, the 1990s became the era of American internationalists. Under the two Bill Clinton administrations, America launched a massive effort to bring China “into the nuclear mainstream.” China however, figured out that its commercial clout gave it impunity from proliferation transgressions and began a cynical cycle of “proliferate-deny-get concessions” game. India, which was seeing the first fruits of economic liberalization, watched with horror as Chinese proliferation to Pakistan rose to alarming proportions with Beijing gifting entire ballistic missile factories and warhead technologies to Pakistan and getting away with slaps on the wrist. To India, these were signs that the U.S. was willing to overlook even the worst proliferation acts for important countries. In 1998, a more self-confident India decided to blast its way out of the NPT shackles by conducting tests and removing any ambiguities about its weapon state status.
Post 1998, India stuck to its principled position even as it tried to negotiate a nuclear modus vivendi with two successive U.S. administrations. Meanwhile the NPT began floundering due to its internal contradictions. The 2005 NPT review conference collapsed, vindicating India’s position that the treaty had fundamental flaws. Weeks later, in July 2005, India got its due when the Bush administration decided to change 30 years of U.S. policy and accommodate India as a nuclear weapon state.
Lest anyone should think that the Indian entry into the nuclear club was because of its weapons program, one must note that India’s nuclear energy program was possibly one of the biggest drivers for the U.S. India, all by itself, had mastered the nuclear fuel cycle and the ability to reprocess spent fuel. Indian scientists have perfected the Pressurized Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR) technology The New Scientist magazine recently did a feature piece saying that India is possibly the world leader in fast breeder reactor (FBR) technology. Cooperation with India might just be the spark to resuscitate the moribund American nuclear power industry at a time when Americans are evaluating the true costs of their oil dependence.
All said this epoch-making deal is likely to have wide ranging ramifications. China is likely to show its displeasure by supplying new delivery systems such as submarine launched missiles for Pakistan to “test.” Pakistan may seek to demonstrate its relevance to India in the form of an attack on India’s population or technology centers by jihadist proxies. Knee-jerk reactions, however, will eventually give way to a realization of Asia’s new strategic alignment. China will likely moderate its nuclear profligacy when it turns around and sees India on the same nuclear table. Pakistan will be told by other nations that there is a price to pay for treating nukes as objects of commerce.
The American-led nuclear engagement of India is not an act of geopolitical munificence nor is it a reckless abandonment of ideals. It is quite simply about the arrival of a new power on the world stage. It is also about the far sightedness of the leader of the world’s only remaining superpower in seeking to accommodate the rising power in a manner beneficial to the superpower‘s interests.
George W. Bush may perhaps be remembered in history for his efforts to initiate reform in the Islamic world. More perceptive historians however may celebrate him for his courage to cut the Gordian nuclear knot that shackled India-U.S. ties for over four decades. This brave gambit by Bush basically enables unfettered cooperation between America and India, two nations with a large intersection of strategic interests such as counterterrorism, democracy and the need for a multipolar Asia.
Congress, decidedly peeved at the manner in which the deal was concluded, may try to slow things down or even consider rejecting the it altogether. However, based on history, pragmatism is likely to prevail. After all, few lawmakers would want to jeopardize American relations with the world power of 2070 just to preserve an unequal status quo of 1970.
(Kaushik Kapisthalam is a freelance commentator on South Asia issues. He can be reached at contact@kapisthalam.com.)
Nuke Assistance to India Builds Menace?
By Ivan Eland
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
If the American Revolution, the U.S. Civil War, the Boer War, and World War I, among others, don’t discredit the democratic peace theory outright, the frosty relations between India and the United States during the Cold War should give the Bush administration pause. India was loosely aligned with the Soviet Union during that period and often hostile to U.S. policy.
In short, selling India nuclear fuel and technology and other weapons (in the works) in order to develop a regional counterweight to an authoritarian China may be a risky gamble that blows up in the U.S. government’s face. Twenty years down the road, India may be more of a threat to U.S. interests than China. The future is hard to predict and the United States has not always been good at identifying who the next enemy will be. The U.S. Navy was originally created to counter the French in the Quasi-War at the end of the 18th century, but was actually first used against the Barbary pirates at the beginning of the 19th century. As recently as the late 19th century, Britain was the United States’ most likely adversary, but the United States eventually made a lasting peace with Britain and actually fought on its behalf against Germany in World War I. The United States built much of its Middle Eastern policy on propping up the Shah’s government in Iran, only to see a revolution in the late 1970s turn that country into a radical Islamic foe. The United States used Manual Noriega of Panama as an intelligence asset, but he eventually became an embarrassing antagonist that required a U.S. invasion to oust. Even after Iraq—with substantial secret U.S. assistance—won its bloody war in the 1980s against Iran, the United States continued to support Saddam Hussein right up until he became a U.S. rival after invading Kuwait.
In the future, many scenarios are possible. China could remain autocratic or could move down the road to democracy after freeing up its economy—that is, adopting the same path as Chile, Taiwan, and Singapore. But as a democracy China would not necessarily be friendly to the United States. On the other hand, if China remains an autocracy, it may not be hostile to the United States. Authoritarian states are not necessarily aggressive externally—for example, the Burmese junta. In fact, the nation with by far the most military interventions since World War II has been a liberal democracy—the United States. Moreover, in the past, the United States has befriended many despotic regimes to further its own interests.
Actively containing the Chinese by building up India, improving relations with increasingly autocratic Russia, and strengthening U.S. Cold War-era alliances ringing China may create a self-fulfilling prophecy—a threatened, hostile China.
The United States would be better off keeping its powder dry and remaining neutral in the Indian-Chinese competition. Both are rising nations with rapidly growing economies, but it is now unclear whether either or both of them will be a future threat to U.S. interests. If one does rise faster than the other and become a menace, the United States can always then help the other. But given the poor U.S. track record of identifying future enemies, it might be a big mistake to pour a lot of resources into a strategic relationship with India at the present time.
Thinking Like an Arab
By Alan Caruba
March 08, 2006
If it hasn’t occurred to most Americans by now, Arabs don’t think like us. They see the world in very different terms. Rationality, logic, and common sense do not rate high among their priorities.
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to briefly work with Edward V. Badolato, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel with a distinguished career in government and private enterprise. Col. Badolato is a graduate of the U.S. Naval War College with several tours of duty in the Middle East, beginning in 1967 shortly after the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War. His tours took him to nearly every country in the Middle East. Following his retirement, he served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Energy in both the Reagan and Bush administrations (1984–89). As such, he was the principal architect of the government’s readiness and response to terrorist threats to our energy infrastructure.
Why, for example, would people who believe they have the one, true religion, not hesitate to blow up mosques and other holy places? Why would they attack weddings and funerals? Why is beheading so popular among terrorists? Why would a few cartoons set off rioting and killing? And what does all this mean to us in terms of the threat it represents?
What America and the West are up against are Islamic fundamentalists and countless sympathizers who would destroy us in a desperate effort to retain their Arab identity. Thus, when Palestinians elect Hamas, a terrorist organization, as their government, the West recoils, but the same is true throughout the Middle East and across northern Africa. In any election, Islamic fundamentalists would take control of the politics of these nations.
What we see as an improvement in the lives of millions of Arabs, changes in their educational system, women’s rights and their inclusion in the work force, improved literacy rates, better nutritional standards, advanced health and hygiene, all things that Westerners embrace, threaten Arabs. This explains why the Middle East has remained the most backward region of the world for centuries and why it now constitutes the greatest threat to the modern world.
Arab Muslims are not like us. They do not want to be like us. If they become more like us they will have to let go of a culture that both stunts their humanity and provides an odd, brutal security blanket at the same time.
For the West that leaves us with the same demand we made of Japan and Germany in the last century, unconditional surrender.
http://www.anxietycenter.com. The complete text of Badolato’s essay can be read at http://www.blackwaterusa.com/btw2004/articles/0503arabs.html.
blahblahblah Says:
history is always in the eye of the beholder
Sorta like a mote, eh..
***************************************
Thinking Like an Arab
Arab Mentality
Acting like an Arab
Arab behavior
I rest my case!! 8)
“Something wrong
So does anyone want to dispute the facts:
1. ‘Palestine’ has never existed as an independent political entity, ergo there are no ‘Palestinian’ people.
2. There are/were arabs who did live on the land under the authority of various other countries — primarily ottoman and British over the last 4–5 centuries. The countries that now exist in these areas have had numerous administrative demarkations and names — from Syria, and ‘lower’ Syria, to Palestine as a region within Syria. The boundaries for and between the provinces were in constant flux. Try looking at maps over the last several centuries.
3. The Palestine Mandate was legally created by the LoN in 1920, and set the major boundary lines that created most of the current countries in the region. The British who legally controlled the mandate, split it into two parts in 1923 to accomodate the arabs, who received about 75–80% of the allocation, and the jews, who received the balance.
4. The currently disputed territories were actually controlled/occupied by arab countries for decades and there was never a call for those lands to be an independent Palestinian state — neither by the occupiers, nor the occupied.
The late Rafik Hariri seemed to think along those lines :
More Rafik Hariri quotes :
Missing Urls for the previous post :
http://www.rhariri.com/news.aspx?ID=1419&Category=Interviews
http://www.rhariri.com/news.aspx?ID=1511&Category=Interviews
http://www.team8plus.org/forum_viewtopic.php?17.1605
The root problem is the Israeli occupation of Palestinians. If they just ended this occupation of Palestinians things will be so much better.
Do you mean return the land that was taken from Syria and Jordan back to those countries?
Or create a new country called ‘Palestine’ on those lands?
Do you see these are two fundamentaly different issues?
Also, I think it is hard for Israel to make concessions while its actual existence is in question.
How can israel be sure that giving away land will provide a permanent solution if its adversaries maintain that it doesn’t even exist?
If the Palestinians want an independent country in addition to the 75% of the Palestine Mandate that they already have (Jordan), then Israel, Jordan, and Egypt must ALL sacrifice territory.
Looking at the maps, large portions of Sinai were administered under the ottomans that overlapped with areas that later became the British Palestine Mandate. It was probably an administrative decision to give Egypt control if Sinai after WWI because it was a more stable British controlled region.
I like the 1923 partition. It seems fair. Can someone draw a new map that take chunks of Sinai and Jordan, and some bits of the occupied territories, so we can all call it a day?
Charles said: “‘Palestine’ has never existed as an independent political entity, ergo there are no ‘Palestinian’ people.”
This is nonsens. While it’s true that there has never existed a Palestinian state, people who identify and/or consider themselves Palestinians have existed for centuries. The same can be said about the Kurds — there’s no Kurdish state (Kurdistan) but people considering themselves Kurds certainly exist.
More facts about Palestine history.
True KB
If Chares don’t believe this, he can consult the Bible
There was a state of Palestine from around 1920 until 1948 under the League of Nations mandate. It was not independent but administered by the British under League oversight.
There was also a short lived state of Palestine centered in Gaza after the 1948 war.
You are overstating KB. Read some of the drill down links you provided above.
I in no way mean to say that they are not people. But the concept of a unified Palestinian people/culture as distinct from other people in the area is way overstated. Don’t compare them to the kurds.
Total population arab/non-arab in 1882 = 141,000. This is according to official Ottoman census for the three territories that currently comprise Israel (more or less).
Basically the land was a wasteland until Jewish settlers began reclaiming it. Arabs migrated/immigrated from surrounding regions/countries to the area. This began in earnest as ‘zionists’ arrived in greater numbers throughout the early 20th century.
I suppose anyone has the right to claim anything. Fine. But the whole myth (that much of the world believes), that there was some country called Palestine until the jews came along and ruined everything with Israel is a complete fabrication.
An arab in the west bank is no different culturally/ethnically/religiously from an arab accross the border in Jordan or Syria.
I’m not saying that makes them bad. i’m just saying that it DOES NOT make them ‘Palestinian.’
I said the name existed even before the Jews
It wasn’t a wasteland, it was a very fertile land that is why Moses choose it then
Charles, this is a long story which we can discuss forever without getting to agree. I think it was a huge mistake to establish the state of Israel without also establishing a Palestinian state (and a Kurdish state). As the situation is today, the best solution would probably be a unified state consisting of both Israelis and Palestinians — something that Gaddafi has called the state of Isratin.
KB, this is actally a good idea.
–the right of return for 7 million Palestinian refugees in the Diaspora, –comprehensive disarmament from the ME
– making elections supervised by the UN
– these are to be followed by the Arab recognition of this state which he called Isratin ( as a combination of two states Israel, Philastin).
– The recognition should be regardless to whom rules this state ( Isratin ) “Arabs or Israelis.”
Agreed. But in fact, the purpose of the 1923 partition was exactly that. The ‘palestinian’ arabs in trans-jordan simply named the arab part ‘Jordan.’
LB,
You are the victim of cliches and ignorance.
The history of the term ‘Palestine’ is not indiginous to the region. It was applied haphazardly by external groups. It was originally the greeks referring to the philistines who have no connection whatever to modern day arabs. The term evolved from there.
After the second Jewish revolt, Hadrian decided to get rid of the name ‘judea’ (cause he was pissed and he was the emporer) so he called it ‘provincea syria palaestina.’
The arabs didn’t even arrive until about 500 years after that!!!
“The British chose to call the land they mandated Palestine, and the Arabs picked it up as their nation’s supposed ancient name, though they couldn’t even pronounce it correctly and turned it into Falastin a fictional entity.”
Ahmm„Charles ”The arabs didn’t even arrive until about 500 years after that!!!”
why do u think Palistinians of today are somehow a distinct Arab racial type that have no roots in the Land of Israel/Palistine/Judia call it what u want..?.. Arn’t arabs Samites, did arabs come from the sea and sudenly take over northern Arabia 1000 years ago.. I think you are confusing rise of Islam and the Arabic Language with people who lived in the lands..
the middle east has seen many cultures and racial intermingling since recorded time.. you only need to have a good look around the countries of the middle east to see the ethnic and genetic variaty that is commonly grouped into the Arab racial box, and that is simply due to the fact that we all share a common language.
Palistinians might be Arabs and Muslims, their ancesters have lived and worked the lands of Judia since time emmomorial.. their great great grandfathers might have been Jews, Christians, Heretics, or whatever.. Over the melenia these ancestors might have retained their religions or converted to whatever religion that was the fad of the time//
For you to come now and say„ Ohh they ae all Arabs they dont belong here, just smacks of petiness and xenophobia..
Let me pose this question, If a Muslim Palistinian Arab converted to Judiasm would he be intitled for a claim on the land of Isreal.. What if all Palistinians converted and started speaking Hebrew?.. wuld it be alright then.
blabla,
As I said at the very beginning, I have no issue with the people themselves ‘as people.’ Of course various tribes, groups, ethnicities have intermixed over thousands of years.
My point is simply that the whole notion of ‘Palestinians’ is fabricated. And it is a recent fabrication. In 1923 the land was demarkated to give the big piece (75%+) to the arabs and that became Jordan. The rest was meant for a Jewish homeland.
There is also a huge misunderstanding regarding the demographics of the region. The official ottoman census in 1882 tallied all people in the region at
I’m srry charles, but i really dont see what your point is..
are you trying to say that Instead of Plaiestinians going on about having their own state they should have been convinced to join with Jordan and become Jordanian.. If that is a the case, i feel that your arguement is slightly disingenuous..
As far as i am concerned the facts of history still stand..
Poeple of Arabic Muslim ethnic backround have. since the establishment of modern day Israel, been systematically and cinically ethnically removed from their lands in order to make way for the settlement and establishment of a purely Jewish state..
call these people what u like„ arabs , Jordanians, palestinians,.. they have a right to speak up against this injustice and untill Isrealis recognise this, there will never be peace in that land..