Dear friends,

As I have been repeating over and over, the situation here is moving rapidly downhill. The most recent hostage-taking in Jericho by Israel is just one more notch downward. Today's Israeli military attack (as I write) on Jenin, AGAIN!!!!, is another. Olmert's statement 2 days ago that the illegal settlement in the North of the West Bank, Ariel, is part of Israel is another, and so on.

The situation from ground zero is the most tense I've seen in a decade. The expected beating that the Palestinians are bracing for for exercising democracy, US style, has people on edge. These last Israeli military actions just added to an already deteriorating reality. Worse yet, is if the PA was in any way part of this fiasco!

To fully understand the internal ramifications of the Jericho ordeal, once needs to understand the Middle East and Arab culture. Humiliation is seen worse than a wound from live ammunition. So as the attached cartoon from the Guardian depicts, one can only speculate what a humiliated people in despair from a 38 yr foreign military occupation will react. My bet says Palestinians will not vanish into thin air.

I wonder if the Palestinians need to buy some bulldozers and head to the houses of all those Israeli political figures and soldiers, who killed thousands of Palestinians, and to bring them to justice in Ramallah.

US-UK Collusion, HELLO, GOOD MORNING,
Sam

'Israel prevented initial Saadat trial'
Orly Halpern, Mar. 16, 2006, From The Jerusalem Post

Ahmed Saadat was never tried because Israel refused to provide the Palestinian Authority with evidence that he ordered the murder of transportation minister Rehavam Ze'evi, Alastair Crooke, a former security adviser to the European Union's special envoy to the Middle East, told The Jerusalem Post Wednesday.

"[Former PA chairman Yasser] Arafat insisted that evidence be produced and that [Saadat] stand trial in Palestine," he said by phone from London. "Israel was not prepared to give evidence to the Palestinians or to Arafat."

In January 2002, Saadat, leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was arrested by PA special forces, who also caught the four PFLP members responsible for Ze'evi's murder. The five were held at Arafat's Mukata headquarters in Ramallah.

In March, the IDF laid siege to the headquarters, locking Arafat in and demanding the surrender of the PFLP members along with Fuad Shubaki, the PA official accused of organizing the Karine A weapons ship.

Crooke was involved in the security negotiations to end the standoff. "I was negotiating over the standoff at the Church of the Nativity [in Bethlehem], which was running parallel to the discussions of the Mukata," said Crooke, who had been an MI-6 agent for 30 years. "Shubaki, Saadat and the situation in Bethlehem were essential to ending the siege of the Mukata."

A secret agreement between the Israelis and the PA was reached so that Arafat would be freed. "To end the standoff, it was agreed that [Saadat, Shubaki and the other four] would be detained at a Palestinian prison under US and UK supervision," said Crooke, who mediated between Israelis and Palestinians on numerous occasions during his six years in the country.

On April 29, a PA military tribunal tried the four PFLP members and sentenced them to terms up to 18 years' imprisonment for killing Ze'evi. Arafat, however, ruled that because Saadat was a political leader and not a military leader, his case must be decided by the PA judiciary, and without evidence there would be no trial. Later that day they were transferred to the Jericho jail. IDF forces withdrew from the Mukata on May 2.

Western supervision at a PA jail was Crooke's idea. "It was my genesis," said Crooke, who created the idea to solve another problem: Palestinian security prisoners who escaped through the jails' "revolving doors." "I gave some suggestions at the time how in Gaza and Jericho the EU would provide monitored detention centers to prevent the revolving door."

The prisons would be hi-tech with electronic signatures, voice and fingerprint recognition and TV monitoring, all of which could be done remotely by satellite, as well as close up, said Crooke, who was called back to London in 2003 for reasons of "personal security" according to his employers.

The Israelis, he said, preferred to leave the EU out of the standoff and work directly with the US and UK. The UK offered to serve as the prison monitor and the US joined.

Saadat, who now faces trial after being captured by the IDF on Tuesday, became the head of the PFLP only days before Ze'evi was killed in October. He took over from Abu Ali Mustafa, one of the founders of the PFLP and its former head, who was assassinated by Israeli forces seven weeks earlier.

The PFLP said it carried out the assassination of Ze'evi in revenge for the killing of Mustafa. Israel said Saadat had given the orders.

"No evidence was forthcoming at the time," said Crooke. "I don't think anyone knows the nature of the evidence that the Israelis have."

Israeli aggression, American/British betrayal... Nothing new!

Another act of aggression by the Israeli state, emboldened by western governments' hostility to Hamas.

Al-Jazeera broadcasted footage of a brutal Israeli raid on a prison in the Palestinian town of Jericho; while BBC and western media focus on the reaction of the Palestinian street, as expected.

Israeli forces hit Jericho prison with tank shells and missiles fired from helicopters before smashing through its walls with armoured bulldozers. Three Palestinians already reported dead and there have been further casualties, but these don't count. For the Israeli Occupation Forces, they are nothing more than dead dogs.

Sadaat has been held since 2001 under a deal brokered by the late Yasser Arafat. Under the deal, Sadaat was to be guarded by US and British forces. Those forces last morning abandoned their posts, citing "security concerns", as the Israeli army approached.

This is not only a major act of aggression by the Israeli state, no doubt emboldened by western governments' unremitting hostility to the newly elected Hamas administration in Palestine. It also represents an unforgivable betrayal by the American and British government, which has abandoned the prisoners to their fate.

I'm not surprised at all; I never expected these governments to have any moral or international commitments toward peace.