"Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' government played no role in their release, which for many Palestinians enhanced the prestige of.... Hamas"
Been coming on for some time now. They actually defend Palestinians.
Related: Abbas helps Israel bury its crimes in Gaza
Gaza Report Vote Delay Angers Hamas, Delights US
Palestinian Politics
The old guard was already withering away; this latest move just cemented the final nail in the PLO coffin.
"Palestinians end push for war crimes report; US said accusing Israel would hurt peace process" by Neil MacFarquhar, New York Times | October 2, 2009
UNITED NATIONS - In a surprising development, the Palestinian delegation to the UN Human Rights Council dropped its efforts yesterday to forward a report accusing Israel of possible war crimes to the Security Council after pressure from the United States, diplomats and human rights organizations said....
The report - produced by a panel of investigators led by an internationally respected jurist, Richard Goldstone, found extensive evidence that both Israel and Palestinian militant groups took actions amounting to war crimes. Israel says that it acted only to halt missile fire from Gaza that terrorized Israeli civilians.
That is not entirely (or even nearly) true.
Related: War Criminals' Whine
Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian ambassador, said that passing a resolution now insisting that the General Assembly or the Security Council deal with the matter, as the report itself recommends, would probably have faced an almost immediate American veto.
How does it feel to have Israel's fist so far up your ass it's inside your skull, 'bamer?
Delaying it also gives the Israelis and Palestinians time to take up another recommendation in the report, that both sides set up independent investigative panels to look into possible war crimes during the Gaza war last winter....
Israel isn't setting up some commission, so pfffft!
“I don’t think that the Americans or the Israelis or anybody can escape from the realities that Goldstone collected, not Hamas either,’’ said Khraishi. The ambassador said he had the support of at least 33 members of the 47-member council, but not that of the United States, the European Union, or Japan.
Human rights organizations that had been pushing for the United Nations to take up the report’s recommendations expressed disappointment. “The United States sought this reprieve, and now the burden is on the US and the Europeans to ensure that there are credible investigations,’’ said Steve Crawshaw, a spokesman in New York for Human Rights Watch.
I wouldn't hold my breath waiting if I were you.
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JERUSALEM - On a day of high emotion for both sides in the Middle East conflict, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza yesterday joyously welcomed home 19 female prisoners, exchanged with Israel for a video proving that an Israeli soldier captured three years ago and held in a clandestine jail is alive and well.
You want to see them?
"Here are the women, the female souls of the resistance against Israeli aggression.
The youngest prisoner was only 15 years of age.
Their names are as follows:
Jihad Abu Turki,
Soomod Khalil Abdullah,
Sana Salah,
Hiam Yusuf Al Bayad,
Laila Muhammad Al-Bukhari,
Nagwa Abdel-Ghani,
Shirin Mohammad Hasan,
Libnan Yousef Abu Ghalameh,
Kifah Omar Muhammad Afanah,
Nevine Khalil Da’ah,
Bara’a Malake,
Maymuneh Jibreen,
Rima Abu Aishe,
Ayat Al Qaisi,
Nahed Farhat,
Zuhoor Abed Abu Hamdan,
Fatme Yunis Al Zak,
Heba Khalil Asaad Natsheh,
Regina Riaz Mohammad Janajirah,
Manal Jiyad Sbeineh.
20 women, one of whom came back to find that all of her children were now grown up.
“To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards out of men.”
-Ella Wheeler Wilcox
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Wow, what brave AND beautiful women!
The video of Staff Sergeant Gilad Schalit was televised by Israeli channels hours after officials judged it to be authentic, riveting an Israeli public that has followed the 23-year-old soldier’s ordeal with deep anxiety. Schalit appeared thin but healthy in the video and said he was being treated well by the Hamas militants who have held him since June 2006....
Isn't that rich? The master forgers confirming a video!
Ismail Haniyeh, prime minister of the Hamas government in Gaza, spoke outside his office at a raucous hero’s welcome for Fatima Ziq, a 40-year-old mother of four who had been arrested in Israel on suspicion of plotting to blow herself up. Haniyeh sent an official car to the Gaza-Israel border yesterday to pick up the woman and the 20-month-old son she bore in prison.
An ecstatic crowd outside Haniyeh’s office snatched the toddler from her and passed him overhead into the embrace of the Hamas leader, who held the wailing boy up and kissed him repeatedly.
Like he wasn't happy or something?
The other 18 freed prisoners, all from the West Bank, received a more subdued welcome from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at his West Bank headquarters. His government played no role in their release, which for many Palestinians enhanced the prestige of his more militant Hamas rivals.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the video made it clear that Hamas “is absolutely responsible for [Schalit’s] health and well-being.’’ He said it would be difficult to cut a wider deal....
But THEY CUT a DEAL with HAMAS!!!!!!!!!!
That is as CLOSE to a RECOGNITION and ACCEPTANCE as you are likely to get from Israel!
Schalit was last seen in public being dragged into Gaza from an Israeli army base by militants who had tunneled under the border.
I don't believe that because Israel and the MSM lied about Lebanon in 2006. Guy was taken INSIDE GAZA!
Hamas has kept him hidden, barring visits by the International Committee of the Red Cross but allowing him to send home an audio recording and three letters....
Okay, the U.S. bars visits by the Cross to its secret torture sites, and the "militants' still let him communicate!
Schalit gave no clue about where he is being held but noted that Palestine, the newspaper in his hands, is published in Gaza. He smiled slightly several times, including when he said, “I am well in terms of my health. The mujahedeen of the Izzedin al-Kassam Brigades [Hamas’s military wing] are treating me excellently.’’
Okay, so that is EITHER TRUE or he was tortured into saying it, right?
Of course, he looked healthy and fit -- not tortured.
Oh, how the Arabs and Muslims shame USrael!
See: How I Came to Love the Veil
Oh, she must have been tortured, right?
She sure was.
Meanwhile, Israel won a tentative victory yesterday when the United Nations Human Rights Council agreed to delay until March a vote on a UN report alleging that Israel and Hamas committed war crimes during their cross-border conflict last winter. Israel, backed by the United States, has rejected the findings as biased.
Yeah, I covered that above.
Do you know HOW SICK the WORLD IS of USraeli whining?
It said the report’s adoption by the 47-nation council would bring Israeli officials and soldiers a step closer to prosecution in the International Criminal Court and scuttle Israel’s peace negotiations with the Palestinian Authority.
Israel does that anyway.
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