Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
but UN had diff borders in 1947 plan. That is what is fair.
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
but UN had diff borders in 1947 plan. That is what is fair.
That '47 plan also called for the recognition of Israel. Before the resolution was even finalized in 1948, Israel had been surrounded and attacked by it's neighbors. Then that happened two more times. Strike a deal with me, then kick me in the nuts three times and see if I still honor the same deal after kicking your ass.
The Palestinians are going to have to compromise. They have caused enough blood to be shed with three wars. Half of the hatred in the Muslim world is based on this perception that the Palestinians are perpetual victims. Well, this week we saw Palestinians trampling a picture of Arafat. About damn time. Pretty soon the rest of the Muslim world will realize that peace has always been available, Palestinian leaders have been foolish and corrupt. Peace on the West Bank is a good start.
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
Throughout history I doubt there has been a scenario where a country was attacked 3 times, decisively defeated the attackers all 3 times and still ended up giving territory to the losers. Not saying it shouldn't happen in this case, but Israel haters should at least keep that in mind.
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
ye-es remind us to light a candle in her honour....once she gets out of palestine that is...
:)
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
Of course this article was written in 2003 when Arafat was still alive. Guppies here thought of course that Arafat was simply a victim of the occupiers. If you ask any Muslim about “Palestine” they will rank it as the number one reason Israel is to be hated and the US is to be hated. But Arafat is the one who brought us hijackings. he brought us Cruise ship murders. He sole from his own people. And it is my belief that he chose to screw the Palestinians for gold. By choosing conflict over peace, Arafat lined his familes pockets to the tune of billions of dollars. Upon his death he left a rotting web of corruption, not a government. Arafat was always the “occupier”, not the Jews.
Auditing Arafat
Nathan Vardi, 03.17.03
The Palestinian leader has more than Israeli tanks to worry about. He may be brought to heel by, of all things, honest financial accounting.
Frozen out by the Bush Administration and hemmed in by the Israeli military, **Yasir Arafat** is now facing a new threat: the cutoff of funds from his very own Palestinian Authority. Financial reforms might succeed in hampering the flow of money to terrorists--might even end up toppling Arafat himself.
Money keeps Arafat in power. With a tight grip on much of the $5.5 billion in international aid that has flowed into the PA since 1994, he appears to have overseen virtually all disbursements, from $600 payments to alleged terrorists and $1,500 in “tuition” for security officers, to $10 million, reportedly paid by a company controlled by friends of Arafat, for a 50-ton shipment of weapons from Iran.
Take the money out of his hands, reform a corrupt financial system and you could reduce the violence. That’s the thinking of U.S. and European officials who insisted on the appointment of a new finance minister for the PA. Salam Fayyad, 50, is the chain-smoking Palestinian technocrat armed with little more than a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Texas who got the finance job last June. Israel has responded by resuming the transfer of $30 million or more per month in tax revenues to the PA, disbursements that were frozen in December 2000 following an outbreak of terrorist bombings. Israel may even release the $500 million-plus that piled up during the freeze.
“I am here to tell you it’s not Arafat’s money anymore,” says Fayyad, sitting in his office in Ramallah, three miles from the Arafat base that Israeli tanks have all but destroyed. A portrait of the Palestinian leader looms above him. “I’m not going to accept anything but total transparency.”
He is using standard accounting to take control of the PA’s mysterious finances and open them up for all to see. Arafat’s three main sources of cash: foreign aid, Israeli tax transfers and profits from PA-controlled companies. Fayyad’s first move was to consolidate the PA’s funds into a single treasury account under his control. That change ended the autonomy wielded by ministerial fiefs that were free to collect their own revenues and redistribute the funds as they saw fit.
It amounts to a direct attack on Arafat’s elaborate patronage system, which ensures the loyalty of the Palestinians’ fractious factions. “He is always ready to pull money out of his pocket to buy people,” says Said Aburish, an Arafat biographer. An Israeli intelligence report pegs Arafat’s personal holdings at $1.3 billion (a claim dubbed “ridiculous” by the Arafat camp), but Israeli officials say Arafat uses his largesse mainly to buy friendships.
“Until the last six months PA money was a power instrument for Arafat,” says Eran Lerman, a retired colonel in Israel’s military intelligence. “Calling what Fayyad is doing a threat to Arafat is an understatement.” Fayyad, for his part, dismisses any such notion. Arafat, he says, “is the person who appointed me, and I am confident in a few months we will have one of the most accountable systems around.”
In late December Fayyad took another step toward that goal. He submitted the first publicly disclosed PA budget, a $1.3 billion plan approved by the Palestinian Legislative Council. Auditing of the spending is being supervised by Ernst & Young, hired by the United Nations, and Deloitte & Touche, hired by the U.S. His latest move: the February delivery of the first meaningful annual report, conducted by Standard & Poor’s, on the finances of ten PA-owned businesses once controlled by Arafat. Fayyad has lumped these and other interests together in the Palestine Investment Fund, of which he now is chairman, though the fund is managed by Arafat’s trusted financial adviser, Mohammed Rachid.
The businesses include a 23% stake in the Jericho casino (worth $28.5 million) and 20% of a Tunisian telecom company ($50 million), as well as a $55 million firm that controls most of the cement imported into the territories and 13 accounts holding an estimated $73 million. At Fayyad’s behest S&P is now valuing the fund’s other 50 or so holdings, including a gasoline monopoly that is believed to net $1 million a month.
Israeli officials began releasing tax proceeds in July, beginning with a trickle of $14 million payments, rising to $58 million in February. The money, which is deposited into the central account Fayyad controls, includes excise taxes of up to $8 million a month collected by Israel on oil sold to Palestinian-controlled areas. The oil-tax collections–some $500 million from 1996 to 2000–previously flowed into a separate account controlled by Arafat and Rachid.
In the past that kind of latitude let Arafat create a public sector of 125,000 people consuming $660 million, half the annual budget. This includes $240 million for a security force of 53,000 agents, most of them members of Fatah, Arafat’s political party, which often receives a 1.5% cut. Now Fayyad is trying to replace the cash payments and create a paper trail, thwarting commanders who skim off the top. Security chiefs are resisting the effort.
Despite Fayyad’s reforms, however, Arafat will continue to hold some financial clout. His office is budgeted for $74 million this year, though Fayyad is quick to point out that the spending is now watched carefully by a finance ministry official and the hired auditors. And some signs indicate that Arafat has stashed other money offshore. An Israeli businessman, alarmed that he might be facilitating terrorism, claimed in December that he was hired by Arafat to funnel some $300 million into Swiss bank accounts that Arafat and Rachid control. The attorney general of Israel is investigating. At least $10 million of that sum was used to buy a stake in an Algerian telecom outfit. Fayyad has taken control of that equity; Rachid insists the rest was used by the PA for other investments.
Still, says Azmi Shuaibi, a Palestinian Legislative Council member: “We are afraid if something happens to Arafat, we will not know where all the money is.”
http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/free_forbes/2003/0317/049.html](The World's Richest People)
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
Throughout history I doubt there has been a scenario where a country was attacked 3 times, decisively defeated the attackers all 3 times and still ended up giving territory to the losers. Not saying it shouldn't happen in this case, but Israel haters should at least keep that in mind.
Err...Israel attacked first one of those 3 times...
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
^^ err, no
Israel was attacked in 1948
it attacked egypt in 1956 cause egypt was doing cross border raids into israel
it was attacked in 1967
and again in 1973
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
That '47 plan also called for the recognition of Israel. Before the resolution was even finalized in 1948, Israel had been surrounded and attacked by it's neighbors. Then that happened two more times. Strike a deal with me, then kick me in the nuts three times and see if I still honor the same deal after kicking your ass.
The Palestinians are going to have to compromise. They have caused enough blood to be shed with three wars. Half of the hatred in the Muslim world is based on this perception that the Palestinians are perpetual victims. Well, this week we saw Palestinians trampling a picture of Arafat. About damn time. Pretty soon the rest of the Muslim world will realize that peace has always been available, Palestinian leaders have been foolish and corrupt. Peace on the West Bank is a good start.
fine man so lets undo the wrong that was committed, two wrongs dont make a right :) just go to the borders that UN called for, recognize Israel and Palestine, let jersalem be an international city in UN control and then live happily ever after.
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
^^ err, no
Israel was attacked in 1948
it attacked egypt in 1956 cause egypt was doing cross border raids into israel
it was attacked in 1967
and again in 1973
Didn't Israel attack Egypt with UK / France blessings as Egypt nationalized the canal?
67 was a definite Israeli attack. This is one of the main reasons they achieved what they did in 67. 1973 was a strategical success on part of the egyptians [unlike the war] as Saadat correctly predicted that you cannot negotiate with israelis in a position of weakness. 1973 and voila! we have the peace accords and sinai goes to egypt!!! ;)
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
Please read my comments again. I said Israel did attack Egypt in 1956 as Egypt had acquired a very large shipment of Soviet Military Equipment and England and France went along with it. 
No it wasn’t
Egypt, Syria, Jordan were all ready for war. Jordan placed its Army under Egyptian control. Egypt closed off the strait of Tairan. Israel had warned that the closing of the Straits would mean war. Egypt had over 150,000 Men and the bulk of the Tanks in the Sinai.
The Arabs fought pathetically. They believed their propaganda about Israel and lost badly.
Lets examine the war. Egypt crosses the canal. Israel fights back and crosses into Africa and encircles the Egyptian 3rd Army. In Golan Heights, Israel throws back the Syrians, and reaches 40km from Damascus and even shells the outskirts of the city before a cease fire is declared.
As for negotiations. Ya u right. Sadat wanted to show that Arabs can fight and Israel negotiated and they gave back the Sinai.
But doesn’t giving back the Sinai goes agaisnt Israel’s so called plan to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates? 
And doesn’t this show that Israel when given a chance is ready to make peace? 
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
^^ All I can say Laathon ke bhoot baaton se nahin mante! ;)
Egyptians lost because they overshot their SAM coverage while Israel got beefed up right away by the Americans unlike 67 when arab air forces were gone for the whole war [Soviets couldn't and didn't supply the arabs back..].
Egyptians had pretty much knocked out IDF [esp AF] and american help was crucial for the israelis otherwise goldameir had already prepared for some surrender [maybe dropping nukes as a parting shot?].
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
^^ I think *technically *Israel executed what is called a "spoiling" attack in '67. Huge armies were in place ringing the Israeli borders, and the Arabs were hours or days away from being organized enough to attack. To throw off the timing of the Arab attack, Israel crossed the line first.
There is no doubt that when huge armies surround every side of your country that that is essentially an act of war. Imagine Pakistan completely surrounded on all sides by India, and India declares that they will attack from all sides and push Pakistan into the ocean.
After being attacked by Arab countries three times, I think Israel has a right to some bounty. I think the Arabs should pay a penalty for their aggression. Give Israel the Golan Heights, Arab countries cannot attack and lose and think that there is no risk in aggression. I generally support the '68 borders, but I think that it is also fair to swap other Israeli land for the largest of settlements. Moses did not bring those borders etched in tablets. Those borders are a man-made compromise, and they can be amended. Do you think the Arabs would have given back an acre if they had won? Hardly.
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
1947 UN recommended borders. That is the only fair thing. Rest is all justifications for this or that. That is what UN wanted and that is what the world must enforce.
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
^^ All I can say Laathon ke bhoot baaton se nahin mante! ;)
Egyptians lost because they overshot their SAM coverage while Israel got beefed up right away by the Americans unlike 67 when arab air forces were gone for the whole war [Soviets couldn't and didn't supply the arabs back..].
Egyptians had pretty much knocked out IDF [esp AF] and american help was crucial for the israelis otherwise goldameir had already prepared for some surrender [maybe dropping nukes as a parting shot?].
No dude...Egyptians overshot their SAM coverage in '73 not '67...that's why they were able to shoot down so many Israeli fighters in the openning salvo...only to give back the advantage to Israelis by not acting out on the original plan put together with othe arab leaders, i.e. to continue the push into Israel after initially neutralizing the IDAF operations...however, by the time they were pressurized by the other arab nations to move further out of beyond their SAM coverage, it was too late and IDAF had been beefed and the IDF had reorganized it's order of battle...
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
So did Pakistan attack India first or did India attack Pakistan in '65…
Re: Removal of jewish settlers from there homes
I was watching a program on Channel 11 and they said the Soviets had told Saadat not to attack first [he didn’t]. I think israelis were told the same by americans? but they did anyway. I guess everything is fair in love and war. In that case, 1973 was “fair” as well as egypt only exploited a weakness of israel! Imagine what would have happened [at least not a complete rout] if egyptian airforce had been in the war. Psychological superiority is the main focus more than anything.
For SAM coverage, I was talking about 1973. I don’t know how someone got the idea I was talking 1967 in that case? 