The incompetence of Condi

Condi Rice went to the Middle East to get the peace process back on track:

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has held talks with Egyptian officials, the first stage of a trip aimed at saving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas broke off contacts with Israel in protest at its recent offensive in Gaza, which has left more than 110 Palestinians dead.

Ms Rice said the US was concerned about the toll of innocent life, but blamed Hamas for triggering the bloodshed.

She said talks must not be sabotaged by those rejecting a peace deal.

Ms Rice headed on to Israel and the West Bank for further negotiations with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Yet still the circle of violence and the helplessness of those caught in its vortex continues:

Israeli tanks and infantry moved out of Gaza before dawn today after a five day operation to kill militants that left more than 110 Palestinians dead, including 22 children.

Hopes that the incursion had ended the barrage of Palestinian rockets raining down from Gaza on Israeli border towns proved in vain, however, when three missiles hit the resort town of Ashkelon this morning, damaging an apartment building. No-one was hurt.

Israel said that its withdrawal did not mean it was scaling back its operation against the Islamists, but merely suspending it temporarily for a two day visit by Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State.

“This very limited (Gaza) operation was intended to show Hamas what could happen, what you may call a ’prequel’,” said an Israeli official.

So then:

The killing of eight people at a Jewish religious college by a Palestinian gunman will not derail peace talks, the Israeli government has said.

The gunman was shot dead after opening fire with an assault rifle inside a crowded library at the Mercaz Harav seminary in West Jerusalem.

Israeli police said the attacker was a Palestinian resident of East Jerusalem.

Some Israelis have called for peace talks with the Palestinians to end but Israel has said they will continue.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas condemned his Hamas rivals - who are in control of Gaza - for hailing the attack.

Hamas described the shooting as a "natural reaction" to Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip last week that left more than 120 Palestinians dead.

And in Gaza:

Gaza's humanitarian situation is at its worst since Israel occupied the territory in 1967, say UK-based human rights and development groups.

They include Amnesty International, Save the Children, Cafod, Care International and Christian Aid.

They criticise Israel's blockade on Gaza as illegal collective punishment which fails to deliver security.

Israel says its military action and other measures are lawful and needed to stop rocket attacks from Gaza.

Israel pulled its troops and settlers out of the Gaza Strip in 2005, but retains control over Gaza's airspace and coastline, and over its own border with the territory.

And into this confusion and endless retaliations we send ....

That boat has already sailed, that test has already been graded

That bird has already flown. What on earth have you guys been doing for the last seven years?

JERUSALEM (AP) -- In an effort to salvage a Middle East peace conference planned for next month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice hoped to find some common ground during a meeting Monday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

After her first round of talks with Israeli leaders on Sunday, State Department officials indicated the conference, called by President Bush, might have to be postponed.

[snip]

Heads of negotiating teams have been appointed only in recent days - former Palestinian premier Ahmed Qureia last week and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Sunday - and officials said they would meet for the first time later this week, six weeks before the tentative date of the Mideast gathering.

After Rice's first series of meetings Sunday, a senior State Department official hinted that the date could slide.

"This is going to take some time," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversations. "This is going to require a lot of hands-on American diplomacy. These are really tough issues."

Rice cautioned against expecting breakthroughs during her four days of meetings, punctuated by a trip to Cairo and followed by talks in London with the king of Jordan.

Olmert also appeared to scale back hopes for broad agreement before the conference.

Hands-on diplomacy? Does the Bush administration have any diplomats left? And to help things along, there's this from John Dugard:

Earlier this year, in his role as special rapporteur to the UN Human Rights Council for the Palestinian Territories, the South African law professor wrote a report for the UN General Assembly in which he compared Israel's actions to those of apartheid South Africa.

Indeed, the word "apartheid" appears 24 times in the 24-page report.

But in his interview with the BBC, Mr Dugard goes further than before.

He has been trenchant in his belief in the past seven years that he has held the UN post that Israel is collectively punishing the Palestinians.

Now, though, he has the international community, and the UN itself, in his sights for complicity.

[snip]

Although some inside Israel agree that the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has distorted and damaged Israel's democratic values, there are plenty who will say Mr Dugard's view is one-sided.

They will argue that condemnation of the restrictions on Palestinians' freedom of movement fails to take into account the right of Israelis to live free from terrorist attack.

Mr Dugard's argument - again shared by some inside Israel - is that the military occupation fuels what he calls "resistance".

And, in an unusually harsh warning from a senior UN official, he worries aloud about how high the Palestinian leadership is raising expectations ahead of next month's scheduled peace conference with Israel.

If, as he fears, those expectations are not met, then, he says, a third intifada could be unleashed.

And he compares the actions of Palestinian militants to those of the French Resistance during World War II.

I put it to Mr Dugard that that comparison in particular would be very difficult for some to stomach. He was unabashed.

"History is replete with examples of populations that have resisted military occupation," he said.

"I can't see why one shouldn't draw these analogies."

It sounds like a lot of heavy duty homework for a C student....

Interesting information on Victoria Toensing

One journalist had an interesting ... interaction ... with her. He relates the story of tracking down the terrorist who shot Leon Klinghoffer.

At NBC, with the help of our Mideast sources, we managed to find Abbas. With an NBC crew in tow, I flew to a Middle East country and interviewed Abbas. We got him to admit to ordering the hijacking, and the killing of Klinghoffer because, Abbas told me, Klinghoffer was attempting to incite other passengers to resist.

To get the interview we had made one commitment: That NBC would not reveal the meeting place.

Enter Victoria Toensing.

NBC was protecting terrorists, she said. And with that charge a huge public debate over freedom of the press broke out. People took sides. There were demands that the NBC reporter (me) and crew return to Washington to appear before a grand jury.

Changing the story

It always seemed to me that most people felt NBC had done a decent journalistic job in tracking down Abbas, that we elicited a confession from those involved and showed them for the thugs they were.

Still, the debate played for days. Toensing knew what she was doing. The NBC debate overshadowed the stories about American failures in the Mideast or screw-ups chasing terrorists.

The truth was any tinpot government security service would have been able to track a four-person television crew leaving Heathrow Airport for the Middle East. I met Victoria Toensing years later at a Washington function and she told me exactly where we had met with Abbas and who his henchmen were.

Now Victoria is testifying at the Valerie Plame hearing. Her job is still the same — to change the nature of the way the story is perceived.

This time she is saying that Valerie Plame was a low-level CIA employee, not a covert operative. As a result, no crime was committed when she was outed in a national newspaper column.

Meltdown between Fatah and Hamas

could lead to civil war:
"One day after the attempted assassination of Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, Fatah and Hamas are shooting at each other. In an exclusive interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE, veteran Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi warns of possible civil war and calls on all sides to lay down their arms."

[snip]

"SPIEGEL ONLINE: Could this be the start of a Palestinian civil war?

Ashrawi: It certainly has all the indications of internal confrontations and clashes among different militias and among different factions. So I'd hate to think of this as a civil war but clearly it has the elements of an internal confrontation which is extremely dangerous and very lethal. And of course Palestinian weapons are being used against other Palestinians and it threatens to spiral out of control.

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Just a few weeks ago, the Palestinian factions were still negotiating to create a national unity government. Now they are shooting at each other, and there has been an attempt on the life of Prime Minister Ismail Haniya. Why are Palestinians shooting at each other instead of trying to foster unity?

Ashrawi: This has been some time in the making. First of all, the Palestinians are living in a very abnormal situation, in a pressure cooker, in a situation in Gaza where it's entirely besieged and cut off from the rest of the world and the economy is in shambles, totally destroyed. The situation is one of utter deprivation. There is tremendous anger, there is such resentment and vulnerability and for some time now there has been the external siege and the sanctions have created this situation in which people feel there is no way out. There is a sense of despair. Generally people cooped up like this with no way out tend to take out their anger against each other. And besides there has been a political rivalry, let's put it that way, between the two major factions Fatah and Hamas that has not resolved itself in ways that are peaceful. At the same time other people have not played a constructive role in trying to resolve these differences in a democratic way. And I'm afraid the situation is going to extend beyond the confines of Gaza and into different areas of the West Bank."

AlJazeera has more:
"At least 13 Palestinians have been wounded in the Gaza Strip after supporters of the ruling Hamas movement and the rival Fatah faction traded fire during protests after Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, called for early elections, medics and witnesses say.

Thousands of armed Hamas and Fatah supporters staged competing protests in central Gaza City late on Saturday. Demonstrations were also under way in the south and the north of the coastal strip. Several smaller protests were also staged in the West Bank.

Hamas has rejected Abbas's call for elections, warning that it amounted to a call for "civil war" and vowed to fight the measure by bringing its supporters into the streets."