Another Day in the Empire: "As noted here yesterday, Israel has long nurtured and financed groups opposed to the PLO, most notably Hamas. “The thinking on the part of some of the right-wing Israeli establishment was that Hamas and the others, if they gained control, would refuse to have any part of the peace process and would torpedo any agreements put in place,” an anonymous U.S. government official told Richard Sale of United Press International. “The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini’s Iran,” a state not likely to make a peace deal with the Israelis, an arrangement that suited them fine, as Israel has never honestly intended to make peace with the Palestinians and instead has worked consistently to terrorize them, drive them off the land, and kill them in numbers. "
Broken Spring? : Information Clearing House This is a sequel to my June 2011 article, ‘After the spring’, on the upheavals in the Arab world. It is an article that has been painful to write, because it brings bad tidings and offers a pessimistic analysis of the upheavals, at least in the short term, in a number of Arab countries. The outcomes and potential outcomes of these uprisings have also acquired new, very significant dimensions. These include a complex entanglement with the accelerated preparations for a possible attack on Iran, and a poisonous, sectarian aspect that could have the consequence of ripping Syria and the Middle East apart.
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