Vital Perspective

Video: Brigitte Gabriel Discusses Radical Islam in Heritage Foundation Forum

Happy New Year to you all. Before we get too far into other activities, we thought we'd leave you with an excellent series of videos of Brigitte Gabriel discussing radical Islam at the Heritage Foundation. Gabriel is a Christian Lebanese-American journalist, author and activist. She is the founder of the American Congress For Truth, a conservative think tank. The videos will take just under an hour to go through.

PLO Executive Committee Calls on Palestinian PM Haniyeh to Resign from Govt

The executive committee of the Fatah-dominated PLO has called on Palestinian PM Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas to resign. President Mahmoud Abbas, who belongs to Fatah and heads the PLO, has recently given up months of efforts to form a Hamas-Fatah unity government, saying this week the talks had reached a dead end.

Efforts to form a replacement government are under way, the main options being for Abbas to dismiss the Hamas-led government and form another, or to call a national referendum on whether new elections should be held. "The executive committee will discuss all the options and will take a final decision in three or four days," when Abbas returns from a trip to Gaza, PLO committee member Samir Ghosheh said.

The PLO wants Haniyeh to quit before decisions are taken on the next step. It cannot force him to resign, but its call is likely to put further pressure on him to step aside as efforts are made to replace his administration. Haniyeh left Gaza this week on a foreign tour and is not expected to return to the Palestinian territories for at least a month, possibly only in January.

Security Cabinet Approves U.S. Requests, Tells IDF to Ready for Gaza Ops

The IDF failed on Wednesday to obtain a green light from the Security Cabinet to expand operations in Gaza. Instead, the army was told to train and prepare for extended operations, but not to deploy. The Cabinet also decided to expand cooperation with Egypt in an effort to prevent arms smuggling. Both Military Intelligence and Shin Bet warned that Hamas is smuggling weapons into Gaza at an accelerated pace. They also said that Gaza was becoming increasingly politically radicalized.

Newly appointed minister Avigdor Lieberman, attending his first meeting of the forum, said that Israel should act "like the Russians in Chechnya" and cultivate a friendly local leadership in Gaza. He argued that there was no point in toppling the Hamas government until there was something to put in its place.

The other order of business at Wednesday's meeting was to approve a series of gestures the White House is demanding in advance of PM Ehud Olmert's Washington visit scheduled to take place in a little more than a week from now. The Bush administration wanted Israel to approve - and it did - a plan to arm and train forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Gen. Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator in the territories, wants to prepare Abbas' forces in Gaza for a confrontation with Hamas, which the U.S. believes is inevitable. The training has been underway for a month.

The White House also wants Israel to withdraw its longstanding opposition to allow the Badr Brigade of the PLO to move into the Palestinian territories from Jordan. Dayton wants to turn it into Abbas' rapid reaction force in Gaza. Olmert's office said approval of the Badr Brigade request is unlikely "right now," but should he face a direct request from President Bush it's unlikely he will refuse, though Defense Minister Amir Peretz must also approve the decision.

Hamas, Spanish Leaders Dispatched to Damascus for Talks with Counterparts

Said Siam, the Hamas interior minister, is participating in talks in Damascus with his Syrian counterpart, Bassam Abdel Majid, on "police training" according to the official Syrian news agency. Siam, who controls the interior ministry troops who fought deadly gunbattles with Fatah loyalists on the streets of Gaza earlier this month, arrived in Damascus Friday and was due to leave Sunday.

Fatah leader Faruq Qaddumi, who also runs the Palestine Liberation Organization's Tunis-based political department, is also in Damascus today for talks with Syrian FM Walid Muallem. On Friday, Qaddumi met Damascus-based Hamas leaders including Khaled Meshaal. Syria "is in favor of dialogue between the Palestinian factions and backs the formation of a national unity government encompassing all the different Palestinian groups," SANA quoted Muallem as saying.

The Hamas leadership is not the only group in Damascus this weekend. Spanish FM Miguel Angel Moratinos, who drew U.S. criticism earlier this year for ignoring its efforts to sideline Syria, arrived in Damascus on an unannounced visit. Muallem welcomed Moratinos, who is also a former EU peace envoy to the region, at the airport.

Moratinos is scheduled to hold a news conference tomorrow morning following talks with Syrian officials including President Bashar Assad, but there was no immediate word on their agenda.

In August, during negotiations leading up to Security Council Resolution 1701, Moratinos travelled to Damascus for talks on the EU's behalf. That visit was the first by a senior Western official since his own previous trip in March. Spanish Defense Minister Jose Antonio Alonso also arrived in the region Saturday, flying into Lebanon to visit Spanish troops deployed with UNIFIL.

California Mayor Defends Presenting Key to the City to Palestinian Envoy

Jewish leaders in Santa Cruz, California have asked the mayor to apologize for giving a ceremonial key to the city to Palestinian representative Afif Safieh after Sahieh called Lebanon's Hezbollah "an amateur in terrorism compared to Israel.''

But Mayor Cynthia Mathews defended the symbolic gesture of welcome and respect as an appropriate show of support for Safieh's efforts to promote peace in the Middle East. She said she would do the same if an Israeli official came to Santa Cruz. "I acted on Safieh's work to encourage communication and peaceful resolution to the conflict, which is something I think we would all like to see,'' Mathews said Tuesday. Safieh is a longtime member of the PLO, which includes groups like the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

In the past decade, Santa Cruz mayors also have awarded city keys to spiritual leader Ram Dass, filmmaker Michael Moore, folk singer Arlo Guthrie and Lex van den Berghe, a local reality TV star.

Bush Extends Waiver on Shut Down of PLO Office in Washington

President Bush has decided to extend a waiver on a law that would shut down the PLO office in Washington. In a letter sent last Friday to Secretary Rice, Bush extended the waiver for another six months.

Last month, the House passed the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act, which would tighten restrictions on the president’s ability to impose such waivers. It has yet to be considered in conference with the Senate.

Understanding (Finally) the Prisoners Document and Its Implications

Frida Ghitis, who writes about world affairs for The Miami Herald, really gets it when it comes to understanding the Hamas-Fatah 'Prisoners Document'. This is a must read.

She says the document "offers a stunning display of vagueness on what some perceive as concessions, combined with absolute specificity on points that Israel has consistently rejected over years of negotiations." Clearly, the document does not recognize Israel's right to exist, it demands a "right of return" which would destroy Israel as a Jewish state, and enshrines the legitimacy of Palestinian terrorism. Hardly a two-state solution!

One thing that Ghitis fails to point out is that the document creates the means by which Hamas would ultimately take over the PLO and that any agreements would be dependant upon the approval of the PNC (the parliament of the Palestinian diaspora), of which Hamas would dominate, or the Hamas-led PLC. Here's the bottom line: instead of Hamas moving closer to Abbas, Abbas has given in to Hamas.

Declassified State Dept Report Implicates Arafat in Murder of U.S. Diplomats

Last week the State Department released secret documents proving that the U.S. was aware of the key role Yasser Arafat played in eight terrorists seizing U.S. diplomats during a Saudi Arabian embassy function in Khartoum and then murdering them in 1973. U.S. Ambassador Cleo Noel and DCM George Curtis Moore, along with a Belgian diplomat, Guy Eid were killed.

"The Khartoum operation was planned and carried out with the full knowledge and personal approval of Yasser Arafat," said an official intelligence memorandum dated June 1973. It added that representatives of Fatah, Arafat's faction of the PLO, "participated in the attack, using a Fatah vehicle to transport the terrorists to the Saudi Arabian Embassy."

At that time, Arafat tried to distance himself from all responsibility for the murder of the diplomats in Khartoum and the PLO, just as he tried to distance himself from the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in September 1972, diverting responsibility to the Black September faction. Indeed, despite the fact that the American administration was well aware of the truth, it placed official blame for the murders on the Black September.

Palestinian Authority Faces Crisis as Hamas, PLO Fight for Supremacy

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) demanded on that Hamas change its platform and recognize the PLO's supremacy as it debated the formation of a government led by Hamas.

"The executive committee demands the Hamas government amend its political program," Yayssir Khaled, a member of the PLO executive committee, told AFP. "The Hamas platform does not mention the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people and President Abbas will ask it to change its program in keeping with PLO policy," said committee member Zakaria al-Agha. "Hamas is not an alternative to the PLO."

A Hamas spokesman rejected the demand as "unacceptable and illegal". The refusal of Hamas to acknowledge the PLO's supremacy was among the main factors behind the refusal of other Palestinian factions -- such as Fatah and the PFLP -- to join a Hamas-led coalition government after nearly two months of negotiations. On Tuesday, Hamas blamed the U.S. for its inability to garner broader support.

Hamas members say they do not intend to wait before presenting their new government, despite PLO objections to some of the Islamic group's basic government principles. "The significance is that the PA is nearing a political and legal crisis between the presidential institution and the executive committee, and the prime minister and the parliament. This will create deadlock and could lead to the eventual dismantlement of the government by the PA chairman," a senior Palestinian sources told Israeli press.