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In this mailing:
by Khaled Abu Toameh
• March 21, 2016 at 5:00 am
- For Abbas,
security coordination with Israel is indeed "sacred": it
keeps him in power and stops Hamas from taking over the West Bank.
- Abbas cannot tell
his people that security coordination with Israel is keeping him on
the throne. That is a topic for Israeli ears only.
- So what are the
threats to end security cooperation about? Money. Here is Abbas's
take-home to the world: "Send more money or we will cut off
security cooperation with Israel."
- Halting
security coordination with Israel would spell both his end and that
of the PA in the West Bank. The international community is simply
hearing a new version of the old bid for yet more political
concessions and yet more cash.
Abbas to the world: "Send more money or we will
cut off security cooperation with Israel."
Left: Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with French President
François Hollande. Right: Abbas with top European Union officials
Federica Mogherini and Jean-Claude Juncker.
The Palestinian Authority's endless threats to suspend security
coordination with Israel are a carefully crafted bluff designed to extort
more funds from Western donors, scare the Israeli public and provide a
cover for its refusal to talk peace with Israel.
Many Palestinians say these threats are also intended for
"internal consumption" -- namely to appease Hamas and other
radical factions and to refute charges that the Palestinian Authority
(PA) is betraying its people by "collaborating" with Israel.
Hamas has conditioned "reconciliation" with President
Mahmoud Abbas's ruling Fatah faction in the West Bank on Fatah ending all
forms of security coordination with Israel. Hamas clams that the security
coordination is directed mostly against its members and supporters in the
West Bank.
Cuba and
Obama's 'Axis of Evil'
America
Rescues Dying Dictatorships Which Then Try to Destroy It
by A.J. Caschetta
• March 21, 2016 at 4:00 am
- Just as the
Soviet Union did not subsidize Castro's tyranny for the good cigars,
so too Iran and North Korea are less interested in old weapons and
luxury goods than in the one thing Cuba has always offered to
America's enemies -- physical proximity. The USSR used Cuba as a
forward operating base in the Cold War. Why would Iran and North
Korea not do the same?
- Iranian and
North Korean scientists have been openly cooperating on so many
projects that Iran, if it is not already doing so, will likely evade
IAEA inspections by testing its weapons in North Korea.
- A medium range
missile fired from Cuba could reach most of the US. Cuba would also
be a good launch point for an EMP attack on the US.
- Obama's
diplomatic engagement with Cuba's octogenarian dictators will ensure
that the island prison stays in business. Like Iran, Cuba has been
flaunting its tyranny since Obama's outreach, with 8,616 political
arrests in 2015.
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuban
dictator Raúl Castro during the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, on
April 11, 2015. (Image source: White House/Pete Souza)
When George W. Bush used the term "axis of evil" to
describe Iran, Iraq and North Korea in his 2002 State of the Union speech
he was derided from all sides. Post-modernists and others among whom
ideas of good and evil are quaint but obsolete, sneered that Bush was a
simplistic thinker. Others, who agreed that threats to their existence
might be evil, seemed less troubled by the ethics than by the accuracy of
the term "axis."
Bush, by linking these three nations, was accused of
misunderstanding that members of an axis work together. As Iraq and Iran
were mortal enemies, so went the argument, there was no evidence of cooperation.
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