From VOA:
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has brokered a broad agreement between Israel and the Palestinians on operating Gaza Strip border crossings. The deal, announced Tuesday, after marathon negotiations, would re-open the critical Rafah crossing - Gaza's international outlet for Palestinian trade and travel.The Bush administration badly wanted the borders agreement to restore momentum in Middle East peace efforts that stalled amid violence after Israel's Gaza withdrawal in September.
Intent on keeping pressure on the parties, Ms. Rice postponed a scheduled Monday departure for South Korea and the Pacific region APEC economic summit to shepherd the talks.
She remained at her Jerusalem hotel, meeting alternately through the night and into Tuesday morning with Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams, while State Department aides constantly amended the draft agreement on a laptop computer.
Ms. Rice announced the completed agreement at a news briefing before leaving for Asia, saying the accord will give Palestinians control of their borders that they want and Israel that security it requires:
"It is a major step forward for the Palestinian people, in their own movement toward independence in this region, and that is that they have control on one side, the Egyptians on the other," she said. "It's an international border. It will need a third party and obviously nobody wants to have this to be a border that is unsafe, and so I expect that everybody will cooperate as much as they possibly can."
Israel retained control over the Gaza Strip's borders and air space after it removed settlements and troops from the coastal area. It closed down the Rafah border crossing at the time of the disengagement, concerned about lax security there by Palestinian police .
Under the accord, Israel would not have its own security presence at Rafah, which is to re-open by the end of the month. But new monitoring equipment would be installed, giving Israel real-time information on checkpoint activity. Palestinian and Egyptian border agents at Rafah would be augmented by European Union security personnel...
Again, the "Palestinians" get something for nothing. Wow, what a deal! And EU "security personnel" to protect the border. And Israel gets. . .another headache.
You know, its almost inevitable that some future terrorist action will be traced to this agreement, this has been the history of such actions. It seems that the Israelis have to prove their bonafides with the blood of their citizens.
It is breathtakng how quickly the Quartet -- led by Rice and Bush -- have moved to bisect Israel following the Gaza withdrawal. The word "contiguous" does not appear in the Roadmap, yet it is clear that the transportation links now being carved between Gaza and the West Bank are destined to become sovereign Palestinian arteries across the Israeli heartland.
I note that the deal on the crossings precludes Israel from having "veto power" over who may enter Gaza or travel to the West Bank. Once the new terrorist state of Hamastan is born, any defensive action taken by Israel to protect against the entry of known terrorists, weapons smuggling or even attacks directed from these land bridges will be considered an act of war by Israel against another UN member state and subject to all associated sanctions.
Under American pressure, Israel is committing slow suicide.
Rice and the Washington beltway (Foggy Bottom) not reading its marching orders correctly in this war against Muslim incursion.
Why appease Old Europe - like Jimmy Carter, it is lost and is only deadweight in the fight.
Zarquawi is a palestinean who grew up on welfare and is the norm for radical Muslim terrorism.
I always thought that Rice was a little naive, that showed very little grasp of ME affairs. Now this is just plainly ridiculous. How in the world can Israel trust the border security to European monitors? My jaw is on the floor. I can already smell corruption. It won't take long before you start hearing stories of Pallys buying off border guards with drug money.
Israel, it seems, is now following the American model of "outsourcing" it's own security. First the Bush administration outsources the US border control to Vincente Fox. Then it follows this spectacular success by outsourcing the Iranian nuclear program to the EU. Now along comes the US Secretary of State, whose knowledge of Middle Eastern realities is somewhat closer to the school of thought inhabited by the likes of Juan Cole, to pressure Israel to give control over it's borders to the EU. The EU, of course, still recognizes the legitimacy of Hamas, so we can all look forward to the murder of many more Israelis. Judged by that standard, of course, the Secretary of State visit is a success.
By going along, Israel has no one to blame but herself.
Kim:
Don't you think that's just a tad over the line? It's hardly been by free choice, but rather by years of constant, heavy pressure by the EU, UN and US that Israel is agreeing to this and other "concessions" to Palestinian statehood. Do you really think you would be able to do any better than Sharon has done?
It is extremely disturbing how it is expected of Israelis to treat the Muslims better than they treat themselves.
What other Middle Eastern country allows Muslim women to vote?
What other Middle Eastern country has sunni arabs, shia arabs, AND Christians Arabs and protects all three? (Sunni kill Shia in Iraq, Muslims killing Christians in Indonesia, Syrian Sunni killing everyone in Lebanon, ect...)
What other Middle Eastern country provides medical care, free, to Muslims?
What other Middle Eastern country has members of Muslim minority sects in the government?
What other Middle Eastern country has both Arabs and Blacks without the Arabs commiting genocide against the Blacks? (All of Africa, especially Darfur)
Well, the world has been plotting to destroy Israel for the last 3000 years. The roadmap to peace, the Gaza pullout, the Gaza elections mean nothing to these Islamofacist and nothing to the EU. They will not rest until every last Jew has been murdered or enslaved.
The way they use their own children as bombers, the way they kill other muslims for speaking out, you can see it in their eyes. They don't care for equality and they don't care about their living conditions and they don't care about other people, they seethe in hate and all they care about is murder and their genocidal war against Jews. And it does not stop there.
What, Europe, did you think you were immune? Christianity has its roots in Judaism. In the eyes of Islamofacists, that makes all of Europe Jews. Christianity even claims to be a continuation of Israel of the old testament. That makes you Jewish, me Jewish, the pope Jewish, little Christian girls in Indonesia Jewish, Australians Jewish, British Jewish, French Jewish, Russians Jewish, Spanish Jewish, Germans Jewish. (The irony. The "aryan race" will soon be exterminated for being "Jewish".) WAKE UP, STUPID WORLD! See Islamofascism as it truly is.
In The New Duranty Times today, a telling picture of Rice, over her head and out of her depth, next to someone else who, when it comes to Islam, though an establishment-alpha-male, is in over his head, out of his depth: James Baker, whose own appeasement of the Saudis over many decades, and his own dislike of Israel (since he wrote his undergraduate thesis on Princeton, decrying the existence of the state, and its recognition by the United States), will keep historians busy, if there is a future with real historians, for quite a while.
That future "While America Slept" will have a chapter on James Baker, and another one on Condoleeza Rice. Visitors here may offer up other names of those who deserve not mere passing mention, but whole chapters. Would you, for example, want Raymond Close or James Akins to have individual chapters devoted to them, because they are in some sense representative of groups larger than themselves?
What about assorted Saudi-financed academics? Where would you draw the line, if the apologetics have not been too extreme or too obvious? Would those who have directly or indirectly received Arab financing, whether it is the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown, or the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ditto) each be given a chapter, or just put into one devoted to Saudi and Arab influence on academic centers, and if so, should such a chapter also include those outside such centers who are King Abdul Aziz professors of this or that, such as the lone "Custodianof the of the Two Holy Places" professors of Islamic Law (Frank Vogel comes to mind) who may make sure that the study at certain law schools, of that "Islamic law," will be so tied up in minutiae, with little mention of Joseph Schacht, or of Snouck Hurgronje (who they?) and of course none whatsoever of Majid Khadduri on Islamic treaty-making with Infidels, or Antoine Fattal on the legal status of non-Muslims in Islam-dominated countries, so as to ensure that the poor students never learn anything that might conceivably be of importance to Infidels in judging Islam.
And today storms rip through the middle of the USA???????
http://www.beecy.net/frank/
Just a reminder??
http://www.robesus.com/usanthem.html
Oh, say can you see, by the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming?
Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight,
O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, now conceals, now discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning's first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines on the stream:
'Tis the star-spangled banner! O long may it wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle's confusion
A home and a country should leave us no more?
Their blood has wiped out their foul footstep's pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heaven-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
YES THIS IS WHAT AMERICA IS MADE OF!!
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE TO DESTROY ALL ISLAMIC TERRORIST AND ALL WHO SUPPORT THEM OPEN THE WORLDS EYES TO THEIR THREAT LET NOT THE WORLD BE DECEIVED BY THEM AMEN
PS
More islamic terrorist dead today!!!