Palestinians exit Friday prayers and enter mass detentions

June 16, 2007

by TRP Hebron, 16 June 2007

At 1:00pm near the Ibrahimi Mosque three international human rights workers were waiting, with members of Christain Peacemaker Teams, for Palestinains to leave the Mosque following Friday prayers.

Soldiers had been randomly taking Palestinian IDs (huwwiyas) of the young men as they entered the Mosque, and had large stacks of them. Palestinians were only allowed to worship inside the Mosque after giving their identity cards to the soldiers.

At 1:00-1:15pm, the prayers ended and the Palestinians began to leave the Mosque. About 160-180 young to middle age Palestinian men then began to wait for their huwwiyas to be returned next to the Mosque.

At first the soldiers gave back about 40 huwwiyas, at the checkpoint on Shuhada St., and then the soldiers just stopped. About 25-30 young men then had to wait for about another 45 minutes before a soldier commander came and gave back the rest of the IDs.

Another group of Palestinian men were detained for 1 hour, after worshipping peacefully in the Mosque, and were released at about 2:15.

The Palestinians next to the Mosque were still being detained after the young men around the corner had been released. The police present gave back the huwwiyas of about 40 Palestinian men, and then made the rest wait. There were about 60 Palestinian men forced to wait, and were sitting in the shade, or next to the guard rails at the metal detectors.

A human rights defender intervened in this incident and asked the soldier present why he did not check the huwwiyas while the men were praying so they would not have to wait. The soldier said they like to wait until afterwards.

The human rights defender also asked why the men were being detained and how long they would have to wait. The soldiers said that these were their orders, and they would have to wait because the computer at the station, meant to check the numbers and names on the IDs, was broken.

These 60 Palestinians were forced to wait for 2 full hours, 3:00-3:15, before the Red Cross, whom internationals had called, managed to get all the Palestinians released except for one 21 year old boy.

Afterward, the police detained more men who were passing randomly, and members of CPT stayed in order to monitor the area.

Hamas: Any foreign force entering Gaza will be regarded an occupation force

June 14, 2007

GAZA, (PIC)-- In a press release on Thursday, Hamas totally rejected the idea of allowing any foreign troops into the Gaza Strip, regardless of their nationality, confirming that Hamas "will consider them as occupation forces."

"The repeated statements about deployment of international forces in the Gaza Strip, the latest of which were (EU foreign relations coordinator) Javier Solana's statements, are unacceptable, and any foreign forces regardless of their nationality being admitted into the Strip will be regarded as occupation forces," Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas leader stated.

He affirmed that the goal of sending such foreign troops into the Strip is only to eliminate the Palestinian resistance and to serve the Zionist occupation, considering it a "blatant foreign interference in favor of a Palestinian party against another."

Solana had called in press statements for dispatching international forces to Gaza to stop the internal fighting and to stop the rockets fired by Palestinian factions at the Zionist settlements.


A Hamas resistance fighter fires an RPG at the headquarters of Fatah’s Preventive Security Service in Gaza.Mohammed Saber/European Pressphoto Agency

'Divide and Conquer'

Further reading from Israeli News:

U.S. official says emergency PA gov't will have 'full support'

PM expected to leave for US talks

Hamas hints at talks as chaos reigns in divided Palestine

Fatah fighters turn screws on Hamas

Young boys serve tea to Hamas fighters while on patrol in Gaza City.

15 June 2007

Gaza: Fatah fighters loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas retaliated against Hamas in the West Bank, shooting and wounding three Hamas men near Ramallah, seizing Hamas gunmen in the towns of Jenin and in Nablus, where they also stormed a Hamas office and hurled its computers out the window.

Palestinian security forces allied with Fatah arrested three dozen Hamas activists in the West Bank.

Also, Fatah gunmen shot and wounded three Hamas activists after kidnapping them. One of the wounded was identified as a Hamas member of Ramallah's municipal council and a second as a Hamas preacher from a nearby village.

Fatah leaders said a decision was made by security commanders to crack down on Hamas in the West Bank, to prevent it from taking any positions in that territory, a Fatah stronghold.

Arrests

Arrests of Hamas activists were reported in the West Bank towns of Jenin, Nablus, Jericho, Ramallah and Bethlehem.

Members of President Mahmoud Abbas' security forces arrest Saleh Frehat, an Islamic court judge affiliated with Hamas, at his home in the West Bank village of Al Yamoon near Jenin.

In Bethlehem, security forces wore ski masks, to avoid being identified, as they seized Hamas activists in their homes and businesses, witnesses said.

In Nablus, masked security agents and Fatah gunmen rode together in cars, searching for Hamas members, and broke into several homes of Hamas activists. In one area, a brief firefight erupted.

In Gaza, watching Hamas gunmen celebrating their capture of a key security compound, Palestinians in the battle zone voiced fears of deepening economic hardship in a territory run by the Islamist group.

"I think Gaza will be sealed off and isolated from the rest of the world. We have been suffering and now will suffer more," said Gaza City resident Hussam Ahmad, 36.

The Gaza Strip's 1.5 million inhabitants are no strangers to poverty. But their economic plight has worsened under Western sanctions and frequent Israeli closings of a border commercial crossing since Hamas came to power in an election last year.

Calling a Hamas-controlled Gaza a "dangerous entity", Amos Gilad, a senior Israeli defence official, said the territory should be denied foreign monetary aid so it "cannot stand on its feet".

Israel lets in food and other humanitarian aid but, in common with Western powers, has tried to choke Hamas and favours Fatah, whose power base is the bigger and wealthier West Bank.

A Hamas supporter in Gaza, who gave his name only as Ali, said he was not frightened by the prospect of more hardship.

"What else could happen to us? The world has never recognised Hamas, anyway, and has imposed sanctions," he said.

"Gaza is going to become a safer place for Muslims after the defeat of the collaborators. Threats don't scare us."

Standing outside his Gaza home, an elderly Palestinian said Israel was the real power in the conflict. He spoke as the sound of Israeli helicopters, on an apparent reconnaissance mission, clattered over the nearby security compound.

"It is a game between Hamas, Fatah and Israel," the man said. "The cat eats the rat, and the dog eats the cat that ate the rat."

Hamas pledges to free kidnapped BBC man

A recent but undated file photo shows British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) correspondent Alan Johnston in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has started taking "practical steps" to bring about Johnston's release a day after the Islamist movement seized the Gaza Strip, according to the group's armed wing.(AFP/File/Mahmud Hams)

16 June 2007

by Sakher Abu El Oun

GAZA CITY (AFP) - Hamas has pledged in the wake of its bloody seizure of the Gaza Strip to work free BBC reporter Alan Johnston, snatched by gunmen more than three months ago in the volatile territory.

"We have started taking practical steps to release Alan Johnston," the Islamic movement's armed wing said in a statement to AFP late Friday, without giving further details.

Sacked prime minister Ismail Haniya echoed the sentiment, saying in an interview that the military takeover of Gaza by Hamas was good news for the journalist, by far the longest-detained Westerner in the territory.

"From now on there will be one legitimate armed force. We will bring discipline and law to Gaza. It will thus be easier to gain the liberation of the British journalist Alan Johnston. His kidnappers will listen to us more closely," he said in an interview with France's Le Figaro newspaper.

Johnston, one of the few Western reporters to be permanently based in Gaza, was seized by gunmen from his car as he drove home from work on March 12 in Gaza City. He has now been held for 96 days.

The shadowy Army of Islam has claimed to be holding the veteran newsman and has demanded the release of Islamic militants, particularly Palestinian-born cleric Abu Qatada who is detained in Britain.

Hamas had announced that it was cutting all ties with the Army of Islam after it claimed the abduction. Hamas officials, including Haniya, had repeatedly called for Johnston to be released.

On June 1 the Army of Islam released the first video of Johnston since he was abducted, in which the 45-year-old said he was in good health and being well treated.

"First of all, my captors have treated me very well. They've fed me well, there's been no violence towards me at all and I'm in good health," said a pale Johnston, wearing a red sweatshirt and seated in front of a black backdrop.

There was no indication as to when the Internet video was made, but Johnston at one point referred to "here in Gaza" and its release sparked a new flurry of international calls for his freedom.

The prize-winning British journalist, who has marked his 45th birthday in captivity, spoke of Palestinian suffering as well as the situations in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a message to his family was cut.

"In three years here in the Palestinian territories, I witnessed the huge suffering of the Palestinian people and my message is that this suffering is continuing and it is unacceptable," said Johnston.

Johnston's plight has sparked solidarity rallies and messages of support from all over the world and an online petition calling for his release has been signed by more than 130,000 people.

Abu Qatada, once described by a Spanish judge as Al-Qaeda's "spiritual head" in Europe, was arrested in Britain in August 2005 as part of a crackdown on Islamist extremism after 56 people were killed in London suicide bombings.

Tel Aviv fountains painted red to protest killing of Palestinians

June 11th, 2007

by Moran Rada

Anarchists add red paint to water in two central fountains, say paint represents blood of Palestinians killed and injured by IDF in territories



Fountain in Dizzengof Square


Anarchist activists sprayed red paint on walls across Tel Aviv Sunday night and added red paint to the water in several fountains, as an act of protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories.

IDF offices in Tel Aviv were “bombarded” during the night with red paint bombs, and the water in the fountains in Masaryk Square and Dizzengof Square were painted red.


IDF offices

According to the anarchists, the paint represents “the blood of the thousands who were killed and the tens of thousands who were injured throughout the long years of occupation, and was meant to illustrate the scope of the killing that is being carried out by the occupation army only several dozen miles away from Tel Aviv.”

In a pamphlet distributed by the activists, they wrote, “We believe that after 40 years of murderous occupation, the Tel Aviv public no longer has the right to enjoy decorative displays while ignoring the crimes that are being committed in its name in the occupied territories on a daily basis.”

They invited the residents of Tel Aviv to dip their hands in the reddened water and “realize that these hands, which appear clean, are also stained with the blood of the occupied and the oppressed.”

Masaryk Square fountain

The Tel Aviv municipality said in response, “We don’t know who is behind these acts, but the responsibility and authority to handle vandals lies in the hands of the police.

“Regarding the fountains that were painted red, the filters should filter out the paint within 24 hours.’

ISM

The Price of Collaboration

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh waves to the crowd at a rally by the group in Gaza City, Friday, June 15, 2007. The Palestinian territories have essentially been split into two parts. Gaza is now under the control of Hamas, an Islamist movement with close ties to Syria and Iran. The West Bank, home to most of the Palestinian population, is dominated by the more moderate Fatah, which has ties to Israel and the West. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

A Palestinian resistance from Hamas stands over pictures of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the late Yasser Arafat inside Abbas' personal office after it was taken over by Hamas in fighting in Gaza City, early Friday, June 15, 2007. Fatah forces collapsed under the onslaught by Hamas, which showed superior organization and motivation. (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

Hamas fighters pose in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' personal office after they captured it in Gaza June 15, 2007. (Suhaib Salem/Reuters)

Editorial

15 June 2007

by Housewife4Palestine

I had written some time back that when it came foreword that Abbas with Fatah began to collaborate with the enemy their day would come, and while I did appeal for this to stop and for Fatah to look at the bigger picture; it seems they went on with their demise.

If you collaborate with the enemy, it has always been a great price and these same people have a reserved seat in hell.

Abbas looks like he is running scared because his backer’s Israel and the United States while they say they support him in this suicide, I seriously doubt they will come to his aid anymore then those before him.

Remember, the United States idea of support if you have been a collaborator for them, is the end of a rope. I did notice recently, the United States is planning to send more money to Abbas, which looks like more dirt, for the only people Abbas has ever helped is his own agenda.

I will admit, I was in distaste of the recent deaths of some activist for I do not know the body count at this time; which to me should not have happened, and I will admit I voiced my outrage over this recent advent for it to cease. For one thing you never do, shed innocent blood.

One thing, I am noticing is Israel and the United States seems to be hopping over this recent development in Gaza; I am wondering if it has taken a little wind out of their sail’s towards the continued murder’s and theft of the whole populace of Palestinians. Only time will tell.

Hamas seizes second Fatah base

Smoke rises over Gaza today.

June 14, 2007

GAZA CITY (CNN) -- As Hamas fighters continue to seize control of key Fatah security installations across Gaza, a Hamas representative Thursday told CNN that the group's goal is not to take control of the Palestinian territory but to control rogue Fatah forces in Gaza. (Watch: Hamas spokesman Osama Hamdan speaks to CNN )

The escalating violence has prompted the European Union to suspend humanitarian aid to the region and could result in a dissolution of the Hamas-led Palestinian unity government.

Hamas forces Thursday overtook the Preventive Security headquarters in Gaza City, hoisting the green Hamas flag atop the building that was once under the control of Fatah.

Hamas fighters captured the second of four major Fatah command centers in Gaza City on Thursday afternoon, planting the Islamic group's green flag on the roof of the intelligence services building and growing nearer to a complete conquest of the Gaza Strip, an Associated Press report said.

Earlier in the day, Hamas overran the Preventive Security building, and witnesses, a doctor and Fatah officials said several vanquished Fatah fighters were shot in the head gangland-style, the report added.

Video shown on Hamas' al-Aqsa TV showed a group of shirtless men with their hands in the air being marched down a Gaza City street at gunpoint -- one man wearing only his underwear.

Unconfirmed reports from Fatah officials that some of the men, who are aligned with Fatah, were executed in street outside the Preventive Security headquarters, were denied by a Hamas representative who spoke to CNN from Beirut.

The Associated Press also reported that an explosion rocked Gaza City on Thursday afternoon.

Plumes of white smoke rose from the direction of a security post. Fatah security officials said forces positioned at the post redeployed elsewhere, and blew it up as they left rather than let Hamas take it over. Hamas forces already control areas north and south of Gaza's largest city and are working to remove the remaining Fatah strongholds in the area.

Hamas takeover

A day after it established a military zone in northern Gaza, Hamas took control of the southern Gaza town of Rafah on Wednesday which lies near a key border crossing with Egypt, Palestinian security sources told CNN on Thursday.

The Rafah crossing, which has been closed since Saturday, is jointly monitored by Israel via closed circuit TV, Palestinian Fatah forces, and European Union monitors. Following the border's closing, the EU monitors relocated to the Israeli city of Ashkelon, a spokeswoman told CNN.

After Hamas won control of the Palestinian government during legislative elections last year, the former ruling Fatah party continued to control of security forces in Gaza. Sharing that control under the Hamas-Fatah unity government formed earlier this year has been a major stumbling block.

Now that unity government may be dissolved under a proposal being considered by Fatah leader and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, according to a source close to Abbas.

Abbas is scheduled to announce his intentions in a public statement later on Thursday, Fatah sources told CNN. (Read: Officials say infighting will cause chaos)

Fatah's Central Committee voted Tuesday night to suspend its participation in the Hamas-led unity government if the fighting continues.

The unity government was an attempt to stop previous fighting in Gaza, as well as to restart international funding -- particularly from the United States and the EU -- that was cut off after Hamas took power last year.

Osama Hamdan, Hamas' representative in Lebanon, told CNN that the current conflict is not "between Hamas and Fatah or even a problem with Abu Mazen (Abbas)."

"The problem was with some officers in the (Fatah-controlled) security forces who were against the law, and they worked hard to undermine the security plan and the national unity government."

Hamdan said the rogue elements targeted by Hamas have been free to create their own fiefdoms in Gaza under the previous Fatah leaders.

"We want the security forces to be under the law, not to create their own laws, as what was happening in the past 10 years," he said.

Hamdan said Hamas acted because no one in Fatah -- not even Abbas -- has control of the lawless forces.

"Someone has to control the situation and bring them to the law," he said.

Hamdan denied reports that his forces are executing members of Fatah in the streets of Gaza.

"That happened to our members on the hands of some well-known officers," he said. "I believe they are trying to blame us by the things which they have done."

Suspension of aid

The European Commission, which is the executive branch of the EU, announced Thursday that it is suspending $112 million in aid for the Palestinian territories as a result of the escalating violence.

In addition, the EC announced it has suspended all 16 of its relief projects in Gaza for the first time, due to the lack of security.

Louis Michel, the European Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian Aid, said he hoped the projects "can resume very soon."

On Wednesday, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) also suspended many of its operations in Gaza after two of its Palestinian staff members were killed in the fighting.
Hamas overran Fatah positions in northern Gaza on Tuesday and declared all villages and towns north of Gaza City -- including Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahiya and the Jabaliya refugee camp -- a closed military area

Hamas militants are demanding residents in the area hand over their weapons to Hamas by 7 p.m. Friday (noon ET/1600 GMT).

At least 70 Palestinians have been killed since the Palestinian-on-Palestinian violence escalated four days ago.

Israel has expressed concern about the possibility that Gaza could be solely controlled by Hamas.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Tuesday if Hamas gains control of Gaza it would have "regional implications" and he called for an international force to patrol the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent Hamas radicals from importing new and more powerful weapons into Gaza.

Peres elected Israel's president

Shimon Peres was elected Wednesday to the ceremonial presidential post in Israel.

June 13, 2007

JERUSALEM (AP) -- Elder statesman Shimon Peres was elected Israel's ninth president Wednesday, capping a campaign to extend his six-decade political career,the parliament speaker said.

Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner of the ruling Kadima Party, won the support of 86 of parliament's 120 members in a second round of voting in which he stood alone, parliament speaker Dalia Itzik said. His two rivals, Reuven Rivlin of the hawkish Likud and Colette Avital of the centrist Labor, withdrew from the race after he seized a commanding lead in the first round.

Peres, 83, who has held all of Israel's top civilian posts, will be sworn in July 15 for a seven-year term.

In a speech to lawmakers following his victory, Peres said he saw his new role as a unifier of Israel's fractured society.

"The president's role is not to deal with politics and partisanship, but to represent what unites us in a strong voice," he said.

Peres had been seen as a shoo-in to win the post in 2000 -- only to lose to the now-disgraced Moshe Katsav, a political backbencher with the blessing of a prominent rabbi.

The office of president, conceived as a ceremonial post held by a prominent statesman or thinker, has been tainted by allegations that Katsav raped or otherwise sexually assaulted four women employees. Katsav has not been formally charged, pending a final hearing before Israel's attorney general, but has stepped down temporarily to fight the allegations.

Israelis hope that Peres, with his international stature, will be able to restore the stature of the position.

Speaking at parliament ahead of the vote, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Kadima said "the history, actions and contributions of Shimon Peres to the State of Israel" made him "a model" for the ideal presidential candidate.

A top aide to Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, Peres was elected to parliament in 1959, then held a series of top posts, including the premiership, as well as minister of defense, finance and foreign affairs.

But he was never elected prime minister outright, serving once in a caretaker role in the 1970s, and once in the 1980s under a rotation agreement with political opponent Yitzhak Shamir after a general election failed to produce a clear winner. He served as premier again in the 1990s after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish extremist.

Age has not been a negative factor in the race, and if anything, Peres is widely seen as having the gravitas the position demands.

The vote for president came after former Prime Minister Ehud Barak won the leadership of the Labor Party in a dramatic political comeback. Tossed out of office six years ago in a humiliating election defeat, Barak beat former navy commander Ami Ayalon by more than 3 percentage points, party officials said Wednesday. (Full story)

Barak now begins the race for the real prize -- a return to the nation's top job, which he held for less than two years. But he is expected to bide his time, first remaining in Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's coalition government to burnish his leadership credentials.

Crime Against Humanity

14 Apr 2003

by John Pilger

They have blown off the limbs of women and the scalps of children. Their victims overwhelm the morgues and flood into hospitals that lack even aspirin.

A BBC television producer, moments before he was wounded by an American fighter aircraft that killed 18 people with "friendly fire", spoke to his mother on a satellite phone. Holding the phone over his head so that she could hear the sound of the American planes overhead, he said: "Listen, that's the sound of freedom."

Did I read this scene in Catch-22? Surely, the BBC man was being ferociously ironic. I doubt it, just as I doubt that whoever designed the Observer's page three last Sunday had Joseph Heller in mind when he wrote the weasel headline: "The moment young Omar discovered the price of war".

These cowardly words accompanied a photograph of an American marine reaching out to comfort 15-year-old Omar, having just participated in the mass murder of his father, mother, two sisters and brother during the unprovoked invasion of their homeland, in breach of the most basic law of civilised peoples.

No true epitaph for them in Britain's famous liberal newspaper; no honest headline, such as: "This American marine murdered this boy's family". No photograph of Omar's father, mother, sisters and brother dismembered and blood-soaked by automatic fire. Versions of the Observer's propaganda picture have been appearing in the Anglo-American press since the invasion began: tender cameos of American troops reaching out, kneeling, ministering to their "liberated" victims.

And where were the pictures from the village of Furat, where 80 men, women and children were rocketed to death? Apart from the Mirror, where were the pictures, and footage, of small children holding up their hands in terror while Bush's thugs forced their families to kneel in the street? Imagine that in a British high street. It is a glimpse of fascism, and we have a right to see it.

"To initiate a war of aggression," said the judges in the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, "is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." In stating this guiding principle of international law, the judges specifically rejected German arguments of the "necessity" for pre-emptive attacks against other countries.

Nothing Bush and Blair, their cluster-bombing boys and their media court do now will change the truth of their great crime in Iraq. It is a matter of record, understood by the majority of humanity, if not by those who claim to speak for "us". As Denis Halliday said of the Anglo-American embargo against Iraq, it will "slaughter them in the history books". It was Halliday who, as assistant secretary general of the United Nations, set up the "oil for food" programme in Iraq in 1996 and quickly realised that the UN had become an instrument of "a genocidal attack on a whole society". He resigned in protest, as did his successor, Hans von Sponeck, who described "the wanton and shaming punishment of a nation".

I have mentioned these two men often in these pages, partly because their names and their witness have been airbrushed from most of the media. I well remember Jeremy Paxman bellowing at Halliday on Newsnight shortly after his resignation: "So are you an apologist for Saddam Hussein?" That helped set the tone for the travesty of journalism that now daily, almost gleefully, treats criminal war as sport. In a leaked e-mail Roger Mosey, the head of BBC Television News, described the BBC's war coverage as "extraordinary - it almost feels like World Cup football when you go from Um Qasr to another theatre of war somewhere else and you're switching between battles".

He is talking about murder. That is what the Americans do, and no one will say so, even when they are murdering journalists. They bring to this one-sided attack on a weak and mostly defenceless people the same racist, homicidal intent I witnessed in Vietnam, where they had a whole programme of murder called Operation Phoenix. This runs through all their foreign wars, as it does through their own divided society. Take your pick of the current onslaught. Last weekend, a column of their tanks swept heroically into Baghdad and out again. They murdered people along the way. They blew off the limbs of women and the scalps of children. Hear their voices on the unedited and unbroadcast videotape: "We shot the shit out of it." Their victims overwhelm the morgues and hospitals - hospitals already denuded of drugs and painkillers by America's deliberate withholding of $5.4bn in humanitarian goods, approved by the Security Council and paid for by Iraq. The screams of children undergoing amputation with minimal anaesthetic qualify as the BBC man's "sound of freedom".

Heller would appreciate the sideshows. Take the British helicopter pilot who came to blows with an American who had almost shot him down. "Don't you know the Iraqis don't have a fucking air force?" he shouted. Did this pilot reflect on the truth he had uttered, on the whole craven enterprise against a stricken third world country and his own part in this crime? I doubt it. The British have been the most skilled at delusion and lying. By any standard, the Iraqi resistance to the high-tech Anglo-American machine was heroic. With ancient tanks and mortars, small arms and desperate ambushes, they panicked the Americans and reduced the British military class to one of its specialities - mendacious condescension.

The Iraqis who fight are "terrorists", "hoodlums", "pockets of Ba'ath Party loyalists", "kamikaze" and "feds" (fedayeen). They are not real people: cultured and cultivated people. They are Arabs. This vocabulary of dishonour has been faithfully parroted by those enjoying it all from the broadcasting box. "What do you make of Basra?" asked the Today programme's presenter of a former general embedded in the studio. "It's hugely encouraging, isn't it?" he replied. Their mutual excitement, like their plummy voices, are their bond.

On the same day, in a Guardian letter, Tim Llewellyn, a former BBC Middle East correspondent, pointed us to evidence of this "hugely encouraging" truth - fleeting pictures on Sky News of British soldiers smashing their way into a family home in Basra, pointing their guns at a woman and manhandling, hooding and manacling young men, one of whom was shown quivering with terror. "Is Britain 'liberating' Basra by taking political prisoners and, if so, based on what sort of intelligence, given Britain's long unfamiliarity with this territory and its inhabitants . . . The least this ugly display will do is remind Arabs and Muslims everywhere of our Anglo-Saxon double standards - we can show your prisoners in . . . degrading positions, but don't you dare show ours."

Roger Mosey says the suffering of Um Qasr is "like World Cup football". There are 40,000 people in Um Qasr; desperate refugees are streaming in and the hospitals are overflowing. All this misery is due entirely to the "coalition" invasion and the British siege, which forced the United Nations to withdraw its humanitarian aid staff. Cafod, the Catholic relief agency, which has sent a team to Um Qasr, says the standard humanitarian quota for water in emergency situations is 20 litres per person per day. Cafod reports hospitals entirely without water and people drinking from contaminated wells. According to the World Health Organisation, 1.5 million people across southern Iraq are without water, and epidemics are inevitable. And what are "our boys" doing to alleviate this, apart from staging childish, theatrical occupations of presidential palaces, having fired shoulder-held missiles into a civilian city and dropped cluster bombs?

A British colonel laments to his "embedded" flock that "it is difficult to deliver aid in an area that is still an active battle zone". The logic of his own words mocks him. If Iraq was not a battle zone, if the British and the Americans were not defying international law, there would be no difficulty in delivering aid.

There is something especially disgusting about the lurid propaganda coming from these PR-trained British officers, who have not a clue about Iraq and its people. They describe the liberation they are bringing from "the world's worst tyranny", as if anything, including death by cluster bomb or dysentery, is better than "life under Saddam". The inconvenient truth is that, according to Unicef, the Ba'athists built the most modern health service in the Middle East. No one disputes the grim, totalitarian nature of the regime; but Saddam Hussein was careful to use the oil wealth to create a modern secular society and a large and prosperous middle class. Iraq was the only Arab country with a 90 per cent clean water supply and with free education. All this was smashed by the Anglo-American embargo. When the embargo was imposed in 1990, the Iraqi civil service organised a food distribution system that the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation described as "a model of efficiency . . . undoubtedly saving Iraq from famine". That, too, was smashed when the invasion was launched.

Why are the British yet to explain why their troops have to put on protective suits to recover dead and wounded in vehicles hit by American "friendly fire"? The reason is that the Americans are using solid uranium coated on missiles and tank shells. When I was in southern Iraq, doctors estimated a sevenfold increase in cancers in areas where depleted uranium was used by the Americans and British in the 1991 war. Under the subsequent embargo, Iraq, unlike Kuwait, has been denied equipment with which to clean up its contaminated battlefields. The hospitals in Basra have wards overflowing with children with cancers of a variety not seen before 1991. They have no painkillers; they are fortunate if they have aspirin.

With honourable exceptions (Robert Fisk; al-Jazeera), little of this has been reported. Instead, the media have performed their preordained role as imperial America's "soft power": rarely identifying "our" crime, or misrepresenting it as a struggle between good intentions and evil incarnate. This abject professional and moral failure now beckons the unseen dangers of such an epic, false victory, inviting its repetition in Iran, Korea, Syria, Cuba, China.

George Bush has said: "It will be no defence to say: 'I was just following orders.'" He is correct. The Nuremberg judges left in no doubt the right of ordinary soldiers to follow their conscience in an illegal war of aggression. Two British soldiers have had the courage to seek status as conscientious objectors. They face court martial and imprisonment; yet virtually no questions have been asked about them in the media. George Galloway has been pilloried for asking the same question as Bush, and he and Tam Dalyell, Father of the House of Commons, are being threatened with withdrawal of the Labour whip.

Dalyell, 41 years a member of the Commons, has said the Prime Minister is a war criminal who should be sent to The Hague. This is not gratuitous; on the prima facie evidence, Blair is a war criminal, and all those who have been, in one form or another, accessories should be reported to the International Criminal Court. Not only did they promote a charade of pretexts few now take seriously, they brought terrorism and death to Iraq. A growing body of legal opinion around the world agrees that the new court has a duty, as Eric Herring of Bristol University wrote, to investigate "not only the regime, but also the UN bombing and sanctions which violated the human rights of Iraqis on a vast scale". Add the present piratical war, whose spectre is the uniting of Arab nationalism with militant Islam. The whirlwind sown by Blair and Bush is just beginning. Such is the magnitude of their crime.

John Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary filmmaker from Sydney, primarily based in London, England. His Web site is johnpilger.com. [Palestine Articles by John Pilger]

Writing Boards of the Quran

A Young man in Mauritania studies a portion of the Quran. Writing boards are used in regions where paper is scarce.

American opinions on Israel: The more things change ...

In Mid-East Conflicts, Americans Consistently Side with Israel (2006)

Compiled by Daily Star staff

June 02, 2007

Forty years after the 1967 war, substantially larger numbers of Americans have placed their primary sympathy with Israel rather than with Arab states or with the Palestinians, a US-based research center said in its latest survey. The war, which began with a massive Israeli air attack June 5, 1967, is described in the Arab world as "Al-Nakssa" or "the setback" after the devastating defeat of armies from Egypt, Jordan and Syria and the rise of Israel as the region's superpower.

During the war, Israel conquered the Sinai Peninsual, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. Israel handed Sinai back to Egypt as part of the Camp David peace treaty, but has retained the rest in defiance of a UN Security Council resolution adopted by the United States and other major powers in November 1967.

In its survey, the Pew Research Center showed that support for the Jewish state has been a near constant in American public opinion about the Middle East, beginning with Israel's creation as a state in 1948.

Pew said that a Gallup poll three days before the outbreak of the 1967 war found "45 percent of Americans sympathized more with Israel than with the Arab states, 4 percent sympathized more with the Arab states and 26 percent with neither. Another 24 percent had no opinion."

In a survey conducted on the eve of the 1973 war, figures remained almost unchanged with "45 percent [of Americans saying they] had more sympathy for Israel, 5 percent for the Arab states, 23 percent for neither."

Since then, pollsters have asked Americans the same question almost every year since then, PEW said. From late 1973 to the late 1980s US public support for Arab states increased, albeit modestly. "About 9 percent when Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Israel in 1977, rising to 13 percent in November 1978 following the signing of the Camp David Accords by Israel and Egypt in September of that year," PEW said.

Following Israel's 1978 invasion of South Lebanon, US public support for the Jewish state fell to 34 percent. Similarly, following Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon and the subsequent siege of Beirut, "the number of Americans who sympathized more with Israel or more with the Arab states was nearly equal: 32 percent sympathized more with Israel, 28 percent with Arab states. Another 21 percent sympathized with neither; 19 percent had no opinion," PEW said.

It has varied only modestly in surveys over the ensuing years, hitting a low point of 37 percent in July 2005, and rising somewhat by that October, after Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Sympathy again rebounded, to a recent high of 52 percent, during the Israel's summer 2006 war on Lebanon.

With regard to the Palestinians, American sympathy generally rises when relations between Israel and the Palestinians show signs of growing closer, PEW surveys have shown. And it falls when Americans feel threatened by the Arab or Muslim world.

In their opinions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Americans are distinctly different from people in other countries surveyed by Pew.

In the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes survey, support for Israel was higher in the United States than in any of the other 14 countries surveyed. In two European countries (Britain and Spain), more people sided with the Palestinians than with Israel. In the five Muslim countries surveyed, the Palestinians were favored by large majorities (59 percent in Pakistan, 63 percent in Turkey, 72 percent in Indonesia, 97 percent in Egypt and Jordan).

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, in an April telephone poll by Near East Consulting, most Palestinians (63 percent) said they supported a peace settlement with Israel, though the outlines of an agreement were not described. A smaller majority (57 percent) said Hamas should no longer call for the elimination of Israel. But support for a peaceful settlement and for a change in Hamas' policy was lower than in the year before.

In a 2007 Pew survey, Muslim-Americans said by a margin of nearly 4-1 (61percent-16 percent) that they believe a way can be found for Israel to exist so that the rights and needs of the Palestinians can be met. A survey conducted earlier this year in seven predominately Muslim countries surveyed earlier showed that roughly half or more of the Muslims interviewed said Palestinian rights could not be taken care of as long as Israel existed.

Further Reading:

The U.S. Public's Pro-Israel History

The 1967 war refugee crisis…

Discarded notes at a UN Relief and Works Agency (Unrwa) school in Rafah, Gaza. Unrwa administers more than 600 schools for Palestinian refugees [Unrwa archive]

Midi

In this first of a series of pictures from 1967, Palestinian refugees can be seen possibly at the West Bank village of Qalqilya. The Arab-Israeli war has, over the decades, left more than 800,000 Palestinians unable to return home [Unrwa archive]

Palestinian family crossing Allenby Bridge in 1967 or 1968. Refugees fled for several years after the six-day war [Unrwa archive]

Another family fleeing across Allenby Bridge in 1967. The sign behind reads: Jericho and Jerusalem [Unrwa archive]

Refugees in 1967 or 1968 on the Allenby Bridge. The bridge crosses the Jordan river, connecting Jericho in the West Bank to the Kingdom of Jordan [Unrwa archive]

Palestinians in the Jordan Valley. More than 90 per cent of those who left their homes in 1967 fled to the Kingdom of Jordan [Unrwa archive]


Emergency tented camps were set up in the Jordan Valley after the 1967 war [Unrwa archive]



Refugees from the West Bank were effectively Jordanian citizens and thus eligible for some form of state benefit. But those from Gaza, which had been under Egyptian control, did not get the same benefits. [Unrwa archive]

A "right of return" for refugees has been a major point of contention in Arab-Israeli negotiations, with Israel concerned that the influx of refugees would outnumber the Jewish population [Unrwa archive]


Refugee numbers have gradually increased as families grow but in Jordan, UN figures show only 18 per cent of all refugees registered with Unrwa remain in camps [Unrwa archive]


An elderly Palestinian woman with an unidentified soldier in 1967 or 1968. Compared with those who fled, life for Palestinians under occupation remains much more difficult [Unrwa archive]

ILO Warns of Financial and Economic Collapse in Palestine

GAZA, Palestine, June 3, 2007 (IPC) - - The International Labor Organization (ILO) described the situation of workers in the occupied territories as "financial and economic collapse" and noted that the rate of per capita's income decreased to 40% of what it was in 1999.

In its new report on the situation of workers in the occupied territories, ILO referred to the effects of the international embargo imposed on the Palestinian government led by Hamas and restrictions imposed by Israel.

The ILO pointed out in its report on the fortieth anniversary of the defeat of the Six Day War, the occupied Arab territories faced further deterioration in the "low living standards and high levels of poverty and unemployment as well as the growing social disintegration and political controversy rages." This crisis had various dimensions "economic, social and political, institutional and humane" because of the occupation, while others resulted from "a series of measures taken after the elections that brought a new government to power in March 2006."

One of the reasons that increased the deterioration of the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, the report referred this crises to the embargo imposed by the international community for the Palestinian Authority, "It behinds a devastating impact on the Palestinian people and the Palestinian economy," and the freezing of the Palestinian tax revenues by the Israeli authorities, contrary to the Oslo agreements which made the Palestinian funds in a monthly deficit reached $ 60 million or about 50% of government revenue.

On the other hand, the restrictions imposed by Israel on the movement of persons and goods within the Palestinian territories and abroad led to the "impossibility of a Palestinian economy".

The restrictions imposed by the Israeli occupation led the level of per capita income decreased to 40% of what it was in 1999 before the outbreak of the second Intifada.

The rise of the unemployment rate made more than 206 thousand Palestinian workers without jobs or about 24% of the total Palestinian labor. This made seven of ten families under the poverty level, an increase of 26% of what it was the last year, which represented about 2.4 million.

These new complexities and the strict measures imposed by the Israeli occupation, led to a collective punishment, the division of the West Bank.

The report explained that the number of the Israeli checkpoints amounted to 450 barrier. There are also active settlements of the Jewish population in the occupied Arab territories.

The report said that the establishments of settlements continued even in 2006. The data from the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics said that the number of settlements reached 119 at the end of 2005 a total of 248000 people, an increase of 118 thousand people from what it was in 1995.

ILO reported that the population of 24 Palestinian towns of about 31 thousand inhabitants would find themselves trapped by the Apartheid Wall and the buffer zones imposed by the occupation authorities around the wall.

75 Prisoners Died as a Result of Deliberately Killing and 70 by Torture

GAZA, Palestine June 10, 2007 (IPC) - - A new report issued by the Statistics Department in the Ministry of Prisoner Affairs explained that the total number of martyrs who were killed in Israeli prisons and detention camps since the year 1976 and until March of this year, has reached 188 prisoners, as a result of numerous violations by the Israeli occupation authorities in prisons and detention camps.

The report prepared by the Director of the Department of Statistics in the Ministry of Detainees and Ex-Detainees Affairs, which IPC received a copy, noted that the number of martyrs who were killed in Israeli prisons and detention camps was 70

The report showed that 43 of the martyrs were killed as a result of Medical neglect, and 75 were killed by deliberately killing.

It also noted that the list was prepared according the available information to researchers, and asked all concerned people to contribute in this field.

The report noted that hundreds of prisoners were died after releasing.
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Palestinian Prisoner dies in Israeli Custody and Prisoner Affairs' Ministry Condemns


WEST BANK, Palestine, June 10, 2007 (IPC + WAFA) - - A Palestinian prisoner died Saturday overnight in Jelbou'a Israeli Jail, prisoners' spokesperson, Mahmoud Abu Hasera said. Israeli occupation forces continued to attack the cities and villages of the West Bank particularly in Hebron and Jenin.

Spokesman of the Palestinian Prisoners, Mahmoud Abu Hasira said that the prisoner Maher Dandan, 38, from Balata refugee camp in north west Bank, who sentenced to 21 years imprisonment and served 8 years in jail, died due to his suffering from an ache in his chest, in addition to the medical negligence by the prison administration Jelbou'a.

In response, Media Bureau "Asrana" in Jerusalem called upon legal institutions, the Red Cross, Arab Knesset members and the International Committee for Human Rights, to work for immediate and swift formation a probe panel to investigate the circumstances of Dandan's death and to close the prison, "Jelbua" Israeli jail.

The Ministry of Prisoners Affair called on the international community to assume responsibilities towards our prisoners in the Israeli jails, after the death of captive Maher Dandan in the prison.

The ministry said, in a press statement, a copy of which made available to the International Press center (IPC) "We condemn and denounce the policy of deliberate medical negligence practiced by the Israeli prison administration against our prisoners which threatened the lives of hundreds of our prisoners directly and clearly."

The ministry pointed out that the prisoner Dandan has been detained since 5 years, and was serving a sentence (16 years) and his brothers Muhammad and Adnan were still in the Israeli prisons.
The number of prisoners who died due to deliberate medical negligence reached 44 prisoners out of 189 martyrs, according to the Department of Statistics in the ministry.

In another context, the Israeli occupation forces bulldozed today dawn, a street downtown Jenin in the northern West Bank, IPC's correspondent reported that the occupation forces stormed the city of Jenin and its refugee camp at dawn amid heavy fire, and an Israeli bulldozer destroyed a street in the city center, which caused a considerable damage and led to the disruption of traffic signs.

Occupation forces prevented, this morning, dozens of vehicles from passing through military barriers, set up abruptly south of the city, and forced citizens to return to wherever they came from.

Eyewitnesses said that an Israeli military force erected a military checkpoint on Jenin - Nablus main road, near the southern entrance of the village of Bir Al Basha, and IOF soldiers prevented citizens and vehicles from crossing in both directions.

Settlers on rampage

Security sources said that a group of extremist settlers attacked houses in Tel Rumeida, no casualties were reported.
Israeli occupation forces invaded, dawn today, a number of houses in the town of Hebron governorate southern West Bank, these houses belong to Muhammad Adnan Abu Zelth and Abed Rabbo Abu Radwan Zelth. No arrests among residents were reported.

In the same context, Israeli settlers attacked resident Said al-Atrash (16 years old), who was injured after throwing stones at the arena adjacent to the Ibrahimi mosque, as an ambulance belonging to the Red Crescent was assaulted and stoned, when the ambulance crew tried to offer help the injured Atrash, the Israeli police led him to an unknown place.

Targeted killing won't bring peace

June 8, 2007

by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti

RAMALLAH, West Bank: As we enter the 41st year of Israel's military occupation, one of the more sinister policies inflicted upon us is what Israel calls "targeted killings."

Israel applies no death penalty, except against Palestinians living under Israeli military government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

There, suspected opponents of Israel's occupation are routinely executed without charge, judge or jury. Innocents who happen to be in the vicinity of Israel's "target" just as often suffer summary execution.

In April, 17-year-old Bushra Breghish was pacing her bedroom, studying for an exam. An Israeli sniper, from a squad dispatched to arrest her brother, shot her through the forehead, killing her instantly. All she held in her hands was a book.

Last week in Ramallah's central square, in broad daylight, Israeli undercover forces shot a fleeing 22-year-old, Omar Abu Daher, in the leg. After he fell, and was entirely vulnerable to arrest, an Israeli assassin shot him in the back of the head from close range, then kicked his body, apparently to confirm the kill.

The deaths of these young Palestinians are not rare, nor were they unintentional. They were the victims of an openly acknowledged policy.

For decades, Israel murdered Palestinian leaders abroad, following the macabre calculations of its political scientists and intelligence experts that even a small number of assassinations could retard, if not foil, our national movement.

Israel claimed to target those guilty of committing or planning acts of violence. In reality, Palestinian political leaders, poets, journalists and other professionals and artists were also killed.

Israel began "targeted killings" in the Gaza Strip in the 1970s, and expanded this practice during the first Palestinian intifada, which occurred from 1987-1993.

Palestinian youths faced Israeli tanks with little more than slogans and stones. Israel condemned their "targets" based on mere suspicion. They have since signed the death warrants of hundreds more, including bystanders like young Bushra studying for final exams.

Since September 2000, more than 400 Palestinians have been murdered in extrajudicial executions. Nearly half were innocent bystanders and at least 44 were children. These extrajudicial executions are war crimes.

The Palestinian unity government has offered to end all forms of violence, provided Israel reciprocates and ends its violence against Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Our own security forces are challenged, and we face acute internal political differences. But we are committed to halting all attacks - including by Qassam rockets - as long as Israel respects its obligations under international law and stops murdering Palestinians.

We have no hope of succeeding in this goal if Israel will not meet us half way. Palestinians would rightly reject a government that protected Israeli lives while failing to protect Palestinians, who have been slaughtered at 30 times the rate of Israelis over the last 17 months.

Israel has responded with escalating attacks against Gaza and extrajudicial killings in the West Bank. Is its political objective something other than peace? Israel's assassinations over the past seven years have repeatedly shattered unilateral truces by Palestinians and scuttled any prospect of negotiations.

Why has Israel consistently re-kindled violence? Is it possible that our willingness to negotiate our differences is more dangerous than any military threat our beleaguered population could ever muster against the sixth most powerful military in the world?

Could it be that Israel seeks to finish the systematic dispossession of Palestinians begun in 1948, when 750,000 Palestinians were driven or fled in fear from their homes and homeland? Does goading Palestinians into violence permit Israel to dodge peace negotiations, and provide it cover to continue its confiscation of Palestinian land and construction of Jewish settlements in the lands it seized in 1967?

After all, "security" was the initial justification for Israel's settlements, and "military necessity" was the pretext for the seizures of our lands.

"Security" rationalizes the segregated road system Israel has constructed in the West Bank, whisking Jewish Israeli settlers wherever they wish to go, while Palestinians negotiate a decrepit one.

"Security" is allegedly served by the 500-plus Israeli roadblocks and checkpoints that dot our territory, restricting travel and smothering our economy, and by the "separation fence" that Israel has built, penning our communities into small Bantustans that function like open-air prisons.

"Security" is why Israel says it will never give up the Jordan Valley, nearly 30 percent of the West Bank.

In fact, security for both Israelis and Palestinians is mutually interdependent, not mutually exclusive. Israel cannot have security while denying it to Palestinians. When Israel is willing to renounce violence, it will discover how ready we have been as a partner for peace.

Orphan Child

by Zain Bhikha

Zionist Attack Attempts to Destroy My Village

Village Memorial to the Martyrs

June 10, 2007

by Housewife4Palestine

"We are being hit by air, on the ground as well as biological and chemical warfare is being used."

I am still suffering from a little of this sickness that has plagued me for a little time now, but one thing my mother use to always say is when you are sick what have you learned.

As my village is being demolished around me and many of my family and friends have been murdered lately and it continues as I write this that the best thing I can do is go back to work to remove the mask of the monster that murder’s us, namely the Zionist and their allies.

The enemy says that we as Palestinians have nothing but hate in our hearts, while this is not true, but the force of real justice is becoming more pronounced then ever before accosting me lately.

It is a horrible thing to see the beauty of life being destroyed in front of your face, loved ones with their brains shot out for no reason laying on bed’s, street’s and floors for the simple word of the complete extermination of a people.

I was also accused lately, that I did not know what the word’s genocide or holocaust was and I will assure the enemy; I know to well what the faces of these words mean. For I am a witness to these horror’s, where I am sure they are sitting comfortably in their home’s spreading their vulgarities towards people they really do not know.

While in my sickness, I was debating about returning to work, because of the sorrow’s I have to face everyday. However, the horror’s have reached my living room and while I may end up as another martyred name on the monument that is in every Palestinian village. I know more then ever like those who are already there, that they died for truth and justice to crimes that seems to be ignored for if it was otherwise these atrocities would have stopped.

I am reminded as I watch mothers and sister’s pray that Allah stands with those who really trust him and this I have always done.

Lastly, may Allah help us now to bring truth and justice into the air so that real peace can occur in a region to destroy an injustice that has gone on far too long?

I do apologize that many are getting more of a window into what is occurring at this time but I have always understood that some time’s truth and love are not always kind but can break the heart.

I do hope someday, I can see the rose garden with peacocks because I would rather do this then see man’s inhumanity to man.

Update:

I planned on starting back to back to work on Tuesday, but another problem has arisen so it may be a bit longer then anticipated, but I am doing all that I can at the moment. Inshaallah everything will improve before long.

When I am able to fully work, again I do hope I can catch up to some of the many issue’s that is occurring manifold towards the recent events in Palestine.

Finally, I will admit and I am sure the Zionist probably do not appreciate this, but a horrific situation such as we are being put under these days is bring families and friends closer in ways that I am sure the average person wouldn't realize unless you are being put though such horrific hardships as this.

I also, do apolgize that I am not here as I was before, but I am hoping that this will improve when the pressure on me let's up a little, I do hope those who read my blog understand.

Bush visits friendly countries in Europe

An Albanian passes by a welcoming banner for the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush on Sunday in his first-ever visit to the tiny Balkan country, on Saturday, June 9, 2007.(AP Photo/Hektor Pustina)

June 9, 2007

By WILLIAM J. KOLE, Associated Press Writer

Video

SOFIA, Bulgaria -Bulgaria has lost 13 soldiers in Iraq, but says it is committed to the U.S.-led coalition at least until next spring, and Albania professes such an affinity for America that it has issued three stamps featuring President Bush's likeness and the Statue of Liberty.

Dogged by protesters at his other European stops this past week, Bush can count on a warm reception when he wraps up his tour with visits to the two Balkan countries — both staunch U.S. allies who see clear benefits to a cozy relationship with Washington.

In Italy, tens of thousands of anti-globalization and leftist activists marched through Rome's streets Sunday to protest Bush's visit to the country. Police used tear gas to disperse them after a small group began throwing bottles at officers.

Similar protests drew thousands in Germany earlier this week when Bush was meeting with other world leaders at the Group of Eight summit.

But Bush is so well-liked in Albania, the street running in front of parliament has been renamed in his honor.

"Albanians identify the United States of America as the cradle of liberty and democracy," said Albert Rakipi of the Albanian Institute for International Studies. Bush's visit to the mostly Muslim nation is "a thank you for Albania's nonstop support of U.S. policy," he said.

Bush makes a stop in the Albanian capital, Tirana, on Sunday to meet with the president and prime minister and greet Albanian soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He visits Bulgaria on Monday before returning to Washington.

Albania recently decided to triple its deployment in Afghanistan to 140 troops, and it has about 120 troops in Iraq — a presence that President Alfred Moisiu says will not end as long as the Americans are engaged there.

Albanian and American flags and a banner declaring "Proud to be Partners" flutter on a square once decorated with a bust of dictator Enver Hoxha, whose communist regime virtually cut off the nation from the rest of the world for four decades.

Hoxha died in 1985, and Albania emerged from isolation in 1990. It remains one of Europe's poorest countries.

In an interview with local media before his trip, Bush said that to him, Albania evokes images of "Muslim people who can live at peace" and are "excited to be living in an open society."

Many Albanians hope Bush will press the case for independence in neighboring Kosovo.

A U.N. plan would give internationally supervised statehood to the Serbian province dominated by ethnic Albanians, but Russia has threatened a veto at the U.N. Security Council, contending it would set a dangerous precedent for other independence-minded regions around the world.

The U.S. strongly supports independence, and Bush's visit "comes at the right time for Kosovo in the final moments of settling its final status of independence," said Pirro Misha, a prominent Albanian intellectual.

In Bulgaria, once the most loyal Soviet ally during the Cold War, U.S. flags also cover parts of downtown Sofia, where Bush will meet with top leaders. As in Albania, Bush also plans to greet soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and express gratitude for Bulgaria's involvement.

Bulgaria, which shook off communism in 1989 and joined NATO in 2004 and the European Union in January, has struck a deal with the United States allowing U.S. troops to be deployed at several Bulgarian military facilities. Parliament recently extended the Iraq mission until March 2008.

Foreign Minister Ivailo Kalfin said his government wants NATO more involved in a U.S. missile defense system that would be based in the Czech Republic and Poland, and hopes the shield can be repositioned so it protects Bulgaria as well.

"Our wish is not to find ourselves in a zone of unequal security," Kalfin said.

Many Bulgarians feel caught in the middle of rising tensions between the U.S. and Russia, which fiercely opposes the plan. They also feel squeezed economically: Bulgaria is almost entirely dependent on Russian energy supplies, and its reputation for crime and corruption has made U.S. businesses hesitant to invest.

A few hundred pro-Communist demonstrators rallied against Bush's visit in Sofia on Saturday, holding posters that read "Stop Bush" and chanting slogans against him.

But others, like 38-year-old economist Petar Iliev, hope Bush's visit will give Bulgaria an image boost.

"It is very important for Bulgaria's reputation that America's leader is visiting," he said. "It shows the world that we are on the right track."