Elections Blog

Has Tony Blair gone wobbly in calling for dialogue with Syria and Iran (in a prelude to what is widely expected to be a similar call in the Iraq Study Group report)?  It’s not as bad as you think…and it’s worse than you think.
The overall approach is entirely sensible.  Said Blair:
“It is a perfectly straightforward [...]

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…and I’m not talking about Iraq.  First, Hamas makes it clear that it is perfectly content to let the Palestinian people suffer rather than give Israel the barest shred of compromise:
The ruling Islamic group Hamas said on Tuesday a planned Palestinian unity government would not recognize Israel or accept a two-state solution to the Middle [...]

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Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is in Washington this week and sat down for a Q&A with Newsweek.  Interesting exchange on Iran:
How do you see the threat posed by Iran?
President Ahmadinejad is a man who is ready to commit crimes against humanity, and he has to be stopped. My position is clear. If there can [...]

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Hamas has thrown in the towel and admitted that Palestine cannot function with Hamas at its helm:
Hamas committed today to folding its eight-month government if that would restore the international assistance that was cut off after it won national elections earlier this year.
In a shrewd and dramatic speech, the Hamas prime minister, Ismail Haniyah, said [...]

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Hezbollah anti-Condi banner

It is disturbing to see criticism of Dr. Rice in the conservative blogosphere after her recent keynote address to the American Task Force on Palestine gala in Washington, DC, October 11, 2006. The dinner was held to honor a Republican Arab-American, (Blog editor’s note: Please accept our appologies for using a “hyphenated American” [...]

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Mahmoud Abbas should not be surprised; when you deal with assassins, you will get burned:
Accusing the Islamic militant group Hamas of backtracking, moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas warned on Saturday that his efforts to set up a national unity government that is acceptable to the West are “back to zero.”
Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas [...]

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Where is the will of the international community to get the Israeli prisoners back? I don’t see them, do you? Wasn’t that a condition of the ceasefire? And is Hamas Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon?
Of course not, and no serious person thought any of the above would happen, because everyone - EVERYONE - knows the [...]

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The Palestinians, by way of their chosen leaders Hamas, have already torpedoed another chance for peace in mere hours:
Palestinian militant group Hamas has said it will not join a planned national unity government if recognising Israel is a condition.
It follows a speech by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas in which he said the government would [...]

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Those of us who hope for a peaceful two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have been burned so many times that it’s well-nigh impossible to get our hopes up again, but if it should come to fruition, this would be pretty significant:
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the U.N. General Assembly on Thursday that the planned national [...]

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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, given an opportunity to disavow his statements denying the Holocaust, pointedly refuses to do so:
TIME: You have been quoted as saying Israel should be wiped off the map. Was that merely rhetoric, or do you mean it?
Ahmadinejad: People in the world are free to think the way they wish. We do [...]

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Look, I’m grateful that Gilad Shilat will apparently soon be free, and his family and friends must be elated, but look at the cost:

Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas confirmed Tuesday that a deal had been reached to secure the release of kidnapped IDF soldier Cpl. Gilad Shalit.
Abbas told Bahrain-based newspaper El-Halij that Shalit would [...]

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I still say he’s a dead man walking, but Olmert has bowed to the inevitable: there will be no further withdrawal from the West Bank.
Senior Israel officials are scheduled to leave for the United States late Monday evening to notify the US government that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s realignment plan for unilateral withdrawal from the [...]

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It’s the clearest sign yet that the recent war was a major defeat for Israel; I don’t know what is more odious, the thought that Israel has to pay ransom, or the thought that it is the UN that will decide how much the ransom is:
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Monday that Israel and Hezbollah [...]

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Chomsky didn’t literally say that in this piece of excrement posted (where else?) in the ultra-left Guardian, but the message is unmistakeable. Consider:
In Lebanon, a little-honoured truce remains in effect - yet another in a decades-long series of ceasefires between Israel and its adversaries in a cycle that, as if inevitably, returns to warfare, [...]

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In the odd, depressing world of Holocaust denial, there exists a substratum of people who deny the Holocaust while denying they denied it, and there are even those apologists who deny the denials of the deniers.
Lest there be any doubt where the Iranian president stands, and for the benefit of those who still claim that [...]

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Good post at Gates of Vienna on the Shebaa Farms Myth; the right conclusion is reached, mainly that the only reason this piece of land is suddenly of paramount concern is that it is a way of allowing opponents of Israel to claim it still ‘occupies’ Lebanon, and thus provides a justification for the terrorist [...]

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Well, another bit of welcome news today:
President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that France will contribute 2,000 troops to an international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, responding both to international pressure and new U.N. pledges about protection and command of the troops.
Chirac’s announcement in a nationally televised address followed days of intense negotiations with the United [...]

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Off the record and possibly just random boasting, but significant, nonetheless:
Israel is carefully watching the world’s reaction to Iran’s continued refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, with some high-level officials arguing it is now clear that when it comes to stopping Iran, Israel “may have to go it alone,” The Jerusalem Post has learned.
One senior [...]

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Thomas Sowell:
It is hard to think of a time when a nation — and a whole civilization — has drifted more futilely toward a bigger catastrophe than that looming over the United States and western civilization today.
Nuclear weapons in the hands of Iran and North Korea mean that it is only a matter of [...]

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Edward Luttlak, writing in the Jerusalem Post, says the critics such as myself are not taking the long view of latest war:
In the immediate aftermath of the 1973 October War, there was much joy in the Arab world because the myth of Israeli invincibility had been shattered by the surprise Egyptian crossing of the Suez [...]

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