- Israeli and Palestinian Sources Concur: Israel Made War
Inevitable
-
- The Omega Institute (OI), which works closely with the
Institute for Policy Research for Development (IPRD), has learned from
Israeli and Palestinian sources that just prior to the current crisis,
senior Hamas leaders were in active dialogue with Israeli religious leaders
in a round of bilateral peace negotiations. Israeli negotiators included
Rabbi Menachem Froman, former deputy leader and co-founder of the Israeli
Settler movement Gush Khatif; Rabbi David Bigman, head of the liberal religious
Kibbutz movement Yeshiva at Ma?ale Gilboa; and Yitzhak Frankenthal, founder
of the Arik Institute. Ongoing negotiations had resulted in a breakthrough
peace ?understanding?, which was to be announced at a press conference
in Jerusalem to mark the launching of an extraordinary peace initiative.
Israeli Prime Minister Olmert had been briefed extensively about the initiative
by Frankenthal. Also due to attend the conference were Khaled Abu Arafa,
the Palestinian Cabinet Minister for Jerusalem, Sheikh Muhamed Abu Tir,
senior Hamas Member of the Palestinian Parliament, and other senior Palestinian
delegates.
-
- The meeting was to announce a joint Israeli-Palestinian
call for the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit who had been abducted by
Hamas in Gaza, along with proposals for the beginning of the release of
all Palestinian prisoners. These measures were to precipitate unprecedented
new peace negotiations on a framework peace agreement, drawn on the 1967
borders. The presence of Palestinian Cabinet Officers and senior Israeli
religious leaders in contact with the Prime Minster was to underline the
seriousness of this peace proposal on both sides.
-
- Just hours before the meeting was due to start, the Israeli
Shin Bet internal Security Service arrested Abu Tir and Abu Arafa and warned
them not to attend the meeting, under threats of detention. The meeting,
which offered a major opportunity to obtain Shalit?s release and launch
a new framework for peace, was thrown into disarray. The next day, the
Israeli Defence Force (IDF) invaded Gaza, and the day after both Abu Tir
and Abu Arafa were abducted by Israeli forces, along with a third of the
Palestinian Cabinet, provoking a predictable escalation of violence.
-
- Israel simultaneously began conducting covert incursions
on to Lebanese territory, provoking Hizbollah?s capture of two IDF soldiers.
Credible sources confirm that the soldiers were not abducted on Israeli
territory, but inside Lebanon. Like the scuppered peace negotiations, Western
officials have ignored this, and misinformed the media. However, some reports
corroborate the sources. Israeli officials, for instance, informed Forbes
(12.7.06) that ?Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers during clashes
Wednesday across the border in southern Lebanon, prompting a swift reaction
from Israel.?
-
- ?The revelations show that Palestinian and Lebanese actors
were not principally responsible for the escalation of the current conflict?,
said OI Director Graham Ennis. ?Contrary to the misinformation disseminated
by the Whitehouse and Whitehall, Israel vetoed unprecedented peace proposals
that would have initiated a promising new framework for serious negotiations,
and went on to provoke Palestinian and Lebanese groups into retaliations,
that now threaten to escalate into a dangerous regional conflict.?
-
- For more information please contact +44(0)7891 132 574
or email <mailto:info@globalresearch.org info@globalresearch.org [ENDS]
-
-
-
- Notes for Editors:
-
- Full details and background information are annexed below
in a memorandum by Graham Ennis, Director of the Omega Institute in Brighton,
UK. It includes some relevant contacts for further verification. This memo
was originally forwarded to Donald Macintyre at The Independent.
-
- Memorandum From: Graham Ennis Omega Institute Brighton,
England
-
-
- Begins
-
- 1: Rabbi Menachem Froman is the former deputy leader,
and co-founder, of the extremist Messianic Israeli Settler movement "
Gush Khatif", but he left the movement after the massacre in Hebron
of Palestinians by the Israeli terrorist Baruch Goldstein. He now lives
in the West Bank Samarian settlement of Tekoa, where he works as a Rabbi,
and has been long engaged in Muslim-Jewish dialogue activities. Froman
himself has a typical Israeli political background. His Uncle was murdered
in the 1930's by Ezzedine Al Qassam, a militant Cleric whose name was used
by Hama's for it's armed wing. Froman has a track record. He was a principal
negotiator in the release from prison of the Hama's spiritual leader, Sheikh
Ahmed Yassin. As a result of discussions with Froman, Yassin subsequently
offered a ease-fire, which Yassin withdrew, after the offer was spurned
by the israeli Government. He now works closely with Rabbi David Bigman,
head of the Liberal religious Kibbutz movement's Yeshiva at Ma'ale Gilboa.
They in turn are connected to Yitzhak Frankenthal, founder of the Arik
Institute, who is also involved in religious and political dialog with
Palestinians. Frankanthal has an unusual background. His son Arik was murdered
by Hama's operatives whilst hitch-hiking in July 1994. Instead of sinking
into bitterness, Frankanthal has become a major force in Israel in the
peace movement.
-
- The significance of all this is that Frankanthal has
developed deep contacts with Palestinians. He was rapidly able to confirm,
after Corporal Gilad Shalit was abducted in Gaza by Hama's, that he was
only lightly wounded and still alive, as a Hama's prisoner. Frankenthal
became concerned that the abduction would destroy the opportunity that
had arisen, after the agreement between Fatah and Hama's prisoners in Israeli
jails, to negotiate peace with Israel, which was then underway. Hama's
had made public its agreement to negotiations. After Shalit's abduction,
and the Israeli incursion into Gaza, this peace process has collapsed.
-
- What is not publicly known, however, is that these bi-lateral
peace negotiations between Jewish and Palestinian religious activists had
gone further than is believed. After Shalit's abduction, Frankanthal and
the other Israeli peace workers had kept up a close and continuous dialog
with senior Hama's leaders. On at least one occasion, Frankanthal had given
a detailed briefing to an aide of the Israeli Prime Minister Olmert, who
was demanding Shalit's return.
-
- All these negotiations had resulted in a remarkable secret
"understanding", as a result of which, the day before the Israeli
incursion into Gaza, there was to have been a major press conference in
Jerusalem. At the press meeting, there would have been an extraordinary
peace initiative launched. Attending the conference would have been not
only Israeli's like Frankanthal, Froman, Bigman, etc, but, more remarkably,
The Palestinian Cabinet Minister for Jerusalem Khaled Abu Arafa, and the
senior Hama's Member of the Palestinian Parliament, Sheikh Muhamed Abu
Tir. The meeting was also supported by Sheikh Ibrahim Sarsour, Chairman
of the Islamic Movement in the occupied territories.
-
- The meeting would have issued a joint call for the release
of Shalit, implicitly backed by the Palestinian Cabinet, due to the authorized
presence of the Cabinet Officer, Abu Arafa. Also, this would have formed
part of a call for this to be the beginning of the release of all Palestinian
prisoners, as part of an immediate start to peace negotiations on a framework
peace agreement, based on the joint agreement of the Hama's/Fatah prisoners,
drawn on the 1967 borders. The presence of Palestinian Cabinet Officers
would have underlined the seriousness of this peace proposal.
-
- However, what actually happened was that just hours before
the meeting was due to start, the Israeli Shin Bet internal Security Service
arrested Abu Tir and Abu Arafa and warned them not to attend the meeting,
under threats of detention. This threw the meeting, which would have been
a major opportunity to obtain Shalit's release, into complete disorder.
The organizers were forced to franticly contact other Rabbis, already on
the road to Jerusalem, and tell them not to appear.
-
- The next day, the Israeli Army invaded Gaza. The day
after that, Abu Tir and Abu Arafa were kidnapped by Israeli forces, along
with a third of he Palestinian Cabinet. Israel revoked the two men's citizenship,
making them stateless, and also removed their residency rights in Jerusalem.
The subsequent escalation of violence, which also spread to Lebanon, resulted,
in part, from the failure of the peace agreement that had been about to
be announced, together with calls for the release of Shalit, which had
been strongly "Signalled" by the Palestinians. The intervention
of Shin Bet almost certainly aborted a planned release of Shalit, and a
powerful appeal for peace negotiations to start. The role, in all this,
of Palestinian leader Abbas, which has been extensive, will one day be
revealed, and written up, by Historians of this huge calamity. That is,
if there is still a history, and historians, and a future, as the whole
Middle East faces something that Robert Fisk memorably denounced as "Not
Dunkirk, but Munich." Or is it once again, 92 years after that fateful
European Summer, time for another, terrible, "Guns of August".
-
- ENDS
-
- NB: Useful contacts: Arthur Neslan, Tel Aviv. (significant
Israeli writer, and journalist, writes also in English.) Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Al-Zahar Ted Belman, Israel National Radio
-
- posted by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed at
- http://nafeez.blogspot.com/
2006/07/shin-bet-vetoed-secret-israeli.html 1:10
PM
-
- http://www.blogger.com/email-post.g?blogID=17440
892&postID=1154092372527083 99
-
- http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=17440892&postID=115
409237252708399&quickEdit=true
-
- http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2006/07/shin-bet-vetoed-secret-israeli.html
-
- http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97476590&grpId=158
77814&grpspId=1600076315&msgId=169&stime=1154491930
|
