Gaza: Poultry sector collapses after depletion of natural gas [1300's style siege?]
Gaza: Agriculture ministry: Poultry sector collapses after depletion of natural gas | Palestinian Information Center | May 5, 2008

GAZA, (PIC)-- The ministry of agriculture in Gaza warned Monday that the poultry and hatchery sector stopped completely because of the depletion of natural gas used for warming eggs and young chicken which threatens to deprive Gaza citizens from white meat after the red meat had already become scarce from the domestic food basket as a result of the closure of crossings for more than ten months.

In a statement, assistant deputy minister of agriculture Dr. Ibrahim Al-Kudra stated that the natural gas needs of the poultry sector are estimated at 400 tons per month, as the Gaza Strip produces 10,000,000 birds.

Dr. Kudra pointed that owners of poultry and hatchery farms started to execute hundreds of thousands of young chicken after strenuous attempts to procure their needs of gas, thus resulting in considerable financial losses. ...
- posted by Editor @ 1:14 PM

Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S.
Israelis Claim Secret Agreement With U.S.Americans Insist No Deal Made on Settlement Growth | By Glenn Kessler | Washington Post Staff Writer | Thursday, April 24, 2008; A14

A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president's efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush's letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush's peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon's chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

U.S. officials say no such agreement exists, and in recent months Rice has publicly criticized even settlement expansion on the outskirts of Jerusalem, which Israel does not officially count as settlements. But as peace negotiations have stepped up in recent months, so has the pace of settlement construction, infuriating Palestinian officials, and Washington has taken no punitive action against Israel for its settlement efforts.

Israeli officials say they have clear guidance from Bush administration officials to continue building settlements, as long as it meets carefully negotiated criteria, even though those understandings appear to contradict U.S. policy. ...

- posted by Editor @ 1:10 PM

Yes, It Is Apartheid : Information Clearing House - ICH
Yes, It Is Apartheid : Information Clearing House - ICH By Yossi Sarid | 26/04/08 "Haaretz" -- -

The anchorwoman was clearly shocked: I don't have time now to respond to what you have said, she told the former U.S. president, allowing Jimmy Carter to make a narrow escape from her clutches. Then she added that she did not want to imagine what would happen to him if he bumped into her colleague from the security affairs desk in Channel 2's dark alley. And the pundit sitting there, sunk in deep thought as always, nodded his heavy head, confirming: He's lucky, the bastard, that we didn't gang up on him and cut him to shreds.
...
What does he want from us, that evil man: What do we have to do with apartheid? Does a separation fence constitute separation? Do separate roads for Jewish settlers and Palestinians really separate? Are Palestinian enclaves between Jewish settlements Bantustans?

There is no hint of similarity between South Africa and Israel, and only a sick mind could draw such shadowy connections between them. Roadblocks and inspections at every turn; licenses and permits for every little matter; the arbitrary seizure of land; special privileges in water use; cheap, hard labor; forming and uniting families by bureaucratic whim - none of these are apartheid, in any way. They are an incontrovertible security necessity, period.

The white Afrikaners, too, had reasons for their segregation policy; they, too, felt threatened - a great evil was at their door, and they were frightened, out to defend themselves. ...

One essential difference remains between South Africa and Israel: There a small minority dominated a large majority, and here we have almost a tie. But the tiebreaker is already darkening on the horizon. Then the Zionist project will come to an end if we don't choose to leave the slave house before being visited by a fatal demographic plague.

It is entirely clear why the word apartheid terrifies us so. What should frighten us, however, is not the description of reality, but reality itself. Even Ehud Olmert has understood at last that continuing the present situation is the end of the Jewish democratic state, as he recently said.
- posted by Editor @ 4:08 PM

Carter: "It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It's a crime
Carter: Gaza residents 'starving to death' - Israel News, Ynetnews News agencies | Published: 04.18.08

... 'For every Israeli killed,' says Carter, 'between 30 to 40 Palestinians are killed because of the extreme military capability of Israel'

Former US President Jimmy Carter called the blockade of Gaza a crime and an atrocity on Thursday and said US attempts to undermine Hamas had been counterproductive.

Speaking at the American University in Cairo after talks with Hamas leaders, Carter said Palestinians in Gaza were being "starved to death" and received fewer calories a day than people in the poorest parts of Africa.

"It's an atrocity what is being perpetrated as punishment on the people in Gaza. It's a crime... I think it is an abomination that this continues to go on," Carter said. Carter said Israel and the US were trying to make the quality of life in Gaza markedly worse than in the West Bank, where the rival Fatah group is in control.

"I think politically speaking this has worked even to strengthen the popularity of Hamas and to the detriment of the popularity of Fatah," he added. ...

- posted by Editor @ 9:57 PM