the plan is to kill anti syrian polititians then kill pro syrian politians,this plan will ignite a civel war which will leave israel as the only country with free finantial institutions,wake up Lebanon ,Israel is the only country who used car bombs recently , in damascus against palistenians.naim

The only country in the region that is to benefit from trouble in Lebanon is the southern neighbor.

You should name the southern neighbor of Lebanon ie Israel as many american might that it is Syria,naim

Syria is to the East is it not and to the North

you are missing the point ,american barly know where Iraq is and you expect alot from them to know the borders of Lebanon you do not have to tell me anything about the Arab wourld ,i was born there and went to school in Syria,naim/usa

Fuuny, blaming Israel is common in EVERY ARAB COUNTRY. Your leaders (ASSAD FAMILY) have ruled with a iron fist over the past few decades. How many Prime ministers has Israel had since the ASSAD family has been in power. It's a joke, yet you continue to blame Israel for all the internal problems you are faced with. DEAL WITH THE REAL issue facing you, (which is that you live in a environment that teaches you to hate Israel) -- try to have a open mind - rather than continue being closed minded and a spokesperson for ARAB governement which have oppressed their citizens.

Just wait for Israel to invade your country again, Mr. Lebanese. We'll see how moderate you'll be then...

My friend, the only reason our southern neighbor would invade Lebanon is because of Hizbullah, and Syrian forces pushing Israel to have to retaliate. Israel would not come into sovereign Lebanese soil without a reason....yet as usual you buy the "governement line" and act as if everything is open aggression against Arab's...it's not -- its the government of Syria feeding enough BS to it's citizens to make people like you actually believe the hype. It's so scary, it's sad to think that you cannot "think out of the box" and develop and formulate your own opinion based on mulitiple sources. You are force fed inforamtion, which is intended to keep you focused AWAY from the true problem....try to see the "forest from the trees."

Israel had the chance to leave lebanon after the palestian left but did not untill the the Lebanese hizballa forced them out twenty years later ,actualy the US did not try to show some concern about Lebanon by asking Israel to leave even when thhey Knew that Israel was leaving yes somtimes people blame Israel unjustly to explain their shortcomings but what is happening in Lebanon recently is not one of these,i still hope that Israel will come to it,s senses and axcept syria,s offer of peacfull solution to the GOLAN isue according to international law where israel will return to june 5 border for a full peace agreement and normalization of relation and coaperation on agrculture, water and tecnology issues ,iwent to school in syria iwas never taught to hate the jews and now in the United states most my freinds are jews actualy arabs in the Us feel closer to the jews than none jews ,may be because they are semetic like us,i look at the midle east and wonder ,what a waste of energy and resources that the semetic people are killing each other where they could be working together to improve their people,s lives the improvment in the lives of the people in the midleast will make personal ownership is more important than collectiv ownership which will make the well being of the indivedual jew,christian and muslem and their abelity to have a home, send their children to school ,abilty to travel and visit all these will make the exact location of the border of no importance except in the eyes of the fanatics.i hope peace will preveil soon.naim/usa

One anonymous said

(which is that you live in a environment that teaches you to hate Israel) -- try to have a open mind -

I arrived in Syria three years ago with a very open mind; only events have pushed me to become very anti Israeli politics and anti Bush. The fact that Israel gets away with murder, the building of the wall in all impunity (and have you noticed that each time Israelis claim that the wall protects them, the statement is followed by an attack ? )
No,; it is not state propaganda that has influenced me but facts. And I am still not "anti semitic"

Israel's interior minister recently declared that after their release from long jail sentences, four Palestinian Arabs convicted of helping with suicide bombings in 2002, killing 35, will be expelled from Israel. They would, the Associated Press reported, "lose the privileges of permanent residents, such as social security and health insurance."

The minister's decision raises a question: Why would Palestinians engaged in destroying the state of Israel feel punished by losing the right to live in Israel? One would expect that anti-Israel terrorists would prefer to live in the Palestinian Authority (PA).

One would be wrong. Palestinian Arabs - even terrorists - generally prefer life in what they call the "Zionist entity." On two occasions, this pattern became especially clear: when eastern Jerusalem in 2000 and part of the Galilee Triangle in 2004 were slated for transfer to PA control. In both cases, the Palestinians involved clung to Israel.

When Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak's diplomacy raised the prospect, in mid-2000, of some Arab-majority parts of Jerusalem being transferred to the PA, a Palestinian Arab social worker found that "an overwhelming majority" of Jerusalem's 200,000 Arabs chose to remain under Israeli control. A member of the Palestinian National Council, Fadal Tahabub, specified that 70% preferred Israeli sovereignty. Another politician, Husam Watad, described people as "in a panic" at the prospect of finding themselves under PA rule.

Israel's Interior Ministry duly reported a large increase in applications for citizenship and one city councilor, Roni Aloni, reported what he was hearing from Jerusalem Arabs: "we are not like Gaza or the West Bank. We hold Israeli IDs. We are used to a higher standard of living. Even if Israeli rule is not so good, it is still better than that of the PA." A doctor applying for Israeli papers explained, "we want to stay in Israel. At least here I can speak my mind freely without being dumped in prison, as well as having a chance to earn an honest day's wage."

To stop this Palestinian Arab rush for Israeli citizenship, the ranking Islamic official in Jerusalem issued an edict prohibiting it, and the Palestine Liberation Organization's agent in Jerusalem, Faisal al-Husseini, went further, calling this step "treason." This proved ineffective, so al-Husseini threatened that taking out Israeli citizenship would result in the confiscation of one's home.

In the Galilee Triangle, a Palestinian-majority area in the north of the country, just 30% of the Arab population agreed to some of the Galilee Triangle being annexed to a future Palestinian state, according to a May 2001 survey, meaning that a large majority preferred it to remain in Israel. By February 2004, when the Sharon government released a trial balloon about giving the PA control over the Galilee Triangle, the Haifa-based Arab Center for Applied Social Research found the number had jumped to 90%. And 73% of Triangle Arabs said they would use violence to prevent changes in the border.

Local politicians fiercely denounced Israel ceding any part of the Galilee. An Arab member of Israel's parliament who once served as adviser to Yasser Arafat, Ahmed Tibi, called the idea "a dangerous, antidemocratic suggestion." Intense Arab opposition prompted quick abandonment of the transfer idea.

Also in 2004, when Israel's security fence went up, some Palestinian Arabs had to choose on which side of the fence to live. Most, along with Ahmed Jabrin of Umm al-Fahm, had no doubts. "We fought [the Israeli authorities so as] to be inside of the fence, and they moved it so we are still in Israel."

That Palestinian Arabs in large numbers prefer to live under Israeli control appears to result more from practical considerations than from an intent to submerge the Jewish state demographically. They see the PA as impoverished, autocratic, and anarchic. As one Palestinian explained, it is "an unknown state that doesn't have a parliament, or a democracy, or even decent universities."

Palestinian Arabs are not so committed ideologically as to disdain the good life that residence in Israel offers. Two long-term conclusions follow. First, were Palestinian Arab demands for a "right of return" to Israel ever met, a massive population influx into Israel would result. Second, any final-status agreement that requires turning Israeli-ruled land to the Palestinians will be very hard to implement.

For weeks, I have echoed the warnings of security officials and elected leaders stating the obvious: The Palestinian Authority is not fighting terrorism, the terrorists are using the cease fire to rearm and reorganize and, therefore, terror will return.

In fact, even before the suicide bombing in Netanya yesterday that killed at least two people and injured dozens, and the earlier failed suicide bombing at the Shavei Shomron settlement, terror had already returned in the form of foiled attacks.

To call what has happened an experiment is to give too much credit - as if there were any possibility of another outcome. But even if Mahmoud Abbas's effort to sweet talk the terrorists into ending their attacks were considered a legitimate attempt, it must be deemed to have failed.

Though he was speaking before the most recent attacks, Vice Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said in an interview that appeared in yesterday's Post what Israel has been arguing for a long time: The Palestinian leadership must confront terrorist groups, not reach agreements with them or invite them into its government, fully armed and unrepentant.

Olmert suggested that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas should take a leaf from David Ben-Gurion's playbook.

"The Palestinians keep saying 'how dare you ask that we engage in a civil war against our own people,'" he said. "[But] unless they engage in a tough and uncompromising campaign to disarm these [terrorist] organizations, there will not be a chance for genuine dialogue between us."

Olmert continued, "This is precisely what Ben-Gurion did in Israel when he proclaimed that there will be one army, one educational system, one government. And, when it was necessary, he imposed this in the most aggressive and sometimes violent manner."

While issuing disclaimers that he did not agree with everything Ben-Gurion did, that the situations were not parallel and that Abbas could do things his own way, Olmert's point was clear.

"This is your chance," he said to the Palestinian leadership. "You take it, you may gain a lot. You don't take it, you will not survive."

The Palestinian situation today and the one faced by Ben-Gurion as Israel took its first steps as a state are, indeed, as Olmert took pains to stress, not analogous. Menachem Begin was no terrorist; he did not systematically target either British or Arab civilians. Even more: it was Begin who averted civil war by deciding not to respond in kind to the attacks on him ordered by Ben-Gurion. Such patriotism and restraint can hardly be expected by the terrorists Abbas faces.

But there is an even greater difference. Both Begin and Ben-Gurion believed deeply in, and were fighting for, the project of creating a Jewish state.

The Palestinian leadership would have the world believe that it, too, has embarked on a creative enterprise, in contrast to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who seek to destroy Israel through terrorism. But Abbas's refusal to touch, let alone dismantle, the infrastructure of terrorism that he has committed to eliminating destroys that contention.

His refusal to act led directly to yesterday's terror attacks and places full responsibility for them on his doorstep. This refusal also renders irrelevant any purported difference between him and the "rejectionist" groups. If there really were such a difference, if these groups really jeopardized Abbas's state-building project, then why we would he not be acting against him?

The lack of such inter-Palestinian physical conflict can only suggest a high degree of ideological agreement. Unless, or until, actions by Abbas prove the contrary, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Palestinian leadership shares the rejectionist creed, which says that the Jewish people has no national rights to independence in this land, and that the only legitimate Palestinian state is one that replaces Israel, not one living in permanent peace along side us.


The international community must help Israel make the Palestinians understand that terrorism will neither build them a state nor destroy ours. There is no excuse for continuing to "help Abu Mazen" when such "help" only encourages him to stay on the unacceptable course he is on. The refusal to recognize this will only cost more Israeli and Palestinian lives.

When comments are excessively long, one tends to skip them;
some arabs and some sionists are in favor of a one state solution with arabs and jews co existing peacefully. Of course Israel would have to abandon its religious character and share power with Palestinians.

to anonymous 7:27 who said

"Palestinian Arabs - even terrorists - generally prefer life in what they call the "Zionist entity."

BECAUSE IT IS THEIR LAND dummy

Wake up everyone. Syria is well known for it's underhand tactics and won't stop at anything to reach it's goals. He was killed by Syria in their latest lame attempt at taking the world's eyes off them.

annie was clear and to the point.