Israel proposes Gaza buffer
I am disappointed but not surprised that once again, Israel is blamed for this. Personally I think they need to take a stronger tact against this.
The PA torpedoed any hope for truce or peace a long time ago; if it was every truly possible. But negotiating with murderers is not the way to do things.
By LAURIE COPANS
Israel's army has developed a plan to create a "buffer zone" inside the edge of the Gaza Strip to halt the latest wave of Palestinian rocket attacks, military officials said Tuesday.
Such Israeli action would likely torpedo a six-month truce in the Gaza Strip and could threaten U.S. efforts to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Meanwhile, Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will travel to Jordan on May 15 to meet with King Abdullah, the prime minister's office said Tuesday.
Olmert and the king will meet in the ancient city of Petra on the sidelines of an annual gathering in Jordan of Nobel Prize laureates.
In a setback to U.S. efforts on the peace process, the State Department announced Monday that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice canceled an upcoming visit to the region, citing the uncertain political situation after an Israeli commission found Olmert's government mishandled last year's war in Lebanon.
The Gaza cease-fire has sharply reduced fighting, but militants have continued to fire homemade rockets into southern Israel. The rocket fire has spiked in recent days, including two more projectiles launched Tuesday. No injuries were reported in Tuesday's attack, the army said.
On Monday, Israel carried out a rare airstrike in Gaza, attacking a car carrying rockets near the Israeli border, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned he was losing patience with the rocket barrages.
The military's plan for a 300-yard-deep zone inside Gaza is one of several options Israel is considering to counter the rocket fire, the military officials said on condition of anonymity since they were not allowed to discuss the plan with the media.
Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, called the proposal a "dangerous idea."
"It will cause more confrontations. It won't provide stability," he said.
Military commanders have presented the plan to Olmert's Cabinet but it has not yet been approved, the officials said. The plan will be debated by senior Cabinet ministers next week, Haaretz reported Tuesday.
Israel periodically carries out "pinpoint" operations on the edges of Gaza to halt rocket launchings. The military's plan calls for a greater presence that would be constant in some places, the officials said.
The plan also calls for an increase in attacks on rocket launchers, including airstrikes on high-ranking militants who oversee the firings, the officials said. Olmert has already agreed to slightly expand the area in the Gaza Strip in which the army can operate, Haaretz said.
Israel has grown increasingly concerned by arms smuggling into the Gaza Strip and the rocket fire. Senior military officials have been pushing for approval of a large land offensive in the Gaza Strip to stop the rocket fire, but other security chiefs are opposed to such a complicated operation in the densely-populated coastal area that could exact many Israeli troop casualties.
Similar operations since Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005 have failed to halt the rocket fire.
According to the army, 16 rockets have been fired at Israel since Friday. The attacks have strained the November cease-fire, which was meant to bring an end to rocket attacks and Israeli airstrikes. Militants from Hamas, the Islamic militant group that is part of the Palestinian government, have become involved in the attacks in recent weeks.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah party sits in the government with Hamas, has repeatedly condemned the rocket attacks, but has been unable to halt them. Ending the rocket fire is a key component of a new U.S. proposal for easing Israeli restrictions on Palestinian movement while also improving Israeli security.
It's unclear whether Olmert could make any progress on the Palestinian track, since a scathing report last week by an official government commission criticized him for "very severe failures" during last year's war in Lebanon. The rebuke has badly weakened the prime minister and caused divisions within the government.
In Washington, officials said Rice had canceled a planned trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories because of the uncertain state of affairs. Israeli media said officials were surprised by Rice's cancellation. Olmert's spokeswoman, Miri Eisin, did not have an immediate response to the reports.
Rice has been a frequent visitor in the region in recent months, urging the sides to restart peace efforts. Olmert and Abbas have held several meetings recently, and Haaretz said Tuesday they had opened a secret negotiation channel.
The chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, called the report "baseless. There is no such thing."
Eisin would not comment directly on the report, but noted that Olmert and Abbas have held several public meetings in recent months.
Abbas and Olmert agreed to form teams that would meet to discuss issues relating to a future state, said a senior Palestinian official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorized the subject with reporters. The teams haven't met yet because they haven't agreed on an agenda, he said.
Only deeply traumatized and numb people do this! Uncaring! Try PTSD!!
Israeli motorists drove around dead body on road
More than two dozen Israeli motorists manoeuvred around the dead body of a road accident victim lying in the middle of a busy intersection, failing to stop to help in an incident captured by a traffic camera.
In footage broadcast by Israeli television stations on Monday and in a series of photographs on newspaper front pages, motorcyclist Moshe Yisraeli was seen trying to squeeze between two trucks at a junction on a highway near Tel Aviv on Sunday.
He never made it. The camera captured his body lying near the centre of the four-way intersection, his motorcycle metres away on its side.
Some 30 cars and trucks slowed down and then carefully drove around the prone motorcyclist in a stream of traffic that continued for nearly two minutes before a driver stopped his vehicle and approached the body.
An ambulance crew later pronounced Yisraeli, 63, dead at the scene.
Israelis have a reputation for rushing to the scene of accidents or Palestinian bombings to help victims, and the apparent apathy shown in Yisraeli's case touched off a public debate over whether Israeli society has become uncaring.
"It's hard for me to think that no one helped him. I prefer to believe that people were in shock and didn't understand what had happened," Yisraeli's daughter, Tali, told reporters.
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