The King of Bahrain joins the Shark Blog's Virtual March on Baghdad!
Ze'ev Schiff lays out three good reasons for the offensive against Hamas.
The Sunday Telegraph reports that Saddam may have killed one of his own missile engineers, in order to prevent the man from disclosing information to the UN inspectors.
On CNN last night I saw a report from Sheila MacVicar, who visited Jordan, Syria and Syrian-occupied Lebanon to ask the locals for their thoughts on the impending liberation of Iraq. None of her subjects expressed support for the U.S. But the most telling moment was when Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher tried to change the subject and claim that the bigger problem in the region was the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. "The longest occupation in the world", he called it. I wish MacVicar would have challenged Muasher on at least three points, e.g. (1) "wasn't it Jordan that attacked Israel in 1967 and led to the occupation in the first place?" (2) "Why didn't Jordan agree to take back the West Bank when Israel offered to return it shortly after the 1967 war?" (3) Kind of beside the point, but hasn't the Chinese occupation of Tibet lasted more than a decade longer than the Israeli occupation of the West Bank?
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at March 02, 2003 06:34 AMNot that I disagree with your larger points, but as I understand things, Israel offered to return the Sinai and the Golan just after the Six Day War, not the West Bank.
Posted by: Haggai on March 2, 2003 03:47 PMHaggai,
Strictly speaking, you're correct. On the other hand, I believe that there were enough elements in the Israeli political leadership at the time that were willing to return most of the West Bank if Hussein were willing to make peace. The Khartoum Resolutions made it clear that any Israeli offers to trade land for peace were a waste of time.
Posted by: Stefan Sharkansky on March 2, 2003 04:04 PMWhat? Saddam Hussein, a murderer? From Dan Rather's interview last week, I thought he was a man of peace!
Posted by: Xrlq on March 2, 2003 08:55 PMIsrael probably would have been in better shape by keeping those offers on the table, but Khartoum certainly made it clear that there was no peace to be had at that point in time.
Posted by: Haggai on March 2, 2003 10:28 PM
I would probably add issue #4:
(4) Why didn't the occupier of the West Bank from 1948-1967 give the Palestinians a state there?
Posted by: jeremy on March 3, 2003 11:56 AM