05-14-2006, 10:32 PM
Quote:Jimmy Carter: Punishing the innocent is a crime
Jimmy Carter International Herald Tribune
SUNDAY, MAY 7, 2006
Innocent Palestinian people are being treated like animals, with the presumption that they are guilty of some crime. Because they voted for candidates who are members of Hamas.
The United States government has become the driving force behind an apparently effective scheme of depriving the general public of income, access to the outside world and the necessities of life.
Public opinion polls conducted after the January parliamentary election show that 80 percent of Palestinians still want a peace agreement with Israel based on the international road map premises.
It is almost a miracle that the Palestinians have been able to orchestrate three elections during the past 10 years, all of which have been honest, fair, strongly contested, without violence and with the results accepted by winners and losers.
With American acquiescence, the Israelis had avoided any substantive peace talks for more than five years, regardless of who had been chosen to represent the Palestinian side as interlocutor.
Restraints imposed on the new government are a planned and deliberate catastrophe for the citizens of the occupied territories, in hopes that Hamas will yield to the economic pressure.
<b>With all their faults, Hamas leaders have continued to honor a temporary cease-fire, or hudna, during the past 18 months, and their spokesman told me that this "can be extended for two, 10 or even 50 years if the Israelis will reciprocate."</b>
Regardless of these intricate and long-term political interrelationships, it is unconscionable for Israel, the United States and others under their influence to continue punishing the innocent and already persecuted people of Palestine.
Quote:Jimmy Carter...what can I say. He loves the liberal media in the US.
Hamas IS a terrorist organization. If they ever make terrorists acts against the US they will get a dose of what the Taliban got. Maybe they'll clean up and be a legitimate government...I hope they do.
<b>O ye who believe! take not into your intimacy those outside your ranks; they will not fail to corrupt you. They only desire your ruin: rank hatred has already appeared from their mouths; what their hearts conceal is far worse. We have made plain to you the Signs if ye have wisdom.</b>
Ah! ye are those who love them but they love you not though ye believe in the whole of the Book. When they meet you they say "We believe"; but when they are alone they bite off the very tips of their fingers at you in their rage. Say: "Perish in your rage; Allah knoweth well all the secrets of the heart."
If aught that is good befalls you it grieves them; but if some misfortune overtakes you they rejoice at it. But if ye are constant and do right not the least harm will their cunning do to you for Allah compasseth round about all that they do. Al-i'Imran 116-120