The son of a bitch is actually following through with his word:

quote:

Settlers: Israel Begins Evacuation of Outpost Mon June 9, 2003 10:03 AM ET JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israel began an operation to evacuate a Jewish settler outpost Monday under a U.S.-backed "road map" to peace affirmed at a Middle East summit last week, the main settler organization said. The YESHA Council said Israeli army tractors had arrived at the Neve Erez outpost in the West Bank, northeast of Jerusalem, to begin demolishing caravans. A Defense Ministry spokeswoman had no immediate comment on what would be the first such uprooting of an outpost in line with a promise Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made at a U.S.-Palestinian-Israeli summit in Jordan Wednesday. "The evacuation of Neve Erez has begun," the council said in a statement. It said YESHA leaders earlier held a disappointing meeting with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who presented them with a list of settler outposts the army planned to dismantle soon. The statement did not say how many of the outposts, many of them sparsely populated clusters of caravans on hilltops and all unauthorized by the Israeli government, would be removed. Israeli media reports said about 15 were on the roster. The road map, which calls for an end to Israeli-Palestinian violence and the start of reciprocal steps leading to the creation of a Palestinian state by 2005, mandates the removal of settler outposts set up since Sharon took office in March 2001. Israel's Peace Now group, which monitors settlement activity, puts their number at around 60. The international community views all Jewish settlements, including the 145 established by Israeli governments on land seized in the 1967 Middle East war, as illegal. Israel disputes this.

If the settlement disbandment of illegal settlements and a freeze on growth of legal settlements continues I'm going to go ahead and say that the burden of achieving peace is going to fall on the shoulders of Abbas and the Palestinians.

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So far it's just the disassembly of scattered, unihibited and isolated outposts. It's a first step but at this point it's primarily symbolic.

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quote:

Originally posted by PeacefulWarrior So far it's just the disassembly of scattered, unihibited and isolated outposts. It's a first step but at this point it's primarily symbolic.

uninhabited?



Some of them were uninhabited but many of the ones populated with settlers are scheduled to be removed as well. What's important is that if the Palestinians can actually stop the terrorism it will lead to future removals and greater concessions. But if the Palestinains can't maintain any control over the extremist what's the point of Israel making concessions?

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quote:

Originally posted by occrider Some of them were uninhabited but many of the ones populated with settlers are scheduled to be removed as well. What's important is that if the Palestinians can actually stop the terrorism it will lead to future removals and greater concessions. But if the Palestinains can't maintain any control over the extremist what's the point of Israel making concessions?

There are plans to remove populated settlements,...I was just talking about the ones that were destroyed today.

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Well I think we can remove the word probably from the thread title. Israel's anticipated response against the Hamas attacks have happened.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....storyID=2905342

Just another day in the middle east ...

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http://mediaframe.yahoo.com/launch?...%252F4crsn.html

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If God is the answer, it must have been a very stupid question.

quote:

Originally posted by Izzy http://mediaframe.yahoo.com/launch?...%252F4crsn.html

Hey I agree with you ... Sharon's actually made efforts to uphold his end of the bargain by agreeing to remove illegal settlements. It doesn't seem like Abbas has made much of an effort to use his security force to curb extremist violence as was stipulated. However, these Israeli counter-attacks have more or less doomed any chance to save the road map which, although is not Israel's fault, is a complete shame.

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All i can do at this point is sit back and just watch in amazement. What the hell are these people thinking? Are they THAT stupid? On the one had we have Abbas, a man that seems capable enought to end the problem, yet he says he has no control over Hamas. Then we have dear Ariel who thinks it's a great idea to just send a couple of gunships to the Jabalya refugee camp and blow shit up. We have a saying an Arabic that when tranlated pretty much says the one guy is even stupider than the other. Talk about a vicious freakin cycle. Peace plan and middle east have just become complete antonyms for the rest of time. Enough!