I've never been a fan of Ha'aretz, but lately the paper seems to be on the edge of some sort of virtual nervous breakdown.
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Yasser Arafat was a strong leader of the sort that can make peace. But since he refused to sign an agreement that many Israelis considered "the most generous offer," and did not give up the use of violence in its entirety, he won a double title - both "not a partner" and "irrelevant."
It's said about Mahmoud Abbas that he does want to put an end to the bloodshed and solve the dispute through peaceful means. He wants, but he's a loser, he can't do it. They say Abu Mazen's one hand is cuffed to evildoers from the Fatah leadership and the other hand is cuffed to the Hamas and Islamic Jihad. So, what's done for a neighbor such as this, who wants peace but regrettably faces some difficulties? Correct. Offer a helping hand while learning the lessons from missing the opportunity to consolidate his power when he served as prime minister under Arafat. But Sharon, then as now, first cuts his wings and then compares him to a featherless chick.
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But if someone wishes to find the old Harlem, or the Jewish Sadr City, he should go to the center of the city of Hebron, to the ghetto called Avraham Avinu (Abraham our Forefather). If this is too frightening, he can suffice with the television footage filmed on Wednesday, when the attorney general came to the ghetto. As in certain countries in South America and in Iraq, where attorneys general or district attorneys cannot travel without bodyguards, Attorney General Menachem Mazuz also arrived in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood surrounded by half an army. But the hooligans and rulers of the neighborhood long ago stopped being impressed by the state's army or its symbols of sovereignty. Like their Arab neighbors, they regard Israel as an enemy state - a state that is ready to surrender land and, in particular, does not allow them to take control of the entire city of Hebron.
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Hamas published an unprecedented statement Monday apologizing for the murder of a young woman by its gunmen near the town of Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip.
According to Palestinian sources, several armed Hamas gunmen stopped a car with four passengers at around 9 P.M. last Friday. The gunmen who apparently were attempting to rob the couples - two brothers and their girlfriends - suddenly opened fire at the car for unknown reasons and killed 20-year-old Yusra al-Azami, a student at the Islamic University in Gaza.
Now the problem with that last item isn't readily apparent. But as this article at CAMERA points out, the rest of the media, including both The Independent and Hamas itself, acknowledged that the incident in question was no robbery attempt. It was an institutional honor killing by the new Hamas morality police.
Mushira Masri, a Hamas spokesman, said last night that the gunmen had not known that the couples were betrothed. "The brothers who did this made a mistake. There was suspicion of immoral behaviour" . . .
