Update for the region.
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The Quest For a Grand Zionist Coalition
http://news.antiwar.com/
February 5 2009
Only five days remain until Israel goes to the polls, and while the surging popularity of Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu party has begun to siphon votes from the frontrunning Likud Party, Likud head Benjamin Netanyahu remains hopeful that he can form the next government.
But while previously the talk was of a Right-Far-Right Coalition with Netanyahu at the helm, more recently Netanyahu has expressed a desire for a unity government, saying he would call on “all of the Zionist parties” to join a broad coalition.
If possible such a coalition could wield enormous power, with polls suggesting it could control upwards of 90 percent of the Knesset (assuming it excludes only the Arabs and the far left). Yet such a coalition would also include such a myriad of positions on the political spectrum that infighting would be inevitable.
In fact, the bickering has already begun. Netanyahu’s promise of a “pivotal” ministerial position to Lieberman has sparked considerable concern from the Labor Party’s rank and file. While Labor chief Ehud Barak has not ruled out joining a coalition including Lieberman, much of the party is pressing hard for him to do so.
For Labor, the choice is stark: joining a Likud-led Grand Coalition as the fourth largest member is unlikely to net them the influence they’ve grown accustomed to in the current coalition. Yet assuming Likud successfully courts the Kadima Party, the alternative is to be the public face of a small and likely ineffectual opposition.
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Feb 5 2009
GAZA - Palestinian doctors at a number of hospitals in the Gaza Strip informed foreign medical experts allowed into the area over the past two weeks that they were witnessing an unexpected deterioration in the condition of their burn victims. They described the same phenomenon: Two weeks after being injured, the burn victims seemed to be getting worse, requiring skin grafts abroad.
In other instances, internal tissue was also destroyed. Some of the wounded died a week to 10 days after being injured, even though they had not appeared to suffer extensive injuries. The doctors only later discovered that their liver and kidneys had been affected. But at this point, it was already too late to save many of the wounded. The precise number of those who suffered burn wounds and then died is still uncertain.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1061720.html
[U.S. manufacturers of white phosphorus are FMC Corporation, Pocatello, ID; Monsanto Company, Soda Springs, ID.
http://www.environmentwriter.org/res...phosphorus.htm]
Jan 22 2009
Richard Falk, an independent UN rights expert, said there was compelling evidence that Israel breached basic humanitarian rules and the laws of war by conducting a large-scale military operation "against an essentially defenseless population."
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satelli...cle%2FShowFull
9 January 2009
The Israeli military may have committed war crimes in Gaza, the UN's most senior human rights official said tonight, as Israeli troops pressed on with their increasingly deadly offensive in defiance of a UN security council resolution demanding a ceasefire.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009...acuees-zeitoun
BOYCOTT ISRAEL CAMPAIGN BOYCOTT COCA COLA
http://www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-coca-cola.html