RAMALLAH: The Palestinian chief negotiator in Mideast peace talks says his people should give up seeking an independent Palestinian state and pursue a single country for Palestinians and Israelis. Saeb Erekat says growing Jewish settlements are eating away at lands Palestinians want for their hoped-for state.
Palestinians may have to abandon the goal of an independent state if Israel continues to expand Jewish settlements and the United States does not stop it Erekat," said yesterday. It may be time for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to "tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities, the two-state solution is no longer an option", Erekat told a news conference.
read more @ kuwait times
2. commandos capture Hezbollah arms ship
JERUSALEM: Israeli commandos seized a ship Wednesday that defense officials said was carrying hundreds of tons of weapons bound for Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement — the largest arms shipment Israel has ever commandeered.
The Israeli military said an Iranian document was found on board, showing that the arms shipment originated from Iran, although the paper was not shown to reporters.
...Rear Adm. Roni Ben-Yehuda, the deputy Israeli navy commander, told a briefing that “hundreds of tons” of weapons were found on the ship, giving a much higher estimate than an earlier one of more than 60 tons.
Ben-Yehuda added the weapons were “a drop in the ocean” of arms being shipped to Hezbollah. But hours after the seizure, Israel had not provided proof that the arms were meant for the Lebanese militants.
...
Based on intelligence reports, a naval unit patrolling the area intercepted and boarded the vessel without incident, defense officials said.
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said the crew was not aware of the cargo’s contents. The ship, the Francop, is operated by United Feeder Services, a Cyprus-based shipping company that said it picked up the cargo in Damietta, Egypt. An employee of the company’s chartering department said the ship had been bound from Egypt to Cyprus and from there to Lebanon and Turkey. He said the company did not know what was inside the containers or where the cargo originated.
reported this yesterday: http://samsonblinded.org/news/israel-raids-german-ship-14463
The Israeli Navy captured the German ship Francop in the Mediterranean. Among the ship’s hundreds of containers, a few contained weapons, which allegedly were being transported from Iran to Syria. The US spotted the ship, but allowed Israel to intercept it to avoid disrupting Obama’s dialogue with Tehran. Technically, Israel’s actions constitute a blatant act of piracy, which once again testifies to the inapplicability of idealism and international law in time of war. Hijacking a foreign ship for routine deliveries of small arms and Katjyusha rockets would be too much. The explanation lies in a terse official announcement that the cargo included anti-aircraft batteries “not seen in the region before."
3. Hezbollah denies any link to Israeli claims of arms shipment
Hezbollah on Thursday vehemently denied Israeli accusations that a huge shipment of arms seized by the Zionist entity was destined for the Islamic resistance group. "Hezbollah staunchly denies any link to the weapons that the Zionist enemy has seized from the Francop ship," the group said in a brief statement.
"At the same time Hezbollah denounces Israel's piracy in international waters," it added.
The Israeli military claimed it had seized the 137-metre (450-foot) Antigua-flagged vessel Francop before dawn on Wednesday around 100 nautical miles from the Israeli coast.
Iran and Syria, staunch allies of Hezbollah, have both rejected Israel's accusations about the ship's destination and direction of passage.
In a joint press conference Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and his Syrian counterpart, Walid al-Mouallem, dismissed Israeli claims that a ship loaded with arms from Iran and headed for Syria had been intercepted in the Mediterranean Sea.
Walid al-Mouallem confirmed that the Israeli navy had seized a ship with Syrian cargo, but denied it was carrying arms; he also denied that the ship had been intercepted on its route from Iran to a Syrian port, saying the ship was headed in the opposite direction, on route to Iran to deliver Syrian-made goods for civilian consumption.
Israel, in fact, did not provide any proof of the alleged “hundreds of tons of arms bound for Hezbollah from Iran," as Israel's deputy naval commander, Rani Ben Yehuda, told the press.
At the joint press conference in Tehran, Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Mouallem commented the seizure of the ship by Israel stating that “unfortunately, some official pirates in the seas, sometimes in the name of the navy, sometimes in the name of inspection, obstruct trade movement between Syria and Iran”.
The ship itself, the “Francop”, was operated by the United Feeder Services, a Cyprus-based company that had taken the load in the Egyptian port of Damietta. An employee of the United Feeder Services said the ship had been bound from Damietta to Cyprus and from there to Lebanon and Turkey.
source: al manar tv
4. Russia to use military force abroad only as a last resort - Medvedev
MOSCOW, November 5 (RIA Novosti) - Russia will use its Armed Forces outside the country only in extreme circumstances to protect Russian nationals, President Dmitry Medvedev said on Thursday.
"Such decisions will be made only when absolutely necessary," Medvedev said at a meeting with members of the upper house of Russia's parliament. "Our citizens must be protected in any part of the world, and they must feel protected by the state." He stressed that such decisions "must be set in law."
...Russia's current 2006 legislation only allows the president to send troops to fight terrorism on foreign soil. Experts have said the law lacks clearly defined terms of "wartime" and a "combat situation," which complicates the deployment of troops outside the country.
read more @ ria novosti5. policeman who killed British troops is back with Taliban
The gunman who killed five British soldiers in an attack in Afghanistan's Helmand province was today back with Taliban fighters who greeted him with flowers, sources close to the Afghan security forces said.
The killer – identified only as a policeman called Gulbadin – was back under Taliban protection, the source said.
British and Afghan commanders were undertaking an urgent investigation into the circumstances of the attack.
amazing how they know this but somehow can't get to him - read more @ guardian
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