This may have been related to the half-ton of explosives and other arms found by Egypt last night.
Hamas has a monopoly on Gaza smuggling, netting the terrorists organization some $150 million each month in profits.
SA’ADA, May 25 — A fifth war between the Yemeni army and Houthis has broken out fiercely in numerous Sa’ada districts, Amran governorate’s Harf Sifyan district and Sana’a governorate’s Bani Hushaish district, leaving hundreds on both sides killed or injured, tribal sources said Sunday, adding that the war is the fiercest ever since fighting between the two sides first erupted in June 2004.I don't know enough about the Houthis to know which side is in the right, but I do know enough to say that most "human rights" groups spend much more time caring about one set of Arabs than any other.
In Sa’ada’s Matra district, believed to be the main stronghold of Houthi loyalists, local sources reveal that government troops have been attacking the area for two weeks, using helicopters, tanks, Katyusha rockets and other heavy weaponry.
The same sources add that the government’s troops are facing fierce resistance by Houthis, thereby hindering them in achieving any notable progress on the ground.
Additionally, there are ongoing bloody confrontations between republican guards and Houthis in Dhahian city, located 8 kilometers east of Sa’ada city, but neither side scored victory.
As a result, government forces were obliged to dispatch more republican guard troops. Backed by helicopters, the newly dispatched troops are fighting fiercely with Houthis in several areas of Haidan district.
This latest war has left hundreds on both sides dead and other hundreds injured in a relatively short time period while the Yemeni government imposes an information blackout on battlegrounds after cutting off all wired and wireless communication means, local sources note.
They express concern about the governorate’s worsening human situation amid shortages in diesel and gasoline supplies and soaring propane gas prices due to the blocking of nearly all roads leading to Sa’ada governorate.
The clashes resulted in food shortages, the closure of markets and the suspension of traffic on the Sana’a-Sa’ada Highway.
After that we need a "A World without Persia" conference at Columbia University. Then a cartoon contest to parody the Iranian casualties in the Iran-Iraq war, followed by another conference denying that the conflict even happened.But first things first. What do we call that sickening excuse for a nation?
Palestinian medical sources announced at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City Tuesday morning the injury of a mother and her two children in a mysterious explosion in the Shojaeya district east of Gaza City.This is the same neighborhood in which a Qassam rocket fell on Saturday.
A TV crew working for the German television station ARD was detained on 15 May in Jabaliya, in the north of the Gaza Strip, by Hamas security forces after covering a demonstration organised by members of Fatah, the party of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Cameraman Mohammed Al-Arabid and soundman Mwatasam Rashid were questioned for an hour and their equipment was confiscated.It has been obvious for nearly a year that Hamas does not allow journalists to operate freely in Gaza and that it is now impossible to get objective news out of that area. Hamas harassment and threats of journalists is well documented. Western journalists have all but gone; all that is left are Arabs who fear, justifiably, for their lives.Two journalists working for the Sudanese satellite television station Sudan TV were detained on 24 May in Gaza City while doing a report on what life is like for the city’s population. Reporter Samir Khalifa and cameraman Ahmed Al-Ras were questioned about their employer’s identity. They were suspected for working for the state-owned Palestine Broadcasting Corporation, which is controlled by the Palestinian Authority and has been banned in the Gaza Strip since June 2007. Khalifa used to work for the PBC but had to sever all contact with the station, which now operates out of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.This is not some investigative reporter coming up with these numbers, this is an ex-president. As such, they appear to have more inside information behind them.
Britain and other European governments should break from the US over the international embargo on Gaza, former US president Jimmy Carter told the Guardian yesterday. Carter, visiting the Welsh border town of Hay for the Guardian literary festival, described the EU's position on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute as "supine" and its failure to criticise the Israeli blockade of Gaza as "embarrassing".Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: "Why not? They're not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US."
The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia - the so-called Quartet - after the organisation's election victory in 2006, was "one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth," since it meant the "imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees". "Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing," Carter said.
While being scrupulously polite to the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas, and prime minister, Salam Fayyad, who represent the Fatah movement, he was scathing about their exclusion of Hamas. He described the Fatah-only government as a "subterfuge" aimed at getting round Hamas's election victory two years ago. "The top opinion pollster in Ramallah told me the other day that opinion on the West Bank is shifting to Hamas, because people [i.e., Jimmy - EoZ] believe Fatah has sold out to Israel and the US," he said.Carter said the Quartet's policy of not talking to Hamas unless it recognised Israel and fulfilled two other conditions had been drafted by Elliot Abrams, an official in the national security council at the White House. He called Abrams "a very militant supporter of Israel". The ex-president, whose election-monitoring Carter Centre had just certified Hamas's election victory as free and fair, addressed the Quartet for 12 minutes at its session in London in 2006. He urged it to talk to Hamas, which had offered to form a unity government with Fatah, the losers.
"The Quartet's final document had been drafted in Washington in advance, and not a line was changed," he said. [Nah, he doesn't sound like a bitter old man who gets ignored by the young whippersnappers who replaced him. - EoZ]
Last night, before a packed crowd at Hay, Carter spoke of his "horror" at America's involvement in torturing prisoners, saying he wanted the next US president to promise never to do so again.
He left an intriguing hint that George Bush might even face prosecution on war crimes charges once he left office.
When pressed by Philippe Sands QC on Bush's recent admission that he had authorised interrogation procedures widely seen as amounting to torture, Carter replied that he was sure Bush would be able to live a peaceful, "productive life - in our country".
Sands, an international legal expert, said afterwards that he understood that to be "clear confirmation" that while Bush would face no challenge in his own country, "what happened outside the country was another matter entirely"
Buy EoZ's book, PROTOCOLS: EXPOSING MODERN ANTISEMITISM
If you want real peace, don't insist on a divided Jerusalem, @USAmbIsrael
The Apartheid charge, the Abraham Accords and the "right side of history"
With Palestinians, there is no need to exaggerate: they really support murdering random Jews
Great news for Yom HaShoah! There are no antisemites!