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  Saturday  June 22  2002    01: 35 AM

Israel/Palestine

This is just fucking great. What can Israel do that can make a bad situation even worse?

Cabinet in Israel Endorses Seizure of the West Bank

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security cabinet followed through on a plan for all-out seizure of the West Bank today, scrapping a tactic of intermittent raids in favor of a permanent armed presence as tense Israeli soldiers in armored columns poured into Palestinian cities, towns and refugee camps, military officials said.

The government's pledge this week to begin taking Palestinian lands "as long as terror continues," went into full swing today. Israeli tanks and troops moved into six of the eight West Bank towns designated for self-rule in the Oslo accords, with later reports of forces moving toward Hebron, one of the remaining two.

It was the largest operation since the six-week Israeli sweep through the West Bank that began in March. The Israeli radio described the action today as a "wide offensive, but smaller" than the spring operation, which at the time drew American calls for a speedy withdrawal.
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But this has been the Israeli Generals' goal for some time. Again:

Israel: the generals’ grand design

In conventional political discourse, Israel’s recent attacks on Palestinian civilians, villages, and governmental institutions are described as “retaliatory acts”. They are justified as a “response” to the latest wave of terror attacks on Israeli civilians. In fact, these “retaliatory measures” are part of a systematic assault on the Palestinian Authority that was carefully prepared long before the current “war on terrorism.” As far back as October 2000, at the outset of the Palestinian uprising and before the terror attacks had started, military circles in Israel had prepared detailed operative plans to topple Arafat and the Palestinian Authority.
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