As Tony Blair is named envoy to ME, Fatah Dahlah accusses Iran and Qatar over Hamas coup

Tony Blair has today stepped out of office and has been named envoy to Middle East, something that not all people agree with.

Dahlan: Iran, Qatar supported Hamas during Gaza ‘coup’

Jerusalem Post – 1 hour ago
By KHALED ABU TOAMEH

“I was not surprised by the coup in the Gaza Strip,” Dahlan said. “I knew about Hamas’s plans and I told different parties about this so we could try to thwart them.”

Asked why the Fatah-controlled security forces were defeated by Hamas, Dahlan said: “The Palestinian security establishment was never prepared for internal fighting. Since the beginning of the intifada in 2000 our security forces faced systematic destruction by Israel. The Israelis destroyed 280 security installations in the past seven years and Hamas continued to destroy security installations before they launched their coup.”

Dahlan pointed out that Hamas militiamen had raided the central prison in Gaza City and freed some murderers. “They claim that they have just liberated the Gaza Strip for the second time [after Israeli disengagement],” he said. “The Hamas men have Fatah blood on their hands. They forgot that Fatah had protected them when they were being chased by Israel.”

Dahlan denied that he had played any role in the Hamas-Fatah clashes that preceded the takeover, saying he had been abroad for nearly two months for surgery. “I was not in charge of security in the Gaza Strip,” he explained. “I was out of the country because I had to undergo surgery. This is not a personal matter because Hamas has been targeting our people and institutions over the past three years.”

Dahlan lashed out at Qatar and Iran, accusing each country of giving Hamas $400 million. He also accused Qatar of turning its Al-Jazeera TV network into an organ for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

“For decades, Iran never paid the Palestinians one dollar,” he said. “But they gave Hamas $400 million that went to Hamas’s bank accounts and not to the Palestinian people. Qatar also gave Hamas another $400 million that were used to slaughter Palestinians.”

Israeli Gaza Attacks Kill 10 Palestinians CBS News
Israeli Attacks Kill 13 in Gaza New York Times
Houston Chronicle – Washington Post – International Herald Tribune – Ha’aretz
all 1,930 news articles »

Anyway, there are signs that Fatah never fought Hamas:

No mainstream news source has reported the clear truth about the Fatah-Hamas ‘war’–there wasn’t any. Fatah never fought. Whether the cause was conspiracy or not, two facts are certain: 1) The enormous resources provided to Fatah to fight Hamas in Gaza were essentially unused and are now in the hands of Hamas to attack Israel. 2) Enormous resources are now being provided to Fatah to fight Hamas in the West Bank.

And then we have the possible knowledge and support by both Iran and Syria of the attack against the UN Spanish peacekeepers…

So what’s really happening here?

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Three Islamists allegedly linked with AlQaeda, detained in Barcelona

 Police has detained today in Barcelona three Moroccans, two of them this morning and the third in the afternoon, with alledged links with Al-Qaeda in the Maghreb.

The first detained were 23-year-old Mohamed Laksir and 27-year-old Moulay Lahoucine Miftah Idrissi. The two are accused of an alledged crime of belonging to illicit association to prepare and commit terrorist attacks. The two belonged to a cell which made the job of recruiting, proselitising and taught the radical teachings of Islam.

The objective was to travel to the training camps of the African region of Sahel.

The investigations were began in Dec. 2005, after the dismantlement of a terrorist structure which had roots in Spain with a close relationship with Salafist groups.

In fact, Moulay Lahoucine Miftah Idrissi is the brother of Mohamed el Idrissi, one of the last Islamists accused by Judge Garzón two weeks ago. Mohammed was impeached, but not accused because of an alledged relationship with March 11th bombings, because, according to the investigation, El Idrissi carried a mobile phone to the families of one of the terrorists who fleed, Mohammed Afalah, to let him speak before dying in Iraq.

Source: Arrestan en Barcelona a dos islamistas presuntos miembros de Al Qaeda | elmundo.es

Al Qaeda for the Islamic Maghreb had already menaced Spain before.

Ceres Televisión

Dos detenidos en Barcelona por su presunta relación con Al Qaeda
Antena 3 TV – Hace 1 hora
La Policía Nacional ha detenido en Barcelona a dos jóvenes por su presunta relación con una célula de Al Qaeda de captación y reclutamiento de terroristas, según informó el Ministerio del Interior. Mohamed Laksir, de 23 años, y Moulay Lahoucine Miftah …
Detenidos dos marroquíes presuntamente relacionados con Al Qaeda Madridpress.com
Detienen a dos presuntos islamistas en Barcelona Reuters América Latina
Libertad Digital – Fuerteventura Digital – Periodistadigital.com (Suscripción) – Cadena Ser
y 29 artículos relacionados »

Related posts:

1. AlQaeda cells in Catalonia.
2. European Council: antiterrorist fight stigmatises the Muslims. [in Spanish].

The third one alledgely related to Al-Qaeda:

The police has also detained this noon in Barcelona to Mohamed Akazim, 32-year-old, Moroccan, accused of belonging to the organization of Al Qaeda for the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, according to the Interior Ministry.

Also read:

1. Muslims just want back their stolen land, says captured jihadist. Asked where the hatred of the west came from, Abu Dujana replied: “Many lands owned by Muslims have been taken away by our enemies. America is part of it, like in Palestine and other places. “We demand those governments return those lands and let us put Sharia law in place.”
2. Call for descendents of Muslims expelled from Spain in the seventeenth century to be given preferential terms for Spanish citizenship. Read the comments by Sheik Yer’mami on Winds of Jihad.

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Chinese ultra-capitalism

Christian Science Monitor has run two very important reports on China and its relationship with Sudan, something I had written about in the past:

In Sudan, China focuses on oil wells, not local needs.

Sudan’s oil production averages 536,000 barrels a day, according to estimates by the Paris-based International Energy Agency. Other estimates say it is closer to 750,000 barrels a day. And there is an estimated 5 billion-barrel reservoir of oil beneath Sudan’s 1 million-square-mile surface, almost all of it in the south of the country, an area inhabited mainly by Christian and animist black Africans who fought a 21-year civil war against the Arab-dominated Muslim government of the north.

The vast majority of this oil, 64 percent, is sold to China, now the world’s second-largest consumer of oil. And while neither Khartoum, China, nor Petrodar release any statistics – this is generally believed to be an oil deal worth at least $2 billion a year.

China’s National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) is the majority shareholder in both Petrodar and the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company, two of the biggest oil consortiums in Sudan.

CNPC has invested billions in oil-related infrastructure here in Paloich, including the 900-mile pipeline from the Paloich oil fields to the tanker terminal at Port Sudan on the Red Sea, a tarmac road leading to Khartoum, and a new airport with connecting flights to Beijing.

But they have not invested in much else here.

Locals live in meager huts, eating peanuts with perch fished out of the contaminated Nile. There is no electricity. A Swiss charity provides healthcare. An American aid group flies in food and mosquito nets. Most children do not go to school. There is no work to be found. Petrodar, for one, has its own workers – almost all of whom are foreigners (mostly Chinese, Malaysians, and Qataris) or Sudanese northerners. The consortium hires Paloich residents only rarely, for menial jobs.

h/t Desde el Exilio.

And remember the Sudanese genocide in Darfur? Well, err:

How China’s support of Sudan shields a regime called ‘genocidal’

Mercenaries are scooping up contracts here. Arms dealers are flying in and out on the daily flight from Nairobi, Kenya. And the rebels, theoretically out of work, are training full time on the dunes around Juba, South Sudan’s self-proclaimed capital.

Up north, in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, weapons arsenals are filling up, talk is tough, and clear signals are being sent out that the resource-rich south will never be allowed to be independent.

More than two years after the north-south peace agreement, and four years before the expected southern referendum on secession – it’s a matter of time, say observers, before the fragile calm blows up, reigniting the 21-year civil war that left 1.5 million dead.

“It’s a lull in which both sides are regrouping for the new war,” says a Canadian UN military observer stationed in South Sudan, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Meanwhile, the Darfur crisis that has killed more than 200,000 and displaced more than 2.5 million in western Sudan continues to rage unabated, helping Sudan earn the top spot on Foreign Policy magazine’s “Failed State Index” for the second year in a row.

The Chinese are as much to blame for this situation as anyone, say critics, and not so much because of their economic policies but because of political ones.

Beijing has “a vested interest in the continuation of a low level of insecurity. It keeps the other major investors out,” charges the Brussels-based International Crisis Group (ICG) in a report. The report argues that China welcomes the absence of real peace in Sudan as enhancing its business opportunities, whatever the cost to southern Sudanese civilians: “There is [on the part of the Chinese] an almost total disregard for the human rights implications of their investments.”

This is unacceptable to leaders of the semiautonomous south who say they won’t sit idly by while revenue from Chinese drilling in their oil fields goes mostly to the Arab-dominated government in the north.

“This peace is ugly,” says Daniel Deng Moyndit, a former rebel who now chairs the Government of South Sudan’s parliamentary security committee. “They [Khartoum government officials] are not serious … and any state is entitled to defense in anticipation of aggression.”

Despite this, “China doesn’t want another government in charge,” adds a Khartoum-based humanitarian aid worker, speaking on condition of anonymity. “They’re used to dealing with this government.”

While pockets of South Sudan are seeing some economic benefits from the shaky peace, the region in general is shortchanged. The main sore point has to do with years of underdevelopment and a perception that oil revenues are not being shared fairly.

Under the peace deal between north and south, oil profits are to be shared: 50 percent to the south, 48 percent to the north, and 2 to the specific oil-producing areas. But many in South Sudan say this agreement is not being implemented fairly.

Read both. They are very important.

And while this happens, our King and Queen do not suspend their visit to China to pay respects to the fallen because they are “strenghening ties with the Asian giant“.

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Blast kills 6 Spanish UN peacekeepers in Lebanon (III) (UPDATED)

The funerals for the 6 Spanish soldiers killed in Lebanon are scheduled for eleven o’clock in the morning (Spanish hour) at the base of the parachute team in Paracuellos del Jarama.

The soldier’s corpses arrived in Spanish Air Base of Torrejón de Ardoz at 2:30 a.m., where they have been received by the Crown Prince Felipe and the PM Zapatero. (video here).

The priest of the Spanish mission in Lebanon, in the funeral in Beirut, called them “peace’s martyrs”, in a ceremony that was attended by some other soldiers from other units of FINUL, in solidarity with the dead. Afterwards, in the moment of honouring the dead, some colleages of the dead cried when the anthem of the parachuters was sung. Previously, the Civil Guard unit, which travelled to Lebanon, had identified the corpses.

Neither the King Don Juan Carlos or Queen Doña Sofía will be at the funeral, because they are in China, “strenghtening the Spanish ties with the Asian giant“. And they are not changing their schedule. The Crown Prince Felipe (right, with relatives of the soldiers) and his wife, Letizia, will attend them.

The behaviour of the Spanish Government has been shameful. No official has informed their relatives of the death of the soldiers. No official communication from Zapatero. Even the Socialist Organization’s Secretary, that moonbat of Blanco (left) has linked this attack to the presence of Spanish troops in Irak. As PP leader, Rajoy, has accused the Government of hiding the war state in Lebanon, Blanco has answered: “he is a little confounded and thinks that with this he can wash his conscience of having sent us to [Iraqi] war“.

There will be two days of official mourning.

Some soldiers from the other BMR -damaged in the explosion- have spoken about the terrorist attack:

“What enrages me more is that they fell one after the other. First they told us there were 3 dead, then 4, then 5 and the then the sixth, the one I brought here“. The soldier who speaks is Jorge Enrique Prieto, 28-years-old and Colombian national, same nationality that had three of the dead. He drove the BMR which was affected by the explosion, and fought till the end to save his companions.

According to him, everything “happened in seconds“. After the explosion, he stopped his vehicle to wait for his companions to rescue the wounded and after that, he made “what is possible and what is impossible too” to get on time to the base to save 19-year-old parachuter Manuel David Portas Ruiz (right). “Firstly, they told me he was alive, then that they have cut off one of his legs, but that he was alive. Then two hours later, they confirmed us he has died“, he laments.

His companion Daniel Blanco, 23-years-old from Torrejón de Ardoz (Madrid), explains that after the explosion he exited his vehicle and saw “fume, fire and heard groans and cryings for help” from their wounded colleagues. “We were surrounded by flames“. “We went to aid them, we deployed ourselves and went to their position fearing there could be more explosions and began clasifying them considering their wounds“.

Spanish Intelligence Agency had already warned the Government of a danger of terrorist attacks last May by two groups linked to Al-Qaeda.

The attacks’ danger were aimed at FINUL, 12.000 soldiers, of which 1.100 are Spanish. These two groups are Fatah al Islam, the main suspect of the attack, and Osbat al Ansar. These same sources outlined that since June 4th they had elevated their alert and security level, even when the contingent already is lacking some basic protection systems such as the anti-bombs inhibitors in the armoured vehicles“.

Who said that the shameful fleeing from Iraq has reduced the danger of Islamist terrorist attacks? Morons.

Another word of the Government and another lie: Sources of the investigation say -from Spanish Intelligence Agency- that the explosion was caused by much more than 50 kilos of explosives:

“With the charge the Minister says that caused the explosion, it would have been impossible to make the BMR’s front part dissappear. There is nothing absolutely. It was torn off and everything inside was propelled through the rear part. You only have to take into account that there is nothing of what was the front part and that damage is not caused by only 50 kilos of explosive“.

More here. [In Spanish]

UPDATE: First analysis shows that the attack was made with 70 kgs. of C4 explosive, 5 times more poweful than the TNT (similar to 300-350 kilos of TNT). Also no blood has been found inside the car bomb, so looks like there were no suicide bombers.

UPDATE 2: Spanish National Court is beginning an investigation of the attack and forbids the incineration of the bodies in order to “know the deeds made by Spanish or foreign people abroad which could be considered, according to Spanish criminal law, as terrorism“.

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