Posted 11:04 AM
by Mary
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter says Israel has a nuclear arsenal of 150 weapons.
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Asked at a news conference at Wales's Hay literary festival on Sunday how a future U.S. president should deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, Carter put the risk in context by listing atomic weapons held globally.
"The U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union (Russia) has about the same, Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more. We have a phalanx of enormous weaponry ... not only of enormous weaponry but of rockets to deliver those missiles on a pinpoint accuracy target," he said, according to a transcript of his remarks.
While experts have long maintained Israel has a nuclear arsenal, the Jewish state has refused to confirm or deny it. The Times of London reported Carter's estimate earlier Monday.
Most estimates, many based on evidence leaked in 1986 by Israeli nuclear technician Mordechai Vanunu, put the number of Israeli nuclear weapons at between 100 and 200. But other experts have said the number is as low as 60 or as high as 400.
It was unclear from the newspaper's account whether Carter was citing those estimates, offering his own independent assessment or drawing on U.S. intelligence he would have had access to as president.
U.S. officials have generally avoided the issue of Israel's nuclear status, although during a 2006 Senate confirmation hearing Secretary of Defense Robert Gates confirmed that Israel was a nuclear power.
The Times, which did not quote him directly, said Carter made the comment Sunday while at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival on the border between England and Wales. He was discussing Iran, and the difficulty it would have in building a secret nuclear arsenal, when he mentioned the Israeli weapons, the paper said.
Reports on Carter's speech from the BBC, The Guardian and The Western Mail did not mention his estimate of Israel's nuclear stockpile.
Labels: Carter, israel, NPT, nuclear weapons
Posted 1:14 PM
by Mary
Carter comes back from Hamas with an olive branch
Aijaz Ahmad: Carter including Hamas in peace process is itself a major development
Wednesday April 23rd, 2008
David Newman, professor of political geography at Israel’s Ben-Gurion University, tells The Real News Network that Hamas’ claim that it will respect a peace deal with Israel—if it is accepted in a vote by Palestinians—represents “a more moderate position” than what the group has previously expressed.
The Real News senior analyst Aijaz Ahmad concludes that Hamas’ new, slightly softened stance could represent “a major breakthrough” in the ongoing standoff between Israel and the Islamic militant group.
David Newman is a Professor of Political Geography and a Senior Research Fellow at Ben-Gurion University in Israel, where he founded the Department of Politics and Government. Editor of the international journal, Geopolitics, and former columnist for The Jerusalem Post.
excerpt:
AIJAZ AHMAD, SENIOR ANALYST, THE REAL NEWS: A very important thing to understand in this context is just who Jimmy Carter is. He's not only a former president of the United States, but the one president who negotiated between Israel and Egypt the most durable peace agreement that there has ever been between Israel and the Arabs. And it is because of that agreement that there has never been, since then, an Arab-Israeli war. So painting him today as somebody who's somehow opposed to Israel, particularly sympathetic to Palestinians, and so on is really contrary to historical fact. As the head of Carter Center, he has been intimately involved in observing the two key elections in Palestine, both 2005 and 2006, and therefore understands the political landscape.
The principal achievement of President Carter during this trip is that he has tried to establish the fact that it is both necessary and legitimate to speak to Hamas, contrary to the position taken not only by the Israeli government, but also all the western governments. The criterion for legitimacy for Carter is simple: you don't have to like Hamas; you don't have to agree with Hamas; you simply have to recognize the fact that Hamas won the elections of 2006 and thus represents a very vast amount of Palestinian public opinion. In talking to Hamas, President Carter seems to have extracted from them a very interesting public statement, namely that President Abbas has the right to negotiate any peace agreement with Israel that he considers appropriate, and if the Palestinian people accept that agreement, Hamas will accept it too. Finally, President Carter has also helped clarify and make public a position that Hamas has been expressing for a long time but has not been covered in the media. What it says is that Hamas would be willing to live side by side with Israel as a neighbor and would even offer a complete truce for ten years. This is a major breakthrough, I believe, and this should be taken up by the United States, the western powers, and anyone else who wants to see peace established between Palestinians and Israelis.
Labels: Carter, hamas, Middle East
Posted 1:18 PM
by Mary
No Peace Without Hamas
By Mahmoud al-Zahar,
WashingtonPostThursday, April 17, 2008; Page A2
GAZA -- President Jimmy Carter's sensible plan to visit the Hamas leadership this week brings honesty and pragmatism to the Middle East while underscoring the fact that American policy has reached its dead end. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acts as if a few alterations here and there would make the hideous straitjacket of apartheid fit better. While Rice persuades Israeli occupation forces to cut a few dozen meaningless roadblocks from among the more than 500 West Bank control points, these forces simultaneously choke off fuel supplies to Gaza; blockade its 1.5 million people; approve illegal housing projects on West Bank land; and attack Gaza City with F-16s, killing men, women and children. Sadly, this is "business as usual" for the Palestinians.
Last week's attack on the Nahal Oz fuel depot should not surprise critics in the West. Palestinians are fighting a total war waged on us by a nation that mobilizes against our people with every means at its disposal -- from its high-tech military to its economic stranglehold, from its falsified history to its judiciary that "legalizes" the infrastructure of apartheid. Resistance remains our only option. Sixty-five years ago, the courageous Jews of the Warsaw ghetto rose in defense of their people. We Gazans, living in the world's largest open-air prison, can do no less.
Labels: Carter, Middle East, Palestine
