The internet is amazing, like a researcher's dream
maybe a nightmare.
If you are not to concerned about sources you can cut and paste quotes to support any side of any issue.
ANALYSIS
Unintended Consequences Pose Risks for Mideast Policy
The Bush administration also did not effectively push Israel to negotiate its 2005 withdrawal from Gaza with Abbas, who had just been elected president after Arafat died. Abbas wanted to demonstrate that he could negotiate with the Israelis, but Jerusalem withdrew from Gaza unilaterally, as had been the plan when Arafat was still alive.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... v=hcmodule
Gaza Pullout
Palestinian officials have repeatedly complained that Israeli was not negotiating the pullout with them, and criticized Mofaz's unilateral decision.
"They have finished the negotiations with themselves, and now they are trying to tell us what to do," Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said.
Israel counters that the Palestinians have shown no willingness to coordinate the pullback.\
http://web.israelinsider.com/Articles/Politics/5295.htm
Israeli Settlers Demolish Greenhouses and Gaza Jobs
JERUSALEM, July 14 - About half the greenhouses in the Israeli settlements in Gaza have already been dismantled by their owners, who have given up waiting to see if the government was going to come up with extra payment as an inducement to leave them behind, say senior officials working on the coordination of this summer's Israeli pullout from Gaza.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/15/inter ... ideast.htm
Main events in Hamas' history
The Associated Press
Here are the main events in the history of the Hamas movement:
December 1987: First Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation erupts, and Yassin founds Hamas as an Islamic resistance movement against Israel.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2004 ... line_x.htm
Sheikh Ahmed Yassin founded Hamas in 1987 as an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas#History
Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies.
Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.
According to documents United Press International obtained from the Israel-based Institute for Counter Terrorism, Hamas evolved from cells of the Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928. Islamic movements in Israel and Palestine were "weak and dormant" until after the 1967 Six Day War in which Israel scored a stunning victory over its Arab enemies.
After 1967, a great part of the success of the Hamas/Muslim Brotherhood was due to their activities among the refugees of the Gaza Strip. The cornerstone of the Islamic movements success was an impressive social, religious, educational and cultural infrastructure, called Da'wah, that worked to ease the hardship of large numbers of Palestinian refugees, confined to camps, and many who were living on the edge.
"Social influence grew into political influence," first in the Gaza Strip, then on the West Bank, said an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity.
According to ICT papers, Hamas was legally registered in Israel in 1978 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the movement's spiritual leader, as an Islamic Association by the name Al-Mujamma al Islami, which widened its base of supporters and sympathizers by religious propaganda and social work.
According to U.S. administration officials, funds for the movement came from the oil-producing states and directly and indirectly from Israel. The PLO was secular and leftist and promoted Palestinian nationalism. Hamas wanted to set up a transnational state under the rule of Islam, much like Khomeini's Iran.
What took Israeli leaders by surprise was the way the Islamic movements began to surge after the Iranian revolution, after armed resistance to Israel sprang up in southern Lebanon vis-�-vis the Hezbollah, backed by Iran, these sources said.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/news_alert_hamas2.html
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Louder Jewish communal figures - who he declined to name - are wary of the peace process and when they speak in the name of American Jewry, their reservations are given political weight. But that doesn't mean they are representative of the community on whose behalf they speak, Joseph said. For many conference participants, the American Jewish community's involvement in the peace process is especially pressing, as President George Bush seeks to formulate policy and U.S. politicians naturally look to the American Jewish community for direction.
At the heart of the issue, participants say, is the fact that voices routinely heard from the organized Jewish community are coming from groups such as AIPAC, the Conference of Presidents, or the World Jewish Congress (WJC), which participants say are relatively hawkish in their approach to a solution for the conflict. Earlier this month, for example, WJC President Ronald Lauder wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Olmert in which he said that "any changes in the status" of Jerusalem must take into account the voice of the Jewish people. Lauder, meanwhile, is also funding a campaign for One Jerusalem which lobbies against the division of Israel's capital, according to newspaper reports.
"Many of the larger Jewish organizations see the peace process as a potential threat, as opposed to something that will promote Jewish continuity," said one participant, who asked to go unnamed. "Many of the American Jewish organizations are getting Israel on the agenda and that is positive. But they view Israel and its struggle as something they and the American Jewish community are mandated to protect. They are many steps behind the people in Israel and many steps behind the majority of American Jews. Nevertheless, they have a louder voice and so they are heard."
http://www.israelpolicyforum.org/displa ... b=85&dis=3