RUSSIA THE BIG WINNER, TALIBAN THE BIG WINNER, U.S.: A NATION ADRIFT WITHOUT A FOREIGN POLICY

 

Back in April I wrote that I feared we saw the true nature of an Obama administration over the pirate episode. I saw indecisiveness, a lack of a plan, covered up with rhetoric. For four days a 850 million dollar Destroyer was held at bay by pirates with World War 2 rifles holding people hostage. The pirates, who had been in the sites of the Navy several times during the ordeal, fired on the Destroyer and boats that came in with supplies. The President had ordered the crew not to shoot back. The FBI and translators began "negotiations" which went nowhere.

 

After 4 days of this the Commander on the ship had enough. He declared the captives were in harms way by the pirates holding guns on them (even though they had been doing that during the entire four days) and within seconds the pirates were shot down. No captives were hurt. The world watched incredulously as the pirates held the Destroyer at bay. Obama's people were quick to react, stating that Obama acted decisively. Even though he gave no order to fire. The Commanders name was not released to the press, and he was kept from the press. Odd, eh?

 

So now we sit and wait for Obama to play out Hamlet. To be, or not to be on Afghanistan. It isn't just a question of how many troops to send in. Military strategists already know it will take up to 600,000 men and women to take and hold the region. It's that the people already there have no plan, no strategy, no definition of victory. So they sit and wait for Obama to decide. The deaths continue while we wait. And wait.

 

The cancellation of the second round of elections could very well plunge Afghanistan into a Constitutional crisis. ( I never want to hear about Florida ever again from people who support such gross violations that happened in Afghanistan). This could mean civil war, demonstrations against the corrupt government while our troops fight to keep him in power. It is already a clear victory for the Taliban who can claim the elections were cancelled out of fear of their response. They can say that the U.S. backs the corrupt regime of Karzai and has no use for the reform party. They can say the U.S. has about as much respect for law and order as Karzai does. Which is none at all. It is a tremendous victory for the Taliban.

 

On NPR they were gushing that Obama had congratulated Karzai for his victory. That now Karzai had to stop being corrupt, provide water and schools and rebuild Afghanistan instead of fleecing it and us. For liberals, this is very simple. A checklist. That he has no power outside of his city, that the majority of people have no I.D.s, have never met a government agent are just silly details. It's time for justice! That his city lacks electricity, water, sanitation and it gets worse once you leave his area are hardly worth mentioning. Just leave some nice rhetoric, and keep pouring in money....

 

Russia is quickly taking over the foreign affairs world. They have made great strides with Syria (why did we just hand Syria over to the Rissians?), and take a look at this:

 

 

Russia may utilize this excellent opportunity to further advance its political agenda in the region: the isolation of Georgia by cutting it off from new transit routes; shelving the E.U. and U.S.-backed Nabucco gas pipeline project by destroying the Azerbaijani-Turkish strategic partnership and thus forcing Azerbaijan to sell its gas to Russia; drawing Turkey into its own orbit of influence undermining the E.U.-U.S.-Turkey axis of influence in the region. Before Washington realizes, it will be too late to protect the South Caucasus as a sovereign and independent region. For the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. appears to underestimate what is unfolding in the region. A lack of clear vision on the part of the U.S. administration clearly plays into Russian hands. It is perhaps no coincidence that the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov so actively pushed his Armenian counterpart to sign the protocol with Turkey.
--Fariz Ismailzade

 

I was right. And I wish I hadn't been. Those pirates holding at bay the strongest nation on earth was the new style. It will cost us dearly on the world stage. It is costing us dearly in Afghanistan as our troops wait for not just a plan, but the reason they are there. It will cost us dearly on the world stage as Russia realizes it can run circles around us. I wish I had been wrong. Brace yourselves folks, we have three more years of damage to go.

For months the Federal government has had time to prepare for the vaccine for the new strain of the swine flu. It would show the Federal government could handle health care, could respond to an emergency swiftly without bureaucratic bungling ala Katrina. Instead, millions are now at risk of catching it. The flu vaccine crisis is now the Obama crisis. From the NY Times:

There has never been a protest movement like this before. CIA agents, military leaders, not protesters who believe the left can show America it can win this war. Now Matthew Hoh has quit the Foreign Service and his reasons why have been leaked. Maybe, maybe someone will listen before it's too late. Thank you for your service Mr. Hoh. Thank you for the courage it took for you to do this.

 

U.S. official resigns over Afghan war

Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting

But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.

"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/26/AR2009102603394.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2009102603447

The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

 

Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll

By DEXTER FILKINS, MARK MAZZETTI and JAMES RISEN

This article is by Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

The ties to Mr. Karzai have created deep divisions within the Obama administration. The critics say the ties complicate America’s increasingly tense relationship with President Hamid Karzai, who has struggled to build sustained popularity among Afghans and has long been portrayed by the Taliban as an American puppet. The C.I.A.’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large area of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/28/world/asia/28intel.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

 

If the parking meter deal put a bad taste in your mouth, try swallowing this:
Chicago is considering leasing its water system to help fix the budget.

The new boss could charge whatever they want for water, CBS 2's Roseanne Tellez reports.

Could it happen here in Chicago? It already has nearby. Homer Glen in Will County relies on Lake Michigan water, but the supply comes from a German-owned firm. Locals say there's a lot more than water going down the drain.

It's a vital resource you can't live without. But in Homer Glen, the question is can you afford water. Residents say rates are breaking the bank  http://cbs2chicago.com/local/water.system.2.1267896.html

Looking at some larger questions, I find the missile defense quarrel to be a good example for thinking about the place of dissident conservatives in contemporary debates. Defending Europe from an Iranian threat that doesn’t exist and wouldn’t be directed at them if it did with a system that probably wouldn’t work is the sort of thing that one would think American conservatives would find laughably unnecessary. It is the purest sort of irrelevant government activity that does nothing for the United States, wastes the public’s money, and inflames other nations against us. The system’s relative, albeit still quite limited, popularity in the countries in question feeds off of Old World antagonisms that most Americans neither understand nor care to learn about. For most mainstream conservatives, none of this matters. The decision is “weak” and it is “appeasement,” therefore they oppose it.

Despite reasonable arguments that Bush was not a conservative in any important respect, mainstream conservatives have shown no desire to distance themselves from him when he was at his most revolutionary and destructive. This is important to keep in mind, because it tells us that mainstream conservatives did not simply “go along” with Bush’s disastrous foreign policy primarily for reasons of tribal or partisan “team” loyalty. They embraced it and believe to this day that it was essentially correct, even if it was perhaps poorly managed here and there.

Foreign policy is not the only source of intense disagreement, but it tends to be a prominent point of contention because it is of particular importance to many of the dissident conservatives, because it is one area of disagreement where fundamental differences are not tolerated on the right, and because it is the only time when dissident conservative arguments seem to interest non-conservatives. As such, foreign policy has an outsized role in defining dissident conservative arguments, and this is probably most true for my own commentary, which has the perverse effect of letting mainstream conservatives classify us as crypto-leftists whenever it suits them because they have already defined any non-hawkish, non-nationalist, non-hegemonist position as left-wing and therefore absolutely unacceptable. The point here is not to rehearse all the reasons why hawkish, nationalist and hegemonist views are antithetical to a conservative disposition and damaging to all of the things conservatives claim to want to preserve, true as these claims are, but to recognize that there is no persuading such people when many of the fundamental assumptions they hold are diametrically opposed to ours and utterly wrong. There no longer seems any value in making the effort to persuade them.

http://www.amconmag.com/larison/2009/10/23/the-gop-is-adrift/

Officials reported ‘intense bombardment’ of the South Waziristan Agency by Pakistan’s military, as General Parvez Kayani vowed to cleanse the area of people with an “anti-state agenda.”

Today forces engaged in a 16 hour battle to capture what is being described as a “significant mountaintop.” 15 militants were reported killed, as well as one Pakistani soldier, in the clash.

Pakistan’s military insists the offensive is going extremely well, though so far they have only managed to capture one hilltop and a tiny village, and the village took over a week of non-stop fighting to gain control over.

Officials say they estimate that the conflict will only take another six to eight weeks, but concede that the offensive is open-ended. If past examples are any indication, it will likely go on well beyond the projected end date.

 

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/25/pakistan-captures-mountain-stronghold-killing-15/#

In April 2005, sheriff's deputies reached a suburban Seattle home in time to prevent a firebomb from detonating. But there was nothing the sheriff's department could do to defuse another volatile situation at the site: a feud between the explosives teams that showed up from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The attempted arson was the apparent handiwork of the Earth Liberation Front, a designated a domestic terrorism group. But trouble at the scene emerged when FBI and ATF explosives experts seemed to believe their own agencies should head the investigation, recalled Sgt. John Urquhart, a spokesman for the King County sheriff's office. "It was clear that there was something going on. There was tension between the groups of ATF agents and FBI agents," Urquhart told TIME  http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091025/us_time/08599193209100

A U.S. military helicopter crashed Monday while returning from the scene of a firefight with suspected Taliban drug traffickers in western Afghanistan, killing 10 Americans including three DEA agents in a not-so-noticed war within a war.    http://tinyurl.com/yfybgrt

 

Hamid Karzai may be able to re-establish his legitimacy by winning a clean second round but if he doesn't, the consequences could be very grim, says David Blair.

Only a legitimate government can defeat a stubborn and resilient guerrilla movement. That awkward axiom of counter-insurgency warfare lies behind the bitter wrangling over Afghanistan's presidential election, which culminated in yesterday's announcement of a second round.

Hamid Karzai, sombre, downbeat and apparently chastened, publicly accepted the verdict of the Electoral Complaints Commission. This United Nations body chided him for the widespread ballot-rigging that marred the first round and knocked his share of the vote below the 50 per cent threshold needed for outright victory.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/6393842/A-second-chance-for-Hamid-Karzai-but-also-one-for-the-Taliban.html#

Afghanistan’s run-off vote has been scheduled for November 7th, but whether or not the second round of voting between President Hamid Karzai and Abdullah Abdullah can actually, credibly take place is going to largely depend on the weather.

The easternmost reaches of Badakhshan Province is already impassable, covered in snow likely until spring. This will likely only amount to a few thousand votes but if winter arrives just slightly earlier than normal this year, large swaths of the nation could be in the same boat.

With very little infrastructure outside the major cities, Afghanistan essentially shuts down during the winter and travel is next to impossible across much of the country until spring. This is, incidentally, why the insurgency seemingly slows to a snail’s pace during the winter months every year.

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/20/early-snowfall-could-derail-afghan-runoff/#

Conventional wisdom suggests that the terrorist strike by Jundallah in southeastern Iran on Sunday might have had the backing of the United States or Britain. But Jundallah today holds "fatal" attraction for a number of foreign powers that are interested in disorienting Iran's policies.

Both Washington and London scrambled with unusual speed to not only disclaim any hand in the strike that killed seven senior commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps as well as 42 other people, but to condemn it in strong terms.

On Sunday, a US State Department spokesman, Ian Kelly, was instructed to issue a categorical US denial. "We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives. Reports of alleged US involvement are completely false," he said.

The fact is that the attack was staged with careful timing. For one thing, the next major step in the diplomatic process involving technical-level discussions was to take place in Vienna on Monday to work out the details of a plan to ship a majority of Iran's stockpile of lightly enriched uranium out of the country to be enriched in Russia to a higher grade.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KJ21Ak03.html

Taliban guerrillas recaptured the birthplace of the Pakistani Taliban leader from the Pakistani army Tuesday, inflicting the heaviest military losses so far in Pakistan's high-stakes offensive in South Waziristan, a refuge for Pakistani extremists, Afghan insurgents and al Qaida.

A government attempt to foment a tribal uprising against the Pakistani Taliban also failed Tuesday. In a meeting with the top Pakistani official for the tribal areas, elders of the area's Mehsud clan refused a request to form a traditional militia, known as a lashkar, to battle the Taliban who've taken over their territory.

Separately, two suicide bomb blasts at an Islamic university in Islamabad, Pakistan's capital, killed six people and wounded at least 20. In response, many educational institutions, including all schools and colleges in the Punjab, the country's most heavily populated province, announced that they'd close.

The Pakistani offensive appears to be first serious operation against extremists in South Waziristan since 2004, when the military entered the area for the first time. Pakistan has thrown some 30,000 soldiers into the fight against an estimated 10,000 Taliban, plus some 1,500 foreign jihadists closely liked to al Qaida.

However, Kotkai, a town surrounded by high mountains in the Sararogha area of South Waziristan, remained in Taliban hands late Tuesday after Pakistani forces were beaten back on the fourth day of the ground operation in South Waziristan.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/world/story/77472.html#

 

Pakistan in all-out border war

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2009/10/19/attack-on-taliban-s-fortress-115875-21757665/

Taliban militants are engaged in street fighting with Pakistani soldiers as the army tries to break the militants' grip on South Waziristan.

Both sides claim to have suffered few casualties but residents in the remote area say dozens have died.

The army, on the second day of its offensive, is reported to be facing battle-hardened militants, supported by Uzbek fighters linked to al-Qaeda.

At least 20,000 people have fled the area over the last week.

Reports from the region are sketchy as it is difficult and dangerous for foreign or Pakistani journalists to operate inside South Waziristan.   http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8313317.stm

Karzai supporters in Afghanistan have begun saying there will be no second election and he will stay in power. So, we are sending in troops to prop him up?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125587282013392519.html?mod=rss_Today's_Most_Popular

(Reuters) - King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia began his first visit to Syria as head of state on Wednesday, in a further sign of improvement in a prickly relationship.

Following are some of the issues that have divided Syria and Saudi Arabia over the past five years:

LEBANON

Lebanon has been the main arena for Syrian-Saudi rivalry and the most obvious beneficiary of this year's rapprochement. The two countries fell out badly over the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, who was seen as a symbol of Saudi influence. Hariri's allies accused Damascus of orchestrating the killing and Riyadh swung behind calls by Western states for Syria to end its 29-year military presence in Lebanon. Syria has always denied any role in the assassination. The political struggle unleashed by the Hariri killing pitted Lebanese factions allied to Syria, including the powerful Shi'ite group Hezbollah, against others backed by Saudi Arabia and the United States. The crisis eventually spilled into armed conflict and was only defused with the cooperation of Riyadh and Damascus. Better Syrian-Saudi ties are widely credited with keeping Lebanon stable for the past year and allowing a smooth parliamentary election in June. But the Lebanese are still awaiting the formation of a new government and hope the Damascus summit will nudge their own rival politicians to strike a deal.

ARAB-ISRAELI CONFLICT

Syria's support for Hezbollah and the Palestinian group Hamas, which oppose U.S. policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict, puts it at odds with close U.S. allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

Syrian-Saudi ties hit rock bottom in 2006 after a 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel, which still occupies Syrian land captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad derided Arab leaders as "half men" in remarks taken as a direct attack on King Abdullah and other rulers who had criticized Hezbollah's role in igniting the conflict.

The dissonance of Syrian and Saudi approaches to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was laid bare during Israel's Gaza offensive earlier this year. Syria, which hosts Hamas's exiled leader Khaled Meshaal, attended an emergency meeting of Arab leaders in Qatar that was snubbed by Saudi Arabia.

Riyadh also held Damascus at least partly responsible for the collapse of a Palestinian unity agreement between Hamas and the rival Fatah faction in Mecca in 2007. The deal unravelled when Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June of that year.

REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCES

Syria's alliance with Iran irritates the Sunni monarchy in Saudi Arabia, which worries about the Shi'ite Islamist republic's growing regional influence. Iran, like Syria, supports Hezbollah and Hamas. Saudi Arabia's concerns about Iranian power have grown since the United States led an invasion to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 2003, allowing Shi'ite groups with close links to Tehran to gain sway in Baghdad.

Saudi Arabia's links with the United States put the kingdom at the heart of what Washington views as a "moderate" group of Arab states. Syria, by contrast, remains under U.S. sanctions for a range of alleged misdeeds, including undermining efforts to stabilize Iraq. President Barack Obama's administration has begun talking to Syria this year, reversing George W. Bush's efforts to isolate it. However, Obama has also extended sanctions on Damascus.

(Writing by Tom Perry in Beirut, editing by Alistair Lyon)

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE5963C320091007?rpc=401

The senior diplomats of Syria and Russia on Sunday called for a new push to resume the stalled Middle East peace process with the help of the international community, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported.

    Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem held talks with Alexander Saltanov, the visiting Special Envoy of Russian president for the Middle East, on Sunday in Damascus to discuss the latest development in the Middle East region, according to SANA.

    The two sides exchanged their viewpoints on the situation in the occupied Palestinian territories, urging to realize the Palestinian reconciliation and put more efforts to make it a success, according to the report.

    The Syrian top diplomat also voiced his appreciation of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council's endorsement of Goldstone Report, the UN fact-finding mission's report on the Gaza war last January.

    In a statement to journalists following the meeting, Saltanov described his talks with Moallem as marked by "deep analysis and mutual trust."

    "We see eye to eye on the need to give a new push to resume the peace process with the help of the international community and the International Quartet Committee," the agency quoted the Russian Deputy Foreign Minister as saying.

    Saltanov also expressed his satisfaction with the bilateral relationship between the two countries, saying Damascus and Moscow will hold a new session of the joint committee for economic and technical cooperation in the near future.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/19/content_12266372.htm

A new primetime drama series called “Ayrýlýk” (meaning ’separation’ or ‘farewell’ in Turkish) recently made its début in Turkey on the state-run TRT 1 television channel. Israel’s Channel Two aired a scene from the fictional show, showing a Palestinian father holding a baby above his head and an Israeli soldier in full combat gear taking aim and shooting the infant. Since the broadcast, Israel-Turkey relations have been put under more strain. The heated debate about the show has further influenced previously close ties between the Jewish state and Muslim Turkey that have deteriorated somewhat since Israel’s December-January Gaza offensive. At the same time, Turkey has strengthened its relations with neighbouring Syria. (Read more here.)

Leading Israeli daily newspapers Yedioth Ahronoth, Maariv and Haaretz have reported extensively on the show, wondering whether it pointed to growing anti-Semitism in Turkey. Tourism agencies said Israeli vacation bookings in Turkey have fallen steeply since the show was aired. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed his disappointment in “the incitement on Turkish TV”. Netanyahu aides said Turkey, which has mediated indirect Israeli-Syrian talks, could not be an honest broker in any future peace negotiations. Commenters on Israeli web portal sites have called on Turkey to look in the mirror and take responsibility for what they termed its genocide against the Armenians.

Professor Efraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, believes Turkey is “not clean of anti-Semitism”. SEE VIDEO HERE:

http://blogs.reuters.com/axismundi/2009/10/18/on-the-rocks/?rpc=401

IRA breakaway Irish National Liberation Army says it's renouncing violence, may disarm soon

 

The Irish National Liberation Army, an IRA splinter group responsible for some of the most notorious killings of the Northern Ireland conflict, renounced violence Sunday and signaled it could hand over weapons soon to disarmament officials.

http://wire.antiwar.com/2009/10/11/ira-splinter-group-renouncing-violence-in-ireland/

Speaking again on the unfolding scandal, UN Special Envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide conceded today what everyone following the story has known for at least a month: that there was widespread fraud in August’s presidential election.

Eide followed up his admission by dismissing concerns about what, by all accounts, has been one of the most fraudulently run elections in history, insisting that the fact that the investigations hadn’t yet concluded proved that the “system is working.”

Eide’s role in the election fraud was brought to light following the firing of his chief assistant, Peter Galbraith. Galbraith says he was ordered by Eide to cover up the extent of the fraud, and claims Eide spoke with Afghan President Hamid Karzai to assure him of his support after the UN had uncovered evidence that up to a third of Karzai’s votes were actually fraudulent.

 

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/11/uns-afghan-chief-admits-widespread-fraud-in-vote/

Ethiopia appears to have launched yet another incursion into Somalia, with hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers pouring across the border into Central Somalia and rounding up villagers suspected of having ties to the insurgency.

Locals say the Ethiopian forces were accompanied by soldiers affiliated with the self-proclaimed Somali government and the forces cut off the communication lines in the villages.

Ethiopia previously launched an invasion of Somalia in 2006 with the blessing of the US government. The invasion was an attempt to prop up the Somali government, which at the time was struggling in the face of growing support for the Islamic Courts Union.

 

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/11/ethiopian-troops-pour-into-central-somalia/

Here’s the thing: This may be our next “Vietnam moment,” but Afghanistan is no Vietnam: there are no major enemy powers like the Soviet Union and China lurking in the background; no organized enemy state with a powerful army like North Vietnam supporting the insurgents; no well organized, unified national liberation movement like the Vietcong, and that’s just a beginning. Almost everywhere, in fact, the Vietnam analogy breaks down – almost everywhere, that is, except when it comes to us. Because we never managed to leave Vietnam behind, even when we were proclaiming that we had kicked that “syndrome,” it turns out that we’re still there. Our military leaders, for instance, only recently dusted off the old Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine that once ended in catastrophe, shined it up, and are now presenting it as an ingenious new solution to war-fighting. Let’s face it: everything about American thinking still stinks of the Vietnamese debacle, including the inability of our leaders to listen to a genuinely wide range of options.

http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2009/10/11/apocalypse-then-afghanistan-now/

Clashes between Israeli security forces and protesting Palestinians have subsided as several hundred Muslims agreed to evacuate Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa Mosque following a deal brokered by the Jordanian embassy in Tel Aviv Saturday.

But the Islamic Movement, whose members sought to take over the mosque, is at the center of intense controversy. In Israel, demands have risen for the arrest of Islamic Movement leader Sheikh Raed Salah.