Slain senior Palestinian official Kamal Medhat had reportedly received several death threats and had recently sent a letter to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas detailing the threats, a top Fatah commander said on Tuesday. "We will not issue haphazard accusations and we leave it to the Lebanese judiciary and security forces to uncover the truth," Brigadier Munir al-Maqdah told reporters following a large-scale meeting of Palestinian factions inside Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp in Sidon.
Senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official Kamal Medhat, two of his bodyguards and another Palestinian official were traveling in a convoy when the bomb exploded at the entrance of the Mieh Mieh camp near the coastal town of Sidon. He said Medhat's killing is "a blow to security in stability not only inside Palestinian refugee camps but also in Lebanon."
"Today's meeting stressed the need to reinforce Palestinian unity in order to counter all the threats and dangers that surround us," he added.
Maqdah said Palestinian factions agreed not to turn Lebanon "into an arena to settle Palestinian disputes."
"We will cooperate with the Lebanese judiciary," he stressed.
The 58-year-old Medhat, who was a close aide to the late Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, was the highest-ranking Palestinian official killed in Lebanon since the PLO was forced to pull out of the country in 1982 after the Israeli invasion.
In Mieh Mieh on Tuesday, residents ruled out a deteriorating situation in the camp. "The assassination aimed to send a message to all Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, not only to the Mieh Mieh camp," Maryam Zbib told The Daily Star.
Another resident, Mohammad al-Hassan said the assassination "aims to create rifts between Palestinians."
Meanwhile, Medhat's assassination drew widespread condemnation. UN chief Ban Ki-moon slammed late on Monday the "terrorist" roadside bombing that killed Medhat. "The secretary general condemns the terrorist attack today," his press office said in a statement, adding that the UN chief hoped "the perpetrators of this crime will be brought to justice promptly."
"Such actions must not be allowed to endanger the climate of calm that currently prevails in Lebanon," Ban added.
In Lebanon, meanwhile, Progressive Socialist Party leader MP Walid Jumblatt paid a visit to PLO representative in Lebanon Abbas Zaki on Tuesday to offer condolences. "I extend my condolences to the Fatah party and the Palestinian national authority. Fatah has always sacrificed its prominent members, for the Palestinian cause," Jumblatt told reporters afterward.
"As long as the Palestinian state has not yet been established, we should work on securing [Palestinian refugees] certain civil rights, because if we want to prevent naturalization, then we should not deprive them of their essential rights," the PSP leader said, urging Lebanese authorities to stop discriminating against refugees.
"In Nahr al-Bared the Palestinians had nothing to do with what happened, and so they should be able go back to the camp," he said, referring to the 106 days of fighting between the Lebanese Armed Forces and the Al-Qaeda inspired Fatah al-Islam militant group in 2007 that reduced the northern refugee camp to rubble.
"I was also told that that some Lebanese security forces are not treating the Palestinians properly," Jumblatt added.
For his part, Zaki welcomed Jumblatt's support, adding that the PSP leader was "the first to call him after Medhat's killing." Zaki said Jumblatt advised him "to urge his followers to practice self-restraint and to avoid any attempt to sow discord among the Palestinians."
In other reactions Tuesday, Lebanese Forces boss Samir Geagea condemned Monday's killing saying it was a "terrorist" attack that targeted both Lebanese and Palestinian stability. Geagea called on the Palestinians to unite around their "just cause" and to stay away from conflicts that would "drain their will to persevere."
Lebanese newspapers on Tuesday described the assassination as a settling of scores between rival Palestinian factions. "Mieh Mieh: a fratricide?" said the French language L'Orient-Le Jour newspaper.
The As-Safir newspaper echoed the view. "Although all Palestinian factions were quick to denounce the crime and blame Israel and its agents, security officials believe that Medhat was killed in a settling of scores," it said.
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An Israeli network security company brought down a Hizbullah-run Web site last week using hacking technology developed in China, Haaretz reported Tuesday. According to the daily, the Israeli company Applicure employed relatively cheap, accessible and easy to use software to bring down the site, english.hizbollah.tv, with only 10 computers.
The Daily Star could not independently confirm the report.
Nevertheless, in the wake of the report, commentators were already questioning the ways in which privately waged cyber-warfare could affect the tense relationship between avowed enemies like Israel and Hizbullah.
The term used to describe the use of a singular or coordinated assault on a Web site to prevent it from properly functioning is "denial of service" (DOS) or distributed denial of service (DDOS). DOS or DDOS attacks utilize a number of computers, infected by viruses or Trojan horses and grouped into networks, to bombard a Web site with an overwhelming number of illegitimate requests, preventing it from servicing legitimate requests.
DOS is only one of many way to bring down a Web site or network, but it is often considered the most popular method because it does not require the advanced software used in other forms of Web sabotage.
Computers used by and often hijacked (without the knowledge of the primary user) by hackers are known as bots. Only ten of these bots, according to Haaretz were needed to interrupt the Hizbullah site.
Haaretz reported that Applicure was "trying out breaking-in tools developed by Chinese hackers," when it brought down the site. The report added that the software used was intended for "laymen," not hackers well-versed in programming.
In addition, the article noted that this particular software is relatively cheap, as little as $260 a year with a limited number of bots, and that it use to disrupt services can earn a user a six figure salary, primarily through blackmail.
Applicure has partners in South Korea, which is reportedly a popular place for Chinese hackers to disrupt Web-based services, especially gaming sites, which are quite popular. China's Computer Emergency Response Team increased its risk assessment to China's internal network twenty fold in 2007.
In the United States, DOS attacks often target online gambling sites where the private information of users, like credit card information can be mined, by infecting the largest number possible of personal computers with Trojan horses.
Citing technology and security experts, the report said this kind of virus infects an entire site and tires to "download" itself on to as many users computers as possible.
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Israel's choice of a right-wing government and the ascension of Prime Minister-designate Binyamin Netanyahu do not present a long-term hindrance to the ongoing peace talks between Israel and Syria, Syrian President Bashar Assad said Wednesday.
Speaking to the Lebanese daily As-Safir, the Syrian leader said that Netanyahu's influence on the process would only be "tactical, rather the strategic."
Assad commented on the Israeli electorate's change of heart in the last election, saying that the rightward shift was evidence of "[Israel's] failure and the confusion that has taken hold of it."
There had been no breakthroughs in the indirect talks, which, he said, had "stalled, again, on the issue of the June 4, 1967 armistice lines."
The Syrian president expressed his dismay over the fact that the Syrian-Israeli track did not appear to figure prominently on the agenda of US President Barack Obama. "The signs that have been conveyed to us are promising," he said, "but Syria is expecting actions. The US administration has been quick to announce two withdrawal initiatives - in Iraq and Afghanistan - but has yet to carry out any tangible steps in our region."
Assad reiterated that his country's relations with Iran were "strategic," adding, "Iran backs us up while our relationship with the US is not strategic and America does not stand alongside Syria, but rather alongside Israel."
The Syrian leader also repeated his country's claim that traces of uranium found on the site of an alleged North Korean-sponsored nuclear facility in northern Syria may have come from Israeli bombs dropped on the installation in a September 2007 strike.
"I mean, it's an open area and anyone can dump massive quantities of uranium there," Assad said. "In any case, we don't have a nuclear facility and the UN inspectors know this. They announced that they found uranium only eight months after the fact in order to provide an excuse for the air-strike. We told them, 'Okay, so you've found uranium, but only a few crumbs. If we were enriching uranium then where were the emergency plans, the explosion, the radiation?'"
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The United Nations-backed tribunal to try the perpetrators of a massive car bomb blast that killed former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri has appointed its main officials and adopted rules of procedures and evidence, the court announced today.
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#1
It's only been ,what, four years?
I believe the UN calls this "fast tracking".
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trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
