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| Israel-Palestine |
| Exit polls sees Sharon losing Gaza ballot |
| 2004-05-02 |
| Sun 2 May, 2004 20:18 By Matt Spetalnick JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli leader Ariel Sharon’s party overwhelmingly has rejected his Gaza pullout plan, exit polls show, handing him an embarrassing defeat. Sunday’s vote was taken on the same day Palestinian gunmen killed a Jewish settler and her four daughters in the territory. Television polls projected the prime minister losing the vote in his rightist Likud party roughly 60 to 40 percent despite U.S. President George W. Bush’s endorsement of his strategy of "disengagement" from the Palestinians. The outcome of the referendum within the traditionally pro-settler Likud, if confirmed by the official ballot count, could jeopardise Sharon’s plan and trigger a political crisis. Polls in the final run-up to the vote had predicted it would go against Sharon, and Sunday’s ambush of a car carrying a pregnant Jewish settler woman and her children in the Gaza Strip may have hardened "no" sentiment even further. The attack, which drew a retaliatory Israeli air strike in Gaza City, was also likely to reinforce the opinion of most Israelis that it is not worth the price of keeping 7,500 settlers in hard-to-defend enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians in the seaside strip. The Likud referendum was not binding and Sharon had vowed that even if he lost among the party’s 193,000 voters he would ultimately present the plan to parliament where he would have a greater chance of winning approval. But Sharon is all but certain to be weakened politically after failing to quell a rebellion by party members unwilling to give up an inch of land captured in the 1967 Middle East war. Sharon had warned Likud members they could bring down his government and force new elections if they rejected his proposal to uproot all settlements in Gaza and four of 120 enclaves in the West Bank -- a move he said would improve Israel’s security. But Sharon, who had expected to cruise to victory on Bush’s unprecedented guarantees, was caught off-guard by the intensity of the grass-roots "no" campaign waged by settlers branding withdrawal a "reward to terror". Minutes before polling stations closed, three Palestinian militants were killed in an explosion in a car in the West Bank city of Nablus, medics said. Some residents said the car was hit by Israeli missiles but there was no immediate confirmation ... Is anyone else beginning to think that Israel should just force every single Palestinian into Jordan or Lebanon and then seal all its borders? The murder of an Israeli mother and her four daughters immediately prior to the critical Gaza pullout vote is a crystal clear indicator that peaceful coexistence just isn’t in the cards. Kill Arafat and then begin to systematically raze all of Gaza with due notice given that the West Bank is next. Any Palestinians with completely clean records can return to Israel to resettle without any "right of return" compensation. I am starting to feel that there will be no other solution. Arab hardcore anti-Semitism must be rewarded with consistent humiliation and military defeat. It is clear that much of the remaining world willingly blinds itself to Palestinian terror. So be it, Israel must now abandon all pretense of conforming to world opinion and demonstrate openly its consistent and intransigent stand against terrorism. Let the gloves come off, terrorists have done so in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. The charade is over and Islamist terror must be crushed. |
| Posted by:Zenster |
| #10 Anti and Gentle think we are violent bigots the should take in a visit at LGF,them folks be hard core.(not a critisizing,just an observation) |
| Posted by: raptor 2004-05-02 9:48:14 PM |
| #9 b--No, you're not losing your mind! LGF has some great pix of the obligatory car swarm. I think the guy in the last pic is holding up a spleen. Them's good eatin'. Btw, I think Israel should up that kill ratio an order of magnitude or two. |
| Posted by: Dar 2004-05-02 8:59:54 PM |
| #8 Thank you for sharing the good news. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-02 7:09:13 PM |
| #7 and 144 raisins for you to share! Nice |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-05-02 5:14:25 PM |
| #6 #5,you are not losing your mind.Israel just gave 2 Al Aqsa leaders a 1-way ticket to join Allah. |
| Posted by: rex 2004-05-02 5:10:02 PM |
| #5 am I losing my mind? I could swear I heard Fox confirm that Israel killed two leaders of ...I think Al Aqsa...can't find it confirmed anywhere. Did anyone else hear this? |
| Posted by: b 2004-05-02 4:56:41 PM |
| #4 If the Israelis were to adopt a policy of reciprocity with the Palestinians, there wouldn't be any Palestinians left on the face of the earth. Actually, they do maintain fairly decent reciprocity. The ratio of Palestinians to Israelis killed remains almost constant at 3:1. Maybe Israel just needs to increase the offset. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-05-02 4:44:27 PM |
| #3 Reuters: The attack, which drew a retaliatory Israeli air strike in Gaza City, was also likely to reinforce the opinion of most Israelis that it is not worth the price of keeping 7,500 settlers in hard-to-defend enclaves among 1.3 million Palestinians in the seaside strip. Did the massacre of the Israeli woman and her toddlers reinforce what Reuters claims to be the view of most Israelis that they should pull out of the Gaza Strip? It certainly did not convince most members of the Likud Party. Matt Spetalnick is just another one of the pro-Palestinian Reuters propagandists I've given up on. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2004-05-02 4:43:18 PM |
| #2 If the Israelis were to adopt a policy of reciprocity with the Palestinians, there wouldn't be any Palestinians left on the face of the earth. Perhaps the Knesset should hold a national referendum on the subject? |
| Posted by: RWV 2004-05-02 4:29:31 PM |
| #1 This will assure violence prior to every election now. |
| Posted by: b 2004-05-02 4:23:11 PM |