President Mahmoud Ahmadinejd (l) and his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad are seen at a press conference in Damascus, July 19.

DAMASCUS, Syria, July 20--President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a meeting with his Syrian counterpart Bashar Al-Assad that the two countries will remain united like brothers.
Ahmadinejad on Thursday flew in to Damascus where he and Bashar issued a joint statement called for further cooperation in bilateral and regional issues.
The two presidents met privately before officials from both sides joined talks, state news agency SANA reported.
Afterwards, they issued a statement saying that it “is necessary to consolidate national unity and harmony among all Lebanese to assure the stability and security of Lebanon.“
They expressed their “support for all decisions taken by all Lebanese“.
Israel ended its decades-long occupation of southern Lebanon seven years ago, but still holds on to a small sliver of land it captured from Syria in 1967 and which Lebanon now claims with Damascus’ approval.
During his Damascus visit, Ahmadinejad met Syrian Vice President Faruk Al-Shara and Prime Minister Naji Otri.
Lebanese TV station ANB reported that Ahmadinejad met Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah, but a party spokesman told AFP he was not aware of any such meeting.
Ahmadinejad said the trip, which comes just two days after Assad was sworn in for a second seven-year term, is aimed at reinforcing the growing ties between the two allies.
“Relations between Syria and Iran have always been expanding and we have common views on bilateral regional and international issues,“ he said before leaving Tehran, adding that the focus would be on boosting economic ties.
The fact that Ahmadinejad’s visit--his second to Damascus since becoming president in 2005--comes so soon after Assad’s reelection will be seen as a clear sign of the value of the relationship to both sides.
Assad was the first world leader to visit Ahmadinejad in Tehran following his 2005 election victory--just five days after he took office--and made another trip to the Islamic republic in February this year.

YEREVAN, Armenia, July 20--Armenian Prime Minister Serzj Sargsyan said access to peaceful nuclear technology is Iran’s right.
Sargsyan in a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki on Friday stressed his country’s support for Iran’s right to acquire nuclear technology, IRNA reported.
Referring to Iran’s outstanding role in regional developments, the Armenian prime minister said, “Tehran should have an active role in regional developments.“ He added that Armenia attaches importance to promotion of bilateral relations and believes bilateral economic relations should expand in line with the political ones.
Referring to Iran’s ample economic and commercial capacities, Sargsyan said there are many capacities that the two sides can use to raise their mutual commercial transactions, including joint venture projects and transportation advantages, particularly in the railroad sector.
Also on Friday, Armenian President Robert Kocharian told Mottaki he was impatiently looking forward to the visit of his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Yerevan.
Kocharian noted that exchange of talks and visits by Iranian and Armenian officials and historical commonalities of the Iranian and Armenian nations as well as their cordial ties have contributed to expansion of two-way ties.
Mottaki, voicing satisfaction with the successful 7th Tehran-Yerevan Economic Cooperation Commission session, called for further promotion of bilateral ties.
Mottaki arrived in Armenia on Thursday for a two-day meeting.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, July 20--Pakistan’s Supreme Court Friday reinstated the country’s chief justice and quashed misconduct charges filed against him by President Pervez Musharraf, in a major blow for the embattled military ruler.
Jubilant lawyers handed out sweets and kissed the hands of Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry after the verdict, which enhanced his status as an icon of opposition to key US ally Musharraf with elections looming, AFP reported.
Musharraf’s March 9 suspension of the judge was “unanimously set aside as being illegal,“ judge Khalil-ur-Rehman Ramday told the court.
The misconduct and abuse of power allegations were dismissed by a 10-3 verdict.
Chaudhry has been showered with flower petals at mass rallies against Musharraf who, in addition to facing the judicial crisis, is struggling to curb a wave of militant attacks sparked by last week’s raid on the Red Mosque in Islamabad.
The president, who took power in a 1999 coup, suspended Chaudhry following allegations that the judge abused his position, notably to obtain a top police job for his son and other privileges for himself.
Chaudhry’s supporters say Musharraf suspended the judge because of fears he could keep Musharraf from maintaining his grip on power and because he took on cases concerning people allegedly abducted by Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.
“This is a big victory for Pakistan. We are thankful to God and the people,“ the main lawyer for the chief justice, Aitzaz Ahsan, told AFP as attorneys chanted “Go Musharraf, Go!“
Musharraf accepted the verdict and said it would be honored, respected, and adhered to,“ his spokesman, retired Major General Rashid Qureshi said.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said the government accepted the court’s decision, but added it was “not the time to claim victory or defeat“.
Musharraf’s action against the independent-minded judge sparked what quickly became the biggest challenge to his eight-year rule, with mass pro-democracy protests and political violence in Karachi that left more than 40 dead.
Opponents say Musharraf, the president and army chief, suspended Chaudhry amid fears that the judge would obstruct his attempts to defy the constitution, which says he should quit as head of the military by the end of 2007.


Unrest Intensifies

Pakistan is in the grip of a wave of vicious suicidal attacks after religious extremists vowed to avenge the operation on the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, in Islamabad last week. The suicide attacks on July 15 targeting security personnel, principally in the Frontier Province, left more than 45 dead and 100 wounded.
A red alert has been issued in the tribal areas in Waziristan and some volatile districts across the Frontier Province as the government braces for more trouble in the days ahead. What remains to be seen is the extent to which the government is prepared to face the backlash ensuing from the fallout of the operation in Islamabad.
According to the Lebanon-based Daily Star, the harrowing events that followed the operation against the seminary in Islamabad could be better understood in the light of the following facts:
First, there is a clear link between the Red Mosque and the JeM. A large number of male and female students at the seminary were from the Swat, Bajaur, Manshera and Dir districts, the principal areas inhabited by members and sympathizers of the JeM.
Second, the resultant suicide attacks have been launched principally in the districts from where most of the members of the banned terrorist organization originated and have been provided sanctuaries by the locals.
Third, the Red Mosque hosted many foreign militants, including Uzbeks as well as Taliban from the tribal areas.
Fourth, at the time of the operation, diehard militants belonging to the JeM as well as some Taliban and foreign militants remained until the end of the siege to fight against the government forces.
Fifth, a large cache of weapons were discovered after the debacle.
As a result of this episode, Pakistan is at present in a precipitous position in the war in terror. A tactic previously unheard of in Pakistan or Afghanistan has now assumed a cult following.
At this stage, it can be assumed that further escalation of terrorist tactics and reprisals by quasi-religious terrorist groups can be reined in with a strong commitment on the part of the state. That includes solidarity on the political-military front and strong governance.

ZAHEDAN,
Sistan-Baluchestan,
July 21--Four armed bandits were killed in clashes with officers of Nasr and Mirhosseini command headquarters in Pirsavaran mountainous areas of Zahedan.
Brigadier-General Abbas Attaei, deputy head of Rasoul Akram Operational Headquarters for coordination, also told IRNA on Friday seven bandits were also wounded.
“The recent operations were in line with cleansing operations in southern Sistan-Baluchestan and Pirsavaran mountainous regions,“ he said.
Attaei pointed out that military operations against insurgents will continue in the future.
“Several of our forces were also wounded during the operations,“ he said.
In other operations against bandits, 11 Basijis (volunteer forces) and personnel of the Islamic Revolution’s Guards Corps (IRGC) were martyred and nine others wounded.
The clash between IRGC personnel and bandits took place on Zahedan-Bam Road.

Jonathan Cook

After the unprecedented defeat of Israel in its 33-day war against Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Zionist regime’s identity crisis intensified as it feared losing US support because of being a liability.
Because of conflicting media analyses about the nature of Israeli politics and its approach toward Palestinians, Iran Daily’s Amir Tajik interviewed Jonathan Cook, the British writer, journalist and Middle East analyst, who resides in the Nazareth city in the occupied Palestine.
Cook explains how Israel is riven with ideological, religious, class, and ethnic differences. Excerpts:

AMIR TAJIK: Israel is often touted by the western media as the only democratic state in the Middle East. Is that true?
JONATHAN COOK: No. Israel is a democracy if you are a Jew, just as apartheid South Africa was a democracy if you were white. But that is not what we usually mean by democracy. At least a fifth of Israel’s population is non-Jewish, most of them Palestinians, and they are systematically discriminated against in all spheres, including in access to resources like land and to political power, and in control of immigration. I have exposed the myth of Israel’s self-description as a Jewish and democratic state at length in my book Blood and Religion. It is a necessary myth in the West because it justifies the huge sums of aid and military support the West gives to what is effectively a rogue, highly militarized ethnic state.

Efforts by western countries to resolve the Palestinian crisis are overwhelmed by their concerns for Israeli security. What should be done to change the situation and achieve a sustainable and fair solution?
The first problem is to understand that Israel is acting in bad faith in negotiations. All other problems flow from this simple fact. Israel has no interest in peace or in dividing the land. It needs war against the Palestinians and against neighboring states to justify its perception in the West as an eternal victim (first of European anti-Semitism, and now of Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism) and consequently its receiving Western military largesse. It was with the help of the West, for example, that Israel was able to develop nuclear weapons without control or supervision.
And similarly Israel has no interest in allowing the Palestinians to develop a national home, even on the 22 percent of their original homeland that Israel now occupies. Such a Palestinian state would, in Israel’s view, be the first stage in the unraveling of the Jewish state. If the land were divided, the pressure would mount for Israel to stop being an ethnic state and become a proper state, with normal rules of equal citizenship inside its own borders. If there were equal rights, Palestinian citizens of Israel would be able to demand that their relatives enjoy the same right to return to Israel that Jews currently enjoy to come to Israel. Very soon, the whole artifice of a Jewish and democratic state would collapse.

Jews were promised “a peaceful land“ in occupied Palestine when they were encouraged to move there from around the world. Now they’re living like soldiers, constantly fighting for their own security. Given this background, who is an Israeli?
The idea of who is an Israeli is very fuzzy, even in Israel. I would argue that the founders of Israel actually put greater weight on the talents of their lawyers than the courage of their soldiers. Uniquely, Israeli law has divorced the idea of Israeli citizenship from Israeli nationality, so one must consider them separately.
There is a loose sense in which there are Israeli citizens: that is, all the people who have citizenship inside Israel, including 1.2 million Palestinians who are also Israeli citizens. But this concept is not very helpful as there are different kinds of Israeli citizen, with different sets of rights. Certainly, Palestinian citizens of Israel have lesser rights than Jewish citizens, as expressed in more than 30 laws that privilege the rights of Jews over non-Jews. Also, Jews are treated under Israeli civil law when they move into the occupied territories as settlers, whereas Palestinian citizens are increasingly likely to be treated under Israeli military law when they visit Palestinian relatives in the “closed military zones“ in the occupied territories.
As for Israeli nationality, this does not officially exist. Israel offers its citizens a range of more than 130 different nationalities, including “Jew“ and “Arab“, but not “Israeli“. This is because Israel is the state of the Jews, so the only nationality that counts in Israel is Jewish nationality. In this way, all Jews wherever they live -- even outside Israel -- are in some sense Israeli nationals, whereas Palestinian citizens of Israel cannot be real nationals because they are not Jewish.

How widespread is the identity crisis among Israelis?
Very widespread. Israel is riven with ideological, religious, class and ethnic differences. The ultra-Orthodox Jews are mostly not Zionists; the settlers are driven by an ideology that is seen by some as potentially jeopardizing the Jewish state’s earlier territorial successes; the Arab Jews, the Mizrahim, are treated as inferior Jews by the European Ashkenazim; the military-industrial elite views the state as a vehicle for their own financial exploitation of Palestinians and other Jews. But these deep differences are subsumed in a bigger manufactured Jewish consensus that regards the ’Arabs’ as an existential threat to Israel because they are seen as forever plotting to commit genocide against the Jews. As long as Jews can be persuaded of this existential threat, they largely agree to put aside their differences. This is another reason why Israel has little reason to make peace with the Palestinians.

What differentiates Israeli political parties? What are their common points?
The various Jewish political parties reflect a fairly narrow internal disagreement about how best to secure the interests of Israel as a Jewish state. (There are a few Palestinian parties but by the agreement of the Jewish parties they have almost no influence on the political process.) That means that there is a large area of consensus among the Jewish parties: all are agreed that a Right of Return of Palestinians must be prevented at all costs; all are agreed that a bi-national state, a confederation or a power-sharing arrangement with the Palestinians is out of the question; and all are agreed that privileges for Jewish citizens must be preserved and that Palestinian parties should have minimal influence.
Where they differ is on the question of what are the best conditions needed to secure a Jewish state.

Do you think Israel will ultimately accept the formation of a Palestinian state?
No, or at least not in the sense commonly understood as statehood. As might be expected of a state, Israel has only its own interests at heart and, as I’ve already argued, peace and land division are not considered among them. Instead, it wants to create a Jewish fortress, from which all Palestinians will be excluded, including its 1.2 million Palestinian citizens. That Jewish space will be in expanded borders that will include much of the West Bank. What will be left to the Palestinians will be the territorial scraps left over: the Gaza Strip, and a number of isolated ghettoes in the West Bank, possibly connected by tunnels under Israeli military control. If it can be engineered, Israel will make sure those ghettoes come under rival and competing Palestinian leaderships, as it has already achieved in Gaza. One day those scraps of land may come to be referred to as a Palestinian state by the international community.
I suspect Israel would prefer such an outcome because then it can argue that it has the right to transfer its Palestinian citizens into the Palestinian state. In short, Israel’s goal is to imprison the Palestinians in a series of ghettoes, but eventually the West may come around to calling those prisons a state.