DAILY ALERT

In-Depth Issues:

Syria's Murderous Role - Richard Carlson, Barbara Newman, and William Cowan (Washington Times)
    Complicating the mission of bringing stability to Iraq is the covert role played by Syria in financing and supporting the present insurgency.
    A number of current and former U.S. intelligence officers experienced in counter-terrorism believe that Syria should have been long ago included on Washington's "axis of evil" list.
    In the earliest stages of the ground war in Iraq, U.S. forces engaged uniformed Syrians near Baghdad, killing more than 100. Current intelligence reports show that hundreds of Syrians are fighting alongside insurgents in the Sunni Triangle.
    In October, U.S. intelligence sources identified three relatives of Saddam Hussein who had fled to Syria and were funneling millions of dollars to Iraqi insurgents.
    The president's goals in Iraq will not be achieved until the Syrians are forced to halt all assistance to our enemies.
    To win the ground war in Iraq and the larger war on terrorism, we must stop more than two decades of Syrian complicity with terrorists.

U.S. Army Arrests 10 Palestinians in Baghdad (AFP/Hindustan Times-India)
    U.S. soldiers arrested 10 Palestinians during a search of the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent and a sports club in Baghdad, a Palestinian diplomat said Tuesday.
    The U.S. army said it arrested "several important international terrorists" at the sports club.

Somerville Rejects Divestment Plan - Benjamin Gedan (Boston Globe)
    A Somerville, MA, Board of Aldermen committee Tuesday rejected a controversial proposal to divest all of the city's public funds from Israel and companies that supply its military, that pitted pro-Palestinian activists against supporters of Israel and Jewish groups.

"Genocide" Big Word at London Anti-Israel Academic Conference - Atarah Haber (Jerusalem Post)
    An international conference entitled "Resisting Israeli Apartheid" was held at the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London on Sunday, organized by the university's Palestine Society and attended by Palestinian and Jewish intellectuals from various countries.
    The Jewish Society, in response, joined forces with Peace Now UK to arrange a counter-conference that focused on possible resolutions to the Middle East conflict and stressed the need to achieve security and dignity for both Israelis and Palestinians.

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Observations:

Palestinians Do Not Need Another Tyrant - Natan Sharansky
(Los Angeles Times)

• Arafat is dead. Whether this will really prove to be a positive turning point in the search for peace in the Middle East depends on whether we have learned from the failures of the past.
• The Oslo process failed because the democratic world, including Israel, believed that peace could be made with a dictator. Neither the U.S. nor Israel nor Europe would do anything to "weaken" him, or more extreme elements would come to power.
• Only weeks after Oslo began, when nearly all the world was drunk with the idea of peace, I argued that a Palestinian "fear society" would always pose a grave threat to Israel and would never prove a reliable peace partner. It was Andrei Sakharov, the foremost dissident in the Soviet Union, who taught me that regimes that do not respect the rights of their own people will not respect the rights of their neighbors.
• In the post-Arafat era, the success of the peace process will hinge on whether the world finally focuses on what goes on inside Palestinian-controlled areas.
• If the world focuses once and for all on helping the Palestinians build a free society, I have no doubt that a historic compromise between Israelis and Palestinians can be reached and that peace can prevail.