Al-Qaida Cell Tried to Assassinate Carter, Blair in Gaza
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and the Quarter’s Mideast envoy Tony Blair were recently in danger of assassination by the leader of an al-Qaida-inspired group from the Gaza Strip.
Hamas foiled the plot being planned by Jaljalat (Thunder), a group led by Mahmoud Taleb, a former militia commander for Hamas. Taleb, who has been wanted by Hamas’s security forces for more than two years, described their hands as being stained with Muslim blood, “making it their duty to kill the two.”
Jaljalat consists of former Hamas militiamen who left because they believed Hamas was becoming accommodating to the infidel West. Meanwhile, Carter asserted in an op-ed piece in The Washington Post that most Palestinian leaders he has spoken to recently are “seriously considering” accepting a one-state solution between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
“By renouncing the dream of an independent Palestine, they would become fellow citizens with their Jewish neighbors and then demand equal rights within a democracy,” he explained. Carter believes that although a two-state solution is preferable, a one-state solution is “a more likely alternative to the present debacle.”
Most Israelis are adamantly opposed to the concept of one bi-national state of Arabs and Jews, due to concerns the Arab population would soon outnumber the Jewish citizens. They argue that such an arrangement would also be unworkable given the decades of hostility between the two peoples.
Source: International Christian Embassy Jerusalem News; icej.org
