A European Union (EU) document, reported in The New York Times and The Guardian, urges member countries to prevent the security fence from "sealing off most of East Jerusalem" and allowing Israel a "de facto annexation" of Jerusalem. The city was re-united after the 1967 Six Day War.
The report charges that "Israeli activities in Jerusalem are in violation of both its roadmap obligations and international law." Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and virtually every previous prime minister and leader of major parties have declared that Jerusalem will remain united. The Palestinian Authority (PA) has insisted that its proposed new Arab state will include Jerusalem as its capital
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By Ryan Jones
November 28th, 2005
Emulating the blunder of their patriarch's elder brother Esau, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new Kadima Party Monday said Israel has no choice but to sell its birthright for the “bowl of pottage” it believes will ease the nation's current ills.
“The people of Israel have a national and historical right to all of Israel, and together with that the need for a Jewish majority, and so we must concede part of the land of Israel in order that a Jewish and democratic state may exist,” Justice Minister Tzipi Livni said as she read out the party's official platform at its first official meeting as a Knesset faction.
The manifesto makes clear reference to a demographic threat that has been proved false by recent studies.
Conducted by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, one such survey found that population figures quoted by those advocating the establishment of an Arab state west of the Jordan River have been artificially inflated by as much as one-and-a-half million persons.
A more detailed look at the numbers showed a Palestinian Arab population numbering no more than 2.5 million persons in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, giving the Jews a firm 60 percent majority west of the Jordan River.
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BETHLEHEM, West Bank (Reuters) - Israeli forces exchanged fire with Palestinian police, wounding one policeman, during a raid into Bethlehem in the occupied     West Bank on Tuesday, Palestinian police said.
An Israeli military source confirmed the rare gunfight with Palestinian police, most of whom were banned by     Israel from carrying weapons during the uprising that began in 2000. The source said troops were on a raid to "arrest terrorists."
Bethlehem's police commander, Issa Hejo, accused the Israelis of opening fire first near a Palestinian checkpoint, sparking gunfire that lasted several minutes and wounded one policeman.
The Israeli source said the Palestinians shot at the soldiers as they neared the local government headquarters.
"The Israeli force returned fire and fired warning shots in the air," the source said.

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Chinese labs have found that the genetic order of the H5N1 virus seen in humans infected in China is different from that found in humans in Vietnam, Xinhua news agency reported Monday. The H5N1 strain of bird flu seen in human cases in China has mutated as compared with strains found in human cases in Vietnam

In China's human cases, the virus has mutated "to a certain degree," health ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an was quoted as saying.
"But the mutation cannot cause human-to-human transmission of the avian flu," he noted.
China this month confirmed its first three human cases of bird flu, two of which were fatal. The disease has killed more than 60 people in Asia since 2003.
Health officials fear that the virus could mutate to the extent where it is easily transmitted from human-to-human, an event that could lead to a global pandemic capable of killing hundreds of millions of people.

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    The lesson of the Bar Lev Line in 1973 was that a nation dwarfed by its enemies geographically, in manpower, and armaments can't afford to fight wars of attrition. The latter involve allowing your enemies to call the shots...literally and figuratively. Israel was almost destroyed in the Yom Kippur War.  
     Israel's military excels at the offensive, lightning strike. It's enemies know this also. So they do what they do to push just so far, but no further. They expect that Israel will play by their rules, since it is always under pressure by those in the American State Department and elsewhere to not "over react." 
     Syria's main proxy in what it considers to be its Lebanese "province," Hizbullah, recently launched a major assault on Israeli positions and towns in the north. It appears that it was primarily designed to kidnap Israeli soldiers. Luckily, despite Israeli casualties, that attempt failed.
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