Abbas and Shas

So, is Abbas trying to prop up Shas?

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said on Sunday that any American proposal for restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations must include a complete halt in Israeli settlement building, including in East Jerusalem.

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Abbas’s position, which is consistent with Palestinian policy, would scuttle a proposed deal that the Americans hope will lead to resumption of the negotiations.

Why Shas?

Well,

...ministers from the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, have threatened to vote against the deal unless they are assured that building could continue in East Jerusalem, which Israel annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it from Jordan in the 1967 war

^

Oh, Really? Now, Where is Shas When You Need Them?

Israel is prepared to withdraw from almost all the Arab neighborhoods and villages in Jerusalem. Israel is prepared to redivide Jerusalem and this is a positive development

says a Ramallah official.

Shas Minister Socks Bush

Found here:

"The manner in which the Americans relate to the intelligence report on Iran is similar to the way in which they viewed those reports they received during the Holocaust on railways transporting hundreds of thousands of Jews to their death at Auschwitz," Minister Yitzhak Cohen of Shas said during a security cabinet meeting Sunday morning on the Iranian nuclear issue.

"It can not be that (US President George W.) Bush is committed to peace as was declared at Annapolis, and then the Americans propagate such an intelligence report which contradicts the information we have proving Iran intends to obtain nuclear weapons," Cohen said. "How can we rely on the Americans if they publish this report that emasculates what the world explicitly knows regarding Iran, and renders impotent the entire struggle against the Iranians?"

Minister Cohen asserted that the report must have been "ordered by someone who wants dialogue with Tehran" and formulated an historical analogy to express just how serious the situation is: "In the middle of the previous century the Americans received intelligence reports from Auschwitz on the packed trains going to the extermination camps. They claimed then that the railways were industrial. Their attitude today to the information coming out of Iran on the Iranians' intention to produce a nuclear bomb reminds one of their attitude during the holocaust."

Cabinet Member Cohen had this to say to his fellow ministers not present in the meeting: "Whoever thinks that the president of Iran is a lover of Zion, with Kosher certification from the Americans, misleads and is mislead. He is not a lover of Zion, but instead an aspiring strangler of Zion. Someone in America fell asleep on his watch, but we must remain awake and aware."