Six Kurdish separatists were killed and three wounded in fighting with Turkish soldiers in south-east Turkey, the semi-official Anadolu news agency reported on Saturday.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Tuesday to discuss efforts to work out a ceasefire between the Hamas and Israel.

If the six decades of the Arab-Israeli conflict should have taught us anything it is surely that it is time to think out of the box.
The Nakba--the war of 1948 and the founding of Israel-- may have occurred 60 years ago but the Zionist project is much older. It began over 110 years ago and it hasn’t finished yet. In other words, the Zionists started plotting and planning long before the Arabs were aware of their designs. By the time the Arabs did catch on the Zionists they were better equipped for the clash that they had anticipated and, indeed, worked to bring about. It was only natural, therefore, that they beat us, seized our land and drove out our people. While we succumbed to depression and loss of confidence, their victory fed Zionist self-confidence and their determination to continue towards the realization of a project the true aims and objectives of which we had not even begun to fathom.
Every time another clash erupted, as was bound to happen, mostly at their instigation, we would be surprised afresh by the ferocity of their aggression. Then we changed track and made peaceful overtures. Whether it was to ward off their wrath or devote ourselves to reconstruction and development is immaterial since they refused to believe us. Claiming they needed to put to rest any doubts about our intentions they insisted upon “confidence-building measures“ beneath which rubric their demands increased and became more unreasonable by the day.
Instead of digging in our heels and reproaching them for failing to honor mutually binding treaties and understandings, we acted as though we had no alternative but to cave in to their demands. Whether this was out of fear of them or because of a desire to win the approval of their allies, it gave them the opportunity to twist our arms and rub our powerlessness in our faces.
Now here we are, more than a third of a century since we have begun to try to live peacefully with Israel, so in thrall to our fear of Zionist cunning that even our dreams of the future have been turned into nightmares.
We must ask ourselves what we have learned from the catastrophe and whether we have taken stock of our position for the Arab-Israeli conflict is clearly far from over. A proper understanding of the past and, hence, the ability to seriously prepare for the future is, after all, contingent upon our acceptance of a number of facts.
First, we have exhausted all means of dealing with Israel, none of which we have handled particularly well. We have engaged in three conventional wars (in 1948, 1956 and 1973), in a protracted war of attrition on the Egyptian front (from 1968 to 1970) and in guerrilla warfare on the Palestinian, Jordanian and Lebanese fronts at various junctures. We have negotiated with Israel secretly, openly, bilaterally and collectively. We have signed various accords with it, in Camp David (1978), Oslo (1993) and Wadi Araba (1994), and participated in international peace conferences in Madrid (1991) and Annapolis (2007). In spite of all these different efforts and approaches a resolution to the conflict and the realization of peace continues to elude us.
Apart from the rare exception, such as the victories scored by Hezbollah in 2000 and 2006, the scales in the fields of battle and diplomacy have been tipped heavily in favor of Israel. If this tells us anything it is that there is some structural flaw in the Arabs’ management of the conflict and we had better identify it and remedy it quickly.
In this regard, one should note that in whatever activity we have engaged, whether on the battlefield or around the negotiating table or via the media, whether steered from Palestine or Tunisia, Mauritania or Oman, with rare exceptions there has been little if any proper coordination between Arab capitals.
Second, Israel was the instigator of most wars and confrontations. Before and during the Nakba, Zionist militias drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians from their towns and villages, using systematic genocide and wanton destruction. Under the eyes of the British mandate authorities they introduced terrorism to the region. In the field of diplomacy, on the other hand, it was the Arabs who almost invariably made the overtures for peace and who have showed willingness to make concessions. This suggests one thing: the Arabs have been on the defensive in both war and diplomacy.
Third, Israeli strategists have always regarded the Arabs as a collection of tribal and sectarian chiefs with whom it invariably insists on negotiating separately, never collectively. More important, negotiations for the Israelis have never been more than a means to sow discord among the Arabs and fragment the Arab front. If it had truly been interested in peace, it would not have constantly raised the threshold of its demands. First it agreed to the borders identified by the UN partition resolution as an acceptable basis for a settlement. It then insisted upon the 1949 truce lines until the 1967 war, then refused to accept the pre-1967 boundaries. Only on Palestinian refugees has Israel been consistent: it steadfastly refuses to acknowledge any responsibility for the problem. (to be continued)
Al Ahram

Defense Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar said on Sunday that talks with the Taliban were in the interest of the country even as militants beheaded a Pakistani soldier to avenge a US missile strike in the northeast.
Talks with Taliban leaders were held earlier and are being held now, Mukhtar asserted while talking to reporters at the PIA office in the southern port city of Karachi Arab News reported.
The minister said that if an agreement with the Taliban materialized, it would benefit the whole world and militant activity across the border in Afghanistan could be controlled.
Mukhtar said Pakistan would take up the issue of the missile strike in Bajaur with the United States after ascertaining facts. He said such attacks inside Pakistani territory were discussed with Washington in the past and they resulted in reducing the number of attacks.

Protests to Resume
Pakistani lawyers vowed on Saturday to stage massive street protests next month unless the new government meets its pledge to reinstate judges purged by President Pervez Musharraf.
The threat from the lawyers, whose tireless protests helped undermine Musharraf’s grip on power last year, raises the stakes in Pakistan’s protracted power struggle, AP reported.
Musharraf imposed emergency rule and cleared out the Supreme Court in November to halt legal challenges to his reelection.
A new government composed of some of his fiercest opponents took office six weeks ago and promised to reinstate the justices, casting doubt on Musharraf’s political survival.
But it has missed two self-imposed deadlines to do so and the coalition appears to be unraveling over the issue--a process that could accelerate in the face of protests.
On Saturday, lawyers’ leaders set a deadline of their own, announcing after a meeting in the eastern city of Lahore that they would mount a in support of the judges on June 10.
A committee will work out the details, but senior lawyer Hamid Khan said the lawyers would likely converge in front of the Parliament building in the capital, Islamabad.

Insurgents fired a rocket that hit a NATO helicopter carrying the governor of a key southern Afghan province On Saturday, but no one was injured, officials said.
A series of clashes, air strikes and bomb blasts elsewhere in the country killed 10 militants and four civilians, AP said.
Helmand Gov. Ghulab Mangal and a delegation of British officials were about to land in the provincial town of Musa Qala when an insurgent rocket-propelled grenade struck the helicopter, Mangal said.
The pilots managed to land the helicopter at a nearby NATO base, Mangal said.
No one was injured in the attack, though the helicopter was damaged.
The rocket-propelled grenade of the helicopter, said Maj. Martin O’Donnell, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.
“There was a minor damage to shaft and the rear blade,“O’Donnell said.
Mangal and other officials were to inaugurate a new mosque in Musa Qala, a town that lies in Helmand at the heart of the country’s opium poppy-producing region.
US, British and Afghan troops pushed Taliban fighters out of Musa Qala late last year after the militants overran the area in early 2007 and held it for 10 months.
The delegation returned back to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah in another helicopter, Mangal said.

TAIPEI - Inauguration of Ma Ying-jeou as Taiwan’s new president.

OREGON/KENTUCKY - Presidential primaries.