Political Negotiations Quotes
Hong Kong was not always a successful city or colony. In 1844 the British were thinking of swapping it for a better colony. However, in a rare combination of synergistic development of a colony, the great strengths of the Chinese and that of the English combined to make Hong Kong one of the best and well developed cities in the world. Few imperial colonies turned out as well.
The 1st the CIA ever had. Popov was, in the 1950s, considered the CIA’s most valuable agent. He was motivated by deeply felt anger at Soviet exploitation of Russian peasants, including his family. He was caught and executed by Russian authorities in 1960. The quotation illustrates just how simple was his initial communication for spying.
Hamas had, in a bloody armed coup, seized control of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority, and refusing to negotiate with the Israelis undermined the Palestinian hopes of peace talks with Israel. The PA could no longer speak for the Palestinians. Hamas a particularly aggressive terrorist organization whose charter called for the death of all Jews in the world, wanted to force the Palestinian Authority to join them in terrorist attacks on Israel. The Palestinians had renounced terrorism and violence. The Hamas fighters were planning to fire rockets at Israel from the West Bank and launching other terrorist attacks against Israel, hoping that Israel would retaliate against the Palestinian Authority by attacking the West Bank which had not been destroyed at all while Gaza had lost much of its infrastructure and 2,000 lives. The Palestinian Authority was not about to let themselves get sucked into a war that they could not possible win and was contrary to the policies of Prime Minister Abbas and his elected government.
There was some political pressure in the North, to offer terms to the South where they could cease the rebellion and return to the Union and return to the status quo ante—before the rebellion.
The Arab culture, like most desert cultures, maintains a degree of hospitality that is much greater than that of most other cultures. Even enemies are granted hospitality. This sometimes confuses Western diplomats who might interpret the friendly hospitality as institutional friendship but it often is nothing more than the gracious hospitality that is expected in Arab society.
It was only since Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency that the public received very much information about what the nation’s foreign policy was or was even desired except in time of war.
The Hamas leadership of the Gaza strip had fired thousands of rockets into Israel which their charter states should be eliminated. The Israelis after many being hit by more than a thousand rockets, used their military to attack (via the air) the Hamas leadership. However, Hamas had stored their rockets and their armaments in or very near civilian facilities including hospitals, schools, mosques and even UN humanitarian facilities. The Hamas leaders thereby made civilian facilities legitimate military targets under the Rules of War of the Geneva and Hague Conventions. So the Gaza leadership, instead of their military protecting their own civilians, used the civilians to protect the military and their weapons in the midst of war. The Secretary General also was referring to the Hamas leadership who had rejected at that point 5 different cease fires that had been proposed by the Egyptians, Americans, The Arab League and others. Israeli accepted them all.
