If any of you are expecting to call me between the hours of 9 and 11 p.m. EST, I’m afraid I will be unavailable.

I will not be liveblogging the finale.

I will not be on the phone with Sarah during the finale.

I will not be playing computer games during the finale.

That’s right, I will be watching the finale. Oh, except for the commercials. I generally don’t pay attention to those.

And nope, I didn’t write this post just before the show started. I scheduled it. I wrote it last night.

Just in case though, be very, very quiet while you’re on my blog. I don’t want to be disturbed.

Update: Well, that was one freaky-deaky ending. I stand by my initial hunch that the writers just say they had a plan for it all. I think they’re going by the MSU plan. (They just make shit up as they go along.)

Update 2: Why do I keep wanting to sing “Sloop John B”?

Fateh and Hamas leaders claim to have settled their differences and agree to “curb” back on the civil war stuff.

Meanwhile, just got a Muppet News Flash: Nabil Hodhod just got taken out by a car bomb in Gaza City. He’s Fateh’s commander of Preventive Security there.

I suppose bits and pieces of him and his staff are spread across a few curbs right now.

In case you’re already popping corn, Meryl, I like my popcorn popped on the stove with olive oil and smothered with Parmesan cheese.

So a Fatah border guard asks his buddy, who is driving the PA Foreign Minister, our old buddy Mahmoud Zahar, to ask Zahar when the PA’s wages were going to be paid. A simple question, and one would think that Zahar, upon overhearing, might say to his constituent, “I’m working on getting money for you, but the Zionist and American devils are making it very hard on us!”

Except that’s not what happened.

According to Abu Nahala, these words enraged a-Zahar, who screamed at the policeman “You aren’t civilized” and spit in his face. A similar version of the story was recounted by police who were on the scene. Border police hurried to interfere, and pulled away the police officer after the two started cursing at each other and even pushing.

The report said that a-Zahar then returned to his car, called someone and demanded that “this policeman be educated.”

“Teach him manners,” he said, according to witnesses. The officer reportedly gave a-Zahar his full name and details after the minister threatened to take steps against him.

And when someone in an organization like Hamas says “Teach him manners,” you know he doesn’t mean read him Emily Post.

According to Abu Nahal, a short time afterwards, some 50 armed gunmen from the Izz a-Din al-Qassam brigades,
Hamas’ armed wing, along with members of the new security unit established by Hamas, showed up at the crossing and spread out in the territory for some 45 minutes. In addition, a senior official in the Foreign Ministry instructed that the policeman‘s behavior be immediately investigated owing to his lack of manners and his “unbecoming conduct” towards the foreign minister.

But I like this quote towards the end of the article:

The police officer, Tahrir Lafi, 30, told a-Sharq al-Awsat, which is published in London, that when a-Zahar’s car stopped at one of the main gates of the Rafah crossing which he was guarding: “I asked the driver, my friend Muhammad al-Hindi to ask the minister when our wages would be paid, and he heard me. He opened his window and unleashed a stream of curses at me, spit on me and threatened to murder me.”

Way to handle popular opinion, Zahar! Keep up the good work, and there’ll be a civil war in no time. Whoops. I think there already is one:

Gaza: Gunmen kidnap, then kill Hamas member

1,000 former Fatah militants rally in support of Hamas government

The press made a big deal out of the latest utterance of the Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Haaretz put up a misleading headline:

Hamas PM Haniyeh: Retreat to 1967 borders will bring peace

The small letters of the article tell a different story:

“If Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders, peace will prevail and we will implement a cease-fire [hudna] for many years,” Haniyeh said during an interview in his south Gaza office. “Our government is prepared to maintain a long-term cease-fire with Israel.”

So, “peace will prevail” on one hand and “a cease-fire[hudna]” on the other. In other words, nothing new happened, same pitiful attempts to put some gloss over the same old and ugly face. Still the same offer of a hudna. Does it become more attractive when repeated multiple times? Hardly.

This time, however, another Hamas leader put a new feature into the offer:

Palestinian Transportation Minister Ziad Zaza described the hudna during the interview as “the cease-fire that will be renewed automatically each time.”
Since we have not seen yet the whole contract draft, I wonder where is the clause of “Termination For Convenience”? In other words, does Hamas intend to warn us in advance when they get a club big enough to bash our collective head in?

Guardian, on the other hand, appears to take an attitude of detachment. In the article mostly dedicated to Olmert’s Washington visit, Suzanne Goldenberg and Chris McGreal (who else, indeed, but these two experts in Middle Eastern affairs) say:

Earlier yesterday, the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, told the Israeli press that Hamas would call a long-term ceasefire if Israel withdrew from all the land it occupied in the 1967 war. But the statement, a reiteration of Hamas’s stated policy, falls short of western demands for the Islamist group to recognise Israel.

So the requirement of mutual recognition and rejection of the murderous Hamas charter is not something a normal person would request. It is “western demands” only. Nice touch.

On a related subject: I have just happened to stumble on these two pictures one after another:

No, no, I am not trying to hint that Haniyeh and Clooney were separated at birth, the likeness is too superficial in this case.

I can only state that I have a suspicion now who is the role model for Haniyeh’s make-up team…

B’nai B’rith passed along this information about this week’s Oprah Winfrey shows:

Wednesday, May 24 – In a powerful one-hour program, Oprah Winfrey travels with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel— author of her current Book Club selection “Night”— on what he has called his final trip to Auschwitz.

Thursday, May 25 – Elie Wiesel joins Oprah at Harpo Studios in Chicago to meet the 50 winners of her National High School Essay Contest. The winning essays were selected from 50,000 submissions that addressed the question “Why is Elie Wiesel’s book ‘Night’ relevant today?” In addition to sharing their inspiring stories — including some who have survived genocide themselves — the students are joined in studio by several Holocaust survivors, all of whom are committed to never letting the world forget what happened and to delivering the message that this horror must not be allowed to happen again.

In addition on Friday, May 26 (7:00pm ET/6:00pm CT), the cable channel Oxygen Network will air “Oprah After the Show,” which includes the students asking Professor Wiesel additional questions about his Auschwitz experience. Several Holocaust survivors also share their personal accounts.

Good for you, Oprah.

You know, Israel remembers the Six-Day War (along with all other wars) on her Memorial Day, and on Jerusalem Day, a day that celebrates the reunification of the ancient city of David, king of Israel. (Remember that it was the Arabs who partitioned the city during the War of Independence. It was supposed to be an international city under the UN partition plan.)

Hezbullah celebrates the sixth anniversary of the Israeli withdrawal of forces from Lebanon by threatening every inch of northern Israel.

The leader of Lebanon’s terror group Hizbullah warned Israel on Tuesday that it would answer any attack on its territory by firing thousands of rockets on all parts of northern Israel.

Hassan Nasrallah’s comments were made as part of Lebanon’s celebrations of the 6th anniversary of Israel’s withdrawal from southern Lebanon after an 18-year occupation.

[...] “Northern Israel today is within the range of the resistance’s rockets. The ports, bases, factories and everything is within that range.”

Nasrallah referred to statements he made years ago that his group has more than 12,000 rockets, reminding his listeners that “when I say we have more than 12,000 rockets I don’t mean 13,000 rockets.”

There are very, very few people whom I truly hate, and whose deaths I wish for.

Nasrallah is one.