Clashing values alter a city's face
Thousands of less devout Jews move out each year, many frustrated by the growing clout of the ultra-Orthodox. The trend may leave Israelis with a painful choice.
Richard Boudreaux
Times Staff Writer
June 5, 2007
Jerusalem — YEARS after Israel seized a hilltop artillery post from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East War and turned it into a Jewish neighborhood, a civic-minded resident launched a turf battle of her own.
Ruth Geva thought that Ramot Allon, a community originally built for secular Jews, needed a police station. But she had to campaign eight years for a place to put one. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish families, known to Israelis as haredim, were moving in and seeking space for synagogues and religious schools.
In 2004 the community got its station. Then last year Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox mayor ordered it closed on a month's notice and handed the building to an ultra-Orthodox kindergarten.
Furious over the decision and weary of the demands of her devout neighbors, Geva is giving up and moving to Israel's Mediterranean coast.
"They get all the services and the city remains poor," said Geva, 59, a community safety consultant. "They take a little bite each time, and finally people like me no longer feel comfortable here."
Forty years ago, when Israel captured East Jerusalem and absorbed the Arab neighborhoods, it set out to maintain a large and sustainable Jewish majority in the city it was declaring its eternal and undivided capital. Instead, Jerusalem is gradually becoming more Palestinian and less Jewish.
Thousands of Jews leave the city each year, many of them alienated by an ascendant ultra-Orthodox minority that is asserting its socially conservative values and political power. Even as Jerusalem attracts a growing number of Palestinians, polls show that many less devout Jews are becoming estranged from it and are more willing to consider dividing it again.
Palestinians made up about a quarter of the city's residents after the 1967 war; today they account for more than a third of the population of 732,100. Demographers say that if current trends continue, Israelis sooner or later will face a painful choice: Give up parts of the city to the Palestinians, who aspire to make East Jerusalem the capital of their own state, or become a minority in a city of profound religious and historical significance.
Israel's postwar planners had every reason to believe they could maintain Jerusalem's solid majority of Jews after the 1967 war.
They began planting neighborhoods such as Ramot Allon on annexed West Bank land, some for devout Jews drawn to the city by the Western Wall and other holy sites taken from Jordan's control. Haredim, whose families on average have seven children, were the fastest-growing group in the city.
The ultra-Orthodox have enabled Jews to maintain an overall birthrate only slightly below that of Palestinians in the city. But the growing number of haredim also has fed the rise of a political movement with an agenda that has polarized the Jewish populace.
Mayor Uri Lupolianski and four of his five deputies are ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Since they were elected in 2003, their administration has channeled more municipal land and spending to their religious community, often over fierce objections by other Jews.
In interviews, Lupolianski and Deputy Mayor Uri Maklev argued that many of those who are leaving are seeking better jobs or more affordable housing. Maklev said the ultra-Orthodox have long suffered neglect and now expect "the minimal services they deserve in education, synagogues and playgrounds near their homes."
"Why," he asked, "should this cause dispute and polarization?"
Critics answer that it is not just a matter of providing services to the ultra-Orthodox where they live: City Hall also is encouraging them to move into less devout neighborhoods, where they often insist on strict observance of Jewish religious law.
"This process has been underway for years and serves as a catalyst for outward migration from the city," said Avi Kostelitz, a modern Orthodox Jew and opposition City Council member from Ramot Allon.
Intertwined conflicts
THOUGH outsiders tend to view Jerusalem as an Arab-Israeli tinderbox, the city is in fact fragmented into three adverse populations: Palestinians, ultra-Orthodox Jews and less devout Jews. Their conflicts are intertwined, and all are influenced by population trends.
Roughly 20% of the city is haredi, a Hebrew term that means "fearful" or one who fears God. Members of the community are distinguishable by their black frock coats and hats and long dresses. They follow complex and demanding rituals spelled out in Jewish law, which requires prayer and quiet on the Sabbath.
Drawn to pray at Jerusalem's holy sites, most haredi men are religious scholars who have large families, live in voluntary poverty and pay minimal taxes for the benefits they receive.
For Palestinians, 34% of the population, Jerusalem also is a magnet, offering more jobs than any city in the West Bank or Gaza Strip.
The remaining 46% are secular and modern Orthodox Jews, categories often lumped together by demographers even though their practices differ widely.
Members of this last group work in universities, government agencies and the tourist trade. They tend to be repelled by the city's poverty, threats of Palestinian violence and tensions with haredim, who have thrown rocks to stop Jerusalem traffic on the Sabbath and burned clothing stores for selling "immodest" attire. These less devout Jews often look to Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities as more attractive alternatives.
The Jewish majority's steady erosion became clear in the mid-1990s. Alarmed, secular political leaders began weighing proposals to split off Arab neighborhoods as part of a peace agreement that would give the Palestinians their own state. Peace talks collapsed in late 2000, and the demographic trend continued.
Last year, 17,200 people moved out of Jerusalem and 10,900 moved in, according to the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, a think tank. Virtually all those leaving were Israelis and as many as 70% were secular and modern Orthodox Jews.
Although prospects for new talks have faded, 58% of Israelis today are prepared to make concessions on Jerusalem if that would end fighting with the Palestinians, according to a Jerusalem Institute poll. Various surveys over the last decade show steady growth in that position among Israelis.
By contrast, three-quarters of religious Jews, a category that includes haredim, are opposed.
Israeli analysts say one reason many Israelis would accept dividing Jerusalem is their estrangement from the city. The Jerusalem Institute poll showed that nearly two-thirds of Israelis thought of their capital as "a city of the ultra-Orthodox," nearly half said it was poor, and one-third considered it "scary to live in."
"Jerusalem is dismal, depressing. People there are nervous, agitated and cross," said Sharon Daya, 38, a swimming instructor who lived in the city all her life until she moved five years ago to a western suburb with her husband and three children. "I miss nothing about it. I go to great pains to avoid going there."
Daya said Israel's vision of a unified Jerusalem had given way to political and religious intolerance.
"Ultimately there will be no escaping the need to divide it … like it was in the past," she said.
If Palestinians were to achieve a majority in undivided Jerusalem, said geographer Shlomo Hasson, Israel would face a dilemma: Exclude the Palestinians from politics to preserve Jewish dominance or accept the prospect of an electoral outcome that would give them at least a share of power, in effect acknowledging Jerusalem's dual character as a Jewish and Arab city.
"Either we undermine our democracy or the nature of our nationality," said Hasson, a Hebrew University professor and founder of the Futura Institute, a Jerusalem think tank. "Both scenarios are devastating for Israel."
Secular suspicions
YOSEF Weil's search for an apartment shows how Jerusalem's rival Jewish worlds collide.
The 35-year-old Talmud scholar decided three years ago to move his family to Jerusalem from an ultra-Orthodox enclave outside the city after his wife tired of the two-hour commute to her secretarial job. He looked in north Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods but found that their rapid growth had pushed rents beyond his reach.
In Ramot Allon he found a place for $500 a month, and he and his family joined the haredi influx that Geva, the community safety consultant, and other secular Jews say is driving them out.
Secular and modern Orthodox Jews suspect an orchestrated takeover of the sprawling hilltop neighborhood of spacious bungalows and tight rows of stone-sided apartment buildings. Real estate agents say haredim are moving in with the approval of their rabbis, who normally frown upon living among secular Jews but view Ramot Allon as an emerging ultra-Orthodox community.
The ultra-Orthodox accounted for roughly half of Ramot Allon's 40,000 residents in 2005 and now are a clear majority. The Colony real estate agency has handled sales of 35 private homes and 50 apartments in the neighborhood this year and reports that only haredim are buying.
Weil finds it an awkward mix. For most haredim it is not enough to be observant in their own homes — their spiritual values must be reflected in their surroundings. Soft-spoken and polite, Weil does not confront his neighbors when they turn up the radio on Friday night and Saturday. Instead he calls the police, to no avail.
"What am I supposed to say to my daughter when she sees a secular person desecrating the Sabbath?" he said. "That he's a bad man? Yes, that's what I tell her, but it's not a pleasant thing to say about a brother."
Weil and his wife live in a two-bedroom apartment with their seven children, all younger than 13. They get by each month "with heavenly help," he said, on her $1,000 salary, $640 in child subsidies from the state and his $625 scholar's stipend, part of which comes from the state and part from his yeshiva.
According to a Jerusalem Institute study, members of Jerusalem's haredi community pay one-seventh what other Jews pay per person in taxes, and more than two-thirds of the members live below the poverty line.
In a poll last year for Tsav Pius, an Israeli group that promotes dialogue between secular and religious Jews, half the secular respondents agreed with the statement that "most haredim exploit the state."
Weil said it was unfair that his children's private school is a cramped trailer while public schools, losing students, have classrooms to spare. Ultra-Orthodox parents have acquired some spare classrooms through lobbying or forceful takeovers, prompting lawsuits and tire-burning protests by secular Jews.
The two sides also are fighting over a community center with a library, gym, pool and meeting hall. The neighborhood board that runs it is self-selected, excludes haredim and refuses to hold elections, suspecting that the ultra-Orthodox would win and take over the facilities. The board is trying to evict a more modest haredi community center run by Asher Kuperstok.
"This is first-rate chutzpah!" Kuperstok declared.
"But … why fight?" he added with a smile. The bigger community center "will all fall into our hands in another three years, maybe five years. Just watch the moving trucks and you'll see clearly who's packing and who's unpacking. I don't need to fight. I can just wait."
Incident on a bus
NOVELIST and playwright Naomi Ragen already has fled two neighborhoods to avoid emerging ultra-Orthodox majorities. Now Ramot Allon's most famous resident is thinking about leaving Jerusalem altogether.
Ragen felt the latest affront when her neighborhood supermarket stopped selling cat food. Haredim, now the store's main clientele, rarely keep pets. The shelves are now filled with food at discount prices, labeled with the strictest kosher certifications and packed in family-size boxes and bottles.
But her apprehensions run much deeper.
Jerusalem, she said, risks falling under a kind of Jewish Taliban "in the same way radical Muslims have corrupted Islam and turned it into something abusive of women."
Ragen was riding near the front of a No. 40 bus from central Jerusalem to Ramot Allon three summers ago when, she said, a haredi man demanded that she move to the rear.
"Show me where in the code of Jewish law it says I cannot sit in this seat and then I will move," she recalled telling him. "Until then get out of my face."
The incident made Ragen a feminist cause celebre. But her outcry did not stop the growth of gender-segregated bus lines; there are at least 30 here and elsewhere in Israel. Last year a Canadian Jew riding to pray at the Western Wall was spat at, punched and beaten to the floor by four haredi men as she, too, refused to move to the back of the bus.
A modern Orthodox Jew raised in New York, Ragen shudders at billboards in central Jerusalem admonishing women to wear long skirts, long sleeves and buttoned-up collars in public.
"People here misconstrue Jewish law, radicalize it beyond recognition and call that 'being more religious,' " she said.
The author is building a home in the Galilee and said she might live there full time.
She has thought about the consequences of Jerusalem's Jewish flight and growing Palestinian population. Palestinians and haredim would increasingly dominate the city and might get along just fine, she said with a tone of irony.
"Their women tend to dress alike, all covered up. That could be a recipe for harmony."
"I love Jerusalem," she added, turning serious. "I hate to see the city turned into a fundamentalist backwater…. But it will always be my touchstone, the center of my religion, even if now is not a particularly good time for me to live here."
Obstacle to consensus
MANY less devout Jews acknowledge that the rule of rabbi-politicians has not altered Jerusalem's character as much as they had feared.
The city is relatively staid, but on weekends, secular residents visit bars, cafes, restaurants and discos — places shunned by haredim. More such establishments are open in secular neighborhoods today than a generation ago.
Lupolianski, the mayor, has not moved to close those places on the Sabbath. He has cut deals to end rock-throwing protests by haredim against Sabbath traffic and defuse other skirmishes.
Yet the religious-secular divide has blocked consensus on how to strengthen the city's Jewish majority.
A plan initially backed by the mayor would have stretched Jerusalem's boundaries into the western hills, cut down forests and built 20,000 homes, primarily for secular Jews. Protests forced the government to shelve the plan in February. Secular critics argued that it would harm the environment and draw middle-class Jews away from central and southern Jerusalem, opening those areas to takeover by the ultra-Orthodox, who are outgrowing their traditional neighborhoods in the north.
To many haredim, keeping a Jewish majority in Jerusalem is not the main point.
The more ultra-Orthodox the city's Jewish population becomes, they say, the more likely that Jerusalem will remain anchored to its religious roots and the harder Israel will strive to hold on to the land until its long-awaited redemption.
Jews have "a right to the land of Israel because the creator gave it to them," said Yakov Zonenfeld, a Jerusalem activist in Chabad Lubavitch, a Hasidic movement that is part of the haredi world. He believes that trading Jewish land for peace is against the Torah, but acknowledged that it was something politicians eventually might feel compelled to do.
"We hope for the Messiah to come redeem us so this entire question will soon be irrelevant," he said.
Other Israelis say ultra-Orthodox domination is choking off the holy city from many who rejoiced at its reunification four decades ago.
"More secular Israelis are beginning to relate to Jerusalem as culturally alien," said Yossi Klein-Halevy, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a Jerusalem research institute.
"That is potentially devastating for Jerusalem's centrality in Israel and within world Jewry," he said. "The more Jerusalem turns haredi, the more secular Israelis will turn away, and that will have political consequences as future Israeli leaders decide whether to keep the city intact."
________________________________________
boudreaux@latimes.com
Times special correspondents Batsheva Sobelman and Shlomi Simhi contributed to this report.
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Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Act of Partition: What is there to celebrate?
The Israeli media is busy reporting:
“This November will mark 60 years since the famous and fateful UN partition vote that paved the way for Israel’s creation. The Knesset plans to reenact the vote with fanfare.
“The commemoration is to occur this coming November 29 (Thursday, the 19th of Kislev), when Israel’s parliament will festively reenact the UN vote that took place exactly 60 years before. An invitation has already been proffered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the ambassadors of the 33 countries that voted in favor of the partition will also be invited.”
What is there to celebrate?
In a statement to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), on October 2, 1947, the representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine said the following about fairness, balance, and justice of the recommendation to partition Palestine:“According to David Lloyd George, then British Prime Minister, the Balfour Declaration implied that the whole of Palestine, including Transjordan, should ultimately become a Jewish state. Transjordan had, nevertheless, been severed from Palestine in 1922 and had subsequently been set up as an Arab kingdom.
“Now a second Arab state was to be carved out of the remainder of Palestine, with the result that the Jewish National Home would represent less than one eighth of the territory originally set aside for it. Such a sacrifice should not be asked of the Jewish people.1
“… 17,000,000 Arabs now occupied an area of 1,290,000 square miles, including all the principal Arab and Moslem centres, while Palestine, after the loss of Transjordan, was only 10,000 square miles; yet the majority plan proposed to reduce it by one half. UNSCOP proposed to eliminate Western Galilee from the Jewish State; that was an injustice and a grievous handicap to the development of the Jewish State.”2
If the Partition Plan would have been implemented, it is likely to assume that the tiny state of Israel would be unable to repel any coordinated Arab assault. Jerusalem, according to the recommended plan, would not be the Capitol of a Jewish state - Jerusalem would have been internationalized.
The Knesset and the Government of Israel should reconsider their venue:
What should be remembered is that Israel’s independence is not a result of a partial implementation of the Partition Plan. Resolution 181 [Also known as the Partition Plan] has no legal ramifications - that is, Resolution 181 recognized the Jewish right to statehood, but its validity as a potentially legal and binding document was never consummated. Like the schemes that preceded it, Resolution 181’s validity hinged on acceptance of the General Assembly’s recommendation by both parties.
Professor Lauterpacht clarified that from a legal standpoint, the 1947 UN Partition Resolution had no legislative character to vest territorial rights to either Jews or Arabs. In a monograph relating to one of the most complex aspects of the territorial issue - the status of Jerusalem - Lauterpacht wrote that any binding force the Partition Plan would have had to arise from the principle pacta sunt servanda [Latin, “treaties must be honored”], that is, from agreement of the parties at variance to the proposed plan. In the case of Israel, Lauterpacht explains:
“… the coming into existence of Israel does not depend legally upon the Resolution. The right of a State to exist flows from its factual existence - especially when that existence is prolonged, shows every sign of continuance and is recognised by the generality of nations.”3
Reviewing Lauterpacht’s arguments, Professor Julius Stone, a distinguished authority on the Law of Nations, added that Israel’s legitimacy, or the legal foundation for its birth, does not reside with the United Nations recommendation to partition Palestine, which as a consequence of Arab actions became a dead issue. Professor Stone concluded:
“… The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control.”4
Resolution 181 had been tossed into the waste bin of history, along with the partition plans that preceded it.
Instead, celebrate by reenacting the reading of Israel’s Declaration of Independence; 5 Iyar 5708, 14.5.1948
1 Yearbook of the United Nations 1947-48. 1949. I . 13. December 31, 1948.
See: http://www.mefacts.com/cache/html/un-documents/11270.htm. (11270)
2 Delivered by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, October 2, 1947.
3 See: Judge, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Jerusalem and the Holy Places (London: The Anglo-Israel Association, 1968), page 52.
4 Professor Julius Stone (1907-1985), Israel and Palestine, Assault on the Law of Nations (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 127. The late Professor Stone was recognized as one of the twentieth century’s leading authorities on the Law of Nations. His work represents a detailed analysis of the central principles of international law governing the issues raised by the Arab-Israel conflict. He was one of a few scholars to gain outstanding recognition in more than one field. Professor Stone was one of the world’s best-known authorities in both Jurisprudence and International Law.
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“This November will mark 60 years since the famous and fateful UN partition vote that paved the way for Israel’s creation. The Knesset plans to reenact the vote with fanfare.
“The commemoration is to occur this coming November 29 (Thursday, the 19th of Kislev), when Israel’s parliament will festively reenact the UN vote that took place exactly 60 years before. An invitation has already been proffered to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, and the ambassadors of the 33 countries that voted in favor of the partition will also be invited.”
What is there to celebrate?
In a statement to the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), on October 2, 1947, the representative of the Jewish Agency for Palestine said the following about fairness, balance, and justice of the recommendation to partition Palestine:“According to David Lloyd George, then British Prime Minister, the Balfour Declaration implied that the whole of Palestine, including Transjordan, should ultimately become a Jewish state. Transjordan had, nevertheless, been severed from Palestine in 1922 and had subsequently been set up as an Arab kingdom.
“Now a second Arab state was to be carved out of the remainder of Palestine, with the result that the Jewish National Home would represent less than one eighth of the territory originally set aside for it. Such a sacrifice should not be asked of the Jewish people.1
“… 17,000,000 Arabs now occupied an area of 1,290,000 square miles, including all the principal Arab and Moslem centres, while Palestine, after the loss of Transjordan, was only 10,000 square miles; yet the majority plan proposed to reduce it by one half. UNSCOP proposed to eliminate Western Galilee from the Jewish State; that was an injustice and a grievous handicap to the development of the Jewish State.”2
If the Partition Plan would have been implemented, it is likely to assume that the tiny state of Israel would be unable to repel any coordinated Arab assault. Jerusalem, according to the recommended plan, would not be the Capitol of a Jewish state - Jerusalem would have been internationalized.
The Knesset and the Government of Israel should reconsider their venue:
What should be remembered is that Israel’s independence is not a result of a partial implementation of the Partition Plan. Resolution 181 [Also known as the Partition Plan] has no legal ramifications - that is, Resolution 181 recognized the Jewish right to statehood, but its validity as a potentially legal and binding document was never consummated. Like the schemes that preceded it, Resolution 181’s validity hinged on acceptance of the General Assembly’s recommendation by both parties.
Professor Lauterpacht clarified that from a legal standpoint, the 1947 UN Partition Resolution had no legislative character to vest territorial rights to either Jews or Arabs. In a monograph relating to one of the most complex aspects of the territorial issue - the status of Jerusalem - Lauterpacht wrote that any binding force the Partition Plan would have had to arise from the principle pacta sunt servanda [Latin, “treaties must be honored”], that is, from agreement of the parties at variance to the proposed plan. In the case of Israel, Lauterpacht explains:
“… the coming into existence of Israel does not depend legally upon the Resolution. The right of a State to exist flows from its factual existence - especially when that existence is prolonged, shows every sign of continuance and is recognised by the generality of nations.”3
Reviewing Lauterpacht’s arguments, Professor Julius Stone, a distinguished authority on the Law of Nations, added that Israel’s legitimacy, or the legal foundation for its birth, does not reside with the United Nations recommendation to partition Palestine, which as a consequence of Arab actions became a dead issue. Professor Stone concluded:
“… The State of Israel is thus not legally derived from the partition plan, but rests (as do most other states in the world) on assertion of independence by its people and government, on the vindication of that independence by arms against assault by other states, and on the establishment of orderly government within territory under its stable control.”4
Resolution 181 had been tossed into the waste bin of history, along with the partition plans that preceded it.
Instead, celebrate by reenacting the reading of Israel’s Declaration of Independence; 5 Iyar 5708, 14.5.1948
1 Yearbook of the United Nations 1947-48. 1949. I . 13. December 31, 1948.
See: http://www.mefacts.com/cache/html/un-documents/11270.htm. (11270)
2 Delivered by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, October 2, 1947.
3 See: Judge, Sir Elihu Lauterpacht, Jerusalem and the Holy Places (London: The Anglo-Israel Association, 1968), page 52.
4 Professor Julius Stone (1907-1985), Israel and Palestine, Assault on the Law of Nations (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), p. 127. The late Professor Stone was recognized as one of the twentieth century’s leading authorities on the Law of Nations. His work represents a detailed analysis of the central principles of international law governing the issues raised by the Arab-Israel conflict. He was one of a few scholars to gain outstanding recognition in more than one field. Professor Stone was one of the world’s best-known authorities in both Jurisprudence and International Law.
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Abdel Rahman: Hamas returned people in Gaza to an age worsen than the occupation's
Ramallah, August 25, 2007 (RNA) – The official spokesman of Fatah movement, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, denied Saturday any talks with the Hamas movement, asserting there’s no dialogue before ending the coup in the Gaza Strip.
Ramallah, August 25, 2007 (RNA) – The official spokesman of Fatah movement, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, denied Saturday any talks with the Hamas movement, asserting there’s no dialogue before ending the coup in the Gaza Strip.
Abdel Rahman, the president’s advisor, said in a Press Conference in Ramattan in Ramallah that “we assert on ending the coup and its aspects before any talks on dialogue or forming the national unity government.”
He said that Fatah insists on dissolving the illegal militias “this, what is called the executive force as well as the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas armed wing), and there’s any future for this coup that increased the disasters and suffering of the Palestinians.”
Abdel Rahman said that Hamas had returned the people with its coup to an age worsen than of the occupation’s, where Israel is the only gainer.
Meanwhile, he condemned the ongoing Israeli aggressions where seven Palestinians had been killed within less than 24 hours, pointing out that Israel wants the continuation of chaos and security deterioration.
Talking about the return of a number of Fatah leaders, he said that president Mahmoud Abbas seeks the return of the leadership from exile, "and he had received an initial approval from Israel over this issue, however it was cleared later that in case their return it would be only a visit."
Abdel Rahman said that "we want their return to be complete and in dignity and we are working on this now. We hope this issue could be ended very soon."
span>
Ramallah, August 25, 2007 (RNA) – The official spokesman of Fatah movement, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, denied Saturday any talks with the Hamas movement, asserting there’s no dialogue before ending the coup in the Gaza Strip.
Abdel Rahman, the president’s advisor, said in a Press Conference in Ramattan in Ramallah that “we assert on ending the coup and its aspects before any talks on dialogue or forming the national unity government.”
He said that Fatah insists on dissolving the illegal militias “this, what is called the executive force as well as the Al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas armed wing), and there’s any future for this coup that increased the disasters and suffering of the Palestinians.”
Abdel Rahman said that Hamas had returned the people with its coup to an age worsen than of the occupation’s, where Israel is the only gainer.
Meanwhile, he condemned the ongoing Israeli aggressions where seven Palestinians had been killed within less than 24 hours, pointing out that Israel wants the continuation of chaos and security deterioration.
Talking about the return of a number of Fatah leaders, he said that president Mahmoud Abbas seeks the return of the leadership from exile, "and he had received an initial approval from Israel over this issue, however it was cleared later that in case their return it would be only a visit."
Abdel Rahman said that "we want their return to be complete and in dignity and we are working on this now. We hope this issue could be ended very soon."
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An open letter to Christiane Amanpour From Maurice Ostroff
God's Warriors
Your mammoth three-part documentary "God 's Warriors" is certainly a magnum opus. And while I admire the sheer professionalism of your presentation, I do hope you will accept the following comments in the constructive manner intended.
Please correct me if I err, but the program creates the impression that you do not see Islamic fundamentalist violence as more serious a threat than enthusiastic, or even zealous, devotion to Judaism or Christianity.
This impression is confirmed by your responses to comments posted on CNN web site. For example in response to Regina Bowling of Charleston, who said she believes we are watching the gathering up of energy worldwide in the form of religious intolerance for the "perfect storm" of global holy war, you replied that you don't see right now the potential for global holy war. This despite 9/11, the London bombings and attempted bombings and other glaring incidents including the world-wide violence that erupted in the Danish Cartoon episode.
The program also creates the impression that you believe there is no difference between God's Jewish, Muslim and Christian Warriors and that the Moral Majority and Evangelists are as dangerous as Islamic Fundamentalists. This was confirmed when you replied to Ms. Bowling that as long as people believe that only their holy book [Koran, Torah or Bible] or only their holy word matters and is relevant, then there will be no solution. (Words in parenthesis are mine).
It was disappointing to find in a purportedly objective program that you injected your own views, demonstrating occasional lack of knowledge. For example when an Israeli settler said God says Jews must live in Hebron, you interjected that the West Bank was designated by the UN to be the largest part of an Arab state. Not only is this statement factually incorrect, it is out of context. May I ask whether you are aware that all Arab states rejected UN partition resolution 181 and that the West Bank was included in the area designated for encouragement of Jewish settlement by the Balfour Declaration and even endorsed in article 6 of the British mandate.
In retrospect I hope you will agree that the use of the very few isolated incidents of Jewish terror attempts over the past 15 years, created the erroneous impression that a religious Jewish terror movement exists on a par with the violent worldwide jihadist phenomenon of indiscriminate death and destruction. Objectivity would require that you draw attention to the enormous difference between Islamic states which encourage terror and Israel which acts vigorously against attempts to engage in terror and where those very few Jews who did make attempts have been severely punished.
The relevance of God's Warriors to the so-called Jewish lobby in the USA is flimsy indeed. It is difficult to accept your objectivity when you allow Jimmy Carter and Professor Mearsheimer to promote their controversial books that have been criticized by experts for blatant inaccuracies, without offering a balanced viewpoint from someone like Alan Dershowitz.
Surely you, of all people know that the Jewish Lobby is but one of dozens of diverse influential lobbies, including the ACLU and the very powerful, well-funded Arab lobbies t hat are part of the Washington scene.
Your repeated references to settlements as illegal are open to valid criticism. Obviously the most reliable sources from whom to seek clarification are the persons who played key roles in drafting the relevant resolution 242, namely British Ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon, American Ambassador, Arthur Goldberg and US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Eugene Rostow . All have agreed that settlements are legal. In an interview in the Beirut Daily Star on June 12, 1974, Lord Caradon stated: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967 because these positions were undesirable and artificial".
Professor Julius Stone, one of the twentieth century's leading authorities on the Law of Nations concurred that the Jewish right of settlement in the territories is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.
What must deeply concern everyone interested in maintaining Western democracy is the danger that this widely advertised documentary diverts attention from the real threat of Jihad, by equating it with non-violent religious movements.
Sorely missing from the entire series is any mention of the basic motivator of Islamic violence, the incitement to hatred emanating from state media as well as openly from mosques, not only in Arab countries but under the noses of European and British governments. As human beings, can we be unperturbed by the indoctrination of infants to become suicidal Warriors as shown in an interview with a three-and-a-half year old girl broadcast on Iqra ? See video clip at http://tinyurl.com/kz5of
It is sad that in your documentary which could serve to create a genuine better understanding of the violence generated by religious zealotry, the authoritative voices of many experts in the field were omitted.
Among the many who would have added authoritative insight into the subject are Brigitte Gabriel, who lectures nationally and internationally about terrorism and who has issued an Urgent Warning to the West, Professor Salim Mansur the Muslim writer and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Steven Emerson the internationally recognized expert on militant Islamic terrorism and national security and Dr. Khaleel Mohammed, the Islamic law specialist and professor of Religion at San Diego State University.
I attach for your information copies of articles by the late Eugene Rostow.
Your considered response would be appreciated.
Maurice Ostroff
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Your mammoth three-part documentary "God 's Warriors" is certainly a magnum opus. And while I admire the sheer professionalism of your presentation, I do hope you will accept the following comments in the constructive manner intended.
Please correct me if I err, but the program creates the impression that you do not see Islamic fundamentalist violence as more serious a threat than enthusiastic, or even zealous, devotion to Judaism or Christianity.
This impression is confirmed by your responses to comments posted on CNN web site. For example in response to Regina Bowling of Charleston, who said she believes we are watching the gathering up of energy worldwide in the form of religious intolerance for the "perfect storm" of global holy war, you replied that you don't see right now the potential for global holy war. This despite 9/11, the London bombings and attempted bombings and other glaring incidents including the world-wide violence that erupted in the Danish Cartoon episode.
The program also creates the impression that you believe there is no difference between God's Jewish, Muslim and Christian Warriors and that the Moral Majority and Evangelists are as dangerous as Islamic Fundamentalists. This was confirmed when you replied to Ms. Bowling that as long as people believe that only their holy book [Koran, Torah or Bible] or only their holy word matters and is relevant, then there will be no solution. (Words in parenthesis are mine).
It was disappointing to find in a purportedly objective program that you injected your own views, demonstrating occasional lack of knowledge. For example when an Israeli settler said God says Jews must live in Hebron, you interjected that the West Bank was designated by the UN to be the largest part of an Arab state. Not only is this statement factually incorrect, it is out of context. May I ask whether you are aware that all Arab states rejected UN partition resolution 181 and that the West Bank was included in the area designated for encouragement of Jewish settlement by the Balfour Declaration and even endorsed in article 6 of the British mandate.
In retrospect I hope you will agree that the use of the very few isolated incidents of Jewish terror attempts over the past 15 years, created the erroneous impression that a religious Jewish terror movement exists on a par with the violent worldwide jihadist phenomenon of indiscriminate death and destruction. Objectivity would require that you draw attention to the enormous difference between Islamic states which encourage terror and Israel which acts vigorously against attempts to engage in terror and where those very few Jews who did make attempts have been severely punished.
The relevance of God's Warriors to the so-called Jewish lobby in the USA is flimsy indeed. It is difficult to accept your objectivity when you allow Jimmy Carter and Professor Mearsheimer to promote their controversial books that have been criticized by experts for blatant inaccuracies, without offering a balanced viewpoint from someone like Alan Dershowitz.
Surely you, of all people know that the Jewish Lobby is but one of dozens of diverse influential lobbies, including the ACLU and the very powerful, well-funded Arab lobbies t hat are part of the Washington scene.
Your repeated references to settlements as illegal are open to valid criticism. Obviously the most reliable sources from whom to seek clarification are the persons who played key roles in drafting the relevant resolution 242, namely British Ambassador to the UN, Lord Caradon, American Ambassador, Arthur Goldberg and US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Eugene Rostow . All have agreed that settlements are legal. In an interview in the Beirut Daily Star on June 12, 1974, Lord Caradon stated: "It would have been wrong to demand that Israel return to its positions of June 4, 1967 because these positions were undesirable and artificial".
Professor Julius Stone, one of the twentieth century's leading authorities on the Law of Nations concurred that the Jewish right of settlement in the territories is equivalent in every way to the right of the existing Palestinian population to live there.
What must deeply concern everyone interested in maintaining Western democracy is the danger that this widely advertised documentary diverts attention from the real threat of Jihad, by equating it with non-violent religious movements.
Sorely missing from the entire series is any mention of the basic motivator of Islamic violence, the incitement to hatred emanating from state media as well as openly from mosques, not only in Arab countries but under the noses of European and British governments. As human beings, can we be unperturbed by the indoctrination of infants to become suicidal Warriors as shown in an interview with a three-and-a-half year old girl broadcast on Iqra ? See video clip at http://tinyurl.com/kz5of
It is sad that in your documentary which could serve to create a genuine better understanding of the violence generated by religious zealotry, the authoritative voices of many experts in the field were omitted.
Among the many who would have added authoritative insight into the subject are Brigitte Gabriel, who lectures nationally and internationally about terrorism and who has issued an Urgent Warning to the West, Professor Salim Mansur the Muslim writer and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Western Ontario, Steven Emerson the internationally recognized expert on militant Islamic terrorism and national security and Dr. Khaleel Mohammed, the Islamic law specialist and professor of Religion at San Diego State University.
I attach for your information copies of articles by the late Eugene Rostow.
Your considered response would be appreciated.
Maurice Ostroff
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Monday, August 27, 2007
Change cast in concrete
The barrier Israel is building along the West Bank has had an unforeseen effect: Palestinians are flooding back into Jerusalem to bolster their claim to the holy city. Jerusalem — ISSA Natsheh watched warily from his West Bank suburb when Israel began building a concrete barrier along the fringes of Jerusalem four years ago.
As the partition slowly took shape, Natsheh grew increasingly worried that he would be cut off for good from the city of his birth. Powerless to stop the construction, Natsheh did what he could: He moved back into Jerusalem.
Two years after the move, Natsheh lives with a wife, three small daughters and a newborn son in a concrete-block shack on a trash-strewn hillside north of downtown. He built the structure without Israeli permission and has covered the front with a black tarp to disguise it so authorities won't tear it down.
Thousands of Palestinians like Natsheh, lured to the West Bank over the years by family ties, cheap property and fewer building regulations, are scrambling back into Jerusalem.
The unforeseen wave of migration has increased the Arab presence, bolstering a broader trend that has seen the Palestinian population grow to more than a third of Jerusalem's total. It is one sign of how the barrier is reshaping the holy city and further complicating any effort to settle competing claims to it.
Israel insists that the barrier is aimed at keeping out suicide bombers and that the strategy is working. Officials say it can be dismantled if there is peace.
"The fence is not political. It's not a border. It's only a security fence," said Nezah Mashiah, an official at Israel's Defense Ministry who oversees the project. A system of crossing points should ensure that people with a right to enter Jerusalem are not impeded, Mashiah said.
But Palestinians are skeptical.
For many, moving back into the city is an act of nationalism, aimed at countering what they view as an Israeli effort to reduce their numbers and undermine their aspirations to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state. For most others, even if they want nothing else to do with Israeli authorities, the purpose is access to jobs, healthcare, social security and other benefits Israel provides to Jerusalem residents.
By disrupting traditional commercial links to the West Bank, the barrier is transforming the region's economy while encouraging even more Palestinians to think about relocating.
The serpentine 90-mile section that roughly tracks Jerusalem's boundaries on three sides is part of a series of fences, concrete walls and patrol roads being built along the length of Israel's border with the West Bank, and sometimes deep into the Palestinian territory. The Jerusalem section, about two-thirds complete, is expected to be finished by early next year, Israeli officials say.
Palestinian officials have encouraged Jerusalem residents over the years to stay in the city to maintain their claim. But they have been largely silent, both publicly and privately, about the current migration, carefully avoiding any statements that would imply recognition of the barrier as a de facto border.
There are no reliable figures on how many Palestinians have moved back, but the number appears to be easily in the thousands. Israeli officials acknowledge that some movement has occurred. Because these Palestinians have a right to live in Jerusalem, the officials say, they have not tried to stop the migration, even though the influx could end up strengthening the Palestinian stake in the city.
In a report last year, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies called the barrier "the most significant change that has taken place in the city since its reunification" after the 1967 Middle East War.
Family's trade-off
NATSHEH'S family planted roots in the West Bank suburb of Al Ram 34 years ago.
For much of the time since then, Jerusalem Palestinians have been relatively free to move between the city and the West Bank, regardless of the municipal borders drawn by Israel. Like Natsheh, 25,000 to 60,000 of the 240,000 Palestinians legally entitled to live in Jerusalem eventually took up residence in the West Bank, according to Israeli and Palestinian researchers.
In Al Ram, Natsheh had a 2,100-square-foot house, big enough for his two wives and all eight of his children.
He was tied closely to the Palestinian cause, and acknowledges that he once served as little more than an armed thug for Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. He was twice imprisoned by the Israelis, once for 10 years after being caught in 1976 with an improvised car bomb and again in 1990, serving four years for arms dealing.
By moving back to Jerusalem, he is in effect opting for a future more closely tied to Israel than to the problem-ridden Palestinian territories. The reason, he said, is quality of life.
"I don't feel good about it," said Natsheh, 53. Somber and reflective, he puffed cut-rate cigarettes in a tattered chair on the stoop of his new home and appeared to still be trying to make peace with his decision.
"I am looking forward for my children, for their future. I don't want them to have a hard life," he said. "They will stay Arabs, but not in the Palestinian Authority. I have fought. I have seen what could happen to them. I don't want them to live the same life I went through."
Life in the West Bank these days means coping with a system on the verge of breakdown. Years of official corruption have severely eroded confidence in the Palestinian Authority, which is mired in political and financial crises and struggles to deliver basic services. Moreover, the power struggle between once-dominant Fatah and the militant group Hamas has sparked factional violence, though far less serious than what is occurring in the Gaza Strip.
Natsheh, like many other Palestinians, has lost hope that either faction can rescue his society. To him, the goal of an independent state seems more remote than ever.
"There is no such vision right now," Natsheh said.
There are other risks to staying in the West Bank. If Palestinians entitled to live in Jerusalem are found to be living in the West Bank, Israel can strip them of their residency right. Even if that doesn't happen, Palestinians worry that the barrier will end up being a de facto border, leaving them without access to rights and benefits from the Israeli government.
Natsheh is not an Israeli citizen. But the blue identification card he carries denotes a status distinct from that of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The card allows him to pass through checkpoints with relative ease and to travel throughout Israel, making it easier to find work.
Natsheh, who was jobless even before moving, said losing his Jerusalem residency status would hurt his chances of working in Israel, although years in prison left him without skills or decent prospects.
"I would have to go underground and be in a worse situation," he said.
Residents also are entitled to the subsidized healthcare and social security benefits Israel provides its citizens. Palestinians in Jerusalem can send their children to Israeli-run schools, although not every neighborhood has one. Many opt for schools run by churches or by the Waqf, an Islamic trust.
One of Natsheh's children, a 6-year-old stepdaughter, attends a semiprivate Muslim school not far from the family's home in Jerusalem. The other girls with him in Jerusalem, ages 1 1/2 and 3, have not started school.
Jerusalem residents can make use of Israeli doctors and highly regarded hospitals such as Hadassah University Medical Center.
Even Palestinians who complain that services in East Jerusalem lag behind those on the Jewish side acknowledge that they usually are superior to those in the West Bank.
Hospitals in the Palestinian territory often lack equipment, such as CT scanners, or make do with donated lower-quality gear. Although there are proficient Palestinian doctors, hospital care and follow-up treatments generally are poor.
When Natsheh's mother, who also moved back into Jerusalem, needed open-heart surgery last year, the family decided to take her to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, a Jewish hospital in West Jerusalem. As a Jerusalem resident, her government insurance helped cover the treatment.
If the family had relied on a West Bank hospital, Natsheh said, he fears she would have died.
So Natsheh eventually will enlarge his shack and bring the rest of his family here, he said. His four brothers in the West Bank also plan to move to Jerusalem.
Even if Israel demolished his concrete-block house, Natsheh said, he wouldn't move back to Al Ram now.
"If there was no wall, I would have continued to live there," he said. "The wall made me decide whether to live on the other side as a beggar with no dignity or on this side as a beggar with dignity."
Living in a shed
LIKE Natsheh, Khaled Dajani acknowledges that his new home isn't much to look at.
The Palestinian truck driver, who works for an Israeli furniture company, lived in the Shuafat refugee camp north of downtown until the early stages of the barrier construction.
When it became clear that the camp would be one of two Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off by the barrier, he relocated, moving his wife and seven children to the Old City.
Such migration has aggravated shortages of housing and classrooms in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Rents have shot up, prompting some families to move into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.
Dajani, 41, headed to the cramped Muslim quarter. But with living space so scarce, he ended up crafting an apartment out of a shed that had been used to store pushcarts. He pays $200 a month, a fifth of his monthly salary.
The home is dank and cave-like. The constant dampness has loosened patches of the white paint Dajani applied to the walls and has left the children with an unending string of respiratory ailments.
"It looks like a prison," he said, pointing to a foot-square grate that is the living room's only source of sunlight.
Dajani said his decision to move was motivated mainly by a desire to maintain a Palestinian presence on the Jerusalem side of the barrier. He fears the fence will sever the connection between the West Bank and the city.
"I want to show that they are wrong, that they don't own Jerusalem," Dajani said, gesturing with thick, work-scuffed hands. "There are still Palestinians in Jerusalem.
"Without Jerusalem we are like dead people," he said.
A framed photograph of Arafat stared from the dingy wall as Dajani described his motivations in language that would have delighted the late Palestinian leader.
"We want East Jerusalem. We want Al Aqsa mosque," he said. "This is the capital of Palestine." He said the barrier was an effort by Israel to slice the refugee camp and its residents off from the city.
Israeli officials insist that Dajani and other Palestinians are drawing the wrong conclusions. Mashiah, the Defense Ministry official, said police had argued that leaving the Shuafat camp and a separate neighborhood, Kafr Aqab, and their 53,000 residents on the other side of the barrier would improve security for Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have set up a special agency to maintain government services to those two areas once the barrier is finished.
Dajani uses the services Israel provides. When his children are sick, he and his wife take them to one of the hospitals in West Jerusalem or to an Israeli clinic.
And even though he has moved to the Jerusalem side of the barrier, like many others, he is carefully keeping a foot in each world.
Some Palestinians have moved to apartments in Jerusalem while maintaining homes in the West Bank suburbs.
In some cases, parents and siblings stay behind in the family homes. Other people split time between rented apartments in the city and longtime homes in the suburbs.
Dajani decided to keep his home in the refugee camp. One brother stayed behind while Dajani and three others took up residence around East Jerusalem. The separation is jarring, he said, but part of the price of maintaining a claim on the city.
"We want to keep what is ours," he said.
A ghostly quiet
ABDELMUNNEM abu Farha hasn't given up just yet.
He has moved his wife, a cancer patient, to a small apartment in the Old City to make it easier for her to get medical tests at the Hadassah hospital. But he hasn't quit his aluminum products business in the West Bank town of Bir Nabala, on Jerusalem's northern fringe.
The town sits so close to Jerusalem that you can hear the Muslim call to prayer issuing from a mosque in the city's Beit Hanina district. Otherwise, the arrival of the barrier last year has brought a ghostly quiet.
A 26-foot-high concrete wall, still under construction here, already has blocked off the main road, which once was choked with customers from East Jerusalem.
Abu Farha, 61, said his shop had lost many customers and that unless Israel unexpectedly changed its plans and made an opening in the barrier for traffic from Jerusalem, there was little chance his business would survive. But he plans to stay until there is no choice but to leave.
Abu Farha's situation reflects the subtle but important ways in which the barrier has begun to alter the dynamics of the region.
By blocking routes that once knitted Palestinian suburbs into the life of Jerusalem, it already has heavily dampened commerce in outlying West Bank towns, officials say.
The main street of Bir Nabala is a forlorn strip of shuttered businesses: tire shop, gas station, TV repair shop and car electronics store.
Khalil Najadeh, 42, said he sold his Mercedes-Benz taxi for scrap metal because there were almost no fares and nowhere to take them. He spoke near the blocked former entrance to town, where a faded welcome sign urging visitors to "Have a safe trip" seemed like a relic.
Nearly half the town's 10,000 residents have left, said the mayor, Tawfik Nabali. "There's nothing left. There's no life left in Bir Nabala."
In Natsheh's former town, Al Ram, officials say the exodus to Jerusalem has left many houses and several schools vacant.
Once-brimming warehouses stand half empty, and just a few stalls are operating at the main vegetable market.
Abu Farha, who was born in Jerusalem, opened his shop on a one-acre parcel in 1973, when Bir Nabala was wide-open and easily reached from the city. He raised his family in a three-story house there, but traveled to Jerusalem frequently to worship and to help tend two family-owned stores.
The stone-sided house sits about half a mile from the new barrier.
"They're trying to cut this tie that grew over time," Abu Farha said.
The economic woes of these small towns are also driving Palestinians without Jerusalem residency to West Bank cities such as Ramallah and Nablus, reversing the trend of the 1970s when Abu Farha, Natsheh and many others moved to the Jerusalem suburbs.
Israeli and Palestinian analysts express concern that the barrier could dampen Jerusalem's economic vitality and regional prominence.
"Jerusalem will turn into a peripheral city, a city with no hinterland, with no suburbs," said Rami Nasrallah, who heads the International Peace and Cooperation Center, a research group in East Jerusalem that has studied the effects of the barrier.
Abu Farha, meanwhile, finds bitter irony in the rush of Palestinians into Jerusalem.
The Israelis "want to empty Jerusalem," he said. "But what they're doing has turned back against them."
ellingwood@latimes.com
*
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater contributed to this report.
As the partition slowly took shape, Natsheh grew increasingly worried that he would be cut off for good from the city of his birth. Powerless to stop the construction, Natsheh did what he could: He moved back into Jerusalem.
Two years after the move, Natsheh lives with a wife, three small daughters and a newborn son in a concrete-block shack on a trash-strewn hillside north of downtown. He built the structure without Israeli permission and has covered the front with a black tarp to disguise it so authorities won't tear it down.
Thousands of Palestinians like Natsheh, lured to the West Bank over the years by family ties, cheap property and fewer building regulations, are scrambling back into Jerusalem.
The unforeseen wave of migration has increased the Arab presence, bolstering a broader trend that has seen the Palestinian population grow to more than a third of Jerusalem's total. It is one sign of how the barrier is reshaping the holy city and further complicating any effort to settle competing claims to it.
Israel insists that the barrier is aimed at keeping out suicide bombers and that the strategy is working. Officials say it can be dismantled if there is peace.
"The fence is not political. It's not a border. It's only a security fence," said Nezah Mashiah, an official at Israel's Defense Ministry who oversees the project. A system of crossing points should ensure that people with a right to enter Jerusalem are not impeded, Mashiah said.
But Palestinians are skeptical.
For many, moving back into the city is an act of nationalism, aimed at countering what they view as an Israeli effort to reduce their numbers and undermine their aspirations to make East Jerusalem the capital of a future Palestinian state. For most others, even if they want nothing else to do with Israeli authorities, the purpose is access to jobs, healthcare, social security and other benefits Israel provides to Jerusalem residents.
By disrupting traditional commercial links to the West Bank, the barrier is transforming the region's economy while encouraging even more Palestinians to think about relocating.
The serpentine 90-mile section that roughly tracks Jerusalem's boundaries on three sides is part of a series of fences, concrete walls and patrol roads being built along the length of Israel's border with the West Bank, and sometimes deep into the Palestinian territory. The Jerusalem section, about two-thirds complete, is expected to be finished by early next year, Israeli officials say.
Palestinian officials have encouraged Jerusalem residents over the years to stay in the city to maintain their claim. But they have been largely silent, both publicly and privately, about the current migration, carefully avoiding any statements that would imply recognition of the barrier as a de facto border.
There are no reliable figures on how many Palestinians have moved back, but the number appears to be easily in the thousands. Israeli officials acknowledge that some movement has occurred. Because these Palestinians have a right to live in Jerusalem, the officials say, they have not tried to stop the migration, even though the influx could end up strengthening the Palestinian stake in the city.
In a report last year, the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies called the barrier "the most significant change that has taken place in the city since its reunification" after the 1967 Middle East War.
Family's trade-off
NATSHEH'S family planted roots in the West Bank suburb of Al Ram 34 years ago.
For much of the time since then, Jerusalem Palestinians have been relatively free to move between the city and the West Bank, regardless of the municipal borders drawn by Israel. Like Natsheh, 25,000 to 60,000 of the 240,000 Palestinians legally entitled to live in Jerusalem eventually took up residence in the West Bank, according to Israeli and Palestinian researchers.
In Al Ram, Natsheh had a 2,100-square-foot house, big enough for his two wives and all eight of his children.
He was tied closely to the Palestinian cause, and acknowledges that he once served as little more than an armed thug for Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement. He was twice imprisoned by the Israelis, once for 10 years after being caught in 1976 with an improvised car bomb and again in 1990, serving four years for arms dealing.
By moving back to Jerusalem, he is in effect opting for a future more closely tied to Israel than to the problem-ridden Palestinian territories. The reason, he said, is quality of life.
"I don't feel good about it," said Natsheh, 53. Somber and reflective, he puffed cut-rate cigarettes in a tattered chair on the stoop of his new home and appeared to still be trying to make peace with his decision.
"I am looking forward for my children, for their future. I don't want them to have a hard life," he said. "They will stay Arabs, but not in the Palestinian Authority. I have fought. I have seen what could happen to them. I don't want them to live the same life I went through."
Life in the West Bank these days means coping with a system on the verge of breakdown. Years of official corruption have severely eroded confidence in the Palestinian Authority, which is mired in political and financial crises and struggles to deliver basic services. Moreover, the power struggle between once-dominant Fatah and the militant group Hamas has sparked factional violence, though far less serious than what is occurring in the Gaza Strip.
Natsheh, like many other Palestinians, has lost hope that either faction can rescue his society. To him, the goal of an independent state seems more remote than ever.
"There is no such vision right now," Natsheh said.
There are other risks to staying in the West Bank. If Palestinians entitled to live in Jerusalem are found to be living in the West Bank, Israel can strip them of their residency right. Even if that doesn't happen, Palestinians worry that the barrier will end up being a de facto border, leaving them without access to rights and benefits from the Israeli government.
Natsheh is not an Israeli citizen. But the blue identification card he carries denotes a status distinct from that of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The card allows him to pass through checkpoints with relative ease and to travel throughout Israel, making it easier to find work.
Natsheh, who was jobless even before moving, said losing his Jerusalem residency status would hurt his chances of working in Israel, although years in prison left him without skills or decent prospects.
"I would have to go underground and be in a worse situation," he said.
Residents also are entitled to the subsidized healthcare and social security benefits Israel provides its citizens. Palestinians in Jerusalem can send their children to Israeli-run schools, although not every neighborhood has one. Many opt for schools run by churches or by the Waqf, an Islamic trust.
One of Natsheh's children, a 6-year-old stepdaughter, attends a semiprivate Muslim school not far from the family's home in Jerusalem. The other girls with him in Jerusalem, ages 1 1/2 and 3, have not started school.
Jerusalem residents can make use of Israeli doctors and highly regarded hospitals such as Hadassah University Medical Center.
Even Palestinians who complain that services in East Jerusalem lag behind those on the Jewish side acknowledge that they usually are superior to those in the West Bank.
Hospitals in the Palestinian territory often lack equipment, such as CT scanners, or make do with donated lower-quality gear. Although there are proficient Palestinian doctors, hospital care and follow-up treatments generally are poor.
When Natsheh's mother, who also moved back into Jerusalem, needed open-heart surgery last year, the family decided to take her to Shaare Zedek Medical Center, a Jewish hospital in West Jerusalem. As a Jerusalem resident, her government insurance helped cover the treatment.
If the family had relied on a West Bank hospital, Natsheh said, he fears she would have died.
So Natsheh eventually will enlarge his shack and bring the rest of his family here, he said. His four brothers in the West Bank also plan to move to Jerusalem.
Even if Israel demolished his concrete-block house, Natsheh said, he wouldn't move back to Al Ram now.
"If there was no wall, I would have continued to live there," he said. "The wall made me decide whether to live on the other side as a beggar with no dignity or on this side as a beggar with dignity."
Living in a shed
LIKE Natsheh, Khaled Dajani acknowledges that his new home isn't much to look at.
The Palestinian truck driver, who works for an Israeli furniture company, lived in the Shuafat refugee camp north of downtown until the early stages of the barrier construction.
When it became clear that the camp would be one of two Jerusalem neighborhoods cut off by the barrier, he relocated, moving his wife and seven children to the Old City.
Such migration has aggravated shortages of housing and classrooms in Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. Rents have shot up, prompting some families to move into predominantly Jewish neighborhoods.
Dajani, 41, headed to the cramped Muslim quarter. But with living space so scarce, he ended up crafting an apartment out of a shed that had been used to store pushcarts. He pays $200 a month, a fifth of his monthly salary.
The home is dank and cave-like. The constant dampness has loosened patches of the white paint Dajani applied to the walls and has left the children with an unending string of respiratory ailments.
"It looks like a prison," he said, pointing to a foot-square grate that is the living room's only source of sunlight.
Dajani said his decision to move was motivated mainly by a desire to maintain a Palestinian presence on the Jerusalem side of the barrier. He fears the fence will sever the connection between the West Bank and the city.
"I want to show that they are wrong, that they don't own Jerusalem," Dajani said, gesturing with thick, work-scuffed hands. "There are still Palestinians in Jerusalem.
"Without Jerusalem we are like dead people," he said.
A framed photograph of Arafat stared from the dingy wall as Dajani described his motivations in language that would have delighted the late Palestinian leader.
"We want East Jerusalem. We want Al Aqsa mosque," he said. "This is the capital of Palestine." He said the barrier was an effort by Israel to slice the refugee camp and its residents off from the city.
Israeli officials insist that Dajani and other Palestinians are drawing the wrong conclusions. Mashiah, the Defense Ministry official, said police had argued that leaving the Shuafat camp and a separate neighborhood, Kafr Aqab, and their 53,000 residents on the other side of the barrier would improve security for Jerusalem.
Israeli authorities have set up a special agency to maintain government services to those two areas once the barrier is finished.
Dajani uses the services Israel provides. When his children are sick, he and his wife take them to one of the hospitals in West Jerusalem or to an Israeli clinic.
And even though he has moved to the Jerusalem side of the barrier, like many others, he is carefully keeping a foot in each world.
Some Palestinians have moved to apartments in Jerusalem while maintaining homes in the West Bank suburbs.
In some cases, parents and siblings stay behind in the family homes. Other people split time between rented apartments in the city and longtime homes in the suburbs.
Dajani decided to keep his home in the refugee camp. One brother stayed behind while Dajani and three others took up residence around East Jerusalem. The separation is jarring, he said, but part of the price of maintaining a claim on the city.
"We want to keep what is ours," he said.
A ghostly quiet
ABDELMUNNEM abu Farha hasn't given up just yet.
He has moved his wife, a cancer patient, to a small apartment in the Old City to make it easier for her to get medical tests at the Hadassah hospital. But he hasn't quit his aluminum products business in the West Bank town of Bir Nabala, on Jerusalem's northern fringe.
The town sits so close to Jerusalem that you can hear the Muslim call to prayer issuing from a mosque in the city's Beit Hanina district. Otherwise, the arrival of the barrier last year has brought a ghostly quiet.
A 26-foot-high concrete wall, still under construction here, already has blocked off the main road, which once was choked with customers from East Jerusalem.
Abu Farha, 61, said his shop had lost many customers and that unless Israel unexpectedly changed its plans and made an opening in the barrier for traffic from Jerusalem, there was little chance his business would survive. But he plans to stay until there is no choice but to leave.
Abu Farha's situation reflects the subtle but important ways in which the barrier has begun to alter the dynamics of the region.
By blocking routes that once knitted Palestinian suburbs into the life of Jerusalem, it already has heavily dampened commerce in outlying West Bank towns, officials say.
The main street of Bir Nabala is a forlorn strip of shuttered businesses: tire shop, gas station, TV repair shop and car electronics store.
Khalil Najadeh, 42, said he sold his Mercedes-Benz taxi for scrap metal because there were almost no fares and nowhere to take them. He spoke near the blocked former entrance to town, where a faded welcome sign urging visitors to "Have a safe trip" seemed like a relic.
Nearly half the town's 10,000 residents have left, said the mayor, Tawfik Nabali. "There's nothing left. There's no life left in Bir Nabala."
In Natsheh's former town, Al Ram, officials say the exodus to Jerusalem has left many houses and several schools vacant.
Once-brimming warehouses stand half empty, and just a few stalls are operating at the main vegetable market.
Abu Farha, who was born in Jerusalem, opened his shop on a one-acre parcel in 1973, when Bir Nabala was wide-open and easily reached from the city. He raised his family in a three-story house there, but traveled to Jerusalem frequently to worship and to help tend two family-owned stores.
The stone-sided house sits about half a mile from the new barrier.
"They're trying to cut this tie that grew over time," Abu Farha said.
The economic woes of these small towns are also driving Palestinians without Jerusalem residency to West Bank cities such as Ramallah and Nablus, reversing the trend of the 1970s when Abu Farha, Natsheh and many others moved to the Jerusalem suburbs.
Israeli and Palestinian analysts express concern that the barrier could dampen Jerusalem's economic vitality and regional prominence.
"Jerusalem will turn into a peripheral city, a city with no hinterland, with no suburbs," said Rami Nasrallah, who heads the International Peace and Cooperation Center, a research group in East Jerusalem that has studied the effects of the barrier.
Abu Farha, meanwhile, finds bitter irony in the rush of Palestinians into Jerusalem.
The Israelis "want to empty Jerusalem," he said. "But what they're doing has turned back against them."
ellingwood@latimes.com
*
Special correspondent Maher Abukhater contributed to this report.
Misinterpreting the Mideast-Moshe Ya'alon
After a few years of benign neglect, Israel is back on the itineraries of well-meaning foreign emissaries. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair visited the country last month in his new role as special envoy of the "quartet" of Middle East peacemakers. Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived. Each visit was concluded with a news conference at which promises of progress were made. But before any lasting on-the-ground movement toward peace can be achieved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, foreign emissaries, as well as some Israelis, will have to shake off some long-disproved tenets of the conventional wisdom about the dispute.
There are four main misconceptions that diplomats bring with them to Israel. Primary among them is the idea that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for stability in the Mideast. The truth is that the region is riven by clashes that have nothing to do with Israel. For instance, the Jewish state plays no role in the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, between Persians and Arabs or between Arab nationalists and Arab Islamists.
The second misconception is that Israeli territorial concessions are the key to progress. The reality is that an ascendant jihadist Islam believes that it is leading the battle against Israel and the rest of the West. Given this dynamic, Israeli territorial or other concessions simply fill the jihadists' sails, reinforcing their belief that Israel and the West are weak and can be militarily defeated.
True, a majority of Israelis supported Israel's unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005 in the belief that meeting Hezbollah and Palestinian territorial demands would nullify the cause of conflict between them. We now know the results: The Hezbollah and Palestinian reactions -- concerted terror wars, kidnapped Israeli soldiers, rockets fired at Israeli cities -- made clear that the Mideast's central conflict is not territorial but ideological. And ideology cannot be defeated by concessions.
Emissaries also still believe that "the Occupation" blocks agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. In the West, the term usually means the territories Israel conquered in the Six-Day War in 1967. If the problem between Israelis and Palestinians were just the 1967 territories, and the solution were dividing those lands up between the two sides (as proposed, most recently, in 2000 by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak), the conflict would have ended long ago.
Instead, the heart of the problem is that many Palestinians -- Fatah and Hamas, in particular -- and even some Israeli Arabs use "Occupation" to refer to all Israel. They do not recognize the Jewish people's right to an independent state, a right affirmed again and again in the international arena.
Finally, the well-intentioned visiting diplomats believe that the Palestinians want -- and have the ability -- to establish a state that will live in peace alongside Israel. But they are not being clear-eyed. The late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, established a thugocracy that never improved the basic living conditions of his people. Indeed, Palestinian unemployment and poverty are worse today than they were before Arafat and his cronies assumed power in 1994.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not take responsibility for Gazans' welfare, which in part led to Hamas' electoral victory in 2006. Now confined to the West Bank after Hamas kicked his Fatah organization out of Gaza, Abbas has not moved to create a governmental structure.
A corollary of this fourth misconception is the belief that economic development can neutralize extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism, thus clearing the way toward peace and security. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, had a term for such believers: "naive Zionists." Those who fit this description should demand that the Palestinians explain what they did with the $7 billion in international aid they received over the years. Seven billion reasons for economic progress -- and yet, why did Palestinian mobs destroy the Erez industrial zone, where Palestinians worked and ran businesses for decades, on the Gaza border? Why do they attack safe roads linking Gaza and the West Bank? Why is the Palestinian economy in shambles?
Shorn of these mistaken assumptions, the picture in the Middle East is disturbing indeed. No wonder emissaries hold on to them. So what to do?
For starters, Western governments and their emissaries must refrain from pressuring Israel for territorial or security concessions, which at best produces only short-term gains and emboldens the Islamist terror groups. Instead, they should try to persuade the Palestinian leaders to commit to a long-term strategy premised on educational, political and economic reforms that would lead to the establishment of a civil society that cherishes life, not death; values human rights and freedom; and develops a middle class, not a corrupt, rich elite. At the same time, these governments should set up an international fund that would offer Palestinian refugee families aid -- say $100,000 to $200,000 a family -- for their resettlement on the condition that their acceptance of the money would signify resolution of their refugee status.
Under no circumstances should emissaries attempt to open a dialogue with Hamas. For the sake of Palestinian society, Hamas and its ideology must be defeated. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the most significant today; it's the battle between jihadist Islam and the West, of which Israel is merely one theater. To defeat jihadist Islam, the West must overcome the regimes, organizations and ideologies that support and feed it -- and Hamas is foremost among them.
The emissaries who travel to Israel must draw on their rich diplomatic experiences, free themselves from misconceptions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the petty politics that flows from them -- especially the binds of political correctness -- to lead us all toward freedom, security and peace. Anything else is mere meddling.
Moshe Ya'alon is a fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center. He served as the 17th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.He served as the 17th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-yaalon26aug26,0,123089.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
August 26, 2007span>
There are four main misconceptions that diplomats bring with them to Israel. Primary among them is the idea that solving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a prerequisite for stability in the Mideast. The truth is that the region is riven by clashes that have nothing to do with Israel. For instance, the Jewish state plays no role in the conflict between Shiites and Sunnis, between Persians and Arabs or between Arab nationalists and Arab Islamists.
The second misconception is that Israeli territorial concessions are the key to progress. The reality is that an ascendant jihadist Islam believes that it is leading the battle against Israel and the rest of the West. Given this dynamic, Israeli territorial or other concessions simply fill the jihadists' sails, reinforcing their belief that Israel and the West are weak and can be militarily defeated.
True, a majority of Israelis supported Israel's unilateral withdrawals from Lebanon in 2000 and from Gaza in 2005 in the belief that meeting Hezbollah and Palestinian territorial demands would nullify the cause of conflict between them. We now know the results: The Hezbollah and Palestinian reactions -- concerted terror wars, kidnapped Israeli soldiers, rockets fired at Israeli cities -- made clear that the Mideast's central conflict is not territorial but ideological. And ideology cannot be defeated by concessions.
Emissaries also still believe that "the Occupation" blocks agreement between Israelis and Palestinians. In the West, the term usually means the territories Israel conquered in the Six-Day War in 1967. If the problem between Israelis and Palestinians were just the 1967 territories, and the solution were dividing those lands up between the two sides (as proposed, most recently, in 2000 by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak), the conflict would have ended long ago.
Instead, the heart of the problem is that many Palestinians -- Fatah and Hamas, in particular -- and even some Israeli Arabs use "Occupation" to refer to all Israel. They do not recognize the Jewish people's right to an independent state, a right affirmed again and again in the international arena.
Finally, the well-intentioned visiting diplomats believe that the Palestinians want -- and have the ability -- to establish a state that will live in peace alongside Israel. But they are not being clear-eyed. The late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, established a thugocracy that never improved the basic living conditions of his people. Indeed, Palestinian unemployment and poverty are worse today than they were before Arafat and his cronies assumed power in 1994.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas did not take responsibility for Gazans' welfare, which in part led to Hamas' electoral victory in 2006. Now confined to the West Bank after Hamas kicked his Fatah organization out of Gaza, Abbas has not moved to create a governmental structure.
A corollary of this fourth misconception is the belief that economic development can neutralize extreme nationalism and religious fanaticism, thus clearing the way toward peace and security. David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, had a term for such believers: "naive Zionists." Those who fit this description should demand that the Palestinians explain what they did with the $7 billion in international aid they received over the years. Seven billion reasons for economic progress -- and yet, why did Palestinian mobs destroy the Erez industrial zone, where Palestinians worked and ran businesses for decades, on the Gaza border? Why do they attack safe roads linking Gaza and the West Bank? Why is the Palestinian economy in shambles?
Shorn of these mistaken assumptions, the picture in the Middle East is disturbing indeed. No wonder emissaries hold on to them. So what to do?
For starters, Western governments and their emissaries must refrain from pressuring Israel for territorial or security concessions, which at best produces only short-term gains and emboldens the Islamist terror groups. Instead, they should try to persuade the Palestinian leaders to commit to a long-term strategy premised on educational, political and economic reforms that would lead to the establishment of a civil society that cherishes life, not death; values human rights and freedom; and develops a middle class, not a corrupt, rich elite. At the same time, these governments should set up an international fund that would offer Palestinian refugee families aid -- say $100,000 to $200,000 a family -- for their resettlement on the condition that their acceptance of the money would signify resolution of their refugee status.
Under no circumstances should emissaries attempt to open a dialogue with Hamas. For the sake of Palestinian society, Hamas and its ideology must be defeated. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the most significant today; it's the battle between jihadist Islam and the West, of which Israel is merely one theater. To defeat jihadist Islam, the West must overcome the regimes, organizations and ideologies that support and feed it -- and Hamas is foremost among them.
The emissaries who travel to Israel must draw on their rich diplomatic experiences, free themselves from misconceptions about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the petty politics that flows from them -- especially the binds of political correctness -- to lead us all toward freedom, security and peace. Anything else is mere meddling.
Moshe Ya'alon is a fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center. He served as the 17th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.He served as the 17th chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-yaalon26aug26,0,123089.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail
August 26, 2007span>
Maliki tells Clinton to come to her senses
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Sunday said the biggest Sunni Arab political party in Iraq has agreed to join a new alliance of moderate Shi'ite and Kurdish parties that aims to end the political paralysis. The Iraqi Islamic Party of Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi had initially rebuffed overtures by the four leading parties in Maliki's government of national unity to join them, saying such alliances were not the answer to Iraq's political crisis.
"Today there will be a joint statement, not from only the four parties but also the Islamic Party. There will be five parties, not four. This final statement will include a summary of all points of agreement," Maliki told a news conference.
An employee in the Iraqi Islamic Party's media office, however, denied the party had joined the alliance or had any plans to do so.
Nearly half of Maliki's cabinet has walked out, accusing the Shi'ite prime minister of sectarianism.
Maliki is under growing pressure from the United States to show political progress towards national reconciliation, but none of the benchmarks set by Washington have been met -- laws on sharing Iraq's oil revenues, a date for provincial elections and easing restrictions on former Baath party members have not yet gone to parliament.
Maliki tells Clinton
Also on Sunday, Maliki angrily rebuked the U.S. politicians who have called for him to be replaced, and demanded an apology from France for pushing for him to be turfed out of office.
"There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses," Maliki said at a news conference.
Maliki's response came after the two U.S. opposition senators urged Iraqi lawmakers to choose someone else to lead Iraq's ruling coalition and seek national reconciliation.
"Leaders like Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin have not experienced in their political lives the kind of differences we have in Iraq. When they give their judgment they have no knowledge of what reconciliation means," he said in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.
Maliki also lashed out at France, following a visit to Iraq last week by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner which was initially hailed as a success.
"Recently we received the French minister…We were optimistic that his visit would start a new relationship," Maliki said. "Suddenly we were surprised that the minister made a statement which can't be called in any way diplomacy, when he called for replacing the government."
Maliki accused the French government of siding with former supporters of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
"In the past you backed the former regime. Today we were happy with you and then you decided to support the former regime's loyalists. We demand an apology from the French government," he said.
Maliki's anger appeared to have been inspired by comments attributed to Kouchner by the U.S. magazine Newsweek, which published an interview with the French minister on its Web site on August 24.
Kouchner is quoted as saying: "Many people believe the prime minister ought to be changed. I don't know if that will go through, though, because it seems (U.S.) President (George W.) Bush is attached to Mr Maliki. But the government is not functioning."
Asked if there was a sentiment in Iraq that Maliki should go, Kouchner said there was and he had told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this.
"Yes. I just had Condoleezza on the phone 10 or 15 minutes ago, and I told her, 'Listen, he's got to be replaced'," he reportedly said.
In the interview, Kouchner is quoted as saying that there was a lot of support among Iraqis he met for Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi to replace Maliki, and he described him as "an impressive fellow."
span>
"Today there will be a joint statement, not from only the four parties but also the Islamic Party. There will be five parties, not four. This final statement will include a summary of all points of agreement," Maliki told a news conference.
An employee in the Iraqi Islamic Party's media office, however, denied the party had joined the alliance or had any plans to do so.
Nearly half of Maliki's cabinet has walked out, accusing the Shi'ite prime minister of sectarianism.
Maliki is under growing pressure from the United States to show political progress towards national reconciliation, but none of the benchmarks set by Washington have been met -- laws on sharing Iraq's oil revenues, a date for provincial elections and easing restrictions on former Baath party members have not yet gone to parliament.
Maliki tells Clinton
Also on Sunday, Maliki angrily rebuked the U.S. politicians who have called for him to be replaced, and demanded an apology from France for pushing for him to be turfed out of office.
"There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses," Maliki said at a news conference.
Maliki's response came after the two U.S. opposition senators urged Iraqi lawmakers to choose someone else to lead Iraq's ruling coalition and seek national reconciliation.
"Leaders like Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin have not experienced in their political lives the kind of differences we have in Iraq. When they give their judgment they have no knowledge of what reconciliation means," he said in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.
Maliki also lashed out at France, following a visit to Iraq last week by Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner which was initially hailed as a success.
"Recently we received the French minister…We were optimistic that his visit would start a new relationship," Maliki said. "Suddenly we were surprised that the minister made a statement which can't be called in any way diplomacy, when he called for replacing the government."
Maliki accused the French government of siding with former supporters of ousted dictator Saddam Hussein.
"In the past you backed the former regime. Today we were happy with you and then you decided to support the former regime's loyalists. We demand an apology from the French government," he said.
Maliki's anger appeared to have been inspired by comments attributed to Kouchner by the U.S. magazine Newsweek, which published an interview with the French minister on its Web site on August 24.
Kouchner is quoted as saying: "Many people believe the prime minister ought to be changed. I don't know if that will go through, though, because it seems (U.S.) President (George W.) Bush is attached to Mr Maliki. But the government is not functioning."
Asked if there was a sentiment in Iraq that Maliki should go, Kouchner said there was and he had told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this.
"Yes. I just had Condoleezza on the phone 10 or 15 minutes ago, and I told her, 'Listen, he's got to be replaced'," he reportedly said.
In the interview, Kouchner is quoted as saying that there was a lot of support among Iraqis he met for Vice President Adel Abdul Mehdi to replace Maliki, and he described him as "an impressive fellow."
span>
Settlers mull moving largest unauthorized outpost
Settlers may offer to relocate Migron, the West Bank's largest unauthorized outpost, ahead of a court hearing on a plan to evacuate several of the unrecognized communities, The Jerusalem Post has learned. Hagit Ofran, the head of Peace Now's Settlement Watch, said the outpost could be moved from its present location near Ofra, northeast of Ramallah, to the Binyamin industrial zone.
A spokesman for the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip confirmed that this was one of the possibilities under consideration as settlers and the Defense Ministry look to strike a deal on the unauthorized outposts in advance of a High Court of Justice hearing set for September 10.
The state is to present the court a plan for the evacuation of a number of outposts including Migron, which the court has already declared must be evacuated.
According to Peace Now attorney Michael Sfard, who petitioned the court over the outpost removal, the state has told the court it prefers to come up with a plan to deal with all 105 unauthorized outposts rather then approach the matter in a piecemeal fashion.
But the Defense Ministry and the council have said the number of unauthorized outposts under discussion is closer to 25 or 26 hilltop communities, those that were established after prime minister Ariel Sharon took office in March 2001.
In March 2005 the cabinet approved the removal of 24 such outposts and Israel has promised the US administration that it will stand by this decision.
According to Peace Now's Ofran, there is a call by settlers to move Migron to the industrial area, which is located on state-owned land, something that would defuse one of the key allegations contained in the petition calling for the dismantling of Migron.
Ofran said Migron was established in 2002 and has 300 residents and at least two permanent buildings.
According to a report on the outposts prepared two years ago by attorney Talia Sasson, at least 24 were built without government permission after March 2001. Of these, 11 were built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land, the report said, including Givat Avigayil, Givat Haroeh, Ahuzat Shalhevet, Givat Hadegel, the Red House, Migron, Mitzpe Assaf, East Ofra, Southeast Ofra, Ahavat Haim and Kochav Hashahar East.
Another four were built on seker land, land whose ownership is in dispute. One of these four, Mitzpe Hananel, has been approved by the defense minister as being on state land but has still not been legally approved.
Only seven of the outposts are indisputably built on state land. These include Ma'aleh Rehavam, Mitzpe Lachish, Nofei Nehemia, Assa'el, Southeast Yatir, Givat Sla'it and Midreshet Nabiyeh.
There is no information about land ownership regarding Havat Shaked. Havat Gilad was built on private Palestinian land. However, a court decided to register it in the name of "Har V'Guy," a Jewish land development company.
Settlers are hopeful that a deal will be struck in which the state legalizes outposts situated on state land. In other cases the outposts would be moved elsewhere in the West Bank, to land where legal settlement is possible.
Officials confirmed that Defense Minister Ehud Barak's settler affairs adviser, Eitan Broshi, was in contact with leaders from the council.
"Our hope is that through dialogue we can minimize the level of tension as well as potential conflicts," a senior official said.
Peace Now director-general Yariv Oppenheimer was angered by the idea of a deal on the outposts.
"We are afraid that Barak is going to sign a deal with the settler leadership," he told the Post. "We do not think that Barak was elected to give a prize to people who broke the law."
On Sunday, Oppenheimer wrote a letter to this effect to Barak, adding: "I am certain that in spite media reports, you are determined to fulfill your responsibility to the Israeli public and to the rule of law" by evacuating the outposts.
Dani Dayan, chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, said the Defense Ministry and settlers were looking for a way to resolve the situation. He said most of the outposts could be legalized.
Dayan said he was hopeful alternative locations could be found for outposts that could not be legalized. But he would not say if the council would approve the removal of an outpost under these circumstances.
Dayan said such a decision could not be made by the council alone; it would have to be taken together with the residents of the outposts in a completely transparent process.
In the council's weekly newsletter last Friday, it alerted settlers to the possibility that such a deal might be reached.
"We believe it is possible to find a solution for the outposts that will strengthen the settlements," the council wrote, adding that such a deal could also help combat government efforts to "dry up" existing settlements.
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A spokesman for the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip confirmed that this was one of the possibilities under consideration as settlers and the Defense Ministry look to strike a deal on the unauthorized outposts in advance of a High Court of Justice hearing set for September 10.
The state is to present the court a plan for the evacuation of a number of outposts including Migron, which the court has already declared must be evacuated.
According to Peace Now attorney Michael Sfard, who petitioned the court over the outpost removal, the state has told the court it prefers to come up with a plan to deal with all 105 unauthorized outposts rather then approach the matter in a piecemeal fashion.
But the Defense Ministry and the council have said the number of unauthorized outposts under discussion is closer to 25 or 26 hilltop communities, those that were established after prime minister Ariel Sharon took office in March 2001.
In March 2005 the cabinet approved the removal of 24 such outposts and Israel has promised the US administration that it will stand by this decision.
According to Peace Now's Ofran, there is a call by settlers to move Migron to the industrial area, which is located on state-owned land, something that would defuse one of the key allegations contained in the petition calling for the dismantling of Migron.
Ofran said Migron was established in 2002 and has 300 residents and at least two permanent buildings.
According to a report on the outposts prepared two years ago by attorney Talia Sasson, at least 24 were built without government permission after March 2001. Of these, 11 were built either entirely or partially on private Palestinian land, the report said, including Givat Avigayil, Givat Haroeh, Ahuzat Shalhevet, Givat Hadegel, the Red House, Migron, Mitzpe Assaf, East Ofra, Southeast Ofra, Ahavat Haim and Kochav Hashahar East.
Another four were built on seker land, land whose ownership is in dispute. One of these four, Mitzpe Hananel, has been approved by the defense minister as being on state land but has still not been legally approved.
Only seven of the outposts are indisputably built on state land. These include Ma'aleh Rehavam, Mitzpe Lachish, Nofei Nehemia, Assa'el, Southeast Yatir, Givat Sla'it and Midreshet Nabiyeh.
There is no information about land ownership regarding Havat Shaked. Havat Gilad was built on private Palestinian land. However, a court decided to register it in the name of "Har V'Guy," a Jewish land development company.
Settlers are hopeful that a deal will be struck in which the state legalizes outposts situated on state land. In other cases the outposts would be moved elsewhere in the West Bank, to land where legal settlement is possible.
Officials confirmed that Defense Minister Ehud Barak's settler affairs adviser, Eitan Broshi, was in contact with leaders from the council.
"Our hope is that through dialogue we can minimize the level of tension as well as potential conflicts," a senior official said.
Peace Now director-general Yariv Oppenheimer was angered by the idea of a deal on the outposts.
"We are afraid that Barak is going to sign a deal with the settler leadership," he told the Post. "We do not think that Barak was elected to give a prize to people who broke the law."
On Sunday, Oppenheimer wrote a letter to this effect to Barak, adding: "I am certain that in spite media reports, you are determined to fulfill your responsibility to the Israeli public and to the rule of law" by evacuating the outposts.
Dani Dayan, chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip, said the Defense Ministry and settlers were looking for a way to resolve the situation. He said most of the outposts could be legalized.
Dayan said he was hopeful alternative locations could be found for outposts that could not be legalized. But he would not say if the council would approve the removal of an outpost under these circumstances.
Dayan said such a decision could not be made by the council alone; it would have to be taken together with the residents of the outposts in a completely transparent process.
In the council's weekly newsletter last Friday, it alerted settlers to the possibility that such a deal might be reached.
"We believe it is possible to find a solution for the outposts that will strengthen the settlements," the council wrote, adding that such a deal could also help combat government efforts to "dry up" existing settlements.
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Sunday, August 26, 2007
Judge Rules Homesh Return Not Illegal, Police Attempt Eviction
A Kfar Saba court has ordered the release of a teenage girl jailed for a month for returning to the destroyed town of Homesh; it ruled that returning there is not illegal. Judge David Gadol of the Kfar Saba Youth Court ordered a teenage activist released after more than a month in prison for taking part in the unauthorized ascents to Homesh – one of the 25 Jewish towns in Gaza and northern Samaria destroyed as part of the 2005 Disengagement Plan. The girl had refused to cooperate with the police, claiming she was being persecuted politically.
Homesh, located just several kilometers north of remaining Jewish towns in Samaria, has become the location of choice to be rebuilt, with grassroots organizations such a Homesh First declaring that the return and rebuilding of Homesh is the first step in “rectifying the mistake of the expulsion.”
The Friday ruling by the Kfar Saba court has paved the way for larger-scale pilgrimages to the ruins of Homesh. Until now, police have cited the 2005 Disengagement Law, which prescribes jail time for those populating areas left during Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal. Now, the court has ruled that the laws are no longer applicable and cannot be used to prevent people from returning to the ruins of the communities.
Judge Gadol said that the Disengagement Law was meant to ensure the implementation of the destruction of the community by barring protesters from the site, but does not bar Jewish from returning. He also said that the State of Israel has not clarified the status of Homesh and other northern Samaria towns. Under the Oslo accords, parts of Judea and Samaria were categorized as Area A (full PA control), Area B (PA administraive control, Israeli security control) and Area C (full Israeli control). The judge said that Homesh remains Area C since Israel never handed it over to the PA. He went so far as to call into question the IDF's ability to declare the area a Closed Miniltary Zone, a method often used to prevent protesters from converging on a location.
The Homesh First movement welcomed the ruling, though it has always maintained that Jews have the right to return to Homesh regardless of the law. “The court’s ruling proves that Jews hiking to Homesh are not committing any crime, even according to the Sodom-like laws of the ‘Disengagement,’” the group said in a statement. “The government is only trying to prevent the hikes for political reasons. The fixing of this national tragedy begins with the return to Homesh. A government that was concerned with the welfare of its citizens would have reinstated the communities by itself.”
Latest Eviction Attempt
As activists celebrated the small victory, police and a busload of Yassam riot police arrived at the renewed campsite community in Homesh and proceeded to try to remove the residents.
Activists fanned out to neighboring hilltops, as they have several times in the past, as police destroyed the structures and tents erected there and confiscated equipment.
Homesh First says that the activists will return as soon as the police leave and continue the renewed Jewish settlement of Homesh despite the destruction of their handiwork and theft of their property.
Young people and families continue to flock to Homesh, which has seen a continuous Jewish presence since July 15. Police intermittently arrive and destroy the structures erected by activists, who rebuild again and again, undeterred.
Events in Renewed Homesh
Monday at 6 PM, a concert in Hebrew, English and Russian is planned to take place in the repopulated town, featuring Zimrat HaAretz singers Eli Bar-Yahalom, Yuri Lipmanovich and Ari Ben-Yam. The show is free and those wishing to attend are instructed to meet before 4:30 PM at the synagogue in Shavei Shomron.
Mohel (circumciser) Dr. Yuval Brandstetter has announced that he is ready to provide circumcisions for babies in Homesh at any time and a group calling itself Radio Free Israel plans to set up a local radio station based in the destroyed town.
Homesh, located just several kilometers north of remaining Jewish towns in Samaria, has become the location of choice to be rebuilt, with grassroots organizations such a Homesh First declaring that the return and rebuilding of Homesh is the first step in “rectifying the mistake of the expulsion.”
The Friday ruling by the Kfar Saba court has paved the way for larger-scale pilgrimages to the ruins of Homesh. Until now, police have cited the 2005 Disengagement Law, which prescribes jail time for those populating areas left during Ariel Sharon’s withdrawal. Now, the court has ruled that the laws are no longer applicable and cannot be used to prevent people from returning to the ruins of the communities.
Judge Gadol said that the Disengagement Law was meant to ensure the implementation of the destruction of the community by barring protesters from the site, but does not bar Jewish from returning. He also said that the State of Israel has not clarified the status of Homesh and other northern Samaria towns. Under the Oslo accords, parts of Judea and Samaria were categorized as Area A (full PA control), Area B (PA administraive control, Israeli security control) and Area C (full Israeli control). The judge said that Homesh remains Area C since Israel never handed it over to the PA. He went so far as to call into question the IDF's ability to declare the area a Closed Miniltary Zone, a method often used to prevent protesters from converging on a location.
The Homesh First movement welcomed the ruling, though it has always maintained that Jews have the right to return to Homesh regardless of the law. “The court’s ruling proves that Jews hiking to Homesh are not committing any crime, even according to the Sodom-like laws of the ‘Disengagement,’” the group said in a statement. “The government is only trying to prevent the hikes for political reasons. The fixing of this national tragedy begins with the return to Homesh. A government that was concerned with the welfare of its citizens would have reinstated the communities by itself.”
Latest Eviction Attempt
As activists celebrated the small victory, police and a busload of Yassam riot police arrived at the renewed campsite community in Homesh and proceeded to try to remove the residents.
Activists fanned out to neighboring hilltops, as they have several times in the past, as police destroyed the structures and tents erected there and confiscated equipment.
Homesh First says that the activists will return as soon as the police leave and continue the renewed Jewish settlement of Homesh despite the destruction of their handiwork and theft of their property.
Young people and families continue to flock to Homesh, which has seen a continuous Jewish presence since July 15. Police intermittently arrive and destroy the structures erected by activists, who rebuild again and again, undeterred.
Events in Renewed Homesh
Monday at 6 PM, a concert in Hebrew, English and Russian is planned to take place in the repopulated town, featuring Zimrat HaAretz singers Eli Bar-Yahalom, Yuri Lipmanovich and Ari Ben-Yam. The show is free and those wishing to attend are instructed to meet before 4:30 PM at the synagogue in Shavei Shomron.
Mohel (circumciser) Dr. Yuval Brandstetter has announced that he is ready to provide circumcisions for babies in Homesh at any time and a group calling itself Radio Free Israel plans to set up a local radio station based in the destroyed town.
Fatah, Hamas clash in worst fighting since Gaza takeover
The Hamas government controlling the Gaza Strip on Saturday accused Fatah of stirring unrest there as part of a plan to remove the Islamist group from power. The accusation came after Friday's street clashes between thousands of Fatah supporters and members of Hamas's paramilitary Executive Force. During the fighting, the worst since Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in June, several journalists were beaten and detained by Hamas militiamen.
The violence began after thousands of Fatah supporters attend Friday prayers in a public square in the center of Gaza City. The prayer was called by Fatah to protest against incitement in Hamas-run mosques in the Strip.
Fatah leaders in Ramallah said Friday's confrontations marked the beginning of a "popular uprising" against the Hamas government. They denied that Fatah was behind the demonstrations, which they described as a genuine expression of disappointment with the Hamas regime.
"Some Fatah elements are trying to exploit the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip to stir unrest and undermine internal security," said Taher al-Nunu, spokesman for the Hamas government. "They want to take the Gaza Strip back to the days of anarchy and lawlessness."
Admitting that Hamas militiamen had targeted journalists during the demonstrations, the spokesman said his government had launched an investigation. Nunu scoffed at Fatah officials for accusing Hamas of targeting journalists, pointing out that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah had been responsible for the arrest of journalists.
As for the recent clashes, he said Fatah supporters marched on former Fatah-controlled security installations immediately following Friday prayers, throwing stones and empty bottles at Hamas security forces. He added that the security forces were forced to disperse the demonstrators by firing into the air.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Fatah leadership in Ramallah was behind the protests. "They organized it and planned it," he said. "The demonstrators cursed the Hamas security forces and threw stones at them without there being any provocation. The Fatah leaders in Ramallah are sending instructions and money to the rioters."
Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel also described Friday's incident as the beginning of a "mutiny" orchestrated by the Fatah leadership in Ramallah. "They want to destabilize the situation in the Gaza Strip," he said. "They have decided to launch a large-scale mutiny against the Hamas government."
Bardaweel accused the Fatah-controlled government of PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad of inciting against the Hamas government. Fayad was responsible for last week's power outage in large parts of the Gaza Strip and for inciting doctors there to stay away from work, Bardaweel said.
"Fayad and his men want to show the world that the situation in the Gaza Strip is on the verge of explosion and that the Fayad government is the only savior of the masses."
Hamas expects the Fatah-backed revolt to escalate in the weeks leading up to this fall's US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, Bardaweel said. "We have received information according to which Fatah has established secret cells in the Gaza Strip to assassinate senior Hamas figures. We are also expecting them to step up the economic, military and political pressure on Hamas on the eve of the proposed conference."
Fatah officials said Hamas arrested dozens of Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip following Friday's violence. They said many of those arrested had been brutally tortured by Hamas militiamen and then taken to hospital for treatment.
The officials named top Fatah activists as being among those taken into custody: Hamdan al-Amsi, Ashraf al-Shatawi, Musa Turk, Falah Hasanat, Mazen Kitnani and Bassam al- Malahi.
Senior Fatah leader Zakariya al-Agha said the residents of the Gaza Strip were "sick and tired" of listening to incitement and messages of hatred in Hamas mosques. "More and more people are boycotting the Hamas mosques because they don't want to listen to the negative messages," he said. "The worshipers organized a peaceful demonstration after the Friday prayer, but the Hamas militias began firing into the air and used force to disperse them."
PA Information Minister Riad al-Malki accused Hamas of "crimes against humanity and the freedom of expression." He was speaking during a protest organized Saturday in Ramallah by scores of Palestinian journalists against the arrest of their colleagues in the Gaza Strip.
"We are afraid for ourselves and our families," said journalist Imad al-Asfar. "Unless we receive the support of the masses, the truth will fall victim to these practices."
The violence began after thousands of Fatah supporters attend Friday prayers in a public square in the center of Gaza City. The prayer was called by Fatah to protest against incitement in Hamas-run mosques in the Strip.
Fatah leaders in Ramallah said Friday's confrontations marked the beginning of a "popular uprising" against the Hamas government. They denied that Fatah was behind the demonstrations, which they described as a genuine expression of disappointment with the Hamas regime.
"Some Fatah elements are trying to exploit the ongoing Israeli aggression against the Gaza Strip to stir unrest and undermine internal security," said Taher al-Nunu, spokesman for the Hamas government. "They want to take the Gaza Strip back to the days of anarchy and lawlessness."
Admitting that Hamas militiamen had targeted journalists during the demonstrations, the spokesman said his government had launched an investigation. Nunu scoffed at Fatah officials for accusing Hamas of targeting journalists, pointing out that the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority government in Ramallah had been responsible for the arrest of journalists.
As for the recent clashes, he said Fatah supporters marched on former Fatah-controlled security installations immediately following Friday prayers, throwing stones and empty bottles at Hamas security forces. He added that the security forces were forced to disperse the demonstrators by firing into the air.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the Fatah leadership in Ramallah was behind the protests. "They organized it and planned it," he said. "The demonstrators cursed the Hamas security forces and threw stones at them without there being any provocation. The Fatah leaders in Ramallah are sending instructions and money to the rioters."
Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel also described Friday's incident as the beginning of a "mutiny" orchestrated by the Fatah leadership in Ramallah. "They want to destabilize the situation in the Gaza Strip," he said. "They have decided to launch a large-scale mutiny against the Hamas government."
Bardaweel accused the Fatah-controlled government of PA Prime Minister Salaam Fayad of inciting against the Hamas government. Fayad was responsible for last week's power outage in large parts of the Gaza Strip and for inciting doctors there to stay away from work, Bardaweel said.
"Fayad and his men want to show the world that the situation in the Gaza Strip is on the verge of explosion and that the Fayad government is the only savior of the masses."
Hamas expects the Fatah-backed revolt to escalate in the weeks leading up to this fall's US-sponsored Middle East peace conference, Bardaweel said. "We have received information according to which Fatah has established secret cells in the Gaza Strip to assassinate senior Hamas figures. We are also expecting them to step up the economic, military and political pressure on Hamas on the eve of the proposed conference."
Fatah officials said Hamas arrested dozens of Fatah activists in the Gaza Strip following Friday's violence. They said many of those arrested had been brutally tortured by Hamas militiamen and then taken to hospital for treatment.
The officials named top Fatah activists as being among those taken into custody: Hamdan al-Amsi, Ashraf al-Shatawi, Musa Turk, Falah Hasanat, Mazen Kitnani and Bassam al- Malahi.
Senior Fatah leader Zakariya al-Agha said the residents of the Gaza Strip were "sick and tired" of listening to incitement and messages of hatred in Hamas mosques. "More and more people are boycotting the Hamas mosques because they don't want to listen to the negative messages," he said. "The worshipers organized a peaceful demonstration after the Friday prayer, but the Hamas militias began firing into the air and used force to disperse them."
PA Information Minister Riad al-Malki accused Hamas of "crimes against humanity and the freedom of expression." He was speaking during a protest organized Saturday in Ramallah by scores of Palestinian journalists against the arrest of their colleagues in the Gaza Strip.
"We are afraid for ourselves and our families," said journalist Imad al-Asfar. "Unless we receive the support of the masses, the truth will fall victim to these practices."
Can the new peace push work?
The powers-that-be in Washington, Jerusalem, Ramallah, Cairo, Amman and maybe Riyadh are now embarked on a major diplomatic and strategic endeavor the like of which has never been attempted in living history. It is an effort to craft the principles of a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict with the full knowledge that these principles, if agreed, cannot be translated into action-orientated implementation in the immediate future.
The political logic behind this initiative is that the clear political horizon that each and every Palestinian will be able to read and absorb will be so encouraging and attractive as to convince him/her to disavow any future use of force - terror - as an instrument in the struggle for statehood. Extremist Muslim groups will be marginalized and defeated by centralist-moderate forces that will assume effective control of Palestinian destiny.
Thus the agreement is not primarily designed as a plan for immediate implementation, but rather as a vital tool in the ongoing effort to change the political landscape inside the Palestinian body politic.
THIS NEW experiment in international relations has its distinct advantages for all parties concerned. In Israel, it will provide the current government not only with a political agenda but will also be billed as a major diplomatic achievement. The agreement will be consecrated at an international gathering in Washington attended by key leaders and players both inside the Middle East and outside its confines. Since it will be devoid of a timeline, there will not be any necessity to confront the settlers in Judea and Samaria here and now and to contend with the ugly scenes that will ensue. Israel and its current leadership will enjoy an indeterminable period of respite that will tide us over the next general election.
The West Bank leadership tandem of Abbas-Fayyad have every reason to embrace this strategy; in the years to come they will receive formidable financial and economic support and will concentrate on building the security forces and institutions of government in the hope that one day they will be ready and capable of confronting and subduing the extremists, Hamas, the Jihadists and the odd motley of local warlords. It will not be necessary to solve the problem of Hamas-controlled Gaza too soon, and the principles agreed will give the leadership the possibility of revealing a glorious political vision of Palestinian statehood that will galvanize the majority to embrace peace and moderation.
THE ARAB state sponsors will be able to tell their constituencies and the entire Muslim world that they have got Israel to sign off on Palestinian statehood and that, when the time comes, their policy of gradually bringing Israel to realism will have borne fruit.
And, of course, the United States and the outgoing president will be able to declare success in consecrating the principles of a historic Palestinian-Israel reconciliation the likes of which have never been seen before. The ceremony will go down in history as marking the legacy of an administration that succeeded where all others failed.
The game plan just described is predicated on a few assumptions:
• that Hamas, weakened and humbled after its bitter-sweet takeover in Gaza, will be too feeble or too discredited to act as a spoiler;
• that it will accept the non-role bestowed upon it and will timidly sulk on the sidelines;
• that the Syrians, if not invited to Washington, will similarly just languish in the political sun and accept the inevitable with reverence and honor;
• that al-Qaida and its tributaries will lie low and confine themselves verbally to crying foul;
• that after the pomp and circumstance of the colorful Washington ceremonies, the Abbas-Fayyad tandem indeed do have a real, tangible chance to create a viable, strong and powerful West Bank entity - security-wise, politically and economically - that will overshadow all its adversaries.
I SERIOUSLY doubt if all these assumptions will materialize. I particularly question the possibility of Hamas being marginalized by the current West Bank leadership. Moreover, I sincerely wonder whether the policy-makers who have crafted this new series of steps genuinely believe that they have a fair chance of producing the desired results - a viable, stable and credible Palestinian state.
But why should we depend only on the assessment of persons like myself, who are no longer in office? How does a Palestinian expert, a most bitter critic of Israel, view the current situation on his side of the divide?
Under the title "Shared Irresponsibility," Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, writes in the August 16 London Review of Books: "Fatah and Hamas have been fighting for control of a Palestinian Authority that has no real authority. The behavior of both has been disgraceful... Neither movement was able to see that such deep divisions would mean that they had even less chance of achieving their national objectives. In this they have been equally irresponsible."
During recent years the intelligence leaders of Israel have given the public the benefit of their assessments on major issues in the defense and security field. For instance, the head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has periodically spoken either at cabinet sessions or at quasi-open sessions of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset. He has been authoritatively quoted at length. There is a deafening silence from these quarters as of late.
One would hope that the prime minister will advise that the public be treated to such a periodic assessment before he puts his signature to the 2007 peace plan. He has every right to accept the assessment, or to reject it and act even contrary to it. After all, is this not what statesmanship is all about?
But does he not owe the public some expert opinion, the like of which he gladly sanctioned in the not too distant past?
The writer is a former head of the Mossad.
The political logic behind this initiative is that the clear political horizon that each and every Palestinian will be able to read and absorb will be so encouraging and attractive as to convince him/her to disavow any future use of force - terror - as an instrument in the struggle for statehood. Extremist Muslim groups will be marginalized and defeated by centralist-moderate forces that will assume effective control of Palestinian destiny.
Thus the agreement is not primarily designed as a plan for immediate implementation, but rather as a vital tool in the ongoing effort to change the political landscape inside the Palestinian body politic.
THIS NEW experiment in international relations has its distinct advantages for all parties concerned. In Israel, it will provide the current government not only with a political agenda but will also be billed as a major diplomatic achievement. The agreement will be consecrated at an international gathering in Washington attended by key leaders and players both inside the Middle East and outside its confines. Since it will be devoid of a timeline, there will not be any necessity to confront the settlers in Judea and Samaria here and now and to contend with the ugly scenes that will ensue. Israel and its current leadership will enjoy an indeterminable period of respite that will tide us over the next general election.
The West Bank leadership tandem of Abbas-Fayyad have every reason to embrace this strategy; in the years to come they will receive formidable financial and economic support and will concentrate on building the security forces and institutions of government in the hope that one day they will be ready and capable of confronting and subduing the extremists, Hamas, the Jihadists and the odd motley of local warlords. It will not be necessary to solve the problem of Hamas-controlled Gaza too soon, and the principles agreed will give the leadership the possibility of revealing a glorious political vision of Palestinian statehood that will galvanize the majority to embrace peace and moderation.
THE ARAB state sponsors will be able to tell their constituencies and the entire Muslim world that they have got Israel to sign off on Palestinian statehood and that, when the time comes, their policy of gradually bringing Israel to realism will have borne fruit.
And, of course, the United States and the outgoing president will be able to declare success in consecrating the principles of a historic Palestinian-Israel reconciliation the likes of which have never been seen before. The ceremony will go down in history as marking the legacy of an administration that succeeded where all others failed.
The game plan just described is predicated on a few assumptions:
• that Hamas, weakened and humbled after its bitter-sweet takeover in Gaza, will be too feeble or too discredited to act as a spoiler;
• that it will accept the non-role bestowed upon it and will timidly sulk on the sidelines;
• that the Syrians, if not invited to Washington, will similarly just languish in the political sun and accept the inevitable with reverence and honor;
• that al-Qaida and its tributaries will lie low and confine themselves verbally to crying foul;
• that after the pomp and circumstance of the colorful Washington ceremonies, the Abbas-Fayyad tandem indeed do have a real, tangible chance to create a viable, strong and powerful West Bank entity - security-wise, politically and economically - that will overshadow all its adversaries.
I SERIOUSLY doubt if all these assumptions will materialize. I particularly question the possibility of Hamas being marginalized by the current West Bank leadership. Moreover, I sincerely wonder whether the policy-makers who have crafted this new series of steps genuinely believe that they have a fair chance of producing the desired results - a viable, stable and credible Palestinian state.
But why should we depend only on the assessment of persons like myself, who are no longer in office? How does a Palestinian expert, a most bitter critic of Israel, view the current situation on his side of the divide?
Under the title "Shared Irresponsibility," Professor Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said professor of Arab Studies at Columbia, writes in the August 16 London Review of Books: "Fatah and Hamas have been fighting for control of a Palestinian Authority that has no real authority. The behavior of both has been disgraceful... Neither movement was able to see that such deep divisions would mean that they had even less chance of achieving their national objectives. In this they have been equally irresponsible."
During recent years the intelligence leaders of Israel have given the public the benefit of their assessments on major issues in the defense and security field. For instance, the head of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has periodically spoken either at cabinet sessions or at quasi-open sessions of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the Knesset. He has been authoritatively quoted at length. There is a deafening silence from these quarters as of late.
One would hope that the prime minister will advise that the public be treated to such a periodic assessment before he puts his signature to the 2007 peace plan. He has every right to accept the assessment, or to reject it and act even contrary to it. After all, is this not what statesmanship is all about?
But does he not owe the public some expert opinion, the like of which he gladly sanctioned in the not too distant past?
The writer is a former head of the Mossad.
Assad is willing to talk to Olmert without involving Washington - but not to abandon absolute commitment to Tehran
The recent Saudi-Syrian ‘dispute’ has reshuffled the cards; scattering some, while reorganizing others. Affiliated to the 8 March Coalition Forces, the Lebanese ‘As-Safir’ newspaper was the first to introduce the term ‘dispute’ to the relations between the two states. However, this was unfortunate timing given the upcoming presidential elections in Lebanon. The Lebanese ‘goodwill intermediary’ Nabih Berri had heavily relied on the Saudi-Syrian close proximity to help reconcile between the authority and the opposition in Lebanon. The intention was finding a president that would be agreed upon by all parties but Shara’s winds have blown counter to the desire of Berri’s ships.
Saudi Arabia’s sharp statement against Syrian policy, and more specifically against Syrian Vice-President Faruq al Shara, perturbed the regime in Damascus, which is unaccustomed to such severity expressed by Saudi Arabia in the media. Within a day or two, two Syrian clarifications emerged: the first was a ‘quasi-reply’ to the Saudi statement, which said: We will not respond. What was said is untrue. Refer to the text of Faruq al Shara’s interview; it will suffice.
The second statement was issued last Sunday, 19 August, but this time with a calmer tone. Stressing the importance of Saudi-Syrian relations, it also upheld that al Shara’s statements had been “unjustly distorted and misconstrued”, which in accordance with Arab media is an indirect apology.
Regardless, in essence, the situation has surpassed this media clash to indicate a more grave and dangerous dimension: political clashes over regional issues. It has become evident that concealing the clash between Saudi and Syria has become impossible to hide. The chasm of discord has widened since the collapse of the Baathist regime in Iraq, amidst fears that the Syrian Baathist regime will suffer the same fate. Moreover, prior to that the Syrian regime had started to gradually lose some of its clout in the state by virtue of the efforts of the resistance forces in Lebanon.
This conflict peaked with the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and after accusing fingers were pointed at the security system affiliated to Syria in Lebanon. This is in addition to what followed of a series of actions, especially following the UN Security Council resolution 1559 (September 2004), which stated upon the withdrawal of the Syrian troops from Lebanon.
However, the current Saudi-Syrian controversy has come out of the shadows and into broad daylight what was once whispered in is now announced loud and clear. The reason for this is because the discord is one over policies and visions between Damascus and Riyadh. The Syrian regime during Bashar al Assad’s term has been linked in a fully strategic manner to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran, and has become the bridge that links between Hezbollah (the Iranian island in Lebanon) and the sources of funding, armament and guidance in Iran.
Of course, the Syrian regime is haggling over these services. It wants from Hezbollah, which has been fuelled and nourished by the Iranian revolution ideologically and militarily, services that are similar to those sought by the Iranian regime. For is it not, the Syrian regime that is, Tehran’s ally in sickness and in health?!
But likewise, Iran too wants a multitude of complex services from Syria; it is struggling in Iraq against Sunni parties and forces, and even non-Sunni movements, such as the Shiaa al Fadhila party (Islamic Virtue Part).
As such, Syria’s sabotage of the political situation in Iraq and its dispatch of suicide bombers over there serves the same aim as Iran’s endeavors in Iraq. The overt slogan raised by both regimes is: resisting the American occupation, and who can undermine the sanctity and purity of that noble resistance?!
However, in the complexity of these paths and the entanglement of various threads between the nationalists and the fundamentalists, the Sunnis and the Shiaa, and between the overlaps of which party is more envious of the other or more devoted to its Arab identity raises the question of Syria’s Arab identity: What does the Syrian regime really want?!
Does Syria still retain its position as the ‘throbbing heart of Arabism”? Or has that heart suffered a cardiac arrest?
But away from the notion of nationalism for now with all its definitions, ailments, and those who had used it as a vehicle to further their own interests or to eliminate personal enemies under its name, or even attacked reform in their own nation using it as a pretext. Away from the reality of this idea in this part of the world, and away from resisting the Islamic discourse addressing nations about the Arab national identity. Stepping away and distancing oneself from all these questions, the centrality of the ‘Levant’ must be acknowledged, in addition to its role in creating and endorsing the launch of Arab nationalism starting with Zaki al Arsuzi, Akram al Hourani, [Michel] Aflaq, and the Socialist Baath Party, which was responsible for creating Hafez al Assad’s regime. Al Assad was the first Alawite officer to reach the seat of power in the history of the Levant (1970).
What distinguished the political culture in Syria was the enduring talk and slogans raised championing nationalism and Arab unity. Battles unfolding between parties in the political game were conducted within the framework of the question: Who is the most faithful towards their Arab identity and sense of nationalism?
But following the passage of many stages to the incumbent Syrian President, Bashar al Assad, things have changed significantly. This is not by reason of Bashar’s close ties with Iran, along with his tight security circle. Indeed, Hafez al Assad had maintained a good relationship with Tehran even during the height of the Iraqi-Iranian war the same war that was introduced to the Arab world as the new ‘Battle of al-Qadisiya’ against the Persians.
Hafez al Assad held the flag of nationalism in one hand, and interests of his own regime in the other. To the Arabs he justified his close proximity to Iran as one in which it played the role of a protector against Saddam’s Baghdad at the time. Meanwhile, whispers were circulating in the rumor mill about sectarian ties being forged between the Alawite Shiaa sect and the Shiaa of Tehran. And yet notwithstanding these rumors, senior clerics from the Twelver movement [the Shiaa Ithna ’Ashariyyah] do not recognize the legitimacy of the Alawite, Druze or Ismalili Shiaa sects, however politics has its own rules and the distant past follows its own logic.
What used to whispered inaudibly during Hafez al Assad’s days is now declared publicly in his son Bashar’s era, especially after the transformation of the relationship between Damascus and Tehran from one of an alliance to a relationship of subservience; Damascus being the submissive regime.
Scores of Iranians infiltrated into Syria; suffice it to say that the volume of Iranian staff members working on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus is several hundred! Talk of political Shiism campaigns is constant. Al Jazeera online related that some time ago that those attending the Friday prayer sermon of Syrian Jurist Wahba al Zuhaili (among them preachers) said that al Zuhaili had warned against the threat posed by these campaigns in one of the towns of al Raqqa governorate, located northeast of Damascus. He furthermore urged people to verify this information.
In an online interview with Al Jazeera, the director of al Khesrofia secondary jurisprudence school, Sheikh Mahmoud Quul Aghassi said that the story had started in al Raqqa after Iranian institutions had built shrines for the Prophet’s companion Ammar Bin Yasser and his disciple Uwais al Qarni, both of whom enjoy an elevated status in the Shiaa vision of Islamic history. He also added that they had opened up a cultural office and had set up a cassette tape sale booth.
However, it does not stop there. There is talk buzzing about another strange phenomenon that has manifested in Syrian society; the proliferation of the ‘Qubaisiat’ women. Attributed to Sunni female preacher Munira al Qubaisi, this school of thought follows a Shafie Sunni path with Sufi inclinations and is fast spreading among the women in Syria and even outside of it. Yet, Damascus remains to be the uncontested center of the movement.
The ideology of the movement preaches an extremist outlook to women that destroys all their past achievements towards openness and renaissance. According to ‘al Hayat’ newspaper, 70,000 females are affiliated to this movement (6 May 2003). Incidentally, among the Qubaisi movement is Ahmed Gibril’s sister; Gibril is the founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). This is not to mention the flexibility in the Jihadi Salafist trend...
Yet, the question remains: What identity does the Damascus regime seek to endorse?
The Syrian foreign policy is undoubtedly of a Shiaa strain, while internally a battle is simmering between an unyielding Sunni extremism, as represented by the female followers of the Qubaisi movement, and a politicized Shiism, such as the active movements in al Raqqa and elsewhere. Adonis [eminent Syrian poet] expressed his distress in an article he wrote for ‘al Hayat’ newspaper regarding the prevalence of the ‘Qubaisiat’ women; whose influence has spread far and wide to Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan. Meanwhile, the Shiism campaigns have equally disturbed the Sunni preachers who have publicly expressed their disapproval and opposition internally.
So what is left of Arabism and nationalism, and is that heart still throbbing?
To sum it up; we do not reject actions that are based on purely nationalistic premises because that is precisely what is required. However, we must be aware of the contradiction between the declared slogans and the current reality on the ground.
Whenever slogans are raised high and the voices that chant them ring loud; I always believe that something secretive and discreet is happening behind the scenes. Perhaps this is the case in Syria and elsewhere.
Saudi Arabia’s sharp statement against Syrian policy, and more specifically against Syrian Vice-President Faruq al Shara, perturbed the regime in Damascus, which is unaccustomed to such severity expressed by Saudi Arabia in the media. Within a day or two, two Syrian clarifications emerged: the first was a ‘quasi-reply’ to the Saudi statement, which said: We will not respond. What was said is untrue. Refer to the text of Faruq al Shara’s interview; it will suffice.
The second statement was issued last Sunday, 19 August, but this time with a calmer tone. Stressing the importance of Saudi-Syrian relations, it also upheld that al Shara’s statements had been “unjustly distorted and misconstrued”, which in accordance with Arab media is an indirect apology.
Regardless, in essence, the situation has surpassed this media clash to indicate a more grave and dangerous dimension: political clashes over regional issues. It has become evident that concealing the clash between Saudi and Syria has become impossible to hide. The chasm of discord has widened since the collapse of the Baathist regime in Iraq, amidst fears that the Syrian Baathist regime will suffer the same fate. Moreover, prior to that the Syrian regime had started to gradually lose some of its clout in the state by virtue of the efforts of the resistance forces in Lebanon.
This conflict peaked with the assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, and after accusing fingers were pointed at the security system affiliated to Syria in Lebanon. This is in addition to what followed of a series of actions, especially following the UN Security Council resolution 1559 (September 2004), which stated upon the withdrawal of the Syrian troops from Lebanon.
However, the current Saudi-Syrian controversy has come out of the shadows and into broad daylight what was once whispered in is now announced loud and clear. The reason for this is because the discord is one over policies and visions between Damascus and Riyadh. The Syrian regime during Bashar al Assad’s term has been linked in a fully strategic manner to the fundamentalist regime in Tehran, and has become the bridge that links between Hezbollah (the Iranian island in Lebanon) and the sources of funding, armament and guidance in Iran.
Of course, the Syrian regime is haggling over these services. It wants from Hezbollah, which has been fuelled and nourished by the Iranian revolution ideologically and militarily, services that are similar to those sought by the Iranian regime. For is it not, the Syrian regime that is, Tehran’s ally in sickness and in health?!
But likewise, Iran too wants a multitude of complex services from Syria; it is struggling in Iraq against Sunni parties and forces, and even non-Sunni movements, such as the Shiaa al Fadhila party (Islamic Virtue Part).
As such, Syria’s sabotage of the political situation in Iraq and its dispatch of suicide bombers over there serves the same aim as Iran’s endeavors in Iraq. The overt slogan raised by both regimes is: resisting the American occupation, and who can undermine the sanctity and purity of that noble resistance?!
However, in the complexity of these paths and the entanglement of various threads between the nationalists and the fundamentalists, the Sunnis and the Shiaa, and between the overlaps of which party is more envious of the other or more devoted to its Arab identity raises the question of Syria’s Arab identity: What does the Syrian regime really want?!
Does Syria still retain its position as the ‘throbbing heart of Arabism”? Or has that heart suffered a cardiac arrest?
But away from the notion of nationalism for now with all its definitions, ailments, and those who had used it as a vehicle to further their own interests or to eliminate personal enemies under its name, or even attacked reform in their own nation using it as a pretext. Away from the reality of this idea in this part of the world, and away from resisting the Islamic discourse addressing nations about the Arab national identity. Stepping away and distancing oneself from all these questions, the centrality of the ‘Levant’ must be acknowledged, in addition to its role in creating and endorsing the launch of Arab nationalism starting with Zaki al Arsuzi, Akram al Hourani, [Michel] Aflaq, and the Socialist Baath Party, which was responsible for creating Hafez al Assad’s regime. Al Assad was the first Alawite officer to reach the seat of power in the history of the Levant (1970).
What distinguished the political culture in Syria was the enduring talk and slogans raised championing nationalism and Arab unity. Battles unfolding between parties in the political game were conducted within the framework of the question: Who is the most faithful towards their Arab identity and sense of nationalism?
But following the passage of many stages to the incumbent Syrian President, Bashar al Assad, things have changed significantly. This is not by reason of Bashar’s close ties with Iran, along with his tight security circle. Indeed, Hafez al Assad had maintained a good relationship with Tehran even during the height of the Iraqi-Iranian war the same war that was introduced to the Arab world as the new ‘Battle of al-Qadisiya’ against the Persians.
Hafez al Assad held the flag of nationalism in one hand, and interests of his own regime in the other. To the Arabs he justified his close proximity to Iran as one in which it played the role of a protector against Saddam’s Baghdad at the time. Meanwhile, whispers were circulating in the rumor mill about sectarian ties being forged between the Alawite Shiaa sect and the Shiaa of Tehran. And yet notwithstanding these rumors, senior clerics from the Twelver movement [the Shiaa Ithna ’Ashariyyah] do not recognize the legitimacy of the Alawite, Druze or Ismalili Shiaa sects, however politics has its own rules and the distant past follows its own logic.
What used to whispered inaudibly during Hafez al Assad’s days is now declared publicly in his son Bashar’s era, especially after the transformation of the relationship between Damascus and Tehran from one of an alliance to a relationship of subservience; Damascus being the submissive regime.
Scores of Iranians infiltrated into Syria; suffice it to say that the volume of Iranian staff members working on the Iranian diplomatic mission in Damascus is several hundred! Talk of political Shiism campaigns is constant. Al Jazeera online related that some time ago that those attending the Friday prayer sermon of Syrian Jurist Wahba al Zuhaili (among them preachers) said that al Zuhaili had warned against the threat posed by these campaigns in one of the towns of al Raqqa governorate, located northeast of Damascus. He furthermore urged people to verify this information.
In an online interview with Al Jazeera, the director of al Khesrofia secondary jurisprudence school, Sheikh Mahmoud Quul Aghassi said that the story had started in al Raqqa after Iranian institutions had built shrines for the Prophet’s companion Ammar Bin Yasser and his disciple Uwais al Qarni, both of whom enjoy an elevated status in the Shiaa vision of Islamic history. He also added that they had opened up a cultural office and had set up a cassette tape sale booth.
However, it does not stop there. There is talk buzzing about another strange phenomenon that has manifested in Syrian society; the proliferation of the ‘Qubaisiat’ women. Attributed to Sunni female preacher Munira al Qubaisi, this school of thought follows a Shafie Sunni path with Sufi inclinations and is fast spreading among the women in Syria and even outside of it. Yet, Damascus remains to be the uncontested center of the movement.
The ideology of the movement preaches an extremist outlook to women that destroys all their past achievements towards openness and renaissance. According to ‘al Hayat’ newspaper, 70,000 females are affiliated to this movement (6 May 2003). Incidentally, among the Qubaisi movement is Ahmed Gibril’s sister; Gibril is the founder and leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine - General Command (PFLP-GC). This is not to mention the flexibility in the Jihadi Salafist trend...
Yet, the question remains: What identity does the Damascus regime seek to endorse?
The Syrian foreign policy is undoubtedly of a Shiaa strain, while internally a battle is simmering between an unyielding Sunni extremism, as represented by the female followers of the Qubaisi movement, and a politicized Shiism, such as the active movements in al Raqqa and elsewhere. Adonis [eminent Syrian poet] expressed his distress in an article he wrote for ‘al Hayat’ newspaper regarding the prevalence of the ‘Qubaisiat’ women; whose influence has spread far and wide to Kuwait, Lebanon and Jordan. Meanwhile, the Shiism campaigns have equally disturbed the Sunni preachers who have publicly expressed their disapproval and opposition internally.
So what is left of Arabism and nationalism, and is that heart still throbbing?
To sum it up; we do not reject actions that are based on purely nationalistic premises because that is precisely what is required. However, we must be aware of the contradiction between the declared slogans and the current reality on the ground.
Whenever slogans are raised high and the voices that chant them ring loud; I always believe that something secretive and discreet is happening behind the scenes. Perhaps this is the case in Syria and elsewhere.
Jewish Hebron marketplace heir is against settlers
The descendent of the Jewish owner of Hebron's disputed marketplace is left wing, secular and lives in Tel Aviv. Unlike the Hebron Jews who were forcibly evicted from the marketplace on August 7, retired journalist Haim Hanegbi, 72, does not dream of returning to the city where his family lived for more than 200 years.
There, settlers have placed a large white banner over the empty shops in which they demand: "Return the stolen property."
They believe that because this marketplace was once owned by Hanegbi's grandfather, Haim Bejayo, and used by the city's Jewish community, they have a right to settle the area situated at the entryway to their Avraham Avinu neighborhood.
It's a claim Hanegbi rejects.
"I have more rights than the settlers and the army," he told The Jerusalem Post last week.
He wants the marketplace to revert to the Palestinians who made use of it from the 1930s to 1994, when Israel forced them to shut down the shops after Baruch Goldstein, from nearby Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque attached to Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs.
For Hanegbi, the issue is greater than the shops that have grabbed headlines over the last month. He is among a group of 27 descendants of the original Jewish community who believe the government should evacuate all 800 Jewish settlers from Hebron.
"We have to throw them out of Hebron down to the last one," said Hanegbi.
He has little sympathy with the settlers' claim to the marketplace. Still, as he explained, the complex web of property ownership in Hebron appears to mean that his family's history has little relevance to the decision about who can use the marketplace.
In 1997, the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria sent Hanegbi a ruling saying the state had a right to the property registered in his grandfather's name. That document, along with a copy of the original deed from 1807 made out to his ancestor Haim Hamitzri, are filed away in a blue plastic folder that Hanegbi took out as he spoke with the Post.
For him, the papers are a piece of the history of his family,
which wandered from Spain to North Africa to Egypt and finally to Hebron, where his grandfather was the city's Sephardic rabbi. They fled Hebron in 1929, along with the other survivors of that ancient Jewish community, when local Arabs attacked the Jewish community, killing 67 Jews and wounding 70.
He holds on to these documents to counter the claims by the Jews who settled in Hebron in 1979 that the marketplace area, as well as all Jewish property in the city, is theirs because they are the spiritual inheritors of that pre-1929 community.
"Why do they have a right to this?" he asked.
Two weeks ago, the settlers received a boost from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's subcommittee on civilian affairs in Judea and Samaria, which called on both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to authorize Jewish settlement in the market.
The Jews moved into the empty shops illegally in 2001, and left of their own volition in 2006 after an agreement with the IDF in which they were reassured that steps would be taken to legalize their presence there.
When Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz annulled the agreement, two families moved back in - only to be forcibly removed.
Government spokesman David Baker said the official position on this matter was unchanged. "What is evident is that Israel is a nation of laws and the laws will be upheld," said Baker.
In Hebron, where settlers believe the government ignored legal arguments that backed their claims, the banner over the marketplace shops charges that it is the government that has stolen the property. "These buildings were constructed on the ruins of the ancient Jewish Quarter following the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron. The Israeli government continues this banditry," it reads.
Sitting in a cafe near his Ramat Aviv home, Hanegbi accused the settlers, with the help of the IDF, of trying to steal not just the marketplace but all of Hebron from the Palestinians.
He is so angry at the way the 35,000 Palestinians who live in the Israeli section of the city are treated that he has a hard time staying calm as he speaks about their situation.
There are roads that Palestinians cannot drive on, and in some cases cannot walk. There are Palestinian stores that were forced to close and others that went under for lack of business, said Hanegbi. These conditions forced Palestinians to leave the city, he said.
According to the IDF, these conditions are necessary for security reasons.
B'tselem said in May that 659 Hebron apartments had become vacant in the last seven years and some 1,141 businesses had closed.
"I do not know how to sit quietly when people are driven out of their homes," said Hanegbi, who had no problem using the word "apartheid" to describe the situation.
He blames it on the settlers who live there and in whose security interests the government has clamped down on the Palestinians living in the area under its control.
He said he had accepted the prior situation in which the state had leased the property to the Palestinian-run Hebron Municipality. But if the property was not in the hands of the state and was to be turned over to Jews, then it should be returned to his family, he said. To that end, he hired a lawyer in 2006 and turned to the courts.
Hanegbi said he wanted to live by the creed of justice, not nationalism. "Write that I am an anti-Zionist," said Hanegbi, who believes in a "state of all its citizens."
His grandfather, he said, wanted to return to Hebron, "just as every refugee dreams of it. The whole land is filled with people dreaming of returning, that is the nature of the person who wants to return to his roots."
But Hanegbi said he was of the belief that Jews could only come back to Hebron in a situation of justice, in which both Palestinians and Jews had equal rights in the city under the law.
"Justice can't be one-sided," he said. "So I can return only when everyone can return."
There, settlers have placed a large white banner over the empty shops in which they demand: "Return the stolen property."
They believe that because this marketplace was once owned by Hanegbi's grandfather, Haim Bejayo, and used by the city's Jewish community, they have a right to settle the area situated at the entryway to their Avraham Avinu neighborhood.
It's a claim Hanegbi rejects.
"I have more rights than the settlers and the army," he told The Jerusalem Post last week.
He wants the marketplace to revert to the Palestinians who made use of it from the 1930s to 1994, when Israel forced them to shut down the shops after Baruch Goldstein, from nearby Kiryat Arba, killed 29 Palestinians as they prayed in a mosque attached to Hebron's Cave of the Patriarchs.
For Hanegbi, the issue is greater than the shops that have grabbed headlines over the last month. He is among a group of 27 descendants of the original Jewish community who believe the government should evacuate all 800 Jewish settlers from Hebron.
"We have to throw them out of Hebron down to the last one," said Hanegbi.
He has little sympathy with the settlers' claim to the marketplace. Still, as he explained, the complex web of property ownership in Hebron appears to mean that his family's history has little relevance to the decision about who can use the marketplace.
In 1997, the Civil Administration of Judea and Samaria sent Hanegbi a ruling saying the state had a right to the property registered in his grandfather's name. That document, along with a copy of the original deed from 1807 made out to his ancestor Haim Hamitzri, are filed away in a blue plastic folder that Hanegbi took out as he spoke with the Post.
For him, the papers are a piece of the history of his family,
which wandered from Spain to North Africa to Egypt and finally to Hebron, where his grandfather was the city's Sephardic rabbi. They fled Hebron in 1929, along with the other survivors of that ancient Jewish community, when local Arabs attacked the Jewish community, killing 67 Jews and wounding 70.
He holds on to these documents to counter the claims by the Jews who settled in Hebron in 1979 that the marketplace area, as well as all Jewish property in the city, is theirs because they are the spiritual inheritors of that pre-1929 community.
"Why do they have a right to this?" he asked.
Two weeks ago, the settlers received a boost from the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's subcommittee on civilian affairs in Judea and Samaria, which called on both Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to authorize Jewish settlement in the market.
The Jews moved into the empty shops illegally in 2001, and left of their own volition in 2006 after an agreement with the IDF in which they were reassured that steps would be taken to legalize their presence there.
When Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz annulled the agreement, two families moved back in - only to be forcibly removed.
Government spokesman David Baker said the official position on this matter was unchanged. "What is evident is that Israel is a nation of laws and the laws will be upheld," said Baker.
In Hebron, where settlers believe the government ignored legal arguments that backed their claims, the banner over the marketplace shops charges that it is the government that has stolen the property. "These buildings were constructed on the ruins of the ancient Jewish Quarter following the Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron. The Israeli government continues this banditry," it reads.
Sitting in a cafe near his Ramat Aviv home, Hanegbi accused the settlers, with the help of the IDF, of trying to steal not just the marketplace but all of Hebron from the Palestinians.
He is so angry at the way the 35,000 Palestinians who live in the Israeli section of the city are treated that he has a hard time staying calm as he speaks about their situation.
There are roads that Palestinians cannot drive on, and in some cases cannot walk. There are Palestinian stores that were forced to close and others that went under for lack of business, said Hanegbi. These conditions forced Palestinians to leave the city, he said.
According to the IDF, these conditions are necessary for security reasons.
B'tselem said in May that 659 Hebron apartments had become vacant in the last seven years and some 1,141 businesses had closed.
"I do not know how to sit quietly when people are driven out of their homes," said Hanegbi, who had no problem using the word "apartheid" to describe the situation.
He blames it on the settlers who live there and in whose security interests the government has clamped down on the Palestinians living in the area under its control.
He said he had accepted the prior situation in which the state had leased the property to the Palestinian-run Hebron Municipality. But if the property was not in the hands of the state and was to be turned over to Jews, then it should be returned to his family, he said. To that end, he hired a lawyer in 2006 and turned to the courts.
Hanegbi said he wanted to live by the creed of justice, not nationalism. "Write that I am an anti-Zionist," said Hanegbi, who believes in a "state of all its citizens."
His grandfather, he said, wanted to return to Hebron, "just as every refugee dreams of it. The whole land is filled with people dreaming of returning, that is the nature of the person who wants to return to his roots."
But Hanegbi said he was of the belief that Jews could only come back to Hebron in a situation of justice, in which both Palestinians and Jews had equal rights in the city under the law.
"Justice can't be one-sided," he said. "So I can return only when everyone can return."
The rise of the fantasists
As the cliché goes, "A conservative is a liberal whose been mugged by reality." Like most clichés, this one exposes a larger truth. Namely, people often base their views on their fantasies of how the world should be, rather than on the reality of how the world actually is. Following this line, the September 11, 2001 attacks can be seen as a large-scale mugging. After the attacks, the same American people that had ignored the threat of totalitarian Islam since the Iranian revolution first categorized the US as the Great Satan back in 1979, acknowledged the danger and recognized it was at war. The overwhelming majority of Americans supported President George W. Bush when he said that the US would fight to destroy all global terror organizations and take down the regimes that sponsor them.
But even before the fires were put out in Lower Manhattan, voices from two quarters were already claiming that the US should stay in Dreamland. First, there were the radical leftists like Susan Sontag and Michael Moore who wrapped themselves in the banner of the human rights of the wretched of the Earth. They claimed that al-Qaida was simply giving Americans their comeuppance for dominating the world through McDonalds and Levis.
Next there were people like former presidents Carter and Bush's national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, assorted university professors, and CIA analysts who wrapped themselves in the banner of realism. They claimed that American support for Israel is what brought the Islamic world to hate the country and kill thousands of its citizens by flying hijacked airplanes into buildings.
In both cases, the fantasists ignored completely Osama bin Laden's declarations that his goal is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. They disregarded the political and cultural milieus marked by inexhaustible envy towards the West and the US that gave rise to al-Qaida and its sister organizations. Rather than acknowledge the reality of real war with real enemies, both camps of fantasists argued that instead of slaying these twin dragons, the US should appease them by serving them Israel for lunch.
These voices were relegated to the margins of public debate until the lead up to the 2004 presidential elections. Ahead of those elections, backed by George Soros's financial muscle, the fantasists had an enormous impact of the debate in the Democratic Party. Politicians who until then had supported the war generally, and in Iraq particularly, clamored to decry it.
THIS WEEK, two leftist institutions - the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine - published a survey of conservative, moderate and liberal foreign policy experts. The results of the survey show clearly that while still a minority, the fantasists are far from marginal today.
Fourteen percent of those surveyed believe that Israel is the US's least helpful ally. While unfortunate, this is far from the survey's most troubling result.
The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group's report, which was released last December, recommended that the administration sell Israel off in order to buy Iranian, Syrian and Saudi cooperation in Iraq that could pave the way to an orderly American retreat from the country. Uber fantasists James Baker and Lee Hamilton asserted that if the US forces Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem to the Palestinians, all will be well with Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the foreign policy experts surveyed agreed with them.
Fifty-three percent of the experts (38% of the conservatives, 59% of the moderates and 59% of the liberals) believe that the US should recognize Hamas. Forty-seven percent (29% of the conservatives, 49% of the moderates and 61% of the liberals) believe that the US should recognize Hizbullah.
As for Iran, 68 percent of the survey's participants think that the Iranian threat can be contained through negotiations. Only 10 percent think that the US should attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Indeed, a significant minority is of the opinion that the world stands to benefit from a nuclear-armed Iran. A quarter of the conservatives, 29% of the moderates and 41% of the liberal experts claimed that Iran will behave more responsibly if it acquires nuclear capabilities. Only 32 percent think that Iran will attack Israel with nuclear bombs. Only 24 percent think it likely that Iran would transfer nuclear devices to terrorists.
A BRIEF look at recent statements by Iran's leaders and its terrorist vassals suffice to show how cut off these views are from reality. Last Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said, "America and its followers are stuck in a whirlpool and they sink deeper as time passes. A dangerous future is predicted for them." Wednesday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled that Iran will share its nuclear know-how with others saying, "If nuclear energy is something good, all nations should enjoy it on the basis of law."
In an interview with Britain's Independent, Iraqi Shiite terror boss Muqtada al Sadr admitted that his group trains with Hizbullah. Sadr said, "We have formal links with Hizbullah…. We copy Hizbullah in the way they fight and their tactics, we teach each other and we are getting better through this."
On the occasion of the one-year anniversary of last year's war against Israel, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah told Iranian television that Hizbullah acts at Teheran's pleasure. "I am a lowly soldier of the Imam Khamenei. Hizbullah youths acted on behalf of the Imam Khomeini… and sent their blessings to the Iranian people," Nasrallah said.
On August 6, Osama Hamdan, Hamas's representative in Lebanon, told al-Kawthar television that Hamas is preparing for war not because expects it Israel to attack, "but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity [Israel] off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out."
ALTHOUGH PRESIDENT Bush insistently rejects the fantasists' approach to world affairs, his current policies towards Iran and Israel reflect their views. Indeed the administration's policies towards both countries read like a page out of the Baker-Hamilton playbook.
The administration maintains its slavish devotion to negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons program in spite of the fact that the diplomatic track failed demonstrably three years ago. It recently expanded its diplomatic offensive to include conducting direct talks with the Iranians on Iraq. Iran has responded to America's conciliatory stance by expanding its uranium enrichment activities and escalating attacks in Iraq.
As to Israel, the Americans are pressuring Israel to conduct negotiations with Fatah towards an Israeli surrender of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. Such withdrawals would foment the rise of yet another base for global jihad run by Iran's Palestinian proxies in the center of the shriveled Jewish state.
To advance this aim, the US pressured Israel to pardon some 178 Fatah terror fugitives and is now pressuring it to pardon another hundred. This is despite the fact that this week the Fatah terrorists announced they would renew their attacks on Israel.
The Americans have pledged to renew training of Fatah's Force 17 militia. This week the New York Sun published an interview with Abu Yusuf, a Force 17 commander who admitted that previous US training sessions enabled Fatah to murder Israelis more effectively.
Other Fatah leaders told The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh this week that Fatah forces are openly cooperating with Hamas cells in Judea and Samaria.
IF THE Americans want to know what will happen if their foreign policy fantasists take charge of their affairs, they have only to cast a glance at what is happening in Israel today. Because in Israel, the fantasists are firmly in charge of policy. With the twin goals of fostering peace and enhancing Israel's international standing, Israel's fantasist leaders are driving the country to the outer reaches of La La Land.
In the name of peace, the Olmert government is conducting semi-secret negotiations with Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas. According to press reports Olmert and his colleagues are offering Abbas 92 percent of Judea and Samaria, the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, and land in the Negev which will connect Gaza to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Furthermore, according to press reports, the Olmert government is willing to accept Israeli responsibility for the fate of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 and for their descendants. What this means in the real world is that Israel is seeking to extend Iran's control over Gaza to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and then to fill these Iranian enclaves with hostile foreign Arabs.
In the interests of enhancing Israel's international cache, Israel is courting the UN which in the Olmert government's fantasy world is Israel's friend. To foster good relations, Sunday the government endorsed the extension of UNIFIL's mandate in south Lebanon despite the fact that UNIFIL's 13,000 soldiers did nothing to prevent Hizbullah's rearmament and reassertion of control over Lebanon's border with Israel over the past year.
On November 29, the government is planning to have Israel's parliamentarians reenact the General Assembly's decision to partition the Land of Israel on November 29, 1947 and so promote the fiction that Israel owes its existence to the UN. The government has asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to preside over the session.
In the real world, the UN is a hostile institution controlled by tyrannies that works actively to delegitimize Israel's right to exist. To this end, next week, the UN will convene two anti-Israel forums in Europe. First, the European Parliament will host an anti-Israel hate fest sponsored by the UN's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
Second, in Geneva, the UN will convene the first planning session for its second anti-racism conference scheduled to take place in 2009. That the conference will be a reenactment of the anti-Semitic orgy of hatred which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001 is made clear by the fact that Libya is chairing the planning session. Iran, Cuba and Pakistan are all members of the planning committee.
FANTASIES ARE alluring. Peddling them can even get you elected. But the majority of Americans who reject fantasy as a basis for making real world decisions should take heed of Israel's example.
That example shows that despite the fantasists' fervent efforts to smother it, reality never goes away. Sooner or later, it mugs you. Sometimes, all it does is pick your pocket. But the longer you ignore it, the more dangerous it becomes.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779147427&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
But even before the fires were put out in Lower Manhattan, voices from two quarters were already claiming that the US should stay in Dreamland. First, there were the radical leftists like Susan Sontag and Michael Moore who wrapped themselves in the banner of the human rights of the wretched of the Earth. They claimed that al-Qaida was simply giving Americans their comeuppance for dominating the world through McDonalds and Levis.
Next there were people like former presidents Carter and Bush's national security advisers Zbigniew Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft, assorted university professors, and CIA analysts who wrapped themselves in the banner of realism. They claimed that American support for Israel is what brought the Islamic world to hate the country and kill thousands of its citizens by flying hijacked airplanes into buildings.
In both cases, the fantasists ignored completely Osama bin Laden's declarations that his goal is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. They disregarded the political and cultural milieus marked by inexhaustible envy towards the West and the US that gave rise to al-Qaida and its sister organizations. Rather than acknowledge the reality of real war with real enemies, both camps of fantasists argued that instead of slaying these twin dragons, the US should appease them by serving them Israel for lunch.
These voices were relegated to the margins of public debate until the lead up to the 2004 presidential elections. Ahead of those elections, backed by George Soros's financial muscle, the fantasists had an enormous impact of the debate in the Democratic Party. Politicians who until then had supported the war generally, and in Iraq particularly, clamored to decry it.
THIS WEEK, two leftist institutions - the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy magazine - published a survey of conservative, moderate and liberal foreign policy experts. The results of the survey show clearly that while still a minority, the fantasists are far from marginal today.
Fourteen percent of those surveyed believe that Israel is the US's least helpful ally. While unfortunate, this is far from the survey's most troubling result.
The Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group's report, which was released last December, recommended that the administration sell Israel off in order to buy Iranian, Syrian and Saudi cooperation in Iraq that could pave the way to an orderly American retreat from the country. Uber fantasists James Baker and Lee Hamilton asserted that if the US forces Israel to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria and Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem to the Palestinians, all will be well with Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the foreign policy experts surveyed agreed with them.
Fifty-three percent of the experts (38% of the conservatives, 59% of the moderates and 59% of the liberals) believe that the US should recognize Hamas. Forty-seven percent (29% of the conservatives, 49% of the moderates and 61% of the liberals) believe that the US should recognize Hizbullah.
As for Iran, 68 percent of the survey's participants think that the Iranian threat can be contained through negotiations. Only 10 percent think that the US should attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Indeed, a significant minority is of the opinion that the world stands to benefit from a nuclear-armed Iran. A quarter of the conservatives, 29% of the moderates and 41% of the liberal experts claimed that Iran will behave more responsibly if it acquires nuclear capabilities. Only 32 percent think that Iran will attack Israel with nuclear bombs. Only 24 percent think it likely that Iran would transfer nuclear devices to terrorists.
A BRIEF look at recent statements by Iran's leaders and its terrorist vassals suffice to show how cut off these views are from reality. Last Saturday, Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei said, "America and its followers are stuck in a whirlpool and they sink deeper as time passes. A dangerous future is predicted for them." Wednesday Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad signaled that Iran will share its nuclear know-how with others saying, "If nuclear energy is something good, all nations should enjoy it on the basis of law."
In an interview with Britain's Independent, Iraqi Shiite terror boss Muqtada al Sadr admitted that his group trains with Hizbullah. Sadr said, "We have formal links with Hizbullah…. We copy Hizbullah in the way they fight and their tactics, we teach each other and we are getting better through this."
On the occasion of the one-year anniversary of last year's war against Israel, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah told Iranian television that Hizbullah acts at Teheran's pleasure. "I am a lowly soldier of the Imam Khamenei. Hizbullah youths acted on behalf of the Imam Khomeini… and sent their blessings to the Iranian people," Nasrallah said.
On August 6, Osama Hamdan, Hamas's representative in Lebanon, told al-Kawthar television that Hamas is preparing for war not because expects it Israel to attack, "but because the final goal of the resistance is to wipe this entity [Israel] off the face of the Earth. This goal necessitates the development of the capabilities of the resistance, until this entity is wiped out."
ALTHOUGH PRESIDENT Bush insistently rejects the fantasists' approach to world affairs, his current policies towards Iran and Israel reflect their views. Indeed the administration's policies towards both countries read like a page out of the Baker-Hamilton playbook.
The administration maintains its slavish devotion to negotiating with Iran over its nuclear weapons program in spite of the fact that the diplomatic track failed demonstrably three years ago. It recently expanded its diplomatic offensive to include conducting direct talks with the Iranians on Iraq. Iran has responded to America's conciliatory stance by expanding its uranium enrichment activities and escalating attacks in Iraq.
As to Israel, the Americans are pressuring Israel to conduct negotiations with Fatah towards an Israeli surrender of Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem. Such withdrawals would foment the rise of yet another base for global jihad run by Iran's Palestinian proxies in the center of the shriveled Jewish state.
To advance this aim, the US pressured Israel to pardon some 178 Fatah terror fugitives and is now pressuring it to pardon another hundred. This is despite the fact that this week the Fatah terrorists announced they would renew their attacks on Israel.
The Americans have pledged to renew training of Fatah's Force 17 militia. This week the New York Sun published an interview with Abu Yusuf, a Force 17 commander who admitted that previous US training sessions enabled Fatah to murder Israelis more effectively.
Other Fatah leaders told The Jerusalem Post's Khaled Abu Toameh this week that Fatah forces are openly cooperating with Hamas cells in Judea and Samaria.
IF THE Americans want to know what will happen if their foreign policy fantasists take charge of their affairs, they have only to cast a glance at what is happening in Israel today. Because in Israel, the fantasists are firmly in charge of policy. With the twin goals of fostering peace and enhancing Israel's international standing, Israel's fantasist leaders are driving the country to the outer reaches of La La Land.
In the name of peace, the Olmert government is conducting semi-secret negotiations with Fatah chief Mahmoud Abbas. According to press reports Olmert and his colleagues are offering Abbas 92 percent of Judea and Samaria, the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, and land in the Negev which will connect Gaza to Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. Furthermore, according to press reports, the Olmert government is willing to accept Israeli responsibility for the fate of the Arabs who left Israel in 1948 and for their descendants. What this means in the real world is that Israel is seeking to extend Iran's control over Gaza to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and then to fill these Iranian enclaves with hostile foreign Arabs.
In the interests of enhancing Israel's international cache, Israel is courting the UN which in the Olmert government's fantasy world is Israel's friend. To foster good relations, Sunday the government endorsed the extension of UNIFIL's mandate in south Lebanon despite the fact that UNIFIL's 13,000 soldiers did nothing to prevent Hizbullah's rearmament and reassertion of control over Lebanon's border with Israel over the past year.
On November 29, the government is planning to have Israel's parliamentarians reenact the General Assembly's decision to partition the Land of Israel on November 29, 1947 and so promote the fiction that Israel owes its existence to the UN. The government has asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to preside over the session.
In the real world, the UN is a hostile institution controlled by tyrannies that works actively to delegitimize Israel's right to exist. To this end, next week, the UN will convene two anti-Israel forums in Europe. First, the European Parliament will host an anti-Israel hate fest sponsored by the UN's Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People.
Second, in Geneva, the UN will convene the first planning session for its second anti-racism conference scheduled to take place in 2009. That the conference will be a reenactment of the anti-Semitic orgy of hatred which took place in Durban, South Africa in 2001 is made clear by the fact that Libya is chairing the planning session. Iran, Cuba and Pakistan are all members of the planning committee.
FANTASIES ARE alluring. Peddling them can even get you elected. But the majority of Americans who reject fantasy as a basis for making real world decisions should take heed of Israel's example.
That example shows that despite the fantasists' fervent efforts to smother it, reality never goes away. Sooner or later, it mugs you. Sometimes, all it does is pick your pocket. But the longer you ignore it, the more dangerous it becomes.
This article can also be read at http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1187779147427&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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