By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies
Three Hamas militants were killed and five were wounded Saturday evening in clashes with a Fatah-related family hours after Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas declared Hamas security forces in Gaza illegal.
The militants, all members of the the Diri family, were killed in an exchange of fire between Hamas and members of the Durmush family, some of whom are affiliated with Fatah, in the Sabra neighborhood of Gaza City.
Four Hamas militants were kidnapped during the incident.
Another member of Hamas was kidnapped in a separate in the Gaza Strip. No further details were available. Earlier, two Hamas officials were kidnapped in separate incidents in the West Bank.
In Nablus, an An- Najah National University lecturer affiliated with Hamas was wounded by six militants apparently belonging to Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.
The lecturer, Marwan Kadoumi, was shot in his legs when the militants entered his home. He was evacuated to the hospital in moderate condition.
Earlier Saturday, pro-Fatah gunmen attacked Hamas officials in two separate incidents in the West Bank, security officials said.
In the first incident, gunmen stopped the car of Nablus' deputy mayor, Mahdi al-Khamdali of Hamas, pulled him out and took him away in a separate car, security officials said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the officials said they believed the kidnappers were supporters of the rival Fatah group.
In Ramallah, meanwhile, gunmen stormed the offices of the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, shot the office manager, Ihab Suliman, in the legs and took him away, Palestinian security officials said. The man, also a Hamas supporter, was released in a nearby town and hospitalized, the officials said.
Fighting between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas has surged since talks on forming a unity government collapsed and Abbas called for early parliamentary and presidential elections. Hamas accused Abbas of mounting a coup.
Late Saturday, Abbas' office said he spoke to United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, briefing her on the current situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip ahead of her upcoming visit.
Abbas says Hamas security force in Gaza is illegal In a statement released on Saturday, Abbas declared that Hamas security forces in Gaza not integrated with PA forces would now be considered illegal.
Abbas made the announcement two days after members of the Hamas force attacked the home of a senior security commander in Gaza, killing the man and seven of his bodyguards. The man was a member of the Preventive Security force, which is loyal to Abbas' Fatah party.
"In light of continued security chaos and assassinations that got to a number of our fighters ... and in light of the failure of existing agencies and security apparatuses in imposing law and order and protecting the security of the citizens, President Mahmoud Abbas decided to reshuffle the security forces and its leadership and to consider the (Hamas) executive force, officers and members, illegal and outside the law," Abbas' office said in a statement.
With Abbas, who was elected in a separate presidential vote, claiming authority over most of the security forces, Hamas last year formed its own unit, known as the "Executive Force."
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas backed the Executive Force and accused Abbas of deepening the rift between the two camps.
"I'm completely convinced that there are those who don't want the Palestinian scene to enjoy calm and stability or to create the appropriate atmosphere for starting serious and deep dialogue aimed at reaching a national unity government," he said.
Members of the black-clad Hamas militia are visible throughout Gaza, and have periodically clashed with the existing pro-Fatah security forces.
More than two dozen people have been killed in the latest wave of factional violence, which erupted early last month. Thursday's attack on the Fatah commander's home in northern Gaza was the bloodiest single battle in the standoff to date.
Abbas has agreed in recent months to integrate the Hamas unit into existing security forces. But those efforts have failed to make progress.
In his statement Saturday, Abbas reiterated the offer but said he would not wait forever. "It will be dealt with accordingly so long as it is not immediately folded into the legal security forces," Abbas said.
Shortly after Abbas's statement was made public, Hamas vowed to double the size of the executive force to 12,000 personnel.
"A decision was taken to increase the number of the executive force to 12,000," said Islam Shahwan, a spokesman of the unit.
"We call upon all sincere citizens to prepare themselves to join the force," Shahwan added.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum called Abbas' announcement "misplaced and useless," while Khaled Abu Hilal, spokesman for the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry, accused Abbas of giving a "green light" for attacks on Hamas security men. The militia reports to the Interior Ministry.
Abu Hilal called Abbas' decision hasty, saying it was "a green light to those who seek to shed the blood of the Executive Force members." The unit has repeatedly clashed with rival security forces loyal to Abbas' Fatah movement in recent weeks.
Al-Aksa Martyrs Bridgades force strike in Hebron Earlier on Saturday, Gunmen from the Fatah-linked Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades forced a strike in the West Bank city of Hebron, preventing stores from opening and clearing the streets of traffic.
The militants forced the strike as a protest against recent attacks by Hamas on its members in the Gaza Strip that have left a number of people dead in recent days in factional fighting between the two groups.
In the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday, unknown assailants burned the house of Mohammed Ah-Sharafi, a member of the Hamas faction in the Palestinian parliament. In response, Hamas members have threatened to burn the house of Fatah cabinet member Sufian Abu zeida.
Hamas cleric gunned down in Gaza A local religious leader who was a frequent critic of the Islamic militant group Hamas was killed in a drive-by shooting Friday as he walked out of a Gaza mosque, witnesses and medical officials said.
Fatah accused Hamas of killing the cleric, saying in a statement: "Sheik Nasar was killed after he came out of the mosque where he criticized Hamas after the crime committed by some of its gunmen yesterday."
Hamas officials said they were investigating the killing. Nasar's assailants pulled up to him in a white car and sped away after the shooting, witnesses said.
Nasar, 50, was not openly affiliated with any political party, but he was a well-known figure in the refugee camp and often preached against Hamas. Shortly before the shooting, Nasar had criticized Thursday's bloody attack on the home of Col. Mohammed Ghayeb, a top Fatah official in northern Gaza, witnesses said.
In his sermon, Nasar warned that God would punish the killers of Ghayeb and his bodyguards. He also said God would punish Palestinian rulers for not preventing the attack, said Jibril Awwar, a friend of the preacher who was lightly wounded in the shooting.
Nasar did not mention Hamas by name, but Awwar said the preacher's message was aimed at the group, which controls most of the Palestinian government.
Hamas: U.S. is funding a 'revolt' against our government Senior Hamas official Mushir al-Masri blamed the U.S. on Friday for attempting to promote a revolt against the Hamas government, after U.S. documents showed that the Bush administration will provide $86.4 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
"We demand that Abbas reject this U.S. policy, which is tearing the Palestinian people apart," he said.
The new policy would expand U.S. involvement in Abbas' power struggle with Hamas.
The U.S. money will be used to "assist the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling PA commitments under the road map to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza," a U.S. government document obtained by Reuters said.
Speaking to reporters after Friday prayers in Gaza City, Haniyeh urged Palestinians not to let the violence spill over to the West Bank and to focus on fighting Israel. "Our fight is not an internal one, it's against the occupation," Haniyeh said.
Haniyeh's words were echoed by senior West Bank Fatah official Jibril Rajoub, speaking in the town of Bil'in to supporters celebrating the movement's 42nd anniversary.
"Our battle with Hamas is not a battle of assassination, kidnapping or revenge. Our battle with Hamas is a democratic moral battle," he told a crowd of about 100. "Our battle is with the occupation, not with each other."
Thousands of Palestinians carried bodies draped in yellow flags through pouring rain Friday in a funeral procession for seven Fatah men killed in the bloodiest single battle in weeks of factional fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Dozens of Fatah gunmen marched in the procession, firing in the air and calling for vengeance against the rival Hamas group, which is locked in a power struggle with Fatah over control of the Palestinian government.
Eighth Palestinian dies from wounds sustained in Thursday's attack A Fatah security man on Friday died of wounds sustained in a battle against Hamas militants the previous day, medical officials said, raising the death toll to eight in the bloodiest single battle in weeks of factional fighting in the Gaza Strip.
The bodyguard had been wounded in a Thursday's assault by Hamas gunman on the home of a top Fatah security official. The official and six other bodyguards were killed in Thursday's fighting.
Israeli retaliations had to be stopped not only out of consideration for Palestinian civilian casualties, but because they were endangering Israel, exacerbating the conflict and threatening our international position, while at the same time creating the appetite for more and bigger rocket attacks. Both of you seem to have missed that point.
On the one hand:
The government has a supreme and overriding moral responsibilty to protect the welfare of its citizens and to make it possible for them to live normal lives without fear for their physical safety. Aaron was raising that point, and therefore the "stress" that is caused or not caused is irrelevant. The purpose of military action or diplomatic action would not be to relieve stress, but to protect the physical welfare of the people of Sderot, Ashkelon (and later Ashdod and Tel-Aviv?). The rockets have killed at least 8 people. They have maimed many more. Probabilities don't matter if you or your child are the one who got killed or lost two legs.
On the other hand:
The responsibility of the government extends to all of its citizens and the means needed to protect those citizens are not necessarily military. The military actions that Aaron favors were, in the judgement of the government, increasing the probability of further attacks rather than decreasing them, and by isolating Israel in the world, they were reducing our diplomatic alternatives and threatening the welfare of our citizens rather than guarding it. The Israeli military actions were being used, with considerable success, by the Hamas in their attempt to gain legitimacy in the eyes of the world, and lift the international boycott.
The enemy we are facing does not care about their own civilian casualties. Indeed, they strengthen their political position both domestically and abroad in proportion as Israel kills Palestinian civilians, who become "martyrs." Their terror actions are intentionally designed to elicit reactions from Israel that are strategically ineffective and generate civilian casualities among the Palestinians, "martyrs" who can be used to help fuel extremism, and who serve as examples of the "evil" nature of the Zionist enemy.
From the point of view of military ethics, there is certainly no justification for a policy that does not increase the security of our own citizens, and in fact causes a deterioration in our situation, and at the same time endangers enemy civilians. It is an "own goal" in the same way that German unlimited u-boat warfare in World War I did not curtail British shipping, but instead dragged the United States into the war.
Even if you have no other medicines around, do not take rat poison to cure a headache. We do not have a good solution to the problem. In the absence of such a solution, however frustrating, it is not helpful to advocate that we "just do something," because that "something" exacerbates the situation and increases the danger to us , rather than reducing it.
Subject: Response by Prof. Asa Kasher to IMRA on follow up to "IDF ethicist: Restraint policy is legit" article
Response by Prof. Asa Kasher to IMRA on follow up to "IDF ethicist: Restraint policy is legit" article 6 January 2007
Dear Dr Lerner:
Thank you for your message [IMRA: repeated below].
Here is my detailed reply. You may use it on the condition that it is quoted in full and without any alteration.
The JP article did not convey the complexity of the argument.
FACTS:
Rockets sent from the Gaza strip to Israel are attacks on Israel.
Some of the rockets kill or wound Israelis. The chances of being hit are small.
The regular fear of the rockets creates stress among many people.
POLICY:
The policy of restraint is not a policy of doing nothing.
It allows, even requires, that targeted attacks on people who launch rockets take place, even if there is a danger of collateral damage;
It does not allow a military activity of concurring parts of the Gaza strip in pursuit of launchers of rockets.
ARGUMENTS:
1. In addition to targeted attacks and a broad military activity, there is the method of shelling areas from which rockets are sometimes launched. There is probable collateral damage when this method is used.
It is well known that this method does not solve the problem of rockets.
It is perhaps of some benefit given the stress of the people and it shows the State of Israel does not remain indifferent when attacked.
Since it does not help in solving the problem, then as far as the problem is concerned it is of a symbolic nature solely. Its role in showing the state does not remain indifferent is also symbolic.
Moral stance 1: You don't kill people who do not threaten you for symbolic purposes.
Moral stance 2: Even if it help solving the problem of stress, it is wrong. You don't kill people who do not threaten you in order to solve problems of stress.
Moral stance 3: A broad military operation is justified only as last resort. The efforts to solve the problem without such an operation is something the states owes, first and foremost, to its combatants, given the assumption that in such an operation Israeli combatants might get killed. If the restraint policy is a policy of trying to solve the problem in other ways, assuming that if they fail the military option would be used, then it is fully justified.
You will see from this explanation how misguided were all the talkbacks that appear in reaction to the article.
Sincerely,
Asa Kasher
Prof. Asa Kasher Laura Schwarz-Kipp Professor of Professional Ethics and Philosophy of Practice and Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Tel-Aviv University Academic Advisor, IDF College of National Defense Editor, PHILOSOPHIA (Springer) -------------------
From: Dr. Aaron Lerner To: Prof. Asa Kasher Subject: Follow up question to your recent interview in the Jerusalem Post Date: Wed, 03 Jan 2007 13:10:15 +0200
Dear Professor Kasher,
I read with great interest your recent interview published in The Jerusalem Post (portion repeated below).
In the interview it would appear that the low probability that a given rocket launching would actually kill Israelis was weighed against the probability that Palestinian human shields would be killed by Israeli military action to try and stop the Palestinian attack, with the conclusion being that the government could justify its policy (at the time) of not shooting at Palestinian rocket teams.
I was wondering how you see factoring in the ramifications of the "restraint policy" vis-a-vis deterrence and the risk that restraint could ultimately lead to a considerably greater conflagration with the potential for casualties of a magnitude far greater than those involved in the Kassam attacks.
By the same token, when one considers the morality of the current restraint, how does one take into account the potential cost in lives in the next round of conflict thanks to Palestinian exploitation of the "window of opportunity" the Israeli government is providing to Palestinian forces to arm themselves with both large quantities of weapons as well as more accurate and effective rockets.
With your permission I would like to share your response with our readers.
The government's policy of restraint regarding Kassam rocket launchings from Gaza is legitimate from an ethical perspective, Prof. Asa Kasher said this week in an exclusive interview with The Jerusalem Post.
"The chances that a Kassam rocket will kill are relatively low compared to a suicide bombing," said Kasher, co-author of the IDF code of ethics.
"Therefore, use of targeted killings to prevent terrorist attacks that threaten the lives of dozens of Israelis is an obligation of the state that has nothing to do with political policy decisions. But the decision to exercise restraint against Kassam rocket launchings is a legitimate policy decision."
Kasher, professor of professional ethics at Tel Aviv University and academic adviser at the IDF College of National Defense, added, however, that each Kassam rocket that landed on Israeli territory was an attack on the State of Israel. He also said the government had a moral responsibility to combat the fears of its residents in the south who were threatened by the Kassam rockets.
-------------------------------------------- IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis Website: www.imra.org.il
Egyptian officials at the Rafah crossing allowed Palestinian Authority President Ismail Haniyeh to smuggle 20 million dollars into the Gaza Strip when he returned from the haj pilgrimage on Thursday, Israel Radio reported Saturday.
The Israel Radio report cited comments made to the Egyptian newspaper El-Ha'aram by an Egyptian customs authority official at the Rafah crossing.
According to the official, Haniyeh "acted lawfully" by declaring the sum of cash in his possession on the Egyptian side of the crossing.
However, European officials charged with monitoring the terminal said to Israel Radio that the Egyptians stated that the PA president was not carrying foreign currency. more...
During their meeting in Sharm el-Sheik last week, President Hosni Mubarak reportedly told Prime Minister Olmert that Egyptian law does not obligate individuals to declare the amount of money in their possession when they leave the country.
A government minister told Israel Radio that Olmert is expected to raise the subject of the cash smuggling when the cabinet convenes its weekly meeting on Sunday.
The EU is a neutral, third party monitor at the Rafah crossing. It has a mandate to report on activity at the crossing, but it has no authority to impose conditions. The issue of cash smuggling through the Rafah crossing is of particular concern to the Israelis and to Western governments who fear the funds are going to support terrorism either directly or through the Hamas government.
Gen. Pietro Pistolese, head of the European Union's monitoring mission in Rafah, told reporters on December 21 that the Palestinian Authority's Fatah forces, which operate that border crossing, have committed themselves to resolving the problem of cash smuggling into Gaza.
'It's not an agreement, it's a commitment. This commitment was expressed yesterday morning [December 20] at the committee of Palestinians, Israelis and EU officials who met to discuss issues relating to the border crossing,' Pistolese said.
Pistolese said the EU knew of some $60 million in cash that had passed through the Rafah border crossing. While Pistolese spoke in strong language about the need to stop the flow of money, he said that what had been secured from the Palestinians was a commitment to finding a solution rather than an agreement to stop the smuggling all together.
Pistoles's comments came a week after Haniyeh crossed was barred entry for hours by Israel because he was apparently carrying some $35 million in cash in his luggage. His delayed entry sparked a series of clashes on the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing that left 18 people wounded.
The casualties occurred when Hamas gunmen attacked the terminal and exchanged gunfire with Palestinian Authority security personnel linked to Fatah and with Egyptian security personnel.
Hizbullah officials recently made surprising promises to the family members of Lebanese prisoner, Samir Kuntar, according to which he would be released from Israeli prison "very soon".
The militia's chief also declared that if Kuntar would not be released Hizbullah would not negotiate any exchange whatsoever. In the past, Hizbullah regarded releasing Kuntar as an obligatory precondition for any future prisoner exchange deal with Israel. more...
Kuntar, the longest serving confirmed Lebanese prisoner in jail in Israel, is serving multiple life terms for the killing of three members of the Haran family and that of policeman Eliyahu Shahar in a raid on Nahariya in 1979.
A Hizbullah delegation recently met Kuntar's family in the city of Abiya. The Lebanese Sheikh who came with the envoy, Sheikh Atalla Hamoud, told Kuntar's family that his release would happen very soon. "Your meeting with us is at hand," he turned to Kuntar in the meeting with his family members.
During the meeting Kuntar's brother, Bassam, who in recent years has been leading the campaign to release his brother, thanked the Lebanese prisoners captured during the recent Lebanon War and the "Shahids who defeated the enemy."
Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah said many times in the past that releasing Kuntar is one of his top priorities. Last April Nasrallah made a speech in which he promised to continue resistance to Israel and Jihad actions until Kuntar's release.
"You will return by the force of the resistance's guns, the resistance's blood and the resistance's actions. I want to promise you and your brothers that when we practice Jihad we rely on our right to release our prisoners by any means possible," Nasrallah said.
After the kidnapping of the two IDF soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, in July 2006, Nasrallah held a press conference in which he repeated his commitment to release Kuntar in a prisoner exchange deal with Israel.
In August, when asked whether Israel might free Kuntar in an exchange deal, a senior Israeli government source did not rule this out, but said Israel would have to ascertain exactly 'what is being offered.' He declined to elaborate, but it is possible that this may have been a reference to the possible inclusion in a deal of information on missing Israeli airman Ron Arad.
Israel has previously shown a readiness to free Kuntar in the context of a deal involving news about Arad. Indeed, it was reported that Kuntar would be released in the second phase of a German-mediated prisoner deal with Hizbullah in 2004, in exchange for information on Arad.
So what we are looking at, above all, is a tremendous loathing for our lives here - as if the ongoing conflict, the poverty, and the breakdown of the state were all here when our parents arrived, and not the product of their immigration, or an outcome of the Western attitude toward Jews over hundreds of years.
What was here when my parents "arrived" was a Turkish empire, and there was a lot more poverty. What is he talking about?
Jews are part of the western world and Western culture. The desire of Jews to appreciate and understand Christian culture is no stranger than the teaching of the Illiad and the Oddysey in classical literature courses. It has nothing to do with the occupation.
On Christmas eve, many Hebrew-speaking Jewish couples could be seen coming out of church in Jaffa after midnight mass. It is highly unlikely that you would find their counterparts in the West, i.e., non-Jews of the same social standing and educational level, going to any church on Christmas. Midnight mass in the churches of the West, at least in those countries that pride themselves on being secular, is only meant for the religious, specifically religious Christians. For everyone else, Christmas is a family event characterized by a mixture of semi-bourgeois and age-old semi-religious customs.
More...
This has nothing to do with loving the music of Bach or rushing into the arms of Jesus, the son of Mary, as born-again Christians.
The Israeli eagerness to embrace Christian culture, as part of Western life, is not something sudden. It has been creeping slowly into Israeli culture, with a kind of historical cunning. It is enough to think about funeral rites in Europe, presided over by priests, while secular Jews in Israel stubbornly refuse to be buried in a Jewish service that includes the mourner's kaddish and traditional graveside prayers.
Sometimes, this Israeli craving for things Christian has a colonial aspect. Every week we watch people on TV discussing the percentage of Muslim citizens in Europe. Sometimes, it feels as if Israeli television anchors have become partners to the infamous dream of Europe as a "continent free of non-Christians."
A generation after Europe set out to destroy its non-Christians, summing up many long years of hatred, discourse in the West on the subject of its Judeo-Christian past has become one of the most consensual lies. Ehud Barak, in an interview with Benny Morris published in The New York Review of Books in June 2002, went as far as to say that Arabs "don't suffer from the problem of telling lies that exists in Judeo-Christian culture."
It would be wrong to assume that this "slow Christianizing" of Jewish intellectuals is linked only to a pursuit of "Western values" in the face of the mounting hatred of Islam, here and in the West. The roots of this strange self-negation must be sought in the history of the Jewish people in the last 150 years. When the first "enlightened Jews," as they are called today, accepted the imperative to "be a human being outside and a Jew at home," the Jews took on a form of colonized existence. In European enlightenment terms, Jews (and now Muslims) were supposed to shed their Judaism when they mingled with the world. To be a "human being" was to be a "Christian," of course, or to be what the West considered a secular person.
A Christian is never asked to be "a human being outside and a Christian at home." What is sometimes called, in our nationalist kitsch, "self-hatred" is deeply implanted within us because we swallowed the European bait: To be a human being means to look like them.
Israelis who watch non-Western clothing being ridiculed in the European media and feel a certain relief have clearly forgotten those pictures in Yad Vashem of Jewish men having their sidecurls snipped off. But it is worth remembering that identifying modernity with "outward appearance" is related to that same self-hatred.
Women who wear head-coverings and wigs, and men who grow sidecurls, interfere with our desire to belong to the West.
This hatred reached an all-time high in the way people viewed Shas. Some of it was manifested in the sudden surge of solidarity between homophobes and homosexuals during the outcry over the gay pride parade.
Obviously, not all Shas-haters go to church on Christmas, and not all of those who go to church on Christmas have a soft spot for American missionaries.
It is not a homogeneous trend. These are symptoms of a profound ignorance of the "Jewish condition," or the situation we are living in, to be more exact.
The number of Jewish Israelis refusing to circumcise their sons is probably not even one percentage, no matter how "secular" they are.
So what we are looking at, above all, is a tremendous loathing for our lives here - as if the ongoing conflict, the poverty, and the breakdown of the state were all here when our parents arrived, and not the product of their immigration, or an outcome of the Western attitude toward Jews over hundreds of years.
By DINA KRAFT KIBBUTZ MASHABBE SADE, Israel The day's coppery last light reflects off the backs of sea bass swimming in fish ponds lined in neat rows on this desert farm.
Fish farming in the desert may at first sound like an anomaly, but in Israel over the last decade a scientific hunch has turned into a bustling business.
...
Scientists here say they realized they were on to something when they found that brackish water drilled from underground desert aquifers hundreds of feet deep could be used to raise warm-water fish. The geothermal water, less than one-tenth as saline as sea water, free of pollutants and a toasty 98 degrees on average, proved an ideal match.
"It was not simple to convince people that growing fish in the desert makes sense," said Samuel Appelbaum, a professor and fish biologist at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the Sede Boqer campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
"It is important to stop with the reputation that arid land is nonfertile, useless land," said Professor Appelbaum, who pioneered the concept of desert aquaculture in Israel in the late 1980s. "We should consider arid land where subsurface water exists as land that has great opportunities, especially in food production because of the low level of competition on the land itself and because it gives opportunities to its inhabitants."
The next step in this country, where water is scarce and expensive, was to show farmers that they could later use the water in which the fish are raised to irrigate their crops in a system called double usage. The organic waste produced by the cultured fish makes the water especially useful, because it acts as fertilizer for the crops.
Fields watered by brackish water dot Israel's Negev and Arava Deserts in the south of the country, where they spread out like green blankets against a landscape of sand dunes and rocky outcrops. At Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade in the Negev, the recycled water from the fish ponds is used to irrigate acres of olive and jojoba groves. Elsewhere it is also used for irrigating date palms and alfalfa.
The chain of multiple users for the water is potentially a model that can be copied, especially in arid third world countries where farmers struggle to produce crops, and Israeli scientists have recently been peddling their ideas abroad.
Dry lands cover about 40 percent of the planet, and the people who live on them are often among the poorest in the world. Scientists are working to share the desert aquaculture technology they fine-tuned here with Tanzania, India, Australia and China, among others. (Similar methods of fish farming are also being used in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona.)
"Each farm could run itself, which is important in the developing world," said Alon Tal, a leading Israeli environmental activist who recently organized a conference on desertification, with the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and Ben-Gurion University, that brought policy makers and scientists from 30 countries to Israel.
"A whole village could adopt such a system," Dr. Tal added.
At the conference, Gregoire de Kalbermatten, deputy secretary general of the antidesertification group at the United Nations, said, "We need to learn from the resilience of Israel in developing dry lands."
Israel, long heralded for its agricultural success in the desert through innovative technologies like drip irrigation, has found ways to use low-quality water and what is considered terrible soil to grow produce like sweet cherry tomatoes, peppers, asparagus and melon, marketing much of it abroad to Europe, especially during winter.
"Most development is still driven by the Zionist ethos that the desert was some mistake of God that we have to correct and make the desert bloom," said Uriel Safriel, an ecology professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The history of fish-farming in nondesert areas here, mostly in the Galilee region near the sea, dates back to the late 1920s, before Israel was established as a state. At the time, the country was extremely poor and meat was considered a luxury. But fish was a cheap food source, so fish farms were set up on several kibbutzim in the Galilee.
The early Jewish farmers were mostly Eastern European, and, Professor Safriel said, "they only knew gefilte fish, so they grew carp." Eventually they expanded to other varieties of fish including tilapia, striped bass and mullet, as well as ornamental fish.
The past decade has seen the establishment of about 15 fish farms producing both edible and ornamental fish in the Negev and Arava Deserts.
Fish farming, meanwhile, has become more lucrative worldwide as people seek more fish in their diet for better health, and ocean fisheries increasingly are being depleted.
The practice is not without critics, who say it can harm the environment and the fish. In Israel there was a decision by the government to stop fish farming in the Red Sea near the southern city of Eilat by 2008 because it was deemed damaging to nearby coral reefs.
Some also argue that the industry is not sustainable in the long term because most of the fish that are farmed are carnivorous and must be fed a protein-rich diet of other fish, usually caught in the wild. Another criticism is that large numbers of fish are kept in relatively small areas,
leading to a higher risk of disease.
Professor Appelbaum said the controversy surrounding fish farming in ocean areas does not apply to desert aquaculture, which is in an isolated, controlled area, with much less competition for resources.
On Kibbutz Mashabbe Sade, Amit Ziv runs a fish farm, raising about 15,000 fish at a time. Up to 500,000 cubic meters of water from the fish ponds is recycled for irrigation every year.
"It's a matter of better efficiency," said Mr. Ziv, who pays about 24 cents a cubic meter for water, a government-subsidized rate. "In an area where there is lack of water, being able to use it twice over is a huge advantage." Mr. Ziv, 39, said there are benefits to raising fish in the desert: the dryness translates to fewer insects and less mold and disease. He also said the warm air makes it easier to keep the pools temperate.
He remembers the stories his parents, who, along with other founders of the kibbutz in 1948, would tell of having to travel long days to get to the fields of the communal farm. They then tilled closer to central Israel, because at the time the local arid ground was thought to be impossible to farm.
"Now," he said, pointing toward the desert-grown crops, "the fields are all here." Mr. Ziv and his dog turned back toward the fish ponds stretched out under green plastic hothouse canopies. It was time to prepare for a shipment of hatchlings that was to arrive the next day.
Turkey is conducting negotiations with Israel, the US and the UN in an attempt to resolve the Shaba Farms issue, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said after meeting his Lebanese counterpart, Faud Saniora, in Beirut on Wednesday.
Erdogan said that Ankara supported the transfer of the territory to UN forces, but stressed that the decision was in Israel's hands.
Turkey's prime minister visited Lebanon for talks with rival Lebanese leaders on the embattled country's deepening political crisis.
He warned that growing sectarian tensions in Lebanon will affect the entire Middle East if left unchecked and offered to mediate in the political crisis if asked by rival factions.
"I told Saniora that sectarian differences will leave repercussions on the region," Erdogan told reporters after the meeting between the two leaders.
"I also told him that all parties in Lebanon and all states in the region must act to solve this problem," Erdogan said, stressing that a solution to the Lebanese crisis should be reached through dialogue.
Erdogan's visit came as the growing political and sectarian tensions among Lebanese factions threaten to tear the country apart. It also came more than a week after Arab League Chief Amr Moussa said that his efforts have failed to reach a solution to the crisis.
Tensions between pro- and anti-Syrian groups erupted when six pro-Hizbullah Cabinet ministers resigned in November after Saniora rejected their demand for a new national unity government that would give Hizbullah and its allies a veto power on key Cabinet decisions.
Erdogan met Saniora who has been living at his office complex in central Beirut amid a tight security cordon near the thousands of Hizbullah supporters and allies camping nearby.
Erdogan, speaking in Turkish, said Turkey was not mediating in the Lebanese crisis but was ready to do so if asked to help by feuding parties.
Saniora said because of its close ties with the Arab world, Turkey can play "an important role" in promoting a solution to the Lebanese crisis.
"We stressed on stability in Lebanon and its impact on the region," he said.
Before meeting with Lebanon's president and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, a Hizbullah ally, Erdogan flew by a Turkish military helicopter to southern Lebanon where he inspected Turkish troops serving with the UN peacekeeping force known as UNIFIL. He reviewed an honor guard, thanked troops for their service and had lunch with military officers.
Some 260 Turkish troops, deployed near the southern port city of Tyre, are helping rebuild bridges and roads damaged in last summer's war between Hizbullah and Israel. Turkish officials said that the total number of Turkish personnel in Lebanon would ultimately reach 681, including sailors and engineers.
Erdogan also said he will meet later Wednesday with legislator Mohammed Raad, head of Hizbullah's 11-member parliamentary bloc.
While Erdogan was meeting Saniora, thousands of Armenians, raising Lebanese and Armenian flags, gathered in the streets north of Beirut shouting slogans against the Turkish premier's visit, witnesses said. All shops in the Armenian neighborhood of Bourj Hammoud north of Beirut closed for a couple of hours.
"Turkey, Israel's strategic ally, cannot keep peace in Lebanon," read a placard by the protesters. The protesters dispersed peacefully but the demonstration caused a traffic jam on Beirut's northern highway.
Ahead of Erdogan's arrival, about 100 Armenian citizens, waving Lebanese flags, also gathered outside the Beirut airport to protest his visit.
In October, thousands from Lebanon's 80,000-100,000 strong Armenian community rallied in downtown Beirut to protest Turkish participation in the UN peacekeeping force because they blame Turkey's Ottoman rulers for the mass killing of Armenians in the early 20th century.
Turkey, a US ally and NATO's only predominantly Muslim member, has close ties to both Israel and Arab states.
In a stark statement published on Saturday Brigadier General Oded Tira observed, "President Bush lacks the political power to attack Iran. As an American strike in Iran is essential for our existence, we must help him pave the way by lobbying the Democratic Party (which is conducting itself foolishly) and US newspaper editors. We need to do this in order to turn the Iranian issue to a bipartisan one and unrelated to the Iraq failure."
Because of the dramatic loss of political power of the Bush-Cheney administration, General Tira urges the Israel Lobby to, "turn to Hillary Clinton and other potential presidential candidates in the Democratic Party so that they support immediate action by Bush against Iran."
In another move designed to strengthen Bush politically, General Tira urges the Israel Lobby to exert its influence on European countries so that, "Bush will not be isolated in the international arena again."
As if all of that Israel-lobbying in America and Europe were not enough, General Tira proposes an even more aggressive political tactic, "We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran. For our part, we must prepare an independent military strike by coordinating flights in Iraqi airspace with the US. We should also coordinate with Azerbaijan the use of airbases in its territory and also enlist the support of the Azeri minority in Iran. In addition, we must immediately start preparing for an Iranian response to an attack."
Based on the urgency of General Tira's extraordinary pleas, it is immediately apparent that he has been shocked by the turn of political events inside America. By this time, he has learned from official US sources that the long-anticipated attack against Iran has been shelved because of tectonic shifts in American politics.
Apparently, General Tira did not realize that President Bush has become the most deeply unpopular president in American history and that it was his subservience to the dictates of the Israel Lobby and its demands for wars against Iraq and Iran that led him into the political prison where he now finds himself isolated and impotent.
Neither does General Tira realize that the Republican Party is no longer unified in its support of President Bush's deeply unpopular war in Iraq or his plans for expanding the war by a sustained bombing campaign against Iran.
Since General Tira did not publish any remarks about the Iraq Study Group headed by former US Secretary of State, James Baker, he may be oblivious to the political facts now in place in 2007 America.
Instead of the bipartisan commitment to broaden Bush's unpopular war as General Tira proposes, there is now a broadening bipartisan movement to reign in the US losses in Iraq. No major American politician has voiced any enthusiasm for broadening Bush's war into Iran as General Tira beseeches the US to do.
General Tira's outburst suggests that the official channels for news and the analysis of public affairs in Israel are not working as efficiently as they should in the 21st century.
Perhaps, someone should provide the General with a subscription to Ha'aretz and the International Herald Tribune for starters.
Pay attention to Tzipi Livni. While it's difficult to notice the difference between the suit brands of our male politicians, Livni is emerging as the most interesting alternative. Even if it's difficult to believe that Kadima will survive, Livni conveys the sense that she is the only one in our leadership today who is starting to understand how to move Israel forward.
It is possible that the path she may be taking, from the diplomatic world to the country's premiership, may qualify her to succeed in the job more than her predecessors. She may be more qualified than those who reached the leadership through the military path and turned to diplomacy only at old age (Rabin, Sharon) and more than Barak, who viewed diplomacy as a military trick. Her path certainly makes her more qualified than Olmert's and Peretz's political paths.
Livni was the first one who understood that if victory can be achieved in the Lebanon war, it can only be done in the diplomatic arena, and argued that the military campaign was only meant to leverage the diplomatic process. As foreign minister she hears, first hand, what the entire world has been telling us, and she has been wise enough to translate it to Hebrew: The Middle East conflict has no military solution, only a diplomatic one.
The fact that Olmert erred when he attempted to limit her, after she demanded to launch talks following the first night of fighting, is clear to everyone by now. Time will tell how many more such errors he'll be making while trying to curb her in the future.
For now we can be comforted by the realization of the importance of her views being voiced in the male-dominated decision-making forums. When we know where too much testosterone got us, it's pleasant to hear that "not only in the war, but also in all kinds of discussions I hear arguments between generals and admirals and I tell them: Boys, stop."
It's true that at the moment it appears that the new alliance between Gaydamak and Netanyahu will win the next elections, yet the new civilian pact offered by Livni may signal that we may have a "fight" here after all.
Who knows, maybe we'll discover that "we've had enough," and that we woke up this morning to a new year that will lead us to a situation where the "boys stop."
In a December 28, 2006 interview with the Iranian website Baztab, which is affiliated with Iranian Expediency Council Secretary Mohsen Rezai, Iranian Presidential Advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin said that Hitler was Jewish, and that Hitler's policies were aimed at bringing about the establishment of a Jewish state. Ramin added that Hitler acted under the influence of his powerful Jewish associates and in cooperation with Britain, since the latter shared his desire to force the Jews out of Europe.(1)
Ramin was recently appointed secretary-general of the new "world foundation for Holocaust Studies" established at the Iranian Holocaust Denial Conference in December.(2)
The following are excerpts from the interview:(3)
Adolf Hitler... Developed an Aversion to Judaism Because His Mother Was a Jewish Whore
"The Bolshevik Soviet government in Lenin's time, and later, in Stalin's - both of whom were Jewish, though they presented themselves as Marxists and atheists... - was one of the forces that, until the Second World War, cooperated with Hitler in promoting the idea of establishing the State of Israel. A book that was published about this... - titled Adolf Hitler, Founder of Israel by Hennecke Kardel, a German born in 1922 - proves that Hitler was Jewish, and that his grandmother was a Jewish prostitute. [Hitler's] father went by his mother's Jewish name until he was 40, and later changed his surname to Hitler.
"Adolf Hitler himself developed an aversion to Judaism because his mother was a Jewish whore. He first received [negative] information about the Jews in an Austrian monastery, (the book presents details and pictures of it), and from then on, he [tried] to escape his Judaism.
"Thus... Hitler simultaneously developed both feelings of solidarity with Judaism and feelings of hatred towards it, and this emotional ambivalence shaped his behavior towards the Jews. On the one hand, his entire family, the people who shared his views, and his associates who brought him into power and stood by him to the last - including his lovers and his personal doctor - were [all] Jewish. On the other hand, he welcomed the policy of expelling the Jews from Central Europe for two other reasons: Firstly, the establishment of a Jewish government in Palestine was an aspiration of the rich and influential Jews who surrounded him. Secondly, exiling the Jews from Europe and Germany was a general and historical demand of the Western Christian nations. With the full support of the British, and in coordination with them, Hitler addressed this general demand and [thereby] managed to gain widespread popularity in Europe. Obviously, publishing writings and information of this sort is forbidden in Germany and in the West...
"The Zionists recently... destroyed many documents and papers pertaining to the period before the war, which contained authentic statistics and figures regarding the Jews, such as how many Jews there were, where they [lived] and how they operated. One of the places that was destroyed completely and burned [to the ground] - and which... contained the most valuable documents pertaining to this matter - was the [building of] the newspaper Pravda, which had been published in Moscow for 80 years. On February 10, 2006, the building was set ablaze, and its entire archive, with all its back issues and photographs, was burned and destroyed, and not a trace of it was left. Nobody - not a single news agency anywhere in the world - investigated this historical crime or discussed it extensively..."
My Suggestion Was to Establish an NGO, in Iran or Elsewhere, [To] Reexamine [the Holocaust]... with the Help of International Forums
"My suggestion was to establish an NGO, in Iran or elsewhere, that would reexamine this issue and investigate it with the help of international forums. But after making enquiries, we saw that nobody in the [entire] world had the courage to raise this issue and investigate it. Anyone who speaks or publishes anything about it is silenced immediately, before [the issue] can be examined. [That is why] we got the idea of organizing a non-governmental conference with the support of the Iranian government, but we [subsequently] discovered that nobody in the world would respond to it, and that it was totally ignored in the news.
"Naturally, I do not want us to take a one-sided view of the Holocaust, and to deny it out of hand, since we do not have sufficient and complete information about it. The purpose of the conference was to question the order that the West has imposed upon us in this manner..."
Endnotes: (1) For more Holocaust denial by Mohammad Ali Ramin, see MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1186, "Iranian Presidential Advisor Mohammad Ali Ramin: 'The Resolution of the Holocaust Issue Will End in the Destruction of Israel,'" June 15, 2006, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP118606; for more on Iran's use of Holocaust denial, see MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 307, "The Role of Holocaust Denial in the Ideology and Strategy of The Iranian Regime," December 15, 2006, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=ia&ID=IA30706. (2) MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1397, "Iran Holocaust Denial Conference Announces Plan to Establish World Foundation for Holocaust Studies," December 15, 2006, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP139706. (3) Baztab, December 28, 2006.
********************* The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.
MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.
The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) P.O. Box 27837, Washington, DC 20038-7837 Phone: (202) 955-9070 Fax: (202) 955-9077 E-Mail: memri@memri.org Search previous MEMRI publications at www.memri.org
Israel wants to increase the likelihood of the U.S. deploying emergency missile defense systems within Israeli territory.
The heads of the Homa anti-missile project in the Defense Ministry asked the U.S. Department of Defense about two months ago for information on two advanced defense systems being developed in the U.S.: The ground-based Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, and a new model of the Aegis naval defense system.
According to a Defense Ministry source, the request for information was aimed at promoting the possibility of an "operational link" between the Israeli and U.S. defense systems, as a continuation of an ongoing project.
The U.S. Army has deployed Patriot missile batteries in Israel on a number of occasions. The American-made missiles were integrated into Israel's anti-aircraft and ground-to-ground missile defense systems and were used in exercises in combination with Israel's Arrow missile system.
The Defense Ministry source said that development and manufacture of Arrow missiles will continue over the coming years.
"The Arrow is a good system," the source said, "its performance is good and we are satisfied with it. We do not intend to halt development and manufacture and intend to continue to develop the Arrow's capabilities in accordance with the security threats."
The request for information from the U.S. was intended, according to the same source, "in the event that the American systems are deployed in Israel for reinforcement.
"We want to be there, as the American systems go into service, in the event that a foreign-policy decision is taken to deploy them in Israel, as happened in the past with the Patriot missiles.
"We want to know what they are developing and have asked for performance data, but it is classified information and a special permit is needed in order to receive it."
The Homa development team, headed by Aryeh Herzog, also requested, inter alia, to link the radar warning on the Aegis ships to the Israeli defense apparatus, in time of need.
Defense Ministry officials are currently waiting for an American response to the request for information.
The Jerusalem Post comments on the passing of the year 2006: "Nationally, 2006 was not a good year. It will be remembered as the year of the second war in Lebanon, the first war much of our nation felt it had lost. Internationally, there is also a sense that the West is not winning, and may be losing, the war against Islamo-fascism that was joined in earnest after the 9/11 attacks five years ago."
Haaretz writes: "The awarding of the Tel Aviv light rail tender to the MTS group, headed by Africa Israel, ostensibly heralds a new age of transportation. In practice, the company faces many obstacles. An effective transit system is critical in Tel Aviv, to open up the traffic blockages that exact a high economic price in Israel's urban center. There is still time to consider building a subway, and to plan a multi-branch underground system whose speed and convenience will encourage more people to give up their cars within the city. The underground rail system could still change from being merely a means of transport into the agent of historic, transportational and economic change."
Two papers comment on the Megidor Committee's recommendations on electoral reform, which were released yesterday:
Yediot Ahronot fears that the recommendations will be ignored unless, "a good and important group of VIPs in the State of Israel," pushes for them vigorously and vocally. The editors assert that, "Maybe not all of the recommendations are good. Maybe not all of them could be implemented. But there is practically no doubt that adopting them would, at least partially, stop the political corruption, distance trouble-makers from the party primaries and lead to better representation for the little guy."
Hatzofeh, in its second editorial, hopes that the recommendations will be implemented quickly. However, the editors remark that, "Usually, we are used to the conclusions of committees like this gathering dust in the State Archives and it somehow seems that this will also be the fate of the Megidor Committee recommendations."
Yediot Aharonot, in its second editorial, says that after President Katsav is indicted, the media will have to do a thorough soul-searching for having, "crucified him, way before the severity of the accusations became clear; they did not give him a chance." The editors contend that the foregoing is valid even if he is convicted and imprisoned.
Hatzofeh complains that "Approximately half of the pupils who are eligible - by law - for a daily hot meal are not receiving it due to the financial distress of the local councils."
Yediot Aharonot, in its third editorial, suggests that the New Year celebrations in Sydney were so carefree because the Australians don't have enemies like ours.
Yediot Aharonot, in its fourth editorial, eulogizes Israeli soccer legend Ya'akov Khodorov, who passed away Sunday morning at age 79.
[Eitan Haber and Nitzan Keidar wrote today's editorials in Yediot Aharonot and Hatzofeh, respectively.]
Special Dispatch-Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project January 3, 2007 No. 1406
American Professor Natana DeLong-Bas: 'I Do Not Find Any Evidence that Would Make Me Agree that Osama bin Laden Was Behind the Attack on the Twin Towers'
On December 21, 2006, the London daily Al-Sharq Al-Awsat published an interview with Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas, who taught this year in the Department of Theology at Boston College and in the Department of Near East and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University(1). In the interview, she said that Wahhabism is not extremism and that the Muslim Brotherhood and Sayyed Qutb have nothing to do with jihadism. Dr. DeLong-Bas also indicated that there may be a Western conspiracy against the Arab and Islamic world, and said that she knows of no evidence that Osama bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks.
In 2004, DeLong-Bas published her doctoral dissertation in book form under the title Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad. This book, published by the Oxford University Press, has been highly recommended by the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C.(2)&nb
According to the book's jacket, "Ibn al-Wahhab was not the godfather of contemporary terrorist movements. Rather, he was a voice of reform, reflecting mainstream eighteenth-century Islamic thought. His vision of Islamic society was based upon monotheism in which Muslims, Christians, and Jews were to enjoy peaceful co-existence and cooperative commercial treaty relations."
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas is a contributor to The Oxford Dictionary of Islam, The Encyclopedia of the Qur'an, and The Encyclopedia of the Islamic World.
The following are excerpts from the Al-Sharq Al-Awsat interview:(3)
"The Extremists in Saudi Arabia are a Mixture of a Number of Elements, and Their Extremism Does Not Stem From the Islamic Religion"
Q: "To begin with, why did you choose to discuss Sheikh Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Wahhab in your doctoral dissertation?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "We hear a lot of talk in the U.S. about 'Wahabbi Islam' and 'the Wahhabis,' but only in a negative way that depicts them as extremist terrorists and gunmen. [Even] before 9/11, Americans would speak about everyone who opposed the positions of the American government - whether we talk of Chechnya, Indonesia, or Palestine - as 'Wahhabis.' This was the main reason I chose to discuss Sheikh Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Wahhab, because I had a strong desire to know the meaning of the term 'Wahhabi Islam', and I could not find a single book that talked about Wahhabism and its meaning. This is why I though that it may be the right time to [write] a historical study about Sheikh [Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Wahhab] and about Wahhabism..."
Q: "Who do you think were the influences on the extremists in Saudi Arabia?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "The extremists in Saudi Arabia are a mixture of a number of elements, and their extremism does not stem from the Islamic religion, as some think. The issue is more complicated than that. The political conditions in the Islamic world, like the Palestinian issue, which has lasted 60 years, [the issue of] Iraq, and the American government's tying [the hands of] the U.N. [and preventing it] from adopting any resolution against Israel, have definitely added to the Muslim youth's state of frustration, which then pushes them to - as they understand it - help their brothers do away with the aggression against them, in the various Islamic countries... [This is happening] at a time in which all political options have been closed off. That is why I believe that religion has nothing to do with this. The activities of the [Islamist] groups stems from the escalation of the crises in the region, which causes this frustration which ultimately leads to nothing but armed operations..."
"I Saw a Lot of Tolerance" in Sheikh Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Wahhab's Books
Q: "There are Muslims - whether ordinary people, intellectuals or even clerics - who criticize some aspects of Wahhabism as being extremist, and some believe that Wahhabi preaching contributed to instilling the tendency to religious extremism. What do you say about this?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "In my reading in Sheikh Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Wahhab's books and his interpretation of the principles of faith, I saw a lot of tolerance and civilized [thinking], much more than is applied today. The important thing now is to examine [the views of] his students and see whether or not they are faithful to what he said and taught..."
Q: "There are those who accuse the Muslim Brotherhood's writings and agenda in Egypt of being the principle source from which the extremists in Saudi Arabia have taken [their views], and of being the cause for the start of religious extremism. Do you agree with this opinion?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "Hassan Al-Bana was not a jihadist or an extremist. The only thing he sought was how to be a true Muslim in everything one does and says. Al-Bana in no way called for any revolutions, nor did he order the assassination of Gamal 'Abd Al-Nasser [sic](4) - something of which he has been accused in the past.
"Often the West ties together Sayyed Qutb's books and the ideology of jihad, and this is not true. Sayyed Qutb employed philosophical investigation [to distinguish] between evil and good in the world, and his book Fi Zilal Al-Koran ['In the Shade of the Koran'] was one of the first books that [went beyond] what was said in previous interpretations of the Koran, and tried to interpret the Koran in a way that is understood and relevant to our times..."
Q: "Do you agree with those who [claim] that Sheikh 'Abd Al-Wahhab tied together religion and politics?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "Not at all. Sheikh Muhammad Ibn 'Abd Al-Wahhab had no political motives. His efforts were limited exclusively to religious da'wa."
Q: "How do you interpret the rise to power of Islamic groups in a number of Islamic countries like Egypt, Palestine and Somalia, and do you believe that the rise in their popularity stems from the recent political circumstances?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "The first reason [for the rise in their popularity] is their effectiveness, and the second is the citizens' grievances against the existing governments and their demonstrations against those governments, [which stem from the fact that] those governments ignored the people's concerns. [In addition, even though] the U.S. made an effort to implement democracy in the Middle East - efforts that did not rise to the level of what Hamas has achieved, for example - we need to give them more time. Also, I believe that the Islamic groups have clearly demonstrated their agendas in their political and reformist activities in the fields of medical care and education..."
Q: "Do you think then that the political Islamic groups have more credibility than others?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "Yes. That is the case, and this is because they are well familiar with the concerns of the people and their needs..."
Q: "Did your writings convince the opponents of Sheikh Muhammad bin 'Abd Al-Wahhab and the relevant [political] circles in the U.S.?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "Some were convinced. Others still persist in their point of view, but it was the response of academics in the university which captivated me the most. Those who have had the opportunity to visit Saudi Arabia and stay and work there, and who have [understanding] of the Middle East, showed great interest in what I said. On the other hand, there are academics who have a particular political agenda. Some of them tried to criticize the substance of the research and to say that it was not academic. At the end of the day, my book provided a new opening for debate about an important issue, and I hope that my book will help to answer the questions I raised."
Q: "In your opinion, why do you think that Al-Azhar at first refused to [allow] the publication and distribution of your book in Egypt, even though it later allowed it?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "I think that the title of the book, Wahhabi Islam, made them think that perhaps it was hostile to Islam and defamed religious figures. Afterwards, Al-Azhar justified its refusal on the grounds that the book touched on sensitive issues."
"I Do Not Want to Believe in the Existence of This Sort of [a Conspiracy Against the Arab and Muslim World], Even Though... the Intervention in All the Affairs of the Arab Region Raises a Number of Concerns"
Q: "This is your second visit to Saudi Arabia. Are you on vacation, or do you plan to write another book on Saudi Arabia?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "I came to Saudi Arabia for both reasons. I am here with my husband and my two sons because I want them to get to know Saudi Arabia so they can see for themselves that everything that is said about Saudi Arabia in the U.S. is inaccurate. On the professional side, I am currently writing a book that deals with the clash of civilizations and discusses 'the jihad for the spirit of Islam in the contemporary Saudi state'..."
Q: "What about Osama bin Laden - do you think that he was behind 9/11?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "I think that the Western media and the world have given Osama bin Laden more weight [than he has in reality] and exaggerated in depicting the danger he poses. Likewise, I do not find any evidence that would make me agree that Osama bin Laden was behind the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. All we heard from him was praise and acclaim for those who carried out the operation."
Q: "Do you believe in the danger posed by the expansion of the Al-Qaeda organization into other areas?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "I believe that this may be possible in the event of war breaking out in Iran, in which case we will see [Al-Qaeda's] presence there."
Q: "Many intellectuals in the Arab and Islamic world are preoccupied with discussing the question of a Western conspiracy [targeting] the Arab and Islamic societies. Do you believe in this 'conspiratorial' point of view of everything that goes on in the region?"
Dr. Natana DeLong-Bas: "There is enough evidence to indicate the possibility of the existence of such a conspiracy, according to those who endorse this theory. As for me, I do not want to believe in the existence of this sort of thing, even though what is happening nowadays - the intervention in all the affairs of the Arab region - raises a number of concerns."
Endnotes: (1) http://www.brandeis.edu/facguide/faculty.php?emplid=419f7ce6855b0a5ad026e69b27d61838fa1bce92 (2) In an address to the Seattle World Affairs Council on March 24, 2006, former Saudi Ambassador to the U.S. Prince Turki stated "I would advise anybody who has an interest in that to read a book by a lady called [Natana] DeLong-Bas, and you will have her name passed onto you. She's an American lady. She did her research mostly in America, Saudi Arabia, and other places, and she has a very definitive book on Sheikh Mohammed and Abd Al-Wahhab and his teachings." Saudiembassy.net, March 24, 2006, http://www.saudiembassy.net/2006News/Statements/SpeechDetail.asp?cIndex=595 . (3) Al-Sharq Al-Awsat (London), December 21, 2006. (4) Hassan Al-Bana was murdered in February 12, 1949, and could not have been involved in ordering the assassination attempt against Nasser. Dr. DeLong-Bas apparently meant to refer to another Muslim Brotherhood leader, Sayyed Qutb, who was executed in Egypt in 1966 for involvement in an attempt on Nasser's life.
********************* The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) is an independent, non-profit organization that translates and analyzes the media of the Middle East. Copies of articles and documents cited, as well as background information, are available on request.
MEMRI holds copyrights on all translations. Materials may only be used with proper attribution.
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Peace declarations coated by threats of war on the part of Bashar Assad, Ahmadinejad's and Nasrallah's close partner, are met by the Israel public with a healthy response, as it appears in the polls: Peace? Sure. But not at the price of withdrawing from the Golan. At the same time, we see in the media a campaign of appeasement based on the old cliché that "the price of peace with Syria is known the Golan." I suggest that we examine this axiom.
Almost two years ago, a historic event happened in the Mideast that for some reason did not publicly resonate in Israel. The Syrian regime recognized for the first time the Alexandretta (Hatay) region as sovereign Turkish territory after dozens of years where Syria strongly demanded Turkish withdrawal from this area. At the same time, Syria maintains its persistent stand that demands an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan. How can we explain the duality in Syria's attitude to those two regions?
In both cases we're talking about two regions that in different periods belonged to Syria, yet today they are controlled by its neighbors and Syria viewsed them as its territory and demanded sovereignty in both of them. If there's a difference between the two, Syria's demand for the Golan is in fact weaker than Alexandretta. In Alexandretta, as opposed to the Golan, there's a large Arab-Syrian population. The Golan, as opposed to Alexandretta, constituted a base for Syrian aggression against its neighbor belligerence that caused Syria to lose the Golan.
The difference between the Golan and Alexandretta is not found in the Syrian position. In both cases, the Syrian position was identical an uncompromising demand to "return" the area to Syrian sovereignty. In both cases, Syria educated its citizens and children to view it as occupied territory. In both cases, all Syrian maps showed the Golan and Alexandretta as Syrian regions.
The significant difference is between Turkey's attitude to its land, sovereignty and borders and Israel's attitude to its land, sovereignty and borders. For dozens of years, Turkey was unwilling to discuss any kind of compromise in Alexandretta. It never expressed a willingness to cede Alexandretta in exchange for peace. It never negotiated a withdrawal from Alexandretta. Its attitude was clear and simple Alexandretta is ours. Period.
For dozens of years, Turkey showed determination in safeguarding its national objectives and strategic interests. It turns out that the stubbornness and patience paid off. When the Syrian interest necessitated peaceful, neighborly relations with Turkey, Syria recognized reality and in contradiction to its pledges for dozens of years renounced its claim for Alexandretta.
It would be appropriate for Israel to adopt the Turkish model and respect its sovereignty in the Golan just like Turkey respected its sovereignty in Alexandretta. Just like the Turks, Israel too must show determination and patience. We should not discuss the Golan, negotiate over the Golan, or agree to create any kind of link between the Golan and peace with Syria. Just like Turkey, Israel must say that the Golan is ours. Period.
Just as was the case with Turkey, determination will pay off for Israel too. And if a day comes where the Syrian interest is to sign a peace deal with Israel, Syria will have to recognize reality and accept Israeli sovereignty in the Golan. Turkey waited patiently for 66 years. We may have to wait less.
The price is known? It's all in our head. We must change our way of thinking and make it clear: We're ready for peace with Syria, despite our reservations over Assad's regime, but the Syrians must know the price of peace: They must renounce their demand to get the Golan from us.
The writer, who is member of Kibbutz Ortal, serves as director of the Golan Community Center
Continual Qassam rocket attacks against Israel by Palestinian terror groups in Gaza are threatening to undermine a month-long cease-fire during which Israel has refrained from undertaking military actions to stop the unprovoked strikes.
The cease-fire agreement went into effect on Nov. 26. [1] Since then, Gaza-based terrorists have fired more than 68 Qassams, 53 of which fell inside Israel. [2]
"It is a real tragedy that Israel has once again been forced to defend itself from rocket attacks," said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, founder and president of The Israel Project. "This is especially true since Israel gave up all of Gaza more than a year ago in the hopes of a better future for both sides. Israel has complained time and again about these attacks and is working with the international community, but the attacks continue. All Israel wants is for its citizens to be able to live in peace."
Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), one of several Iran-backed terrorist groups operating inside Gaza, has claimed responsibility for much of the Qassam fire that has breached the cease-fire in the last month. One of the Qassams landed in the southern Israeli town of Sderot on Dec. 26, seriously wounding two teenage boys.
In response to that incident, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert released a statement on Dec. 27 that read: "A directive has been given to take pin-point action against the rocket-launching squads. In parallel, Israel will continue to preserve the cease-fire and will act vis-à-vis the Palestinian Authority in order for them to take immediate action to stop the shooting of Qassams." [3]
Abu Ahmed, a PIJ spokesman, confirmed that the group was deliberately launching Qassams in an attempt to jeopardize the fragile cease-fire by provoking a response by the Israel Defense Forces.[4]
The United States, the European Union, and the Australian and Canadian governments officially designate PIJ as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).
Iran provides an estimated $2 million in state-sponsored funding to PIJ annually. [5] The Al-Quds Brigades, the violent military wing of PIJ has claimed responsibility for dozens of Qassam rockets launched into Israel in recent months. In addition to rocket attacks, PIJ planned and carried out the April 17, 2006 suicide bombing in Tel Aviv that left 12 civilians dead and more than 60 wounded near the city's old downtown bus station.
In March 2006, Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched a Grad-type Katyusha rocket - the so-called Quds 4 - into Israel for the first time. [6] The Quds 4 rocket has a range of up to 14 km (8.5 mi.). Since then, a total of four Grad-type rockets have been fired into Israeli territory.
According to Israeli intelligence sources, the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militia - a terrorist organization heavily financed by Iran - is now providing direct funding to a variety of Palestinian factional groups to launch Qassam rockets into Israel.
Hezbollah initiated a war against Israel this past summer after Hezbollah terrorists crossed the Lebanese-Israeli internationally recognized border while firing rockets and mortar shells into Israeli towns and ambushed Israeli jeeps patrolling the northern border. Hezbollah kidnapped two soldiers and killed three others in the attack, touching off a 34-day war during which tens of thousands of Israelis were forced to flee northern Israel or live underground. Hezbollah has provided no information about the fate of the abducted soldiers. [7]
Militants affiliated with Hezbollah and other factional Palestinian terrorist groups receive training, financial support and weapons from Syria and Iran and even receive thousands of dollars in reward money for each attack, according to an Israeli Security Agency source. [8]
"Sometimes they are paid before the attack and sometimes they submit a bill to Lebanon afterward and the money gets transferred a short while later," according to the source. [9]
Security officials also said Hezbollah is directly involved in smuggling thousands of dollars into Gaza to pay for the attacks. Militants are paid based on the number of Israelis they kill or injure by Qassams they fire into Israel. [10]
Financial support for these terrorist attacks against Israel is chiefly awarded by Iran.
Regarding PIJ's Qassam attacks against Israeli civilians, Abu Ahmed said, "Our firing is not coincidental. The rocket-firing cells are aiming at targets and strategic facilities on which, or next to which, the rockets land." [11]
Palestinian Islamic Jihad is also working to create a rocket with a longer range to use against Israel. "We are in the advanced stages of working on a rocket with a range of 22 km (13.5 mi.)," Abu Ahmed said.[12]
As a result, the IDF is considering expanding the current security zone around the Gaza Strip. In order to protect Israeli citizens in the communities surrounding Gaza, Israel's Home Front Command wants to widen the zone an additional 3 km (1.9 mi.), which would total 20 km (12.4 mi.). Almost 50,000 Israelis live within a 7 km (4.3 mi.) perimeter of Gaza, but the newly expanded zone, once completed, will help protect the 162,000 civilians who would be in range of the extended Qassam fire. [13]
Hamas' Izzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades as well as the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, an offshoot of Fatah, also have been responsible for firing Qassam rockets from Gaza into Israel throughout the month-long cease-fire.
An estimated 1,300 Qassam rockets have been launched by Palestinian militants from Gaza since Israel evacuated all of its citizens, including soldiers and even its dead, from the Gaza Strip in August 2005. Israel took that dramatic step for the purpose of helping to launch an independent Palestinian state. Instead, almost immediately afterwards, Palestinian terrorist groups began using Gaza to stockpile weapons, fire rockets into Israel and even set up terrorist training camps. [14] The Hamas-led Palestinian Authority (P.A.) has done nothing to stop the attacks, which include intentionally targeting innocent Israeli civilians.
Under the control of the Hamas government, Palestinians are now capable of launching Qassam rockets into the coastal town of Ashkelon, which lies 13 km (8 mi.) from northern Gaza. Qassams usually can travel 3 -10 km (1.8 - 6 mi.), but Hamas' green light for continued terror against Israel has resulted in the creation of a new double-engine Qassam rocket by the military wing of Hamas and the build-up of Grad-style Katyusha rockets that can reach targets within 18-30 km (11-19 mi.). [15]
Throughout the recent wave of Qassam rocket attacks, Israel has demonstrated its commitment to the Nov. 26 cease-fire agreement and has refrained from reacting militarily.
On Dec. 23, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert hosted his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas at his home in west Jerusalem. During the meeting, the two leaders agreed to cooperate on a number of issues, primarily taking concrete steps to resume the peace process. [16]
Following the discussion at Olmert's residence, Olmert announced that he would unfreeze $100 million dollars in Palestinian tax revenues and find a way to deliver the aid so that it would directly reach the Palestinian people rather than falling into the hands of the Hamas-led government. [17]
Said Miri Eisin, an Israeli government spokeswoman, "The money itself will not be transferred to the Hamas-led government and right now we are looking for the right way to be able to transfer the money ... for different humanitarian issues." [18]
Also, the Israeli prime minister pledged to ease travel and security restrictions in the West Bank and Gaza. [19]
In response to the number of Qassams that have been launched during the cease-fire, Israel's ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) has been directed to file a motion with the president of the U.N. Security Council regarding Palestinian violations of the agreement. [20]
Those violations include eight Qassams launched on Dec. 26 from Gaza into Israel and a mortar that landed near an IDF base. One of the Qassams landed in Ashkelon, near a strategic installation. [21] During Dec. 18-26, militants in Gaza fired 31 Qassams; of those, 17 landed in Israel.
A total of 10 civilians have died as a result of Qassam and mortar fire launched from the Gaza Strip into Israel, beyond the 1967 border. Before Israel carried out its disengagement from Gaza, an additional seven people were killed by rockets and mortars in Jewish communities in Gaza, including a foreign worker and two Palestinians. [22]
Background Information on Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ)
Approach: Bombings, including suicide and mortar attacks
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also referred to as Islamic Jihad (IJ), was founded in 1980 by Fathi Shiqaqi subsequent to his departure from the Muslim Brotherhood. The specificity of this group's title - Palestinian - is due to its geographic location and its members' national affiliation.
Islamic Jihad is the principal establishment of which PIJ and a number of other trans-national IJ terror cells worldwide are supplemented. All IJ factions draw their tenets from political and militant Islam. Since its inception, PIJ has been a radical Islamic movement.
Currently, PIJ is led by Ramadan Abdullah Shallah. PIJ is committed to the violent destruction of Israel, which it views as one battle in a larger worldwide holy war, pitting Islam against all non-believers. PIJ violently opposes the peace process and has conducted numerous suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. The most recent PIJ suicide bombing killed 11 Israelis in the heart of Tel Aviv on April 17, 2006. More than 200 civilians have been murdered in PIJ attacks, with more than 1,000 civilians wounded. [23]
PIJ's activities have been hampered in recent years by Israeli security services and an international crackdown on its funding sources. However, its refusal to abide by cease-fires and continued rejection of Israel's right to exist make PIJ a continued threat to a lasting peace in the region.
The Israel Project is an international non-profit organization devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom and peace. It provides journalists, leaders and opinion-makers accurate information about Israel. The Israel Project is not related to any government or government agency.
Board of Advisors: Senator Evan Bayh (IN), Senator Saxby Chambliss (GA), Senator Norm Coleman (MN), Senator Ben Nelson (NE), Senator Arlen Specter (PA), Senator Ron Wyden (OR), Congressman Rob Andrews (NJ), Congresswoman Shelley Berkley (NV), Congressman Tom Davis (VA), Congressman Eliot Engel (NY), Congressman Frank Pallone (NJ), Congressman Jon Porter (NV), Congressman Jim Saxton (NJ), Congressman Brad Sherman (CA), Congressman Joe Wilson (SC), Actor and Director Ron Silver
In my very first political science lecture in the Hebrew University in the early 1980s, I was taught that international politics were governed by State interests. In all my years in Israeli politics and as a third-time minister, I have yet to see this theory implemented in Israel.
I believe it was Henry Kissinger who once said that Israel has no foreign policy, only domestic. The sad reality of today is that the State of Israel has never defined, and rarely acted in accordance with its national interests. The few examples I can think of include Israel going to war over the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal and restriction of Israeli marine traffic in 1956, the 1981 attack against the Iraqi nuclear facility and the 1995 peace agreement with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
I have recently suggested that it is in Israel's national interest to join the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The world today is a less hospitable place to our democracy. The second half of the twentieth century witnessed a world divided over economic doctrines and political thought. I myself was born in Moldova, a country taken over by the Soviet Union in 1944, and spent my childhood under the rule of a harsh totalitarian regime (until my family made aliya in 1978, when I was 20 years old).
Today's world is dividing over values. On the one side is the free, democratic world, and on the other side is the radical, fundamentalist world. We might have disagreements with Europe and the international community over foreign policy, but we share the same values system that is the target of the radical, fundamentalist war against the West.
The great danger in this global conflict is that we are facing non-rational players. Take Bin Laden for example - there is nothing you can offer him to stop his war against the free world - no amount of money, no piece of territory, no agreement - his goal is to convert the entire world to Islam, or send all infidels to heaven. There is no sense in rationalizing with this kind of enemy.
Not a single Islamic leader - political or spiritual - has condemned the death sentence against Salman Rushdie, and even today he has to live in hiding between London and Paris. Not a single Islamic leader has ever condemned the Taliban's destruction of the Buddha sculptures in Afghanistan. The Muslim world's reaction to cartoons about the prophet Muhammad and to Pope Benedict XVI's speech are irrational.
My goal for Israel is to complete this global re-positioning within the coming five years. This move will send a strong message not only to our enemies, but also to our friends and allies.
One last note: Jpost.com readers are aware of the letter I sent to incumbent UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, who said that the Israeli-Palestinian issue was at the core of solving all the problems in the Middle East.
Someone pointed out to me a very poignant comment posted on a talkback to the Jpost.com article about this letter, by Bob in the US: "Last week I appeared in court because I was doing 20 miles over the speed limit. I flat out told the presiding judge "I'm not paying the fine until the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is resolved." His exact words were "What the Hell does the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have to do with anything?" I ask the same question.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas plans to cut short a tour of Arab nations, forgoing his planned visit to Jordan where he was to meet with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, aides said Wednesday.
Haniyeh plans to return to the Gaza Strip on Thursday.
Jordan has offered to host the meeting between Haniyeh and Abbas in an effort to defuse deadly tensions between their rival factions. Both Haniyeh and Abbas have agreed in principle to such a meeting, but no date was announced.
The aides said Haniyeh decided to break off his trip after making an Islamic pilgrimage, or haj, to Saudi Arabia, to attend to unspecified "work." They said he would resume the tour, but did not specify when.
In addition to traveling to Jordan, Haniyeh was also to have visited Kuwait and Qatar.
Haniyeh broke off a previous trip to Jordan in mid-December following a deadly bout of Hamas-Fatah violence. His convoy came under fire at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt as he returned.
A shaky cease-fire reached in late December has curbed the fighting.
There was no immediate indication of a link between the change in Haniyeh's travel plans and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's scheduled trip to Egypt on Thursday to meet with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Egypt has played a major role in mediating between Israel and the Palestinians, and has been trying to negotiate the release of an Israeli Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit captured by militants linked to Hamas in June. Palestinian sources maintained last week that Olmert and Mubarak were planning to announce a finalized prisoner exchange deal on Thursday, but the reports have not been confirmed, and even denied.
By Amos Harel, Haaretz Correspondent and The Associated Press
Israel failed to achieve all its objectives in its summer war against Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Dan Halutz admitted Tuesday, but he rejected calls to resign as a result.
Speaking to reporters at a press conference in summary of the IDF's probe into the war, Halutz said "when I chose to take responsibility I chose to take responsibility. There are some people who interpret responsibility as escape. I decided to stand up to the inquiry," he said.
Halutz, who is under pressure to stop down because of the shortcomings of the war, said he decided to stay on and "correct what can be corrected."
"I see that a few of you would very much yearn to see me quit. I didn't plan to announce that to you today, and if you ask the question again, my answer will not change." He said resignation now would be "running away," adding, "I have not heard my superiors calling on me to resign. If they do, I will respond."
Summing up internal army inquiries into the war, which ended inconclusively in a cease-fire after 34 days of fighting, Halutz said IDF forces caused considerable damage to Hezbollah and killed "hundreds of terrorists."
But he added, "We were not successful in reducing the short-range rocket fire on Israel's north until the cease-fire." Hezbollah fired about 4,000 rockets at Israel during the fighting. Israel pounded Lebanon with airstrikes at Hezbollah targets and infrastructure, and ground forces swept through south Lebanon. "We attacked the Katyushas [rockets], but unsuccessfully," he said.
"There were cases in which officers did not carry out their assignments, and cases in which officers objected on moral grounds to their orders," Halutz said, an apparent reference to resistance against attacking south Lebanese towns and villages.
He said these instances of refusal "ran counter to the army's basic values." He said a senior officer was suspended as a result.
Halutz said it would be a mistake to declare a military goal of freeing the two IDF soldiers captured in a cross-border Hezbollah raid, which set off the fighting - though that was one of the goals stated at the outset of the conflict.
He noted conclusions of an inquiry by a former chief of staff that included vague definitions of goals and faulty work in command centers.
Halutz indicated that reserve soldiers would be called up for longer annual service to undergo better training, and said a plan to shorten the length of regular service, now set at three years, would be delayed.
A committee appointed by the government is in the midst of its investigation of the war and its outcome. The internal army inquiries did not call for resignations, but the government committee has the power to do so. Halutz said if that committee called for his resignation, "of course" he would comply.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz has made the same pledge.
The conflict ended August 14 with a United Nations Security Council resolution that posted a reinforced peacekeeping force in south Lebanon with a mandate to keep the area clear of armed forces.
The fighting left more than 1,000 people dead on both sides, according to the United Nations and Israeli and Lebanese officials. Lebanon's Higher Relief Council, a government group, says the majority of those were Lebanese civilians. UNICEF also says most of those killed were civilians, and that about a third of them were children.
Israel claimed 600 Hezbollah fighters were killed during the war but that figure was not substantiated, with the group only acknowledging 70 of its fighters killed.
Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said yesterday the organization has accepted a prisoner exchange offer conveyed by Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman during his visit to Saudi Arabia last weekend. Barhoum confirmed to Haaretz that Suleiman had met in Saudi Arabia with Hamas political leader Khaled Meshal and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.
Suleiman presented the officials with Israel's offer to release about 450 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Gilad Shalit. Under the terms of the deal, Hamas would give Israel a video proving that Shalit is still alive. In exchange, Israel would release women and minors being held in its jails. Palestinian sources said agreement had been reached on the number of prisoners to be included in this group. They did not disclose the number but emphasized it does not include all Palestinian women and minors being held in Israel.
About two months after Shalit's return, Israel would release a second group of prisoners. Israel has promised to be "generous" with the numbers being released.
If the deal is completed, Hamas will be able to claim that Israel agreed to free more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, while Israel will claim that it released only 500 to 600, and that the remainder were released in negotiations with PA Chair Mahmoud Abbas.
The agreement is not yet a done deal, however. Palestinian source reported that Hamas gave Egypt a list of about 450 prisoners it wishes to see freed. Senior Hamas officials now claim they are waiting for Israel's response. Palestinian sources expect the negotiations to be held up over the inclusion on this list of senior Hamas military figures who were responsible for a large number of suicide attacks, and key Palestinian figures such as Marwan Barghouti.
On Sunday the Egyptian security delegation currently in Gaza met with Abbas to update him on the agreement between Israel and Hamas over the number of prisoners to be freed. The Egyptians told him, however, there is still disagreement over which individuals are to be released.
Arab summit mooted
Meanwhile, the Cairo daily Al Ahram reported yesterday that a mini-Arab summit is to be convened in the Egyptian capital shortly to discuss the creation of a Palestinian unity government. Representatives from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and perhaps even Syria are expected to attend, in addition to Abbas and Haniyeh. A scheduled visit by Haniyeh to Jordan has apparently been canceled.
MOSCOW (AFP) - Controversial Russian contracts to sell anti-aircraft weapons to Syria and Iran are being fulfilled on schedule Russian officials said.
At least half of the 29 Tor-M1 missile systems bought by Iran for 1.4 billion dollars (1.06 billion euros) had been delivered, state-run ITAR-TASS quoted an unnamed source at the defence ministry as saying Tuesday.
"We are actively carrying out deliveries of the system to Iran. At least 50 percent of the contract has been delivered," the official was quoted as saying.
The air defence systems are being stationed around Iran's civilian nuclear sites, according to ITAR-TASS.
The United States, which is leading international pressure against Iran's nuclear programme, strongly resisted the contract and imposed sanctions against Russian jetmaker Sukhoi and arms exporter Rosoboronexport.
Meanwhile, Interfax news agency quoted Valery Kashin, head of weapons maker Engineering Design Bureau, as saying that Russia met all its commitments in 2006 under the contract to supply Syria with the Strelets anti-aircraft system. He gave no details.
Israel spoke out against the 2005 deal, claiming that Syria would pass on the system, which fires Igla ground-to-air rockets, to Hezbollah guerrillas in Lebanon.
Details about the quantity and cost of the Strelets contract have not been made public.
Important media outlets in Arab world address Egyptian president's remarks during his meeting with prime minister, in which he hinted his country would develop nuclear weapons. Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram reports that this indeed is Mubarak's plan. Sources in Israel: Remark directed at Iran
Roee Nahmias Published: 01.05.07, 18:32
Several prominent Arab media outlets agree Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's nuclear remark was unusual and a first of its kind. Some of the most important media outlets in the Arab world on Friday broadly addressed the Egyptian president's "nuclear remark" during his joint press conference with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the end of their meeting Thursday in Sharm al-Sheikh.
"Dispute between Munarak and Olmert regarding nuclear weapons and funds for Hamas," called out the main headline of one of the most prominent newspapers in the Arab world, the London-based al-Sharq al-Awsat.
Rare Remark
The newspaper quoted Mubarak's remarks on the issue only after he answered the question of an Egyptian journalist.
"Egypt's stance regarding mass destruction weapons was already declared at the beginning of the 1990s in Baghdad at the presence of late President Saddam Hussein.
"We said that the region should be demilitarized of mass destruction weapons and that we don't want nuclear weapons in the region, or else we would be forced to also bring in nuclear weapons so that we are not attacked at any time," the president said.
The important Lebanese newspaper al-Nahar also stated in one of its main headlines that the Egyptian president "surprised Olmert regarding his plan to possess nuclear weapons.
"President Mubarak declared yesterday for the first time at the end of his talks with the Israeli prime minister in Sharm al-Sheikh that Egypt 'would not stand aside' if the nuclear arms race in the region escalates and that it would be 'forced' to try and equip itself with similar weapons in order to defend itself," the newspaper reported.
One might think that Mubarak's remark was a slip of the tongue or that his intention was misinterpreted. But even the state Egyptian newspaper al-Ahram chose to highlight the issue and signal that this was indeed the president's plan.
The newspaper quoted the interview Mubarak gave to Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, but contrary to the headlines in Israel , the Egyptians chose to highlight the president's remarks in one of the newspapers headlines: "The mass destruction weapons are a danger to the entire region; we will not stand aside if Iran possesses such weapons."
The newspaper also presented President Mubarak's full "nuclear remark" in its report on the press conference Thursday.
Israel: Remark directed at Iran
Sources in Israel viewed Mubarak's remark as extremely important and as the first of its kind. According to the sources, this is the first time the president himself makes such remarks and a senior Egyptian official says so out loud.
The sources added that this was the first response to Olmert's remarks in Germany on Israel's nuclear weapons.
"This testifies to Egypt's future plans. Now no source will be able to come and say that Egypt has no nuclear plans," one of the sources clarified. "But the remarks are not only directed at Israel, but express the ongoing anger in Egypt over the Iranian statement that their nuclear plan is indeed for peaceful purposes, but that if they are attacked it would be used for military purposes."
According to the source, the Egyptians find it convenient to make such remarks opposite the Israelis, as they are accepted with understanding by the public opinion as an answer to Israel's nukes. But in spite of all this, the remark is against Iran.
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused the United States in an interview published on Friday of obstructing peace between Israel and Syria.
"I believe America is preventing (Israeli Prime Minister Ehud) Olmert from achieving peace with Syria," Mubarak told the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth during Olmert's visit to the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh on Thursday.
Mubarak did not elaborate on his reasons for believing the United States was an obstacle to peace.
During the war between Israel and the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah last year, media reports said the United States opposed Israeli overtures toward contact with the Syrians.
The Bush administration says Syria allows weapons and fighters to cross its border into Iraq to support the insurgency there and has led Western efforts to isolate Syria over its alleged role in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese ex-premier Rafik al-Hariri. Syria has denied both allegations.
Washington imposed sanctions on Syria in 2004, mainly for backing Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Islamist group Hamas, now the ruling Palestinian party.
Mubarak urged Olmert to test Syria's peaceful intentions to find out whether Assad is serious.
"Bring the truth to light, if it's just a (tactical) manoeuvre or true intentions. Check out which peace he (Assad) wants to achieve. Why say no to a peace offering?" he said.
He added: "Now, when the president of Syria calls for peace, don't imagine he will come to Jerusalem. That won't happen. No Arab leader will come to Jerusalem until peace is achieved."
Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar Sadat, went to Jerusalem to make peace in 1977 but Mubarak has gone there only once in 25 years, for the funeral of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.
Mubarak said in the interview that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is in conflict with a cabinet led by Hamas, needed financial help to strengthen him.
"We have to strengthen him so he can make decisions. He has a government, but he has problems with his government. We must assist him financially, unfreeze money and make conditions easier so people can live," he said.
GAZA (Reuters) - Unidentified gunmen shot dead a Muslim cleric after he delivered a sermon in the Gaza Strip on Friday calling for an end to fierce factional fighting between Hamas and Fatah, hospital officials and local residents said.
The cleric's shooting in central Gaza came hours after Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas said he and President Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah had agreed to keep rival gunmen off Gaza's streets after clashes in which eight were killed....
Tension was high across the coastal strip as thousands of Palestinians loyal to Fatah took part in funeral marches for a commander killed in a barrage of rocket-propelled grenades fired by Hamas gunmen on Thursday.
Brushing aside Haniyeh's plea for calm, Fatah issued a statement in Gaza: "Blood for blood and aggression for aggression ... and all the sons of the movement should retaliate to each aggression openly."
The cleric, who was in a car when the gunmen opened fire, was not affiliated to any faction. No group claimed responsibility for the shooting, which occurred after prayers at a mosque in the Maghazi refugee camp.
At one of the funeral marches, members of Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades threatened to assassinate Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar and Interior Minister Saeed Seyam of Hamas.
"Zahar and Seyam, you have to leave Gaza. We will tear your bodies to pieces," an al-Aqsa member shouted at the crowd.
Overnight, Hamas-controlled militants and police forces stormed the house of senior Fatah leader Sufian Abu Zaida in northern Gaza Strip, smashing furniture.
Factional fighting has surged in Gaza and the occupied West Bank since Abbas challenged the ruling Hamas faction by calling for early parliamentary and presidential elections after talks on forming a unity government failed.
ABBAS, HANIYEH MEET
Haniyeh said after late-night emergency talks with Abbas, their first meeting in two months, that they had agreed to "withdraw all gunmen from the streets and deploy police forces to keep law and order".
Abbas made no public comment, but a diplomat who attended the talks confirmed an agreement had been reached. Similar pacts in the past have quickly been shattered by violence.
Haniyeh met Abbas again on Friday and told Reuters: "We have stressed the need for calm to continue."
In a move that could fuel tension, Washington will provide $86 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Abbas, expanding U.S. involvement in Fatah's power struggle with Hamas.
In internal fighting on Thursday, Fatah gunmen killed a policeman loyal to Hamas.
Hamas gunmen, blaming the shooting on bodyguards of Colonel Mohammed Ghareeb of the Preventive Security Service, besieged his home in the northern Gaza town of Beit Lahiya, killing Ghareeb and six of his men and wounding his wife.
Some Fatah gunmen expressed anger at Abbas for not sending forces to save Ghareeb, who had pleaded for help on television.
The fighting spread overnight to the occupied West Bank, where gunmen critically wounded a Hamas activist near the city of Nablus, Hamas officials said.
Haniyeh told reporters: "The battle is not an internal battle, it is a battle against the occupation."
Earlier on Friday, Israeli forces raided the village of Attil near the West Bank town of Tulkarm. The army said two members of Islamic Jihad were seized.
On Thursday, Israeli forces mounted a rare raid into the West Bank city of Ramallah in which hospital officials said four Palestinians were killed and at least 25 wounded.
(Additional reporting by Ari Rabinovitch in Jerusalem; Mohammed Assadi in Ramallah and Atef Sa'ad in Nablus)
The international community's obsessive focus on the State of Israel caused it to miss out on genocides all around the world, Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz told a rally in a Toronto synagogue last week, according to a report in the Canadian Jewish News .
...More
"Six million additional people have died since the end of the Second World War because of this obsessive focus on Israel," Dershowitz was quoted as saying, citing global inaction over the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, the former Yugoslavia, and the slaughter currently taking place in Darfur.
He added that Iran 's denial of the Holocaust was aimed at de-legitimizing Israel, demonizing Jews and, legitimatizing attacks on Israel and attacks on Jews.
The rally was organized by Canadian Jewish community organizations, and included Holocaust survivors, a Catholic priest, and the Canadian minister of intergovernmental affairs, who received an ovation after blasting anti-Israel bias among Canadian members of parliament.
US Jewish activism focuses on American social justice
Meanwhile, New York's The Jewish Week reported on a "new breed of savvy, grass-roots Jewish activism taking hold," working towards achieving social justice within the United States.
According to the article, major US Jewish organizations are "pulling back" from American issues to "focus increasingly on Israel and anti-Semitism." Taking their place are "innovative, community-oriented progressive groups for whom social-justice issues resonate strongly."
One organizer described the new trend as "the future of Jewish activism" in the United States .
Examples cited in the report include Chicago Jewish group which created a day labor center for Hispanic workers.
Jewish teens attacked in Australia
The Australian Jewish News said Melbourne police were investigating whether a physical assault on two ultra-Orthodox teenagers, one of whom was on crutches at the time of the attack, was motivated by anti-Semitism.
The teenagers were reported to be waiting for a tram in Melbourne, "when a car pulled up and one of its passengers allegedly shouted, 'you killed our cousins in Lebanon .'"
One of the teenagers, who was suffering from a broken leg, then had one of his crutches taken from him and used against him as an assault weapon, while the other youth received minor facial injuries, the report added.
The AJN noted that this was not the first anti-Semitic assault of its kind in Australia. "Last October, another Orthodox man, Mencahem Vorchheimer, was assaulted by a group of footballers as we walked to synagogue on Simhat Torah," the report said, adding that police have not yet charged any suspects over the attack.
On March 29, 2006, a group of British intellectuals posted "The Euston Manifesto" at http://www.eustonmanifesto.org. Evoking the traditions of the anti-fascist and anti-totalitarian democratic Left, they defended liberal democracy and Enlightenment values while denouncing anti-Americanism, anti-Semitism, terrorism and the radical Islam that inspired it. They called for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Euston Manifesto struck a nerve. More than 2,700 people, mostly in Britain but also in the United States, Europe and around the world, signed the manifesto on-line.
In August, a group of liberals and centrists in the US decided to write and circulate "American Liberalism and the Euston Manifesto" in an effort to continue the effort begun in London. I wrote a draft which was debated and discussed by my co-authors Russell Berman, Thomas Cushman, Richard Just, Robert Lieber, Andrei Markovits and Fred Siegel. On September 12, we posted our statement on the Euston Manifesto Web site. The full statement and a list of more than 200 prominent signers are also available at the Web site of "New American Liberalism" at http://www.newamericanliberalism.org.
Signers of our statement included Ronald Asmus, Daniel Bell, David Bell, Omer Bartov, Eliot Cohen, Gerald Feldman, Saul Friedlander, Daniel Goldhagen, Walter Laqueur, Will Marshall, Benny Morris, Martin Peretz, Gary Smith, Leon Wieseltier, Gerhard Weinberg and James Young.
The authors of both the British and American statements hope to influence the political and intellectual debates about how liberal democracies can best confront and defeat the threats posed to us by radical Islam and the terrorism it inspires.
The American statement evokes the legacies in foreign policy of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. We wrote that "the key moral and political challenge in foreign affairs in our time stems from radical Islamism and the jihadist terrorism it has unleashed. We favor a liberalism that is as passionate about the struggle against Islamic extremism as it has been about its political, social, economic and cultural agenda at home. We reject the now ossified and unproductive political polarization of American politics rooted as it is in the conflicts of the 1960s, not the first decade of this century. We are frustrated in the choice between conservative governance that thwarts much-needed reforms at home, on the one hand, and a liberalism which has great difficulty accepting the projection of American power abroad, on the other. The long era of Republican ascendancy may very well be coming to an end. If and when it does, we seek a renewed and reinvigorated American liberalism, one that is up to the task of fighting and winning the struggle of free and democratic societies against Islamic extremism and the terror it produces."
IN LIGHT of the success of the Democratic Party in this fall's elections, this last sentence has even greater relevance.
We called anti-Americanism "a low and debased prejudice, not the mark of political sophistication or wisdom," and rejected "all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism." We invoked the leaders of the American civil rights movement "who won great political victories because they understood that hatred and terror would produce only more of the same."
Especially in view of "the retrograde attitudes about women and homosexuals emerging from the Islamic fundamentalists," we reaffirmed the need for equality for women and gays. While making clear our disagreement with much of the Bush administration's domestic policies and its conduct of foreign policy, we argued that some facts about international politics were not a matter of Left and Right. Knowledge about how to develop and deploy chemical, biological and most importantly nuclear weapons has been spreading around the globe more rapidly than liberal democracy and respect for human rights.
Indeed, the experience of fascism and Nazism showed us that it was possible for Germany, Italy and Japan to develop modern technology yet at the same time reject liberal democracy and embrace policies of racism, chauvinism, aggression and mass murder. We pointed to this paradoxical embrace of technological and scientific modernity that coincided with rejection of liberal democracy and human rights among radical Islamists, including those in the government of Iran.
The authors viewed "the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran with alarm. Such a state with these weapons would be a grave danger for the Middle East, Europe and the United States. It would increase the danger that such weapons might wind up in the hands of radical Islamist terrorist groups immune to the calculations of nuclear deterrence.
"In contrast to the communists during the Cold War, who wanted to change, not depart from this world, the cult of death and martyrdom of the terrorists inspired by Islamic fundamentalism raises deeply troubling questions about the prospects for peace and security in the future. We take very seriously and find utterly repugnant the threats of Iran's political leaders to 'wipe out' the State of Israel. We will not remain silent in the face of these genocidal threats to implement what would amount to a second Holocaust.
"We note as well that the vast majority of victims of the jihadist fanaticism have been other Muslims. Yet the passions of too many liberals here and abroad, even in the aftermath of terrorist attacks all over the world, remain more focused on the misdeeds and errors of our own government in Iraq than on the terrorist outrages by Islamic extremists. Anger at the Bush administration, however justified, should not trump opposition to all aspects of jihadism."
SINCE THE publication of our statements, we think and hope more liberals and centrists are reflecting on the disasters that would ensue if political support in the US for the long war against the radical Islamists of various persuasion were to erode. Now that the Democrats are in a more powerful position to influence American foreign policy, we hope they will read and ponder the arguments made by anti-totalitarian liberals in Britain and the US in the spring and fall of 2006. The co-authors and signers will be making efforts to continue the momentum begun by our first initiatives.
The writer is professor of European history at the University of Maryland and the author of The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During World War II and the Holocaust.
A number of voices in the international community have recently identified the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the root cause of many of the Middle East's problems. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and outgoing UN Secretary General Kofi Annan have been among the most prominent of these voices.
In his article "A battle for global values," (Foreign Affairs, January/February 2007), Tony Blair reiterates what he has expressed in previous public statements: "How can we bring peace to the Middle East unless we resolve the question of Israel and Palestine?" Achieving peace, he continues, "would not only silence reactionary Islam's most effective rallying call but fatally undermine its basic ideology."
Kofi Annan, addressing the UN Security Council on December 12, said, "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not just one regional conflict amongst many. No other conflict carries such a powerful symbolic and emotional charge even for people far away."
TRUE, GENUINE peace between Israel and the Palestinians would remove one of the long-standing conflicts in the Middle East. Moreover, to state the painfully obvious, peace would serve the best interests of those involved.
But to suggest, as Prime Minister Blair in particular does, that such a settlement is a necessary precondition for peace in the Middle East and would take the wind out of radical Islam's sails is unsupported by the facts.
Let's assume for a moment that Israel did not exist. Would that have changed the basic story line of the bulk of recent events in the Middle East?
Would Iraq and Iran have chosen not to pursue an eight-year war that cost more than a million fatalities? Would Iraq have decided not to invade Kuwait in 1990? Would it have rethought its use of chemical weapons against both its own Kurdish population and Iran?
Would Syria have refrained from slaughtering over 10,000 of its own citizens in Hama in 1982? Would it have relinquished its hold on Lebanon, as demanded by multiple Security Council resolutions?
Would Saudi Arabia have stopped exporting its Wahhabi model of Islam, with its narrow, doctrinaire view of the world and rejection of non-Muslims as so-called infidels, across the globe? Would al-Qaida not have attacked the US in 2001, when, it should be remembered, the Israeli-Palestinian issue was never even mentioned among Osama bin Laden's main "grievances"?
Would the danger posed by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Jordan magically disappear absent the Israel factor? Would Iran today abandon its hegemonic ambitions in the region? Would the Shi'ite-Sunni split, with its profound political and strategic ramifications, evaporate into thin air? Would the Sudanese government stop its collusion with the Arab Janjaweed militias to end the massive murder and displacement in Darfur?
Would the desperate poverty and widespread illiteracy that dampen hope and create a fertile recruiting ground for radical Islamic movements suddenly be alleviated? Would Saudi women instantaneously have the right to drive, would non-Muslims finally enjoy equal rights in all those Arab countries where Islam is the official religion, and would the Baha'i no longer experience persecution at the hands of the Iranian government?
In reality, the destabilizing factors in the Middle East run far deeper than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Strikingly, while most Western political leaders mince their words, the courageous Arab authors of the annual Arab Human Development Report have not. They have spoken of three overarching explanatory factors for the region's unsatisfactory condition: the knowledge deficit, the gender deficit and the freedom deficit.
While there is no certainty of a successful outcome unless these three areas are addressed in a sustained manner, the Middle East, which ought to be one of the world's most dynamic regions, is likely to continue suffering from instability, violence and fundamentalism, irrespective of what happens on the Israeli-Palestinian front.
CONSIDER SOME of the important findings in the Arab Human Development Report and related studies:
The total number of books translated into Arabic in the last 1,000 years is fewer than those translated in Spain in one year.
Greece, with a population of fewer than 11 million, translates five times as many books from abroad into Greek annually as the 22 Arab countries combined, with a total population of more than 300 million, translate into Arabic.
According to a 2002 Council on Foreign Relations report, "In the 1950s, per-capita income in Egypt was similar to South Korea, whereas Egypt's per-capita income today is less than 20 percent of South Korea's. Saudi Arabia had a higher gross domestic product than Taiwan in the 1950s; today it is about 50 percent of Taiwan's."
As Dr. A.B. Zahlan, a Palestinian physicist has noted, "a regressive political culture is at the root of the Arab world's failure to fund scientific research or to sustain a vibrant, innovative community of scientists." He further asserted that "Egypt, in 1950, had more engineers than all of China." That is hardly the case today.
According to the 2005 UN Human Development Report, only two Egyptians per million people were granted patents (and for Syria the figure was zero), compared to 30 in Greece and 35 in Israel.
In the 2005 UN report the adult literacy rate for women aged 15 and older was 43.6 percent in Egypt and 74 percent in Syria, while for the world's top 20 countries it was nearly 100 percent.
And finally, according to the current Freedom House rankings, the only country in the Middle East that is listed as "free" is Israel. Every Arab country is at best "partly free" or, worse, "not free."
The sad truth is that it is precisely political oppression, intellectual suffocation and gender discrimination that explain, more than other factors, the chronic difficulties of the Middle East. To be sure, there exist no overnight or over-the-counter remedies for these maladies that would allow the region to unleash its vast potential, but they are at the heart of the problem. It would be illusory to think otherwise.
The writer is executive director of the American Jewish Committee.
The Bush administration is launching a new effort to achieve a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
"We're strongly committed to a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace, two democracies supporting each other's rights to exist," President Bush said Thursday after meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "I´m optimistic that we can achieve that objective."
Germany has just begun a six-month term leading the European Union, and Merkel and Bush said they would soon reconvene the "Quartet," the grouping of the European Union, United States, Russia and United Nations that guides the peace process.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is to travel to the Mideast as early as next week to work on shoring up Palestinian institutions, according to her spokesman, Sean McCormack.
With the Israeli media scope-locked on bigger stories, the fact that Thursday Prime Minister Ehud Olmert paid an obsequious and shameful visit to a country which propagates Holocaust denial and sponsors the Palestinian jihad went largely unnoticed. No, Olmert did not visit Iran. He visited Egypt.
Iran's Holocaust denial conference last month was roundly condemned in Israel and in the West - as well it should have been. Not only is Holocaust denial intellectually and morally unacceptable. When undertaken by people whose stated desire is the physical annihilation of the Jewish state, Holocaust denial is also dangerous.
Yet while everyone took note of the Iranian conference, aside from the Simon Wiesenthal Center, no one considered it disturbing when last week a sister conference organized by Egyptians who share Iran's aspiration to wipe Israel off the map was held.
Under the banner, "The Holocaust Lie," on December 27th the Egyptian Arab Socialist Party held its Holocaust denial conference in Cairo. The conference was broadcast live on Iran's Arabic language network Al-Alam. Its keynote speaker was party leader Waheed al Uksory. Uksory gained international prominence for being one of the few politicians whom the regime permitted to run against Egypt's dictator Hosni Mubarak in the 2005 presidential elections.
That psychotic and genocidal hatred of the Jewish people rules the Egyptian street no less than it dominates the leadership ranks in Teheran has made no impression on Olmert and his associates. Far from responding to the Wiesenthal Center's call to protest the conference during his meeting Thursday with Mubarak at Sharm e-Sheikh, Olmert and his colleagues devoted their time ahead of the summit to searching for new superlatives to heap onto Mubarak for his "responsible" leadership of the so-called "moderate" Arab states.
Israelis received a taste of that "Egyptian moderation" on Wednesday night. On the eve of Olmert's visit with Mubarak, Channel 2 broadcast a Hamas recruitment video displaying the terror training camps it has built on the ruins of the Israeli communities of Gush Katif.
One of the stars of the film was an Egyptian jihadist who arrived at the camp for weapons training. He was filmed standing in front of the Egyptian flag - no doubt in a bid to demonstrate his country's great contribution to making "liberated" Gaza the jihadist wonderland it is today.
Prior to Israel's withdrawal from Gaza, Israelis were led to believe that the role Egypt would play in the area after the retreat would be quite different. Under Mubarak's iron fisted leadership, Egypt was then prime minister Ariel Sharon's ace in the hole - the leg on which his entire strategy of surrender rested.
Sharon and his advisers promised the Israeli people that we could trust Egypt to prevent Gaza from becoming a forward base for global jihad. To help Egypt fulfill its responsibilities, Sharon even agreed to breach the central principle and strategic guidepost of our peace treaty with Egypt - the demilitarization of the Sinai Peninsula. With Sharon's blessing, Egyptian military forces were deployed along the border with Gaza for the first time since 1967.
Unfortunately, Holocaust denying Egypt has not lived up to Sharon's promises. Not only have its military forces done nothing to prevent the mass transfer of weapons to Gaza. Egyptian authorities have enabled the inundation of Gaza with advanced weapons systems by allowing weapons shipments from Iran, Lebanon and other countries to be transferred from Egyptian ports to Gaza through the breached border which Egyptian authorities have done nothing to seal off.
And as the Channel 2 film showed, the Egyptian military also allows foreign terrorists to enter Gaza at will.
OLMERT'S VISIT to Sharm e-Sheikh yesterday is but one consequence of his government's overall foreign policy. Among its other guiding delusions, that policy is founded on the fiction of an Egyptian-Israeli alliance and friendship. It is this imaginary alliance that informs Olmert's belief that Israel has no need, and indeed no right to fight the burgeoning threat to its national security emanating from "liberated" Gaza - a threat that has grown to strategic proportions largely as a result of Egyptian actions.
But then the public and the media both had bigger fish to fry this week than Olmert's imaginary friendship with Mubarak. This week in two separate developments, the illusions of competence and integrity in the IDF General Staff and in the civil service came crashing down.
First, following a two-day closed conference of the IDF's senior commanders, Tuesday night IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz held a disturbing press conference where he presented his assessment of the central lessons from the summer's war. Earlier that day, the nation awoke to the news that overnight the police conducted mass arrests of the country's top tax officials, leading businessmen, and Olmert's bureau chief Shula Zaken. The arrests were the result of their investigation of a suspected conspiracy whereby acting under Zaken's alleged guidance, the businessmen and tax officials conspired to defraud the Tax Authority.
Standing before the cameras, Halutz enumerated a long list of strategic, operational, tactical and moral failures that took place during the course of the IDF's operation against Hizbullah last summer. While Halutz didn't admit it, a common thread runs through the General Staff's failure to clearly define its war aims to the forces in the field; the Navy's decision to send the INS Hanit into battle against an enemy armed with missiles without turning on its missile defense systems; the decision not to mobilize reserves or launch the ground campaign until it was too late to make a difference; the decision to ignore precise intelligence regarding Hizbullah's intentions and locations; and the failure to destroy Hizbullah's short-range missile arsenal. The thread that links all these failures is Halutz himself.
Any doubt that Halutz is unfit to command the IDF dissipated Tuesday when he stated that one of his central lessons from the war is "that we need to redefine the concept of defeating the enemy." That is to say, since he is incapable of winning a war, he prefers to define defeat as victory and remain at his post.
No doubt to his great relief, Halutz's frightening display of arrogant incompetence was in the end relegated to the inside pages of the newspapers. It was hard to devote column space to the professional collapse of the IDF's General Staff when the heads of Israel's Tax Authority and Olmert's bureau chief were being shuttled from police interrogation rooms to the court house for arraignment.
The media and police spokespeople have emphasized that Shula Zaken's suspected involvement in massive corruption does not mean that Olmert had a role in the conspiracy. But whether Olmert played a role in the scheme to defraud the public trust or not, Zaken's suspected role in the plot indicates that a culture of criminal corruption apparently flourished inside of Olmert's office.
ON THEIR surface, neither Halutz's press conference nor the tax fraud scandal are connected to the Olmert government's hallucinatory policies towards Egypt. But in fact they are inextricably linked. The fact that Israel faces unprecedented threats to its security and very existence while it is being led by the most incompetent, corrupt leadership it has ever known is not coincidental.
To understand why this is the case it is necessary to recall how the current leaders came to be in their current positions in the first place.
In 2003, Ariel Sharon and his sons found themselves on the brink of political, economic and personal destruction. Criminal investigations of their alleged corruption were coming to a head and it was widely predicted that Sharon and his sons Omri and Gilad would all be indicted on felony charges. A way had to be found to step away from the abyss. After advising with Sharon's personal attorney and chief of staff Dov Weisglass, Sharon and his sons chose to protect themselves by adopting the Left's irrational strategy of destroying Israeli communities and giving their land to terrorists. That is how the policy of retreating from Gaza and northern Samaria and carrying out the mass expulsion of Israeli citizens from the areas was born.
Sharon's moral and criminal corruption, like the strategic insanity and danger inherent in the decision to transfer control of Gaza to Hamas and Fatah, were self-evident. And yet, as Sharon predicted, the media, law enforcement and judicial authorities which are dominated by the Left chose to ignore the truth. Overnight the media transformed Sharon from the corrupt politician to the visionary leader. As Amnon Abramovich, Channel 2's chief commentator explained, the media understood that corrupt or not, their job was to protect Sharon to make sure he threw the Jews out of Gush Katif. And as Supreme Court Justice Mishel Cheshin admitted in an interview upon his retirement, the Supreme Court justices would never have dreamed of acting against Sharon lest they endanger the withdrawal.
Senior officials, cabinet ministers and the IDF General Staff first heard of the withdrawal plan from the media. Those who dared to question the retreat policy were distanced from positions of influence. Then national security adviser Maj.-Gen. (res.) Giora Eiland couldn't get an audience with Sharon.
Then Sharon fired the IDF's chief of general staff Lt. Gen. Moshe Ya'alon. And so it was that Halutz, a good friend of Omri's and a good pilot by all accounts, was promoted to replace Ya'alon - who although far more qualified than he to command the military, was far less obedient.
In the political arena, Sharon's advisers moved quickly to destroy his political opponents. Then finance minister Binyamin Netanyahu was demonized. Government ministers from Shas and the National Union were fired. In their place Sharon promoted obedient, opportunistic and inexperienced yes-men. So it was that Olmert and Tzipi Livni rose to the top positions in his cabinet.
In summary, Sharon's corruption caused him to adopt irrational strategic policies. Principled opposition to these policies voiced by senior public servants and politicians led to their removal from positions of influence. These competent public servants were then replaced by incompetents whose only qualification for their jobs was their total obedience to Sharon. Sharon's defenders claim that he knew that the people he surrounded himself with after deciding to retreat from Gaza were incompetent to lead the country. But, they argue, Sharon did not foresee his stroke which placed these people in charge of the country. If he hadn't been incapacitated, they argue, everything would have turned out differently. Perhaps they are right. Perhaps not.
Whatever the case may be, the one obvious conclusion that can be drawn from the events of the past week and year without Sharon is that in order to forge competent, honest policies, Israel needs competent and honest leaders. And so to extricate itself from the morass of ineptitude and criminality that has become our public sector, Israel must find the way to rid ourselves of the current political and military leadership that embody both.
The good news is that we have an alternative leadership. It is made up of those principled public servants who were removed from positions of power for their refusal to deny the truth.
In his last year as prime minister, during which he spearheaded the disengagement from the Gaza Strip and the "big bang" on the political map, Ariel Sharon showed increasing signs of physical deterioration. He had difficulty walking, tired quickly and told his close associates that his vitality was no longer as it used to be. His aides tried to make things easier for him, to spare him physical effort and to keep his schedule light so that he would be able to rest.
At events to which Sharon was invited the distances were carefully measured so that he would have to walk as little as possible. On his last trip abroad, to the United Nations General Assembly in September, 2005, his people counted the steps between the conference rooms where he met with world leaders and made sure that he would not have to climb stairs. When he dined at the residence of the British ambassador, Simon McDonald, Sharon had to walk 64 meters, as measured by the bodyguards, and arrived panting and out of breath.
On Sundays, before cabinet meetings, the prime minister and other ministers pass in front of a battery of photographers. During his first years as prime minister, Sharon would ascend the staircase from his bureau to the meeting room and cross the corridor with confident steps and a determined expression. During his last year, he was brought up to the meetings in a small elevator, and the short walk in front of the cameras became an increasing challenge.
"The decline wasn't obvious in the big decisions," says a senior official who participated in many discussions with Sharon. "His wit, his humor, his conviction and his determination remained until the last meeting that he conducted, which dealt with the village of Maghar, on the day he collapsed. And he was a good politician - he knew where to use harmless deception and how to fudge things, when a meeting was important and whether he could relate anecdotes for an hour and a half. But toward the end, he went into less detail and stuck much closer to the points and the summaries that had been written for him. In the beginning I never saw him fall asleep at meetings, and at the end I did. And the difficulty in walking increased, and this was obvious."
Former Knesset Foreign Relations and Defense Committee chairman Likud MK Yuval Steinitz was the only one who spoke publicly about Sharon's decline. In an interview with Haaretz's Ari Shavit last April, Steinitz related that during Sharon's last nine months as prime minister, "there was a marked change. It didn't reach a situation of disability, but Sharon needed his aides and his papers and texts that were prepared for him in advance. It hadn't been that way before. There was an obvious decline in his functioning." Prior to that, said Steinitz, Sharon's appearances in his committee "had been virtuoso."
Unquestioned leadership
The information concerning Sharon's physical difficulties was concealed from the media and the public. Only after he sank into a coma, exactly one year ago, did the details begin to trickle out in conversations with people who worked with him closely and participated in meetings that he ran. This was not an attempt to identify in retrospect early signs of his collapse. It emerges that his aides were aware of his problems and discussed this among themselves even while he was serving as prime minister. They do not deny the details - the tiredness, the difficulty in walking and breathing, the increasing need for prepared notes and summaries of meetings. But according to them, his intellectual prowess was not affected, nor was his ability to make decisions and lead. No one questioned his leadership and his total control of the country up until his last minute as prime minister. There is also no knowledge of warning signs that could have predicted the stroke he suffered on December 18, 2005, two weeks before he finally collapsed from a cerebral hemorrhage, when his term as prime minister ended suddenly.
Sharon's case has shown that the health of national leaders is not just a personal matter, but rather the concern of the entire public. There is no doubt that his departure was a political and historical turning point. However, insofar as is known, he did not suffer from a "leaders' disease" that was concealed from the citizens of Israel. He did not undergo any medical treatment in secret nor did he suffer from cancer and heart ailments like Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Menachem Begin.
His personal physicians, Dr. Shlomo Segev and Prof. Bolek Goldman, risked their professional prestige when they declared that "Sharon is healthy" in an interview to the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth just a few days before he collapsed. According to them, their periodic checkups did not show anything unusual, apart from excess weight. They were not asked about the physical difficulties that were causing concern in Sharon's immediate environment, and they did not speak about them. They also minimized his limp and the lameness in one leg. The blood-vessel disorder in Sharon's brain was discovered only after he was hospitalized.
Nor was Sharon himself worried about his health. On the contrary: According to all evidence, he believed that he would live to a ripe old age like his grandmother and his aunt, about whom he would speak a lot. He had no doubt that he would be elected for another four-year term and afterward retire to his ranch "to ride the horses." A close aide says that Sharon considered serving for another two years and then finding someone he could trust as his replacement. Perhaps Tzipi Livni (now foreign minister), whom he brought quite close toward the end of his term and whom he helped advance up the ladder of ministerial roles.
"We thought that we had to make things easier for him, because we wanted to protect him," relates the aide. "We all have a father or a grandfather his age. We wanted him to deal only with the major issues, and not to go to superfluous and stupid events and to be at home more. So he could rest. But not because of health problems. He had more colds and lost his voice, but he didn't have health problems. And he didn't want people to make things easier for him."
During the period that preceded the disengagement, Sharon canceled most outings from his bureau and infrequently participated in events. The explanation that was given to the media had to do with security: The bodyguards feared that people from the right who opposed the evacuation of the settlements would try to harm the prime minister. His aides say that this was indeed the reason he shut himself up in the bureau - and not the state of his health or his physical fatigue. At that time Sharon also asked to cut back his schedule.
Problematic circumstances
One aide insists to this day that Sharon's collapse was a tragedy of problematic coincidences. The first stroke affected him in his office, before he set out for home, to Sycamore Ranch. Had he suffered it at night, in his home, the blood clot would have dissolved and no one would have noticed anything. There would have been no invasive examinations, the doctors would not have discovered the hole in his heart and would not have scheduled a catheterization and injected him with blood thinners, which caused the second, serious stroke. Had it not been for this chain of events, perhaps Sharon could have lead the country to this day.
This aide relates that during the last year, he suffered from sharp pains in one of his legs, in which he had been wounded in the battle for Latrun in 1948. His limp worsened and he panted a lot. When he came to work he would sit down in the chair in his bureau; he did not wander among the rooms like his successor, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. But, "particularly on the trip to the UN, Sharon walked more than on other trips, and they always measured his steps for him."
The aide says that in meetings and discussions as well, Sharon would fall asleep a lot less than other ministers, and his tiredness stemmed from problems in falling asleep at night. "There's no doubt that he was five years older than he was on the day he was elected, but not for a moment did I think that we were hiding the truth about the state of his health or, alternatively, that a thing like that would happen," he sums up.
According to the same source, the period when Sharon worried him was after his victory in the 2003 elections. "He was in a kind of downer, not clinical depression. He was moody, as though he had won the elections and now there wasn't anything new, and he was bored with the job. We said that he was really in a depression, and at that stage he started sleeping more and more at the ranch and we stopped the afternoon nap in Jerusalem."
During his first term, Sharon would rest in the afternoon at his official residence in the Rehavia neighborhood and sleep there several times a week. In his second term, his agenda went on without a break until the evening and then he would leave for Sycamore Ranch. Sharon emerged from the crisis and found a new direction only at the end of 2003, when he decided to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
In retrospect, it is clear that the medical statistics were working against Sharon. He was the most elderly prime minister in the history of Israel, even more so than "the Old Man" - David Ben-Gurion. His excess weight was also obvious. Were his belief in his own longevity and his close circle's insistence on protecting him and expecting him to be able to serve for several more years mere wishes or reasonable expectations in the circumstances? It is a fact, say his aides, that he is continuing to live even in the hospital, a year after a serious stroke and complex brain surgery.
The people close to Sharon knew that the state of his health was a charged political issue that was liable to work to his detriment him in contending with younger politicians, such as Benjamin Netanyahu. In the 2001 election race, Ehud Barak's campaign headquarters made a failed attempt to bring up "Arik's illnesses" for media discussion, but the story did not catch on in the absence of any real evidence. In the 2003 campaign there was talk of corruption and investigations, but not of illnesses. However, as the 2006 elections drew near the issue of the prime minister's health reared its head again.
The last interview
In April, 2005, before Passover, I went with my colleague Yossi Verter for a holiday interview with the prime minister. We did not know then that this would be the last interview with him. These meetings with Sharon were every journalist's nightmare: He prepared himself well for the questions and stuck to the points he had prepared in advance. How can we get him away from those pages, we asked ourselves, and we decided to bring up the health issue. There are elections soon, and he is no longer young. Maybe we'll succeed in catching him unprepared on a sensitive point.
But Sharon knew these questions and immediately pulled out his prepared answer: "I invite you to see my medical report. This could have a bad effect on other people's health." We accepted the challenge and asked to see the file. Sharon had not expected this: "In fact for me this would be quite convenient," he said. "I don't know how this is done." We insisted, and Sharon moved in his chair and turned to his spokesman Assaf Shariv. "Ah, how do we do this? Are there rules?" "We'll definitely check," replied Shariv. In an attempt to avoid embarrassment, Sharon declared: "I'd like to but it's just not the usual thing to do here. Maybe you can ask ..."
With this the matter ended. The rules were not found and the medical file was revealed, at least partially, only after Sharon's first stroke, when the people around him tried to show that he was healthy, fit to serve and be reelected.
A few months later I wrote an article about Sharon's health as an important issue in the approaching elections. I had no information about illnesses or difficulties, only an assessment that a man of his age is no longer at his best. At his bureau they said to me: "It's good that you're writing about this now, way before the campaign. This way they won't bother us later on." At the last press conference that Sharon held, about two weeks before the first stroke, he related jokingly to his advanced age and said: "In four months I'll be 78. This is the best age to move forward." (The name of the new party he had founded, Kadima, means "forward.") He stood there then and answered questions fluently for an hour and a half, and among the reporters there was amazed whispering that he was completely lucid. But the very fact of the discussion of Sharon's lucidity shows that his advanced age was indeed a cause for concern. No one, after all, raises this question regarding Olmert, Netanyahu or Barak.
It is difficult to know whether Sharon's physical hardships had a detrimental effect on the quality of his functioning as leader of the country or on the quality of the decisions he made, or whether he was more dependent on his sons, his close associates and the people of his bureau than he had been in the past. There is no doubt that up until the last minute the state of his health was of supreme importance to the country's future and that his sudden collapse sent all systems into a tailspin.
The lesson has not been learned: A year after Sharon's departure, there are still no compulsory rules for the reporting and supervision of the health of Israel's leaders, nor for a compulsory age for retirement from the position of prime minister, as there is for civil servants and judges.
Iranian official: If threatened, we will use nuclear weapons After countless declarations of peaceful intentions of nuclear plan, Iran's chief nuclear envoy confirms fears by saying if county is threatened, situation will change YNET Associated Press Published: 01.05.07, 15:04 www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3348748,00.html
Iran's chief nuclear envoy Ali Larijani said on Friday that Iran is committed to the peaceful use of nuclear technology but warned the situation could change if his country is threatened.
"We oppose obtaining nuclear weapons and we will peacefully use nuclear technology under the framework of the Nonproliferation Treaty, but if we are threatened, the situation may change," He told a news conference after two days of talks in Beijing.
Iran's nuclear chief said his country has produced and stored 250 tons of the gas used as the feedstock for uranium enrichment, state-run television reported Friday.
Vice President Gholamreza Aghazadeh, who is also the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, said Iran has kept the uranium hexaflouride gas, or UF-6, in underground tunnels at a nuclear facility in Isfahan to protect it from any possible attack.
"Today, we have produced more than 250 tons of UF-6. Should you visit Isfahan, you will see we have constructed tunnels that are almost unique in the world," State-run television quoted Aghazadeh as saying.
'Iran will stand up to coercion'
While China has strong trade ties with oil-rich Iran, it is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, which voted unanimously to bar all countries from selling materials and technology to Iran that could contribute to its nuclear and missile programs.
It also froze the assets of 10 Iranian companies and 12 individuals related to those programs.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Friday said international sanctions won't stop Iran from enriching uranium, vowing not to give into "Coercion," State-run television reported.
"Iran will stand up to coercion. ... All Iranians stand united to defend their nuclear rights," State-run TV quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.
Iran has refused to comply with international demands that it suspend uranium enrichment. It also has condemned as "Invalid" And "Illegal" a UN Security Council resolution passed last month that imposes sanctions against the Islamic Republic for refusing to halt enrichment.
"Enemies have assumed that they can prevent the progress of the Iranian nation through psychological war and issuing resolutions, but they will be defeated," Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying on state-run TV.
By Amos Harel, Avi Issacharoff and Mijal Grinberg, Haaretz Correspondents, and News Agencies
Israel Defense Forces troops raided a village near the West Bank town of Tul Karm on Friday in a search for a wanted Palestinian militant, Palestinian witnesses said.
The raid came one day after four Palestinians were killed and at least 20 wounded when Israeli forces pushed into the center of the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Witnesses near Tul Karm said IDF soldiers searched houses in the village of Attil, looking for Abdel-Mo'ti Hassan, an Islamic Jihad militant.
The troops entered the village in nearly 20 armored vehicles but left without capturing Hassan, 26, witnesses said.
The IDF said it was checking the report.
Meanwhile, Palestinians fired two Qassam rockets at the western Negev on Friday, causing no injuries.
One of the rockets damaged the yard of a house in Sderot, and the second hit a kibbutz.
Islamic Jihad took responsibility for the rocket fire, Israel Radio reported.
In the West Bank, security forces arrested two wanted Palestinians before dawn Friday.
Palestinian gunmen in Nablus opened fire on Israeli troops and threw several explosives at them. There were no injuries.
Abbas condemns Ramallah raid Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas harshly condemned the Ramallah raid Thursday, saying it "proved that the Israeli calls for peace and security are fake."
Abbas demanded that Israel pay the Palestinian Authority $5 million in compensation for the damage to shops and cars in Ramallah.
The raid came less than two weeks after Prime Minister Ehud Olmert met Abbas and promised a package of measures to ease restrictions between the two sides.
Four Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded on Thursday when IDF undercover troops entered the West Bank town of Ramallah on an arrest raid, setting off protests and gunbattles in the center of town.
During a joint press conference with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Sharm el-Sheikh, Olmert apologized for the deaths of civilians, but defended Israel's incursion as an operation aimed at stopping terrorists responsible for the death of Israeli citizens.
The soldiers, who were dressed in civilian garb in an effort to blend in with the locals, entered an office building near Manara Square with the specific objective of locating and detaining Rabia Hamad, a militant belonging to the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.
Hamad, who the soldiers said was armed with a pistol, identified the men as IDF soldiers and tried to escape.
The IDF exchanged fire with Hamad, injuring him, yet he managed to elude IDF forces.
Military sources reported that Hamad was a senior Fatah official and a central figure in the planning of terrorist bombings. Because of his standing and occupation, his arrest was a top priority.
The undercover soldiers arrested four Palestinian militants in the raid.
The exchange of fire brought dozens of young men out of the buildings, and they began throwing stones and firebombs at the soldiers; a larger IDF force and Border Police moved in to support the commandos.
In the incident, which lasted nearly two hours, heavy exchanges of gunfire between the Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen ensued. The commandos and the rest of the IDF force was finally extracted with the help of a bulldozer and armor plated jeeps, as well as helicopter gunships that fired against open areas to cover the retreating force.
A soldier from a select IDF unit sustained light shrapnel wounds in the eye during the raid. He was evacuated to the hospital.
In a written statement on Thursday, Abbas appealed to the international community to rein in Israel.
"The continued aggression will only lead to the destruction of all efforts aimed at realizing peace," Abbas said.
The incursion, with IDF armoured vehicles and bulldozers slamming aside parked cars near Ramallah's main Manara Square, was the biggest such operation in the city since May, when four Palestinians were killed in a raid.
An IDF spokeswoman in Tel Aviv said forces were engaged in "routine arrest activity" when they came under Palestinian fire.
The IDF left the area after more than an hour of confrontations and exchanges of fire.
French President Jacques Chirac on Friday renewed a call for an international conference to help restore Middle East stability, saying that, "At the gates of Europe, the Middle East has become the epicentre of international tensions."
Chirac, in what is likely to be one of his last major foreign policy addresses before April presidential elections, repeated his criticism of the U.S.-led war in Iraq. He told diplomats in Paris that the situation risked spilling over into wider conflict.
"As France feared and warned, the war in Iraq set off upheavals whose effects have not yet been fully played out," he said, adding that conflict in the wider region could produce a confrontation "on an unimaginable scale."
"The Israeli-Palestinian conflict crystallises all these resentments," he said.
He said the international community had to act to restore the peace process and backed proposals to revive the so-called "Quartet" of Middle East mediators: the European Union, Russia, the United Nations and the United States.
"Let us propose within the Quartet an international conference of a new type which, without presuming to dictate the terms of a settlement to the parties, would bring the guarantees to which they aspire," he said, according to the text of his speech.
"I firmly believe there can be a real impetus for negotiation."
Chirac also backed German Chancellor Angela Merkel's drive for progress on reforms to make decision-making easier in a European Union that now counts 27 members.
"Everyone today can see the urgent need for reform," he said, adding that any solution would have to take into account the concerns over the bloc's powers raised by the rejection by French and Dutch voters of the proposed constitution in 2005.
Germany, which assumed the rotating presidency of the bloc at the start of the year, has made reviving the reform a top priority.
Welcoming the EU's new members, Romania and Bulgaria, Chirac said the 50th anniversary of the signing of the founding Treaty of Rome, due to be celebrated in Berlin later this year, was a major opportunity to reach a new consensus.
France is expected to continue the work begun by Germany when it takes over the EU presidency in 2008, although by then Chirac is expected to have left the scene he has helped shape over more than a decade in power.
Knesset members on Friday debated the wisdom of the timing of an Israel Defense Forces raid in the West Bank city of Ramallah on Thursday that cast a pall over a meeting in Egypt between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the same day.
Four Palestinians were killed and 20 wounded on Thursday when IDF undercover troops entered the West Bank town of Ramallah on an arrest raid, setting off protests and gunbattles in the center of town.
When the leaders' summit in Sharm el-Sheikh ended, Mubarak told reporters at his joint press conference with Olmert: "I expressed to the prime minister our indignation at what happened today in Ramallah and said that Israel and all the people in the region will achieve peace only by refraining from all practices which obstruct its course."
Olmert apologized for the deaths of civilians, but defended Israel's incursion as an operation aimed at stopping terrorists responsible for the death of Israeli citizens. He pointed out Israel's restraint in responding to the Qassam rockets fired from the Gaza Strip at the Negev.
"Things developed in a way that could not have been predicted in advance. If innocent people were hurt, this was not our intention," he said in reference to the West Bank raid.
The meeting apparently did not advance the two main topics on the agenda, the prisoner exchange deal involving kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit and Palestinians being held in Israeli jails, and furthering negotiations with the Palestinians.
Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said Friday that the IDF should have delayed the raid until after the meeting because Israel's relations with Egypt are of utmost importance.
"Such an operation I think did not need to have been done on the same day that there is a visit of the Israeli prime minister to a country in which we have utmost strategic interest," Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister from the Labor Party told Israel Radio on Friday.
"The relations between us and Egypt are such that they are more important to us than anything else, and according to my best assessment, at least according to the information I have in my hand, it was possible not to carry out this operation now but to postpone it to another time," he said.
MK Ran Cohen (Meretz-Yachad) also criticized the timing of the raid.
However, MK Yisrael Hasson (Yisrael Beiteinu), a former deputy head of the Shin Bet security service, argued that there was no reason for the raid to have upset Mubarak or prevent progress from being made in the talks.
"Nothing should have kept Mubarak, in this regard, from advancing the issue of preventing [weapons] smuggling [from Egypt into Gaza]," he told Israel Radio. "Nothing on this matter should have bothered Mubarak as such from moving forward in some achievement."
"It shouldn't have bothered him because he knows how to swallow these things," said Hasson. "This is an operation that I think the IDF does a few times a week ... without Mubarak stopping his activities."
Mubarak: Talk to PA Mubarak urged Olmert to conduct peace talks with the Palestinian Authority if it could not negotiate with Hamas.
Olmert said Hamas could not be a partner to negotiations, to which Mubarak responded: "Then try with the Palestinian Authority. It is the one delegated for this. In Egypt, too, there were elements who did not agree to the peace agreement [with Israel], but peace happened, with the majority of votes, almost by consensus, because peace is life."
Mubarak also said that Israel must not allow the Qassams to stop the peace process.
"These Qassam rockets. They'll fire them every other day. Shall we stop the peace process because one or two individuals fire rockets? We must proceed with the peace process," Mubarak said.
Mubarak said it was Olmert who suggested holding a four-way summit of Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and Egyptian leaders, to advance a prisoner exchange agreement.
Regarding the recent Syrian overtures to Israel, the Egyptian president said that neither party believed the other, and for this reason they must sit down together and begin talking in order to establish mutual trust.
The press conference became tense when Olmert mentioned that during their meeting he expressed concerns about the ongoing smuggling of weapons and money from Egypt into Gaza via the Philadelphi Route. Olmert said he knew the issue concerned Mubarak as well and that Egypt is making efforts to stop the smuggling.
Mubarak said in response that Egyptian law allowed the passage of money into Gaza as long as it was declared, but that Egypt would not hesitate to intercept weapons shipments.
When an Egyptian journalist asked Olmert to comment on remarks that appeared to imply that Israel possesses nuclear weapons, Olmert repeated the stock Israeli statement, "Israel will not be the first country to introduce nuclear weapons into the region." Mubarak called for making the Middle East a nuclear weapons-free zone.
Hamas spokespeople deny organization ready to swap video of Shalit for prisoners' release Hamas spokesman Fauzi Barhoum and Abu Ubaida, a spokesman for Hamas militants, on Thursday denied reports that their group was ready to give Israel a videotape of captured Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, if it agrees to release Palestinian women prisoners and other detainees.
Haaretz reported earlier this week that Hamas would hand over a video proving that Shalit is alive, the first such indication since his capture by Hamas-linked gunmen on June 25, in return for the release of Palestinian women and minors held in Israeli jails.
Moussa Abu Marzouk, deputy head of Hamas' political bureau in Damascus, said Thursday that Shalit is alive.
He also confirmed earlier reports that Hamas was willing to trade the videotape for the freedom of "Palestinian women and a considerable number of detainees," but did not name a figure.
The later statement by Barhoum and Abu Ubaida contradicted Abu Marzouk statement.
Abu Marzuk said the demand was "modest in light of the high price Palestinian people have paid and the collective punishment they have faced by Israel following the capture of the soldier."
Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve. -George Bernard Shaw
What if it's true? What if Israelis deserve no better than Ehud Olmert, Amir Peretz, Avigdor Lieberman, Moshe Katsav, Dan Halutz?
If we are stuck with them, and they have nothing to offer us in the way of governance or personal example, perhaps they can offer us something else. At the very least, maybe they have something to teach us. About ourselves. What's wrong with us.
Take the question of leadership. We know what we want in a leader, the kind of person we'd be fools not to follow. We want someone wiser than we are on issues of life and death, someone better able to see around corners and beyond horizons. We want someone of sounder judgment, superior imagination, someone whose ability exceeds his ambition, someone who cares about the country more than he cares about his chair. Someone who cares about us.
Now look who we've got.
At this point, the top echelon of government, and much of the top leadership of the military, is a collection of one-man fan clubs. Leaders whose followers long ago knew better than to continue to follow them.
Here's where it gets even more depressing.
What if the reason that we tend to get the leaders we most deserve is that we tend to vote for the leaders we most resemble?
The cabinet, the Knesset, the president, the chief rabbinate - they are their constituents in caricature. Us, in a fun house mirror.
If this is the case, it should be a fairly simple matter to divine what's wrong with Israelis. The male ones, at any rate.
First, we apply the Universal Law of Israeli Male Dynamics, which states, referring to behavior in the Gan, or Israeli pre-school:
They never left the Gan.
They can do whatever they want. They can say whatever comes to mind. There are no painful consequences, no significant punishments. They can decide that the sandbox is theirs, and woe to the kid who was there first.
They believe, and they may be right, that they will not be thrown out of the Gan, no matter what they do.
Anything goes.
Witness what is sometimes called the Rabin Principle, that we can battle terrorism as if there were no peace process, and pursue the peace process as if there were no fight against terror.
It doesn't work. In fact, any kid in Gan could probably figure out that it cannot work. But we are so clever, we tell ourselves, that we can make it work.
We won't let the fact that it never works deter us.
Witness Thursday night. As Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is launching one of the most potentially useful and significant summits, on his way to meeting key mediator Hosni Mubarak, the Israel Defense Forces was raiding Ramallah in an operation - carried live on Al Jazeera - that cost four Palestinian deaths. As well as any chance that the summit could help free kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit.
"Things developed in a way that could not have been predicted in advance," Olmert said, in an expression of magic thinking fully worthy of a response to an angry pre-school teacher. "If innocent people were hurt, this was not our intention."
Even in the absence of dramatic events, variations of the Gan axiom abound. A random selection, from the pre-school that meets every Sunday in the Cabinet Room:
THE SNEAK [Namecard: Ehud O.]
Teacher Evaluation: Good habits of personal hygiene. Plays well with others, until teacher's back is turned. His demeanor is correct, with an undertone of sleaze. Despite what teacher would hope, the sleaze on the exterior belies greater sleaze on the inside.
He will stealthily take whatever he can. He will put it where it cannot be easily found. When it is found, he will have an explanation at the ready. There is more where that came from, but no one can figure out where it is.
THE BULLY [Namecard: Avigdor L.]
Teacher Evaluation: Just as Ehud O. fools people into wondering whether he could possibly be as sleazy as he appears, Avigdor L. is often so verbally abusive that one might mistake it for nothing but idle, if intimidating, bluster. But underestimate him at your peril. He might just be the kind of bully that if you call his bluff, goes ahead and does just what he threatened - and woe the block that he decides to knock off.
THE LOUDMOUTH [Namecard: Amir P.]
Teacher Evaluation: Alternately enchanting and obnoxious, Amir P. talks a good game - often at the top of his lungs. But his undeniable people skills, along with his propensity for high-volume self-promotion, can land him in situations for which he is unprepared and unsuited.
And so it goes. Around the cabinet table sit all the traits to which we have fallen chronic victim:
The Minister of Arrogance and Insecurity.
The Minister of Ambition that Exceeds Ability.
The Deputy Minister for Reckless Glibness.
The Special Advisor for Inattention to Details.
The Minister of Disdain for Accountability.
The Minister of Profligate Tolerance for Corruption.
Finally, no overview of what's wrong with Israelis would be complete without a word on being provincial to the point of pathology.
It is one of the wonders of selective innocence. Left wing, right wing, professor or dropout, provincialism knows no barriers. It is everywhere in this tiny ghetto of a Jewish state.
Once, relatively few Israelis traveled abroad, foreign influences like television were limited, and down-on-the-farm narrowness was eminently understandable. No more. There's something about the provincialism of Israelis that has become a cultural staple, second nature. Effortless.
There's something oddly charming about it, when it's not causing someone pain.
You see it in its sub-cultural forms, in the hermetic self-satisfaction and immunity to criticism as exemplified in such groups as settlers, the ultra-Orthodox, the ultra-left.
You see it on a national level, in the conviction that a world that condemns Israel at every opportunity, and at times unjustly, actually frees it to act any way it damn pleases.
You might say there's something even childlike about it. A certain lack of perspective, that may, in fact, explain everything else.
The outrage over Iran's hosting of a Holocaust denial conference has tended to overshadow what should be a greater outrage: Iran's state-sanctioned incitement to commit genocide. Simply put, the denial of genocide became a media event, but incitement to genocide in violation of the prohibition against the "direct and public incitement to commit genocide" in the Genocide Convention, the "never again" convention, is greeted with a yawn.
In a similar vein, the international community celebrated the adoption by the United Nations of the "responsibility to protect" doctrine so as to authorize intervention to protect populations from genocidal acts, but it ignores the "responsibility to prevent" obligation mandated by the Genocide Convention. Yet, this is regarded as jus cogens, a peremptory norm of international law - binding on us all.
This juridical anomaly is not only of academic interest. For we are witnessing - and have been witnessing for some time - the emergence of state-sanctioned incitement to genocide, whose epicenter is President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran. Here, you have the toxic convergence of the advocacy of the most horrific of crimes - genocide - embedded in the most virulent of hatreds - anti-Semitism - and underpinned by a publicly avowed intent to acquire nuclear weapons for that purpose, as former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani put it.
Nor should the words of former president Rafsanjani - characterized as the "moderate" victor in the recent Iranian elections - be dismissed as overheated rhetoric only. For the Argentinean judiciary recently determined that it was this same Rafsanjani who planned, organized and ordered the mass terrorist bombing of the Argentinean Jewish community center (AMIA) in 1994, resulting in the death of 85 people and 300 wounded.
In a fortuitous yet chilling reminder, the Argentinean prosecutors' decision calling for arrest warrants to be issued against the Iranian leadership was released on the same day that President Ahmadinejad called yet again for the disappearance of Israel, and on the anniversary of his first public and direct call for the destruction of Israel (on October 25, 2005) when, as he put it, "Israel must be wiped off the map, as the imam says."
The imam, in this instance, is former Ayatollah Ali Khameini, the supreme leader of Iran, who had declared in 2000 that "there is only one solution to the Middle East problem, namely the annihilation and destruction of the Jewish state," while otherwise using epidemiological metaphors in calling for Israel, "the cancerous tumor of a state," to be "removed from the region."
Indeed, Ahmadinejad and the Iranian leadership's denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jews of Europe - together with the demonization of the Jews as "evil incarnate" and the delegitimization of Israel as the defiler of Islam - appear to be prologue to and justification for a new genocide. Lest this admit of any doubt, Ahmadinejad has presided over the parading of a Shihab-3 missile draped in the emblem that Israel be "wiped off the map," while exhorting assembled thousands in their chants declaring "Death to Israel," as in the Tehran conference on "A World Without Israel."
Moreover, calls for the destruction of Israel by the most senior figures in the Iranian leadership are frighteningly reminiscent of calls for the Rwandan extermination of Tutsis by the Hutu leadership. The crucial difference - which makes the Iranian genocidal threat even more dangerous - is that the Hutus were equipped with the simplest of weapons, such as machetes, while Iran, in defiance of the world community, continues its pursuit of nuclear weapons.
The failure to prevent past genocides caused UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan to lament as follows on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide in 2004: "We must never forget our collective failure to protect at least 800,000 defenseless men, women and children who perished in Rwanda 10 years ago. Such crimes cannot be reversed. Such failures cannot be repaired. The dead cannot be brought back to life. So, what can we do?"
The answer is for the international community to pay heed to the early warnings of genocide - and incitement has been demonstrated to be a predictor of the genocide to come - and to act now, as mandated under the Genocide Convention, to prevent this clear and present danger, not only to Israel and the Jewish people, but to international peace and security.
Indeed, what is often ignored in Ahmadinejad's incitement to genocide are his warnings to any Muslim who supports Israel that they will burn in the Umma of Islam, and that the West should beware of propping up this disappearing state, while this genocidal incitement emerges as an apocalyptic precursor to the elimination of Israel and the messianic coming of the 12th Imam Mahdi.
The "responsibility to prevent" obligation in international law requires that the following actions be undertaken with all deliberate speed:
1. Israel should support the execution of arrest warrants issued by the Argentinean judiciary for the named Iranian authorities - including former Iranian president Rafsanjani - and Hezbollah operatives.
2. State parties to the Genocide Convention, whose responsibility is to enforce the convention, should refer the horrific genocidal incitement by President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders to the appropriate UN agencies for account. It is astonishing that this genocidal incitement has yet to be addressed by any body or agency of the United Nations.
3. State parties should initiate in the International Court of Justice an inter-state complaint against Iran, also a state party to the Genocide Convention, for its criminal violation of the Genocide Treaty.
4. The situation of the international criminality of President Ahmadinejad, and other Iranian leaders, should be referred by the UN Security Council to the special prosecutor of the International Criminal Court for investigation and prosecution.
5. State parties to the Genocide Convention, which have enabling domestic legislation, should prepare criminal indictments for President Ahmadinejad, former president Rafsanjani, and other Iranian leaders on the basis of the "universal jurisdiction" principle embodied in the Genocide Convention.
6. NGOs should prepare an indictment of President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders for the violation of the prohibition in both the Genocide Convention and the International Criminal Court Treaty, against the "public and direct incitement to genocide."
7. The new secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, who seeks to "lead by example," should refer the genocidal incitement of President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders to the UN Security Council, as a matter threatening international peace and security, pursuant to Article 99 of the UN Charter.
It is time that these juridical options be initiated, which might also embolden progressive forces within Iran, while holding the responsible individuals accountable. Indeed, recent history has taught us that sustained international juridical remedies can bring about the indictment of seemingly immune dictators, such as Slobodan Milosevic and Augusto Pinochet. This is an opportunity for countries to exercise juridical leadership in regard to one of the most important threats confronting the international community.
Prof. Cotler is a member of Canadian Parliament, former minister of justice and attorney general of Canada, and is professor of law (on leave) at McGill University.
By Avi Issacharoff, Haaretz Correspondent, and News Agencies
The Bush administration will provide $86.4 million to strengthen security forces loyal to Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, expanding U.S. involvement in Abbas' power struggle with Hamas, U.S. documents showed on Friday.
Fighting between Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas has surged since talks on forming a unity government collapsed and Abbas called for early parliamentary and presidential elections. Hamas accused Abbas of mounting a coup.
The U.S. money will be used to "assist the Palestinian Authority presidency in fulfilling PA commitments under the road map to dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza," a U.S. government document obtained by Reuters said.
Haniyeh, Abbas agree to defuse tensions
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Friday he and Abbas had agreed at emergency talks to keep gunmen from their rival Hamas and Fatah factions off Gaza's streets after six people were killed and 18 were wounded.
"We have expressed our regret and sorrow for these incidents that do not reflect our struggle," Haniyeh told reporters at Abbas's office at the end of their first meeting in two months.
Haniyeh said he and Abbas agreed to "withdraw all gunmen from the streets and deploy police forces to keep law and order."
Abbas made no public comment after the session, but a diplomat who attended the talks and declined to be identified confirmed an agreement had been reached.
Similar pacts in the past have been shattered swiftly by violence and Gazans said they feared another eruption of bloodshed later in the day when Thursday's dead are buried.
Gunbattles broke out between forces loyal to Abbas and the Hamas government in northern Gaza on Thursday, killing six people and wounding 18 other people, witnesses said.
In the northern Gaza Strip, a senior Palestinian security officer allied with Fatah was killed when Hamas militants laid siege to his house, engaging in a protracted gun battle with his guards, and then attacked it with grenades and a dozen rockets, Palestinian officials and witnesses said.
The officer, Colonel Mohammed Ghayeb, was on the phone to Palestine TV just moments before his death and appealed for help as his house came under attack. Ghayeb's wife was seriously wounded in the attack, in which Hamas fired assault rifles and rockets at the building.
"They are killers," he said of the Hamas gunmen. "They are targeting the house, children are dying, they are bleeding. For God's sake, send an ambulance, we want an ambulance, somebody move."
The battle outside the house raged for much of the day and killed four of Ghayeb's guards and a Hamas gunman. About three dozen people, including eight children, were also wounded.
Ghayeb was the chief of the Preventive Security Service in northern Gaza, and his killing was expected to trigger revenge attacks by the men under his command.
During the standoff outside Ghayeb's home in Beit Lahiya, dozens of women rushed into the streets in protest, chanting "Spare the bullets, shame, shame."
One resident, Amina Abu Saher, told the local Al Quds radio station that it was difficult for her to see Palestinians fighting each other and said she and the other women were determined to stop the internal fighting.
Haniyeh called for calm in the wake of the renewed internal violence. Five people were killed on Wednesday in fighting.
"These clashes must stop, this bloodshed must end. Let all of you love one another, let's resolve differences through dialogue and not with weapons," Haniyeh told reporters after returning from making the Haj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. "Weapons must only be directed against the Israeli occupation," he added.
The two sides declared the truce in an attempt to end violence that surged after Abbas challenged Hamas by calling for early parliamentary and presidential elections after unity government talks failed.
Also Thursday, unknown gunmen fired on mourners at a funeral for three security officers loyal to Abbas who were among those killed the day before.
Fatah sources and medical officials said two mourners were wounded during the funeral march in central Gaza when gunmen shot at the procession.
A senior Hamas member was also kidnapped by unidentified gunmen in Gaza City, the Islamists said.
Abbas met with leaders of political factions in Gaza on Thursday night. The smaller Islamic Jihad group, which has stayed out of the fighting, was to propose another round of unity talks, this time between Abbas and Hamas' supreme leader, Khaled Meshal, rather than between lower-level envoys.
As the fighting worsened, Haniyeh of Hamas cut short a tour of Arab nations and returned to Gaza on Thursday. His next stop was to have been Jordan, which has offered to host a meeting between Haniyeh and Abbas, in an attempt to defuse the tensions.
A new book about Anne Frank, the iconic Jewish teenager who was killed by the Nazis, claims to be the most comprehensive story of her life so far.
The book, The Life of Anne Frank, has been released to mark the 60th anniversary of the publication of the girl's famous diaries.
It tells the story of her life before she went into hiding in Amsterdam.
The publishers say they want to keep her story alive in a new generation with lessons that are relevant today.
"Will I ever be able to write something great, will I ever become a journalist or a writer? I hope so, oh, I hope so very much, because writing allows me to record everything, all my thoughts, ideals and fantasies."
That is what Anne Frank asked in her diary. She was never to know that her wish would be fulfilled, as her journal was discovered and published after her death, and became one of the most famous and poignant tales of persecution under the Nazis.
Family photos
The Life of Anne Frank, published by Macmillan books, aims to fill in many of the lesser known details about her, such as her life before she went into hiding, her arrest and how she was betrayed, the BBC's Geraldine Coughlan reports.
It is written by people working for the Anne Frank House, the museum dedicated to her in Amsterdam, and is filled with family photos and other contemporary details.
Anne Frank and her family hid in a cramped secret annexe in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands for two years between 1942, when she was 13, and 1944.
She kept a diary of her life and efforts to stay hidden.
But her family was betrayed and she died, aged 15, in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp shortly before the end of the war.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh met with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on Thursday night to discuss a solution to the current inter-faction violence after a day of clashes between Hamas and Fatah loyalists left eight Palestinians dead.
According to Army Radio, Haniyeh, of Hamas, said the two had agreed at the meeting to work toward ending the infighting in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
"We are going to end all armed displays in the streets," Haniyeh told reporters. he said. Abbas had no comment.
The eight Palestinians killed in Thursday's armed confrontations brought the death toll to 13 over the past 48 hours. At least 16 Palestinians were wounded in Thursday's fighting.
Haniyeh, who returned to the Gaza Strip after a week-long visit to Saudi Arabia, appealed to the warring factions to halt the fighting and to direct their weapons toward Israel. Fatah officials, on the other hand, accused Hamas of operating "death squads" in the Gaza Strip.
The body of Gen. Muhammed Gharib, chief of the Fatah-dominated Preventive Security Service in northern Gaza, riddled with bullets and mutilated by stab wounds, was found in his home in northern Gaza Thursday after a daylong battle with Hamas gunmen. Gharib's two daughters were also killed during the fighting, according to reports.
Gharib was on the phone to Palestine TV just moments before his death and appealed for help as his house came under attack. "They are killers," he said of the Hamas gunmen. "They are targeting the house, children are dying, they are bleeding. For God's sake, send an ambulance, we want an ambulance, somebody move."
The battle outside the house raged for much of the day and killed four of Gharib's guards and a Hamas gunman. The Hamas member was identified as Ayman Subuh, 26. A passerby killed in the crossfire was named as 18-year-old Ihab al-Mabhouh. About three dozen people, including eight children, were also wounded.
During the standoff outside Gharib's home in Beit Lahiya, dozens of women rushed into the streets in protest, chanting "Spare the bullets, shame, shame."
Hospital officials said ambulances sent to the scene were unable to reach their destination because of the heavy clashes between Fatah and Hamas supporters. Eyewitnesses reported that Hamas gunmen fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the home of senior Fatah official Sufian Abu Zaida. No one was hurt.
On Wednesday, Gharib escaped an assassination attempt when Hamas gunmen fired at his convoy. Two of his bodyguards were kidnapped during that attack. The killing of the senior officer on Thursday was likely to spark reprisal raids.
Earlier Thursday, six Palestinians were wounded by gunfire during the funeral procession of three Fatah-affiliated security officers who were killed in Wednesday's clashes with Hamas in Khan Yunis. Fatah activists accused Hamas gunmen of firing at the mourners. However, a spokesman for Hamas claimed that the six were wounded when their friends fired into the air during the funeral.
Speaking to reporters outside his home in Shati refugee camp, Haniyeh urged all Palestinian groups to halt the fighting and to use their weapons against Israel. He also expressed regret for the death of Palestinians in the ongoing fighting.
"We must rise to the hopes of our people," he said. "Let's top this bloodshed and rivalry. Let's tackle our problems through dialogue, not weapons. These weapons should be directed only against the Israeli enemy."
Haniyeh lashed out at Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, accusing him of failing to fulfill his promises to Abbas to release Palestinian prisoners and remove IDF checkpoints in the West Bank.
"We don't have much confidence in Israeli promises," he said. "Olmert has already reneged on a number of understandings he reached with President Abbas during their recent summit. He neither released prisoners nor eased restrictions imposed on our people."
As the fighting escalated in the Gaza Strip, Fatah spokesman launched an unprecedented attack on Hamas, holding the movement responsible for the latest flare-up.
"It's time to put an end to the death gangs that Hamas is operating in the Gaza Strip," said Fatah legislator Jamal Tirawi. "Hamas must stop lying and killing. Their version of the latest events reminds us of the Israeli army's lies. They are stupid to think that the people believe them."
In a frosty and uncomfortable atmosphere, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak met on Thursday evening at the Northern Peak Resort in Sharm e-Sheikh. Mubarak made no statement on progress over the release of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, expressed confidence in his country's efforts to stem the smuggling of arms into Gaza and failed to criticize the firing of Kassams on southern Israel, saying this was the work of "only one or two people."
The atmosphere and the statements made by the two leaders at their press conference gave the impression that very little, if anything at all, had been achieved in their talks.
Notably, during the press conference that followed their meeting, neither leader went out of his way to compliment his colleague. Olmert did thank his host for the talks, but there was no echo of the praise he had lavished on Mubarak's statesmanship at their last meeting in June.
An IDF operation in Ramallah earlier in the day, in which four Palestinians were killed, evidently cast a pall over the meeting. Mubarak chose to open his statement at the press conference with a denunciation of the raid, "which hinders our efforts to achieve peace."
He went on to term the talks "frank and constructive" but did not report any progress in the Egyptian-brokered negotiations for an exchange involving the release of Shalit and Palestinian prisoners.
He concluded his statement, which had been prepared in a written text, with another criticism of the Ramallah operation.
Olmert thanked Mubarak for "Egypt's special effort" in trying to bring about the release of Shalit, but he also offered no news of progress. Olmert said he had expressed his concern over the continued smuggling of arms through the Philadelphi Corridor and added that he knew "these issues concern the president" and was "sure that Egypt is making a special effort to stop" the smuggling.
In answer to a question, Mubarak said that the money transfers to Hamas were being blocked because they are against Egyptian law and "we are not going to have any other law here." He added that "we are not allowing any arms to go through" but also noted that the border could not be hermetically sealed.
Olmert expressed regret "if innocent people have been hurt in Ramallah. But we must remember that Israel must take steps to stop terrorists, and the operation today was to stop terrorists who had killed innocent Israelis."
Several times during the conference, the leaders cut each other off or butted in on what the other was saying. Mubarak also impatiently cut off an Israeli journalist trying to ask an additional question.
Sources in the Prime Minister's Office had said before the meeting that Israel had responded positively to an Egyptian idea to convene a regional summit of Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. But Mubarak, when asked about the initiative, said only that the "prime minister proposed some time ago that after a deal to free the Palestinian prisoners and Gilad Shalit has been reached, we should organize such a summit."
Olmert repeatedly said during the press conference that Israel continues to adhere to the cease-fire reached with the Palestinian Authority and blamed Hamas and other terrorist organizations for repeatedly violating it.
Olmert was asked by an Egyptian reporter about his interview with German television in which he had included Israel in the "nuclear club." "How," the reporter inquired, "did that tally with his declarations of peace?"
Olmert answered that "What I said in Germany is that Israel will not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the region. As everybody knows, the country that is threatening to introduce nuclear weapons and use them is Iran. And many countries have reason to be worried by these intentions, including Israel and Egypt."
For his part, Mubarak called for an agreement on a nuclear-free Middle East.
The entire visit, from the moment the prime minister's chartered plane landed on Egyptian soil, up to take-off back to Israel, lasted barely four hours and took place with little fanfare. Even the official dinner after the press conference was kept markedly brief.
Imam Ali Ibn Abi Taleb: "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him knowledge"
The League of Arab States has 22 members. Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar and Oman are 'traditional monarchies'. Of the 22, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Tunisia, Algeria and Somalia are 'Authoritarian Regimes' (Source: www.freedomhouse.org). Of the 22, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Morocco and Somalia are among the 'world's most repressive regimes' (Source: A special report to the 59th session of the UN Commission on Human Rights). Of the 330 million Muslim men, women and children living under Arab rulers a mere 486,530 live in a democracy (0.15 per cent of the total).
A mere two hundred and fifty miles from the 'League of Dictators' HQ in Cairo is the only 'parliamentary democracy' in the region; universal suffrage, multi-party, multi-candidate, competitive elections. Israel's 6,352,117 residents are 76 per cent Jewish and 23 per cent non-Jewish (mostly Arab).
Israel spends $110 on scientific research per year per person while the same figure for the Arab world is $2. Knowledge makes Israel grow by 5.2 per cent a year while "rates of productivity (the average production of one worker) in Arab countries were negative to a large and increasing extent in oil-producing countries during the 1980s and 90s (World Bank; Arab Development Report)."
Facts cannot be denied: The state of Israel now has six universities ranked as among the best on the face of the planet. Hebrew University Jerusalem is in the top-100. Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Tel Aviv University and Weizmann Institute of Science are in the top-200. Bar Ilan University and Ben Gurion University are in the top-300. The Arab League does not have a single university in the top-400 (http://ed.sjtu.edu.cn/ranking.htm). One in two Arab women can neither read nor write (remember, "If God were to humiliate a human being He would deny him/her knowledge").
Israel's universities are producing knowledge. Israeli society is applying that knowledge plus diffusing knowledge produced by others. On the other hand, within the Arab League, repressive regimes have erected religious, social and cultural barriers to the production as well as diffusion of knowledge.
Look at how knowledge is abandoning the Arab world: Between 1998 and 2000 more than 15,000 Arab physicians migrated. According to the World Bank, "roughly 25 per cent of 300,000 first degree graduates from Arab universities emigrated. Roughly 23 per cent of Arab engineers, 50 per cent of Arab doctors and 15 per cent of Arab BSc holders had emigrated."
Israel, on the other hand, has more engineers and scientists per capita than any other country (for every 10,000 Israelis there are 145 engineers or scientists). Israel ranks among the top-7 countries worldwide for patents per capita.
Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd., Israel's pharmaceutical giant, is the world's largest producer of antibiotics (Teva developed Copaxone, a unique immunomodulator therapy for the treatment of multiple sclerosis, the only non-interferon agent available).
Facts are hard to deny: Most members of the Arab League grant Muslim women fewer rights -- with regards to marriage, divorce, dress code, civil rights, legal status and education. Israel does not. Spain translates more books in a year than has the Arab world in the past thousand years (since the reign of Caliph Mamoun; Abbasid, caliph 813-833).
Six million Israelis buy 12 million books every year making them one of the highest consumers of books in the world. Israel has the highest number of university degrees per capita in the world; the Arab world has the lowest. Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other country (109 per 10,000 Israelis); the Arab world -- next to nothing.
Results are for everyone to see: The average per capita income in Israel is $25,000 while the average income within the League of Arab States is $5,000.
The writer is an Islamabad-based freelance columnist. Email: farrukh15@hotmail.com
My own Zionist plot to lower the Arab birth rate - provide free university education to everyone.
Rattling the Cage: A bigot called Bibi
Larry Derfner, THE JERUSALEM POST
Jan. 3, 2007
By rights, Binyamin Netanyahu, who every poll says is by far the most popular politician in Israel, should be ranked with Jean Le Pen, Jorge Haider and the rest of the Western world's racist demagogues.
But he won't be, because anti-Arab racism in Israel is either supported or strategically ignored by the mainstream of the Jewish world, and pretty much taken for granted by the gentile world.
What Netanyahu said Tuesday night was not new for him; he was reported to have made the same appeal to the same sort of audience - haredi political leaders - a couple of years ago as finance minister.
Then, as now, he was apologizing for the way his child welfare cuts had hurt large haredi families, while at the same time asking the haredim to look at the bright sides of that policy.
"Two positive things happened," he told a conference of haredi government officials in Nir Etzion this week. "Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate." (Quoted in Ynet, Yediot Aharonot's Web site. The speech was also reported in Haaretz.)
The once-and-possibly-future prime minister of Israel says publicly that he's sorry his welfare cuts made life harder for Jewish families who are "blessed," as he put it, with many children, but isn't it "positive" that these cuts resulted in fewer Arab children being born? Then Netanyahu went on to suggest a national remedy for the victims of his economic policies - but for Jewish victims only, not Arab victims.
"I don't think that the Jewish Agency should refrain from helping part of the Jewish public in the state," he said, "and it is possible that additional non-governmental bodies could have done so."
IMAGINE IF any gentile government official in the world cited the lowering of the Jewish birthrate in his country as an accomplishment, then recommended that his country's founding institution raise money to help poor gentile families, but not poor Jewish families. How would the Jewish world, starting with Israel, characterize such an individual? What sort of pressure would the Jewish world apply to get him or her fired, blackballed and, if possible, indicted?
Yet everyone knows the speech in Nir Etzion will not hurt Netanyahu at all - even though, again, this is not the first time he's said this, and even though the statements are perfectly in line with his standing as Israel's number one fear-monger on the Israeli Arab "demographic threat." (On second thought, Netanyahu is probably only number two - Avigdor Lieberman, his former right-hand man and alter ego, is number one. When it comes to the subject of Israeli Arabs, it's hard to tell where Netanyahu ends and Lieberman begins.)
The worst that will happen to Netanyahu from this is that maybe another liberal commentator or two will denounce him, and there will be a press release from some civil rights organization. Maybe not even that. If, on the other hand, we're really, really lucky, the attorney-general might have a word to say. (FYI, even if there was a chance of it happening, I wouldn't want to see Netanyahu indicted. If every Israeli who made racist remarks in public had to stand trial, the courts would collapse under the load.)
The only political parties that might censure Netanyahu are the left-wing parties, and nobody cares about them; in fact, a bad word from Meretz can only help the Likud leader in the polls.
The Anti-Defamation League won't say anything, and neither will the other Diaspora Jewish organizations. Bibi is just too big, too popular, too important, too much a symbol of Israel for the Diaspora Jewish establishment to say a word against him, let alone accuse him of being a shameless bigot.
Two positive things happened: Members of the haredi public seriously joined the workforce. And on the national level, the unexpected result was the demographic effect on the non-Jewish public, where there was a dramatic drop in the birth rate.
That's the Israeli people's overwhelming choice for prime minister talking. I hope The New York Times, CNN and every other major news medium in the world picks up this story and doesn't let it go until Israel and Diaspora Jewry are shamed into dumping this guy once and for all.
On second thought, exposure as an anti-Arab racist by the international media could cause Netanyahu some problems overseas, but at home, it would only increase his appeal.
Statement from PM Olmert's Bureau (Communicated by the Prime Minister's Media Adviser)
The Prime Minister's Bureau, this evening (Thursday), 4.1.07, wishes to clarify that contrary to television reports, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has not decided to dismiss Defense Minister Amir Peretz or to transfer him to another post. As far as the Prime Minister's Bureau is concerned, the issue is not on the agenda.
January 4th 2007 BACKGROUND INFORMATION Attributed to "security sources" (Distributed by the IDF Spokesperson's Office)
Wanted Fatah terrorist arrested in Bethlehem
This afternoon security forces operating in Bethlehem arrested Muhammad Muntasser Taufik Abu Zaid, a 19 year-old wanted Fatah terrorist. Abu Zaid was shot and injured while attempting to escape arrest. He was taken to an Israeli hospital to receive medical treatment.
Abu Zaid was involved in numerous shooting attacks against IDF forces in the past year, and recruited terrorists for shooting attacks and bombing attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF forces. Abu Zaid is known as an explosives expert involved in bomb construction and weapons dealing.
In his efforts to carry out attacks, Abu Zaid received directives and funds from members of the Popular Resistance Committees terror organization in the Gaza Strip. Even in the past few days, Abu Zaid was planning various attacks.
Poll of Kadima voters: 8.7% Want Olmert as candidate, 42.0% Government will last at most a year, 39.4% Would vote Kadima now Dr. Aaron Lerner Date: 4 January 2007
Telephone poll of a representative sample of 345 adult Israelis (including Arab Israelis) who said that they voted for Kadima in the last elections carried out by Geocartographia for Israel Radio's "Its all Talk" on 3 January 2007
Do you think that the Olmert administration will run full term or less? At most a year 42.0% Two years 10.2% Full term -Nov.'010 36.2% Other 11.6%
If Ehud Olmert resigns who should take his place? Livni 37.7% Peres 15.9% Mofaz 7.2% Sheetreet 5.8% Dichter 11.6% None of the above 15.9% Don't know 5.8%
If elections for the Knesset are advanced, who do you think should be Kadima's candidate for prime minister? Olmert 8.7% Livni 49.3% Mofaz 14.5% Sheetreet 5.8% None of the above 11.6% Don't know 10.1%
If elections were held today what party would you vote for? Kadima 39.4% Likud 4.5% Labor 1.5% Yisrael Beiteinu 6.1% Won't vote/white slip 6.1% Haven't decided 42.4%
-------------------------------------------- IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis Website: www.imra.org.il
"The dog bark-reader is just one of a batch of innovative security systems to emerge from Israel, which business magazine Forbes said in December had emerged as "the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies." "Israeli animal rights societies said they knew little about the system but it was preferable for dogs to live indoors and unleashed" If a terrorist blows up a dog, it is not news and it is not cruelty to animals and it is not reported in Reuters of course, but if a dog bites a terrorist it is news and cruelty to animals.
A Zionist plot. Zionists are cruel to animals. Indeed, God created dogs to live indoors and unleashed. They always lived indoors. Walking dogs is cruel to animals.
It is preferable for terrorists to live indoors and leashed, but they don't stick to that, creating certain necessities.
By Corinne Heller Wed Jan 3, 8:16 AM ET BEERSHEBA, Israel (Reuters) - An Israeli firm has designed a security system to ensure jailbreakers or intruders find a guard dog's bark can indeed be worse than its bite.
Harnessing technology that interprets barking -- to see if an animal is responding to a threat instead of just routinely woofing -- the company aims to replace or supplement expensive electronic surveillance systems. "There is currently very little utilization of the watchdog's early warning capabilities," says privately owned manufacturer Bio-Sense Technologies, based in the Israeli town of Petah Tikva, on its Web site.
The company -- which says dogs have better night vision than humans and a vastly superior sense of smell and hearing -- used computers to analyze 350 barks and found dogs of all breeds and sizes barked the same alarm when they sensed a threat.
If the dogs sense an intruder or attempted security breach, dozens of sensors around the facility pick up their "alarm bark" and alert the human operators in the control room.
Dubbed "Doguard," the Dog Bio Security system is in place in high-security Eshel Prison as well as Israeli military bases, water installations, farms, ranches, garages and in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
Eshel Prison installed the system last year to supplement its existing network of electric fences and human guards, prison officer Bazov Moris told Reuters.
Now Rex, a brown American Staffordshire Terrier, Emmy, a white Caanan, and 27 other dogs guarding the prison are tracked by sensors to alert guards to any attempted breakout at the jail, which houses about 3,000 prisoners including Israelis and Palestinians.
There have been no escape attempts since the system was installed, but Moris is convinced it works. He said prisoners at other facilities had been able to escape "because dogs barked but no alert was sent to the guards."
During a demonstration an alarm wailed as Rex and Emmy raced, growling and snarling, alongside one of the facility's metal fences, which a man in a brown uniform was trying to scale from the other side.
Officers in a small basement office nearby watched on a surveillance video and spoke into their walkie-talkies as a wall of computer screens flashed in red: "Dog alarm in Sector 12."
Seconds later, several prison guards, wielding clubs, raced to the scene and tackled the man to the ground.
NOT FOOLPROOF
The dog bark-reader is just one of a batch of innovative security systems to emerge from Israel, which business magazine Forbes said in December had emerged as "the go-to country for anti-terrorism technologies."
By monitoring not just the dogs' barks, but also their physiological responses -- like heart rates -- it joins a trend for computer systems building on animal knowledge that humans also share.
Another Israeli example, from Suspect Detection Systems, offers border checkpoints a computer quiz that alerts guards if travelers show a marked physiological response to particularly tough questions.
However, Doguard is not foolproof. When first set up at Eshel Prison and at a water installation and farm in central Israel, the dogs triggered several false alarms, officials said.
"The dogs need two to three weeks to adapt -- they must get to know their territory," said Daniel Low, chief executive officer of Meniv Rishon, the municipal water system of the Israeli town of Rishon Lezion.
Low said he had installed the system in several places to replace guards.
Galia Alon, an official at Modi'in Ezrahi, a large Israeli security company that supplies private guards and equipment, cautioned against relying on dogs as a first line of defense.
"Dogs are excellent at spotting intruders -- they are well trained and have a more sharpened sense of smell than humans," she said. "But people can identify people by looking at them and talking to them, and they are more inclined to catch them."
Yossi Brami, manager of a dairy at Kibbutz Gezer, a communal farm, had the system installed two months ago. He said he was told dogs work better in pairs because one signals to the other if an intruder appears, so two were placed to guard his calves.
The dogs used in the alarm system were rescued from shelters, Bio-Sense chief executive officer Eyal Zehavi said, adding some clients asked for them to be trained professionally first.
Eshel Prison's dogs live in individual kennels. Several times a day, they are let out to patrol buildings, where they are unleashed in a fenced-in compound.
At Kibbutz Gezer, dogs Chief and Lola are kept on a long chain and are released to run around the farm several times a day. The dogs guarding Meniv Rishon are also chained.
Israeli animal rights societies said they knew little about the system but it was preferable for dogs to live indoors and unleashed.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has decided to remove his defense minister, Amir Peretz, two TV stations reported Thursday.
Citing sources in Olmert's office, Israel TV and Channel 2 said Peretz would be asked to resign and take another cabinet position, and if he refused, he would be fired.
Channel 2 speculated that Peretz would not be offered the finance portfolio, currently occupied by Avraham Hirschson from Olmert's Kadima Party.
Labor MK Eitan Cabel said his party would not accept the removal of members from the government or to different portfolios. A Dahaf poll conducted for the Knesset Channel on Wednesday found that 45 percent of Israelis would appreciate Olmert more if he would remove Peretz from his post. Only four percent said they would not appreciate such a move.
Fifty-one percent of the respondents said Peretz's dismissal would not affect their judgment of the prime minister.
Twenty percent said they would like Olmert to dismiss IDF Chief of Staff Dan Halutz, as opposed to six percent of participants who said firing the army chief would decrease their appreciation for the PM.
A smuggling tunnel under the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt collapsed Thursday morning, Palestinian security officials said.
There were no immediate reports of casualties or details on who might have been inside at the time of the collapse, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press.
Palestinian smugglers use hundreds of tunnels dug under the border to bring weapons and contraband goods into Gaza from Egypt.
Israel says antitank missiles, tons of explosives and thousands of rifles have reached militants in Gaza through the tunnels.
Palestinian operatives claim to have smuggled in long-range Katyusha rockets, as well as the materials needed to upgrade their homemade rockets to reach deeper into Israel.
Israel's demands that Egypt do more to stop the weapons smuggling are to figure on the agenda of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt later Thursday.
Public view of Sharon changes a year after his stroke
Herb Keinon, Jerusalem Post
The mind reels at all this country has gone through since Ariel Sharon suffered a significant stroke a year ago on Thursday, and his powers were passed to Ehud Olmert.
Hamas won the Palestinian Authority elections, and Kadima won at the ballot box in Israel, although with considerably less support than would have been the case had Sharon led the Kadima ticket.
Amona was evacuated violently, in complete contrast to the evacuation of settlements in the Gaza Strip in August 2005.
Olmert unveiled his realignment plan; President Moshe Katsav and Justice Minister Haim Ramon became embroiled in separate sex scandals; Kassam rockets continued to fall on the western Negev; Gilad Shalit was kidnapped; Elad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were kidnapped; the IDF went to war in Lebanon; the IDF did not decisively win the war in Lebanon; UNIFIL marched into Lebanon; Kassam rockets continued to fall on the western Negev; the IDF could not stop the Kassam rockets on the western Negev; Iran posed an existential threat.
Even by the machine-gun pace of the news cycle one is accustomed to in Israel, 2006 seemed an extraordinary year of events, tumult and change.
One of the major changes the year wrought was that it is now difficult for the average citizen to look at the various institutions that form the building blocks of this society with much confidence.
Nearly every institution has been tainted: the presidency, by the Katsav scandal; the Prime Minister's Office, by various allegations of scandals there; the Knesset, by its day-to-day behavior; the IDF, by its shoddy performance during the summer's war; the Justice Ministry, by Haim Ramon's kiss and its aftermath; the Rabbinate, by the low public standing of Israel's two chief rabbis; the police, by the Benny Sela escape; and now the tax authorities.
Another thing that has changed dramatically over the last year has been Sharon's legacy.
When he was felled by his stroke last year, Sharon was riding a wave of unprecedented popularity. He pulled the Gaza disengagement off without a hitch, he broke the Likud-Labor hegemony over politics in the country, he enjoyed the confidence of a large part of the population who looked at him and felt that here was a man who selflessly placed the interests of the country above his own.
As was the case when Sharon was a general, people were willing to follow him when he was prime minister, not necessarily because they were sure of where he was leading, but because he was the one who was doing the leading.
Israelis love the daring, the audacious; the more daring and audacious, the more they love it. Disengagement was daring and audacious, so people loved it. Something this audacious must be brilliant, no?
Well, if the proof were in the pudding, then many would now answer that question with a "no." And this is something that has changed dramatically in the year since Sharon had his stroke: people are looking differently at his legacy, and at the state of affairs he left behind.
Olmert's election campaign in the spring was based on two main pillars: Sharon's "legacy" and realignment. In the meantime, realignment has been tossed out the window, overtaken by the chaos from Gaza and the war in Lebanon. More and more people having come to the realization that unilateralism simply doesn't work, and that you can't just leave an area and hope for the best, because if the mafia goons move in where you moved out, then - more often then not - there goes the neighborhood.
And if realignment looks different now than it did back in February and March, so does Sharon's overall legacy.
First of all, disengagement did not do what Sharon promised. Sharon wasn't warm and cuddly, and never promised that leaving Gaza would lead to a new Middle East. But he did argue that it would bolster Israel's security. He argued that if rockets fell, Israel would have the international legitimacy to take the military action to silence them forever.
But this didn't happen, and now one would be hardpressed to find many people who actually believe that with anarchy in Gaza, arms flowing under the border from Egypt, and the western Negev at the mercy of the Kassam rockets, Israel's security is better now than it was prior to disengagement.
And then there is Lebanon. Sharon knew for five years about Hizbullah's arms buildup in Lebanon, that it was stockpiling weapons, but he did nothing. Reasons for this have been proffered - that he was preoccupied with fighting Palestinian terrorism, that he was so traumatized by the first Lebanese go-around that a psychological block kept him from taking any real action to stop the buildup.
Whatever the case, the bottom line was that he didn't take action, and Israel was woefully unprepared to deal with what it found when it went to war against Hizbullah in July.
It has now been a year since Sharon had his stroke. And in that intervening year, there has also been a significant re-evaluation among many as to where his policies have left them. Those in doubt that this reevaluation is taking place should consider that according to all the recent polls, if elections were held today, Sharon's political rival and nemesis Binyamin Netanyahu would be the country's prime minister.
Polls may not predict the future, but they do indicate sentiment, and the public sentiment today regarding Sharon's policies is significantly different than what it was an action-packed and trauma-filled year ago.
On September 30, 2005, Denmark's biggest daily newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published a series of 12 cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad. One, which was perceived as highly offensive, showed the Prophet with a bomb on top of his turban. Several months later, mass demonstrations were held in the streets of the Muslim world to protest against the perceived insult to the Prophet; some of the demonstrations turned violent and dozens were killed. Arab countries recalled their ambassadors; Danish and Norwegian diplomatic representations in Damascus, Beirut, and Tehran were attacked and set on fire; churches were attacked; Scandinavian representatives in the Middle East received death threats and demands that they leave their posts; fatwas permitting the murder of the cartoonists were issued by several Muslim clerics; Muslim fundamentalist organizations threatened terror attacks in Denmark; and an unprecedented boycott of Danish products was implemented by Muslim countries.(1)
"The Muslims worldwide - some billion and a half... are facing a new kind of Crusader war, whose weapon is the pen, not the rifle," wrote Muhammad Foda in the evening supplement of the Egyptian government daily Al-Gumhouriyya.(2) The popular nature of the protest against the cartoons is all the more evident because well-known Egyptian singer Sha'aban Abd Al-Rahim wrote a song about the affair.(3)
Bin Laden also mentioned the affair. In a tape released April 23, 2006, he demanded that the Western governments hand the cartoonists who had defamed the Prophet over to the Muslims, so that they could be tried according to shari'a law. He stressed that anyone who mocked the Prophet or Islam should be killed.(4) On May 15, 2006, Al-Qaeda activist Sheikh Abu Yahya Al-Libi, who in July 2005 had escaped from a U.S. military prison in Afghanistan, said that the Muslims should talk less and do more: They should fight Denmark and Norway, and not be content with demonstrations and other forms of protest.(5)
However, the protests were not only on the popular level. The cartoon crisis began with activity by Danish Muslim leaders, and with calculated moves by Arab governments and Islamist figures. This is evident in the fact that the wave of mass demonstrations began months after the publication of the cartoons, and following Islamist and government activity - that is, not in immediate response to the publication of the cartoons.
The intense protest against the cartoons gave rise to worldwide debate regarding freedom of expression and the different perspectives on this freedom in Western and Muslim cultures. The main argument made by Denmark and by countries that defended it was that the publication of the cartoons violated no law and overstepped no boundaries of freedom of expression or freedom of the press as practiced in the West. To counter this argument, Muslim shapers of public opinion - many of whom have themselves in the past invoked the "freedom of expression" argument when accused of making antisemitic statements - were forced to redefine the boundaries of this freedom, stating that it did not apply to materials offensive to others. But even as it presented this argument, Arab media continued to make harsh and offensive statements against non-Muslims.(6)
This paper presents the unfolding of the crisis, the role of the Arab governments in it, and the role of the Muslim Brotherhood and Al-Jazeera TV in escalating it. It also presents the prevailing Arab and Muslim perspective on the boundaries of freedom of expression as reflected in response to the cartoon crisis.
*Aluma Dankowitz is Director of MEMRI's Reform Project.
Endnotes: (1) For example, in a communiqué by the Abu Hafs Al-Masri Brigades who claim to be affiliated with Al-Qaeda, the organization threatened Denmark with "a blood-soaked war and blessed invasions [by the Muslims]." Al-Quds Al-Arabi, London, February 2, 2006. On the burning of the embassies and the damage to churches, see MEMRI TV Clip No. 1025, "Protesters Burn European Embassies, Consulates, Churches in Damascus and Beirut," Al-Jazeera TV (Qatar), New TV (Lebanon), February 5, 2006, http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1025 . (2) As cited in Al-Masaa (Egypt), February 3, 2006. (3) See MEMRI TV Clip No. 1073, "Egyptian Performer Sha'ban Abd Al-Rahim Sings against Denmark and the Avian Flu, and Talks about His Life and Convictions," Dream2 TV (Egypt), March 1, 2006, http://www.memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=1073 . (4) http://www.metransparent.com/texts/bin_laden_full_text.htm, April 27, 2006. See also MEMRI Special Dispatch No. 1153, "Arab Reformists Under Threat by Islamists: Bin Laden Urges Killing of 'Freethinkers,'" May 3, 2006, http://memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=subjects&Area=reform&ID=SP115306. (5) Yahya Al-Libi's statements were posted on several Islamist forums. See, for example, http://www.al-hesbah.org/v/showthread.php?t=62858, May 12, 2005. (6) This combination of demands to respect Islam, on the one hand, and offensive comments, on the other hand, can be seen in the following remarks by an Iraqi preacher: "Bring Your wrath down upon the heads of the people of Denmark, oh Allah. Bring Your full force down upon their heads, oh Allah. Make Your ground swallow them up, oh Allah. Send Your earthquakes upon them, oh Allah. Send Your hurricanes upon them, oh Allah. Erupt Your volcanoes upon them, oh Allah. [...] You do not know how to respect the monotheistic religions, or the prophets and messengers. Oh Arab and Muslim rulers, a trade boycott is not enough. Closing down embassies is not enough. You should instruct your peoples to boycott all the infidels." Salah Al-Din TV, Iraq, February 10, 2006, http://www.memritv.org/Transcript.asp?P1=1047 .
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GAZA (Reuters) - Clashes erupted between forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and the Hamas government in Gaza on Wednesday, killing five people in the worst fighting since the rivals agreed a fragile truce two weeks ago.
At least nine people were wounded in separate incidents across the Gaza Strip, hospital officials said.
Abbas's Fatah faction and Hamas declared the ceasefire in the wake of violence that escalated after Abbas called for early elections to break a political deadlock with the Islamists.
Hamas condemned Abbas's move as a coup to oust it less than a year after it surprised Fatah to win a parliamentary ballot.
The fresh violence is likely to revive fears among Palestinians that Gaza could slip into civil war.
Neither has the occupied West Bank, where Palestinians also seek statehood, been spared. Unidentified gunmen abducted a Hamas government aide in Ramallah, security sources said. In Jenin, gunmen fired at the home of Palestinian minister for prisoner affairs, Wasfi Kabha, the sources said. He was unhurt.
Among the Gaza dead were three security officials loyal to Abbas who were killed in the southern town of Khan Younis, hospital officials said.
Abbas's Preventive Security force said the three died when a Hamas police unit ambushed two of its vehicles. Hamas said the security force fired first.
WOMAN KILLED
In the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza, one woman was killed after getting caught in the crossfire of a fierce clash between rival forces. Nine others were wounded, mostly combatants, hospital officials said.
That clash came after unknown gunmen killed a Fatah member who was on a rooftop in the town of Beit Lahiya and a car carrying Hamas security officers was ambushed. Two policemen were wounded in the ambush, the Hamas police force said.
Gunmen also abducted four Fatah members from the streets, witnesses said. Fatah blamed Hamas, which declined to comment.
While Abbas has called for fresh parliamentary and presidential elections, he has left the door open to talks with Hamas on forging a unity government that Palestinians hope will lead to the lifting of Western sanctions imposed on the Hamas administration.
On top of the internal chaos, general law and order has deteriorated in Gaza in recent months.
Palestinian colleagues of a Peruvian photographer abducted by gunmen this week demanded his release on Wednesday, saying the 50-year-old's life was in danger because he needed medicine for heart disease.
Sakher Abu El-Awn, Gaza office manager of the French news agency Agence France-Presse, said Jaime Razuri, who was seized outside the AFP Gaza City office on Monday, was taking several types of medication, including some for the heart problems.
"We believe his life is at serious risk and we urge his captors to release him immediately," said Abu El-Awn.
In Lima, Peruvian Foreign Minister Jose Antonio Garcia Belaunde told reporters: "We know he has been kidnapped by a dissident group within Hamas." Belaunde did not elaborate.
Belaunde's deputy, Gonzalo Gutierrez, was traveling to Gaza to try and negotiate Razuri's release.
Razuri's kidnapping is the latest in a spate of abductions of foreign journalists and aid workers in Gaza in the past year. All have been freed unharmed.
No one has claimed responsibility for Razuri's abduction.
Jan. 4, 2007 0:54 | Updated Jan. 4, 2007 8:10 Israelis blast past others in bid to own moon By GINA SEBOK TZUK
Israelis own 10 percent of the privately owned area on the moon, according to Tom Wegner, a spokesman for Crazyshop, a company that sells plots of moon land to private individuals in Israel.
About 10,000 Israelis have purchased moon property since it became available in 2000. Of the 10 million acres sold worldwide, 1 million are owned by residents of Israel, Wegner said Wednesday.
"Some Israelis believe that buying land on the moon is an original gift and a great investment that their grandchildren might benefit from," he told The Jerusalem Post.
Israeli moon property sales rose dramatically last month following NASA's announcement on December 5 that it would establish an "international base camp" on one of the moon's poles, landing astronauts in 2020 - and setting up a permanent colony four years later.
Although the sales also increased in the United States, nowhere in the world were they as high as in Israel. While about 9,000 Israelis purchased plots from 2000 until December's announcement, a full 1,000 did so over the last month, Wegman said. "This trend will continue to increase in Israel; it is a snowball effect," he said.
Israelis make their purchases through a Web site run by Crazyshop, which also offers other "out of this world" products such as the opportunity to name a star after a loved one. The company, which claims to be the exclusive place to buy moon property, is a franchise owned by American Dennis Hop, who "owns the moon," according to Wegman.
For some the attraction may be the appeal of a promising investment. At only NIS 250 for 500 square meters of moon, "it is such a small investment that everyone can afford it," Wegner said.
The eventual payoff could be much greater due to a loophole in international law, said Ron Movshovitz, a legal adviser for the Israel Space Society.
The United Nations' Outer Space Treaty banned states from purchasing land in space, but allowed individual citizens to purchase land, said Movshovitz.
As a result, it is possible that in the near future NASA will have to buy land from the private property owners, enabling them to demand large sums for their plots.
However, said Wegman, not all the buyers are concerned with finances. Owning land in outer space appeals to those out for adventure, and many buyers look forward to the time they can visit their properties, he reported.
US-based Space Adventure plans to send tourists to the moon seven to 10 years from now. But at $100 million a trip, space travel will be beyond the budget of many moon land owners.
Instead, they may have to settle for a picture of their property. Crazyshop provides a kit containing an image of the plots marked on a moon map and a certificate of ownership.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/809283.html Several days after the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Report, David Welch, the head of the Middle East desk in the United States Department of State, argued before a selected audience that U.S. policy had been, and would continue to be, to isolate American enemies in the Middle East: Iran, Syria, Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaida. The policy was to isolate each of them separately and all of them together. On a more positive note, Israel should be encouraged to support Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Apparently, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has fully adopted this strategic approach.
Looking back at history may be useful to learn some lessons. The basic doctrine of the Austro-Hungarian empire that broke apart at the end of World War I was "many enemies, much honor." The present U.S. administration appears to be attempting to copy the experience of the Austro-Hungarian empire. One may question whether this will turn out to be a successful approach.
Future historians who study the political behavior of the Bush administration, in light of the achievements thus far, will tend to conclude that the effect of U.S. policies during the period 2000-2008 was to contribute to the creation of an Iranian radical Islamic hegemony in the Middle East. The United States helped to destroy Iran's enemy to the East, the Taliban; it opened the way to Shi'ite majority rule in Iraq, to the West; it contributed to the revival of Russian power politics in the North; and it opened the way for Iranian interference among the Shi'ite population of the Arabian peninsula to the south. The Bush administration's energy policies contributed to the rise of oil prices, which helped Iran to finance its regional aspirations. And now, through a policy of "isolating" the enemy, the United States is assisting Iran to build a wide and effective regional coalition together with Iraq, Syria, a Shi'ite-dominated Lebanon, Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaida. Instead of isolating Iran, the Bush administration is actually "successfully" isolating its own regional allies, and is proactively undermining the stability of Jordan, Egypt and eventually also of the moderate forces in the Palestinian Authority.
Looking back at history may also be useful to learn some positive lessons. When the American and British policy of supporting the Baghdad Pact broke down, during and after the 1956 Sinai Campaign, then president Dwight D. Eisenhower changed course, and in January 1957, he issued the Eisenhower Doctrine: Engage all potential allies in a common struggle against two well-defined enemies, the Soviet Union and Gamal Abdel Nasser's Egypt. The Eisenhower Doctrine was intended to develop, and in fact succeeded in developing, a multitude of bilateral, trilateral and multilateral relationships among the United States and each of its allies in the Middle East, North Africa, southeast Europe and the Indian subcontinent. For Israel, this policy opened the door to relations with many of those regional powers (particularly Iran, Turkey and Ethiopia).
Today, the common fear of Iranian regional hegemony makes an updated Eisenhower Doctrine (the Bush-Blair Doctrine?) both necessary and possible: Engage with Lebanon to create a more stable balance of forces there; engage with the Syrians to draw them away from the Iranian orbit, using a step-by-step approach; engage with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to assist in driving a wedge between Syria and Iran; and help Abbas to test whether he can form a Palestinian national unity government, and if not, support him in isolating Hamas.
Israel is no disinterested observer; it is an important player. Isolating one's enemy is only possible by engaging with his potential allies. Olmert's policy of creating an opening to the moderate Palestinian leadership is good, but it cannot stand alone. It needs three other elements: an opening move toward Syria; a political program to get Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and Jordan fully engaged, and a proactive effort to help the United States to change course.
The author is a senior lecturer in Middle Eastern history at the University of Haifa.
By Aluf Benn, Avi Issacharoff, Gideon Alon and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Sharm al-Sheikh resort in Sinai on Thursday, and Egypt has already floated the possibility of holding a subsequent regional summit with the participation of the leaders of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
The Prime Minister's Office said that it views this idea favorably.
"We have no fundamental problem with a summit, and if they raise the idea during the Olmert-Mubarak meeting, we will discuss it and consider it," a source in the Prime Minister's office told Haaretz on Wednesday night.
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The Olmert-Mubarak metting is taking place at a time when ties between the two countries have grown warmer following the prime minister's meeting with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on December 16 in Jerusalem. Egypt sees itself an important partner in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and it considers the idea of a summit meeting a good opportunity for furthering the diplomatic process.
Mubarak hosted a summit at Sharm al-Sheikh two years ago that was attended by Abbas and then prime minister Ariel Sharon.
A spokesman for Mubarak, Suleiman Awad, said Wednesday that a summit would to help break the impasse in the diplomatic process between Israel and the PA. Egyptian sources also told the Saudi Arabian daily Al-Watan that a four-party summit would offer new ideas for reviving negotiations on a permanent Israeli-Palestinian settlement and achieving a formula that would ensure the establishment of a Palestinian state.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to visit the region soon for talks with all parties on resuming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Thursday's meeting will be the second between Olmert and Mubarak since the prime minister was elected last year. Olmert intends to use it to raise three main issues: increased Egyptian supervision of the border between Sinai and the Gaza Strip; the establishment of a "regional support network" for Abbas and the diplomatic process; and the Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange that Egypt has been mediating, in which abducted Israel Defense Soldier Gilad Shalit would be released.
The Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported Wednesday that Mubarak plans to raise the issue of Israel's planned transfer of $100 million to the PA, something that Olmert promised Abbas during their meeting. Mubarak will also ask Olmert to expand the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, currently confined to the Gaza Strip, to the West Bank as well. In addition, he will discuss the Shalit deal.
Palestinian sources have said in recent days that there has been significant progress in the Shalit negotiations, and that Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on how many Palestinian prisoners will be released. However, the parties have not yet reached agreement on the identity of the prisoners to be released, and this is delaying a conclusion of the deal.
An Israeli government source said that no announcement is expected today regarding completion of the prisoner exchange deal. For the past several days, Israeli sources have insisted that, contrary to reports in the Arab press and statements by Hamas spokesmen, "there is no breakthrough and no progress" in formulating a deal.
"I do not believe that something significant in the matter of Gilad's release will emerge from this [Olmert-Mubarak] meeting ... because it is known that there has been no significant progress in the talks," Noam Shalit, Gilad's father, told Haaretz Wednesday.
Another Israeli government source said Wednesday that Israel will not ask for a reevaluation of an agreement reached with Egypt in late 2005, under which 750 Egyptian border guards were deployed along the Sinai-Gaza border. However, Olmert intends to ask the Egyptian president to order tighter security measures along this border, in order to prevent the smuggling of arms and explosives from Sinai into Gaza.
"We do not want Sinai to turn into a black triangle in the middle of the peace triangle," an Israeli source said. "Clearly, the movement of terrorist elements between Sinai and the Gaza Strip will also become an Egyptian problem."
Last update - 10:10 04/01/2007
Israel receptive to Egypt's call for four-way summit
By Aluf Benn, Avi Issacharoff, Gideon Alon and Jack Khoury, Haaretz Correspondents
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak at the Sharm al-Sheikh resort in Sinai on Thursday, and Egypt has already floated the possibility of holding a subsequent regional summit with the participation of the leaders of Jordan and the Palestinian Authority.
The Prime Minister's Office said that it views this idea favorably.
"We have no fundamental problem with a summit, and if they raise the idea during the Olmert-Mubarak meeting, we will discuss it and consider it," a source in the Prime Minister's office told Haaretz on Wednesday night.
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The Olmert-Mubarak metting is taking place at a time when ties between the two countries have grown warmer following the prime minister's meeting with PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas on December 16 in Jerusalem. Egypt sees itself an important partner in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, and it considers the idea of a summit meeting a good opportunity for furthering the diplomatic process.
Mubarak hosted a summit at Sharm al-Sheikh two years ago that was attended by Abbas and then prime minister Ariel Sharon.
A spokesman for Mubarak, Suleiman Awad, said Wednesday that a summit would to help break the impasse in the diplomatic process between Israel and the PA. Egyptian sources also told the Saudi Arabian daily Al-Watan that a four-party summit would offer new ideas for reviving negotiations on a permanent Israeli-Palestinian settlement and achieving a formula that would ensure the establishment of a Palestinian state.
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is due to visit the region soon for talks with all parties on resuming Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
Thursday's meeting will be the second between Olmert and Mubarak since the prime minister was elected last year. Olmert intends to use it to raise three main issues: increased Egyptian supervision of the border between Sinai and the Gaza Strip; the establishment of a "regional support network" for Abbas and the diplomatic process; and the Israeli-Palestinian prisoner exchange that Egypt has been mediating, in which abducted Israel Defense Soldier Gilad Shalit would be released.
The Egyptian daily Al-Ahram reported Wednesday that Mubarak plans to raise the issue of Israel's planned transfer of $100 million to the PA, something that Olmert promised Abbas during their meeting. Mubarak will also ask Olmert to expand the Israeli-Palestinian cease-fire, currently confined to the Gaza Strip, to the West Bank as well. In addition, he will discuss the Shalit deal.
Palestinian sources have said in recent days that there has been significant progress in the Shalit negotiations, and that Israel and Hamas have reached an agreement on how many Palestinian prisoners will be released. However, the parties have not yet reached agreement on the identity of the prisoners to be released, and this is delaying a conclusion of the deal.
An Israeli government source said that no announcement is expected today regarding completion of the prisoner exchange deal. For the past several days, Israeli sources have insisted that, contrary to reports in the Arab press and statements by Hamas spokesmen, "there is no breakthrough and no progress" in formulating a deal.
"I do not believe that something significant in the matter of Gilad's release will emerge from this [Olmert-Mubarak] meeting ... because it is known that there has been no significant progress in the talks," Noam Shalit, Gilad's father, told Haaretz Wednesday.
Another Israeli government source said Wednesday that Israel will not ask for a reevaluation of an agreement reached with Egypt in late 2005, under which 750 Egyptian border guards were deployed along the Sinai-Gaza border. However, Olmert intends to ask the Egyptian president to order tighter security measures along this border, in order to prevent the smuggling of arms and explosives from Sinai into Gaza.
"We do not want Sinai to turn into a black triangle in the middle of the peace triangle," an Israeli source said. "Clearly, the movement of terrorist elements between Sinai and the Gaza Strip will also become an Egyptian problem."
The year 2006 deserves to be called "the year of the rocket." It was a year in which the firing of rockets into Israeli territory, from the Gaza Strip and Lebanon, dictated Israeli foreign and security policy more than any other factor. The Katyushas fired by Hezbollah and the Qassams fired by the Palestinians had a greater influence than the change of leadership in Jerusalem and the strengthening of Iran.
Sderot and its environs absorbed about 1,000 Qassam rockets from Gaza over the past year, and during the Lebanon war, about 4,000 rockets were fired at northern Israel. The losses, the injuries and the damage were smaller than those caused in previous wars or by suicide attacks. But the rockets dragged Israel into prolonging fighting in Lebanon and convinced Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and most of the public that it is dangerous to withdraw from additional territory in the West Bank or the Golan Heights.
Olmert buried the convergence plan for a clear reason: Israel can live with rockets on Sderot, and for a limited period even with rockets on the north, but it will have difficulty tolerating Qassams on Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Haifa port and oil refinery could be closed for a month, because there are alternative facilities in Ashdod. But there is no substitute for Ben-Gurion International Airport. Nor for the centers of government, commerce and culture in the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and Jerusalem. Therefore, it is difficult to speak about a significant withdrawal in the West Bank, which would include evacuating the Israel Defense Forces from dominant locations, before a solution is found to the Qassam.
Israel's political and security establishments were slow to understand the strategic significance of the rockets. They mocked them as "flying objects," as junky weapons used by armed gangs. With the sophisticated weapons in Israel's arsenal, it is hard to get excited about a steel pipe filled with a mixture of sugar and fertilizer as a propellant, and a few kilograms of explosives in the warhead. What is all that compared to an F-16 fighter plane, an Apache helicopter or the IDF's smart bombs? But the power of the Qassam does not lie in its technology, but in the combination of massive firing and a lack of effective countermeasures. The shelling and assassinations in the Gaza Strip did not stop the firing, nor did the cease-fire.
The first Qassam hit Israel on February 22, 2002. Five years have passed since then, during which time it would have been possible to improve the defenses of the Jewish communities near Gaza and to develop a system for intercepting rockets. According to experts, within about two years, it would be possible to develop an initial defense system of anti-Qassam rockets or lasers. The system would not provide Israel with hermetic protection, but it would reduce the strikes. But senior army officers and the Defense Ministry considered that a waste.
The army's insensitivity seems strange in hindsight. First, the threat was familiar: Israel had been attacked in the past with Katyushas in the Galilee and the Beit She'an Valley. Second, the IDF warned of the thousands of Hezbollah rockets, but developed a response only to long-range rockets and neglected the smaller Katyushas. Third, the army understood that "searing the enemy's consciousness" is what wins wars, rather than the number of dead or the number of shells fired. These insights were not translated into a search for a response to the Qassam.
In the last discussion led by former prime minister Ariel Sharon, a few hours before he collapsed, he banged on the table and demanded that the defense establishment present new ideas to combat the Qassams. "This cannot continue," he shouted. Defense Minister Amir Peretz warned, rightly, that the primitive missile would turn into a strategic threat, and that he was waiting for recommendations for a defensive system. Olmert held a discussion as well.
Olmert and Peretz must assign high priority to the rocket threat and seek a combined military and diplomatic response to it - both in order to save Sderot and Ashkelon, and in order to restore the government's diplomatic freedom of action. Without such a response, the prime minister will find it difficult to keep his promise to create a new "demographic border" for Israel and to bring the settlers down from the hills.
The presidential commission examining the method of government in Israel, headed by Prof. Menachem Magidor, has carried out comprehensive and impressive work. Its most important reccommendation is without a doubt about what not to do: not to move over to a presidential system, but on the contrary, to strengthen the parliamentary one.
Over the last few years, the public debate in Israel has tended to reject the existing system, preferring revolutions instead. But the majority of the 73 experts who participated in the Magidor commission maintain that a presidential system is not suitable for the Israel of today and that the parliamentary system, with all its faults, was and remains the preferred option. The commission's message is clear: Those who want to copy the presidential type of government from the United States must first copy America's rigid constitution and political culture.
The Magidor commission issues recommendations that aim to make the parliamentary system more efficient to strengthen voter confidence in the government. Its suggestions include changing the electoral system to make half of it based on regional representation, raising the electoral threshold to 2.5 percent, requiring a two-year budget instead of an annual one, and passing a law that would prevent a fraudulent party census.
President Moshe Katsav is the first president to appoint a public commission, and he did so in connection with a very important subject. For this, his initiative should be welcomed, and the pall hovering over the president due to the criminal allegations against him should not affect the attitude toward the report. The Magidor report must not be buried in a drawer like so many other commission findings.
The suggested electoral reforms would harm small parties, but there is no choice because only in this way will the country be able to have a stable and more representative political and parliamentary structure. Historic movements and factions, no matter how unique, will have to find some way to unite. This necessary process will apparently require additional time to become accepted in the political world, and will involve bitter disputes. However, the recommendations dealing with the Knesset and the government can and must be implemented without delay.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who put the issue on the national agenda, must now lead the Knesset in adopting the commission's recommendations. For instance, laws that limit the number of ministers to 18 and require confirmation hearings for ministers should be passed as soon as possible. The recommendation that a no-confidence motion should require submission of a proposed alternative government should also be considered. This would change a no-confidence motion from a weekly nuisance to an unusual and significant parliamentary proceeding.
The Knesset would do well to pay a lot of attention to the recommendations dealing with improving its functioning by decreasing the number of committees and the number of MKs in each committee. The MKs should also seriously consider the suggestion to increase the number of workdays from three a week to four. Even if it seems to them that they work fairly hard, the public appears to think otherwise. These recommendations could improve the image of the Knesset and the public confidence in it.
This is a propitious time and a time of goodwill in the political system, and it is understood that the method of government must be changed. The Knesset now faces an important test: Will it take advantage of the opportunity to improve the system of government, or will it miss the opportunity?
Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation, Norwegian Representative Office to the PA and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Summary: Norway is a significant donor of humanitarian and development funds to the Palestinian Authority. However, some of this money is provided to NGOs that are engaged in intense political advocacy campaigns directed against Israel. Such funding contravenes the stated goals of Norway's development agencies. This report details examples of politicized NGOs funded by Norway, and is similar to NGO Monitor analysis on funding from the EU, the UK, Sweden, and others.
Research note: This report examines Norwegian funding of NGOs active within the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A complete list of these NGOs and specific funding information is not readily available from the Norwegian government. Despite these obstacles, we have tried to provide as complete a report as possible. The information provided below, however, may not be comprehensive, and we hope that the Norwegian government will provide full disclosure in response.
Background: Norwegian Aid to the Palestinians
Norwegian development aid is distributed by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) and by local Norwegian Embassies. NORAD is a "directorate" under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), making it "politically and technically responsible for Norwegian development cooperation."
In 2005, Norway gave the Palestinian Authority (PA) NOK 476million (Norwegian Kronor) ($74million) in bilateral development aid, making the PA the third largest recipient of Norwegian aid after Sudan and Pakistan [1] Norway is also a major contributor to UNWRA. On October 6, 2006, the Norwegian Government announced that it would be increasing its contributions to UNRWA from NOK100 million ($15million) to NOK150 million ($23.5million)as well as increasing its humanitarian aid by $23.5million. The statement said specifically that additional aid was for "humanitarian efforts and peace and reconciliation measures in the region."
NORAD states that "the purpose of Norwegian development cooperation is to contribute towards lasting improvements in economic, social and political conditions for the populations of developing countries" and "to contribute towards promoting peace, democracy and human rights." NORAD also states that "the assistance provided to the Palestinian authorities has a clear political dimension since development cooperation is linked to efforts to promote peace in the region, the primary goal being the establishment of a Palestinian state." Such aid is also meant to develop a democratic society and [to help] lay the foundation for resuming peace negotiations." Moreover, an MFA paper of June 15, 2006 discussing the role of NGOs in international development stated that "an active civil society is an asset in itself and can form the basis for promoting democracy, human rights and good governance."
In addition to NORAD, Norwegian Development funds to the PA are channeled via the Norwegian Representative Office to the PA in Ramallah (NRO). This direct development cooperation "was initiated to support the continuation of the peace process through social and economic development and to strengthen Palestinian institutions as a pre-requisite for establishing a democratic Palestinian state."
Since Hamas has come to power, the USA and many European governments have frozen diplomatic relations and direct support of the PA. In contrast, Norway's stance on funding to the PA has been ambiguous and unlike the EU, Norway does not officially recognize Hamas as a terrorist organization. On January 4, 2006, Norway stated that "the government has decided that [it] will no longer align itself with any other list [of terrorist organizations] than that published by the UN" since "as neutral facilitator...Norway's role could become difficult if one of the parties involved [in a peace process] was included on the EU list, and the opportunities for contact were thus restricted." The UN does not include Hamas on its list of terrorist organizations.[2] However Norway has said on a number of occasions that continued development assistance to the PA is dependent on the PA fulfilling the demands of the "International Quartet" to "renounce violence, recognize the state of Israel and accept previously concluded agreements."
Funding to NGOs
Of the NOK476million Norway gave the PA in bilateral development aid in 2005, NOK89million ($13.9million) was channeled through Norwegian NGOs, NOK12million ($1.8million) through "local NGOs", over NOK3.5million ($540,000) through "regional NGOs" and NOK8million ($1.25million) through International NGOs.
Figures for the specific allocation of funds to NGOs in general or individual organizations are not readily available from the MFA, the NRO or NORAD. In response to an enquiry from NGO Monitor, the NRO did provide some information about its NGO funding program. However, specific details, such as the amount of donations to individual NGOs and in which years, were not provided.
As explained below, while some of Norway's aid to NGOs is channeled to development and humanitarian assistance, significant funding goes to NGOs engaged in political campaigning and advocacy against Israel, and in support of extreme Palestinian demands. This NGO activity often contradicts or works against the goals of the Norwegian Government to "promot[e] democracy, human rights and good governance" and to help "lay the foundation for resuming peace negotiations."
Funding for Norwegian NGOs
Norwegian Peoples Aid One of the biggest and most highly regarded of Norway's humanitarian and development NGOs is Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA). NPA is "the humanitarian organization of the Norwegian trade union movement" and maintains that it is "guided by the values of national and international solidarity, human dignity, freedom and equality." NPA states that 90% of its funds come from public sources, 45% of which comes directly from the MFA or NORAD.[3] Other donors include the governments of Denmark, Sweden and the EU. Due to the high percentage of public funding, NPA is essentially a quasi-governmental organization (Quango) and not strictly independent of the Norwegian government. NPA states that its work in the Palestinian Authority is financed mostly by NORAD.[4]
While NPA implements many humanitarian projects, other activities are highly political and one-sided, as shown by its publications and campaigns on the Israel-Palestinian conflict. It lobbies against Israeli policies in Norwegian and international forums and largely erases Palestinian terrorism as a factor in the conflict.
NPA was a co-signatory and drafter of a joint statement to the Special Sitting of the UN Commission on Human Rights, 15 March - 23 April 2004 convened after the killing of two senior Hamas leaders, Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. Together with Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) and other highly political pro-Palestinian NGOs, NPA condemned Israel's policy of targeted killings. The NGO statement called Israeli policy "a gross violation of both international human rights and humanitarian law" and claimed Israeli counter-terrorist operations "contribute to the continuation and intensification of a seemingly endless cycle of violence." The statement did not mention the involvement of Sheikh Yassin and Rantisi in terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
NPA publishes a blog on its website written by a Palestinian civilian living in Rafah, providing a highly emotive and one-sided account of events in the area. In an August 2006 press release about the ongoing conflict in Gaza, NPA graphically describes Palestinian injuries and condemns Israel for its "war…[and] aggression against humanity," its "vicious attacks," and "hundreds upon hundreds of people murdered and injured each day." There is no mention in the release of the cross-border attack that resulted in the death of two Israeli soldiers and the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, nor of the ongoing rocket attacks from Gaza against Israeli civilians.
On September 28, 2004, Nils A. Røhne, then head of NPA's International Department, gave a speech in the Norwegian Parliament. Rohne described Israel as "a brutal occupant" and Palestinian violence as "a fight against oppression and for human worth for all people and peoples." Rohne quoted former Norwegian Prime Minister Kåre Willoch (who has accused Israel of ethnic cleansing and hosted a Hamas official at a private dinner) claiming that "Israel's politics creates terror. The extremism which Israel is cultivating as if in a greenhouse in the Palestinian areas will spread to the rest of the Arab world." Rohne ended with a list of demands which the Norwegian government should make from Israel, but made no demand that Palestinians end their campaign of violence against Israeli civilians.
NPA Support of Other NGOs NPA provides funding and support to other NGOs, many of whom employ politicized rhetoric to attack Israel and are active in the divestment and boycott movement against Israel. For example, the "Stop the Wall Campaign" in Norway lists NPA as one of its most important affiliates in the country. NPA helped promote the campaign's Autumn 2004 conference entitled "The Apartheid Wall and the future for a Palestinian state."
NPA provides funds to the Maan Development Center. While Maan generally engages in genuine development work and has implemented many successful projects in Gaza and the West Bank, this work is tarnished by its involvement in campaigns against Israel. For instance, NPA gave $206,875 to fund advocacy, paralegal and media training for one of Maan's political projects entitled "Right to My Land through Building Capacities of Land Defense Committees." Although this project had some developmental aspects such as seed distribution, the money is also used to assist the Popular Committees against the Wall & Settlements and the Land Defense Committees to "inform the Palestinian and international public" about their efforts against the "apartheid wall" as well as to coordinate visits with staff of international organizations so that they may "publish stories and/or pictures of their experiences."Maan has also signed a petition calling for the academic boycott of Israel.
NPA also funds the Palestinian Association for Cultural Exchange (PACE). PACE states that its mission is to promote Palestinian culture through education, cultural heritage preservation, research, and exchange programs. PACE conducts a number of projects such as its "Cultural Heritage Shop", opened in 2001 to promote Palestinian handicrafts. PACE has also conducted surveys of Palestinian refugees and has published a tour guide of the West Bank and Gaza in English, Arabic and Italian.
As these examples demonstrate, NPA's activities and statements, and support for radical agendas do not promote Norwegian government goals of "help[ing] to lay the foundation for resuming peace negotiations" and promoting "peace and reconciliation" in the region.
Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre The Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) received over $238,000 from the Norwegian Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 2005, more than fifteen percent of its budget. IDMC was established in 1998 by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), monitors conflict-induced internal displacement, and advocates on behalf of internally displaced persons (IDPs).
In September 2006, IDMC issued a report entitled "Displaced by the Wall: Pilot Study on Forced Displacement Caused by the Construction of the West Bank Wall and its Associated Regimes in the Occupied Palestinian Territories." This report was supported by and published in conjunction with the NRC and BADIL, a radical Palestinian NGO which promotes claims to a "Right of Return" and provides active support to divestment and boycott campaigns against Israel.This claim is among the most divisive and intractable aspects of the conflict (For a detailed analysis on this issue click here.).
Much of the report is taken up by emotive accounts of Palestinian children and their objection to the Separation Barrier. It labels the construction of the barrier "a crime against humanity" and a "war crime" but fails to weigh the context of widespread Palestinian terrorism thatled to the construction of the barrier. While the report calls on the UN to implement the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice; calls on Israel to "dismantle the Wall"; and calls on the PA to advocate for the rights of Palestinian IDPs; it does not call for a halt to the violence against Israeli civilians.
IDMC regularly ignores Israel's right to security in its human rights analyses. In its twenty-six page overview of IDPs in the PA for 2006 it claims that Israel's closure policy in the West Bank is one of the main causes of economic crisis in the PA. IDMC also erases Palestinian terrorism and the high level of Palestinian corruption as contributory factors to Palestinian poverty. The overview criticizes the suspension of international aid to the Hamas-led PA, but does not call on the PA to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel, or end other obstacles to peace. It also erroneously describes the Separation Barrier as a "670 kilometer-long Wall" even though only about 3% of the barrier is a "wall".The overview's sources included Adalah, Al Haq, Amnesty International, BADIL, B'Tselem, FIDH, Human Rights Watch, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights and UNRWA – organizations which have been shown to lack credibility, as documented by NGO Monitor.
Norwegian Funding for International NGOs
Medecins Sans Frontieres The MFA and NORAD both provide substantial funding to Medecins Sans Frontiers (MSF). The MFA donated €6,096,000 to MSF in 2004 (US$7,825,650). €1,012,000 of MFA's funds went specifically to MSF's programs in the PA, comprising 83% of MSF's total budget for this region. In 2004, NORAD also gave €913,000. MSF is active in the Palestinian territories and works with children affected by traumatic stress. However, MSF sometimes departs from its humanitarian aid mandate. For example, in May 2006, MSF criticized the suspension of aid to the Hamas-led PA. MSF's statement did not call for an end to Palestinian violence nor for the dismantling of terrorist organizations. MSF issued a press release on May 12, 2005, stating that "the direct violence (incursions, shootings, bombings) and indirect violence (occupation, closure, control) have affected the mental health status of the Palestinian population." The release failed to mention, however, intra-Palestinian violence as a possible cause and misrepresents the Separation Barrier as a "high concrete security wall."
Norwegian Funding for Israeli and Palestinian NGOs
Society Voice Foundation The NRO finances the Society Voice Foundation (SVC), an organization which does commendable work in promoting reform and a "culture of non-violence and equality" within Palestinian society. SVC held a conference entitled "Societal Peace and Combat Violence in the Palestinian Society [sic]" on February 28, 2006. The final statement of the conference stressed the "importance of conflict resolution inside the authority institutions and showing solidarity without fanaticism." SVC also runs a "Women's Empowerment" program which focuses on increasing the "Political, Economical and Social Rights participation" of Palestinian women. NRO's support of SVC contributes to development and peace building in Palestinian society in accordance with NRO's objectives.
Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees The Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC) receive funds from a number of Norwegian sources. According to PARC, these include NPA and the Royal Norwegian Society for Development. PARC operates a range of agricultural, economic and social projects in the West Bank and Gaza, primarily devoted to rural development. However, the organization also involves itself in political campaigns and frequently issues press statements attacking Israel's security measures. PARC has accused Israel of deliberately acting to prevent the implementation of the two-state solution among other "crimes." PARC has also signed petitions calling for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel and the campaign for boycotting Israeli academia.
Gaza Community Mental Health Programme The Gaza Community Mental Health Programme (GCMHP) states that in 2005 it received over $124,000 from the "Norwegian Government." GCMHP's mission statement exhibits clear political bias. It says that "Gaza has witnessed extreme forms of violence and suffering, due to Israeli occupation and military operations" which has led, according to GCMHP to "mental health problems in the Gaza reach unprecedented levels [sic]." By ascribing the social problems in Gaza only to the Israeli "occupation," and ignoring intra-Palestinian violence and corruption, GCMHP illustrates its politicization. This is further highlighted by the political nature of its press releases. On May 11, 2006, GCMHP described Israel's security measures for Gaza as a "medieval siege." GCMHP also involves itself in political campaigning. On November 12, 2005, GCMHP hosted a delegation of European Parliamentarians and described to them the "psychological violence" waged by Israel in Gaza and claimed that "the disengagement was a mirage to be consumed by the Western Media." GCMHP has also signed petitions for economic and academic boycotts of Israel. Once again, Norwegian development funds provided to the GCMHP are being misused for demonization of Israel, which advances neither peace, democracy nor human rights.
Hebron Rehabilitation Committee The NRO also supports the Hebron Rehabilitation Committee. This organization states that its mission is to "preserve Hebron as an historical Arab Palestinian town, in order to safeguard its cultural and architectural heritage against the threat of a takeover by extremist Israeli settlers." This NGO is not a human rights organization nor a humanitarian aid organization but rather a clearly political group whose goal it is to influence the status of the city of Hebron. HRC boasts that "prohibited buildings were restored secretly and behind closed doors and states that one of its primary goals is "reviving and strengthening the Palestinian presence in the Old City through a repopulation policy compatible with cultural heritage protection and community needs." HRC ignores the historical Jewish connection to the city of Hebron, including the second holiest site in Judaism. HRC also does not mention the Arab riots of the 1920s and the massacre of many of Hebron's Jewish residents. MFA and NORAD state that the main goal of Norwegian development assistance is to contribute towards reducing poverty and peace building. It is hard to see how support to HRC furthers these goals.
MIFTAH In 2004, the NRO provided MIFTAH with over $68,000. MIFTAH claims to be a "non-partisan Jerusalem-based institution dedicated to fostering democracy and good governance within Palestinian society." Despite its claim to be "non-governmental and non-partisan," Hanan Ashrawi is the head of MIFTAH's Executive Committee and Mustafa Barghouti is on its board. Both are members of the Palestinian Legislative Council. Eyad Al-Sarraj, the President and Director General of GCMHP and Raji Sourani, the current Director of PCHR are also members of the board.
MIFTAH states that its objectives are to provide "a forum for innovative public discourse" and that one of its main goals is "increasing global awareness and knowledge of Palestinian realities by providing policy analysis, strategic briefings and position papers." One such paper is an article published April 20, 2006 which described a suicide bomber who killed eleven people on April 17, 2006 as "innocent." The article stated that the bombing "took nine innocent Israeli lives and one innocent Palestinian life", described Israeli policy as "state terrorism" and called U.S. insistence on the PA to prevent terrorist attacks an "unachievable demand." MIFTAH often uses inflammatory terminology in describing Israel's security measures and says that Israeli policy "fulfils all elements of the crime of apartheid." MIFTAH denounced the U.S. Congressional bill HR 4681 (Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006) blocking aid to the Hamas-run PA. MIFTAH described the bill as "unjustified" and "collective punishment." Miftah's lobbying activities and promotion of a rejectionist narrative contradicts the NRO's claim to "contribute to the process of promoting peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis."
B'Tselem B'Tselem lists the MFA as one of its donors. B'Tselem is a self-declared partisan organization and states that it seeks to change Israeli policy.While B'Tselem is viewed as an important element in maintaining open debate on human rights practices in Israel despite the environment of terrorism and violent conflict, the use of B'Tselem's partisan reporting by other NGOs, the media, and the UN is highly problematic. These organizations and news sources often omit context and background information, and present B'Tselem's reports as apolitical and unbiased human rights reporting.
As a result, B'Tselem has become a convenient tool to paint an inaccurate and sensationalized picture of popular dissent within Israel against the government, and to distort Israel's human rights record as part of the campaign of demonization and delegitimation associated with the Durban Strategy. By providing funding to B'tselem, Norway participates in this process.
Conclusion
Via the MFA, NORAD and the NRO, Norway does provide funds for important development work among Palestinians. However, as shown above, money has also been provided to many politicized Palestinian and international lobbying groups. NORAD openly admits that its Palestinian aid has "a clear political dimension," but the rejectionist narrative and radical political campaigns promoted by some of these NGOs, go beyond analyzing the political solutions to the conflict, and contradict the objectives which the government sets out for Norwegian development aid. These include the "the establishment of a Palestinian state" as the "primary goal," and "lay[ing] the foundation for resuming peace negotiations," neither of which are furthered by the NGO activities described in this report. The goal of "promoting democracy, human rights and good governance" is also hindered by the financing of NGO campaigns that focus on external attacks against Israel, and ignore Palestinian human rights abuses, corruption, and factional violence.
2. The UN only lists Al Qaeda and the Taliban as terrorist organizations, pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1267. There is no comprehensive list of UN-designated international terrorist organizations.
3. For the year 2004, NPA's operating income was NOK719 million ($117 million). Of this, $31m, (26%) came from the MFA and $19.9m (17%), from Norad. . For the year 2005, NPA's operating income was NOK 731 million ($119 million). Of this, $42 million (35%) came from the MFA and $17.3 million (14%) from Norad.
4. NPA received $17,000,000 from USAID although it states that the majority of this is used for its work in Darfur, Sudan. NPA also received other significant financial donations from the US Department of State, the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the Dutch Ministry for Foreign Affairs and The Swedish International Development Corporation Agency (SIDA).
The year 2007 doesn't look too promising for Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury. For those who have never heard of Choudhury, he is a Bangladeshi journalist arrested in 2003 on his way to a conference in Israel on the media's role in education for peace. More specifically, Choudhury, who published his work in the Bangladesh Weekly Blitz, which he edits, has written about promoting dialogue between Jews and Christians. For that crime, he has been beaten and interrogated. Two months later, with no evidence, he was charged with sedition and put in solitary confinement for 16 months in a Dhaka prison. $"> $">Choudhury was released on bail in April 2005, mostly because of pressure from the U.S. State Department and protest by the Committee to Protect Journalists and Journalistes sans frontieres. According to Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler who acts on behalf of many political prisoners around the world, as of October 2006, Choudhury was attacked by a large crowd at his newspaper offices, he was called "an agent of the Jews" and was badly beaten. When he reported the attack to police, instead of being protected, he was arrested. $"> $">Choudhury is about to stand trial on charges of sedition, treason and blasphemy, all of which according to Bangladeshi law, are punishable by death. $"> $">Choudhury is not alone in his plight. Every day journalists around the world risk their lives to uncover and report human rights abuses and political corruption. Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, a U.S.-born Russian journalist, was known for her outspoken opposition to the Chechen conflict and the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The 48-year-old mother of two was shot dead Oct. 7, 2006 in an elevator located in the Moscow apartment building where she lived. Reports indicate it was a contract killing carried out by a professional. $"> $">Hayar Ullah Khan, a freelance tribal reporter and photographer covering the military action in Pakistan's tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, was abducted in October 2005, four days after releasing pictures from an attack on North Waziristan. His reports contradicted official accounts claiming that a senior Al-Qaeda commander, Abu Hamza Rabia, died after munitions exploded inside a house. Khan's family say he was taken prisoner by the government. His bullet-ridden body was found last June. He leaves behind his wife, Mehrunnisa Khan, and four children. $"> $">Abeer Al-Askary is an Egyptian journalist who has published several investigative reports on state security officers within the Ministry of Interior who have supervised torture against activists and prisoners. Al-Askary was one of the victims of a May 25, 2005 assault that targeted activists and journalists covering demonstrations against the referendum on constitutional amendments in Egypt. Female journalists were not only physically assaulted, but also sexually harassed. $"> $">Shi Tao is serving a 10-year prison sentence for "leaking state secrets abroad." Shi, a freelance journalist in Internet publications and an editor for Dangdai Shang Bao, a Chinese business newspaper, drew ire from Chinese authorities because he published essays on political reform on news websites outside China. $"> $">Sitting in the comfort of a free and democratic society, it's hard for some people to understand why individuals such as Choudhury, Kahn, Politkovskaya and dozens of others continue to risk their lives to probe, investigate, and publish articles aimed at exposing threatening regimes. Cynics would say some of these journalist are just glorified ambulance chasers, hoping to capture 15 minutes of fame by way of a prize for reporting. Others say they are foolhardy slobs with a death wish. $"> $">They are neither. They work alone, with no support, forging ahead to bring the truth into the open. The International Press Freedom Awards that recognizes courage in journalism is an important event that brings the plight of these journalist to light. But it's not enough. They deserve encouragement and support because in dangerous situations, they champion everything we hold dear, and often take for granted.
Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury
Journalist, Columnist, Author & Peace Activist
PENUSA FTW Award 2005, AJC Moral Courage Award 2006
"...Trabelsi points out that almost all films made here, even many that bash the Occupation, get financial support from the Ministry of Education. Almost all travel by filmmakers to the festivals screening their works is subsidized, moreover, by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."
"I can't help wondering how we can boycott ourselves, or how we can call on others to boycott Israeli cultural institutions, when we ourselves teach in the universities and are funded by Israeli foundations in producing our films?"
"The height of absurdity was attained when one of the petitioners found himself under his own boycott. This was Arna Mer Khamis's son Juliano, who wrote and directed Arna's Children. In Hungary, the Palestinian community boycotted the film because Juliano is Israeli."
" Today the PA is on the brink of civil war. And amid the descent into the abyss, what do we hear? The call of the intellectuals for a cultural boycott?!"
AT THE HEIGHT of the second Lebanon War, on August 4, 2006, 123 Palestinian filmmakers and artists, joined by 349 others, called on their colleagues "around the world to cancel all exhibitions and other cultural events that are scheduled to occur in Israel." Their petition continued: "We call upon the international community to join us in the boycott of Israeli film festivals, Israeli public venues, and Israeli institutions supported by the government, and to end all cooperation with these cultural and artistic institutions that to date have refused to take a stand against the Occupation, the root cause for this colonial conflict." ( www.pacbi.org )
The petitioners drew the notion of a cultural boycott from the experience with South Africa. As there, so here-they wrote-all people of conscience are obliged to oppose Israeli war crimes and atrocities. According to the petition, ".silence, apathy and lack of action from Israelis, are regarded as complicit in the ongoing war crimes; as for those Israeli artists, academics and intellectuals who continue to serve in the Israeli army they are directly implicated in these crimes."
Recently, their call has won support from influential figures such as film director Ken Loach, art critic John Berger, and novelist Arundhati Roy.
Boycotting oneself
The 123 signers rightly demand that Israel be brought to justice for its crimes. Oddly, however, the boycott's implementation has had an effect quite contrary to its expressed intent: outspoken supporters of the Palestinian struggle have found themselves under its ban. Apart from their political position, these victims of the boycott have another thing in common: an Israeli passport.
Among the banned, for example, is Avi Mograbi, who directed How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Arik Sharon. We also find Osnat Trabelsi, producer of Arna's Children, a documentary about the late anti-occupation activist Arna Mer Khamis, who founded an alternative educational system for Palestinians in Jenin. In deference to a request from a group of Arab artists, a French film festival barred Simone Biton from taking part in a film workshop; Biton, who has long lived in France, had produced Mur (Wall) in protest against the separation barrier. Even Arab artists living in Israel have not been spared. A Paris film festival banned Badal , a film on a marriage deal between Arab families, directed by Ibtisam Ma'arana, a Palestinian with Israeli citizenship. The height of absurdity was attained when one of the petitioners found himself under his own boycott. This was Arna Mer Khamis's son Juliano, who wrote and directed A
