Israel offers U.S. doctors training in emergency response

Dr. Raymond Rappaport of Redwood City participates in a drill during an emergency medicine course in Tel Hashomer, Israel. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, November 18, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Tel Hashomer, Israel -- It wasn't a normal day for Raymond Rappaport, a veteran primary care doctor from Redwood City.

In the space of a few hours, he correctly diagnosed a postal worker suffering from anthrax poisoning and joined a team of emergency doctors to save the life of a young man with a gunshot wound to the chest. Then he entered a trauma room, covered from head to toe in a gas mask, biochemical suit and rubber gloves brandishing injectors filled with antidotes that counter nerve gas poisoning. He later worked on an unconscious patient who apparently had a seizure from a chemical attack.

Rappaport is one of 30 American doctors who recently participated in a grueling five-day course in emergency medicine hosted by Israeli civilian hospitals and military medics. On this day, the group visited the Israel Center for Medical Simulation, a state-of-the-art training center for emergency medicine at the Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer near Tel Aviv.

After each exercise, which was carried out using real equipment on electronic mannequins that breathed and spoke to them, the U.S. doctors watched a video playback and received feedback from Israel's top medical trainers.

"A lot of these things are not available in the United States. A lot of the medicine is different," said Rappaport. "They're up on the cutting edge of the latest technology."

As an example, he held a color-coded auto-injector that Israeli citizens use in case of a chemical weapons strike. Every Israeli is issued a gas mask and an auto-injector the size of a marker pen: white for age 10 and older, orange for age 2 to 10 and green for children under 2. The auto-injectors contain carefully calibrated doses of atropine and TMB4 that restimulate enzymes knocked out by nerve gas.

The U.S. doctors pointed out that the cocktail is not available in the United States because the Food and Drug Administration has not approved the combined dose and suggests victims of chemical weapons give themselves two separate injections.

"In Israel, we don't have the FDA so it's more useful for us to produce a combined auto-injector that has both atropine and TMB4," said instructor Arik Eisenkraft. "Why? Because we think that in case of attack it will be difficult for the casualty to understand and give himself several injections."

This no-nonsense approach impressed Rappaport.

"This is the way they get things done, the way they save lives without worrying about the bureaucracy," he said. "They go right to saving lives, making that the utmost No. 1 importance."

Rappaport, who was on his third professional trip to Israel, said he sees advances in emergency medicine with each visit.

"Americans have a lot to learn from the Israelis. Every American doctor should come on this course, so that they can be prepared and know what to do if these kind of attacks ever happen back home," he said.

Eisenkraft, a pediatrician, has been head of chemical and biological warfare medicine of the Israeli army medical corps for 10 years. He said Israelis take the threat of chemical warfare more seriously than Americans. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam Hussein pounded the Tel Aviv area with 39 Scud missiles. Many Israelis have prepared sealed rooms in case of a chemical or biological attack.

It's "more imminent and realistic, it's closer to us than to the United States. It's something we must know, practice and remember," said Eisenkraft. "America has great medical education, but only small groups in the Army know this stuff. Most physicians are not familiar with it."

The U.S. doctors also were introduced to Israeli strategies to deal with a sudden influx of people wounded in a mass-casualty disaster. Without planning, a rush of patients can paralyze a hospital, tying up vital equipment, Israeli doctors said. The Americans were shown how Israeli hospitals operate in groups coordinated with ambulance first-responders. Nonurgent cases are directed to other hospitals so trauma services are available for more serious cases.

Several American hospitals have adopted practices based on the Israeli model, according to Michael Frogel, chief of general pediatrics at Schneider Children's Hospital in New York.

But Israeli emergency medicine is not just about surgery.

Within minutes of a suicide bombing or another crisis, a central hot line handles inquiries from concerned families trying to locate their missing loved ones. The hot line provides updated information, including the cataloging of photographs and other details. Areas are allocated to those known as the walking wounded, victims who are suffering from shock, to keep the surgical staff and facilities free. Psychologists are called in to care for those with acute stress to prevent chronic post-traumatic stress disorder.

Solisis Lopez Deynes, a 31-year-old emergency physician at UC Irvine Medical Center, said the Israeli training had been an eye-opening experience.

"Emergency medicine here is very impressive," said Lopez Deynes, who plans to return to her native Puerto Rico to help develop emergency medical services there. "In Israel, they are dealing with emergency situations, war, explosions, suicide bombers that we don't have in the United States. So they know a lot about how to manage that, and they have to apply these techniques on a daily basis."

The Americans visited the headquarters of the Israeli army medical corps, where they joined medics training to treat serious battle injuries. They also met with emergency and disaster management experts and visited Sderot, a city of 22,000 residents that is within range of Palestinian homemade rockets. The city is under almost daily bombardment from Gaza militants.

This was the 10th training course organized by the American Physicians' Fellowship for Medicine in Israel. Frogel, who is vice president of the group, said more than 400 American doctors have acquired skills they can use back home, and some have volunteered to return to Israel during a state of emergency.

"Israel has the best system of dealing with mass casualty incidents. They have the world's finest expertise in these issues," Frogel said. "People are trying to achieve the same level of training that they have here."

This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle

US and Israel 'face up to' Iran bomb

LONDON SUNDAY TELEGRAPH
November 18, 2007

By Philip Sherwell in New York and Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

America and Israel are secretly drawing up plans to deal with an Iran
that has acquired nuclear weapons, The Sunday Telegraph has learned.

Teheran's two arch-foes are preparing for what they have long declared
is an unacceptable scenario, as the prospects for air strikes to
cripple Iran's nuclear network fade, and China and Russia undermine
efforts to forge an international sanctions regime.

The United States and Israel are sticking publicly to their threats
not to allow the Islamic Republic to develop an atomic bomb. But
intelligence chiefs and military planners have given warning that Iran
has done better at hiding and dispersing its nuclear facilities than
previously assessed, this newspaper has been told.

The revelations come as the United Nations nuclear watchdog has
revealed that Iran has stepped up its production of enriched uranium,
and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tightens his grip on Teheran's
nuclear programme by threatening domestic critics with treason
charges.

Pentagon strategists are updating US deterrence policies for a future
nuclear-armed Iran, even though ­ after the terrorist attack on New
York and Washington in 2001 ­ the Bush administration put a policy of
pre-emptive military action at the heart of national security policy.

"The more they looked at the intelligence and the information they
had, the more pessimistic they have become about what could be
achieved on the operational front by military action," said Dan Goure,
a Pentagon adviser. "Military strikes might only set the programme
back a couple of years, but the current thinking is that it is just
not worth the risks." A political rethink has also begun in Israel,
where security policy is linked to its status - never publicly
admitted - as the region's only nuclear state.

At a security cabinet meeting last weekend, Ehud Olmert, the prime
minister, told officials to draw up proposals for dealing with an Iran
that had built atomic weapons, according to leaks.

"First, we must make clear that this is a threat not just to Israel,
but to the wider world. Second, we must exhaustively consider all
preventive options. Third, we must anticipate the possibility of those
options not working," said Ami Ayalon, a security cabinet minister,
after the meeting.

Israel's air force trains for possible long-range raids, and bombed a
suspected nuclear site in Syria recently. But military chiefs face the
same intelligence problems as the US as well as refuelling
difficulties if they cannot fly over hostile Arab states to reach
Iran.

Israel is believed to be equipping a fleet of German-made submarines
with atomic weapons ready to respond to any nuclear threat from
Teheran, and Ehud Barack, the defence minister, is keen to develop a
sophisticated ballistic anti-missile system.

Iran insists its nuclear programme is only for civilian energy
purposes, but the West and Israel say there is overwhelming
intelligence that it is pursuing an atomic bomb. Estimates of the
time-frame range from two to 10 years.

US hawks linked to Vice-President Dick Cheney have argued that a
co-ordinated aerial and submarine-launched bombardment could set
Iran's nuclear programme back by five to 10 years.

But Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, who has emerged as a White
House counterweight to Mr Cheney, has made concerns about possible
retaliation against US forces in Iraq a top priority.

Temple Mount discovery leads to dispute in Jerusalem

Workers dig out stones for repair on the plateau of the Temple Mount area, where ancient Israelite remains were reportedly found. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, November 18, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Israeli archaeologists say that ancient remains from the era of Solomon's Temple were discovered last month for the first time on the holiest site for Judaism, reigniting a historical and political debate over an area that also is holy to Muslims.

While doing renovation at the famed Temple Mount, Israeli archaeologists discovered a sealed layer containing fragments of ceramic table vessels and animal bones. The items have been dated by Israeli scientists to the First Temple in the eighth century B.C. - roughly during the reign of the biblical King Hezekiah. The discovery includes fragments of bowl rims and bases, the base of a small jug used for ladling oil, the handle of a small jug and the rim of a storage jar. All are typical of Israelite vessels from that period, scientists say.

"These finds are important because it is the first time we have ever found a sealed archaeological level clearly dated to the First Temple period within the complex of the Temple Mount," said Jon Seligman, a senior archaeologist at the Israel Antiquities Authority. The group plans to present its findings to scientists in a series of seminars.

The Temple Mount is known not only for the First and Second temples, but also for the Western Wall, also known as the Wailing Wall, in reference to Jews mourning the destruction of the temple. Jews from all over the world come to pray by the wall.

But since the seventh century A.D., the Temple Mount has also been known to Muslims as the Haram Al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary for the al-Aqsa Mosque and the golden-roofed Dome of the Rock, the latter where Muslim tradition says the prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

The discovery has met with skepticism from an archaeologist with Waqf, the Jordanian-controlled trust that manages the 36-acre compound. And it has not pleased some Muslim leaders, who regard the site as an exclusive Muslim preserve. Some have denied that the Jews ever built a temple there. Sheikh Ikrema Sabri, the former mufti of Jerusalem, recently told the Jerusalem Post that the temples of Solomon and Herod never existed.

"There was never a Jewish temple on al-Aqsa, and there is no proof that there was ever a temple," Sabri said. "Because Allah is fair, he would not agree to make al-Aqsa if there were a temple there for others beforehand."

Sabri also said the Western Wall, revered by Jews as the last remnant of a huge retaining barrier built by King Herod to support the vast plaza where the temple stood, has no historical significance for Jews.

"The wall is not part of the Jewish temple. It is just the western wall of the mosque," he said. "There is not a single stone with any relation at all to the history of the Hebrews."

Israel and the Palestinian Authority claim sovereignty over the site, which remains one of the most intractable problems delaying a settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, some analysts say. Waqf has religious, economic, administrative and some security control. But only Israeli police can enforce the law on the site.

A few months before he was elected prime minister in 2001, Ariel Sharon arrived with hundreds of police officers, declaring that the complex would remain under perpetual Israeli control. The following day, Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli police confronted each other at the site. The years of violence that followed became known as the al-Aqsa intifada.

The complex on the summit of Mount Moriah forms the southeast corner of the Old City of Jerusalem. The earliest reliable historical record by the Roman historian Josephus identified it as the location of King Herod's Temple. Jewish tradition says an earlier shrine planned by King David and built by his son, King Solomon, was the Temple Mount's first permanent structure.

But there had been no archaeological evidence to support the concept that ancient Israelites had been present - until now.

"We have many finds from the First Temple era from all over Jerusalem, but never from this site," Seligman said.

Last month, workers laying an electrical cable under the auspices of Waqf dug a trench about 300 yards long in the southeast corner of the site. When they checked the trench, inspectors from the Israel Antiquities Authority said they found the ancient fragments.

However, Yusif Natsheh, a Waqf archaeologist, disputed the findings.

"I was present throughout this work and neither I, nor any Waqf official, recall seeing these items in the trench," said Natsheh. "I only heard about them in the press, weeks after the work was finished. If they were found, then why were they taken outside the compound?"

Natsheh said the trench was less than 3 feet deep and wondered how the Israeli archaeologists could hit a layer dating back to the First Temple without first slicing through the Byzantine and Roman periods, which logically would be above them.

"All of this archaeology and science in Jerusalem is manipulated for different political attitudes," said Natsheh. "It is not archaeology, it is not history, it is just spoiled politics."

Seligman dismissed Natsheh's accusation as "outrageous. Categorically, 100 percent of these findings came from the Temple Mount, and we stake our reputation on that."

Professor Seymour Gittin, director of the W.F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in East Jerusalem, said the discovery "definitely dates between the seventh and eighth centuries. They were pottery of the kind we normally associate with Israelite culture as distinct from the Moabite and other cultures close to Jerusalem at that time," he said.

Out of deference to Islamic shrines, very little archaeological research has been conducted on the mount. However, underground passageways beneath al-Aqsa show clear signs of Herodian decoration and link to a series of arched doorways in the southern wall that fit contemporary descriptions of the Roman-era entrance to Herod's Second Temple, most archaeologists agree.

Most archaeologists also agree that the Western Wall is typical of Herodian stonework, which can be seen at the shrine that Herod built over the Tombs of the Patriarchs in the West Bank town of Hebron - later transformed into the Al-Ibrahimi Mosque.

Meanwhile, the discovery has sparked anew the issue of who controls a site that is holy to Jews and Muslims.

Just this month, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman threatened to withdraw his right-wing Israel Beiteinu Party from the coalition government if the issue is even discussed at U.S.-sponsored peace talks planned by the end of the year between Israelis and Palestinians in Annapolis, Md.

This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Ex-Brooklyn rabbi likely to be dragged back to Brooklyn to face kid-sex charges

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Saturday, November 17th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem, JOE GOULD and DAVE GOLDINER in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

An Ex-Brooklyn rabbi accused of raping several boys more than 20 years
ago has been arrested in Israel and could finally face justice.

Avrohom Mondrowitz, 60, a married father of seven, could be headed
back to Brooklyn because a new agreement with the U.S. allows
extradition for the sodomy and sex abuse counts he faces from a 1985
indictment.

"I don't see it as a moment for celebration," said Michael Lesher, who
represents six adult men who claim to have been abused by Mondrowitz.

"This is a moment of gratitude to victims who came forward, who were
willing to expose their pain."

Mondrowitz has a hearing in an Israeli court Sunday that could clear
the way for him to be returned to Brooklyn for trial.

The case was jump-started a few weeks ago after the U.S. and Israel
agreed to extradite suspects who face at least a year in prison.

Mondrowitz was once a popular child psychologist and youth counselor
in Borough Park, where he was especially well-known among
ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jews.

He fled to Israel after several boys filed horrific complaints
claiming he sodomized them after befriending them or taking them to
amusement parks and movies.

Sometimes, he would rape them in his counseling office even as their
parents waited outside, the boys claimed.

"Finally, justice will prevail," said Rabbi Mark Dratch of J-SAFE, a
child-abuse prevention group.

Mondrowitz's wife insisted he would fight extradition.

"He's absolutely innocent," she said at their Jerusalem apartment.

Mondrowitz's case attracted controversy because critics claimed
District Attorney Joe Hynes put the explosive case on the back burner
under pressure from Hasidic community leaders. His office has
emphatically denied that charge and insisted it was pushing for a
legal way to try Mondrowitz.

Israel Will Allow 6 Palestinian Students to Cross Border for Education

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 16, 2007

Jerusalem -- ­ Six Palestinian students denied permission to enter Israel in order to attend a higher-education institute have finally been granted entry permits on the orders of the Israeli Supreme Court. The students were victims of a blanket ban imposed by the Israeli army on all Palestinians applying for study at Israeli colleges.

After a yearlong delay, the Supreme Court this month rejected the army’s sweeping criteria and ordered the Israeli Government Coordinator of Activities in the occupied territories to review each Palestinian student’s application on an individual basis.

The six students had been admitted to the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, which is affiliated with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in the southern part of the country. The institute brings together Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and other Arab students and academics to study regional environmental issues.

In the past, Israeli security officials have said that Palestinians wishing to enter that area of Israel require special permission because of various sensitive security installations nearby.

“We resubmitted our request for the permits immediately after the ruling, and reminded the coordinator of the Supreme Court decision,” said Michael Lehrer, the institute’s director. “I understand that they sent the names to Israeli security services to check that each person had no connection to any terrorist organizations. On Wednesday they called and told us all six permits had been granted.”

Mr. Lehrer said the students could decide whether they preferred to join the course now, with a third of the semester already passed, or to defer to the spring semester in the hope that permits for that period would be issued on time. ­ Matthew Kalman

Posted on Friday November 16, 2007 | Permalink |

A Stem-Cell Prospect for Ailing Hearts

Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN/Jerusalem

Valentin Fulga dropped out of medicine twice to pursue more-challenging research, but now it looks as though his change of heart could result in saving the lives of thousands--perhaps millions--of cardiac patients. Dr. Fulga, 47, is the scientific brain behind a new treatment for heart disease that is exciting the medical world even though it has yet to undergo full clinical testing.

More than 60 people in need of heart transplants or major surgery have been treated using the new procedure. That's a small number, but the results are nonetheless stunning: all of them improved. That's why TheraVitae, the privately owned company set up by Fulga and his Thailand-based partner Robert Clark, is being hailed as a potential giant.

Fulga's treatment repairs damaged or inactive heart tissue using adult stem cells harvested from the patient's blood and processed outside the body by mimicking the body's environment. Unlike other stem-cell therapies, which make use of bone marrow or--more controversially in the U.S.--the blood of human embryos, Fulga believes the procedure patented by TheraVitae is simpler, safer and less invasive. "The patient is effectively treating himself with his own blood, so there is very little danger of rejection," says Fulga, an ophthalmologist. "It's the safest kind of stem cell you can get."

The procedure takes about a week, including the time needed to fly the blood to TheraVitae's laboratories in Israel. There, a small number of natural cells are exposed to conditions that normally occur inside the human body. The process causes the stem cells to multiply and differentiate into cells that restore damaged heart tissue. The final product, called VesCell, is then injected into the patient's heart, where it appears to trigger the body's natural healing mechanisms, helping the heart tissue recover some of its function.

"We don't actually know the basis of the science," Fulga cheerfully admits, but his research team knows it is on to something. Soon it plans to reveal other discoveries made during its research that Fulga believes will open the way for the use of stem-cell therapy in more areas.

The company treats patients in Bangkok, where medical standards are top-notch and interest in high-tech treatment and medical tourism is booming. The process costs about $30,000 per patient, plus physician's and travel expenses, but Fulga hopes the figure can be reduced to less than $10,000.

And it's good business. Fulga and his colleagues are tapping into the estimated $54 billion--a-year market of cardiac patients in need of treatment. The company projects that it will break even soon. "We want to be the Intel of cell therapy," says Fulga.

Israel OKs extradition of Brooklyn pedophile suspect

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, November 12th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - A suspected Brooklyn pedophile hiding from sex abuse
charges in Israel will become the first American extradited to the
U.S. under a revamped treaty, a Jerusalem court ruled Sunday.

Stefan Colmer, 30, was indicted by a Brooklyn grand jury on charges he
sexually abused two 13-year-old boys from the ultra-orthodox Jewish
community in Brooklyn where he lived.

Hoping to avoid arrest, Colmer, a computer technician and salesman,
fled to Israel and changed his name to David Cohen.

Jerusalem police arrested Colmer in June and have held him pending
Sunday's extradition hearing, at which an Israeli judge ruled he must
be returned to face the charges in Brooklyn.

Before a January change to the treaty, Israel and the U.S. had agreed
to extradite suspected sex criminals only if they had been charged
with rape.

Colmer is suspected of performing oral sex on the two boys over
several months last year after luring them to his home from a nearby
yeshiva high school, according to the U.S. Justice Department's
extradition request.

The Brooklyn grand jury indicted Colmer on eight counts of criminal
sexual acts. If found guilty, he could face up to seven years in
prison.

The Justice Department also has requested the extradition of another
alleged Brooklyn child molester, Rabbi Avrohom Mondrowitz, who fled to
Jerusalem 23 years ago amid allegations the former counselor and
principal molested four boys.

Mondrowitz was arrested last month by Israeli police but was released.
The Israeli Justice Ministry has refused to comment on the case.
Attorney Michael Lesher, who represents six men who have accused
Mondrowitz of molesting them as children, said Mondrowitz must be
returned to face charges.

"I am certainly delighted to see that Colmer will be extradited to
face justice in Brooklyn," Lesher said. "But we certainly will not
rest until the same is done with Avrohom Mondrowitz."

Analysis: Wheels turning again on Middle East 'road map' to peace

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Is the Israeli-Palestinian peace process back on track?

That's the question occupying diplomats as they prepare for a Middle East meeting called by President Bush for Annapolis, Md., next month or early December. A recent flurry of diplomatic activity appears to have breathed new life into the U.S.-backed "road map," encouraging some to believe it could recover from a near-fatal blow in June with the Hamas takeover of the Gaza Strip.

The charge is being led by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who is expected to return next week to Jerusalem and Ramallah for talks for the eighth time this year. Wrapping up her latest round of talks last week, she said her efforts stood a "reasonable chance of success."

But even her personal involvement has so far failed to bridge the gap required for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to sign a joint declaration of principles that would pave the way for a solution to the conflict. Some observers even say it would be better to cancel the meeting than allow it to fail.

"The idea is not to raise expectations that can lead to frustration and to violence, because we need to learn from past experience," Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said recently, alluding to the failure of the Camp David summit in July 2000 that was followed by the Palestinian uprising known as the intifada.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that controls the Gaza Strip, has urged Palestinian and other Arab leaders to stay away altogether, calling Bush's invitation a "new door for capitulation. ... We urge our Arab brothers not to go down this dark tunnel."

Writing in the Jerusalem Post last week, David Kimche, a former deputy commander of the Mossad spy agency, said, "Failure is not an option. Its consequences would be too harrowing - the collapse of the moderate, anti-violence and pro-peace camp of Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and President Mahmoud Abbas, victory for Hamas and other extremist factions and the eventual demise of the two-state solution."

While the Annapolis meeting has garnered international attention, work on the ground is being spearheaded by former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, the newly appointed Middle East representative of the so-called Quartet of the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

Brushing aside skepticism that greeted his appointment in July, Blair has thrown himself into his new job, planting a 10-person team in offices in the American Colony Hotel in Jerusalem and promising to spend at least one week a month in the region.

"The most important thing is that things are moving again," Blair said during a recent trip to New York. "There is momentum back in this process. That doesn't mean to say that we are foolishly optimistic after all the difficulties of the past. But things are moving again."

Blair said that by year's end, the Palestinian Authority is expected to create a blueprint for institutions needed to create an independent state, and that he has been working with international donors and private business investors to create the economic conditions necessary to make that happen. His efforts closely mirror the conclusions of three recent reports from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and British government that call attention to the deepening economic crisis in the Palestinian territories and suggest that without an economic solution, a political process is impossible.

Blair is considering a graduated program of action, beginning with issues affecting the daily life of Palestinians - mobility, education and employment. Blair will ask donors to create jobs and improve Palestinian living conditions by funding a slew of major infrastructure projects, ranging from roads and factories to power stations and sewage treatment plants.

Some Palestinian officials, however, say they have heard it all before.

"Palestinians keep hearing about economic recovery plans submitted by this or that envoy or representative, when they, even as individuals, can hardly travel from one city in the West Bank to another," said Walid Awad, a senior official in Fatah, the moderate faction headed by Abbas. "They hear about security plans and wonder about their own security, hear about one peace initiative or another, when in effect, nothing changes on the ground, except for the worse."

But this time, Blair is determined to reach results. He is helped by the fact that Israeli and Palestinian leaders sense that this may be the last chance to save Palestinians from spending the next century in a constant state of war under a fundamentalist Islamic regime led by Hamas.

After Fatah was driven out of Gaza by Hamas in June and left to rule only in the West Bank, Abbas and Fatah officials know they must end corruption and lay the foundations of their future state, many analysts say.

All this requires Israeli cooperation. The Olmert administration must remove military checkpoints in the West Bank, release Palestinian prisoners and make diplomatic progress if ordinary Palestinians are to feel any benefits from Blair's mission, most analysts say.

But the Israelis also are faced with a serious quandary. They are under almost daily rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, where Hamas continues to call for Israel's destruction. Nor is the Hamas threat confined to Gaza. Only last month, a suicide bomb wired in a belt was discovered in Tel Aviv after a huge security operation netted a Hamas bombmaker in a Nablus refugee camp.

"Everyone understands that Tony Blair has a crucial mission here," said Mark Regev, Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman. "We have no interest in Israel living next to a failed society with a failed economy. It will only create instability and provide a recipe for further violence. Israel has its own interest in the Palestinians getting their act together - economically, politically and socially. We are behind Blair."

This article appeared on page A - 13 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Israeli Academic Year Begins With Faculty on Strike

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Monday, October 22, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

JERUSALEM

Israel's academic year began deep in crisis on Sunday as faculty members at universities throughout the country went on strike in pursuit of a 20-percent pay raise.

Hours earlier, university heads rescinded their threat not to open the campuses, in protest of government delays in honoring a commitment to provide an extra $75-million in support this year. In a compromise with the government, the presidents accepted an infusion of $55-million instead.

The universities opened, but most of the teaching-staff members stayed away. Students spent the day completing administrative procedures, registering for library cards, and shopping for last-minute materials.

Some 120,000 Israeli university students are affected by the strike. They join 600,000 high-school students locked out of their classes as a separate wage dispute by high-school teachers entered its 10th day on Sunday.

Israeli higher education is only just recovering from a crippling student strike over fees last semester. The student action, which went on for 41 days, forced universities to extend classes into the summer-vacation period. And the end of the previous academic year was disrupted by the Lebanon war, which closed down campuses in northern Israel, exiled thousands of students from their homes, and caused hundreds of students and staff members to report for reserve military duty.

In the current dispute, a faculty-union representative, Zvi Hacohen, a professor of desert research at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, said lecturers' salaries had been eroded by 15 percent since the last wage agreement was signed with the government, in 2001.

Israeli university lecturers earn the equivalent of $2,500 to $5,250 a month, much less than their American and European colleagues, even after adjustments for the lower cost of living in Israel.

Mr. Hacohen said the low pay had contributed to a "brain drain," with some 3,000 Israeli professors now working abroad, compared with 4,500 still in their own country.

"The negotiations broke down because we have asked for one thing from the beginning, that there be a mechanism to ensure there will be no more erosion of faculty salaries," said Mr. Hacohen. "Salaries rise automatically in the public sector. That doesn't happen among academics."

An education ministry official criticized the professors for going on strike instead of continuing talks. The walkout "will unnecessarily harm the students and the higher education system," the official said.

The president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Menachem Magidor, said he had some sympathy for the professors' plight, but he said their decision to strike was "counterproductive."

He said the university heads had settled their dispute with the government by compromising on their original demands, and he urged professors to do the same.

"There was some attrition in their salaries, compared with the public sector and definitely with the overall economy," Mr. Magidor said. "But I don’t think it's as large as they claim and I don't think it's realistic to expect to get the full thing now. I think that what would be reasonable would be to have a formula to compensate for some attrition that happened in the past and a guarantee that there will be less or no attrition in the future."

Some classes went ahead on Sunday, taught by part-time or junior staff members who are not represented by the senior-faculty organizations. Students were divided between those concerned about losing yet more hours of study and those who support the lecturers' demands.

Ronit Tirosh, a former director general of the education ministry who is now a member of parliament, called on Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to take radical steps to solve the burgeoning education crisis by reordering the government's priorities and dramatically raising salaries. Ms. Tirosh, who is a member of Mr. Olmert's Kadima Party, conceded that such a move would cost "billions of shekels."

Palestinian Students Accepted at Israeli Universities Wait in Limbo

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Wednesday, October 17, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Jerusalem

Palestinian students on the West Bank are being prevented from taking their places at Israeli universities and colleges under a blanket government ban that was challenged almost a year ago by the Israeli Supreme Court.

But as the new academic year begins, the Israeli military commander in the West Bank has so far failed to comply with the court's request to provide clear criteria for denying Palestinian students access to Israel so they can attend class.

In December 2006, the court asked the Israeli government to explain its refusal to extend the six-month entry permit of Sawsan Salameh, a 30-year-old Palestinian woman who is a doctoral student at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (The Chronicle, January 12). Chief Justice Dorit Beinisch said that, in the absence of a "security or private reason preventing the extension of the permit, we assume the renewed permit will be granted."

Ms. Salameh's permit has been extended every six months since then, but each time the court has met to hear the army's criteria for banning other students, the government has requested an extension.

At the last hearing, in September, the three-judge panel headed by Justice Beinisch rejected requests for a further extension and set November 1 as the date for a hearing.


Enforcing Unwritten Criteria
Sari Bashi, executive director of Gisha, an Israeli human-rights group that sued the government, said the delay had effectively forced Palestinian students to miss the start of another semester. The Israeli academic year is scheduled to begin this month.

Gisha is also representing Saed Hasan, a West Bank student who was due on Monday to begin an executive M.B.A. program run jointly by Northwestern University and Tel Aviv University. Israel refused to give Mr. Hasan a permit, telling Tel Aviv University that he "does not meet the criteria." But the government has told the court that it has not yet drawn up the criteria.

"Since 2000 the unpublished criteria have apparently become stricter and stricter," said Ms. Bashi. "As a result, there has been a steady decline and a chilling effect on the willingness of Palestinian students to apply to Israeli universities and the willingness of the universities to accept them because they don't know if they will get permits."

Another petitioner to the court is the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, in southern Israel. The institute brings together Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian, and other Arab students and academics to study regional environmental issues.

"Seven of our Palestinian students for this academic year need permits, and we put in a request two months ago and called almost every other day," said David Lehrer, executive director of the institute. "Last week we received a negative answer that none of the Palestinian students would be allowed to come to the institute. They had not checked the individual students but imposed a policy not to allow Palestinian students to study long-term programs in Israel."

"We challenged this ban in the Supreme Court last winter, and the court agreed with us that the ban was unreasonable," he said.

Shlomo Dror, a spokesman for the Coordinator of Israeli Government activities in the occupied territories, said that for security reasons, Palestinian undergraduates would be allowed to study in Israel only if the courses were not available in the West Bank. He said there was a specific problem with the Arava Institute because Palestinians were not allowed into that area of Israel except in exceptional cases and not for long periods.

Israeli Arab farmer has 8 wives and 67 children

Shehadeh Abu Arar with some of his 67 kids in village of Burgata

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, October 15th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - He has eight wives, 67 children and two more on the way.

And Shehadeh Abu Arar says he couldn't be happier.

The Israeli Arab farmer and camel breeder boasts of knowing all his
little ones by name and brushes off questions about his unusual
lifestyle.

"I am happy I have kids, this is what God gave us," said Abu Arar, 58.
"This is what He wants, and I do what He tells me."

Abu Arar has more children than any man in Israel, where Arab
population growth causes some to fear that Jews will someday be a
minority.

He first married in 1967 and had 31 children from his first two wives.
His eldest son is 37 and his youngest child is less than 1. So far, he
has 20 grandchildren.

All of them live with him in an extended family compound in the
village of Burgata, where he shuttles from one lovely to another.

"Every night I decide which wife to go to," Abu Arar recently told the
Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.

His youngest wife is only 23, a Palestinian from the Jenin refugee
camp in the West Bank.

Abu Arar is not stopping there - eight wives, apparently, is not enough.

"Now I am thinking about a new wife, No. 9, and I am already preparing
for the marriage," he said. "There are many women who wish to marry
me."

The family grows flowers and vegetables near its home. It also raise
cows, sheep and goats that provide food for the extended clan.

Every morning, a bus comes and takes 30 of the children to the local school.

It's not all milk and honey for the wives.

"Each one has to take care of her own children, and I have my own
chores," Abu Arar told Yedioth Ahronoth. "It's very difficult. But,
thank God, my children help out, and we make a good living."

Under Israeli law, Bedouins like Abu Arar may take as many wives as
they like without being considered a polygamist.

In a quirk of law, only 53 of the children are Israeli citizens - the
other 14 are considered Palestinians because their mothers came from
the West Bank.

Some Israeli nationalists fret that higher birthrates may one day make
Arabs, who represent about 20% of the Israeli population, a majority
in the Jewish state.

Leonardo's lady protests

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, 12 October

Leonardo DiCaprio's Israeli model girlfriend, Bar Rafaeli, is suing
her native country's largest newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, for libel
after claiming she said, "I am not sorry for not serving in the army
... Why is it good to die for our country? Isn't it better to live in
New York?" Rafaeli's lawyer Dror Arad Alon said the statements are
false and that she was "wickedly manipulated by the newspaper's
reporter and editors," The News' Matthew Kalman reports.

Israel's top secret sites on Google Earth

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Israel's most top secret security installations have been
jeopardized by a new version of Google Earth, Israeli military experts
say.

Satellite photographs of the sites, downloaded from Google Earth, were
published last week on the front page of Israel's largest-selling
newspaper. The latest version of the popular Internet mapping tool
clearly shows sites viewed by the government as sensitive - such as
the nation's classified nuclear research station in the Negev Desert
city of Dimona, the headquarters of the Mossad spy agency, Israeli air
force bases, the location of the Arrow missile defense system and the
central military headquarters and Defense Ministry compound in Tel
Aviv.

Yediot Ahronot, the Israeli daily that published the photographs on
its front page, said the upgraded Web site is an "asset" to enemy
states and a "treasure" to terrorists. Israel has spent decades and
millions of dollars hiding these sites from public view. All are
heavily guarded round-the-clock, and the location of the Mossad
headquarters is a closely guarded secret. Reporters in Israel are
forbidden from photographing or revealing any details about these
locations under strict military censorship.

Israeli government and security officials refused to comment on the
photographs. But a former military intelligence officer, who spoke on
condition of anonymity, said: "Anything I say will be
counterproductive. I think I'll avoid that issue completely."

But Professor Gerald Steinberg, chairman of the political science
department at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, disagrees. He says
Israel has been prepared for the new Google Earth images, which he
says do not endanger Israel's security.

"Israel has had 10 years to prepare for this," said Steinberg, who
helped draft an agreement with the United States limiting satellite
resolution imagery. "It was the Clinton administration's policy to
make available high-resolution imaging. Israel was granted a cushion
which for clear security reasons does not put all the available
information on the Internet.

"The satellite pictures were available before now to anyone with a few
thousand dollars. They are not real-time pictures, and they were not
taken yesterday. I don't think this is a major change in security."

The new high-resolution images, made available to Google Earth users
last week, consist of one pixel per 2.4 square yards. Until now,
previous images of Israel were limited to one pixel per 12 to 24
yards.

Cordy Griffiths, a Google spokesperson in London, said the images were
upgraded last week in line with a Google Earth policy of improving its
service to users. But Griffiths said all Google Earth images are
bought from commercial satellite imaging companies and governed by the
U.S.-Israel agreement.

"These new images fall within the law," said Griffiths. "It is higher
resolution than the imagery we had before, but it is freely available
material that we buy from third parties. The onus is on them to check
that everything is legal."

Griffiths preferred not to answer whether Israeli officials have
complained to Google since the new images were posted. "We would be
happy to discuss any concerns the Israeli government might have," she
said. "None of the images have been changed since the imagery update
for Israel in Google Earth last week."

Griffiths also denied reports that Google images of India were
deliberately blurred or distorted to protect security installations in
that country.

"Google does not intentionally degrade or distort image quality.
However, we use the imagery that comes to us from our data suppliers,
some of which includes clearly blurred or degraded imagery. For
example, an airbase in the Netherlands, the vice president's residence
in Washington, D.C.," she said.

According to Israeli experts, the photographs in question are a year
or two years old, and clearly show the layout of top-secret buildings.
The photograph of the nuclear plant at Dimona shows the approach
roads, internal walkways and individual buildings in a facility that
is off-limits and hidden behind electric fences with large warnings
signs and a complex array of cameras and other security devices.

The images also include Camp Rabin, the heavily guarded defense
headquarters in central Tel Aviv that is surrounded by anti-terrorist
blockades, a high wall and buildings with bomb-proof windows. It
contains the underground bunker from which Israel's top generals
command their military campaigns, as well as the offices of the prime
minister, defense minister and Shin Bet secret service.

Moreover, the alleged Mossad headquarters, whose location is a highly
protected secret, was identified and labeled by a Google Earth user.

"This contains a stock of information in which any intelligence body
would be willing to invest a great deal of money and effort in order
to get its hands on it," said Alex Fishman, Yediot Ahronot security
correspondent. "Locating sensitive strategic and security facilities
in Israel is a major objective for countries like Iran and Syria."

But political scientist Steinberg recalls similar fears when the first
satellite photos of Dimona were declassified by the United States some
10 years ago.

"There was concern this would have a negative impact on Israeli
security," he said. "It doesn't seem to have given any information to
anyone that was used to carry out attacks."

This article appeared on page A - 13 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Israelis accuse French network of staging film of Gaza slay

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, October 3rd 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - A senior Israeli official is accusing a French TV station of staging news footage to make it look like the Israeli Army was to blame for the shooting death of a Palestinian boy.

Images of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura bleeding to death in his father's arms in Gaza in September 2000 swept the world and became a central image of the Palestinian intifadeh.

The army at first apologized for Mohammed's death, but a subsequent investigation by the Israeli Defense Forces said it was more likely he was killed in crossfire by Palestinian bullets than by the Israelis.

The boy's family rejected Israeli requests at the time to examine the boy's body to determine which side killed him.

Until now, Israeli officials have kept a low profile on the case. But last week, Daniel Seaman, director of the Israel government press office, openly accused the correspondent who aired the footage, Charles Enderlin, and the Palestinian cameraman who captured it, Talal AbuRahma, of a "blood libel" against Israel.

"Israel was accused of murdering a small child after the event by the world press, and his image has been burned into the collective Arab memory as a symbol of the brutality of the Zionist state," Seaman wrote in a letter to the Israel Law Center Shurat Hadin, which had demanded he rescind the press credentials of the network that aired the film, state-owned France 2.

"The events of that day were essentially staged by the network's cameraman in Gaza," wrote Seaman, but he said he would not withdraw the network's press passes.

Israel has asked France 2 to release the full 27 minutes of footage filmed that day in Gaza, but the network has so far refused.

Earlier this year, Enderlin and France 2 won a libel suit in a French court against media watchdog Philippe Karsenty, who accused them of staging the incident. Karsenty is appealing the verdict.

Enderlin told the Daily News he stood by the original broadcast. "The video is authentic and we will continue filing libel suits against people who say contrary," said Enderlin. "The story was not staged."

He said France 2 had refused to release the full footage on principle, "just as any newspaper will refuse to show the private notes of journalists." But he said he welcomed a decision by the French appeals court to screen the 27 minutes of film to a judge next month.

In Gaza, Jamal al-Dura, Mohammed's father, said there was no question an Israeli soldier had fired the fatal bullets.

"The Israelis killed my son. Now they are trying to deny responsibility. They want to erase the case of my son," he said.

Israel to Syria: Use chem weapons & we'll wipe you off map

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, September 20th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem and BILL HUTCHINSON in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Israeli officials vowed to wipe Syria off the map if it is attacked
with chemical weapons like one that reportedly exploded in July at a
secret Syrian base staffed with Iranian engineers.

Politicians in Israel said yesterday they were not picking a fight
with their neighbor, but pledged to forcefully retaliate if chemical
warheads come screaming across its shared border.

"We will not attack them first. But if they ever use these weapons
against Israel, then we must be clear — it will be the end of this
evil and brutal dictatorship," Yuval Steinitz, a right-wing member of
the Israeli parliament, told the Daily News yesterday.

Sparking shock waves across the Middle East was a report in Jane's
Defence Weekly about an accidental explosion at a top secret Syrian
base in July.

Citing Syrian intelligence sources, the report claimed a team of
Iranian and Syrian engineers were killed July 26 while trying to arm a
Scud-C missile with a mustard gas warhead.

Syrian official news agency, SANA, reported that least 15 Syrian
military personnel had been "martyred" and 50 others injured in the
blast near the northern city of Aleppo on the Turkish border. It
claimed the early morning explosion was caused by the high
temperatures.

The SANA report mentioned nothing of Iranian personnel killed in the mishap.

Jane's said dozens of Iranian workers were among those who died when a
fire in the missile's engine triggered the explosion and release of a
toxic cloud of lethal chemical agents banned under international law.

U.S. intelligence sources played down the report saying they've seen
no credible evidence chemical weapons were involved in the Syrian
accident.

Israeli air strike 'took out Syria's secret nuclear site'

DAILY MAIL : Tuesday 18 September

From Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

ISRAEL destroyed a fledgling Syrian nuclear weapons system in an air
raid 12 days ago, it was claimed last night.

The suggestion fuelled speculation that the air strike on a remote
area of northern Syria wiped out a secret nuclear programme
established with North Korean equipment.

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told
Israeli television: 'I think it would be unusual for Israel to conduct
a military operation inside Syria other than for a very high value
target, and certainly a Syrian effort in the nuclear weapons area
would qualify.'

He added: 'I think this is a clear message not only to Syria. I think
it's a clear message to Iran as well that its continued efforts to
acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered.'

Israel imposed a rare news blackout after the raid.

But Syria claimed Israeli warplanes were forced to drop their
munitions and fuel harmlessly in the desert after coming under
anti-aircraft fire.

Syria has also protested to Israel about the breach of its airspace
and threatened to retaliate.

In a marked escalation of the crisis last night, Iran reportedly
threatened to rally to Syria's defence if its Arab ally is attacked by
either by Israel or the U.S.

Israeli radio claimed a Persian-language website had suggested Iran
has 600 Shihab-3 missiles that it will launch at Israel on the first
day Iran or Syria is attacked.

With a possible range of up to 1,260 miles, the Shihab-3 could reach
all of Israel, including its nuclear reactor in the south. The website
also said that Iran would launch up to 15 missiles at U.S. targets
inside Iraq if either Iran or Syria is attacked.

The air raid came amid heightened tensions over Iran's nuclear
ambitions and fears that another country in the Middle East may be
aligning itself with North Korea over an atomic programme.

Syria continues to host Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other deadly terror
groups in its capital Damascus.

It has also been accused of allowing Iran to ship huge amounts of
military hardware across its territory to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel has always made clear it will respond if attacked, perhaps with
its own, far superior nuclear capability.

The news blackout means Israeli newspapers have been forced to recycle
speculation from around the world.

One of the most common claims is that the target of the attack was a
shipment of nuclear weapons from North Korea bound for use by Syria or
possibly to be passed on to Hezbollah.

The Israeli daily newspaper Maariv quoted 'foreign reports' of a raid
by combined air and ground forces more than 200 miles inside Syrian
territory.

It suggested 'the operation carried out was one of the most dangerous
and brilliant in the history of the Israeli defence forces'.

Andrew Semmel, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear
non-proliferation, said Syria was on the country's nuclear 'watch
list'.

'There are indicators that they do have something going on there,' he added.

'We do know there are a number of foreign technicians that have been
in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria
and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment.'

The few tight-lipped comments coming from Israeli leaders seemed,
however, to suggest that any danger was past – at least for now.

The raid is said to have involved a group of up to eight Israeli F-15
warplanes, which penetrated Syrian airspace before dawn on September
6.

Two jettisoned fuel tanks were later discovered in Turkish territory.

It was the first Israeli raid into Syria since October 2003, when
Israeli jets attacked a terrorist training camp on the outskirts of
Damascus.

If it is confirmed that the air strike was to destroy a nuclear site
in Syria, it will evoke memories of Israel's 1981 raid on an Iraqi
nuclear reactor at Osiraq.

The facility was crippled in a surprise attack aimed at preventing
Saddam Hussein from acquiring the means to make nuclear weapons.

Emigre at center of murder investigation remains missing

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, September 17th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Herzliya, Israel
and BILL HUTCHINSON in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

The whereabouts of a Russian emigre at the center of a murder
investigation into the deaths of two New York women grew more
mysterious yesterday when his wife insisted she hasn't seen him in
years.

Detectives probing the deaths of Larysa Vasserman, 48, and Tatiana
Korkhova, 54, would like to talk with Eugene Perchikov, who is the
beneficiary in both women's life insurance policies.

But finding Perchikov might take a global dragnet as he jets around
the world from Russia to Israel and the United States.

"We have been separated for two years. He hasn't lived here since
then," Perchikov's wife, Natalia, told the Daily News from her
suburban Tel Aviv home. "We don't live together anymore."

The wife refused to answer questions about her estranged husband,
saying, "I can't tell you anything about him and I don't want to talk
about him."

While Perchikov has not been charged with any crime, he has been
accused in two lawsuits ofmurdering Vasserman and Korkhova.

In both cases, the medical examiner failed to determine the cause of death.

Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney's office is pursuing a
fraud investigation.

Perchikov collected more than $1 million on Vasserman's insurance
policy after she was found dead in her Manhattan home in 2004.

He was also named beneficiary on Korkhova's $1 million policy when she
was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment in 2002. Perchikov's Israeli
friend Larisa Yurkov-Shkolnik was listed as a beneficiary on a second
Korkhova insurance policy. Both insurance companies refused to pay.

Contacted yesterday by The News at her home in Raanana, Israel,
Yurkov-Shkolnik declined to discuss her involvement with Perchikov.

"I can't talk about anything to do with the court case in America,"
she said. "I don't want to talk about it."

Judge Orders Iran to Pay $13-Million for Terrorist Bombing That Killed Student

Judge Orders Iran to Pay $13-Million for Terrorist Bombing That Killed Student

Chronicle of Higher Education
Daily News Blog
September 11, 2007

Jerusalem - Officials at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have
welcomed a ruling by an American court that ordered the government of
Iran to pay compensation for an American student who was killed on the
campus in a Hamas bomb attack in 2002.

The student, Marla Bennett, a 24-year-old from San Diego who was a
graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, was studying for
an M.A. in Jewish education. She was one of nine students and
cafeteria workers killed in the lunchtime explosion in the crowded
Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at the university's Mount Scopus Campus.

In a ruling issued on August 30, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, of the U.S.
District Court in Washington, determined that because the bombing had
been carried out by members of the Hamas terrorist movement, which is
supported by the Iranian government, Iran bore responsibility for the
attack. Judge Lamberth ordered Iran to pay $12,904,548 to Ms.
Bennett's estate and family. The Iranian government did not respond to
the lawsuit, and as with other such terrorism-related litigation
against Iran, the plaintiffs are likely to find it difficult to
collect the judgment.

In a statement issued today, the Hebrew University administration said
it "pays tribute to the memory of Marla Bennett and all of the other
victims of the terrorist attack and expressed satisfaction at the
decision of the court, which perhaps will ease, if only slightly, the
sorrow of the family." ­Matthew Kalman

Police crack first neo Nazi cell ever discovered in Israel

DAILY MAIL 10 September 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

It seems almost unthinkable in the homeland created by the Jews after the terrors of fascism.

But Israel has a cell of neo-Nazis, accused of a string of attacks on foreign workers, orthodox Jews, drug addicts and gays.

The immigrants from the former Soviet Union are all Israeli citizens and have been arrested in connection with 15 assaults.

VIDEO: The disturbing footage of the Neo-Nazi suspects assaulting a victim

The anti-semitic group attacked at least 15 jews

News of the arrests has shocked Israel, which was founded nearly 60 years ago in the wake of the Holocaust.

The discovery of anti-Semitism within its own borders has dominated Israeli newspapers and TV and radio news shows.

All of the suspects are in their late teens or early 20s, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Eight have been arrested and yesterday a court ruled that they should remain in custody.

Another has fled the country.

The gang documented its activities on film and in photographs, and Israeli TV stations showed grainy footage of victims lying helpless on the floor while several men kicked them.

Police found knives, spiked balls, explosives and other weapons in the suspects' possession, Mr Rosenfeld said.

White Power: a Nazi salute reveals his tattoo

One photo showed a suspect holding an M16 rifle in one hand and in the other, a sign reading "Heil Hitler".

Detectives discovered the skinhead ring after investigating the desecration of two synagogues in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva more than a year ago.

Police found the cell was in contact with fascist groups abroad, and materials seized include a German-language video about neo-Nazis in the U.S..

Group members wore tattoos of Celtic crosses - a symbol adopted by white supremacists.

They also bore tattoos of barbed-wire fences, and the number 88, code for Heil Hitler because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Another tattoo proclaimed "White Power."

Targets of their carefully planned attacks included workers from Asia, drug addicts, homosexuals, punks and Jews who wore skullcaps.

In one case the group discussed planning a murder, Mr Rosenfeld said, without providing details.

The group leader was named as Eli Boanitov, 19, of Petah Tikva.

In the past, there have been only isolated cases of neo-Nazi activity in Israel.

"This is the first time that we've arrested such a large number of individuals who are part of an organised neo-Nazi group," Mr Rosenfeld said.

At the hearing, suspects cover their faces with t-shirts

Skrewdriver: a Neo Nazi rock band formed in the late 70's

The eight arrested youths immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.

Police said none of them were Jewish as defined by religious law.

All profess Christianity.

More than a million Jews immigrated from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s, and more than half a million in the 20 years before that.

Because of the high assimilation rate in the Soviet Union, many Jews there married non- Jews.

When they later moved to Israel, they took their spouses, children and grandchildren with them.

This means many from the former Soviet Union with questionable ties to Judaism have been allowed to immigrate.

Mr Rosenfeld said all of the suspects had "parents or grandparents who were Jewish in one way or another".

Israel doesn't have a hate crimes law, and suspects in past cases have been tried as Holocaust deniers, he added.

The suspects came to Israel as Russian immigrants

From Boston to the West Bank Art school director has a vital vision

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent | August 15, 2007

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- At first, the road sign at a busy intersection
in this town looks like any other: A raised silhouette of a hand on a
red background in a circular white border.

But the index and middle fingers of the hand are missing, and the
warning written in Arabic in the border has only a tangential
connection to traffic control: Awkefu al-ketel "Stop the killing."

It's a powerful message directed at both sides in the civil war
between Hamas and Fatah, which has claimed dozens of lives in the Gaza
Strip and could spread to the West Bank.

The artwork, displayed at 50 major junctions across Ramallah and its
neighboring town El Bireh, is the creation of Majd Abdel Hamid, a
19-year-old local artist and one of 12 students selected for the
opening semester of the newly inaugurated International Academy of Art
Palestine.

"It's missing the two victory fingers which usually indicate the
Palestinian revolution and victory. It was a sign that Arafat often
used," explains Hamid. "It says that no one is going to win. It's a
lose-lose situation. The situation with killing is like losing parts
of your body, it's something really bloody."

Hamid's road sign is the first art project to be sponsored by the
Academy and a perfect example of what its founders, a group of local
Palestinian artists, hope to achieve.

"Politicians for more than 60 years haven't really solved our
problems," says Maria C. Khoury, the Academy's Boston-educated project
director.

"For a long time, artists have wanted to say that through art there
can be a new language, there can be communication among ourselves, as
artists, and with the international community," she says.

Khoury, 47, who was born in Greece and raised in Denver, is a graduate
of Hellenic College in Brookline and Harvard University Extension
School, with a doctorate in childhood education from Boston
University. She met her Palestinian husband David at Hellenic College
and in 1996 emigrated to Taybeh, the tiny West Bank village where he
was born.

The Khoury family owns Foley's Liquors in Brookline and on their
return to the West Bank they poured their savings into creating Taybeh
Brewing Co., the first Palestinian brewery. It flourishes despite the
Israeli occupation, the Palestinian intifada, and the rise of Hamas,
which disapproves of alcohol even when brewed by Greek Orthodox
Christians. Today, David Khoury is the mayor of Taybeh.

Maria Khoury says the brewery slogan -- "Taste the Revolution" -- was
built on the same principle as the International Academy of Art
Palestine.

"We're trying to establish an institute that speaks out and says we
love our country, we love our culture," she says. "If we have freedom,
we too can produce excellent products, not just in business. My
husband tries to do that in business and commerce. But we also do it
in the arts, to have the freedom to express who we are."

The Academy aims to be the first independent degree-awarding art
institute in Palestine. Art courses are available at three Palestinian
universities, but their aim is to train high school teachers and they
focus on traditional Arabic art.

The 12 students selected to begin Academy studies this fall will focus
on contemporary visual art across a range of disciplines from video
installations to sculpture to painting.

The Academy's launch came thanks to the initiative of Henrik Placht, a
Norwegian artist who visited the West Bank in 2002 at the height of
the intifada. Placht secured a three-year grant of $1 million per year
from the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
sponsorship of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Placht has already initiated a series of student visits and teaching
exchanges, which began this summer with a Palestinian student building
an Israeli military checkpoint as an art installation at an Oslo train
station.

Khoury is justly proud of the Academy's premises in El Bireh, the
former home of Palestinian historian Aref Al Aref. It housed a
fledgling art gallery more than 20 years ago. The house is a
century-old stone mansion that has been refurbished with studio space
in the basement and the loft, a computer design room, and, at its
center, a white cube with parquet wood flooring, the only exhibition
space of its kind in the Ramallah area.

For Nabil Anani, one of the four local artists who established the
Academy, it is a dream come true.

Anani, 64, was one of four Palestinian artists who founded the "New
Vision" movement during the first intifada. Together they produced
Palestinian art using local materials, placing their work at the
center of the struggle against the occupation.

"The Israelis know that art is important for the Palestinians and so
they were against us from the beginning," Anani says. "They
confiscated many artworks. They arrested many artists. They closed
many exhibitions."

Since the Oslo peace accords in 1993, the Israelis have largely
withdrawn from towns like Ramallah and El Bireh, but freedom is still
elusive. Israeli settlements, and the constant presence of military
jeeps and checkpoints are daily obstacles to free movement around the
West Bank.

Meanwhile, internal political tensions between Hamas and Fatah have
recently erupted into the kind of violence which prompted Hamid's
"Stop the Killing" project.

Anani says a Palestinian art academy is not a luxury -- it's a necessity.

"Palestine needs culture, needs writers, needs artists, needs dance,"
he says. "They need food, hospitals, security, work -- they need
everything. But if you want food, you also want to see art and to
dance and to be happy."

Adds Khoury: "We are starving as Palestinian people to be normal, so
we don't only just need food and medicine. We need to feed our souls."

We'll never surrender! Israeli settlers protest during clash with cops

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, August 8th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - Wielding sledgehammers and power saws, Israeli police in riot gear smashed through doors and walls in a predawn raid on an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank town of Hebron yesterday, destroying three homes.

Police - more than 3,000 officers backed by soldiers - battled with more than 200 demonstrators who pelted them with stones, light bulbs, oil, flour and water.

"We will never surrender!" settler leaders chanted through bullhorns.

Settlers were dragged shouting and screaming from the houses, located in a former Arab market. Three young activists who barricaded themselves inside one of the homes were evicted by an elite army unit usually tasked with rescuing victims of earthquakes and collapsed buildings.

Four soldiers, 14 police officers and 12 settlers were injured during the operation, a police spokesman said. Eleven settlers were detained briefly and two were arrested.

The illegal settlement was built at the site of the ancient Jewish Quarter of the city, close to the Tombs of the Patriarchs. Two families were evicted, along with protesters who had occupied a third house in the area.

Tensions remain high in Hebron, the only town in the West Bank where Jewish settlers live in the middle of the Palestinian population under heavy military protection.

Settler leaders vowed not to allow more West Bank outposts to be demolished. They said the Hebron houses, populated in protest at the murder of baby Shalhevet Pass by a Palestinian sniper in 2001, would be rebuilt.

"We will return to the Shalhevet neighborhood and the families will be back in their homes," said Noam Arnon, spokesman for the Israeli settlers in Hebron.

The raid triggered a political debate inside Israel after several soldiers refused to follow orders to oust the settlers.

The destruction of the settler homes in the heart of Hebron came as Israeli leaders floated a new peace plan seeking to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, with land inside Israel swapped for the larger settlement blocs.

No vacancy in Blair's bid for housing in Jerusalem

Hilltop compound sought, though his work is in West Bank

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, July 23, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will find no space at the inn when he turns up today at Government House, the U.N. headquarters in Jerusalem where he has asked to live and work in his new job as Middle East special envoy.

His new diplomatic colleagues are already incensed at the way Blair's appointment was sprung by the United States last month on the Quartet -- representing the United Nations, European Union, Russia and United States -- and their dismay increased this week when Blair requested accommodations and offices for himself at Government House, a picturesque hilltop compound in southern Jerusalem built in 1930 to house the British High Commissioner under the Palestine Mandate.

It sits on the summit of the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas Iscariot is said to have betrayed Jesus for 30 shekels of silver, and has spectacular views to the north over the Dome of the Rock, the Old City of Jerusalem and southwards over Bethlehem, Herodion and the Judean Desert.

Francesco Manca, spokesman for the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization -- which controls Government House -- said there is no empty office space for Blair and the only available living quarters is a two-room apartment that is already occupied by the head of the truce organization, Australian Maj. Gen. Ian Campbell Gordon.

"At present we have nothing," Manca said. "The current situation in Government House is that we are looking for office space for our existing purposes without the addition of anyone new. We are already at the stage where we are using freight containers for extra office space. This is a usual U.N. solution in Sudan but not in Jerusalem. There is no empty house here."

Manca pointed out that Blair's predecessor, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, also considered Government House but set up his office at the American Colony Hotel across town.

"The idea of having Blair here cannot be implemented immediately. Even if this is chosen as the place, significant changes would have to take place to make it feasible," he said.

The prospect of Blair and perhaps a dozen support staff taking up residence in the already overcrowded compound at Government House has set diplomatic tongues wagging in Jerusalem.

Blair probably chose Government House because of its relative isolation and well-established security systems, but U.N. officials do not relish the prospect of hosting such a high-profile tenant who is considered a high-risk target because of his controversial involvement in the Middle East as prime minister.

Blair is considered so unpopular with ordinary Palestinians, who regarded Saddam Hussein as a hero and are firmly opposed to the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq, that it will be impossible for him to stay in Ramallah, even though his new job working with the Palestinians seems to demand it.

"For security reasons, he has to be in Jerusalem," said a U.N. official. "Security is a major problem. Because of his former role as prime minister he would be in danger in the West Bank."

An elegant sandstone chateau built in a 16-acre compound strategically located on a hilltop overlooking the Old City, Government House opened in 1930 to serve as the headquarters for the British high commissioner to Palestine. Since 1948, it has been the headquarters of UNTSO, set up to monitor the Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian cease-fires.

In 1994, the newly appointed special coordinator for the Middle East peace process and his staff (UNSCO) asked to set up their offices there, and were housed in freight containers and hastily constructed modern buildings set up in the grounds. Built in an octagon from locally quarried stone in a blend of traditional Arabic and Mediterranean styles, the main building is surrounded by shaded terraces set among the landscaped formal gardens with a huge ornamental fountain at their center.

The compound is hidden from view by pines and cypress trees, high walls, a severe gateway and modern security systems supplemented with razor wire, anti-car-bomb barricades and cameras.

Diplomats in Jerusalem already are smarting from Blair's comments at his first press conference as special envoy in Lisbon on Thursday, where he appeared to demand a wider political mandate than the narrow task of building Palestinian institutions, the role assigned him by the Quartet.

"If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it is very important to build the capacity of the institutions for this state to be a viable one," said Marc Otte, the EU special representative to the Middle East peace process. "That is the topic on which he will concentrate at the outset, for the time being. The rest, we'll see."

"He expects a political mandate. So far he does not have one," said another UN official. "Blair's focus is only now on building Palestinian institutions and fundraising to build those institutions. His political role is limited. He may be expecting a wider political role. But at the moment, he's not been granted that role. It's not part of his mandate," said the official.

"This might upset a lot of people, including other envoys of other countries. This is your role. You go outside that and it means you are overlapping other people's work. It's a big problem."

This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Cinnamon cure for diseases

SUNDAY EXPRESS
22 July 2007

From Matthew Kalman

A PASSAGE from the Bible may hold the key to fighting the most dreaded diseases of the 21st century, using a cinnamon-based remedy developed by high priests of Old Testament times.
Zoology professor Michael Ovadia, of Tel Aviv University - a world-renowned expert on antidotes for snake venom - made the discovery after hearing a passage from the Bible which described temple priests anointing themselves with oil.
"The High Priests, the Cohens, would prepare a holy oil used on their bodies before they made a ritual animal sacrifice, " Ovadia said. "I had a hunch that this oil, prepared with cinnamon and other spices, played a role in preventing the spread of infectious agents to people."
The special properties of cinnamon have been known since ancient times, when it was used as a cure for many ailments including diabetes, coughing and sore throats. Today, cinnamon extracts boasting healing properties are widely available.
But simply munching a cinnamon stick will not cure HIV or flu.
"You cannot just take the cinnamon by itself, " Professor Ovadia said, "because the essential oils can be damaging to humans in high doses." But the sweet smell of cinnamon could be wafting through airports, railway stations and other crowded public places as a protection against HIV, herpes, bird flu and other dangerous viruses.
Patented cinnamon extract could be installed in air-conditioning systems, face masks and even aerosol sprays.
The Tel Aviv team's patented formula, codenamed VNF, can attack a broad range of viruses.
In animal tests, it stopped viruses in less than a minute.
Human testing is still some way off. But Dr Nissim Chen, of the university's business arm, said: "We think it could be used in vaccinations against avian influenza."

Proposed Huge Jump in Israeli Tuition Prompts Renewed Threat of Student Strike

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Tuesday, July 17, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Jerusalem

Student leaders in Israel are threatening a nationwide undergraduate strike if the government imposes a 70-percent jump in tuition and carries out other recommendations of a committee that on Monday published a wide-ranging report on reforms in higher education.

The Shochat Committee's proposals include doubling the higher-education budget, to $2.5-billion; providing $225-million in new research funds; doubling the budget of Israel's National Science Foundation, to $120-million; providing special undergraduate scholarships in the humanities; and rewarding outstanding researchers and academics in an effort to stop an Israeli "brain drain" to the United States.

"The implementation of these reforms will be like injecting oxygen into a system that has suffered severe deterioration," said a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat, who led the committee. "This is the most comprehensive and thorough reform proposal to strengthen the higher-education system in Israel that has ever been presented."

Mr. Shochat said the reforms, if enacted, would increase access to higher education for all Israelis wishing to attend university, add 450 new lecturers to the academic staff, reduce class sizes, and improve centers of excellence in research and teaching.

The committee, composed of Education and Finance Ministry officials, academics, and a former university president, recommended "unprecedented aid systems for increasing accessibility." That goal would be attained through increased scholarships for students from poorer families and from sections of society where university attendance is not strongly encouraged.

But the most controversial aspect of the proposals was the recommendation to raise undergraduate tuition from about $2,000 to $3,500 a year.

Mr. Shochat said that most of the fee for each student should be absorbed by a long-term loan, which would only become repayable a year after graduation, and then only if the student was earning a wage comparable to a high-school teacher. He said students would actually pay less while studying, enabling everyone in Israeli society to attend college "irrespective of their socioeconomic status or the financial situation of their parents."

Students declined an invitation to sit on the committee, and ended a crippling 41-day strike in May with a promise from the government that they would be consulted before any of the proposals were adopted. On Monday they appeared to be poised to reject the reform program.

"We will not accept loans. We will not allow this farcical reform to go ahead," said Itai Shonshein, chairman of the National Union of Israeli Students.

He said the apparent doubling of the higher-education budget was "an illusion" because the budget had been halved in recent years.

"They are replacing the money taken by the government with the money of the students," he said.

Mr. Shonshein threatened that if the government did not allow the students to exercise a veto over the proposals, "the next school year will not open."

Palestinian Art Institute to Open in September

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
July 7, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

The first higher-education institution in the Palestinian territories dedicated solely to art has selected its first 12 students.

The International Academy of Art Palestine, which plans to open in September, will offer a four-year program and be based in Ramallah.

The academy, backed by the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art, has applied for accreditation from the Palestinian Ministry of Education to grant undergraduate degrees in contemporary visual arts.

The academy's project director, Maria C. Khoury, an education specialist who graduated from Harvard University and Boston University, said she hoped the academy would become "the international portal in the Arab world for contemporary art."

The academy has leased the historic Aref Al-Aref house in Ramallah, which housed the town's first Palestinian art gallery when it opened in 1979. The project is the brainchild of four Palestinian artists who wanted to establish a dedicated institute to teach a new generation of local artists and develop a curriculum appropriate to local conditions.

The money for the academy's first three years of operation was donated by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

http://chronicle.com
Section: International
Volume 53, Issue 45, Page A31

Freed BBC journalist: Captivity like being buried alive

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, July 5th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - BBC reporter Alan Johnston stepped into the bright sunshine yesterday after being held captive in a darkened room for 114 days and proclaimed: "It is unimaginably good to be free."

Johnston, 45, was snatched from his car in broad daylight on a side street in Gaza City on March 12 and held by a radical Islamic group calling itself the Army of Islam.

He was released early yesterday after Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, threatened to storm the militant stronghold where he was being held and kill his captors.

The freed journalist told reporters he was kept in isolation, unable to see sunlight.

"It was the most appalling experience, on and on, like being buried alive, removed from life," said Johnston, looking pale and gaunt but otherwise in good health despite his nearly four-month ordeal.

He said it was "always frightening" and "occasionally quite terrifying."

"I just didn't know when it would end or how it would end," he said.

Johnston called his captors "dangerous and unpredictable," but said he developed a "surreal, 'Odd Couple'" relationship with one "extraordinarily moody guard."

"I dreamt many times of being free again and always woke up in that room.... The last 16 weeks have been the very worst of my life."

Johnston said the one silver lining during his captivity was that he had a radio and was able to listen to his BBC colleagues.

"How many kidnap victims are able to sit and listen to their friends giving them messages of support from around the world? I felt at one point as though all the journalists in the world were coming to the rescue," Johnston said.

The reporter said he owed his release to Hamas. "I'm pretty sure that if Hamas hadn't come in and turned the heat on, I'd still be in that room."

Immediately after his release, Johnston was hustled off to a meeting with former Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who briefly draped a Palestinian flag around the reporter's shoulders.

Israel and the rival Palestinian party Fatah called Johnston's release a stage-managed Hamas publicity stunt.

"They released Johnston without getting anything in return because they want to make a good impression on the world," said Israeli cabinet minister Gideon Ezra.

Fatah officials said Hamas had given the kidnappers cash and weapons for Johnston's release.

Johnston was expected to spend some time resting at the British Consulate in east Jerusalem before flying home to see his family.

In Scotland, his parents said they were "overjoyed" to get a phone call from their son.

"It's been 114 days of a living nightmare and just to hear his voice," said his father, Graham Johnston.

"All he said was: 'Hello, Dad' and I [said]: 'Hello, son, I hear you're all right.' He said: 'I'm a 100%.'"

HOW CAN BLAIR BE OUR PEACE ENVOY?

SUNDAY EXPRESS
Sunday July 1,2007

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

TONY Blair’s appointment as a Middle East peace envoy has been met with anger and derision across the region where he hopes to bring an end to decades of conflict.

Political commentators and ordinary ­citizens were united last night in condemning the former Prime Minister as little more than a puppet of American President George W Bush.

Officially, Palestinian moderates close to President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Mr Blair’s appointment. So did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who hailed him as a “true friend of the State of Israel”.

But behind the scenes, few expect Mr Blair to solve the intractable problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – some predicted he would not last long in his new job.

In Gaza, radical groups shrugged off Mr Blair’s appointment as an irrelevance.

“Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. “He makes no independent decisions and is practising terrorism against Arabs. Such a person cannot be a representative for peace.”

Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project.
Hamas

Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batch said: “I don’t think Tony Blair will do anything good, he is only obeying the United States and its crimes.

“He appears to be an on-off button controlled from the White House. How can such a person be a peacemaker after being a warmonger? He is not welcome at all here.”

Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, described Mr Blair as a “loser”.

“He lost control of the leadership of his country,” Mujahed said. “He was a loser in Iraq. So the international community is trying to hide his total failure by exporting him and sending him to the Palestinian territories. We don’t expect any success or help at all from this man.”

Political commentators were equally hostile towards Mr Blair. Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz warned that though he may have brought peace to Northern Ireland, he faces a far tougher task in the Middle East.

“Here, among our foes, the appetite for death has long since turned in upon itself,” Horovitz said, “and breaking the addiction may be beyond the powers of even the most energetic and persuasive of spurned British Prime Ministers.”

Mr Blair is the latest in a series of high-powered political emissaries to be sent to the Middle East since the start of the Palestinian intifada uprising in September 2000, by a quartet comprised of the US, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

The list includes American Senator George Mitchell, former CIA director George Tennet, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn and US General Keith Dayton. All have failed – particularly Dayton, whose plan to buttress Fatah fighters in the Gaza Strip against a Hamas takeover collapsed two weeks ago.

Even moderate voices cast doubt on the wisdom of handing the job to Mr Blair.

An editorial in Al Bayan, the government paper of the United Arab Emirates, said: “Certainly the man is endowed with great experience and competence, but is he capable of assuming such a mission at this precise moment, he who goes all the way as a Bush man?”

Ordinary Palestinians dismissed Mr Blair as just another western interloper, out of touch with the reality of Middle East life.

“He came here so many times and we are still in the same situation, actually things are worse,” said shopkeeper Mohammed Abu Amin, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “He does not understand the Palestinians and he does not seem able to get Israel to change its policies.”

Despite the onslaught of criticism, there was one voice prepared to speak up for Mr Blair. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice hailed his record “at the forefront of international efforts to promote peace and reconciliation around the world, from Northern Ireland to the Balkans and beyond”.

But Mr Blair’s highly restricted mandate is limited to building Palestinian institutions and critics claim it will allow little scope for his skill at peacemaking. Leaving him only to become a high-powered fund-raiser for the Palestinians who have received more international aid per head, in the past 15 years, than any other nation on earth.