By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY
24 December 2000
Christmas may not have been officially called off in the town where the Bible says Jesus was born. But the bright flame of peace that lit the region last January now flickers amid the renewed ravages of war.
The new Palestinian intifada (uprising) exploded Sept. 29 after Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Noble Sanctuary, known as the Temple Mount to Jews. Control over the site, holy to both Muslims and Jews, and of much of Jerusalem's Old City is one of the key issues that brought the U.S.-brokered peace process to a standstill after months of unprecedented progress.
Since that visit, Israeli-Palestinian battles have raged on the borders of Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza. The conflict wore on this week, despite the resumption of low-level talks in an apparent attempt to make the most of the interest and engagement of the outgoing U.S. administration.
For the Arab Christians of Bethlehem, the collapse of the negotiations and the ensuing unrest have precipitated an economic disaster because tourists can't, or won't, come here. The mayor says local businesses are denied vital foreign dollars, further crippling the economy. ''Israel is not allowing tourists to enter Bethlehem, unfortunately,'' Nasser says. ''The economic situation in the city is very bad and is deteriorating. The hotels are empty. The restaurants have no clients. Our workers are denied the right to go outside and earn a living.''
Israel claims that despite the ban on Palestinians leaving Bethlehem, tourists can still enter. The problem is that gun battles at Rachel's Tomb, an enlarged Jewish shrine dedicated to the wife of Jacob
at the main entrance to Bethlehem, causes Israeli troops to blocked the road. A Palestinian man carrying carton of eggs stopped by israeli troops (photo by Nasser Shiyoukhi/AP)
''Bethlehem is open at all times to any foreign citizen,'' Israeli army spokesman Maj. Yarden Vatikai says. ''When there are serious gun battles and the road is dangerous, the army closes it even to tourists. Our intention is to allow free access to all holy sites while not endangering the safety of our visitors.''
The Israeli army also has been denying Palestinians entry into Israel. Because at least 200,000 Palestinians earn their living as day laborers in Israel, many Palestinian households -- both here and elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza -- have no income.
George Mascoby, a guide who works with Near East Tours in Jerusalem, says he has continued to lead tours into Bethlehem since the clashes started. But he says that there are few tourists to take. ''We are in constant touch with our friends in Bethlehem and other places to make sure we are warned in advance of any problems,'' he says. ''If the road is closed, we go somewhere else. The problem is that there are no tourists.''
Vacant rooms, empty streets:
More than $200 million had been invested to prepare for Bethlehem 2000. Half came from the private sector. With the millennium declared a Holy Year for Christians, a grand project was set in motion to rehabilitate the infrastructure to accommodate a record number of foreign visitors. The mayor says 1 million tourists came to Bethlehem in 1999. Until September, it looked as if the number would exceed the year's target of 1.7 million.
The Jacir Palace Inter-Continental Hotel was opened in May in a spectacular renovated merchant's palace built by Suleiman Jacir in 1910. But last week, the hotel's fabulous arched courtyard, whispering fountains and gilded lounges were vacant. The hotel is a few yards from the Rachel's Tomb flash point. Even though its doors remain open, there isn't a single guest in the 250 rooms, even at the knockdown price of $140 a night. The grand opening was canceled and hasn't been rescheduled.
Younis Arar, 29, is the hotel's banquets manager. A Muslim from nearby Hebron, he slips through the Israeli blockade each day and says he supports the uprising, even though it is crippling business. ''We are fighting the occupation, but we are fighting for peace,'' he says. ''What alternative do we have?''
Munib Younan, the Lutheran bishop of Jerusalem, says religious leaders must speak out and remind politicians that most people want peace above all else. ''We have to tell our politicians that our grass roots are fed up of injustice, fed up with bloodshed, fed up with fighting, fed up with these prejudices, fed up with retaliation,'' he says.
Bethlehem's mayor insists that despite the conflict, which has reached past Bethlehem's threshold, plans for Christmas will proceed. ''We will have our traditional religious processions, as usual,'' Nasser says. ''We will have a Christmas tree in the square. We will have choirs singing. . . . But what's missing is the smile on the faces of the children.''
Inside the Church of the Nativity, where visitors usually wait in line at least half an hour to descend into the tiny grotto where Jesus is said to have been born 2,000 years ago, there are few visitors and no foreigners at all on this day.
Teacher Suad Khair shepherds a class of 7-year-olds from the Greek Catholic school in the nearby town of Beit Sahour, scene of heavy gun battles between Palestinian militia and Israeli soldiers guarding a nearby army base. ''The children are so sad, so afraid,'' she says. ''Every day we wake up not even knowing whether we will finish the school day or whether the fighting will start again.''
In Beit Sahour, traditional site of the Shepherd's Field where news of Jesus' birth was first heard, Majdel Atrash surveys the ragged hole where an Israeli missile smashed into the wall of his children's bedroom a couple of weeks ago. Still nursing the cuts on his arm caused by flying shrapnel, he says it is a miracle no one was more seriously hurt.
''We will still have Christmas, for the children,'' he says, ''But this year, we will have new decorations to hang on our tree.'' With a grim smile, he deposits the contents of a bag on the coffee table: shrapnel and twisted metal, the remains of the bullets and shells dug out of his walls and furniture.
Outside, the children are playing in the garden. One boy, holding a wooden rifle, crouches behind an old stove. The other children throw stones at him until he surrenders. Then they attack and capture him. They call the game intifada -- just like the Israeli-Palestinian battles they see on TV.
Sana' Abu Amsha, 35, a mother of three and English teacher at the Latin School in Beit Jala, on the other side of Bethlehem, is close to tears. She says her children have nightmares and wet their beds because of the nightly gun battles.
''I'm afraid to even let my daughters take part in the marches, in case there is an attack,'' she says. ''Instead of going out and watching the events or visiting friends, I think this Christmas, we will just stay at home and hope that nothing happens.''
On top of the fear, there is anger. The residents of Beit Jala had hoped that the Israeli troop withdrawal from Bethlehem in 1995 -- part of the peace negotiations that aimed to give the Palestinians sovereignty over their land -- would lead to peace and independence. Instead, negotiations dragged on, and now there is war.
Spiritual leaders are urging the Palestinians and Israelis to return to negotiations. The alternative, they say, is unthinkable: a bloodbath in the Holy Land. ''We don't want to see'' Israeli helicopters ''in the heavens,'' Bishop Younan says. ''We want to see the real star of Christmas that is telling the Palestinians we will have our own liberation, we will have our peace, we will have our legitimate rights, and telling the Israelis they will have their security also. When this star is shining in Bethlehem, then it will be full of joy.
Sunday, 24 December 2000
Monday, 18 December 2000
War drives tourists from Bethlehem
19 December 2000
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Bethlehem's mayor, Hanna Nasser, looks out over Manger Square from his office window and sighs. The square, with the Church of the Nativity on the far side, should have been the centerpiece of millennium Christmas celebrations. But the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims expected here for the Holy Year events never arrived. In fact, the whole city — with its brand new hotels, rejuvenated square and church and overflowing gift shops — is almost deserted. Nasser dismisses as ''ridiculous'' reports that Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem this year. But he concedes that tourism is almost nonexistent and the celebrations will have a more somber tone after three months of violence in which more than 270 Palestinians — 19 of them from the Bethlehem area — have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
Christmas may not have been officially called off in the town where the Bible says Jesus was born. But the bright flame of peace that lit the region last January now flickers amid the renewed ravages of war.
The new Palestinian intifada (uprising) exploded Sept. 29, after Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Noble Sanctuary, known as the Temple Mount to Jews. Control over the site, holy to both Muslims and Jews, and of much of Jerusalem's Old City is one of the key issues that brought the U.S.-brokered peace process to a standstill after months of unprecedented progress.
Since that fateful visit, Israeli-Palestinian battles have raged on the borders of Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza. The conflict wore on this week, despite the resumption of low-level talks in an apparent attempt to make the most of the interest and engagement of the outgoing U.S. administration.
Blockade cripples business
For the Arab Christians of Bethlehem, the collapse of the negotiations and the ensuing unrest have precipitated an economic disaster because tourists can't — or won't — come here.
The mayor says local businesses are denied vital foreign dollars, crippling the already weakened economy.
''Israel is not allowing tourists to enter into Bethlehem, unfortunately,'' Nasser says. ''They come to the military checkpoint and they are not allowed to enter the city - it's very bad. Israel has always said that access to all the holy places is guaranteed, but it's not the case.'' He adds: ''The economic situation in the city is very bad and it is deteriorating. The hotels are empty. The restaurants don't work. Our workers are denied the right to go outside and earn a living.''
Israel says it's not to blame. Despite the ban on Palestinians leaving Bethlehem, tourists can still enter, Israeli spokesmen say. The problem is that some of the most ferocious gun battles have been at Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish shrine dedicated to the wife of Jacob at the main entrance to Bethlehem, which is guarded by Israeli troops.
''Bethlehem is open at all times to any foreign citizen,'' Israeli army spokesman Maj. Yarden Vatikai says. ''When there are serious gun battles and the road is dangerous, the army closes it even to tourists. Our intention is to allow free access to all holy sites while not endangering the safety of our visitors.'' The blockade around Bethlehem and other Palestinian areas works both ways. The Israeli army also has been denying Palestinians entry into Israel. Because at least 200,000 Palestinians earn their living as day laborers in Israel, many Palestinian households — both here and elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza - have no income.
George Mascoby, a guide who works with Near East Tours in Jerusalem, says he has continued to lead tours into Bethlehem since the clashes started. But he concedes there are few tourists to take.
''We are in constant touch with our friends in Bethlehem and other places to make sure we are warned in advance of any problems,'' he says. ''If the road is closed, we go somewhere else. The problem is that there are no tourists.''
Joseph Ross, a Philadelphia pastor who has led Christian pilgrims to Israel for decades, had been scheduled to bring a group at the start of December, but 22 canceled.
More than $200 million had been invested — half from the private sector — to prepare for Bethlehem 2000. With the millennium declared a Holy Year for Christians, a grand project was set in motion to rehabilitate the infrastructure to accommodate a record number of foreign visitors. The mayor says 1 million tourists came to Bethlehem in 1999. Until September, it looked as if the number would exceed the year's target of 1.7 million.
The Jacir Palace Inter-Continental Hotel was opened in May in a spectacular renovated merchant's palace built by Suleiman Jacir in 1910.
But last week, the hotel's fabulous arched courtyard, whispering fountains and gilded lounges were vacant. The hotel is a few yards from the Rachel's Tomb flash point. Even though its doors remain open, there isn't a single guest in the 250 rooms — even at the knockdown price of $140 a night. The grand opening was canceled and hasn't been rescheduled.
Younis Arar, 29, is the hotel's banquets manager. A Muslim from nearby Hebron, he slips through the Israeli blockade each day and says he supports the uprising, even though it is crippling business. ''We are fighting the occupation, but we are fighting for peace,'' he says. ''What alternative do we have?''
Munib Younan, the Lutheran bishop of Jerusalem, says that religious leaders must speak out and remind the politicians that most people want peace above all else.
''We have to tell our politicians that our grass roots are fed up of injustice, fed up with bloodshed, fed up with fighting, fed up with these prejudices, fed up with retaliation,'' he says.
Bethlehem's mayor has been trying to maintain the spirits of the season. Nasser insists that despite the conflict, which has reached past Bethlehem's threshold, plans for Christmas will proceed.
''We will have our traditional religious processions as usual,'' the mayor says. ''We will have a Christmas tree in the square. We will have choirs singing. We will have the Boy Scouts celebrating. But what's missing is the smile on the faces of the children.''
Inside the Church of the Nativity, where visitors usually wait in line at least half an hour to descend into the tiny grotto where Jesus is said to have been born 2,000 years ago, there are few visitors and no foreigners at all on this day.
Teacher Suad Khair shepherds a class of 7-year-olds from the Greek Catholic school in the nearby town of Beit Sahour, scene of heavy gun battles between Palestinian militia and Israeli soldiers guarding a nearby army base. ''The children are so sad, so afraid,'' she says. ''Every day we wake up not even knowing whether we will finish the school day, or whether the fighting will start again.''
In Beit Sahour, traditional site of the Shepherd's Field where news of Jesus' birth was first heard, Majdel Atrash surveys his shattered windows and the ragged hole where an Israeli missile smashed into the wall of his children's bedroom a couple of weeks ago. Still nursing the cuts on his arm caused by flying shrapnel, he says it is a miracle no one was more seriously hurt.
''We will still have Christmas, for the children,'' he says, ''But this year, we will have new decorations to hang on our tree.'' With a grim smile, he deposits the contents of a bag on the coffee table: shrapnel and twisted metal, the remains of the bullets and shells dug out of his walls and furniture.
Outside, the children are playing in the garden. One boy, holding a wooden rifle, crouches behind an old stove. The other children throw stones at him until he surrenders. Then they attack and capture him. They call the game intifada - just like the battles they see on TV.
On the other side of Bethlehem, in the middle-class town of Beit Jala, Father Yacoub of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas is collecting his own pieces of shrapnel. Palestinian gunmen from nearby refugee camps have been coming into Beit Jala almost every night for the past two months and firing at the nearby Jerusalem suburb of Gilo. Israeli forces have responded with machine-guns, tank shells and laser-guided missiles fired from Cobra helicopters.
Early this month, the gunmen managed to draw Israeli fire toward the church — even though Israeli army officials declared they were avoiding this obvious attempt to draw the region's Christians into the conflict. The damage was small: a shattered window, a damaged light and a bullet-hole in the patriarch's chair. But the psychological impact is incalculable.
The 75-year-old church stands over a fourth-century shrine built to commemorate St. Nicholas, the saint also known as Santa Claus. St. Nicholas lived in the cave beneath the site for two years. But not even the thought of reindeer and sleigh bells will be enough to lift the spirit of Beit Jala this Christmas.
''We will have prayer services, but no other celebrations,'' Father Yacoub says.
Fear and anger
Sana' Abu Amsha, 35, a mother of three and English teacher at the nearby Latin School, is close to tears. ''My daughters are 10 and 8 years old and we have been discussing whether we should decorate the Christmas tree,'' she says. ''They want me to, but I can't. To decorate the tree, it means that inside you must have peace, you must feel happy, but we are not.''
She says her children are having nightmares and wetting their beds because of the nightly gun battles.
''I'm afraid to even let my daughters take part in the marches, in case there is an attack,'' she says. ''Instead of going out and watching the events or visiting friends, I think this Christmas, we will just stay at home and hope that nothing happens.''
On top of the fear, there is anger. The residents of Beit Jala had hoped that the Israeli troop withdrawal from Bethlehem in 1995 — part of the peace negotiations that aimed to give the Palestinians sovereignty over their land — would lead to peace and independence. Instead, negotiations dragged on, and now there is war.
Both sides blamed
Blame is cast in both directions. The Israelis are criticized for Sharon's visit to the Noble Sanctuary in September. And the Israeli army is feared and distrusted for feeding the nationalistic frenzy by responding to rock-throwing throngs with heavy weaponry.
But the local Christian community also has issues with the Palestinian Authority - the quasi-governmental body established under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Thousands of Christians have left the Bethlehem area and gone abroad because of what they regard as an anti-Christian bias in the Palestinian Authority. And now they blame Arafat for failing to stop the violence.
''Why did the gunmen have to come up here and shoot?'' asks one Beit Jala resident as he inspects the damage to the church of St. Nicholas. ''Arafat doesn't care if all the Christians get killed.''
There are similar misgivings in Beit Sahour, where residents say masked gunmen hid in their gardens to shoot at the nearby Israeli army base.
''We're scared of them, simple as that,'' says a local man, who speaks on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisals. ''We'd like them to go away, but they have guns and they are officers from the Palestinian Authority security forces. We're not in a position to argue.''
Spiritual leaders are urging the Palestinians and Israelis to return to negotiations. The alternative, they say, is unthinkable: a bloodbath in the Holy Land.
''We don't want to see the Cobra and Apache in the heavens,'' Bishop Younan says. ''We want to see the real star of Christmas that is telling the Palestinians we will have our own liberation, we will have our peace, we will have our legitimate rights, and telling the Israelis they will have their security also. When this star is shining in Bethlehem, then it will be full of joy.''
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Bethlehem's mayor, Hanna Nasser, looks out over Manger Square from his office window and sighs. The square, with the Church of the Nativity on the far side, should have been the centerpiece of millennium Christmas celebrations. But the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims expected here for the Holy Year events never arrived. In fact, the whole city — with its brand new hotels, rejuvenated square and church and overflowing gift shops — is almost deserted. Nasser dismisses as ''ridiculous'' reports that Christmas is canceled in Bethlehem this year. But he concedes that tourism is almost nonexistent and the celebrations will have a more somber tone after three months of violence in which more than 270 Palestinians — 19 of them from the Bethlehem area — have been killed in clashes with Israeli troops.
Christmas may not have been officially called off in the town where the Bible says Jesus was born. But the bright flame of peace that lit the region last January now flickers amid the renewed ravages of war.
The new Palestinian intifada (uprising) exploded Sept. 29, after Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visited the Noble Sanctuary, known as the Temple Mount to Jews. Control over the site, holy to both Muslims and Jews, and of much of Jerusalem's Old City is one of the key issues that brought the U.S.-brokered peace process to a standstill after months of unprecedented progress.
Since that fateful visit, Israeli-Palestinian battles have raged on the borders of Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and Gaza. The conflict wore on this week, despite the resumption of low-level talks in an apparent attempt to make the most of the interest and engagement of the outgoing U.S. administration.
Blockade cripples business
For the Arab Christians of Bethlehem, the collapse of the negotiations and the ensuing unrest have precipitated an economic disaster because tourists can't — or won't — come here.
The mayor says local businesses are denied vital foreign dollars, crippling the already weakened economy.
''Israel is not allowing tourists to enter into Bethlehem, unfortunately,'' Nasser says. ''They come to the military checkpoint and they are not allowed to enter the city - it's very bad. Israel has always said that access to all the holy places is guaranteed, but it's not the case.'' He adds: ''The economic situation in the city is very bad and it is deteriorating. The hotels are empty. The restaurants don't work. Our workers are denied the right to go outside and earn a living.''
Israel says it's not to blame. Despite the ban on Palestinians leaving Bethlehem, tourists can still enter, Israeli spokesmen say. The problem is that some of the most ferocious gun battles have been at Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish shrine dedicated to the wife of Jacob at the main entrance to Bethlehem, which is guarded by Israeli troops.
''Bethlehem is open at all times to any foreign citizen,'' Israeli army spokesman Maj. Yarden Vatikai says. ''When there are serious gun battles and the road is dangerous, the army closes it even to tourists. Our intention is to allow free access to all holy sites while not endangering the safety of our visitors.'' The blockade around Bethlehem and other Palestinian areas works both ways. The Israeli army also has been denying Palestinians entry into Israel. Because at least 200,000 Palestinians earn their living as day laborers in Israel, many Palestinian households — both here and elsewhere in the West Bank and Gaza - have no income.
George Mascoby, a guide who works with Near East Tours in Jerusalem, says he has continued to lead tours into Bethlehem since the clashes started. But he concedes there are few tourists to take.
''We are in constant touch with our friends in Bethlehem and other places to make sure we are warned in advance of any problems,'' he says. ''If the road is closed, we go somewhere else. The problem is that there are no tourists.''
Joseph Ross, a Philadelphia pastor who has led Christian pilgrims to Israel for decades, had been scheduled to bring a group at the start of December, but 22 canceled.
More than $200 million had been invested — half from the private sector — to prepare for Bethlehem 2000. With the millennium declared a Holy Year for Christians, a grand project was set in motion to rehabilitate the infrastructure to accommodate a record number of foreign visitors. The mayor says 1 million tourists came to Bethlehem in 1999. Until September, it looked as if the number would exceed the year's target of 1.7 million.
The Jacir Palace Inter-Continental Hotel was opened in May in a spectacular renovated merchant's palace built by Suleiman Jacir in 1910.
But last week, the hotel's fabulous arched courtyard, whispering fountains and gilded lounges were vacant. The hotel is a few yards from the Rachel's Tomb flash point. Even though its doors remain open, there isn't a single guest in the 250 rooms — even at the knockdown price of $140 a night. The grand opening was canceled and hasn't been rescheduled.
Younis Arar, 29, is the hotel's banquets manager. A Muslim from nearby Hebron, he slips through the Israeli blockade each day and says he supports the uprising, even though it is crippling business. ''We are fighting the occupation, but we are fighting for peace,'' he says. ''What alternative do we have?''
Munib Younan, the Lutheran bishop of Jerusalem, says that religious leaders must speak out and remind the politicians that most people want peace above all else.
''We have to tell our politicians that our grass roots are fed up of injustice, fed up with bloodshed, fed up with fighting, fed up with these prejudices, fed up with retaliation,'' he says.
Bethlehem's mayor has been trying to maintain the spirits of the season. Nasser insists that despite the conflict, which has reached past Bethlehem's threshold, plans for Christmas will proceed.
''We will have our traditional religious processions as usual,'' the mayor says. ''We will have a Christmas tree in the square. We will have choirs singing. We will have the Boy Scouts celebrating. But what's missing is the smile on the faces of the children.''
Inside the Church of the Nativity, where visitors usually wait in line at least half an hour to descend into the tiny grotto where Jesus is said to have been born 2,000 years ago, there are few visitors and no foreigners at all on this day.
Teacher Suad Khair shepherds a class of 7-year-olds from the Greek Catholic school in the nearby town of Beit Sahour, scene of heavy gun battles between Palestinian militia and Israeli soldiers guarding a nearby army base. ''The children are so sad, so afraid,'' she says. ''Every day we wake up not even knowing whether we will finish the school day, or whether the fighting will start again.''
In Beit Sahour, traditional site of the Shepherd's Field where news of Jesus' birth was first heard, Majdel Atrash surveys his shattered windows and the ragged hole where an Israeli missile smashed into the wall of his children's bedroom a couple of weeks ago. Still nursing the cuts on his arm caused by flying shrapnel, he says it is a miracle no one was more seriously hurt.
''We will still have Christmas, for the children,'' he says, ''But this year, we will have new decorations to hang on our tree.'' With a grim smile, he deposits the contents of a bag on the coffee table: shrapnel and twisted metal, the remains of the bullets and shells dug out of his walls and furniture.
Outside, the children are playing in the garden. One boy, holding a wooden rifle, crouches behind an old stove. The other children throw stones at him until he surrenders. Then they attack and capture him. They call the game intifada - just like the battles they see on TV.
On the other side of Bethlehem, in the middle-class town of Beit Jala, Father Yacoub of the Greek Orthodox Church of St. Nicholas is collecting his own pieces of shrapnel. Palestinian gunmen from nearby refugee camps have been coming into Beit Jala almost every night for the past two months and firing at the nearby Jerusalem suburb of Gilo. Israeli forces have responded with machine-guns, tank shells and laser-guided missiles fired from Cobra helicopters.
Early this month, the gunmen managed to draw Israeli fire toward the church — even though Israeli army officials declared they were avoiding this obvious attempt to draw the region's Christians into the conflict. The damage was small: a shattered window, a damaged light and a bullet-hole in the patriarch's chair. But the psychological impact is incalculable.
The 75-year-old church stands over a fourth-century shrine built to commemorate St. Nicholas, the saint also known as Santa Claus. St. Nicholas lived in the cave beneath the site for two years. But not even the thought of reindeer and sleigh bells will be enough to lift the spirit of Beit Jala this Christmas.
''We will have prayer services, but no other celebrations,'' Father Yacoub says.
Fear and anger
Sana' Abu Amsha, 35, a mother of three and English teacher at the nearby Latin School, is close to tears. ''My daughters are 10 and 8 years old and we have been discussing whether we should decorate the Christmas tree,'' she says. ''They want me to, but I can't. To decorate the tree, it means that inside you must have peace, you must feel happy, but we are not.''
She says her children are having nightmares and wetting their beds because of the nightly gun battles.
''I'm afraid to even let my daughters take part in the marches, in case there is an attack,'' she says. ''Instead of going out and watching the events or visiting friends, I think this Christmas, we will just stay at home and hope that nothing happens.''
On top of the fear, there is anger. The residents of Beit Jala had hoped that the Israeli troop withdrawal from Bethlehem in 1995 — part of the peace negotiations that aimed to give the Palestinians sovereignty over their land — would lead to peace and independence. Instead, negotiations dragged on, and now there is war.
Both sides blamed
Blame is cast in both directions. The Israelis are criticized for Sharon's visit to the Noble Sanctuary in September. And the Israeli army is feared and distrusted for feeding the nationalistic frenzy by responding to rock-throwing throngs with heavy weaponry.
But the local Christian community also has issues with the Palestinian Authority - the quasi-governmental body established under the leadership of Yasser Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization. Thousands of Christians have left the Bethlehem area and gone abroad because of what they regard as an anti-Christian bias in the Palestinian Authority. And now they blame Arafat for failing to stop the violence.
''Why did the gunmen have to come up here and shoot?'' asks one Beit Jala resident as he inspects the damage to the church of St. Nicholas. ''Arafat doesn't care if all the Christians get killed.''
There are similar misgivings in Beit Sahour, where residents say masked gunmen hid in their gardens to shoot at the nearby Israeli army base.
''We're scared of them, simple as that,'' says a local man, who speaks on condition of anonymity because he fears reprisals. ''We'd like them to go away, but they have guns and they are officers from the Palestinian Authority security forces. We're not in a position to argue.''
Spiritual leaders are urging the Palestinians and Israelis to return to negotiations. The alternative, they say, is unthinkable: a bloodbath in the Holy Land.
''We don't want to see the Cobra and Apache in the heavens,'' Bishop Younan says. ''We want to see the real star of Christmas that is telling the Palestinians we will have our own liberation, we will have our peace, we will have our legitimate rights, and telling the Israelis they will have their security also. When this star is shining in Bethlehem, then it will be full of joy.''
Monday, 11 December 2000
Parents protest risk to children
Palestinian leaders, militia come under fire as recent clashes take dozens of young lives
GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, December 11, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
TULKARM, WEST BANK -- Some Palestinian parents are starting to speak out against their leaders, saying children are being encouraged to risk their lives in clashes with Israeli troops.
After more than two months under the control of armed gunmen loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, residents of the West Bank town of Tulkarm have, in an unprecedented step, demanded that local militia stop sending their children to take part in gun battles. Six Tulkarm youths have been killed in more than two months of clashes.
"We don't want to send our sons to the front line, but they are being taken by the Palestinian Authority," Aisheh, a 43-year-old mother of six, said in an interview. She said she decided to speak out after her 17-year-old son was hit in the head by a rubber bullet last week, but asked that her full name not be published for fear of reprisals.
Israel has come under international criticism for the deaths of at least 38 Palestinian children under the age 17 in the upsurge of violence that began Sept. 28 and has claimed more than 300 lives, most of them Palestinian. Nearly 1,000 Palestinian children have been injured.
Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to Mr. Arafat, condemned Israeli troops for "cold-blooded killing" and angrily denied Israeli accusations that the Palestinian Authority has sent children to the front of demonstrations to act as a human shield for armed gunmen.
"We don't send children -- nobody can send children -- and we don't hide behind children," Mr. Abu Sharif said in an interview. "We have never used kids, we will never use kids. We love our children the same way other human beings love their children."
He said Palestinian police officers try to dissuade children from taking part in clashes.
But Aisheh, the mother, said the decision to put children on the front line is being carried out by officials from the Palestinian Authority security forces and the militia of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement.
"When school finishes, Palestinian Authority security cars go around collecting children from the streets and sending them to the killing fields," she said. "This is very serious because they are children and they are unarmed."
When the school day or Friday prayers are over, she said, children are taken to El-Khadouri at the western entrance to Tulkarm, where there are daily clashes with Israeli troops.
Her husband, Abdelghani, said parents had been stopped from speaking out. "No one here dares to say publicly that he is against sending his own children to the front line," he said.
"Some parents who have tried to protest have been condemned as fifth columnists and threatened. . . . Once the children are injured, it's the families who have to spend days and weeks at their bedside. From that point on, no one cares about them, except for their own family."
He added that the children of Palestinian officials were noticeably absent from the deadly demonstrations.
"Why don't our leaders send their own children to be killed? The answer is because most of their children have already been sent abroad to safety in Europe and the United States," Abdelghani said.
The couple are not alone in their complaints. The Tulkarm Women's Union sent a rare letter of protest to Mr. Arafat last week demanding he stop using children as cannon fodder.
"Our children are being sent into the streets to face heavily armed Israeli soldiers," the letter says. ". . . We urge you to issue instructions to your police force to stop sending innocent children to their death." The letter concludes, "We love our children and we want them to live."
Palestinian media have also been criticized for encouraging children to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at armed Israeli troops.
Palestinian television regularly broadcasts images of children carrying weapons and staging mock attacks on Israelis.
And the Palestinian media exalt those killed as martyrs for Allah, "emphasizing that dying a martyr's death was the realization of their hopes," noted Itamar Marcus, director of the Palestinian Media Watch monitoring group.
GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, December 11, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
TULKARM, WEST BANK -- Some Palestinian parents are starting to speak out against their leaders, saying children are being encouraged to risk their lives in clashes with Israeli troops.
After more than two months under the control of armed gunmen loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, residents of the West Bank town of Tulkarm have, in an unprecedented step, demanded that local militia stop sending their children to take part in gun battles. Six Tulkarm youths have been killed in more than two months of clashes.
"We don't want to send our sons to the front line, but they are being taken by the Palestinian Authority," Aisheh, a 43-year-old mother of six, said in an interview. She said she decided to speak out after her 17-year-old son was hit in the head by a rubber bullet last week, but asked that her full name not be published for fear of reprisals.
Israel has come under international criticism for the deaths of at least 38 Palestinian children under the age 17 in the upsurge of violence that began Sept. 28 and has claimed more than 300 lives, most of them Palestinian. Nearly 1,000 Palestinian children have been injured.
Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to Mr. Arafat, condemned Israeli troops for "cold-blooded killing" and angrily denied Israeli accusations that the Palestinian Authority has sent children to the front of demonstrations to act as a human shield for armed gunmen.
"We don't send children -- nobody can send children -- and we don't hide behind children," Mr. Abu Sharif said in an interview. "We have never used kids, we will never use kids. We love our children the same way other human beings love their children."
He said Palestinian police officers try to dissuade children from taking part in clashes.
But Aisheh, the mother, said the decision to put children on the front line is being carried out by officials from the Palestinian Authority security forces and the militia of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement.
"When school finishes, Palestinian Authority security cars go around collecting children from the streets and sending them to the killing fields," she said. "This is very serious because they are children and they are unarmed."
When the school day or Friday prayers are over, she said, children are taken to El-Khadouri at the western entrance to Tulkarm, where there are daily clashes with Israeli troops.
Her husband, Abdelghani, said parents had been stopped from speaking out. "No one here dares to say publicly that he is against sending his own children to the front line," he said.
"Some parents who have tried to protest have been condemned as fifth columnists and threatened. . . . Once the children are injured, it's the families who have to spend days and weeks at their bedside. From that point on, no one cares about them, except for their own family."
He added that the children of Palestinian officials were noticeably absent from the deadly demonstrations.
"Why don't our leaders send their own children to be killed? The answer is because most of their children have already been sent abroad to safety in Europe and the United States," Abdelghani said.
The couple are not alone in their complaints. The Tulkarm Women's Union sent a rare letter of protest to Mr. Arafat last week demanding he stop using children as cannon fodder.
"Our children are being sent into the streets to face heavily armed Israeli soldiers," the letter says. ". . . We urge you to issue instructions to your police force to stop sending innocent children to their death." The letter concludes, "We love our children and we want them to live."
Palestinian media have also been criticized for encouraging children to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at armed Israeli troops.
Palestinian television regularly broadcasts images of children carrying weapons and staging mock attacks on Israelis.
And the Palestinian media exalt those killed as martyrs for Allah, "emphasizing that dying a martyr's death was the realization of their hopes," noted Itamar Marcus, director of the Palestinian Media Watch monitoring group.
Saturday, 9 December 2000
Ten die in Mideast clashes
GLOBE & MAIL
Saturday, December 9, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
HEBRON, WEST BANK -- One of the bloodiest days in more than two months of violence erupted yesterday, leaving seven Palestinians and three Israelis dead.
Israel blockaded all West Bank cities last night, after a "day of rage" in which some Palestinians daubed their anger in blood on walls inside Jerusalem's Old City.
"The entry and exit [of Palestinians] from Area A, with the exception of humanitarian cases, will be prohibited," an army statement said, referring to territory under Palestinian control in the West Bank.
The killings yesterday took the recent death toll to more than 300, including 36 Israeli soldiers and civilians. The violence occurred as Palestinian activists marked the Dec. 8, 1987, start of the six-year intifada (uprising) that ended only once the Oslo peace accords had been signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
"The uprising is a strategic choice of the Palestinian people, and it can't be stopped. There will be an escalation in the coming days," said Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank.
The battles took place after Palestinians poured out of mosques following Ramadan prayers. In the deadliest incident, four Palestinian policemen and a civilian were killed in the West Bank town of Jenin when an Israeli tank fired shells at a Palestinian police post. The army said the shells were fired at four suspicious figures whom soldiers spotted in the distance.
Outside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, scores of Palestinians threw rocks; Israeli police fired rubber-coated steel pellets, tear gas and stun grenades.
A Palestinian was killed and six injured. Several Israeli police officers were also hurt. The confrontation spilled over into the Via Dolorosa, the biblical path followed by Christ to his crucifixion.
A pool of blood was left after Samir Ammar Mashni, 16, was shot dead. Palestinian youths dipped their hands in his blood, held them aloft in a show of defiance and then made handprints on the stone walls lining the alley.
Earlier, Palestinians sprayed an Israeli van with gunfire, killing a schoolteacher and a driver, and wounding another passenger. The van was on a bypass road used by settlers travelling around the West Bank city of Hebron, near the entrance to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba.
Rina Didovsky, 39, who had six children, had been on her way to school in Kiryat Arba. The driver of the van, who was was critically wounded, died later. The gunmen fled into a nearby village controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
On a settler bypass road near the town of Jericho, Palestinians fired on an Israeli bus, killing one passenger and wounding another.
"The cowardly attack on civilians will not break our spirit and our determined struggle against violence and terrorism," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. "As we have proven in the past, heinous murderers will not escape without punishment."
The attacks were the latest in a series of deadly shootings and bombings against Israeli civilians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
Two weeks ago, two teachers were killed and several children seriously wounded when the bus they were taking to school was bombed in Gaza. Two sisters and a brother lost parts of their legs.
A soldier, who had been escorting a civilian car through the West Bank, underwent an emergency operation Thursday after he was shot in another drive-by attack. A woman and a civilian were wounded.
Leaders of the 190,000 Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip say such attacks have become daily events, but are noticed only when someone is killed.
Many are calling on the Israeli army to ban Palestinians from travelling in private cars in the area. Zvi Katsover, mayor of Kiryat Arba, called on the Israeli government to order soldiers to pursue attackers into Palestinian-controlled territory.
"It's a wonder that there aren't worse attacks," he told Israel Radio. "The attackers take no risks. No one deters them, no one stops them, no one catches them."
Many Palestinian leaders, including Mr. Arafat, have encouraged attacks against settlers, saying they are legitimate targets for the gunmen.
Saturday, December 9, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
HEBRON, WEST BANK -- One of the bloodiest days in more than two months of violence erupted yesterday, leaving seven Palestinians and three Israelis dead.
Israel blockaded all West Bank cities last night, after a "day of rage" in which some Palestinians daubed their anger in blood on walls inside Jerusalem's Old City.
"The entry and exit [of Palestinians] from Area A, with the exception of humanitarian cases, will be prohibited," an army statement said, referring to territory under Palestinian control in the West Bank.
The killings yesterday took the recent death toll to more than 300, including 36 Israeli soldiers and civilians. The violence occurred as Palestinian activists marked the Dec. 8, 1987, start of the six-year intifada (uprising) that ended only once the Oslo peace accords had been signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.
"The uprising is a strategic choice of the Palestinian people, and it can't be stopped. There will be an escalation in the coming days," said Marwan Barghouti, head of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank.
The battles took place after Palestinians poured out of mosques following Ramadan prayers. In the deadliest incident, four Palestinian policemen and a civilian were killed in the West Bank town of Jenin when an Israeli tank fired shells at a Palestinian police post. The army said the shells were fired at four suspicious figures whom soldiers spotted in the distance.
Outside the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem, scores of Palestinians threw rocks; Israeli police fired rubber-coated steel pellets, tear gas and stun grenades.
A Palestinian was killed and six injured. Several Israeli police officers were also hurt. The confrontation spilled over into the Via Dolorosa, the biblical path followed by Christ to his crucifixion.
A pool of blood was left after Samir Ammar Mashni, 16, was shot dead. Palestinian youths dipped their hands in his blood, held them aloft in a show of defiance and then made handprints on the stone walls lining the alley.
Earlier, Palestinians sprayed an Israeli van with gunfire, killing a schoolteacher and a driver, and wounding another passenger. The van was on a bypass road used by settlers travelling around the West Bank city of Hebron, near the entrance to the Israeli settlement of Kiryat Arba.
Rina Didovsky, 39, who had six children, had been on her way to school in Kiryat Arba. The driver of the van, who was was critically wounded, died later. The gunmen fled into a nearby village controlled by the Palestinian Authority.
On a settler bypass road near the town of Jericho, Palestinians fired on an Israeli bus, killing one passenger and wounding another.
"The cowardly attack on civilians will not break our spirit and our determined struggle against violence and terrorism," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. "As we have proven in the past, heinous murderers will not escape without punishment."
The attacks were the latest in a series of deadly shootings and bombings against Israeli civilians living in the West Bank and Gaza.
Two weeks ago, two teachers were killed and several children seriously wounded when the bus they were taking to school was bombed in Gaza. Two sisters and a brother lost parts of their legs.
A soldier, who had been escorting a civilian car through the West Bank, underwent an emergency operation Thursday after he was shot in another drive-by attack. A woman and a civilian were wounded.
Leaders of the 190,000 Israelis living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip say such attacks have become daily events, but are noticed only when someone is killed.
Many are calling on the Israeli army to ban Palestinians from travelling in private cars in the area. Zvi Katsover, mayor of Kiryat Arba, called on the Israeli government to order soldiers to pursue attackers into Palestinian-controlled territory.
"It's a wonder that there aren't worse attacks," he told Israel Radio. "The attackers take no risks. No one deters them, no one stops them, no one catches them."
Many Palestinian leaders, including Mr. Arafat, have encouraged attacks against settlers, saying they are legitimate targets for the gunmen.
Friday, 8 December 2000
Let our kids alone, Arafat told
Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY December 8 2000 Page 16A
TULKARM, WEST BANK -- In a rare letter of protest sent this week to
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a Palestinian women's group demanded that
the Palestinian Authority stop using children as cannon fodder.
''Our children are being sent into the streets to face heavily armed Israeli
soldiers,'' said the letter from the Tulkarm Women's Union -- a local branch
of the Palestinian Women's Union, a trade-union group that promotes the
status of women in the Palestinian Authority.
''The Palestinian Authority must put an end to this phenomenon. We urge you
to issue instructions to your police force to stop sending innocent children
to their death.''
The letter adds weight to complaints from parents who are beginning to speak
out despite what they say has been two months of intimidation by armed
gunmen loyal to Arafat.
''We don't want to send our sons to the front line, but they are being taken
by the Palestinian Authority,'' says Aisheh, 43, a mother of six in the West
Bank city of Tulkarm. She says she decided to speak out after her
17-year-old son was hit in the head by a rubber bullet last week. He
suffered a concussion.
Like other protesting parents, Aisheh declines to allow her full name to be
published for fear of reprisals. A nurse from Gaza who spoke out on
Palestinian TV against sending children to the flash points was condemned in
the Palestinian media as a traitor. Other individuals who refuse to allow
their names to be published say they have been threatened by armed Fatah
officials for discouraging their children from participating in the clashes.
Israel has faced international criticism for the deaths of at least 38
children under the age of 17 in more than two months of conflict in which
nearly 300 people have died. Nearly 1,000 children have been injured. The
Palestinians consider anyone under the age of 17 a child. But children just
entering their teens -- and some even younger -- have been injured in the
region's worst violence in nearly a decade.
Despite their parents' objections, many Palestinian children appear eager to
fight the Israelis and even become martyrs for the Palestinian cause: an
independent state.
An Israeli human rights group this week charged that Israeli soldiers
routinely open fire on unarmed Palestinian demonstrators. But the group,
B'Tselem -- created in 1989, according to its Web site, to ''change Israeli
policy'' to protect Palestinians -- also said the Palestinian leadership was
making little effort to keep children and gunmen away from potentially
violent confrontations.
Bassam Abu Sharif, a special adviser to Arafat, has accused Israeli troops
of ''cold-blooded killing.'' He denies Israeli accusations that the
Palestinian Authority has placed children at the front of demonstrations to
act as human shields for armed gunmen.
''We don't send children -- nobody can send children -- and we don't hide
behind children,'' Abu Sharif says. ''The kids in the demonstrations were
there because they were out of school. We love our children the same way
other human beings love their children.''
Israeli army chiefs point out that not all the children killed in the recent
clashes have been innocent bystanders. They say their snipers have orders to
shoot anyone shooting or throwing Molotov cocktails at them, but some of the
attackers have been as young as 12.
The most famous casualty of the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict was
Mohammed Al-Dourra, a 12-year-old boy shot dead on the second day of
fighting as he took cover in his father's arms during a gun battle in the
Gaza Strip. His last moments were caught on camera by a French TV crew and
broadcast around the world.
Abu Sharif says Palestinian police are trying to dissuade children from
taking part in clashes with Israeli soldiers. He adds: ''These kids are on
the streets. For them, banners and demonstrations are a festival.''
But Aisheh says the militia of Arafat's Fatah movement and the Palestinian
security forces provide transportation and encouragement to children eager
to answer the call to combat Israel's continued presence on Arab land.
''When school finishes, Palestinian Authority security cars go around
collecting children from the streets and sending them to the killing
fields,'' she says. ''This is very serious because they are children and
they are unarmed.''
Palestinian Authority TV broadcasts constant images of children carrying
weapons and staging mock attacks on Israelis.
Over the summer, children as young as 12 were trained in the use of
Kalshnikov rifles and other weapons at special camps by Fatah officials.
Ramahan Sahadi Abed Rabbah, 13, was asked by the official Palestinian
Authority newspaper why he participated in clashes with soldiers. ''My
purpose is not to be wounded, but something more sublime -- martyrdom,'' he
replied.
''As the number of those killed rises, the Palestinian media extol and exalt
not only those killed, but also their willingness to die as martyrs for
Allah, emphasizing that dying a martyr's death was the realization of their
hopes,'' says Itamar Marcus, director of the Palestinian Media Watch
monitoring group.
Palestinian Authority TV and newspapers also have come under fire, accused
of encouraging children to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at armed
Israeli troops.
Aisheh's husband, Abdelghani, says intimidation has kept parents from
speaking out.
children to the front line,'' he says. ''Some parents who have tried to
protest have been condemned as fifth columnists (traitors) and threatened.''
Palestinian sentenced to death for spying
GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, December 8, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
NABLUS, WEST BANK -- A Palestinian labourer was sentenced to death yesterday after he was convicted of spying for Israel and aiding the assassination last week of a leader of the radical anti-Israeli organization Hamas.
The trial of Alan Bani Odeh, 25, in a Palestinian court yesterday lasted just 90 minutes. The three-judge panel concluded that he supplied a booby-trapped car to his cousin, Ibrahim Bani Odeh, 34, acknowledged by Hamas as a senior commander of its military wing, which has carried out numerous attacks on Israeli targets.
The prosecutor said the driver's seat of the car had been rigged with an explosive device by Israeli secret-service agents. The bomb was detonated as Ibrahim Bani Odeh was driving through Nablus.
As the verdict and sentence were read out, the crowd inside the court applauded and chanted "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great.)
The bearded defendant, surrounded by six police officers, admitted that he had been in contact with Israel's Shin Bet secret service, but denied any prior knowledge of his cousin's assassination.
Ibrahim Bani Odeh had been in a Palestinian jail for two years as part of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's crackdown on Hamas cells in the West Bank. He was released just days before his death, along with dozens of other Islamic extremists held by the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials say Alan Bani Odeh fled to Israel after the assassination but was arrested by agents of the Palestinian Preventive Security force and returned to Nablus.
Israeli officials have denied any connection to either man or to the assassination. They did not protest against the apparent abduction of the defendant from Israel, a breach of the Oslo peace accords.
Several other Palestinian radicals have died in similar circumstances recently. Hussein Abayat, commander of a Bethlehem militia belonging to Mr. Arafat's mainstream Fatah group, was killed last month when a laser-guided missile from an Israeli helicopter hit his car.
Alan Bani Odeh is the first Palestinian to be sentenced to death by a Palestinian court on charges of collaborating with Israel. However, several Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel have been killed or kidnapped in recent weeks by Palestinian police and activists.
Thirty-one Palestinians have been sentenced to death by Palestinian courts since the establishment of the Palestinian authority in 1994. Three have been executed.
Hamas welcomed the quick trial and death sentence yesterday. "This will deter other criminals from collaborating with the Zionist enemy," it said in a statement.
But Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, whose offer to defend Alan Bani Odeh was rebuffed, said: "This kangaroo court which tried and sentenced Mr. Bani Odeh to death in less than two hours reveals the true face of Palestinian justice. It is an unthinkable affront to the norms of international justice."
Ms. Darshan-Leitner is the lawyer who acted for Daniel Weiz, the Israeli soldier extradited to Canada in October and charged with the murder of Matti Baranovski.
Friday, December 8, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
NABLUS, WEST BANK -- A Palestinian labourer was sentenced to death yesterday after he was convicted of spying for Israel and aiding the assassination last week of a leader of the radical anti-Israeli organization Hamas.
The trial of Alan Bani Odeh, 25, in a Palestinian court yesterday lasted just 90 minutes. The three-judge panel concluded that he supplied a booby-trapped car to his cousin, Ibrahim Bani Odeh, 34, acknowledged by Hamas as a senior commander of its military wing, which has carried out numerous attacks on Israeli targets.
The prosecutor said the driver's seat of the car had been rigged with an explosive device by Israeli secret-service agents. The bomb was detonated as Ibrahim Bani Odeh was driving through Nablus.
As the verdict and sentence were read out, the crowd inside the court applauded and chanted "Allahu Akbar!" (God is great.)
The bearded defendant, surrounded by six police officers, admitted that he had been in contact with Israel's Shin Bet secret service, but denied any prior knowledge of his cousin's assassination.
Ibrahim Bani Odeh had been in a Palestinian jail for two years as part of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's crackdown on Hamas cells in the West Bank. He was released just days before his death, along with dozens of other Islamic extremists held by the Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian officials say Alan Bani Odeh fled to Israel after the assassination but was arrested by agents of the Palestinian Preventive Security force and returned to Nablus.
Israeli officials have denied any connection to either man or to the assassination. They did not protest against the apparent abduction of the defendant from Israel, a breach of the Oslo peace accords.
Several other Palestinian radicals have died in similar circumstances recently. Hussein Abayat, commander of a Bethlehem militia belonging to Mr. Arafat's mainstream Fatah group, was killed last month when a laser-guided missile from an Israeli helicopter hit his car.
Alan Bani Odeh is the first Palestinian to be sentenced to death by a Palestinian court on charges of collaborating with Israel. However, several Palestinians suspected of assisting Israel have been killed or kidnapped in recent weeks by Palestinian police and activists.
Thirty-one Palestinians have been sentenced to death by Palestinian courts since the establishment of the Palestinian authority in 1994. Three have been executed.
Hamas welcomed the quick trial and death sentence yesterday. "This will deter other criminals from collaborating with the Zionist enemy," it said in a statement.
But Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, whose offer to defend Alan Bani Odeh was rebuffed, said: "This kangaroo court which tried and sentenced Mr. Bani Odeh to death in less than two hours reveals the true face of Palestinian justice. It is an unthinkable affront to the norms of international justice."
Ms. Darshan-Leitner is the lawyer who acted for Daniel Weiz, the Israeli soldier extradited to Canada in October and charged with the murder of Matti Baranovski.
Wednesday, 22 November 2000
Egypt recalls envoy to protest Israeli attacks
Special to The Globe and Mail
JERUSALEM — Egypt recalled its ambassador to Tel Aviv yesterday to protest against the "severity and aggression" of Israeli attacks on Palestinians, a dramatic move that increases the prospect of a full-scale regional crisis in the Middle East.
"This step expresses the extreme displeasure of Egypt for what is going on in the occupied territories against the Palestinians," Foreign Minister Amr Moussa said in Cairo, announcing the recall of Ambassador Mohammed Bassiouny for "consultations" with President Hosni Mubarak. "We deplore the severity and the aggression, the use of force . . . against a civilian population, against Palestinians in their territories."
The move took both Israelis and Palestinians by surprise, and increased diplomatic tensions after two months of clashes in which more than 280 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed.
Israelis fear that the move is the first step toward a complete severing of ties and even, possibly, war. Palestinians welcomed the display of support.
"This is a fateful message to the Arab people, the United States and the international community that Israel must pay a price for its violence," said Palestinian cabinet minister Hassan Asfour.
Apparently stunned by the announcement, Israeli leaders did not respond for several hours. Foreign Ministry director-general Alon Liel said officials were attempting to persuade Mr. Mubarak to change his mind.
"I would not exaggerate the immediate consequences of such a step, but of course we regret it," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. "Egypt plays an important role in the peace process and this move will not help her to fulfill that role."
The move followed Israel's fiercest attack yet on Palestinian security and communications facilities, which left one person dead and more than 130 injured in Gaza on Monday night.
The missile attacks were launched after the bombing of a school bus carrying Israelis. Israel said the bombing was the work of Palestinian security forces, an assertion the Palestinians denied.
Yesterday, violence raged unabated in parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Four Palestinians were killed in clashes with Israeli troops and a fifth Palestinian died of wounds suffered in earlier fighting. An Israeli civilian died after he was shot by a Palestinian sniper near the scene of the bomb blast that killed two adults and wounded several children.
Egypt's recall of Mr. Bassiouny, the doyen of the diplomatic corps in Israel, is a low point in more than 20 years of often-tense diplomatic relations between Israel and its most populous Arab neighbour.
Egypt, the first Arab state to sign a peace treaty with Israel, has played a complex and important role as a mediator in the current crisis, and throughout the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
In recent weeks, Mr. Mubarak's refusal to break off relations with Israel or back an economic boycott of the Jewish state had sparked praise in Jerusalem and protests in the West Bank and Gaza.
"The Egyptian leadership has come under heavy pressure as a result of the expectations in the Arab world and in Egypt, as the leading Arab country, to cut off its ties with Israel," said Egyptian political analyst Nasser Abdel Rahman. "Monday's air attacks on Gaza were the straw which broke the camel's back and enabled Egypt to ignore U.S. pressure not to sever ties with Israel or recall its ambassador."
The last time Egypt recalled its envoy to Israel was in 1982, after the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps in Beirut by Lebanese Christian militia allied with Israel.
Then-ambassador Sa'ad Mortada was also called home "for consultations," but never returned. Four years later, after the two countries reached agreement on a border dispute, Mr. Bassiouny became ambassador.
He has played a key role in Israeli-Arab mediation ever since, and is a popular figure with Israeli leaders and the foreign diplomatic corps. Three years ago, he became embroiled in scandal when an Israeli belly dancer accused him of attempting to rape her, but Israel's top court ruled that his diplomatic immunity protected him from prosecution.
The only other Arab country with full diplomatic ties with Israel is Jordan. The Jordanian envoy to Tel Aviv ended his posting in the summer; King Abdullah has postponed naming a replacement while the violence continues.
At a meeting with U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen yesterday, King Abdullah asked Washington to help defend the Palestinian people against "Israeli aggression."
There have been pro-Palestinian demonstrations in both Egypt and Jordan; authorities are concerned that such displays could turn into antigovernment protests. The situation in Jordan, home to more than 1.5 million Palestinians, is particularly volatile.
Israel's diplomatic isolation from the Arab world is the worst it has been for years.
Israeli representative offices in Morocco, Qatar and Tunisia have also been closed in recent weeks because of the violence in the West Bank and Gaza.
Wednesday, 15 November 2000
Israel mourns Leah Rabin
Widow of assassinated prime minister to be buried among nation's heroes
GLOBE & MAIL
Wednesday, November 15, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM - As Leah Rabin is laid to rest today beside her husband, assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, many could be forgiven for wondering whether the Oslo peace process that he led and she championed is being buried with her.
Mrs. Rabin held no official position, but her status was such that her funeral in Jerusalem will be conducted with the trappings of a national event. Her body will lie in state in the Tel Aviv square where her husband was shot by a religious Jewish extremist five years ago.
The burial will take place on Mount Herzl, where Israel's national heroes are laid to rest. U.S. President Bill Clinton was visibly moved when he attended Mr. Rabin's funeral there along with other world leaders such as the late King Hussein of Jordan.
Just steps away from the Rabins' gravesite lie the remains of Theodore Herzl, the assimilated Jewish journalist who founded the Zionist movement in 19th-century Europe. His dream of a Jewish return to Zion was fulfilled, but it also became the Palestinian nightmare of displacement and exile.
The Oslo process, which was to have finally settled the century-old conflict, should have concluded this year. But just as Mrs. Rabin was being diagnosed with the skin cancer that ultimately killed her (she died on Sunday), the peace process was losing pace. As Mrs. Rabin entered hospital a few weeks ago, unable to fight the disease, Israelis and Palestinians lurched from peace talks to deadly confrontation.
Mrs. Rabin was one of the few notable Israelis who bridged the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians, even describing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "almost one of the family."
He returned the compliment when he paid an unprecedented condolence call to her Tel Aviv home in the days after her husband's murder, doffing his black-and-white keffiyeh and revealing for the first time in public his balding pate.
But Mr. Arafat is likely to be the most conspicuous absentee from today's funeral. Tentative suggestions that he might attend were originally welcomed by Israeli officials, but the mood soured after more violence erupted this week.
Yesterday should have been an auspicious day, when the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization was to meet and declare an independent Palestinian state following the successful conclusion of peace negotiations.
Instead, four more Palestinians died in continuing clashes in the West Bank and Gaza. One of them was a middle-aged man who lost control of his car when it was stoned by Israelis, near the site of an ambush Monday by Palestinian gunmen north of Nablus, who shot dead a female teacher and two soldiers.
Israeli security forces have clamped a tight cordon around Palestinian towns and cities, allowing only food, medical and other essential deliveries.
"The closure is one way to prevent violence, because the alternative is to go after the terrorists and to enter cities, which is something we do not want to do," said Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. "We want to stop any kind of escalation."
Other Israeli voices called for more punitive action against Palestinian gunmen. "The best way to deal with this reality is to track down these attackers and strike at them, and so reduce to a minimum the possibility that such acts will occur again," said Israeli chief of staff Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz.
But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak should stop using force against the Palestinians.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said yesterday it would be "premature" to declare a Palestinian state.
GLOBE & MAIL
Wednesday, November 15, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM - As Leah Rabin is laid to rest today beside her husband, assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, many could be forgiven for wondering whether the Oslo peace process that he led and she championed is being buried with her.
Mrs. Rabin held no official position, but her status was such that her funeral in Jerusalem will be conducted with the trappings of a national event. Her body will lie in state in the Tel Aviv square where her husband was shot by a religious Jewish extremist five years ago.
The burial will take place on Mount Herzl, where Israel's national heroes are laid to rest. U.S. President Bill Clinton was visibly moved when he attended Mr. Rabin's funeral there along with other world leaders such as the late King Hussein of Jordan.
Just steps away from the Rabins' gravesite lie the remains of Theodore Herzl, the assimilated Jewish journalist who founded the Zionist movement in 19th-century Europe. His dream of a Jewish return to Zion was fulfilled, but it also became the Palestinian nightmare of displacement and exile.
The Oslo process, which was to have finally settled the century-old conflict, should have concluded this year. But just as Mrs. Rabin was being diagnosed with the skin cancer that ultimately killed her (she died on Sunday), the peace process was losing pace. As Mrs. Rabin entered hospital a few weeks ago, unable to fight the disease, Israelis and Palestinians lurched from peace talks to deadly confrontation.
Mrs. Rabin was one of the few notable Israelis who bridged the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians, even describing Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as "almost one of the family."
He returned the compliment when he paid an unprecedented condolence call to her Tel Aviv home in the days after her husband's murder, doffing his black-and-white keffiyeh and revealing for the first time in public his balding pate.
But Mr. Arafat is likely to be the most conspicuous absentee from today's funeral. Tentative suggestions that he might attend were originally welcomed by Israeli officials, but the mood soured after more violence erupted this week.
Yesterday should have been an auspicious day, when the Central Council of the Palestine Liberation Organization was to meet and declare an independent Palestinian state following the successful conclusion of peace negotiations.
Instead, four more Palestinians died in continuing clashes in the West Bank and Gaza. One of them was a middle-aged man who lost control of his car when it was stoned by Israelis, near the site of an ambush Monday by Palestinian gunmen north of Nablus, who shot dead a female teacher and two soldiers.
Israeli security forces have clamped a tight cordon around Palestinian towns and cities, allowing only food, medical and other essential deliveries.
"The closure is one way to prevent violence, because the alternative is to go after the terrorists and to enter cities, which is something we do not want to do," said Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami. "We want to stop any kind of escalation."
Other Israeli voices called for more punitive action against Palestinian gunmen. "The best way to deal with this reality is to track down these attackers and strike at them, and so reduce to a minimum the possibility that such acts will occur again," said Israeli chief of staff Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz.
But Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak should stop using force against the Palestinians.
Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said yesterday it would be "premature" to declare a Palestinian state.
Friday, 27 October 2000
Middle East conflict spills into cyberspace
USA TODAY
27 October 2000
By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM — Israeli and Arab Internet hackers went to war Thursday, paralyzing each other's Web sites with an arsenal of desktop weapons that managed to penetrate the most sophisticated defenses.
The Israeli Knesset Web site was frozen for hours after it was "spammed" — overloaded with hundreds of thousands of electronic messages. Similar attacks brought down the main Israeli government portal and the Foreign Ministry Web site for more than 30 hours. Attacks also continued through the night on the Israel Defense Forces Web site.
The Web site of the Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamic movement that captured three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli businessman in Switzerland two weeks ago, was successfully penetrated by a hacker who replaced its blistering anti-Israel rhetoric with a rippling Israeli flag and a soundtrack of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. Sites belonging to other groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Information Center were also targeted.
News from the e-world battle lines:
A Lebanese hacker, identified only as Walid, told the Beirut Daily Star newspaper of his plan to hack the Knesset server late Wednesday night. "We'll target and hack Israeli Web sites one by one. This will continue," he said. He warned that the cyberwar could intensify, with Israelis and Arabs trying to e-mail viruses that would destroy each other's systems.
The Israeli army hired AT&T on Thursday to reinforce its service and protect it from
crashing, an army spokesman said. Israeli security officials said they had traced the attacks to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and servers in Europe and North America.
Netvision, Israel's largest service provider, hosts the Knesset and Foreign Ministry Web sites.
The company's other services also were crippled, with private users unable to access their e-mail for much of the day.
"We are taking measures, which for obvious reasons we would rather not reveal, to prevent similar attacks," said Gilad Rabinovich, NetVision's general manager.
Arab hackers swapped information through Internet chat rooms and two sites, UmmahUnity and Tripod, offered advice and downloadable programs to assist anyone who wanted to join the cyberattack against Israeli sites.
As in the real-life clashes over the past month that have claimed more than 130 lives, most of them Palestinians, there was a dispute over who fired the first shot in the virtual war.
Lebanese hackers say the attack on the Israeli Web sites was a response to a call two weeks ago for pro-Israel users to flood the Hezbollah Web site with e-mails.
27 October 2000
By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM — Israeli and Arab Internet hackers went to war Thursday, paralyzing each other's Web sites with an arsenal of desktop weapons that managed to penetrate the most sophisticated defenses.
The Israeli Knesset Web site was frozen for hours after it was "spammed" — overloaded with hundreds of thousands of electronic messages. Similar attacks brought down the main Israeli government portal and the Foreign Ministry Web site for more than 30 hours. Attacks also continued through the night on the Israel Defense Forces Web site.
The Web site of the Hezbollah, the Lebanese Islamic movement that captured three Israeli soldiers and an Israeli businessman in Switzerland two weeks ago, was successfully penetrated by a hacker who replaced its blistering anti-Israel rhetoric with a rippling Israeli flag and a soundtrack of Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem. Sites belonging to other groups such as Hamas and the Palestinian Information Center were also targeted.
News from the e-world battle lines:
A Lebanese hacker, identified only as Walid, told the Beirut Daily Star newspaper of his plan to hack the Knesset server late Wednesday night. "We'll target and hack Israeli Web sites one by one. This will continue," he said. He warned that the cyberwar could intensify, with Israelis and Arabs trying to e-mail viruses that would destroy each other's systems.
The Israeli army hired AT&T on Thursday to reinforce its service and protect it from
crashing, an army spokesman said. Israeli security officials said they had traced the attacks to Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and servers in Europe and North America.
Netvision, Israel's largest service provider, hosts the Knesset and Foreign Ministry Web sites.
The company's other services also were crippled, with private users unable to access their e-mail for much of the day.
"We are taking measures, which for obvious reasons we would rather not reveal, to prevent similar attacks," said Gilad Rabinovich, NetVision's general manager.
Arab hackers swapped information through Internet chat rooms and two sites, UmmahUnity and Tripod, offered advice and downloadable programs to assist anyone who wanted to join the cyberattack against Israeli sites.
As in the real-life clashes over the past month that have claimed more than 130 lives, most of them Palestinians, there was a dispute over who fired the first shot in the virtual war.
Lebanese hackers say the attack on the Israeli Web sites was a response to a call two weeks ago for pro-Israel users to flood the Hezbollah Web site with e-mails.
Saturday, 7 October 2000
Boots uses sun's rays to power its stores
The Sunday Times
October 7, 2000
Matthew Kalman
BOOTS, the high-street chemist, is planning an investment in solar power to provide environmentally friendly energy for its stores. Boots executives plan to install several trial units made by Solel Solar Systems, an Israeli company. If the trial is successful, Boots will roll out the units across its stores.
The units trap sunlight in solar panels mounted on the roofs or walls. Solel says they are capable of providing 70% of a building's hot water and air-conditioning yet pose no environmental threat. Once the units have been installed, they do not consume fuel and have minimal maintenance costs.
Avi Brenmiller, chief executive of Jerusalem-based Solel, says the patented system is 50% more efficient than existing alternatives and is suitable for northern Europe, with its relative lack of sunshine.
Solel's Vac 2008 is four metres long with a heat-collecting element consisting of a stainless-steel tube suspended in a vacuum inside a tubular glass sheath. The element is mounted on a parabolic solar reflector coated with silver. This concentrates the sun's rays onto the metal tube, which is coated with a mixture of metal and ceramic particles in a secret process. Water passes through the tube and is heated by sunlight. The special coating and the vacuum insulate the tube so that once it is heated it retains 97% of the energy.
Temperatures inside the element can reach up to 400 degrees centigrade, enabling it to provide air-conditioning without using electricity. In sunny climates, Solel says its generators can produce enough electricity to power a hospital, office building or even a village. Brenmiller says: "It hasn't been possible until now to manufacture such efficient collectors to reach the temperatures needed to produce enough energy at a low-enough cost. The unique methods used to make the system mean it can be used even in climates without much sunshine, such as Britain."
Rionay, an Eastbourne company, distributes Solel systems in Britain.
October 7, 2000
Matthew Kalman
BOOTS, the high-street chemist, is planning an investment in solar power to provide environmentally friendly energy for its stores. Boots executives plan to install several trial units made by Solel Solar Systems, an Israeli company. If the trial is successful, Boots will roll out the units across its stores.
The units trap sunlight in solar panels mounted on the roofs or walls. Solel says they are capable of providing 70% of a building's hot water and air-conditioning yet pose no environmental threat. Once the units have been installed, they do not consume fuel and have minimal maintenance costs.
Avi Brenmiller, chief executive of Jerusalem-based Solel, says the patented system is 50% more efficient than existing alternatives and is suitable for northern Europe, with its relative lack of sunshine.
Solel's Vac 2008 is four metres long with a heat-collecting element consisting of a stainless-steel tube suspended in a vacuum inside a tubular glass sheath. The element is mounted on a parabolic solar reflector coated with silver. This concentrates the sun's rays onto the metal tube, which is coated with a mixture of metal and ceramic particles in a secret process. Water passes through the tube and is heated by sunlight. The special coating and the vacuum insulate the tube so that once it is heated it retains 97% of the energy.
Temperatures inside the element can reach up to 400 degrees centigrade, enabling it to provide air-conditioning without using electricity. In sunny climates, Solel says its generators can produce enough electricity to power a hospital, office building or even a village. Brenmiller says: "It hasn't been possible until now to manufacture such efficient collectors to reach the temperatures needed to produce enough energy at a low-enough cost. The unique methods used to make the system mean it can be used even in climates without much sunshine, such as Britain."
Rionay, an Eastbourne company, distributes Solel systems in Britain.
Tuesday, 3 October 2000
Violence, death toll climb in Mideast
Israeli army uses helicopter gunships, missiles against civilian Palestinian targets
GLOBE & MAIL
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
GAZA CITY -- It was the moment 16-year-old Shadi Abu Dakka had been waiting for since his best friend was killed four years ago.
In 1996, Israeli soldiers shot Khaled Khattib dead as he tried to remove the Israeli flag from the top of a lookout post at the Netzarim army base in the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, Mr. Abu Dakka scaled the same flagpole and succeeded in removing the flag bearing the blue Star of David. But before he could replace it with the green, black, red and white colours of the Palestinian flag he was carrying, an Israeli sniper shot him in the leg.
"I fulfilled my dream and the wish of my best friend, Khaled," Mr. Abu Dakka said as he lay in the orthopedic ward at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. "Every time I passed near that base, the only thing I could think of was how to bring down the Israeli flag. There is no reason why an Israeli flag should be hoisted on Palestinian land."
He said he knew the risk he was taking and was prepared to sacrifice his life yesterday, the fifth day of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip that have left more than 50 people dead.
"I knew I could be martyred and I was prepared for that," he said. "Before me, five other kids tried to climb the 15-metre-high fence surrounding the lookout post, but they were all shot and wounded.
"When my turn came, the soldiers shot in the air at first, but I was not deterred. I continued climbing, carrying the Palestinian flag on my back. Although I was wounded in the leg, I tore down the Israeli flag and then quickly replaced it with the Palestinian flag. I jumped down and hid among some concrete barriers while the Israelis continued shooting. Then my friends came and rescued me."
His friends say they have appealed to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to give the youth an award.
Mr. Abu Dakka was one of the lucky ones. Hours later, the Israeli army used Apache helicopter gunships to fire missiles at Palestinian buildings and vehicles near the Netzarim base, killing two people and injuring about 50 more.
The helicopters were deployed for the first time Sunday in what Israeli army operations chief General Giora Eiland described as "a demonstration of the firepower at our disposal."
At least 10 people were killed yesterday, including three Israeli Arabs and one Israeli soldier, who was shot in the head at Beit Sahour near Bethlehem. Voice of Palestine Radio reported hundreds injured.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Mr. Arafat are to meet in Paris tomorrow with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in an effort to quell the violence.
Mr. Barak, who asked Israeli-Arab leaders last night to meet with him this morning for urgent talks, said all agreements and negotiations with the Palestinians on a long-awaited peace deal would be "shelved" until the current violence ended. "But it is too early to eulogize the peace process," he added.
Mr. Barak said Mr. Arafat was responsible for the violence and should order his officers to end their gun attacks on Israeli positions, but the Palestinian leader shrugged off the call.
"Stop shooting our soldiers, our old people, our youths, our women," Mr. Arafat said.
Yesterday, young Palestinian Fatah activists and police armed with automatic weapons joined stone-throwing demonstrators in clashes with Israeli troops in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Hebron. Israeli cars were stoned and set ablaze at various points throughout the West Bank and an Israeli man was shot dead south of Nablus.
GLOBE & MAIL
Tuesday, October 3, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
GAZA CITY -- It was the moment 16-year-old Shadi Abu Dakka had been waiting for since his best friend was killed four years ago.
In 1996, Israeli soldiers shot Khaled Khattib dead as he tried to remove the Israeli flag from the top of a lookout post at the Netzarim army base in the Gaza Strip.
Yesterday, Mr. Abu Dakka scaled the same flagpole and succeeded in removing the flag bearing the blue Star of David. But before he could replace it with the green, black, red and white colours of the Palestinian flag he was carrying, an Israeli sniper shot him in the leg.
"I fulfilled my dream and the wish of my best friend, Khaled," Mr. Abu Dakka said as he lay in the orthopedic ward at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. "Every time I passed near that base, the only thing I could think of was how to bring down the Israeli flag. There is no reason why an Israeli flag should be hoisted on Palestinian land."
He said he knew the risk he was taking and was prepared to sacrifice his life yesterday, the fifth day of clashes between Palestinians and Israeli security forces throughout Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip that have left more than 50 people dead.
"I knew I could be martyred and I was prepared for that," he said. "Before me, five other kids tried to climb the 15-metre-high fence surrounding the lookout post, but they were all shot and wounded.
"When my turn came, the soldiers shot in the air at first, but I was not deterred. I continued climbing, carrying the Palestinian flag on my back. Although I was wounded in the leg, I tore down the Israeli flag and then quickly replaced it with the Palestinian flag. I jumped down and hid among some concrete barriers while the Israelis continued shooting. Then my friends came and rescued me."
His friends say they have appealed to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to give the youth an award.
Mr. Abu Dakka was one of the lucky ones. Hours later, the Israeli army used Apache helicopter gunships to fire missiles at Palestinian buildings and vehicles near the Netzarim base, killing two people and injuring about 50 more.
The helicopters were deployed for the first time Sunday in what Israeli army operations chief General Giora Eiland described as "a demonstration of the firepower at our disposal."
At least 10 people were killed yesterday, including three Israeli Arabs and one Israeli soldier, who was shot in the head at Beit Sahour near Bethlehem. Voice of Palestine Radio reported hundreds injured.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Mr. Arafat are to meet in Paris tomorrow with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in an effort to quell the violence.
Mr. Barak, who asked Israeli-Arab leaders last night to meet with him this morning for urgent talks, said all agreements and negotiations with the Palestinians on a long-awaited peace deal would be "shelved" until the current violence ended. "But it is too early to eulogize the peace process," he added.
Mr. Barak said Mr. Arafat was responsible for the violence and should order his officers to end their gun attacks on Israeli positions, but the Palestinian leader shrugged off the call.
"Stop shooting our soldiers, our old people, our youths, our women," Mr. Arafat said.
Yesterday, young Palestinian Fatah activists and police armed with automatic weapons joined stone-throwing demonstrators in clashes with Israeli troops in Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem and Hebron. Israeli cars were stoned and set ablaze at various points throughout the West Bank and an Israeli man was shot dead south of Nablus.
Saturday, 30 September 2000
Seven killed during riot in Jerusalem
Palestinian leaders call for general strike after clashes on eve of Jewish New Year
GLOBE & MAIL
September 30, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM -- At least seven Palestinian demonstrators were killed and 220 Palestinians were injured when Israeli riot police stormed the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem yesterday, leading the Palestinian Authority to call for a general strike today.
Forty-four Israeli police officers, including the Jerusalem chief, were hit by stones in the worst bloodshed in four years at the walled compound that is at the centre of the deadlock in Mideast talks.
Thousands of Muslims barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque as sporadic stone-throwing and violence spread through East Jerusalem and the West Bank on the eve of the Jewish New Year.
The violence quickly spread to Jerusalem neighbourhoods and the West Bank, further dimming prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said the situation was very serious and that Israel expected the Palestinian Authority and regional Muslim leadership, which supervises the Temple Mount, to restore calm. "Otherwise the Israeli police will have to get involved and act, even though we don't want to," Mr. Barak said.
Yesterday's disturbances began as thousands of Muslims leaving Friday prayers hurled bottles, masonry blocks and iron bars onto Jewish worshippers and police at the Western Wall 15 metres below. Israeli police struggled to clear the area by the wall, which was crowded with people offering prayers on the eve of the Jewish New Year, which began last night.
About 25 Israelis, including Jerusalem police Chief Yair Yitzhaki, were treated in hospital for head wounds after being hit from above.
The Muslim demonstrators then tried to break into the plaza around the Western Wall. Israeli riot police forced them back and tried to clear the Temple Mount compound. They opened fire on the demonstrators with rubber bullets, killing seven Palestinians and wounding more than 200 others, according to Palestinian medical officials.
The call for a general strike came from Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo over the Voice of Palestine radio, which said only official bodies, such as ministries, would be exempt.
The Voice of Palestine Radio reported that seven of those injured had lost an eye.
There were further outbreaks of violence as the afternoon wore on.
In Jerusalem neighbourhoods close to Palestinian areas, youths threw stones at Israeli cars and set fire to an Israeli ambulance. In Bethlehem, demonstrators threw stones at Israeli soldiers and burned tires. In Nablus, Israeli security forces moved out a group of religious students.
"We hold the Israeli government fully responsible for today's massacre," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"On the instructions of President Arafat, we have asked the United States to intercede with Israel to stop this bloodshed."
Abu Ala, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, told the Voice of Palestine: "The Israelis have gone mad. What happened today could destroy the Middle East peace process. Israeli extremists are trying to derail the process."
The clashes, the worst in Jerusalem for four years, came the day after violence broke out during a controversial tour of the Temple Mount by hawkish Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon.
The Temple Mount is the key stumbling-block in peace talks that have dragged on between Israelis and Palestinians for more than seven years.
Each side wants control over the site, which Jews regard as the location of Solomon's Temple and Muslims believe is the place where Mohammed ascended to heaven.
The temple was destroyed by the Romans, and a mosque has stood on the site since the eighth century.
Earlier yesterday, a Palestinian police officer shot and killed an Israeli policeman during a joint Israeli-Palestinian security patrol in the West Bank town of Kalkilya.
GLOBE & MAIL
September 30, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM -- At least seven Palestinian demonstrators were killed and 220 Palestinians were injured when Israeli riot police stormed the Temple Mount in the Old City of Jerusalem yesterday, leading the Palestinian Authority to call for a general strike today.
Forty-four Israeli police officers, including the Jerusalem chief, were hit by stones in the worst bloodshed in four years at the walled compound that is at the centre of the deadlock in Mideast talks.
Thousands of Muslims barricaded themselves inside the Al-Aqsa mosque as sporadic stone-throwing and violence spread through East Jerusalem and the West Bank on the eve of the Jewish New Year.
The violence quickly spread to Jerusalem neighbourhoods and the West Bank, further dimming prospects for an Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak said the situation was very serious and that Israel expected the Palestinian Authority and regional Muslim leadership, which supervises the Temple Mount, to restore calm. "Otherwise the Israeli police will have to get involved and act, even though we don't want to," Mr. Barak said.
Yesterday's disturbances began as thousands of Muslims leaving Friday prayers hurled bottles, masonry blocks and iron bars onto Jewish worshippers and police at the Western Wall 15 metres below. Israeli police struggled to clear the area by the wall, which was crowded with people offering prayers on the eve of the Jewish New Year, which began last night.
About 25 Israelis, including Jerusalem police Chief Yair Yitzhaki, were treated in hospital for head wounds after being hit from above.
The Muslim demonstrators then tried to break into the plaza around the Western Wall. Israeli riot police forced them back and tried to clear the Temple Mount compound. They opened fire on the demonstrators with rubber bullets, killing seven Palestinians and wounding more than 200 others, according to Palestinian medical officials.
The call for a general strike came from Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo over the Voice of Palestine radio, which said only official bodies, such as ministries, would be exempt.
The Voice of Palestine Radio reported that seven of those injured had lost an eye.
There were further outbreaks of violence as the afternoon wore on.
In Jerusalem neighbourhoods close to Palestinian areas, youths threw stones at Israeli cars and set fire to an Israeli ambulance. In Bethlehem, demonstrators threw stones at Israeli soldiers and burned tires. In Nablus, Israeli security forces moved out a group of religious students.
"We hold the Israeli government fully responsible for today's massacre," said Nabil Abu Rudeineh, spokesman for Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"On the instructions of President Arafat, we have asked the United States to intercede with Israel to stop this bloodshed."
Abu Ala, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, told the Voice of Palestine: "The Israelis have gone mad. What happened today could destroy the Middle East peace process. Israeli extremists are trying to derail the process."
The clashes, the worst in Jerusalem for four years, came the day after violence broke out during a controversial tour of the Temple Mount by hawkish Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon.
The Temple Mount is the key stumbling-block in peace talks that have dragged on between Israelis and Palestinians for more than seven years.
Each side wants control over the site, which Jews regard as the location of Solomon's Temple and Muslims believe is the place where Mohammed ascended to heaven.
The temple was destroyed by the Romans, and a mosque has stood on the site since the eighth century.
Earlier yesterday, a Palestinian police officer shot and killed an Israeli policeman during a joint Israeli-Palestinian security patrol in the West Bank town of Kalkilya.
Monday, 4 September 2000
Hussein gravely ill with cancer: newspaper
Takes steps to pass control to youngest son
GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, September 4, 2000
MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Jerusalem - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is gravely ill with cancer of the lymph system and has set up a family council led by his youngest son to take control if the President were to become incapacitated, a leading Arabic newspaper reported yesterday.
Western newspapers have reported several times in recent years that the 63-year-old President has cancer, but the London-based Asharq al-Awsat went into considerable detail in its report.
The Saudi-financed publication quoted an Arab doctor "with an excellent reputation" as saying that a medical team of three French doctors, one German and one Swede is taking care of Mr. Hussein. The team had been brought together by a committee chaired by the President's personal secretary and confidant, Abed Hamoud, the daily said.
Western diplomats in the Middle East said they could not confirm the accuracy of the reports.
The death of Mr. Hussein could spark a succession crisis between his two sons, both of whom are known for their ruthless behaviour.
Mr. Hussein was last seen in public last month as he was driven through Baghdad in an open-air car with visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
According to the unidentified Iraqi doctor who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat, Mr. Hussein is suffering from pains in his hip and lungs and has problems breathing. His sight has also been affected and he suffers temporary memory losses and is unable to concentrate, the doctor said.
The doctor said that Mr. Hussein had so far refused to undergo chemotherapy treatment.
The paper also said the President recently led a family meeting attended by his secretary Mr. Hamoud; his two sons, Udai and Qusay; and his three brothers, Barazan, Watban and Sabawi. They appointed a family council led by Qusay to run the affairs of Iraq in the event the President were unable to fulfill his duties or were to die suddenly.
Last month, the Arab media reported that Qusay had effectively been appointed his father's deputy and second-in-command. The reports said Mr. Hussein was seeking to change the constitution so 34-year-old Qusay could become president if needed; the legal age now is 40.
Qusay is known as the ruthless commander of the Special Security Organization, a key branch of the Iraqi security apparatus. In 1997, Qusay reportedly ordered the execution of 1,500 political prisoners, according to a United Nations report. Iraq denied the report, which said relatives were even ordered to pay for the bullets used to kill the prisoners before being allowed to retrieve their bodies for burial.
His older brother, Uday, 36, was badly injured in an assassination attempt in 1996 and is only just able to walk without assistance. He is a notorious playboy who made headlines in 1998 for clubbing his father's food-taster to death. He was considered the favourite to succeed his father until the attack. He still controls the official Babel newspaper and could mount a strong challenge for the leadership of Iraq when his father dies.
GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, September 4, 2000
MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Jerusalem - Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is gravely ill with cancer of the lymph system and has set up a family council led by his youngest son to take control if the President were to become incapacitated, a leading Arabic newspaper reported yesterday.
Western newspapers have reported several times in recent years that the 63-year-old President has cancer, but the London-based Asharq al-Awsat went into considerable detail in its report.
The Saudi-financed publication quoted an Arab doctor "with an excellent reputation" as saying that a medical team of three French doctors, one German and one Swede is taking care of Mr. Hussein. The team had been brought together by a committee chaired by the President's personal secretary and confidant, Abed Hamoud, the daily said.
Western diplomats in the Middle East said they could not confirm the accuracy of the reports.
The death of Mr. Hussein could spark a succession crisis between his two sons, both of whom are known for their ruthless behaviour.
Mr. Hussein was last seen in public last month as he was driven through Baghdad in an open-air car with visiting Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
According to the unidentified Iraqi doctor who spoke to Asharq Al-Awsat, Mr. Hussein is suffering from pains in his hip and lungs and has problems breathing. His sight has also been affected and he suffers temporary memory losses and is unable to concentrate, the doctor said.
The doctor said that Mr. Hussein had so far refused to undergo chemotherapy treatment.
The paper also said the President recently led a family meeting attended by his secretary Mr. Hamoud; his two sons, Udai and Qusay; and his three brothers, Barazan, Watban and Sabawi. They appointed a family council led by Qusay to run the affairs of Iraq in the event the President were unable to fulfill his duties or were to die suddenly.
Last month, the Arab media reported that Qusay had effectively been appointed his father's deputy and second-in-command. The reports said Mr. Hussein was seeking to change the constitution so 34-year-old Qusay could become president if needed; the legal age now is 40.
Qusay is known as the ruthless commander of the Special Security Organization, a key branch of the Iraqi security apparatus. In 1997, Qusay reportedly ordered the execution of 1,500 political prisoners, according to a United Nations report. Iraq denied the report, which said relatives were even ordered to pay for the bullets used to kill the prisoners before being allowed to retrieve their bodies for burial.
His older brother, Uday, 36, was badly injured in an assassination attempt in 1996 and is only just able to walk without assistance. He is a notorious playboy who made headlines in 1998 for clubbing his father's food-taster to death. He was considered the favourite to succeed his father until the attack. He still controls the official Babel newspaper and could mount a strong challenge for the leadership of Iraq when his father dies.
Wednesday, 30 August 2000
Barak's reform plans raise eyebrows among supporters, critics
GLOBE & MAIL
Wednesday, August 30, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem -- Prime Minister Ehud Barak's sweeping plans for religious and civic reforms have supporters and critics wondering whether he is launching a true crusade to repair Israel's splintered society -- or simply embarking on a populist campaign to win the next election.
Less than 10 days ago, Mr. Barak stunned his country by announcing a new "civic agenda" for Israeli society. He wants to draw up a written constitution; end the Orthodox Jewish monopoly on marriages and burials; make national service compulsory for all citizens, including Arab-Israelis and ultra-Orthodox Jews who are currently exempt; and dismantle the Ministry of Religion and its local religious councils.
Secular Israelis who worry about the growing strength of the Orthodox religious establishment hail the plan as a "secular revolution" and as a turning point in Israeli history.
But religious leaders accuse the Prime Minister of blatant electioneering in the wake of the collapse of his Labour Party's coalition government in June. Many subscribe to the view that the new plan was hatched solely to solve Mr. Barak's political woes.
"This whole constitution proposal by Barak is a bluff," said Moshe Gafni, an MP for the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, which once supported Mr. Barak. "Everyone knows that if either we or Shas [another religious party] would call Barak tonight and offer to join the government, he would call off this whole program."
But Mr. Gafni also cautions that if Mr. Barak is serious in his plan, there could be trouble ahead.
"The question is whether the Prime Minister is leading a process that will change the state of Israel to a non-Jewish state," he said. "If this indeed true, we are talking about a world war."
The most perplexing question concerns Mr. Barak's timing and motivation. He has been trailing badly in opinion polls since his coalition collapsed, and has been saved from outright defeat only by the disarray of his opponents and the fact that the Knesset (parliament) is in recess until October.
Some observers suggest he is trying to deflect attention from the shaky state of peace talks with the Palestinians by focusing instead on sweeping domestic change, even though he has the support of only 42 MPs in the 120-seat Knesset.
"I can't imagine a worse time than this to draft a constitution," said Professor Avi Ravitsky, an expert on Jewish philosophy and a Barak supporter who declined an invitation to join the government.
"In a society which is so divided, it is not right to legislate a constitution with a slim majority -- which will just be overturned by the next government with its slim majority."
Others suggest Mr. Barak is merely trying to exert pressure on the religious parties, among them his former coalition allies, to support his peace initiatives by showing them what could happen to their power base if they remain outside the government.
The influential Maariv newspaper suggested the Prime Minister's new agenda is not quite as billed. "If it was clear that Ehud Barak and his government would unfurl the flag of the civil revolution not just in word but deed, then it would have to be welcomed," the paper argued.
Whatever his motive, Mr. Barak is forcing his country to consider key issues that have been largely ignored in favour of the peace process and the fight against terrorism.
As Avraham Burg, Speaker of the Knesset, put it: "There is a need for a new Zionist narrative not based on a shared external enemy or the ideology of settlement, but a social revolution that will resurrect the Labour Party and the Israeli people."
Mr. Barak's agenda also includes questions of pressing concern to Israel's one-million-strong community of Russian immigrants, who make up about 20 per cent of the electorate and have been tagged by experts as the key swing voters in the past five elections, including the one last year that brought Mr. Barak to office.
For example, many Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to Orthodox criteria, which means they cannot marry or be buried the way they want in Israel, which does not have civil marriages or funerals. The problem was intensified because the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for such personal matters, was controlled by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party until last year.
Yisrael b'Aliyah, a Russian immigrant party headed by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, made opposition to Shas the basis of its election campaign last year, reflecting the widespread Russian dislike for the political and religious hegemony of the ultra-Orthodox.
The Russian community was dismayed when Mr. Barak took Shas into his coalition as the second-largest party in the government. But after a year of coalition crises and scandals, fuelled largely by the refusal of Shas to have its schools adhere to financing regulations, Mr. Barak seems to have washed his hands of the party.
Wednesday, August 30, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem -- Prime Minister Ehud Barak's sweeping plans for religious and civic reforms have supporters and critics wondering whether he is launching a true crusade to repair Israel's splintered society -- or simply embarking on a populist campaign to win the next election.
Less than 10 days ago, Mr. Barak stunned his country by announcing a new "civic agenda" for Israeli society. He wants to draw up a written constitution; end the Orthodox Jewish monopoly on marriages and burials; make national service compulsory for all citizens, including Arab-Israelis and ultra-Orthodox Jews who are currently exempt; and dismantle the Ministry of Religion and its local religious councils.
Secular Israelis who worry about the growing strength of the Orthodox religious establishment hail the plan as a "secular revolution" and as a turning point in Israeli history.
But religious leaders accuse the Prime Minister of blatant electioneering in the wake of the collapse of his Labour Party's coalition government in June. Many subscribe to the view that the new plan was hatched solely to solve Mr. Barak's political woes.
"This whole constitution proposal by Barak is a bluff," said Moshe Gafni, an MP for the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism Party, which once supported Mr. Barak. "Everyone knows that if either we or Shas [another religious party] would call Barak tonight and offer to join the government, he would call off this whole program."
But Mr. Gafni also cautions that if Mr. Barak is serious in his plan, there could be trouble ahead.
"The question is whether the Prime Minister is leading a process that will change the state of Israel to a non-Jewish state," he said. "If this indeed true, we are talking about a world war."
The most perplexing question concerns Mr. Barak's timing and motivation. He has been trailing badly in opinion polls since his coalition collapsed, and has been saved from outright defeat only by the disarray of his opponents and the fact that the Knesset (parliament) is in recess until October.
Some observers suggest he is trying to deflect attention from the shaky state of peace talks with the Palestinians by focusing instead on sweeping domestic change, even though he has the support of only 42 MPs in the 120-seat Knesset.
"I can't imagine a worse time than this to draft a constitution," said Professor Avi Ravitsky, an expert on Jewish philosophy and a Barak supporter who declined an invitation to join the government.
"In a society which is so divided, it is not right to legislate a constitution with a slim majority -- which will just be overturned by the next government with its slim majority."
Others suggest Mr. Barak is merely trying to exert pressure on the religious parties, among them his former coalition allies, to support his peace initiatives by showing them what could happen to their power base if they remain outside the government.
The influential Maariv newspaper suggested the Prime Minister's new agenda is not quite as billed. "If it was clear that Ehud Barak and his government would unfurl the flag of the civil revolution not just in word but deed, then it would have to be welcomed," the paper argued.
Whatever his motive, Mr. Barak is forcing his country to consider key issues that have been largely ignored in favour of the peace process and the fight against terrorism.
As Avraham Burg, Speaker of the Knesset, put it: "There is a need for a new Zionist narrative not based on a shared external enemy or the ideology of settlement, but a social revolution that will resurrect the Labour Party and the Israeli people."
Mr. Barak's agenda also includes questions of pressing concern to Israel's one-million-strong community of Russian immigrants, who make up about 20 per cent of the electorate and have been tagged by experts as the key swing voters in the past five elections, including the one last year that brought Mr. Barak to office.
For example, many Russian immigrants are not Jewish according to Orthodox criteria, which means they cannot marry or be buried the way they want in Israel, which does not have civil marriages or funerals. The problem was intensified because the Ministry of the Interior, which is responsible for such personal matters, was controlled by the ultra-Orthodox Shas party until last year.
Yisrael b'Aliyah, a Russian immigrant party headed by former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky, made opposition to Shas the basis of its election campaign last year, reflecting the widespread Russian dislike for the political and religious hegemony of the ultra-Orthodox.
The Russian community was dismayed when Mr. Barak took Shas into his coalition as the second-largest party in the government. But after a year of coalition crises and scandals, fuelled largely by the refusal of Shas to have its schools adhere to financing regulations, Mr. Barak seems to have washed his hands of the party.
Monday, 28 August 2000
Israelis killed in raid on Hamas leader
Three soldiers believed to have died from friendly fire; target flees
GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, August 28, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
Nablus, West Bank -- A botched raid on an Islamic militant's hideout ended yesterday with three Israeli commandos dead, apparently by friendly fire, and Palestinian officials upset about Israel's handling of threats to peace between the two peoples.
The target of the late-night Saturday raid was Mahmoud Abu Hunud, a fugitive at the top of Israel's most-wanted list, blamed for two 1997 bombings that killed at least 21 Israelis and injured hundreds.
Mr. Abu Hunud, a leader of the militant Hamas group, which is adamantly opposed to any peace deal with Israel, fled the shootout into Nablus, a nearby town under Palestinian control. There, he surrendered to Palestinian security forces for medical treatment and was being kept under heavy guard yesterday in a Nablus hospital.
Despite their failure to capture Mr. Abu Hunud, for whom they had been searching for years, Israeli officials praised Palestinian security forces and said his detention proved the effectiveness of Palestinian-Israeli security co-operation.
"It doesn't matter under whose custody he is," Carmi Gillon, a former head of the Shin Bet security service, told Israel radio. "He's out of commission."
A senior Palestinian security officer said the Palestinian Authority had no intention of handing Mr. Abu Hunud over to the Israelis.
Israel's military chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz, set up a special commission of inquiry to find out what went wrong with the ambush and how the three Israelis were killed.
"There is a basis to believe that there was a serious operational error, which led to one of our units mistakenly shooting at their comrades," he said yesterday morning.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak also said it was possible the three Israelis had been killed by friendly fire.
"When three of our best sons are killed, it is hard to talk of success," said Israeli Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh, "but the operation has saved the lives of dozens of Israelis."
The Palestinians did their best to distance themselves from the botched operation.
"What the Israelis have done is a mistake that they committed on their own initiative, and it has nothing to do with the Palestinian Authority," said Colonel Jibril Rajoub, the top Palestinian security official in the West Bank. "They paid the price."
The area of the shootout is jointly controlled by Israel and the Palestinians, with ultimate security control in Israel's hands. Col. Rajoub suggested that it is time for Israeli forces to move out for good.
"It would have been more appropriate to have given the information to the [Palestinian] police to tackle the issue peacefully and without bloodshed," he said.
But Gen. Mofaz said Israel is not about to cede its West Bank operations.
Mr. Abu Hunud, 33, was tracked down late Saturday night by commandos from the crack undercover Duvdevan unit, who surrounded a relative's house in the village of Assireh al Shamalia, north of Nablus. But he apparently saw them and opened fire, launching a fierce gun battle that left him wounded and the three Israelis dead.
Palestinian security officials said he suffered at least three bullet wounds. His mother, Fatmeh, visited him yesterday and said he was in good condition.
Mr. Abu Hunud has been on the run from Israeli and Palestinian security forces since escaping from a Palestinian jail in 1996. He became commander of the Hamas military wing in 1998 after his predecessors were each assassinated by Israeli soldiers. He recruited suicide bombers and planned the attacks in Jerusalem in 1997 that sparked a major crisis in the peace talks.
Since then, he is believed to have been planning major terror attacks on Israeli targets. He managed to evade a nationwide search by never sleeping in the same place twice and rarely returning to his home village to see his parents.
Mr. Abu Hunud's younger brother, Mustapha, who works as a nurse at a hospital in Nablus, said he saw the attack from the start.
"We didn't even know Mahmoud was in the village, and we were very surprised," he said. "We had always thought that he was in Iran or somewhere else abroad. He apparently came to the village [Saturday] night to see my parents. Someone tipped off the Israeli security forces, who arrived immediately."
According to Mustapha, Mr. Abu Hunud was hiding in a house belonging to a relative. The Israeli commandos scaled a house opposite and waited on the roof.
"At around 9:15 p.m. I heard shots," Mustapha said. "When I looked out the window, I saw dozens of Israeli soldiers. Some of them were panicking, crying and shouting. I saw them carrying some of their own soldiers, who were bleeding. I left my house and people told me that Mahmoud had opened fire at the soldiers."
Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Mr. Abu Hunud's escape from the soldiers was being celebrated by Hamas supporters, who consider him a hero of the Palestinian resistance.
GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, August 28, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
Nablus, West Bank -- A botched raid on an Islamic militant's hideout ended yesterday with three Israeli commandos dead, apparently by friendly fire, and Palestinian officials upset about Israel's handling of threats to peace between the two peoples.
The target of the late-night Saturday raid was Mahmoud Abu Hunud, a fugitive at the top of Israel's most-wanted list, blamed for two 1997 bombings that killed at least 21 Israelis and injured hundreds.
Mr. Abu Hunud, a leader of the militant Hamas group, which is adamantly opposed to any peace deal with Israel, fled the shootout into Nablus, a nearby town under Palestinian control. There, he surrendered to Palestinian security forces for medical treatment and was being kept under heavy guard yesterday in a Nablus hospital.
Despite their failure to capture Mr. Abu Hunud, for whom they had been searching for years, Israeli officials praised Palestinian security forces and said his detention proved the effectiveness of Palestinian-Israeli security co-operation.
"It doesn't matter under whose custody he is," Carmi Gillon, a former head of the Shin Bet security service, told Israel radio. "He's out of commission."
A senior Palestinian security officer said the Palestinian Authority had no intention of handing Mr. Abu Hunud over to the Israelis.
Israel's military chief of staff, Lieutenant-General Shaul Mofaz, set up a special commission of inquiry to find out what went wrong with the ambush and how the three Israelis were killed.
"There is a basis to believe that there was a serious operational error, which led to one of our units mistakenly shooting at their comrades," he said yesterday morning.
Prime Minister Ehud Barak also said it was possible the three Israelis had been killed by friendly fire.
"When three of our best sons are killed, it is hard to talk of success," said Israeli Defence Minister Ephraim Sneh, "but the operation has saved the lives of dozens of Israelis."
The Palestinians did their best to distance themselves from the botched operation.
"What the Israelis have done is a mistake that they committed on their own initiative, and it has nothing to do with the Palestinian Authority," said Colonel Jibril Rajoub, the top Palestinian security official in the West Bank. "They paid the price."
The area of the shootout is jointly controlled by Israel and the Palestinians, with ultimate security control in Israel's hands. Col. Rajoub suggested that it is time for Israeli forces to move out for good.
"It would have been more appropriate to have given the information to the [Palestinian] police to tackle the issue peacefully and without bloodshed," he said.
But Gen. Mofaz said Israel is not about to cede its West Bank operations.
Mr. Abu Hunud, 33, was tracked down late Saturday night by commandos from the crack undercover Duvdevan unit, who surrounded a relative's house in the village of Assireh al Shamalia, north of Nablus. But he apparently saw them and opened fire, launching a fierce gun battle that left him wounded and the three Israelis dead.
Palestinian security officials said he suffered at least three bullet wounds. His mother, Fatmeh, visited him yesterday and said he was in good condition.
Mr. Abu Hunud has been on the run from Israeli and Palestinian security forces since escaping from a Palestinian jail in 1996. He became commander of the Hamas military wing in 1998 after his predecessors were each assassinated by Israeli soldiers. He recruited suicide bombers and planned the attacks in Jerusalem in 1997 that sparked a major crisis in the peace talks.
Since then, he is believed to have been planning major terror attacks on Israeli targets. He managed to evade a nationwide search by never sleeping in the same place twice and rarely returning to his home village to see his parents.
Mr. Abu Hunud's younger brother, Mustapha, who works as a nurse at a hospital in Nablus, said he saw the attack from the start.
"We didn't even know Mahmoud was in the village, and we were very surprised," he said. "We had always thought that he was in Iran or somewhere else abroad. He apparently came to the village [Saturday] night to see my parents. Someone tipped off the Israeli security forces, who arrived immediately."
According to Mustapha, Mr. Abu Hunud was hiding in a house belonging to a relative. The Israeli commandos scaled a house opposite and waited on the roof.
"At around 9:15 p.m. I heard shots," Mustapha said. "When I looked out the window, I saw dozens of Israeli soldiers. Some of them were panicking, crying and shouting. I saw them carrying some of their own soldiers, who were bleeding. I left my house and people told me that Mahmoud had opened fire at the soldiers."
Throughout the West Bank and Gaza, Mr. Abu Hunud's escape from the soldiers was being celebrated by Hamas supporters, who consider him a hero of the Palestinian resistance.
Friday, 11 August 2000
Jewish refugees' seized assets may be used as bargaining chip
Israelis divided on whether their effects should square accounts with Palestinians
GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, August 11, 2000
By Matthew Kalman and Joshua Brown
Jerusalem - When Asher Yissachar left his native Iraq for Israel in 1951, he was allowed to take nothing with him except a few clothes. The watch and the ring he wore to the airport did not make it onto the plane with him.
Now, nearly half a century later, Mr. Yissachar hopes that the assets that he and his family left behind in Iraq will help Israel square its accounts with Palestinian refugees, to whom Israel owes billions of dollars.
Mr. Yissachar, a 66-year-old retired farmer, sees a symmetry between the estimated 600,000 Jews who left or were expelled from Arab countries when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, and the similar number of Palestinian refugees created at the same time.
"If the Palestinians can come and claim that they are refugees, then we are refugees, too," he said. "We are refugees just like they are refugees. They left, and we came."
He said it would have been impossible for Jews to remain citizens in countries such as Iraq after the founding of Israel. He recalled a day in Baghdad, before he moved to Israel, when he watched police stop every car that came their way.
"If it was being driven by a Jew, they just took the keys. In one half-hour I saw them confiscate 125 cars."
In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed a law allowing its Jewish citizens to forfeit their Iraqi citizenship and move to Israel. More than 130,000 Jews applied. A year later, Iraq passed a law saying that property of those who went to Israel would be confiscated by the government, a move decried by the Israeli government as "legalized robbery."
Mr. Yissachar says that the Iraqi government still owes him money, but he is willing to give up the claim if Israel could use his lost assets as a bargaining chip against the claims of Palestinian refugees, a controversial plan the Israeli government has long supported.
The thousands of Jews from Arab countries who made their way to the new Israeli state were housed first in makeshift camps. Within a short period, they were given permanent housing and became fully absorbed into Israeli society.
Meanwhile, their displaced Palestinian counterparts had to live in refugee camps overseen by the United Nations. Today, Palestinian refugees and their heirs are numbered at about four million, with thousands dispersed in camps across the Mideast.
At last month's peace talks at Camp David, Md., Palestinian officials are reported to have claimed $40-billion (U.S.) in compensation for Palestinian refugees' lost property, now in Israeli hands.
After the summit, U.S. President Bill Clinton said that in addition to the establishment of an international fund to compensate Palestinian refugees, a peace accord might also call for the compensation of Jews from Arab lands.
The idea that Jews should be compensated for the property confiscated by Arab governments is not new. In the past, Israel has made intermittent efforts to register Jewish claims against the relevant governments.
Just how much property the Jews left behind in Arab countries is difficult to gauge. One estimate claims that the assets of the 100,000 Jews who abandoned property in Iraq, the wealthiest of the Jewish-Arab communities, are now worth $100-billion (U.S.). The most conservative figure places a price tag of $8-billion on the confiscated assets in Iraq.
The value of the Jewish property left behind in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen, while less than the Iraqi total, is also substantial.
But even if a compensation fund were set up, it is not clear that it would bring any direct benefit to the former owners and their heirs. Israel has long argued that the assets left behind in Arab countries should be used to cancel out some or all of the debt owed by Israel to the Palestinian refugees whose property it expropriated after the 1948 war.
In 1988, several organizations representing Jews from Arab countries, working with the World Jewish Congress, began compiling a registry of all Jewish-owned assets lost in the late 1940s and the 1950s in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen.
The registration forms ask respondents to list details of former communal property such as synagogues, schools, ritual baths and hospitals, as well as private assets including homes, bank accounts and jewellery. The questionnaire states: "The data will be used as the basis for a counterclaim to the Arab claims in the future final negotiations between Israel and the Arab states."
For Yehouda Shenhav, one of the founders of an Israeli political advocacy group for Jews from Arab lands, the notion that Israel might use his family's property to pay off its debts to the Palestinians is deeply disturbing.
A sociologist at Tel Aviv University, Professor Shenhav is the son of Iraqi-Jewish immigrants, and is a left-wing political activist. He objects to what he sees as the Israeli government's attempt to use his family's assets to reduce its debt to the Palestinians.
"These are not Palestinians who took their property, these are Arabs," he said. "Why do we include all Arabs in one box? They have nothing to do with each other. These are two different, separate issues. Why do we link them?"
What disturbs him most is that the Israeli government appears to be claiming the abandoned property for itself, without asking its former owners whether they agree to yield their ownership.
"If the government was fair, and [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak would say, 'Listen we want your help. There is no way you are going to get compensation. Are you going to give a hand?' -- that would be different," he said.
Prof. Shenhav is not alone in challenging Israeli attempts to use the abandoned Jewish property as a bargaining chip. These efforts are especially problematic to Jews from Arab lands living in Europe and North America.
Professor Heskel Haddad, an ophthalmologist in New York City, left Iraq with his family in the 1950s, leaving behind a great deal of property. That property, he says, belongs to his family, not Israel.
"It has no legal right to represent Jews from Arab countries living outside Israel, no legal right to link their claims to those of the Palestinians," he recently told the Jerusalem Report.
GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, August 11, 2000
By Matthew Kalman and Joshua Brown
Jerusalem - When Asher Yissachar left his native Iraq for Israel in 1951, he was allowed to take nothing with him except a few clothes. The watch and the ring he wore to the airport did not make it onto the plane with him.
Now, nearly half a century later, Mr. Yissachar hopes that the assets that he and his family left behind in Iraq will help Israel square its accounts with Palestinian refugees, to whom Israel owes billions of dollars.
Mr. Yissachar, a 66-year-old retired farmer, sees a symmetry between the estimated 600,000 Jews who left or were expelled from Arab countries when the State of Israel was founded in 1948, and the similar number of Palestinian refugees created at the same time.
"If the Palestinians can come and claim that they are refugees, then we are refugees, too," he said. "We are refugees just like they are refugees. They left, and we came."
He said it would have been impossible for Jews to remain citizens in countries such as Iraq after the founding of Israel. He recalled a day in Baghdad, before he moved to Israel, when he watched police stop every car that came their way.
"If it was being driven by a Jew, they just took the keys. In one half-hour I saw them confiscate 125 cars."
In 1951, the Iraqi parliament passed a law allowing its Jewish citizens to forfeit their Iraqi citizenship and move to Israel. More than 130,000 Jews applied. A year later, Iraq passed a law saying that property of those who went to Israel would be confiscated by the government, a move decried by the Israeli government as "legalized robbery."
Mr. Yissachar says that the Iraqi government still owes him money, but he is willing to give up the claim if Israel could use his lost assets as a bargaining chip against the claims of Palestinian refugees, a controversial plan the Israeli government has long supported.
The thousands of Jews from Arab countries who made their way to the new Israeli state were housed first in makeshift camps. Within a short period, they were given permanent housing and became fully absorbed into Israeli society.
Meanwhile, their displaced Palestinian counterparts had to live in refugee camps overseen by the United Nations. Today, Palestinian refugees and their heirs are numbered at about four million, with thousands dispersed in camps across the Mideast.
At last month's peace talks at Camp David, Md., Palestinian officials are reported to have claimed $40-billion (U.S.) in compensation for Palestinian refugees' lost property, now in Israeli hands.
After the summit, U.S. President Bill Clinton said that in addition to the establishment of an international fund to compensate Palestinian refugees, a peace accord might also call for the compensation of Jews from Arab lands.
The idea that Jews should be compensated for the property confiscated by Arab governments is not new. In the past, Israel has made intermittent efforts to register Jewish claims against the relevant governments.
Just how much property the Jews left behind in Arab countries is difficult to gauge. One estimate claims that the assets of the 100,000 Jews who abandoned property in Iraq, the wealthiest of the Jewish-Arab communities, are now worth $100-billion (U.S.). The most conservative figure places a price tag of $8-billion on the confiscated assets in Iraq.
The value of the Jewish property left behind in Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, and Yemen, while less than the Iraqi total, is also substantial.
But even if a compensation fund were set up, it is not clear that it would bring any direct benefit to the former owners and their heirs. Israel has long argued that the assets left behind in Arab countries should be used to cancel out some or all of the debt owed by Israel to the Palestinian refugees whose property it expropriated after the 1948 war.
In 1988, several organizations representing Jews from Arab countries, working with the World Jewish Congress, began compiling a registry of all Jewish-owned assets lost in the late 1940s and the 1950s in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen.
The registration forms ask respondents to list details of former communal property such as synagogues, schools, ritual baths and hospitals, as well as private assets including homes, bank accounts and jewellery. The questionnaire states: "The data will be used as the basis for a counterclaim to the Arab claims in the future final negotiations between Israel and the Arab states."
For Yehouda Shenhav, one of the founders of an Israeli political advocacy group for Jews from Arab lands, the notion that Israel might use his family's property to pay off its debts to the Palestinians is deeply disturbing.
A sociologist at Tel Aviv University, Professor Shenhav is the son of Iraqi-Jewish immigrants, and is a left-wing political activist. He objects to what he sees as the Israeli government's attempt to use his family's assets to reduce its debt to the Palestinians.
"These are not Palestinians who took their property, these are Arabs," he said. "Why do we include all Arabs in one box? They have nothing to do with each other. These are two different, separate issues. Why do we link them?"
What disturbs him most is that the Israeli government appears to be claiming the abandoned property for itself, without asking its former owners whether they agree to yield their ownership.
"If the government was fair, and [Prime Minister Ehud] Barak would say, 'Listen we want your help. There is no way you are going to get compensation. Are you going to give a hand?' -- that would be different," he said.
Prof. Shenhav is not alone in challenging Israeli attempts to use the abandoned Jewish property as a bargaining chip. These efforts are especially problematic to Jews from Arab lands living in Europe and North America.
Professor Heskel Haddad, an ophthalmologist in New York City, left Iraq with his family in the 1950s, leaving behind a great deal of property. That property, he says, belongs to his family, not Israel.
"It has no legal right to represent Jews from Arab countries living outside Israel, no legal right to link their claims to those of the Palestinians," he recently told the Jerusalem Report.
Thursday, 3 August 2000
Defection not likely to deter Israeli PM
Barak says he expected Foreign Minister's exit
GLOBE & MAIL
Thursday, August 3, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem -- A calmly defiant Prime Minister Ehud Barak vowed yesterday to continue with Mideast peace efforts, despite the resignation of one of his senior ministers and a parliamentary move to call early elections.
As he surveyed the debris of his shattered government coalition yesterday and contemplated his future, the 58-year-old former soldier seemed deaf to the chorus of politicians and experts singing his political requiem.
The resignation of Foreign Minister David Levy -- who quit over what he said were concessions over the fate of Jerusalem made by Mr. Barak in last month's peace talks with the Palestinians -- left the Prime Minister exposed and isolated on the battlefield of Israeli politics, but he looked and sounded far from beaten.
Smiling calmly, Mr. Barak said he expected Mr. Levy's exit (the 10th minister to quit the cabinet in the past year) and regretted it, but "I am committed, first of all, to moving the state of Israel forward and averting the danger of war, strengthening the country through peace agreements."
He also insisted that he had not made concessions at last month's peace talks in Camp David, Md. "Until now we have not made any concessions, we have not agreed to anything, nothing is signed, nothing is on paper."
Yet he is convinced that a historic peace deal with the Palestinians will be concluded before the agreed mid-September deadline, and that the Israeli people will approve it -- and approve of him -- in an election he will call as a referendum on the peace pact.
Despite what appears to be an uphill battle, Mr. Barak has a bit of breathing room. The Knesset adjourned yesterday for a three-month recess after giving approval to first reading of a bill calling for early elections (it must be approved twice more to take effect). This gives Mr. Barak until late October to finish an agreement with the Palestinians.
He can also use the interval to patch together a new coalition and stop the unravelling of his government, which began after most of his coalition partners quit over his decision to go to Camp David.
A former army chief of staff and the most decorated warrior in Israel's history, Mr. Barak's critics accuse him of behaving as if he were still in uniform, making decisions alone and barking orders instead of participating in the collegial give-and-take of cabinet government.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man he once commanded in the elite commando unit where they both served, suffered the same sort of criticism, which eventually led to his defeat at the polls to Mr. Barak. Mr. Netanyahu's demise began with the exact same overture -- the resignation of his foreign minister, the same David Levy, and the same vote by the Knesset in favour of early elections, at the same end-of-term session exactly two years ago.
But Mr. Barak insists that the comparison stops there.
"The Netanyahu government had effectively come to the end of its agenda and had lost the support of its most committed supporters on the extreme right," he said after the Knesset vote. "As a result, there was a feeling that it was there just in order to survive and the people decided to bring it down."
In comparison, he said, "This government is setting out on a tremendous push for profound changes, both in our political-security situation and on socio-economic issues."
But at a stormy meeting of his One Israel Party caucus, Mr. Barak was warned by colleagues that unless he can strike a peace accord, he will not be able to count on their support once the Knesset returns.
Leading the dissidents within his own party was Avraham Burg, the popular young Speaker of the Knesset, who refused to rule out a leadership challenge to Mr. Barak before the next election.
"The rosy picture which you are drawing is a black one," Mr. Burg told him. "You lack the qualities of leadership. If you want to pursue the process alone, you will find yourself alone. If you want other people with you, you must share your plans with them."
But Mr. Barak's critics cannot escape the fact that he won the last election, fulfilled his promise to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon after a 22-year occupation, and has come closer than any of his predecessors to a final peace treaty with the Palestinians.
He has vowed that any treaty will include a promise that the Palestinians will have no more demands of Israel -- something Mr. Barak is betting most Israelis will find too tempting to reject.
But Tommy Lapid, a popular MP for the small Shinui Party, warns that Mr. Barak cannot focus on security and military issues alone.
"Mr. Barak must understand that he cannot survive politically only on the basis of negotiations with the Palestinians," said Mr. Lapid. "He must conduct negotiations with the people living in this country."
GLOBE & MAIL
Thursday, August 3, 2000
By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem -- A calmly defiant Prime Minister Ehud Barak vowed yesterday to continue with Mideast peace efforts, despite the resignation of one of his senior ministers and a parliamentary move to call early elections.
As he surveyed the debris of his shattered government coalition yesterday and contemplated his future, the 58-year-old former soldier seemed deaf to the chorus of politicians and experts singing his political requiem.
The resignation of Foreign Minister David Levy -- who quit over what he said were concessions over the fate of Jerusalem made by Mr. Barak in last month's peace talks with the Palestinians -- left the Prime Minister exposed and isolated on the battlefield of Israeli politics, but he looked and sounded far from beaten.
Smiling calmly, Mr. Barak said he expected Mr. Levy's exit (the 10th minister to quit the cabinet in the past year) and regretted it, but "I am committed, first of all, to moving the state of Israel forward and averting the danger of war, strengthening the country through peace agreements."
He also insisted that he had not made concessions at last month's peace talks in Camp David, Md. "Until now we have not made any concessions, we have not agreed to anything, nothing is signed, nothing is on paper."
Yet he is convinced that a historic peace deal with the Palestinians will be concluded before the agreed mid-September deadline, and that the Israeli people will approve it -- and approve of him -- in an election he will call as a referendum on the peace pact.
Despite what appears to be an uphill battle, Mr. Barak has a bit of breathing room. The Knesset adjourned yesterday for a three-month recess after giving approval to first reading of a bill calling for early elections (it must be approved twice more to take effect). This gives Mr. Barak until late October to finish an agreement with the Palestinians.
He can also use the interval to patch together a new coalition and stop the unravelling of his government, which began after most of his coalition partners quit over his decision to go to Camp David.
A former army chief of staff and the most decorated warrior in Israel's history, Mr. Barak's critics accuse him of behaving as if he were still in uniform, making decisions alone and barking orders instead of participating in the collegial give-and-take of cabinet government.
Former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the man he once commanded in the elite commando unit where they both served, suffered the same sort of criticism, which eventually led to his defeat at the polls to Mr. Barak. Mr. Netanyahu's demise began with the exact same overture -- the resignation of his foreign minister, the same David Levy, and the same vote by the Knesset in favour of early elections, at the same end-of-term session exactly two years ago.
But Mr. Barak insists that the comparison stops there.
"The Netanyahu government had effectively come to the end of its agenda and had lost the support of its most committed supporters on the extreme right," he said after the Knesset vote. "As a result, there was a feeling that it was there just in order to survive and the people decided to bring it down."
In comparison, he said, "This government is setting out on a tremendous push for profound changes, both in our political-security situation and on socio-economic issues."
But at a stormy meeting of his One Israel Party caucus, Mr. Barak was warned by colleagues that unless he can strike a peace accord, he will not be able to count on their support once the Knesset returns.
Leading the dissidents within his own party was Avraham Burg, the popular young Speaker of the Knesset, who refused to rule out a leadership challenge to Mr. Barak before the next election.
"The rosy picture which you are drawing is a black one," Mr. Burg told him. "You lack the qualities of leadership. If you want to pursue the process alone, you will find yourself alone. If you want other people with you, you must share your plans with them."
But Mr. Barak's critics cannot escape the fact that he won the last election, fulfilled his promise to withdraw Israeli troops from Lebanon after a 22-year occupation, and has come closer than any of his predecessors to a final peace treaty with the Palestinians.
He has vowed that any treaty will include a promise that the Palestinians will have no more demands of Israel -- something Mr. Barak is betting most Israelis will find too tempting to reject.
But Tommy Lapid, a popular MP for the small Shinui Party, warns that Mr. Barak cannot focus on security and military issues alone.
"Mr. Barak must understand that he cannot survive politically only on the basis of negotiations with the Palestinians," said Mr. Lapid. "He must conduct negotiations with the people living in this country."
Thursday, 22 June 2000
Villagers stand together against being divided
U.N. border for Golan Heights splits houses
By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY, June 22, 2000
GHAJAR, Golan Heights -- Mapmakers from the United Nations, backed by the Lebanese government, insist that Mohammed Khatib's kitchen should be in Lebanon, but his living room and half his bedrooms should be across the border in the Golan Heights.
For the past two weeks, since U.N. officials tried to mark the frontier straight through the middle of three houses and up the main street, Ghajar has been on strike. The residents have kept a round-the-clock vigil at the village gate. They're armed with clubs and burning tires, ready to repel the mapmakers with force if necessary.
''We will not allow them to divide our village,'' says Hassan Fatali, 29, an English teacher at the village school. ''We will protect the village with our blood and our bodies. We will not allow them to divide one family into two.''
Residents says the tiny village has been around for more than 400 years, long before the British and French invented a country called Lebanon in 1923 and drew the international border on a map that now divides Ghajar.
If the U.N. prevails, the village school will be under Israeli control, but the clinic will be in Lebanon. Kasser Salman, a 30-year-old town worker, will be on the Israeli side, but his younger sisters, Najd and Majd, and his nieces and nephews, will be in Lebanon.
''We want to stay all united in one village, with one destiny,'' Salman says. ''They want to put two-thirds of the houses in Lebanon and cut them off from their land. What can a farmer do with a house and no land? If they do it, we'll just keep breaking down the fence. It's an impossible situation, and we'll never allow it.''
Ghajar is perched on a rocky promontory that plunges into a ravine where the fresh waters of the El Wizani Spring bubble into the Jordan River to the south. Its 1,700 villagers say the Hazbani River, 50 yards north, is the natural border and also the source of their water.
To add to the confusion, Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since 1967. The residents of Ghajar insist they are proud Syrians. Some of them, such as Amar Khahamouz, even fought for the Syrians and still have army papers issued in nearby Kuneitra. But when Israel seized the area, villagers all took Israeli citizenship and have been living quietly since. They tend their cows and sheep, study in Israeli universities and work in nearby Israeli towns and kibbutzim.
''In 1967, when our people tried to cross the Hazbani River, they were beaten back by the Lebanese army,'' Fatali said. ''Israel thought Ghajar was Lebanese, but Lebanon wouldn't accept us. They said we were Syrians, which we are.''
''We have nothing against our Lebanese brothers, but we are a Syrian village occupied by Israel, and all our property is registered in Syria,'' village council leader Salman Khatib says.
On Wednesday, Khatib presented a protest letter to U.N. Undersecretary-General Kieran Prendergast. Addressed to SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan, the letter says, ''We are ready to die, sir, and you and the international community will be responsible for that.''
Annan said Wednesday in Jerusalem that his cartographers' ''blue line'' was based on ''historic material, both here in Israel and in Paris and in London,'' but the villagers were unimpressed.
''The United Nations should be uniting people, not dividing them,'' says Adel Shanadi, 42, a Hebrew teacher at the village school. ''In Berlin, they destroyed the wall. Here they want to build one. We have become the victims of the United Nations. As far as we are concerned, they have become the Dividing Nations.''
Lebanese leaders have insisted that Israel withdraw from a number of small Lebanese enclaves still controlled by Israel since its dramatic pullout last month after 22 years of occupation. They have threatened not to deploy any of their troops in the area until the Ghajar dispute has been settled.
The villagers say they don't mind where they end up, as long as they are united, together with their land. Israel is unlikely to cede control of this area to Lebanon.
On Wednesday, birds of prey with golden-tipped wings could be seen through the barbed-wire border fence, circling above the ravine outside the village. The residents of Ghajar, once renowned throughout the Ottoman Empire for their talents as soothsayers, were trying not to see them as an omen of diplomatic bone picking to come.
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