Oh little town of silent streets, how still it is

USA TODAY
23 December 2001

By Matthew Kalman

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — In the city where the Bible says Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, Christians might not be in the right mood to celebrate this Christmas.

After 15 months of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel, Bethlehem is a city ravaged by grief, damaged by violence and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

Normally, just before Christmas, Manger Square would be packed with pilgrims standing in line for hours to enter the Church of the Nativity, descend into the grotto and kiss the silver star marking the traditional site of the holy infant's birth. But this year, often not a single pilgrim or foreign tourist is in evidence. The grotto is empty and eerily silent. Souvenir shops have been shuttered.

Michael Giacaman usually keeps his souvenir shop open on Christmas Eve well past midnight to serve the floods of tourists who flock to the traditional processions and singing of carols.

This year, his plans have changed: "I might open for half a day," says Giacaman, surveying the empty square from the doorway of his shop. Two years ago, with millennium celebrations at their height, he sold an armful of mother-and-pearl and olive wood souvenirs to visiting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Now, days go by without any sales.

"No tourists come here, so the shop sells nothing," he says. "We've had to export all our olive wood souvenirs to America."

In his office overlooking the square, Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser is counting the cost of the violence.

"We have 22 people dead and 150 injured," says Nasser. "The commercial center was badly damaged by Israeli tanks, which caused about $15 million of damage in 10 days. Our entire yearly budget is only $3 million. We have 70% unemployment, zero tourists in the hotels and maybe three restaurants open out of 86."

He says at least 500 residents have emigrated to escape the situation. "This Christmas, there is no peace, no joy and no stability," he sighs. "Fifty percent of our population are children, and they are the worst affected. I see it in my own grandchildren. They cannot sleep alone — they are haunted by the sounds of gunfire and missiles."

Most of Bethlehem's 28,000 residents are Muslims. Officially, they are united against the common enemy, Israel. Privately, many Christians blame their Muslim neighbors for inviting Israeli reprisals by shooting at the nearby Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Some Christians have been shot in mysterious circumstances, including an elderly former city councilor who refused to follow the instructions of the masked Palestinian gunmen who roam the streets.

The signs of increasing Muslim extremism are clear to see. Opposite the empty Church of the Nativity stands the Mosque of Omar, adorned with a huge banner pledging allegiance to the terrorist Islamic Jihad group, supposedly outlawed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "Our goal is Allah, our model is Mohammed, our constitution is the Koran, our path is Jihad (holy war)," proclaims the banner. "Dying for the sake of Allah is our highest wish."

Such a public display of Islamic fundamentalism in one of Christendom's holiest sites would have been unthinkable even a year ago.

As this Christmas approaches, the people of Bethlehem have seen too much death to focus on that holiest of births.

"Each year, we are newly born with Christ in this city," says Nasser. "Bethlehem belongs to all Christians. They should come and visit us, particularly now. We need their solidarity to survive."

But the only visitors are people such as Trevor Baumgartner, a 27-year-old child-care provider from Seattle who has come to Bethlehem for the first time to join a group protesting human rights abuses in Israel. He has been in Bethlehem for several days of political training and has not yet visited the Church of the Nativity.

"We here are choosing to engage in this fight through non-violent theory and practice on the ground, and part of that is being here," he says. "I guess you could call this a pilgrimage."

Arafat vows to defy Israel's ban

23 December 2001

By Matthew Kalman USA TODAY

BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Sunday that he would defy an Israeli ban and travel here for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

Israeli officials have demanded that Arafat arrest the assassins of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi before they allow him to leave Ramallah. He has been confined to that West Bank city since early this month, when Israel destroyed his helicopters and demanded he fight Palestinian terrorism.

"No one can prevent me from reaching Bethlehem," Arafat said in Ramallah. Although he is Muslim, Arafat has gone to Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations each year since 1995, when the town was turned over to Palestinian authorities. "It is my duty, and I will see to it that I fulfill it," he said. "I will go there even if I have to go on foot."

The mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, said he would boycott midnight Mass tonight at the Church of the Nativity — believed to mark the birthplace of Jesus — if Arafat can't attend.

Last Christmas, the Israeli secret service escorted Arafat's convoy by road back from Bethlehem to Ramallah because his helicopter was grounded by driving rain. This year, Israeli tanks and ground forces are blockading Ramallah to prevent Arafat from leaving the city.

Israel has lifted restrictions on Palestinian Christians traveling in and out of the West Bank, so they can attend Christmas services in Jerusalem or Bethlehem.

Israel said Arafat had been given information on the assassins who killed Zeevi on Oct. 17 but was doing nothing to apprehend them, to disband terrorist organizations or to stop attacks on Israel.

Arafat has been under pressure from the United States and the European Union to crack down on militants. This month, he ordered radical groups to end suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. Over the weekend, both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations agreed to suspend such attacks in Israel.

Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdul Rahman said he had asked Pope John Paul II "to intervene to stop this attack on religious traditions and against the Palestinian people."

Also Sunday, a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed as "imaginary and without any foundation" newspaper reports of a secret peace agreement between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and a Palestinian official. The reports said Peres and Abu Ala, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, had agreed on the establishment of a Palestinian state "within eight months" in Gaza and the 42% of the West Bank currently under full or partial Palestinian control.

The latest wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence is in its 15th month.

Arafat's call for peace met with skepticism

USA TODAY
16 December 2001

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

JERUSALEM — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in a televised address Sunday to the Israeli and Palestinian people, called for an end to "armed attacks" and suicide bombings against Israel.

He also called for peace talks and said he wished to see a real Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital coexisting with Israel.

Arafat's address crushed hopes that he would issue a clear call for an end to the 15-month intifada (uprising) against Israel. He did not mention Hamas or Islamic Jihad by name. The militant Palestinian groups have been declared terrorist organizations by the United States and the European Union.

The Palestinian leader has been under intense pressure from the international community to rein in terrorists who have stepped up a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians.

In response to Sunday's address, Israeli and U.S. leaders said they were still waiting for Arafat to take action against terrorists. "Nobody heard anything we haven't heard before," Israeli Cabinet Minister Matan Vilnai said. "The proof will be in his actions, not his words."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Arafat's words "constructive" but said, "He must turn these important words into effective and sustained action against terror and violence."

Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking on Fox News Sunday, blamed the Palestinians for the breakdown of truce talks mediated by special envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni. Powell recalled Zinni to Washington over the weekend amid a new wave of Palestinian attacks and Israeli retaliation. "We sent Gen. Zinni over to try to get that dialogue going, and all of that was blown up by these terrorist organizations on the Palestinian side," he said.

Reading a prepared statement in a broadcast marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Arafat said, "I reaffirm the comprehensive and immediate cessation of all armed attacks, and I renew my call for a comprehensive halt of any attacks or operations, especially the suicide attacks which we have always condemned."

Arafat called for a renewal of the dialogue that produced "the peace of the brave" — a reference to his 1993 peace accord with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. "We are not asking for the impossible, and we do not pose any threat to Israel's existence," he assured Israelis.

Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian security forces closed down offices and institutions linked to Hamas, which has taken responsibility for a wave of recent attacks in which more than 40 Israelis have died.

Israeli forces, meanwhile, continued military operations in Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza. More than a dozen Palestinians were killed over the weekend. Last week, Israel said it was cutting ties with Arafat and would be responsible for the security of its citizens.

U.S. envoy weighs giving up his cease-fire mission

13 December 2001

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

RAMALLAH, West Bank — U.S. peace envoy Anthony Zinni was considering whether to continue his 2-week cease-fire mission in the face of Israel's refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leader's failure to carry out his promise to close down extremist installations.

Zinni has been trying to negotiate a cease-fire and create an atmosphere in which Arafat could move decisively against the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. He will decide by Sunday whether to give up on his efforts. The United States and Israel have labeled both Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations. They are responsible for a new wave of bloody attacks against Israelis.

Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles Thursday at security targets in Gaza and in the West Bank, including a Palestinian government building in Ramallah and an office of Arafat's Fatah organization in Jenin. The attacks were retaliation for Wednesday's terrorist ambush near an Israeli settlement that killed 10 Israelis.

A U.S. official familiar with Zinni's efforts said the main stumbling block to implementing a cease-fire was Arafat's refusal to make the "hard decision" to end terrorist activity.

But Israel also came under renewed scrutiny for declaring it will cut off contact with Arafat. Secretary of State Colin Powell directed Zinni and U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer on Thursday to seek an explanation from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Israeli Cabinet's action. He also referred to Arafat as "the elected head of the Palestinian Authority."

Israeli Cabinet ministers announced early Thursday that contact with Arafat was being cut. But they stressed there were no plans to topple him. "We have reached the point where Arafat has ceased being relevant as far as Israel is concerned to deal with the whole question of terrorism," Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said. "From today onward, we will do everything we have to as a nation to defend ourselves."

Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a senior Arafat adviser, called Israel's new attacks "a formal declaration of war."

Europe adds Hamas, Islamic Jihad to terrorist list

December 11, 2001

By Matthew Kalman and Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY

JERUSALEM — The European Union labeled the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad "terrorist networks" for the first time Monday. The EU demanded that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dismantle the groups and order an end to armed attacks on Israel.

The decision by the EU to add Hamas and Islamic Jihad to its list of international terrorist groups — a list that also includes Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization — puts Europe more closely in line with U.S. policy, which strongly supports Israel. The move, Israelis say, also indicates that Western nations are united in their frustration with Arafat.

"I think certainly the American effort here and the terrorist attacks last week were eye-opening" to European foreign ministers, said Danny Seaman, director of Israel's government press office. "Many of them are coming to the conclusion that Arafat isn't doing anything."

Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ziad Abu Zayad said the EU is mistaken in its impression of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He said the two organizations should be regarded as Islamic resistance to Israeli occupation: "These groups are not international terrorist groups."

Israel didn't escape criticism Monday from the EU, which often has blamed the Israelis for violence in the region that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives in 14 months. The EU foreign ministers called on Israel to withdraw its forces from Palestinian-ruled areas, freeze the size of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and end its practice of having security forces assassinate suspected Palestinian terrorists.

Meanwhile, violence on both sides continued. Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian teenager and toddler Monday in an attempt to assassinate an alleged Islamic Jihad terrorist in Hebron in the West Bank.

In the attack, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying Mohammed Ayoub Sidr, 26, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad who Israel says is responsible for suicide bombings in Jerusalem and shooting attacks near Hebron. Sidr was injured in the attack. Burhan Himuni, 3, who was riding in the car, and Shadi Arafe, 13, who was in a taxi nearby, were killed.

In the past 2 weeks, Israeli civilians have been hit by a wave of suicide bomb attacks.

Islamic Jihad took responsibility for an attack Sunday in Haifa that injured 29 people. Hamas admitted responsibility for suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that killed 25 a week earlier. Israel retaliated after last week's bombings with fighter-jet attacks on Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad installations.

Also Monday, as U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni met with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in an attempt to restart peace negotiations, Palestinian forces fired several mortars into Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.

Saudis airing anti-Semitic TV series for Ramadan Based on Protocols of the Elders of Zion

The National Post (Canada)
December 7, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

A major Arabic TV channel has produced a 30-part dramatization of the notorious anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to be broadcast throughout the Arab world as a special program for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

Horseman Without a Horse is a multi-million-dollar production starring leading Egyptian actor Muhammad Subhi in 14 different roles with a large international cast from Egypt, Syria and France. The program was made by Arab Radio and Television (ART) a popular satellite channel based in Jedda, Saudi Arabia.

Roz Al-Youssuf, an Egyptian weekly, said in an admiring preview that the series successfully debunks Jewish claims that the Protocols – the supposed minutes of the Jewish clique that controls the world – were a forgery invented by anti-Semitic propagandists in Tsarist Russia.

"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations and racism," the paper reported.

The Protocols, which first surfaced in Russia at the end of the 19th century, have fed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that suggest Jews seek to exercise world domination through control of the media, banking system and political movements.

They were popular in Nazi Germany and are required reading among neo-Nazi groups to this day. The Protocols have sold thousands of copies in several Arabic editions and are particularly popular in Egypt and Syria.

News of the ART production comes as Dubai TV continues its nightly broadcast of Terrorman – a Ramadan satire depicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, drinking the blood of Arab children.

Since Sept. 11, one often-repeated fantasy that has been pushed is that the Israeli Mossad was behind the World Trade Center attack – a gruesome twist on the Jewish conspiracy theory that finds its most potent statement in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

U.S. raids Texas charity called front for Hamas

USA TODAY
4 December 2001

By Judy Keen and Matthew Kalman

President Bush, moving to fulfill his pledge to dismantle all terrorist groups with global reach, announced Tuesday that authorities had raided a Texas charity he said is a front for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The announcement of the first U.S. crackdown on a U.S. group with no known links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network underscores the administration's anger with Palestinians' role in Middle East violence.

On Tuesday, Israel launched a second wave of airstrikes on Palestinian Authority facilities in the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for weekend suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that killed 25 Israeli civilians.

U.S. officials said action against the charity was accelerated after Hamas, which is on a State Department list of terror groups, claimed credit for last weekend's bombings.

Bush said the Treasury Department has frozen the assets of the Holy Land Foundation, based in Richardson, Texas. The group raised $13 million from Americans last year. Authorities closed its offices in Texas, California, New Jersey and Illinois. They also blocked the accounts of a bank and holding company with ties to Hamas that are based in the West Bank.

Bush said the money raised by the foundation helped Hamas recruit and train suicide bombers and support their families. "Those who do business with terror will do no business with the United States or anywhere else the United States can reach," he said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement from the foundation denying that it gives money to Hamas. The statement said the foundation "has been unfairly targeted in the nationwide smear campaign to undermine Muslims and the institutions that serve them."

In a speech to Congress on Sept. 20, Bush said the war on terrorism "begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." Michael Zeldin, an official in the Clinton Justice Department, called Tuesday's action "the first objective proof" that Bush plans to go after all terrorists.

In the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeared to enter a dramatic new phase Tuesday as Israel branded Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority a "supporter of terrorism" and stepped up airstrikes on Palestinian targets.

Two Palestinians were reported killed and dozens injured as Israeli helicopter gunships and fighter bombers fired missiles at eight Palestinian facilities in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel said the buildings had been used as terror bases. "All eight targets that were attacked were installations of security forces operating at the behest of the Palestinian Authority," Israeli army spokesman Ron Kittrey said.

Israeli security officials said a third of Israel's casualties in the past 14 months of violence have been suffered in attacks by "moderate" groups allied to Arafat.

Israeli bulldozers also wrecked the runway at Gaza International Airport. This move and Monday's destruction of Arafat's helicopters in Gaza City effectively consigned the Palestinian leader and other senior officials to the Palestinian-controlled territories.

Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said attacks on Palestinian installations prevented Arafat from meeting Israel's demand that he round up terrorists. He accused Israel of "tying Mr. Arafat's arms and legs, throwing him into the sea and telling him to swim."

The Palestinian Authority said it rounded up more than 100 militants after the weekend attacks, but Israel said those arrested were not senior commanders.

Israeli officials insisted they had no intention of toppling Arafat, but they said Israel had put peace talks on hold until it had completed its "war against the terrorism on our own doorstep."

Making his first public comments since the Israeli offensive began, Arafat hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, telling CNN, "He doesn't want a peace process to start."

The new Israeli policy was hammered out at a stormy Cabinet meeting where right-wing ministers led by Sharon voted to adopt a resolution branding the Palestinian Authority "an entity that supports terrorism, and must be dealt with accordingly."

Labor Party ministers led by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres refused to participate in the vote. Peres told reporters in Bucharest Tuesday that his party might consider quitting Sharon's coalition if it tries to topple Arafat. Former Israeli foreign minister David Levy, a member of the Labor Party, worried about the Israeli move linking the Palestinian Authority with terrorism. "Is Arafat a partner, or is he our bin Laden?"

Palestinian leaders said Israel is making a grave mistake. "It is a most dangerous decision," said Hussein A-Sheikh, senior Fatah leader on the West Bank. "Israel now regards the entire Palestinian people as the enemy."

Keen reported from Washington; Kalman reported from Jerusalem.

Boys killed on walk to school as Israeli tank shell explodes

DAILY MAIL, November 23, 2001

From Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

FIVE Palestinian boys were killed yesterday when one of them apparently kicked an unexploded Israeli tank shell as they walked to school in the Gaza Strip.

Witnesses said the youngsters - aged seven to 14 and all members of the same extended family - were blown to pieces by the blast.

Ahmed al-Asttal, a 22-year- old farmer wounded in the blast and a relative of the dead boys, said: 'I thought that the ground was shaking beneath my feet and I was so afraid.

'I couldn't walk. I looked at myself and I saw blood all over my clothes.'

A Palestinian commander in the area, Colonel Khaled Abu al-Ula, said the boys, including two pairs of brothers, had kicked or tripped over the unexploded round.

'After an investigation by our forces and by our explosives expert we can say that it is a tank shell which had not exploded,' he said.

He blamed Israel for the tragedy, saying its army 'continues to fire these bombs and shells at residential areas'.

Israeli officials expressed regret and offered condolences to the families.

But they said if the blast was caused by a tank shell, it had probably been fired earlier in the week in response to a Palestinian mortar attack from the area, in the Khan Younis refugee refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.

'There was no Israeli military activity in that area today,' said Israeli government spokesman Arye Mekel.

Palestinians have been firing mortars at Israeli soldiers and settlements every day for the past week, often from positions within civilian areas.

A youth who saw the carnage, 15-year- old Fateh al-Astel, said: 'We looked behind us and saw children running.

'I saw dismembered bodies. Half a body here, hands several metres away, another half a body in another place.'

Schoolchildren gathered in the crater left by the explosion, picking up the burnt remains of the boys' backpacks and school books.

Last night, Palestinian president Yasser Arafat blamed Israel for the youngsters' deaths.

He accused it of continued violations and warned of 'an escalation which is dangerous'.

Palestinian officials had initially said the boys were killed when an Israeli tank opened fire, but later admitted the unexploded ordnance had been lying there for some days.

Gunmen assassinate Israel's tourism minister

17 October 2001

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

JERUSALEM — The Middle East was plunged deeper into crisis after a Palestinian group assassinated a right-wing Israeli Cabinet minister in a Jerusalem hotel early Wednesday. It was the first time an Israeli minister has been killed by an Arab terrorist. "The situation today has changed, and will never again be like it was yesterday," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told ministers at an emergency Cabinet session called after the murder of Rehavam Zeevi, 75.

Israel's tourism minister and leader of the National Alliance party was shot in the face at point-blank range outside his hotel room. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist group that is the second-largest faction of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed responsibility. It said it assassinated Zeevi in revenge for Israel's killing of the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa. He died in a missile attack by an Israeli helicopter gunship at his West Bank office in Ramallah in August.

The United States condemned the killing and called on Arafat to rein in terrorists.

"Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority must move now to find and arrest all those responsible for this act," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.

Sharon and left-wing opposition leader Yossi Sarid also said Arafat must immediately arrest those responsible or face serious consequences. "Only despicable terrorists can dream of assassinating an elected official in a democratic state," Sharon said at a somber session of the Knesset.

He added, "The full responsibility falls squarely on Arafat, as someone who has controlled, and continues to control, terrorism, and as one who has not — to this day — taken even one serious step to prevent terrorism."

Israel reimposed a blockade on Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank. The blockade had been lifted 2 days ago as part of a truce Sept. 26.

Late Wednesday, a suicide bomber wounded two Israeli soldiers and killed himself on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip.

However, despite his accusation, Sharon appeared to rule out immediate military retaliation, giving the Palestinian leader a chance to follow through on his vow to apprehend the killers.

Zeevi and his seven-member party, angry at Sharon for new concessions to the Palestinians, resigned from the government Monday. Their resignation was due to take effect Wednesday. After the assassination, Zeevi's colleague Avigdor Lieberman said he would stay in the coalition.

Born in Jerusalem, Zeevi served in the pre-state militia that fought for an independent Jewish state. He was a career soldier, rising to the rank of major general. Zeevi served as adviser to several prime ministers before entering the Knesset in 1988 as leader of the ultranationalist Moledet Party. The party advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, by agreement, from the West Bank and Gaza.

Zeevi was found mortally wounded outside the door of his room at the Hyatt Hotel by his wife, Yael.

The Rev. Andrew Hocking, a tourist from California, was staying in the room opposite Zeevi's. He said he went into the hall when he heard Yael Zeevi's screams. "I thought she was being attacked; that's what it sounded like," he said, adding that he did not hear gunfire. "I saw her kneeling over him, and he'd obviously been shot. Blood was everywhere. ... It was pretty obvious to me he was already dead."

Palestinian police begin cracking down

By Matthew Kalman,
USA TODAY, 9 October 2001

JERUSALEM — Thousands of students took to the streets of Gaza on Monday to demonstrate support for Osama bin Laden and denounce U.S.-led strikes on targets in Afghanistan. Palestinian police, under orders from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to maintain calm, shot dead two demonstrators and wounded 50 others. Israel has called on Arafat to enforce a cease-fire by reining in and arresting militants who have been conducting attacks against Israelis.

Palestinian police opened fire with live ammunition and tear gas. Palestinian officials banned filming of the riots to suppress footage of Palestinians hailing bin Laden as their hero at an anti-American demonstration organized by the extremist Hamas group. Hamas has historically been Arafat's rival and pledged to wreck his interim peace deals with Israel.

Palestinian leaders are still smarting from international condemnation of the celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the USA.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the Gaza protests would test the Palestinian Authority's ability to control militants.

Israeli leaders, who expressed full support for the U.S. campaign against the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, said their security officials had been sharing operational anti-terror intelligence with U.S. officials since the attacks.

Israeli officials said they believed their country is no more vulnerable as a result of the attacks in Afghanistan. "Israel is not participating in this war and people should remain calm for the moment," Ben-Eliezer said. "We do not expect any attack on Israel."

Palestinian leaders try to repair image

12 September 2001

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

JERUSALEM — Palestinian leaders moved Wednesday to repair the political damage done by news footage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after hearing of Tuesday's terror strikes in the USA. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority's president, was filmed donating blood for the victims. Arab League spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi hastily organized a candlelight vigil at the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem nearly 24 hours after hundreds of Israelis flocked to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in a spontaneous outpouring of grief. Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman used tougher measures to avoid an international backlash in response to apparent Palestinian jubilation. Abdel Rahman called international news agencies and said the safety of their staff could not be guaranteed unless they withdrew the embarrassing footage of Palestinian police firing joyfully in the air.

Such threats appeared to succeed in suppressing immediate release of video showing large street celebrations in Ramallah, Bethlehem and other West Bank towns.

Israelis, hundreds of whom lined up to donate blood and leave flowers at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Tuesday's strikes may have helped convey to Americans a little of what they have been feeling over the past year of violence. The Palestinian territories have been closed for most of that time to prevent attacks inside Israel, and the Israeli government has targeted and assassinated more than 50 suspected terrorists.

"Now that they are experiencing this horror, Americans and other foreign countries might begin to realize how we Israelis feel every day," said Shira Buchler, 23, a teacher in Jerusalem. "The only way to rid the world of terror is to hunt down these animals before they destroy us all. If we keep giving Arafat chance after chance, the terror groups he is giving sanctuary to will just grow and grow."

Former U.S. secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger hinted that the United States might have to adopt measures similar to Israel's. "This really is a war with terrorism, and we need to be prepared to act as if we are at war," Eagleburger told CNN on Tuesday. "And that does not necessarily mean that you have to strike back only at those that you know were the perpetrators of this thing."

Using Saudi financier Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, where bin Laden has received safe haven, as a starting point, Eagleburger suggested a policy of targeting terrorists and the governments that support them. "We do know that the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan has mothered Osama Bin Laden for years," he said. "They need to be hit."

He added that the policy should not be limited to bin Laden: "There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them, even if they are not immediately, directly involved in this thing."

Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University in Israel said this sounds similar to Israeli policy towards Palestinian terrorism. "There are clear indications that the U.S. public and officials are suddenly aware of the Israeli situation," he said. "Potentially, it's a very fundamental shift, with the U.S. taking the lead rather than staying neutral and acting cautiously."

He said that Americans, armed with a new understanding of the "horrifying nature of terror" and the willingness of people to commit suicide in order to kill thousands, may understand the thinking in Israel. "Previously, it was not understandable from the perspective of America that this hatred could exist and that Israel was doing its best to protect itself from that," Steinberg said.

Israel intensified its hunt for Palestinian militants Wednesday. It raided a West Bank town and two nearby villages. Seven Palestinians, including three suspected Islamic militants and an 11-year-old girl, were killed.

Senior Palestinian officials accused Israel of exploiting the world's horror over the terror in the USA to step up its strikes against Palestinian targets. Ashrawi said Israel is "using this tremendous tragedy as a cover for an escalation against the Palestinians."

In Bethlehem's Dehaishe refugee camp, Palestinian community leaders condemned the strikes in the USA and said there had been no celebrations Tuesday. But even after much prompting in Arabic to stay on message, ordinary Palestinians were unable to stifle their pleasure at America's downfall.

"I've never been so happy in my life as when I heard the news," said Khalil Abu Laban, a father of seven. "The Americans are responsible for everything. 'The friend of your enemy is your enemy,' " he said, quoting from religious texts. "I am against killing of innocent civilians, but the Americans are bad. This is good for us, the Palestinians."

"The Jews are assassinating, destroying and wounding Palestinians every day," said his wife, Aisheh. "Let them feel the suffering we have been feeling for a long time."

Suicide bomb dismays Arab citizens of Israel

By Matthew Kalman

USA TODAY 10 September 2001

DEIR HANNA, Israel - The shock waves of Sunday's suicide bombing in a train station in northern Israel were being felt Monday by the million or more Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens.

Initial reports said the terrorist who blew himself up in Nahariya, killing three off-duty Israeli soldiers and injuring dozens more, was 48-year-old Muhammed Shaker Habashi, from the village of Abu Snan, about 30 miles from here in the Galilee, the northern part of Israel.

Israeli Arab leaders and organizations lined up Monday to denounce the attack. "It's very serious," said Shawki Khatib, chairman of the Israeli Arab Leadership Monitoring Committee, which represents Israel's Arab citizens. "We condemn such people, and we spit them out - not only those who carry out such attacks, but even those who think in this direction."

Khatib and other Israeli Arab leaders warn against concluding that Sunday's attack indicated a new extremist tendency within their community. "This does not indicate a trend and it is not a turning point," said Abdel Malik Dahamshe, one of 10 Arab members elected to the Knesset, Israel's 120-seat parliament. "We have proven ourselves for 53 years. We don't need to prove afresh twice each day that we are citizens."

Israeli observers said Sunday's suicide bombing has generated greater concern throughout the country that the attack by one of their own will add a dangerous new dimension to the 11-month conflict. Writing in Monday's daily Ma'ariv, Israeli commentator Chemi Shalev said, "For much of the public, a suicide bomber from among the Israeli Arabs is a nightmare that has come true."

Relations between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority have always been complex. From the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 until 1966, Israeli Arabs lived under military rule. The Druse, members of a religion that grew out of Islam centuries ago but that Muslims no longer recognize as part of Islam, make up about 10% of Israeli Arabs. Christians represent 12%-15% of the Arab citizens. All have long complained of discrimination by the Jewish majority. Despite recent attempts to bridge the gap, Arab Israeli communities suffer from a deficiency of health, welfare, education and transport services.

Palestinian activists had been largely unsuccessful, until lately, in their attempts to exploit the feelings of alienation among Israeli Arabs. Despite feelings of solidarity with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who often are relatives, Israeli Arabs have been absent from any active role in the recent intifada, or uprising, that has claimed more than 700 lives, most of them Palestinians.

However, with the rise of the extreme religious Islamic movement in the past decade, these feelings have shifted toward political activity on behalf of the Palestinian struggle for independence.

Fundamentalist Muslim groups are trying to enlist young Palestinians to fight and even sacrifice themselves for their cause: an independent Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. For the first time, observers say, it appears their message is reaching inside Israel to Arab citizens.

"This confers legitimacy on those on the Jewish side who recently began to claim that Israeli Arabs are a fifth column," said Elie Rekhess, a professor of Israeli Arab politics at Tel Aviv University, alluding to a group within a society that helps the enemy.

Thirteen Israeli Arabs were shot dead by Israeli police during a wave of riots in northern Israel last October. The unrest died down after a few days. Since then, Israeli Arabs have been largely quiet, especially after the Israeli government set up an official commission of inquiry into last year's riots. In Deir Hanna, Sunday's suicide bombing hit especially hard. The village's 15,000 Muslims, Christians and Druse were still reeling from the arrests Thursday of four local 16-year-olds on suspicion of planting a bomb at a major intersection 3 miles away.

Israeli security officials say they believe the teens were recruited by a Fatah group loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Jenin. Two of the teens have confessed, Israeli police and their Israeli Arab lawyer say.

But Rasmiyeh Khatib, whose nephew is among the teen suspects under arrest, said Israeli Arabs are good citizens. "We are loyal to the state. We don't want problems. My nephew is a good boy who was led astray. I'm sure he didn't know what he was doing. They played with his head."

In Abu Snan, home to the suspected suicide bomber Habashi, there was outrage that the village could should have produced a terrorist. Most residents are Druse. The highest-ranking Druse soldier in the country, Maj. Gen. Yusef Mishlev, comes from the village.

Sheik Mohanna, the local Druse leader whose son died fighting for the Israeli army in Lebanon, expressed the shock of his community. "Abu Snan has given its best sons for the sake of the country. We are in trauma here in the village. Such people have no place amongst us, none."

Hostility comes across, down

20 June 2001

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

JERUSALEM — When Palestinians turn to the crossword pages of their daily newspapers, they may be looking for a few minutes' respite from the grinding Middle East conflict and a chance to flex their literary muscles. But a new analysis of the word games in the Palestinian press reveals that even during their hard-earned leisure time, readers are being fed a diet of anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic rhetoric.

One clue in the mass-circulation Al-Quds newspaper on Dec. 20 asked for a three-letter word to describe "the Jewish trait (spelled backward)." The answer: gdr, an Arabic word meaning "treachery" or "someone who stabs you in the back." The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida asked on Feb. 18, 1999, for a word to describe the "Jewish center for eternalizing the holocaust and the lies." The answer: Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.

The crossword puzzles are just one reflection of the deep-seated antagonism toward Jews and the existence of the state of Israel — hostility that has remained untempered in the years since the signing in 1993 of the first peace agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

"The Palestinian media serves as a window into the internal Palestinian world," says Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, the group that produced the report. "These problematic messages are not published in the Palestinian Authority newspapers during times of particular tension. Rather, these have appeared over the past number of years as a routine part of Palestinian culture and amusement, reflecting normative Palestinian thinking."

Since September, when Palestinian-Israeli fighting escalated into a new regional conflict, Israelis have accused the Palestinian media of actively inciting anti-Israel feeling by depicting heroic images of Arab terrorists and Palestinian children with guns. In the past six months, at least 458 people have died, 375 of them Palestinians.

Limor Livnat, Israeli education minister, says the failure to accept the existence of Israel is embedded in the Palestinian education system, including 14 textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority in September 2000 with financial backing from the European Union.

"These schoolbooks do not teach coexistence and compromise with Israel, but faithfulness and commitment to the struggle for the 'liberation of Palestine,' " Livnat says. "Peace with Israel is not presented as a goal or discussed as an option. Israel's name does not appear on any regional map, and its land is included in the 'state of Palestine.' "

Historical events also have sometimes been revised in the crossword puzzles, apparently to reflect Palestinian views. A mentally unstable Australian Christian tourist who in 1969 set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, was described as a "settler" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 6, 2000). Most of the people referred to as "settlers" in Palestinian areas are Jews. And the murder of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra refugee camp in Beirut by Lebanese Christian Falangists in 1982 was described as a "massacre carried out by the Zionists" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 9, 1999). Palestinians blame Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was defense minister at the time of the massacre, for allowing the Falangist attack.

Perhaps the most insidious references from the Israeli standpoint are those that mention towns, deserts, mountains and rivers. When Al-Hayat Al-Jadida asked for a five-letter word describing a "Palestinian desert (spelled backward)" on May 26, 2000, the answer was the Negev, in southern Israel.

Critics say the refusal to identify geographical locations as part of Israel reinforces the idea that the Jewish state is not a legitimate entity, despite Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's assurance to then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993 that "the PLO recognizes the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security."

For their part, the mainstream Israeli media appear to have accepted the idea of an independent Palestinian state, although the label "Palestine" still is largely taboo in the media because it is seen as implying the destruction of Israel. Although racist statements about Palestinians occur in the Israeli media, they are rare and are condemned.

Hafez Barghouti, editor of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, says the reference to the Holocaust as "lies" was a simple typing error. "The word should have been butula — heroism. But the typist changed one letter by mistake and it came out as batala — lies or denial," Barghouti says. That incident aside, he says he cannot see what the fuss is about.

"They steal our land, they kick us out, they kill us, and now they come to settle accounts with us over words," Barghouti says. "It's very strange that they find time to go over crossword puzzles. ... Instead of searching through crosswords, they should examine the graves of the Palestinians who have died since September to find out how they were killed."

Rajoub vs Arafat

Palestinian leaflet may reveal rift

Statement accuses security chief of U.S.-endorsed plot to oust Arafat

By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY

30 May 2001 - Page 7A

JERUSALEM -- The powerful Palestinian security chief in the West Bank was accused late Wednesday of heading a U.S.-Israeli plot to overthrow Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Col. Jibril Rajoub, 54, commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security force in the West Bank, was denounced in a signed leaflet issued by a faction of his own political group, the Fatah movement, which reports to Arafat and has the loyalty of most Palestinians.

The leaflet could be the first sign of a serious split within the highest ranks of the Palestinian Authority, which governs some parts of the Palestinian territories and seeks an independent Palestinian state.

The leaflet alleges that there is an ''Israeli plan based on assassinating brother Abu Amar (Arafat) or deporting him from the homeland to create an alternative leadership that would be prepared to succumb to America and Israel.''

It names Arafat's deputy Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as a co-conspirator with Rajoub in the alleged plot to overthrow Arafat, citing ''the recent visit of Abu Mazen to America and his meeting with (Secretary of State) Colin Powell, who proposed to him the American plan.''

The statement calls on Rajoub's estimated 10,000 armed loyalists to rise up against him. The men who back Rajoub represent a significant portion -- perhaps as much as 20% -- of the armed Palestinian forces in the West Bank and Gaza. Rajoub's men are the only Palestinian security agency that has not been accused by Israel of participating in the current uprising, which has claimed more than 550 lives. Contacted by telephone late Wednesday, Rajoub called the leaflet a ''shameless forgery.''

He said, ''Fatah has nothing to do with such a big lie. It's not published by Fatah.''

But sources within Fatah, which is divided among various factions, confirmed the leaflet's authenticity.

Some Israeli politicians have openly talked about the need to replace Arafat with a more pragmatic leader willing to sign a peace deal.

This is not the first time Rajoub has been mentioned as a potential successor to Arafat, 72. Four years ago, the Palestinian leader formally dismissed Rajoub after the younger man made a high-profile visit to the USA and was touted as a possible heir to Arafat. But Rajoub was soon reinstated.

Since then, Rajoub's power has grown and he has played a central role in diplomatic negotiations and security coordination with Israel and the United States. Many of his men have received CIA training as part of the CIA's security coordination effort.

Analysts were surprised that such a document would surface, and some expressed doubts about the leaflet's authenticity. They agreed, however, that many Palestinian activists are concerned that a deal to end the eight-month intifada, or uprising, without tangible gains is in the works.

''There are certainly fears that Israel and the United States are trying to undermine Arafat, but I would be extremely surprised if these fears would be expressed in a document like this,'' said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland.

David Schenker, an expert on Palestinian politics at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also expressed caution about the document.

If it is authentic, however, the leaflet reflected ''splits that until now have been below the surface,'' Schenker said.

Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian security commanders met in Gaza late Wednesday for the second time this week to discuss security. Both sides said the meetings would continue next week.

Kidnappings in Gaza

U.S., British citizens targeted in Mideast

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

May 29, 2001

JERUSALEM — Palestinian forces intensified their attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday as diplomats made progress in efforts to renew negotiations to end eight months of violence. In the Gaza Strip, Newsweek bureau chief Josh Hammer, an American, and British photographer Gary Knight, were kidnapped and held for five hours by a group loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Hammer, Knight and a Palestinian driver and translator were kidnapped by the Fatah Hawks in the Gaza Strip.

They were told their detention was a "symbolic" kidnapping to protest British and American support for Israel in the current Palestinian revolt.

Hammer and Knight had gone to Gaza to interview the Hawks as the militia members fired mortars at Israeli settlements.

The group released them unharmed, but warned that U.S. and British nationals would be targeted in the future. "We have no other choice but to strike at and threaten American and British interests," the Hawks said in a statement. The group also denounced U.S. and British "bias" in favor of Israel.

Hammer said Palestinian officials told him Arafat was outraged over the kidnapping. Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Palestinian security chief, quoted Arafat as saying, "This isn't the Palestinian way."

Just before the journalists were released, two Palestinian suicide bombers died near an Israeli settlement in the southern Gaza Strip as they tried to attack an Israeli military position.

One blew himself up as he approached the soldiers; the second man was shot and killed. No others were injured.

In Jericho, a Palestinian was killed by an Israeli undercover unit.

In the West Bank, Palestinians were blamed in separate drive-by shootings. Two women who were citizens of both the United States and Israel were killed in one; an Israeli man died in another.

Israeli officials said there had been more than 100 attacks by Palestinian forces since Israel called a unilateral cease-fire last week.

Meanwhile, according to reports out of a U.S.-mediated meeting of senior officials from both sides in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the Palestinians rejected an Israeli call for a cease-fire.

Wedding disaster; 'The floor just opened up ... then I saw my brothers fall'

DAILY MAIL
May 25, 2001

By MATTHEW KALMAN

AT LEAST 15 wedding guests were killed and around 300 injured last night when a four-storey hall collapsed in Jerusalem.

Many were trapped under the rubble.

Scores more were taken to hospital after the tragedy in the Jewish half of the city.

Police said the collapse was caused by a structural failure and not a terrorist attack.

'People are trapped, people are dying here,' said one distressed witness.

Some 700 guests were celebrating on the top floor of the building when part of it caved in. Tons of masonry were sent plunging on to the floor below which also collapsed.

Wedding guests fell through the building and huge quantities of concrete and masonry landed on top of them.

'There was no blast,' said guest Yochi Bar-Zani. 'The floor opened up under me. I saw my brothers fall inside and I fell on top of them, burying them.'

'Three floors and the ceiling fell down,' said Shmuel Dimant, 27, blood streaming down his face.

'People were dancing and all of a sudden the dance floor collapsed, and all the tables around it fell through,' said Rami Mordechai, who said he was at the wedding but at a distance from the part of the floor that crumbled.

'People were flying through the air, the orchestra, the loudspeakers, everything fell,' said Efraim Rino, his voice choking as he told Israeli TV that some of the victims were his relatives.

One man described how he fell holding the hand of his ten-year- old son. He said both were rescued from beneath the rubble.

'Daddy, don't be frightened I'm with you,' he said his son told him. 'Then we fell through one floor and another.' Rescue workers used their bare hands to pull chunks of concrete off trapped wedding guests.

The collapse left a gaping hole with metal reinforcement cables hanging at twisted angles from the sides.

The bride was taken to Bikur Holim hospital in downtown Jerusalem, where a doctor said she was not seriously injured The casualty status of a person whose injury may or may not require hospitalization; medical authority does not classify as very seriously injured, seriously injured, or incapacitating illness or injury; and the person can communicate with the next of kin. Also called NSI. See also casualty status. .

Sara Pinhas, a relative of the groom, said dancers had lifted the father of the bride on a chair when suddenly he fell.

'Then we felt the whole building collapse, everything fell down. We managed to climb down the side of the building,' she said.

Dozens of ambulances from as far away as Tel Aviv 40 miles to the west were summoned to the Versailles Banqueting Suite as rescuers laid out the injured on pavements and car parks outside.

Fleets of rescue and emergency vehicles could be heard racing through the streets as every hospital in the city cleared its emergency room and went on to a disaster footing.

Units of the Israeli army who helped rescue victims of the Turkish earthquake and Nairobi bombings searched through the rubble.

Israeli interior minister Eli Ishai said 'at least 15 people were killed'.

Relatives gathered outside the hospitals, desperately seeking news of their loved ones. Some were covered with blood. Others said they helped pull victims out of the wreckage before beingtaken for treatment themselves.

Doctors said there were many children among the injured, including a three-month-old baby.

Dudu Adi, the owner of the hall, stood weeping at the scene. He said: 'The building is 12 years old and we have never had any problems with it.'

Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert said: 'This does not seem to have any links to any political or terrorist act but it is a grave disaster for us. This is a terrible, terrible tragedy.'

Mitchell Report

Palestinians reject Sharon's calls for cease-fire

By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY

06/20/2001 - Updated 04:07 PM ET

JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Tuesday for a total cease-fire with the Palestinians in response to an international commission's report that outlined a plan for peace talks. "I call on our neighbors to stop the violence immediately and return to the negotiating table," Sharon said. "If there is a cease-fire, we will uphold it." However, Sharon refused to accept the Mitchell Commission's recommendation that Israel freeze construction in existing settlements.

A senior Palestinian official, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, dismissed the offer. "We reject everything Sharon said about a cease-fire," he said.

Soon after Sharon's statement, fierce fighting broke out in southern Jerusalem between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.

Sharon said he accepted the report of a team headed by former U.S. senator George Mitchell that was released Monday and endorsed by Washington.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer ordered the Israeli army to stop all firing except "when life is in danger" and called on the Palestinians to "immediately stop violence and terrorism as a first step toward a return to the negotiating table."

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer welcomed Sharon's call for a cease-fire and said President Bush would "welcome a similar statement" from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.

Sharon said he accepted the formula of the Mitchell Commission: a cease-fire, followed by a cooling-off period, confidence-building measures and finally, peace talks. The commission also called for the Israelis to only use non-lethal force against Palestinians who attack outposts with rocks, and that the Palestinians must arrest the Hamas terrorists who are attacking Israelis.

The report also called for a freeze on construction at existing settlements that house 200,000 or more Israelis. Sharon said Israel would not expand the borders of any settlements. But he insisted that Israel has an obligation to permit new housing within existing settlements to accommodate the "natural growth" of the thousands of families living there. On Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell called the settlement issue "a key element that has to be dealt with" but declined to call for a freeze.

Palestinian leaders say Israel's occupation of Palestinian land must end before they stop the unrest.

"It is the Israelis who are the terrorists — the Israeli occupation, the Israeli policies, expanding settlements, confiscation of land," Palestinian security chief Col. Jibril Rajoub said.

Contributing: Wire reports

Three minutes free of violence

There was a brief, quiet interlude as Palestinians contemplated Israel's founding, MATTHEW KALMAN says

The Globe and Mail,
Wednesday, May 16, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- For three minutes yesterday, Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip stood in silent contemplation to mark the 53rd anniversary of what they call the naqba, the catastrophe of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

On a day otherwise filled with violence, traffic stopped and even children stood at attention.

The exact moment that commemoration was to begin was broadcast over Voice of Palestine Radio, followed by the Palestinian national anthem -- My Homeland, My Homeland.

It looked strikingly like events in Israel last month, when citizens stopped in their tracks -- as they do every year -- to silently mourn the dead of the Holocaust and then the fallen soldiers of more than a half-century of conflict.

Air-raid sirens mark the moment of commemoration on the Israeli side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.

The similarity between the two ceremonies was not coincidental. Just as the Israelis place great emphasis on the Holocaust, which proves for them the necessity of an independent Jewish homeland, so the Palestinians want the world to remember their suffering, which they say continues to this day and demands the solution of an independent Palestinian homeland.

For decades, the Palestinian national movement has shadowed the institutions and the symbols of the prestate Zionists and then the Israelis, with each side creating a mirror image of the other.

For Israelis, May 15, 1948, was a day of joy and independence, later to symbolize their victory over the invading armies of several Arab states. For Palestinians, it triggered the flight of more than 600,000 refugees to those same neighbouring Arab countries, most of them never to return.

(Israel celebrated its 53rd anniversary last month, in accord with the Hebrew calendar.)

The gap between such conflicting interpretations of the same events has widened over the years as history itself has become a central motif in the identity of Israelis and Palestinians.

"We are trying to refresh the memory of all that there is another side to this story of 1948 -- the side of tragedy, expulsions and demolishing houses," Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, said yesterday. "We are not only talking about the past. We are talking about a past that is being carried on in these days by the . . . Israeli occupation."

Israeli and Palestinian scholars disagree fundamentally -- and also among themselves -- over the events of the past century.

In Israel, a school of "new historians" has challenged official versions of Zionist history, which barely mention the 400 Palestinian villages destroyed in the 1948 war of independence, or the killings of Arab civilians.

Some Palestinian scholars, meanwhile, were deeply embarrassed this week when colleagues attended a seminar in Jordan dedicated to proving that the Holocaust was exaggerated. Many Palestinians complain that even if the Holocaust did occur, it is unfair that Israel was created on their land with the assistance of European powers.

Meir Litvak, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University, said the Palestinians have drawn on many of the symbols and institutions of the Zionist movement -- from the Palestinian declaration of independence to the creation of a Palestine National Fund modelled on the Jewish National Fund.

"The similarity and emulation is there. It doesn't mean it is not authentic, but there is borrowing -- conscious or unconscious -- from the Israeli example," he said.

"The Palestinian national movement is still in evolution and has not yet completed its nation-building. Part of that process is the establishment of institutions and holidays. . . . This is typical of every national movement."

This sense of national movement has been reinforced in the Palestinian community by the fighting of the past seven months, said Mahmoud Darwish, a prominent Palestinian poet.

"We are not looking back to dig up the evidence of a past crime, for the naqba is an extended present that promises to continue in the future," Mr. Darwish said in a speech broadcast over Voice of Palestine.

"We do not need anything to help us remember the human tragedy we have been living for the past 53 years: We continue to live in the here and now. We continue to resist its consequences, here and now, on the land of our homeland, the only homeland we have."

Of course, many Israelis, convinced that history proves they can live nowhere but in a country with a Jewish majority, express similar sentiments in support of the rightness of their own cause.

Young victims fall in Israel

With killing of two teens, rage escalates in the Middle East

By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY

May 10, 2001 Page 1A

TEKOA, Israel -- The discovery Wednesday of the mutilated bodies of two teenage boys, one an American, in a cave near a West Bank settlement increased outrage over violence here that continues to claim child victims.

Koby Mandell, 13, and Yosef Ishran, 14, had been bound, stabbed and beaten to death with rocks, police said. The walls of the cave in the Judean Desert were covered with the boys' blood, reportedly smeared there by the killers.

Koby immigrated to Israel with his family from College Park, Md., in 1996. They moved into the Tekoa settlement two years ago.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon blamed Yasser Arafat for the killings. He said the Palestinian leader was doing nothing to stop attacks on Israelis.

Violence in the region exploded in September after Sharon visited a site holy to Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem. The unrest has claimed more than 500 lives.

Asked about the slaying of the teens, Arafat responded that Palestinian children have been victimized by Israel. He cited a 3-month-old Palestinian girl, Reema Ahmed, who was wounded Wednesday during an Israeli shooting attack on a Gaza refugee camp. The youngest victim of the recent violence -- Iman Hijo, a 4-month-old Palestinian girl -- was buried Tuesday.

Early today, violence in the region flared again as at least seven people were wounded -- six Palestinians and one Israeli soldier -- in a gunbattle when Israeli soldiers bulldozed Palestinian buildings in another refugee camp in Gaza.

The future of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza is a key issue standing in the way of a Mideast peace accord. About 200,000 Jewish settlers and 3 million Palestinians live in the Palestinian territories. Sharon has vowed to continue to build settlements, further angering Palestinians.

The deaths of children have enraged both sides and possibly jeopardized efforts to renew the peace process.

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called the killings of the Israeli boys ''horrible, brutal.'' U.S. lawmakers called on the White House to appoint a special Middle East envoy. ''The situation is sufficiently serious that there ought to be a special representative appointed,'' Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said.

Pope John Paul II, speaking in Malta, said he was saddened by ''news from the Holy Land of terrible violence even against innocent young people.''

Israeli police said Koby and Yosef may have been killed in a chance encounter with Palestinians. The boys were reported missing late Tuesday after skipping school to go hiking.

''We began looking in Tekoa valley,'' said Meir Ben-Hayoun, a neighbor of one of the boys. ''And at 7 this morning we found their bodies, beaten, mutilated and stabbed.''

Thousands of people attended the funerals Wednesday. Classmates hugged and wept.

A handwritten sign called on God to ''avenge their blood'' and asked settlers to meet at the murder site tonight to light bonfires. ''We will not forget or forgive,'' the sign said.

Israel pledges relief for barred Palestinian workers

The Globe and Mail,
Monday, April 30, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM -- Israel promised yesterday to ease the economic plight of thousands of Palestinians who have been unable to work inside Israel for the past several months.
However, violence continued against Israeli targets, including a suicide attack involving a school bus that killed only the bomber.

Hopes for an end to the violence rose briefly as Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres held talks with Egyptian and Jordanian leaders before leaving for New York, where he is to meet United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today. On Thursday, Mr. Peres is to meet U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington.

A statement yesterday by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak that Israel and the Palestinians had agreed to a ceasefire spurred a flurry of interest -- but was later deemed to be premature.

"The two sides have agreed to a ceasefire," Mr. Mubarak said after talks in Cairo with Mr. Peres. "After a ceasefire of four weeks, negotiations between the two sides will start to reach a solution to the current situation."

But asked later whether they had agreed to a ceasefire, Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa told reporters: "No, they are still talking about the matter."

Speaking to reporters in Cairo, Mr. Peres said Israel would immediately adopt measures to help residents of the occupied West Bank and Gaza who have been forced out of work because of security measures designed to stop Palestinian terrorists entering Israel.

More than 11,000 of the 60,000 Palestinians who work in Israel have already been given permission to resume work.

Within Palestinian ranks, there were conflicting reports about a possible truce. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was reported to have repeated his call for an end to mortar attacks against Israeli settlements and towns. But Marwan Barghouti, leader of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement in the West Bank, said that as far as the Palestinians are concerned, the Israeli government should declare a unilateral ceasefire.

"There is no ceasefire with the Sharon-Peres government," Mr. Barghouti said. "If Israel wants to bring a halt it must stop shooting."

In the West Bank yesterday, a busload of Israeli school children escaped harm when a car bomb exploded in the road as their bus passed the settlement of Shavei Shomron. Police found remains of a body in the car and believe the explosion was a Palestinian suicide attack.

Israel calls off talks until after election

GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, January 29, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak suspended all diplomatic contacts with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat last night and cancelled a summit meeting planned for tomorrow in Stockholm.
The terse announcement was made shortly after a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland turned into a public embarrassment for Israeli cabinet minister Shimon Peres, as Mr. Arafat launched a scathing attack on Israeli policy.
The suspension of contacts until after Israel's election on Feb. 6 does not include links aimed at combatting violence and terrorism.
Mr. Barak stressed that his government "continues to adhere to the peace process on the basis of upholding Israel's vital interests." But his statement represented a dramatic contrast to the optimism expressed on Saturday at the end of a week of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at an Egyptian resort.
Yesterday's discussion in Davos began politely enough, with Mr. Arafat gently insisting that Mr. Peres deliver his speech first. The Israeli Nobel laureate, who is closely associated with continued efforts to reach a deal with the Palestinians, said Israel remained committed to peace. "We never initiated any pressure upon the Palestinians. Nor did we aim our guns just out of bad will, only when it was needed to defend our lives."
But his Nobel peace partner shot back with a withering dissection of Israeli attacks against Palestinians.
"I wouldn't wish an Israeli child to have to live a single hour of the lives that Palestinian children are now having to live suffering under repression and under bombardment," he said.
"The current government of Israel is waging and has waged for the past four months a savage and barbaric war as well as a blatant and fascist military aggression."
Mr. Peres, his hands clasped tight together in a double fist, was clearly taken aback. Only a day earlier, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators said the sides had never been so close to a peace treaty.

Hope is dim at Mideast peace talks

Violence persists with arrest of Palestinian woman accused of luring youth to his death

The Globe and Mail,
Monday, January 22, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak shrugged off widespread criticism last night over his decision to accept a Palestinian invitation to 10 days of intensive peace talks before next month's prime ministerial election.

"By staying away from the talks in Taba, we would be serving the interests of the Palestinians and I have no intention of doing that," Mr. Barak said. "It is our duty to continue to test the possibility of reaching an agreement or understandings that would first and foremost reduce the level of violence."

As Israeli and Palestinian negotiators gathered for the talks in the Egyptian resort of Taba, neither side was optimistic amid positions that appear to be hardening and continued violence that has killed more than 380 people, most of them Palestinians. Yesterday, a Palestinian youth was shot dead during riots in Gaza and what appeared to be a car bomb in preparation exploded prematurely in East Jerusalem.

But Ariel Sharon, the right-wing challenger who has led Mr. Barak by as much as 20 points in recent opinion polls, accused the Prime Minister of electioneering.

"There is no doubt that the renewal of talks tonight is an attempted grab for electoral purposes by a government that does not exist," Mr. Sharon said.

Meanwhile, even senior members of Mr. Barak's own government challenged the legitimacy of conducting negotiations in the shadow of the Feb. 6 election.

"If you're so convinced we're going to win, then why not arrange to meet the Palestinians on Feb. 7 in the evening?" cabinet minister Haim Ramon jeered.

The negotiating teams faced each other in a Taba hotel room to discuss procedural issues.

"We were hard-working," Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami told journalists after the session adjourned 2½ hours later. The talks were due to resume this morning.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, who met with Turkish Foreign Minister Ismail Cem in Gaza, was also upbeat, saying he hopes the talks produce an agreement "as soon as possible."

But the Israeli cabinet formally resolved to three basic principles yesterday: No Palestinian sovereignty over the Temple Mount holy site (known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary), no right for Palestinian refugees to return to Israel and support for the 180,000 Israeli settlers in the West Bank.

These "red lines," as Mr. Barak called them, were rejected by other Palestinian leaders.

"These are very difficult conditions, which we cannot accept," Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath said. "If this is Barak's starting point, the talks are doomed to failure."

Mr. Shaath said his side will not be pressured by the looming Israeli election.

"We're not going to make an agreement just because time is running out," he said. "Under this terror of time, you cannot reach an agreement that can last."

Meanwhile, real terror continued to grip the Israeli public after the slaying of Ofir Rahum, a 16-year-old schoolboy whose bullet-riddled body was discovered last week on the outskirts of the Palestinian town of Ramallah.

He disappeared after withdrawing a large amount of cash from the bank and skipping school to meet a mystery woman in Jerusalem, 80 kilometres away, after meeting her in an Internet chat room.

Amneh Muna, a 23-year-old Palestinian journalist and political activist, was arrested in the early hours Saturday at her home in the West Bank village of Bir Naballah, just north of Jerusalem.

She was interrogated yesterday by Israel's Shin Bet security service at a compound in Jerusalem. Shin Bet prevented her from talking to anybody, including her family-appointed lawyer, and secured a court order prohibiting publication of her picture.

In an interview at the family home, hours after her arrest, Ms. Muna's brother, Tariq, denied that she was involved in the killing and described how 50 masked Israeli troops surrounded the house to arrest her.

Mr. Muna, 30, said his parents, brother and two sisters were called from their home in the dead of night, one by one, then asked to watch as dozens of soldiers searched the house.

"They took away hundreds of documents and newspapers and every photograph we have of my sister, including family albums," Mr. Muna said.

"They also took her identity card, credit cards and about $2,000 cash in U.S. dollars and Israeli shekels. They also took all the family's mobile phones. They were searching for about two hours."

He said the first the family heard about the connection to the killing "was on the TV news. It's just not true. She's not that kind of person."

The slain youth's father said yesterday that the family is concerned about other young people entering what he called the "black hole" of the Internet.

"I don't want revenge," Shalom Rahum said. "I just want all the children, everyone who goes into these chat rooms, to be careful. I hope my son will be the last victim and other young people will learn the consequences."

Palestinian minister offers amnesty

Outcry stops execution of collaborators as Israel seals Gaza over killing of settler

The Globe and Mail,
Tuesday, January 16, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM -- The Palestinian minister of justice, apparently stung by an international outcry over the firing-squad executions of two Palestinians convicted of collaborating with Israel, offered an amnesty to other suspects yesterday.

"Those who surrender will be pardoned, so long as they give themselves up within the next 45 days and reveal all their activities," Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein said.

Meanwhile yesterday, Israel suspended peace talks for a day and sealed off the Gaza Strip after the kidnap and murder of a Jewish settler. About 100 Israeli settlers went on a rampage after his death, burning Palestinian buildings and cars.

Mr. Abu Medein said seven alleged collaborators had surrendered since the executions of Alan Bani Odeh and Majdi Mikkawi on Saturday. The two were tried and convicted by Palestinian security courts, which gave them no right to a defence or an appeal. Two other men were condemned to death by a similar court in Bethlehem on Saturday.

The men were accused of providing intelligence to Israel to assist in assassinating Palestinian militia leaders and officials, more than 30 of whom are believed to have been killed in recent pinpoint attacks.

The European Union issued a protest against the executions and asked Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to commute the two death sentences handed down Saturday.

In Ottawa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said Canada is "deeply troubled" about the executions and is urging the Palestinian Authority to commute the other death sentences.

"At this critical moment in the Middle East, we would hope that all parties would refrain from any deliberate action that aggravates the situation further," spokeswoman Valerie Noftle said.

But Faisal Husseini, the senior PLO official in Jerusalem, said the Palestinian leadership should be more resolute in hunting down traitors and called on Mr. Arafat to "take a clear decision to execute the traitors."

In the West Bank village of Burkin yesterday, a suspected Palestinian collaborator was shot dead by a hit squad at the door to his home.

Earlier, the body of kidnapped Jewish settler Rony Tzalah, 32, was discovered in an onion field next to his greenhouse in the Israeli settlement of Kfar Yam in the southern Gaza Strip. He had been shot in the head.

After the body was discovered, about 100 Jewish settlers went on a rampage, destroying nearby Palestinian-owned greenhouses and empty houses, setting fire to cars and trees, and shooting toward the homes of their Palestinian neighbours. No injuries were reported, but the Israeli army had to bring in firefighters to douse the flames.

Mr. Tzalah's death provoked an angry response from Israel, which called off planned peace talks in protest, although they are due to resume today.

"This is a serious blow to the peace process," said Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, who is under strong pressure to call off all talks while fighting continues.

Palestinians warn of more executions

Arafat urged to commute further sentences after 'collaborators' killed by firing squad

The Globe and Mail,
Monday, January 15, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is under pressure to commute two planned executions after an outcry over the deaths by firing squad of two Palestinian men on Saturday.

All four were accused of collaborating with Israeli forces to assassinate terrorist leaders in recent weeks. The men were all convicted in lightning trials by Palestinian security courts, whose rulings cannot be appealed and whose proceedings have been condemned by human-rights groups.

Alan Bani Odeh, 25, was executed by a Palestinian police firing squad as a chanting crowd of 5,000 gathered outside a police station in Nablus Saturday morning. Majdi Mikkawi, 28, was shot at the same time in Gaza.

Palestinian Justice Minister Freih Abu Medein said two more men sentenced to death on Saturday would also be executed this week, and a dozen more would follow. The condemned men's only recourse now is Mr. Arafat, who must approve all executions.

"Anyone we lay our hands on will not merit the mercy of the Palestinian people or the mercy of Palestinian law. Palestinian blood is pure blood and may not be spilled by agents," Mr. Abu Medein said.

But the head of a human-rights group suggested actions may not follow such tough talk. "I don't believe the Palestinian Authority is going to execute any more, at least in the coming weeks," said Bassem Eid, director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group.

"There is a big fight against collaborators but the Palestinian Authority has to consider international pressure," Mr. Eid said. "The coverage has affected the reputation of the Palestinian Authority and its justice system."

Mr. Eid said it was the duty of foreign governments who donate aid to the PA to monitor events in the Palestinian areas and ensure democratic rights. The executions were only the fourth and fifth death penalties carried out in the more than six years of the Palestinian Authority.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak joined in criticism of the executions yesterday, which Israeli media featured prominently.

"It is regrettable that the Palestinian Authority, which aspires to be a recognized entity, has recourse to show trials that recall dark periods of history," Mr. Barak said in a statement.

The Israeli human-rights group B'Tselem, which has also criticized Israeli policies, condemned the executions, saying: "The fact that in these cases the defendants were not accorded a fair trial, had no effective opportunity to defend themselves and no opportunity to appeal makes these executions especially grave."

Mr. Bani Odeh was found guilty last month of helping Israeli agents assassinate Ibrahim Bani Odeh, a distant relative and a leader of the Hamas terror group. The court found he supplied a car to Ibrahim Bani Odeh, which had a bomb hidden in the headrest of the driver's seat. It was detonated as the Hamas leader drove through Nablus, killing him instantly. Mr. Bani Odeh admitted meeting Israeli agents, but said he did not know the car was rigged when he agreed to lend it to his relative.

On Saturday morning, as a huge crowd gathered outside the gates of the police station in Nablus, Mr. Bani Odeh was permitted a final meeting with his mother, wife and two small daughters.

After 15 minutes, his wife, Siham, emerged in tears, cradling their infant daughter in her arms. "He swore to me that he is innocent," she said. "He never knew they were planning to kill Ibrahim. He asked me to look after the children and he asked his mother to take care of all of us."

Several hundred people from the crowd were allowed into the police station's courtyard to witness the execution. At 11 a.m., Mr. Bani Odeh was taken to the courtyard, tied to a pole and blindfolded. As he stood there, his brother walked up to him and said "Allah yisamhak" (May God forgive you). He was executed by a squad of six hooded police officers.

Among the onlookers was Ibrahim Bani Odeh's widow, Rakiyeh. "I thank President Arafat for bringing justice," she said. We are very happy today to see that this traitor, who helped kill my husband, is being punished."

The second man, Mr. Mikkawi, was found guilty of giving Israel information that led to the Nov. 22 killing of four Fatah members, one of them his uncle, Jamal Abdel-Razek. Mr. Mikkawi was executed in Gaza. No members of the public witnessed his death, but it was videotaped and broadcast yesterday on Israeli television.

Hours after the executions, four men suspected of collaborating with Israel were tried by a PA security court in Bethlehem for their alleged role in the death of Fatah militia leader Hussein Abayat, who was killed in an Israeli rocket attack in November. Two of the men, Mohammad Deifallah Khatib and Husam Deen Moussa Hmeid, were sentenced to death by firing squad, while two others drew life in prison.

Palestinian leaders said there were at least a dozen more suspects accused of helping the Israelis and that all of them could expect the same fate.

Arafat agrees to new round of peace talks with Clinton

Car bomb injures 30 in Israeli town as fighting escalates in West Bank, Gaza

The Globe and Mail,
Tuesday, January 2, 2001

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM -- Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat agreed last night to visit Washington for what could be a decisive meeting with U.S. President Bill Clinton on the future of the Middle East peace process, as a bomb attack in Israel and fighting throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip raised tension on the ground.

The two men reportedly held a lengthy telephone conversation late yesterday about Mr. Clinton's proposals for renewing peace talks with Israel. Direct talks have been stalled since July's failed summit at Camp David, Md., and almost buried by the fighting of the past three months. More than 350 people have been killed, most of them Palestinians, and six more died yesterday.

Mr. Clinton needs an answer soon if he is to realize his dream of clinching a peace deal before he leaves the White House later this month. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak has already accepted the U.S. proposals as a basis for new talks, but Mr. Arafat originally said he could not give a final answer until after a meeting of Arab foreign ministers scheduled for Thursday.

Mr. Arafat's plans to meet Mr. Clinton this afternoon raised hopes that a breakthrough might still be possible, despite yesterday's violence and rhetoric. Earlier, though, a senior Palestinian official said Mr. Arafat will reject the U.S. proposals.

"The Palestinian leadership has decided to respond in the negative to the American proposals," said Sakher Habash, an official of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at a rally in Ramallah to mark the 36th anniversary of the Fatah movement's first terror attack against Israel. "The Palestinians will continue with their struggle until independence."

And Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, who spoke to Mr. Arafat yesterday, said there were "no indications" a deal would be sealed before Mr. Clinton's term ends.

Hours before Mr. Clinton and Mr. Arafat spoke, a large car bomb exploded in the centre of the busy Israeli seaside resort of Netanya, north of Tel Aviv.

One person was seriously injured and about 30 more wounded by shrapnel when the booby-trapped vehicle exploded as a crowded rush-hour bus was passing on Netanya's main thoroughfare.

"There were three explosions, one after the other," said Mickey Ratz, who witnessed the explosion. "I was only 20 metres away. I saw a car on fire. There was shattered glass all over the place. I saw a lot of blood."

Israeli helicopters hovered over the city trying to locate a car that was seen fleeing the scene at high speed just before the attack, and police said the injured man might be the bomber.

Hamas, a militant Palestinian group, denied carrying out the attack. But just yesterday morning, senior Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantissi was quoted in a Persian Gulf newspaper threatening more attacks on Israel.

"Hamas has stepped up its operations and has carried out bomb attacks from afar to protect the lives of its fighters," said Mr. Rantissi, whom Mr. Arafat released from a Gaza jail last week. "We might be forced to use the old [suicide attack] methods if that is the only way to cause losses to the enemy."

Israeli security officials have warned of a possible increase in Hamas attacks in the run-up to the election for prime minister planned for Feb. 6. A wave of suicide bombings during the 1996 election campaign left nearly 100 Israelis dead and swept right-wing firebrand Benjamin Netanyahu to office in a surprise victory over peace champion Shimon Peres.

"After this attack, we can't hold back any longer," Israeli cabinet minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said yesterday. "That's it -- we have run out of patience. Now we need a more immediate and firm response. Mr. Arafat is responsible for everything that is happening and he will have to suffer the consequences. We can't continue with negotiations with the Palestinians as long as these attacks continue."

But Palestinian cabinet secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman said Israel was also to blame.

"The latest escalation is a direct result of the events that started three months ago," he said. "We have warned and cautioned against such an escalation. The only way to escape the cycle of violence and attacks is by returning to the negotiating table and reaching an agreement on the basis of UN resolutions, which means a full withdrawal from the [Israeli-occupied] territories."

Meanwhile, six Palestinians died yesterday after clashes with Israeli troops. Among them was 10-year-old Muad Abu Adwan, who died of wounds suffered Sunday in crossfire in the West Bank town of Hebron, where Palestinians shot at Israeli houses throughout the night and Israeli soldiers and settlers returned fire.

Jewish settlers, angered by Sunday's slaying of hard-line Rabbi Binyamin Kahane, blocked roads to West Bank Arab villages. The resurgent violence has increased pressure on Mr. Barak, who trails badly in polls with slightly more than a month before an election in which he has staked his job on reaching a deal with the Palestinians.

Yesterday, Mr. Netanyahu threw his weight behind the candidacy of Likud leader Ariel Sharon.

And Mr. Barak renewed a threat of "unilateral separation" from the Palestinians unless a deal is reached. Israeli Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami said that a security fence was already being prepared along those border stretches that both sides seem to agree on.

The Prime Minister told army radio that if the talks do not resume, Israel will consider establishing its permanent borders without Palestinian input.

"We must part from the Palestinians. It is one of our highest priorities to do so in an agreement, but we will have to prepare to do so without an agreement if it becomes clear that the Palestinians are not interested in an agreement."

Attorney-General Elyakim Rubinstein, meanwhile, warned Mr. Barak against rushing into any agreement before the election.

Would-be messiahs back in action

JERUSALEM
Matthew Kalman

Monday, Jan. 01, 2001

The plump American with the smiling, round face and woollen cap standing outside a Jerusalem department store was keen to talk about international relations.

"All this is leading to a Third World War, you know," he said, referring to the continuing unrest in the West Bank and Gaza. "China will play a major role, and millions of people are going to be killed.

"I'm here on a mission," he confided. "I've been sent here to try and prevent this war."

He took out his identification and presented some impressive credentials. According to his genuine-looking U.S. passport, the 40-something man with a salt-and-pepper beard and a large knapsack was none other than King David -- the Hebrew ruler who made Jerusalem his capital 3,000 years ago.

It was a pleasure to see him. The streets of Jerusalem have been lacking John the Baptist, the prophet Isaiah and other would-be messiahs who were regular features in the holy city until about a year ago.

Many of them were gripped by the Jerusalem Syndrome, a recognized psychiatric disorder in which perfectly normal people become so entranced by Jerusalem's religious atmosphere that they assume the identities of biblical characters or become modern-day prophets.

But because of a security crackdown by Israel and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, the prophets, kings and gods were rounded up and kicked out as 2000 approached and many feared that some millennialist sects might spark violence in this tense region.

"Every year we examine about 150 patients, of whom 40 or so require hospitalization," said Dr. Yair Barel, director of the Kfar Shaul psychiatric hospital in Jerusalem. "There was one case where two different patients insisted they were the Messiah, so I decided to put them in a room together to see if they would come to their senses."

It didn't work, he said. "Each thought the other was an impostor."

Despite the security fears, or perhaps because of them, Dr. Barel said, the expected rise in the number of cases of Jerusalem Syndrome during 2000 did not materialize.

Only a few sufferers have ever proved dangerous. One was a fundamentalist Australian Christian who tried to burn down the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in 1969, which could have sparked an all-out Middle East War.

Since 1969, Muslims have been afraid that Israel is planning to rebuild Solomon's Temple there. Palestinians justify their current intifada (uprising) by invoking Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon's controversial visit to the compound on Sept. 28.

In the months before last January, Israeli security forces were on high alert for the possibility that apocalyptic millennialists would attack the mosque or stage mass suicides in Jerusalem in an attempt to hasten the End of Days.

Dozens of fundamentalists -- most of them quite harmless -- were rounded up and expelled from Israel in late-night raids.

According to Gershom Gorenberg, author of The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, published this week by the Free Press, a U.S. publisher, the overzealous police actions were not entirely misplaced.

"The expectation of The End is part of significant streams within all three of the monotheistic religions," Mr. Gorenberg said in an interview. "In all three, there are significant numbers of people whose vision of the end focuses geographically on Jerusalem and specifically on the Temple Mount."

Mr. Gorenberg said it is no surprise that the seven-year-long Oslo peace process left until the end any discussion about the Temple Mount, which is holy to both Muslims and Jews and regarded by evangelical Christians as the site of the Jewish Temple, which must be rebuilt before the Second Coming.

Numerous Web sites analyze current events in the light of biblical prophecy, suggesting that we are living through the End of Days. Currently enjoying huge success in the United States are the Left Behind books, a series of novels by fundamentalist Christians Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins.

Mr. Gorenberg said the fact that nothing happened last New Year's Eve has not destroyed belief in the apocalypse. Now that 2000 and 2001 have both begun quietly, the tension is even greater.

"This is really the point at which millennial and messianic groups become interesting and most unstable, when their expectations have been dashed via the continuation of history," he said.