Teen charged with recruiting suicide bombers

MATTHEW KALMAN

JERUSALEM — Special to The Globe and Mail

Published Wednesday, May 05, 2004

He is only 15, an age at which most boys are out playing soccer after school or studying for exams. But according to charges filed in an Israeli military court yesterday, Nasser Awartani has spent the past year busying himself with more deadly matters.

The Nablus student was charged in an Israeli military court yesterday with recruiting teenagers to become suicide bombers for militant groups, the first time such charges have been levelled against a Palestinian youth.

Israel's military court in the northern West Bank charged Nasser with 12 counts, including attempted murder and membership in a militant group. Although hundreds of Israelis have been killed in suicide attacks, none of the Israeli deaths were attributed to Nasser in the indictment.

An Israeli army spokesman alleged that Nasser was involved in "recruiting, preparing and dispatching young suicide bombers in order to carry out terrorist attacks." His job involved ferrying potential bombers to initial meetings with militants and helping them get ready for attacks.

One of his alleged recruits was Hussam Abdo, the 16-year-old whose picture was flashed around the world as he struggled to remove a suicide bomb at an Israeli checkpoint in March.

Another of the suicide bombers Nasser allegedly recruited was 16-year-old Sabi Abu Saud, who blew himself up at an army checkpoint near Tulkarm last November, injuring several soldiers.

Nasser's mother, Ihlas, said her son could not be guilty because he spent all his time at home. "They want to blame someone, so they have chosen my son," she said.

But Israeli intelligence, who raided the teenager's home and arrested him on March 25, said he arranged suicide attacks for the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and also for the squads of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

According to court documents, Nasser was recruited into al-Aqsa toward the end of last year by two local leaders of the underground group. At first, he began by putting up posters of Palestinian "martyrs" who died while attacking Israeli targets, but then learned how to build homemade guns, the indictment said. In February, he and his alleged comrades in al-Aqsa were photographed with an M16 assault rifle.

Last October, he was allegedly approached by two al-Aqsa leaders and asked to carry out a suicide bombing. He refused, but agreed to help them find other youths, the indictment said.

On March 22, Nasser approached some of Hussam Abdo's classmates and asked them if they could recommend a boy for a suicide attack. They suggested Hussam. On March 24, Hussam was allegedly picked up in central Nablus, blindfolded, and driven to a deserted house where an al-Aqsa bombmaker gave him an explosive harness ready for use. The boy was photographed and wrote out a farewell message to his parents. He was given a box of eggs to carry and driven to the Harawa checkpoint south of Nablus. There, he was spotted by Israeli soldiers, who instructed him how to remove the bomb harness as he stood shaking with terror, saying he didn't want to die. Hussam was recently charged with attempted murder.

Sharon vows to press on with Gaza pullout

MATTHEW KALMAN

JERUSALEM — Special to the Globe and Mail

Published Tuesday, May 04, 2004

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon yesterday brushed aside suggestions he might resign after the humiliating rejection of his Gaza withdrawal plan by his own Likud Party, and vowed to push ahead with the controversial scheme, perhaps in modified form.

"I want to say in the clearest fashion there will be another plan," he told a meeting of Likud lawmakers.

As the Prime Minister embarked on a series of consultations on whether and how to amend the plan, he made it clear he has no intention of stepping down. "I intend to continue leading the state of Israel to the best of my understanding, conscience and public duty. This is not an easy task. However, I intend to carry it through."

At the same time, Israeli opponents of the pullout celebrated yesterday by laying the cornerstone of a new residence in a Gaza settlement and moving four Jewish families into a predominantly Palestinian neighbourhood in East Jerusalem.

Mr. Sharon's plan envisioned an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, home to 7,500 Jewish settlers in 21 settlements, and the evacuation of four small settlements in the West Bank by the end of 2005. But members of Likud, a traditionally pro-settler party, disagreed. They voted against the plan 60 per cent to 40 per cent in a nonbinding referendum on Sunday. But only about half of Likud's 190,000 members voted.

Opposition leader Shimon Peres said it was "unacceptable" for Likud members, who make up less than 2 per cent of the Israeli population, to determine the future of the country. He called for early elections, amid rumours that Mr. Sharon has already offered him a return to the coveted foreign-affairs portfolio in a broad-based national unity government.

Israeli officials suggested the original withdrawal plan, which was popular with Israelis and had U.S. backing, would be slightly scaled down and the new version would not be put to a Likud vote.

"I intend to consult my ministers, the Likud faction and other Knesset factions in order to examine the implications and the steps we intend to take," Mr. Sharon told Likud members of the Knesset, or parliament.

And in what appeared to be a hint that he might go it alone without the right wing of his party, or perhaps call new elections, Mr. Sharon warned: "Israel elected us to find a way to tranquillity, security and peace and promoting Israel's economy. And we intend to do this. There is no other reason for us to be here in the Knesset."

There were hints yesterday from the Prime Minister's circle that he will present the disengagement plan directly to the Israeli people, who polls indicate are overwhelmingly in favour of Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Gerald Steinberg, a political analyst at Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, said Mr. Sharon might "try and detour around the Likud, basically abandoning his own party, his own core constituency and try to build a centrist Israeli political party or some sort of consensus-based new bloc."

In April, U.S. President George W. Bush threw his support behind the disengagement plan, provoking widespread Arab anger. Yesterday, the White House said it will examine options with Mr. Sharon, calling his disengagement plan "a courageous and important step towards peace."

While some U.S. commentators said the Likud rejection of the plan has undermined Mr. Bush's credibility in the Middle East, Professor Steinberg disagreed.

"It's an embarrassment for Sharon in his future dealings with the White House because he was not able to deliver on that deal, but for the U.S. government in the big picture this is not a major issue," he said.

In Gaza overnight, an Israeli attack helicopter fired a missile at a group of Palestinians in a Gaza refugee camp, wounding at least 12, three critically, residents said. Hours earlier, in a separate incident in the West Bank, Israeli troops took up positions around Palestinian president Yasser Arafat's office building in the city of Ramallah, witnesses told Associated Press. Military officials said soldiers were arresting suspects, but said the operation was not linked to Mr. Arafat.

DAILY MAIL

23 April 2004

Matthew Kalman

This is what happened to a Palestinian child who joined teenagers throwing stones at Israeli border police.

Muhammad Badwan was grabbed by officers and tied by an arm to the grille covering the windscreen of their security vehicle (circled).

Last night the 13-year-old’s father said the police had illegally used his son as a human shield to try to stop demonstrators throwing stones at them.

‘When I saw him on the hood of the jeep, my whole mind went crazy, ‘ said Saeed Baswan, a 34-year-old labourer. ‘It’s a picture you can’t even imagine. He was shivering from fear.’

Muhammad said: ‘I was scared when they got me at first. I thought they would put me in prison. I was scared a stone would hit me.’

The incident happened in Muhammad’s home village of Biddo, north-west of Jurusalem, which has become a flashpoint for violence between Israeli forces and demonstrators protesting against the building of an Israeli security fence.

The picture was published by an Israeli human rights group trying to expose the behavior of some Israeli security personnel. Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis For Human Rights, heard about the boy and tried to intervene with the police, demanding he be released.

The rabbi claimed he was head-butted by one of the officers and arrested. He said he intended to press charges against the police.

‘The boy was sitting on the hood of a vehicle, unsuccessfully trying to hold back his tears, shivering with fright, and with one arm tied to the screen protecting the windshield,’ he said.

‘We tried to calm him down and reassure him. I asked if he was hurt. He said he had been beaten and was in pain.

‘It is very depressing that we have come to this position where this is what we do.’The Israeli police said they were investigating the incident.

Leader in waiting?

Palestinian 'prince' eyes Arafat's throne
Dahlan pushes a more moderate approach on Israel, but also has contacts with Hamas

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

GLOBE & MAIL, Saturday, Apr. 3, 2004

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- He travels through the West Bank in a bulletproof, black Chevrolet Suburban, bearing official licence plates from the Palestinian security service. Everywhere he goes, his bodyguards stay close at hand, even sealing off the floor of his Ramallah hotel.

As politicians line up to welcome him home after a visit to England, and calls come in from friends in both the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and Hamas, there is little doubt about the status of Mohammed Dahlan: He is a Palestinian prince in waiting.

At 42 -- a veteran of war, exile, Israeli jails and a long-running feud with Yasser Arafat -- Mr. Dahlan is fast emerging as the most powerful Palestinian of his generation. He is seen as one of the few people who could unseat Mr. Arafat in an election. And with the assassination last month of Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Hamas spiritual leader, Mr. Dahlan may be unrivalled among Palestinian militant leaders as well.

"The Palestinian people are looking for a way out," Mr. Dahlan said in an interview this week. "They are looking for a Palestinian leadership to take them to this exit."

The former head of the Palestinian security service pierces the air with his finger for emphasis before taking a sip of mint tea. He knows that in Washington, Cairo and Jerusalem, he is considered by many to be the person to provide just that leadership.

"Our experience together -- the international community, the Palestinian Authority, Israel, the States --- has really failed, finally," Mr. Dahlan said. "To be frank with ourselves, it's failed. We have to change our role. We have to change our way of thinking, of working, of implementing our commitment. The Israelis should do the same. Enough is enough. We have to elect a new leadership. I think the new generation will be part of the future."

Mr. Dahlan has been a key player in Palestinian politics for 25 years, rising through the "shebab" youth wing of Mr. Arafat's Fatah movement to head the Palestinian Preventive Security Force, the largest armed detachment in Gaza. He still enjoys the loyalty of thousands of men he commanded, and earned the respect even of his enemies.

Having helped stir the first intifida, or uprising, in the late 1980s, he led the Palestinian Authority's crackdown on Hamas in 1996.

But since his job last year as interior minister in the short-lived government of Mahmoud Abbas, he has been plotting a new campaign, rushing back to Ramallah from a two-month sojourn in Cambridge, England, after Mr. Yassin's death.

"It's a mess," he said of the current heightened tensions, as he kept a watchful eye on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic satellite TV station.

"The Palestinian leadership must share the blame for this result. It's not just the occupation. The [Israeli] occupation destroyed the Palestinian Authority. . . . There is no central ruling authority. The visible militant groups are the ones that are in control locally."

Mr. Dahlan is calling for "fundamental change" in Palestinian ranks, beginning with the full democratization of Fatah and the PA.

Though he's been officially unemployed since September, he is enjoying his time off. Once a four-pack-a-day man, he has quit smoking, coffee and even surrendered his beloved nargila water pipe, all "in one shot," he boasts. He spent his recent visit to England "wasting time, reading and improving my English."

Mr. Dahlan was born in 1961 in the Gaza Strip, in the Khan Younis refugee camp. As a teenager he joined Mr. Arafat's political movement and founded the Fatah Youth Association in Gaza. His role in the Palestinian movement landed him in an Israeli jail for five years (where he became fluent in Hebrew) before he was expelled to Jordan.

Eventually moving to Tunis to join Mr. Arafat in exile, he became a special adviser. He returned to Gaza with Mr. Arafat, taking up a senior position in the new Palestinian security forces and joining U.S.-brokered peace talks. He and Mr. Arafat fell out, mainly because of Mr. Dahlan's push for reforms.

Now he may be one of the few people in the world who maintains an easy-going relationship with CIA Director George Tenet and with Omar Suleiman, head of Egyptian intelligence, as well as an open channel to Mohammed Deif, the Hamas terrorist chief with whom he once shared an Israeli prison cell -- and whom he personally arrested eight years ago.

If Mr. Dahlan had his way, he would get tough with the 14 Palestinian security forces, and fold them into one service. He would also take up Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's offer to pull out of Gaza, a move he says could be used to create "a new model" of Palestinian governance.

He is confident that a democratic, unified Palestinian Authority can deliver security for Israel also, because the Palestinian people are tired of the violence. "If the Palestinian leadership have decided to stop this kind of attacks they should stop, period," he said. "We can do it. Believe me, we can do it. We did it before."

Mr. Dahlan says a reformed, liberated Gaza could serve as a model for a future Palestinian administration, and dismisses suggestions the PA is threatened by a Hamas takeover. He says the PA, with resolution and through dialogue, would have no problem reasserting its control over a liberated Gaza Strip.

"We need a basic change in the Authority and in Fatah, all through elections. Last time Fatah had elections was 15 years ago, so the cadre now does not listen to the decisions of the leadership," he said, adding that if members of the PA "are elected legally, I will commit myself to them. . . . They should renew their legitimacy through elections."

Would he run in those elections?

"Of course, yes."

Against Mr. Arafat?

"I don't know against whom," he says, then roars with laughter.

"I will play a role but I don't see my future in Gaza," he said, hinting at broader ambitions in Ramallah, the West Bank city where the seat of Palestinian power is located.

"I'm speaking on behalf of my generation. This is our future -- to be together and to create a moderate state here through elections, to develop and improve the idea of democracy among our people."

Venture capital invests in Israeli techs

Recovering from recession, country ranks behind only Boston, Silicon Valley in attracting cash for startups

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE April 2, 2004

By Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Israel's technology industry is doing better than you might think.

Just days after the Bank of Israel declared that the country's recession had technically ended, a group of leading California venture capitalists predicted the renaissance of Silicon Wadi, Israel's impressive high-tech sector.

"It's starting to happen in Israel again," said Harry Kellogg, vice chairman of Silicon Valley Bank and president of its merchant banking operation, which has invested in eight Israeli funds so far.

"Last year, about $1.1 billion was invested in Israel, ranking it No. 3 in the world after Silicon Valley and Boston," said Kellogg, who visited Israel last month along with 40 other major California investors. "More money is coming into startups here than is going into Shanghai or India. It's one of the key markets in the world as far as Silicon Valley Bank is concerned," he said.

Despite the optimism of venture capitalists and government banks, there's no denying Israel remains mired in political strife that makes it difficult for the long-standing technology industry to stay strong and grow. Just the same, Israel's tech sector, nurtured from academic and military roots, is showing that it's up to the task, thanks in large part to money coming from U. S. venture capitalists.

The global economic downturn of the past three years was amplified in Israel by the three-year Palestinian intifada. The impact of continued violence and terror attacks hurt the tourism industry and depressed consumption across the board, sending the gross domestic product plummeting.

"The Israeli economy was essentially mimicking what happened in the United States but with a magnification effect due to the security situation," said Manuel Trajtenberg, an economics professor at Tel Aviv University.

Nevertheless, the American investors visiting Jerusalem said the intifada hurt the high-tech sector less than it did other parts of the Israeli economy. Trajtenberg said figures available so far confirm that impression.

"It is true that the high-tech sector was shielded to a large extent from the magnification effect of the intifada," he said. "If you look at indicators of activity like unemployment, number of workers and exports, the downtrend is similar to the high-tech sector in the United States."

"There was less of a magnification compared to other sectors of the economy like tourism and retail industries," Trajtenberg said.

Last month, the Bank of Israel said that the recession in Israel, which began in the summer of 2000, months before the outbreak of the intifada, ended in November. The central bank said the recession cost Israel 10 percent of its GDP during those three years and sent unemployment soaring to a record 10.9 percent in the last quarter of 2003.

Active tech sector

Already, Israel has more companies traded on the Nasdaq than any other country outside North America. Moreover, annual foreign investment in Israeli startups has consistently outstripped any European country, according to the Israel Venture Capital Association, even though Israel has a population of only 6 million.

Sequoia Capital, one of the first Silicon Valley venture capital firms, has only one office outside the United States -- in Israel. Benchmark Capital's two foreign bases are London and Tel Aviv. Siemens venture capital has said it will open an Israel office -- its only branch outside Europe and the United States.

Israeli companies excel in security technologies, semiconductors and communications. Israeli tech firms include Checkpoint, a leading firewall firm; Amdocs, which makes billing systems for telecoms; Comverse, a big voice-mail company; and Mercury Software, which measures software performance.

Last month, investors at VentureWire Network Outlook 2004, an annual trade conference of the U.S. venture capital industry, voted three non-U.S. companies among the 10 startups most likely to succeed. All three were Israeli: Actelis Networks, BitBand and P-Cube.

Among the recent deals was an investment of $20 million by Grove Street Advisors in Pitango Venture Capital on behalf of the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

Grove Street Advisors manages $2.8 billion invested by CalPERS in 80 venture capital funds. Of that total, $25 million already is invested in six Israeli funds: Pitango, Gemini Israel Funds, Israel Seed Partners, Jerusalem Venture Partners, Apax Partners and Carmel Ventures.

Last week, the Israeli retail comparison site Shopping.com announced plans to file for the first Nasdaq IPO by an Israeli company in two years.

Grove Street Advisors founder and managing partner Clinton Harris said he has been investing in Israel since 1991 and has returned because now is "a good time to invest."

"We have $500 million earmarked for startups and set aside 5 to 10 percent of that amount for Israel," said Harris. "Apart from Israel, we have almost nothing invested outside the U.S."

Overall economic conditions

Israel's economic indicators are turning positive. Growth projections for the year have been adjusted to 3 percent, while demand, private consumption, sales and output all rose in December and January, according to Israel's Central Bureau of Statistics.

Professor Avi Ben-Bassat of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, a former director-general of the Israeli Finance Ministry, agreed that there is "a very positive change in the trend of the economy." But he's not totally sold on the turnaround. Israel is "still in deep recession," he said.

"It will take a long time before we reduce unemployment from its current very high level of 11 percent to the natural level of about 6 percent and restore GDP growth to the pre-recession levels of 4 or 5 percent per year," Ben-Bassat said. "But we expect GDP to grow at a rate of 2 to 3 percent this year, which is much better than the negative trend of the past two years."

According to the Israel Venture Capital Research Center, the $1 billion attracted by Israeli startups in 2003 meant investment was back to the 1999 level.

"Escalating interest in Israeli high-tech companies among foreign investors and the fact that 12 Israeli venture capital funds have embarked on raising new funds are clear signals that the environment has significantly improved." The center forecasts that Israeli VCs will raise between $1.5 billion and $2 billion in 2004-05.

U.S. investors argued that the fall in foreign investment since 2000 was due to global economic conditions, not the intifada. They said they were not deterred by fears of the security situation in Israel.

"I've come here a dozen times, so I'm certainly not concerned about it," said Arjun Gupta of TeleSoft Partners, which has investments in two Israeli companies, Lynx and Jungo.

"I think there's a higher chance that you'll have a wreck on a U.S. freeway than really get into a problem here. Having said that, if you have other people's capital, you have fiduciary responsibility," he said.

"Across the board, we've never had an Israeli entrepreneur not say: 'Hey, if there's any problem, I'll pull the whole company over to the States,' " Gupta said.

The venture environment

Jon Medved of Jerusalem's Israel Seed Partners, a venture capital group with $260 million under management, said he faces growing competition from U.S. funds investing directly in Israeli startups.

"There has been much talk lately in the U.S. of the venture overhang where too much money is chasing too few good deals, but the situation in Israel is still the opposite," Medved said.

"Israeli venture funds like my own are seeing quality deals at reasonable prices which are roughly half the valuations that are prevalent in the U.S. We have actually been outbid on a few deals recently by U.S. funds who felt the prices were attractive enough to pay a significant premium to what we offered, " he said.

U.S. investors say Israel offers a unique mix of entrepreneurial and technological skill, backed by a discipline and frugality that they ascribe to the influence of the army.

"They don't need as much money to get things off the ground here in Israel as they do in the U.S.," said Kellogg of Silicon Valley Bank. "Fear of failure is not an issue here like it is in other parts of the world. If you fail, it's not a bad thing like it is certainly in Europe and in Asia."

Isaac Applebaum of Lightspeed Venture Partners said he has invested in six Israeli companies and is beginning to see the emergence of serial entrepreneurs.

"It's the only place like it," said Applebaum. "I think it's going to get a lot better because there's a lot of new money coming in. These guys work day and they work night, and they deliver."

Pact brings peace to the Seinfeld cast

Resolution of a bitter conflict over royalties clears the way for the release of a DVD collection

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail
Friday, February 27, 2004 - Page R2

JERUSALEM -- Amultimillion-dollar dispute over royalties between Jerry Seinfeld and the three co-stars of his long-running television comedy series has finally been settled, allowing the release of an official DVD collection of the show's 180 episodes, plus newly filmed interviews and other material.

In an exclusive interview with The Globe and Mail, Jason Alexander (who played George Costanza on Seinfeld) said a deal "has very recently been worked out" after months of tension.

Describing the comedy star's behaviour over money as "inappropriate," Alexander said that he, Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Elaine) and Michael Richards (Kramer) had refused to provide extra material for the DVD collection because Seinfeld and Castle Rock Television, which produced the series for NBC, refused to pay them or offer a share in the royalties.

He said the Seinfeld producers have now agreed that the three co-stars will also earn royalties from the DVD collection.

"We are currently in negotiations so that we are participants in the DVD and that's a happy arrangement because we didn't really want to create this sort of negative impression of our experience," said Alexander, who has just ended a nine-month run in a theatre production of The Producers in Los Angeles.

Michael Richards broke ranks in December and agreed to work on the DVD.

"I innocently asked a question, 'Is there some compensation?' I don't believe there is," Richards told The New York Times.

A similar dispute nearly scuttled the last series of the nine-year-long show. The three co-stars have no share in the royalties, which have netted Seinfeld more than a billion dollars.

Alexander said the three co-stars decided to get tough during negotiations for the final series in 1997. They told NBC Entertainment chief Warren Littlefield that Jerry Seinfeld's decision to cut them out of the show's massive royalties had created an unacceptable gap between the actors.

They did manage to raise their fee for the final series to the same level as Seinfeld himself -- about $1-million an episode -- but Alexander said it was done with a heavy heart.

"We made a deal that was acceptable to us. We got paid very handsomely for our final season," he said. "It was in the pool of profit for NBC to give us those salaries.

"We weren't asking for something that wasn't there, but it was still inappropriate. It drove the cost of production of a TV show sky-high.

"I remember saying to Warren Littlefield: 'We're not kidding and we deserve this, but you're an idiot if you make this deal. It'll destroy television.' "

Alexander said the three co-stars would have greatly preferred "back-end participation" -- a share in royalties from future profits, rather than taking such huge salaries up-front.

"Julia, Michael and I, during our big renegotiation for the final year, asked for something that I will go to my grave saying we should have had, and that is back-end participation in the profits for the show.

"It was categorically denied to us, which forced us to then ask for ungodly salaries," he said.

"We make very little, standard Screen Actors Guild residuals for the reruns," he said.

"I'm not ashamed to talk numbers. I would say in the years that we've been in syndication, Julia, Michael and I have probably individually seen about a quarter of a million dollars out of residuals, whereas our brethren have seen hundreds of millions of dollars. Seinfeld has a profit of over a billion dollars."

"When the DVDs came up, we were being asked to provide new services," he said. "We had no problem with the DVDs being released, but then they said, 'We want you to perform new services. We want to do interviews and create additional footage and additional material.' Why would we do that? They said, 'Because of the legacy of the show.'

"Well, the character of George is not a millstone around my neck but I had to turn to my former bosses and say, 'I'm not invested in the longevity of the show. The longevity of the show actually is a detriment to me right now. It keeps me from getting certain kind of work. You have not made me a participant in the life of this show, therefore I am not inclined to give you these services.'

"It took a while for them to understand. Frankly, I think they were well prepared to proceed without our services until the audience said, 'Don't do that.'

"I said to Jerry when he made the decision years ago to not let us in, 'The day will come when you regret this decision, only because it's going to put us in a position eventually of seemingly tainting the wonderful impression of what this was for the four of us.

"You have created a rift between you and the three of us, and while we are in no way, shape or form looking for parity with you, you have created a chasm that is also inappropriate,' " Alexander recalled.

EU funds disappear

DAILY MAIL 20 January 2004

By Matthew Kalman,
Daily Mail correspondent in Jerusalem

A TEAM of inspectors from OLAF, the European Union fraud office, is this week arriving in Jerusalem to investigate whether EU funds have been misdirected by the Palestinians.

The European fraud-busters come at a time when allegations are mounting of corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

Palestinian officials and employees of pressure groups in the West Bank and Gaza are accused of having systematically diverted foreign aid over recent years.

But the outcome of the OLAF investigation is by no means certain.

That's because European Union officials, orchestrated by EU External Relations Commissioner Chris Patten, have repeatedly ignored the signs that millions of euros of taxpayers' money may be ending up in the wrong Palestinian pockets.

In the hope of strengthening ties with Yasser Arafat and the Arab world, EU leaders have proved remarkably reluctant to find out exactly how their aid money is spent.

Arab states have reduced their funding in protest at the stalled peace protest. Does the EU have the will to do the same?

At the very least, the EU should consider its continued support conditional on clear-cut action by Arafat to implement the first phase of the Road Map peace plan. This calls for the Palestinians to 'declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism'.

The EU has placed customs tariffs on Israeli goods produced in West Bank settlements. EU aid to Israel is not allowed to be used in the occupied territories. The time may have come for the EU to apply similar sanctions to the Palestinians.

Yasser Arafat is suspected of having been paying the salaries of terrorists from the e10m in monthly EU budget support for his civil service.

Patten's claims that the EU funds were minutely supervised by the IMF have been disputed by the IMF official responsible, Salaam Fayyad, now Palestinian finance minister.

An IMF report concluded that $900m was 'diverted' from the PA budget up to 2000.

Former Palestinian cabinet minister Abdel Fattah Hamayel admits paying $40,000 per month 'living expenses' to those Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades gunmen not already employed by the Palestinian security forces.

Stephen Bloomberg, a London-born engineer, is suing the EU for e20m. In August 2001, two Palestinian gunmen sprayed his car with bullets, killing his pregnant wife and leaving Mr Bloomberg and his teenage daughter paralysed in wheelchairs.

The gunmen were caught by the Israelis. One was a police officer and the other the police chief from the West Bank town of Kalkilyeh. Their salaries at the time were paid by the EU.

It is also alleged that corruption may have tainted EU donations to Palestinian Non Governmental Organisations.

Much of the e105m donated since 2000 has been channelled through the Palestinian Finance Ministry.

Funds are budgeted at an exchange rate of 4.5 shekels to the dollar and paid out at a rate of 3.5 shekels to the dollar.

No one knows what happens to the millions represented by the exchange gap.

Concrete action

LAST week, lawyer Khader Shekirat was arrested by Palestinian police after the EU accused him of stealing $2m from LAW - the EU-funded Palestinian human rights group which he headed.

Recently, the Palestinian NGO Network flatly refused to sign a pledge, requested by the American aid body USAID, that they will not 'provide material support or resources to any individual or entity that advocates, plans, sponsors, engages in or has engaged in terrorist activity'.

They said they preferred to reject the $1.3m received from USAID in the past decade rather than sign the pledge.

The EU should consider a similar pledge - combined with concrete action - from the Palestinian NGOs and the Palestinian Authority government.

Two Arabs -- one a bomber, the other a victim

Apprentice lawyer killed guard, self 18 others in Haifa

San Francisco Chronicle
Saturday, October 11, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Haifa, Israel -- Among the 20 people who died last Saturday in the suicide bomb attack on a restaurant in Haifa were two Arabs, a man and a woman.
They had little in common.
Mutanis Karkaby, 32, was a poorly paid security guard at the Maxim restaurant, a popular meeting place on the beach jointly owned and patronized by Jews and Arabs, not a remarkable thing in the Israeli city where peaceful coexistence is most deeply entrenched.
Hanadi Jaradat, a 29-year-old from a well-to-do family in Jenin, was only days away from finishing her training with a local law firm.
Hanadi killed Mutanis and 18 other people when she walked into Maxim at lunchtime and blew it to pieces by detonating a harness under her clothes packed with explosives, jagged metal and bolts. Several entire families were destroyed -- grandparents, parents and young children ripped to shreds where they sat.
Hanadi was not a refugee. She didn't suffer from hunger or deprivation, and her landowning family could afford to send her to Jordan to study law. The Jaradats live in a smart-looking, detached house in Jenin noted for the large lemon tree in the front garden. They are not religious.
But Hanadi's generation, nonetheless, turned into a cell of killers. Swept up in the feelings of oppression and powerlessness shared by so many Palestinians, they steeped themselves in the blood-chilling ideology of Islamic Jihad, which calls for the destruction of Israel and the death of its Jewish residents.
Hanadi was not the first in the family to lash out through the medium of a suicide bombing. A relative, Rageb Jaradat, killed eight people and injured 22 when he blew himself up on a bus between Jenin and Haifa in April 2002.
Hanadi's brother Fadi and her cousin Saleh were Islamic Jihad terrorists. Saleh was a local commander of the group who helped plan a suicide bomb attack by another young woman in Afula in May and made several unsuccessful attempts to detonate large car bombs inside Israel. Fadi was one of his assistants.
ISRAELI HIT SQUAD
Both were gunned down in June outside the family house by an undercover Israeli hit squad as Hanadi watched in horror and begged the soldiers to spare them.
Saleh had been on the run and had not seen his wife and 12-year-old son for some time. That evening, the fugitives came into Jenin for a quick meeting.
"Saleh came to see his wife and son, and to ask about my father's health," Hanadi told the Hamas Web site after the killings. "We were sitting at the entrance to the house drinking coffee. It was dark. A car with Arab plates pulled up, and we thought it was one of Saleh's friends.
"Suddenly, the white car stopped. Two guys jumped out and immediately opened fire on Saleh. Another car quickly appeared, also with Arab plates. Saleh's wife picked up her son and rushed inside. My brother Fadi fell to the ground . . . bleeding.
"I held his hand, and I started dragging him behind the couch we were sitting on to get away from the bullets. I started shouting, 'Fadi! Saleh!'
"I heard Fadi say in a very weak voice, 'Help me, save me.' Then the armed men attacked me, knocked me on the ground, dragged Fadi away and told me, 'Go into your house, or we'll kill you.'
"I shouted back, 'Leave me alone, I want to save my brother, he is bleeding. '
"Saleh was lying motionless . . . but Fadi was still moving. But three of the soldiers, who spoke Arabic fluently, attacked me and asked me, 'Where are his weapons?' I said, 'I don't know. There are no weapons. Allahu Akbar, he's going to die.'
"Then they forced me to lie face down, and one of them said, 'You bitch, you terrorist, we'll kill you with them.' They put their rifle to my head. I shouted back, 'You are terrorists, dogs.'
"Then I saw them dragging both of them away. They dragged them a few meters and shot them again in cold blood."
VOW OF REVENGE
Hanadi swore to take revenge.
"The murderer will pay the price, and we will not cry alone," she told her Hamas interviewers. "To hell with all the world if our people cannot live in freedom and dignity and achieve the dream and goals of the martyrs."
Her father, Taisir Jaradat, said this week that he has no regrets. "I'm proud of my daughter," he said. "She did the right thing."
Her younger sister, Hydaya, described Hanadi as a "a very sociable and lovable person. . . . She became religious after my brother was martyred. She was very bitter.
"We are proud of her because she took revenge for my brother. Now we know that his blood was not spilled in vain."
While the talk in Jenin was of death and revenge, in Haifa it was of peace and reconciliation.
At the modest apartment of Mutanis' parents, relatives and friends tried to console the shattered family and vowed that Hanadi's act of retribution would not put an end to Jewish-Arab brotherhood here.
Mutanis was a Christian, one of thousands of Arabs who live side by side with Jews in the working-class Wadi Nisnas neighborhood. This week his parents' residence was packed with Jewish, Christian and Muslim neighbors paying their respects. Men sat in one of the rooms around his father, Jurias, while the women sat in the other with his mother, Layla, and young wife, Samar.
They were married two years ago.
LIFELONG HAIFA RESIDENT
Jurias has lived in Haifa all his life. His great-great grandfather came here from a nearby village. He is a plumber and also lays tiles, but there has been little work since the Israeli economy took a nosedive with the start of the intifada three years ago.
He said he wasn't surprised to see the mixed crowd flocking to his house and the funeral.
"We go to their houses of mourning as well," said Jurias. "Jews and Muslims came to the church, we all sat together. And later, they carried Mutanis' coffin on their shoulders together."
Asked the secret of Haifa's religious and ethnic harmony, he replied, "Arabs and Jews coexist together here because nobody tells anybody else what to do."
"The Palestinians and Israelis need a smart man who can see and hear," he said, miming the actions. "Then it will be finished in a day. Moses took a stick and parted the Red Sea. It was a miracle. There are many good people. Go and find them."
A photo of Mutanis, a dark-haired, good-looking young man, stared out from the sideboard.
"We were five brothers and sisters, and Mutanis was the youngest," said his brother Afif. "When you eat grapes, the last grape is the sweetest. So it was with Mutanis."
He said Mutanis had a gift for making people laugh.
"He smiled with his eyes, and he made people happy. He had worked in a few jobs, for the national lottery company, as a picture framer and a waiter."
Then he moved on to one of Israel's more hazardous occupations -- restaurant security guard.
Afif looked again at the picture.
"Life in Israel is difficult, but he wanted to build something. And he believed in God."

Islamic Jihad denies Syria camp

But former terrorist says he received training there

San Francisco Chronicle
Tuesday, October 7, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Serrvice

Jerusalem -- Syria claims that Ein Zaheb, the area near Damascus bombed by Israeli warplanes Sunday, is a Palestinian refugee camp in a peaceful rural area. But a former fighter in a Palestinian terrorist group told The Chronicle the bombed site was a key training facility and arsenal for Palestinian extremists based in Syria as recently as two years ago.
Israeli intelligence sources say they attacked the facility because it is "supported by Iran and is used for operational training for Palestinian terrorists."
Responding to the Israeli charges, Abu Emad el-Refaei, an Islamic Jihad spokesman in Beirut, denied that his organization had any bases in Syria.
"We do not have any training camps or bases in Syria or any other country," he told al Jazeera television Monday. "All our bases are inside the Palestinian occupied territories."
But Jamal Ali, who was an active member of a Syrian-based Palestinian extremist group until he renounced violence and left Syria nearly two years ago, said in an exclusive interview that he had received training at the camp three years ago. He said the site was uninhabited but was used for secretive one-day training sessions.
Now living under an assumed identity in Jordan, Ali said he had trained at Ein Zaheb and other facilities in Syria. He added that the Ein Zaheb base had still been in operation, and even expanding, in the summer of 2001, just before he left the country.
Ali said trainees were taken, one at a time, to nearby caves and given their weapons, accompanied by a training officer and four security guards.
"Inside the cave, we were handed the weapons and two or three grenades," he said. "We then went to a building outside known as the 'grease place,' where they kept the bullets and ammunition. Then we would spend hours stripping and rebuilding the guns until we could do it blindfolded.
"After that, we were driven up to the plateau for target practice with cardboard targets erected in the hills. Finally, we would practice throwing the grenades over the hillsides and diving for cover behind the rocks."
Footage first broadcast on Iranian television and replayed Sunday by Israel TV showed trainees at Ein Zaheb handling detonators and explosives, as well as large numbers of weapons, rockets and grenades stored in tunnels and caves.
Ali said the base was operated by the radical Damascus-based Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command (PFLP-GC), the Palestinian splinter group led by Ahmed Jibril, but was used by most of the 10 extremist Palestinian organizations with headquarters in Damascus, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad.
A senior commander for the PFLP-GC told the Associated Press in Damascus on Monday that the camp was one of their deserted bases, not an Islamic Jihad camp, and had not been used in seven years. He said a civilian guard had been injured in the attack.
Ali described the camp as a sprawling underground network in "a very mountainous area riddled with caves."
"Inside the network of tunnels is one of the main weapons stores for Jibril's and the other groups," he said. "About three or four kilometers away, up on a plateau in the mountains, is a firing range used for training with guns, hand grenades and explosives."
Ein Zaheb was originally a training base used by Yasser Arafat's Fatah group, he said, until Syria turned against Arafat in 1983 and handed it over to Jibril.
"Ein Zaheb was the place where Abu Nidal, another Syrian-backed terrorist, executed 11 high-ranking officers from Fatah just after the Lebanon War in 1982," Ali said.
"It's a very rugged, very beautiful place in the mountains on the road from Damascus to Beirut," said Ali. "The terrain is so rough they train special squads in rock climbing and rappelling, but it's also full of natural springs and pools." The area is called Rabweh, he said, which means heaven.
On Monday, workers cleared rubble from what appeared to be a one-story house destroyed in the air raid. Pieces of metal and concrete shattered by the rocket attack lay on a nearby hill.
Israeli officials claim the camp is still feeding a pipeline that supplies terrorists to attack the country.
"There is a wide variety of training in the camp, including sabotage, artillery training, guerrilla warfare and even aeronautical training," said an Israeli security official. "Some of the terrorists training at the camp are operatives who come to receive advanced training and then return to Palestinian Authority territory in order to establish an operational terrorist infrastructure."
Amos Gilead, adviser on diplomatic and security affairs in the Israeli Defense Ministry, said the choice of Ein Zaheb as a target followed more than a month of tough messages warning Syrian leader Bashar Assad to stop assisting Palestinian extremists.

Israelis lobby Bush on security fence

Threat to withhold loan guarantees leads to less aggressive plan

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, September 22, 2003
Page A - 1

Abu Dis, West Bank -- Two of Israel's most senior civil servants will try to persuade the Bush administration today to drop its objections to the 225-mile, $1 billion security fence Israel is building to stop suicide bombers entering from the West Bank.
The White House has threatened to withhold part of the $9 billion in loan guarantees to Israel to protest the route of the fence, which is planned to cut deep into Palestinian territory in the West Bank in order to protect Israeli settlements.
In Washington today, Dov Weisglass, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Cabinet secretary, and Defense Minister Amos Yaron will present National security adviser Condoleezza Rice with a new plan for the barrier in an effort to deflect U.S. criticism. They will propose that instead of including the large settlements of Ariel near Nablus and Ma'aleh Adumim east of Jerusalem, the barrier will be left unbuilt in those areas.
The compromise has enraged supporters of the fence in Israel, but Sharon hopes it will avoid a head-on collision with the Bush administration.
The spat with Washington is the latest chapter in the tortured history of the project, which was first proposed by dovish Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the 2001 election campaign.
Leftist Israelis support the fence -- but only if it follows the invisible "Green Line" marking Israel's 1967 border with the West Bank, thus removing it as an obstacle to an eventual peace with the Palestinians.
RIGHTISTS FEAR DE FACTO BORDER
Rightists -- who might be expected to be in favor of the project, since it would create further "facts on the ground" -- instead fear that the fence will become a de facto final border, hastening the creation of a Palestinian state and causing the evacuation of Jewish settlements beyond the barrier's reach.
Police and security officials strongly support the project. Their arguments,
underscored by terror attacks that have killed hundreds of Israelis, persuaded Sharon and his center-right allies to begin construction.
Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, says the experience of nearby Cyprus, divided after a bitter war between Turkey and Greece, bolsters the theory behind the security fence.
"The violence subsided significantly after the Turkish authorities turned the Green Line there into a dividing wall, passing along the entire length of Cyprus," he said. "The evidence clearly demonstrates that almost 30 years of physical separation allowed tempers to cool, as the emotional amplifiers of the conflict subsided."
Critics, however, say that Sharon is moving too slowly, allowing foreign opposition to crystallize, and that the proposed course of the fence has strayed too far from the Green Line into Palestinian territory.
"They should have built the fence long ago, but it was held up because the settlers were opposed," said Haim Ramon, a prominent Labor Party politician. "The fence has been delayed for more than a year because the government is trying to route it not according to security needs but the needs of the settlers."
'APARTHEID WALL'
Palestinians vehemently oppose construction of what they dub the "Apartheid Wall," accusing Israel of grabbing large swathes of Palestinian land. They argue the barrier cuts them off from their own fields and orchards and denies them freedom of movement inside the West Bank and the chance to find work inside Israel.
"We are being put into a series of cages," said Sari Nusseibeh, the president of Al-Quds University, as he surveyed the bulldozers looming over a hill near his office last week.
The proposed route of the fence runs through the village of Abu Dis east of Jerusalem, cutting straight through the university and slicing off a playing field from the administration buildings.
Amnesty International has condemned the barrier as a form of "collective punishment" that "permanently restricts the free movement of Palestinians."
The clamor for erection of a continuous border fence grew as terrorist attacks reached a bloody peak in spring 2002.
"There is a security fence between the Gaza Strip and Israel, and though many have tried, not a single terrorist has been successful in entering Israel from Gaza," argues Maj. Gen. Uzi Dayan, a former national security adviser to Sharon who now heads a public committee lobbying for the fence. "All of the terrorists . . . come from areas within the West Bank, as there is no fence or barrier between the West Bank and the major population centers in Israel."
Economists say the fence will pay off in ways other than basic safety.
TERROR ATTACKS HURT ECONOMY
Avi Ben-Bassat, an economics professor at the Hebrew University who is a former director-general of the Finance Ministry, said the economy had been seriously hurt by the terror attacks.
Israel's gross domestic product grew by more than 4 percent annually from 1997 to 2000 but has been falling ever since the intifada began in September 2000. The worldwide recession is largely to blame, but Ben-Bassat attributes one quarter of the decline to terrorism and its associated costs.
Ben-Bassat said the fence would enable Israel to cut military expenditures, which now account for a huge 9.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.
"The benefits are enormous," he said. "It will cost about $1 billion, or 1 percent of GDP, but it will add $6 billion to GDP over the next two years. It's very expensive to protect the border now, and they can't do it anyway."
In August 2002, bulldozers broke ground on the first section of the fence outside the northern West Bank city of Jenin, aiming to cut off a favored cross-country route used by suicide bombers into nearby Israeli cities.
The project is modeled on the international border fence with Jordan, which runs largely along the Jordan River. It comprises a barbed wire and concrete barrier delineating an exclusion zone about 10 meters wide, a ditch to stop vehicles, an electrified, 3-meter-high fence fitted with sensors, a dirt road examined daily for footprints, a patrol road fitted with further sensors and a final barbed-wire fence on the other side.
It is planned to run about 200 miles around the West Bank, encircling some Israeli settlements but excluding others. But the final route of the fence, including sensitive areas around Jerusalem, has not been decided.
Israel Harel, a leading ideologue of the settler movement, said the "panic for a fence" had changed the face of Israeli politics.
"More than presenting an insurmountable obstacle that will prevent the infiltration of terrorists, the separation fence will constitute the border," he said. "The main political powers in Israel have adopted a consensus: Since there is no possibility of reaching an agreement (with the Palestinians) in the foreseeable future, there must be a unilateral separation."
Pragmatic rightists close to Sharon also worry about drawing a line that leaves some settlements unprotected. Likud party chief whip Gideon Sa'ar said that routing of the fence along the Green Line, as proposed by Washington, would be "the biggest prize of all for Yasser Arafat."
©2003 San Francisco Chronicle
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/09/22/MN24064.DTL

Israel decides to uproot Arafat

Sharon's Cabinet gives go-ahead for security services to 'remove' Palestinian chief

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, September 12, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- The Israeli government threatened Thursday to "remove" Yasser Arafat, saying he was sabotaging the peace process, and gave its security services a green light to move against the Palestinian leader "in a manner, and at a time, of its choosing."

Thousands of Palestinians rushed to Arafat's compound in Ramallah to protect their leader, fearing Israel would expel or even kill him, but most analysts doubted that Israel would defy U.S. wishes and take any immediate action against Arafat.

The decision by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's security Cabinet came in the shadow of a pair of suicide bombings Tuesday in which 15 Israelis were killed and dozens wounded. The bloodshed, coming less than a month after 22 people died in a suicide bomb attack on a Jerusalem bus, has brought Israeli anger at Arafat to the boiling point.

The 13-member security body said events of recent days had "proven again that Yasser Arafat is a complete obstacle to any process of reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians" and added that "Israel will work to remove this obstacle." The statement effectively gives Sharon and Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz blanket approval to move against Arafat without seeking further Cabinet approval.

A majority of the right-wing ministers attending the emergency meeting supported the expulsion of Arafat, according to Israeli television reports, and some even called for his death. But the Cabinet put off any immediate action to give Palestinian Prime Minister-designate Ahmed Qureia a last chance to clamp down on militants and to placate the United States, which opposes any move to send Arafat into exile.

"The government needed to say something about Arafat to satisfy strong domestic political pressures," said Professor Gerald Steinberg of the Begin- Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. But he cautioned that "exiling Arafat clearly has a big downside because he will be able to rally support abroad and continue directing the traffic."

"I think the government will decide to keep him here incommunicado where no one will be allowed to see him," he added, "so he will disappear as a factor, as an influence in the process."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said, "We think it would not be helpful to expel him because it would just give him another stage to play on." Israeli media said U.S. officials had called Sharon to underscore the point.

The pressure to do more is intense, however. At least four Cabinet ministers and one of the country's daily newspapers called for Arafat's assassination.

"He is a murderer, the leader of a murderous terrorist gang," said Education Minister Limor Livnat, comparing Arafat to a string of terrorists, including Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, who was targeted in an Israeli assassination bid last Saturday. "There is no difference between bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Yassin and Arafat."

An editorial in the Jerusalem Post urged Israel to "kill as many of the Hamas and Islamic Jihad leaders as possible, as quickly as possible, while minimizing collateral damage." The newspaper added: "And we must kill Yasser Arafat, because the world leaves us no alternative."

However, Steinberg dismissed the notion that Israel would kill the Palestinian leader, saying the political cost would be too high. Instead, he predicted that the singling out of Arafat was a signal that Israel sought to replace the Palestinian Authority government with another more to its liking.

Palestinian analyst Khaled Abu Toameh said Arafat's supporters were convinced their leader was now under physical threat.

"It's nothing but a warning, but the Palestinians clearly take it very seriously," he said. "They genuinely believe that Sharon is determined this time to get rid of their leader. Many think it could happen tonight -- that's why they came (out) in the hundreds. This will only boost Arafat's popularity in the Palestinian street."

Abu Toameh agreed that removing Arafat effectively would mean the end of the Palestinian Authority. "It's impossible to see how the Palestinian Authority can function without Arafat," he said. "He makes all the important decisions personally."

Qureia, the incoming prime minister, called on the international community to intervene. "It is an unwise decision," he said. "It will re-escalate the situation (and) put all efforts in danger. "

The wording of the Cabinet decision, like the decision by the government to declare Arafat "irrelevant" in December 2001, left observers confused about what, if anything, will happen next. Israeli politicians have a long tradition of appeasing critics by promising to take actions that are not carried out, and Sharon himself came to power three years ago on a promise to end the intifada.

However, the Cabinet gave a hint of its direction by asking the army to prepare and present plans for Arafat's "removal," leaving open the question of whether that meant exile, assassination or simply intensifying his isolation in his battered Mukataah headquarters in Ramallah, where he has been confined by Israeli sieges and threats for nearly two years.

Gaby Ashkenazi, a commander of Israeli forces in the West Bank, said the army had "several plans ready and waiting to go" with regard to Arafat. "One of them is labeled 'Arrest of Arafat and his removal from the Mukataah' ," said Ashkenazi.

The Cabinet also approved a call-up of reserves, which will take several weeks, indicating that Israel is preparing for a major military operation.

Arafat himself appeared defiant before the crowd that flocked to his compound, chanting: "With our blood, with our souls we will redeem you."

Flashing his trademark double-handed V-for-victory sign and a huge smile, Arafat addressed the crowd through a bullhorn, exhorting them to sacrifice "martyrs by the millions" on the road to Jerusalem -- the kind of language Israel considers an encouragement to launch more suicide bombings.

"They can kill me with bombs, but they can't deport me," Arafat told the crowd. "I won't leave Ramallah."

Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres called the Cabinet move "a terrible mistake," and an opinion poll on Israel Radio showed only 38 percent of Israelis favor forcing Arafat out of the country.

FIRST PERSON: Blood, emotions spill over in bombing

Suicide attack at cafe turns tears into anger

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- 11:20 p.m. Tuesday. I had just sat down to check my e-mails before going to bed when a huge blast like a thunderclap nearly knocked me out of my chair.

Looking out the window, I could see white smoke billowing into the dark sky over the rooftops from Emek Refaim, a strip of fashionable cafes and restaurants less than 200 yards behind my house. The night was silent, broken only by a lone car alarm triggered by the shock waves.

I shot out of my apartment and ran toward the smoke, joining a two-way stream of traffic. Running with me were people pulling on medics' vests, as well as photographers and other reporters. Walking slowly in the other direction, or simply standing, visibly shaken and often sobbing quietly, were the shocked bystanders who had witnessed the attack.

A minute later, as I turned the corner into Emek Refaim -- "The Valley of the Ghosts" -- I took in a scene from hell: Smoke curled up from the street and people lay all around, groaning and crying. Ambulances and police cars raced past me, sirens wailing, and juddered to a halt next to Cafe Hillel, a popular meeting place that opened only a few months ago.

It was one of my favorite cafes -- a lively spot where young people in their 20s and 30s gathered to eat, drink coffee and talk animatedly over the loud background music. Now the cafe was silent, a pit of blackness amid the flashing lights of ambulances and police cars. As I drew nearer, I saw its windows had been blown to bits. Strewn around the street were lifeless bodies and what looked like pieces of still warm human flesh.

Dozens of police and medics descended on the scene within moments, and the night filled with sounds. Police officers screamed through bullhorns, telling the gathering crowds to stay back in case there was another bomb. Medics shouted into walkie-talkies, directing ambulances and helping to evacuate the wounded.

I saw at least a dozen injured people hurried away on stretchers, their blood spilling onto the orange blankets of the gurneys. Girls were in tears, and survivors of the attack were trying to contact friends and relatives on cell phones to tell them they were OK, but the network had crashed, leaving scores of people talking desperately into thin air.

Several youths started arguing with police who were trying to clear the scene.

"Where are you going?" the officer asked one of them.

"I want to find some Arabs to beat up," he said.

Arriving home, I found my 13-year-old son and 15-year-old daughter in tears, shaking. Another night in Jerusalem.

Israel's anti-terror policies force retaliations, critics say

NEWS ANALYSIS

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- The two rapid-fire suicide bomb attacks that rocked this nation Tuesday -- just days after Israel attempted to assassinate the top Hamas leaders as they sat down to lunch in Gaza -- have revived questions about Israel's campaign to quash Palestinian terrorism.

Critics argue that Israeli attacks such as the bombing Saturday that narrowly missed killing Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin underscore Israel's impotence in the face of Palestinian resistance and only provoke retaliatory attacks. But Israeli policymakers say the Palestinians' refusal to take responsibility for securing areas under their control has forced them to target the terrorists themselves and their masterminds.

In the past three weeks, since a suicide bomber killed 22 people in Jerusalem on Aug. 19, Israel has killed a dozen Hamas leaders. If Saturday's raid had succeeded, then it would have claimed the life of Yassin and at least 10 others, including the group's chief bombmaker, Mohammed Deif.

Afterward, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon warned Hamas leaders that they were "marked for death," and Hamas threatened unprecedented revenge, saying Israel had "opened the gates of hell" with its attempt to assassinate Yassin.

The relentless attacks are part of a campaign to eliminate -- or at least intimidate -- the militants.

"Israel's purpose is to reconstruct deterrence on the terrorist front as well as we have managed to maintain it on the conventional (military) front for the past 30 years," said Eran Lerman, a former military intelligence colonel who is Jerusalem director of the American Jewish Committee. But Lerman cautioned that the strategy must be carried out carefully.

"Deterrence is never an isolated concept -- it's not just a matter of how much pain you can inflict on the other guy," he said. "If you do it in an illegitimate way, you lose diplomatically, and the other guy has scored on the strategic level."

DIFFERENT STRATEGIES USED

Faced with the constant threat of terror attacks, Israeli policy has gone through several distinct phases since the outbreak of the intifada three years ago.

At first, Israel used diplomatic and financial pressure to try to persuade Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to crack down on the militants.

When this failed, Israel began targeting suspects defined as "ticking bombs" -- people suspected of preparing an imminent attack on Israelis -- and assassinating them in extrajudicial killings. At the same time, it stepped up military pressure against the Palestinian Authority, bombing their buildings and isolating Arafat. But that tactic only seemed to inflame the intifada.

Now, Israel is going after the leadership of terrorist groups -- and it appears to know where to find them.

In its anti-terror campaign, Israel draws on a vast array of sophisticated and frequently top-secret devices, but insiders say the most-potent tool in the Israeli armory is the stool pigeon.

"Palestinians snitch on one another habitually, to the point that Israel will eventually know where all of these leaders are," said Dr. Michael Oren, a former Israeli army officer in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon, and author of the highly acclaimed history book "Six Days of War."

Israeli officials say their first priority is defensive -- to prevent terror attacks wherever possible.

"We have invested a lot of our capability in following the preparation of terror attacks against Israel," said Edad Shavit, a senior analyst in Israeli military intelligence.

ISRAEL UNDETERRED

As Tuesday's suicide bombings illustrate, even this aggressive campaign has failed to provide insurance against terror attacks. But Israeli authorities say they are determined to proceed and are making progress in pinpointing high- level targets within the militant groups.

Since the reoccupation of the West Bank last year, Israeli intelligence officials have been working furiously to rebuild the information networks they neglected during the years after the 1993 Oslo peace pact.

"The quality of 'humint' (a military term for human intelligence) flowing to Israel has been growing remarkably, and it's not just because of money," said Lerman. "There is a sense that Israel is serious -- and serious about protecting its sources. There are also elements in Palestinian society who are sick and tired of seeing what these people are doing and where they are dragging the rest of their own people."

In the vanguard of Israel's war on terrorists are the mistaravim, or "secret Arabs" -- Israelis who look and sound like Palestinians -- who infiltrate target areas and mingle with the local population.

Israel also taps phones and e-mails, deploys highly sensitive listening devices and launches unmanned, silent drones equipped with state-of-the-art video and photographic equipment.

Once the intelligence is in hand, Israelis can deploy an impressive array of deadly material, from laser-guided missiles to sniper rifles equipped with liquid hydrogen-operated night vision equipment able to hit a target more than a mile away in complete darkness.

"The Israel Air Force's strike techniques for carrying out 'targeted killings' appear to have been refined successfully, so that far fewer innocent bystanders are hurt," said political analyst and former Mossad agent Yossi Alpher.

Indeed, the Israeli army says that one of the reasons the attack on Yassin failed was that it used a relatively small 550-pound laser-guided bomb in order to minimize civilian casualties.

But Alpher has deep misgivings about where this campaign is leading.

"The trouble is that Prime Minister Sharon is now liable to conclude that his best option is to fully reoccupy the Gaza Strip in order to eliminate Hamas," Alpher told an online forum of American Peace Now, adding that without a viable political solution, "this is a recipe for yet further deterioration of the situation."

That view is shared by Gen. Shlomo Gazit, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.

"The Palestinians are using their weakness in the balance of power in their own favor," said Gazit. "Withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip is the only act that can save Israel from self-destruction. If the army does not change its military doctrine, we are doomed."

Mideast peace plan in tatters

Israel bombs Hamas luncheon; Abbas steps down

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, September 7, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- The Israeli military bombed a Gaza City apartment on Saturday in a failed attempt to assassinate the entire Hamas leadership just hours after Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas resigned, sending prospects for peace in the Middle East plunging to new lows.

The resignation of Abbas after just 100 days in office -- the result of a power struggle with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat -- will likely freeze the U.S. peace initiative known as the road map. Israel and the United States both refuse to deal with Arafat.

The Israeli bombing slightly wounded Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, Hamas' spiritual leader, and 14 other people. The 550-pound bomb was launched during a lunch meeting of the Hamas political and military leadership.

The group included two men who had already survived rocket assassination attempts -- Abdel Aziz Rantisi and terror mastermind Mohammed Deif. Yassin, a frail, 68-year-old, managed to flee the building as the jets approached.

A senior Israeli security official told the New York Times that the attack failed because the Israeli Air Force used a "relatively small bomb" to minimize civilian casualties.

Rantisi, who was in the building when it was hit, said his followers would "open the gates of hell" with a new suicide-bomb campaign against Israeli civilians.

Israeli security chiefs braced for more suicide bombings, ordering hundreds of extra police and soldiers onto the streets late Saturday. Security checks were stepped up at shopping malls, movie theaters and other public places.

Hamas was also stung by a decision on Saturday by European foreign ministers to outlaw its political wing as a terrorist organization. Previously, only its military wing had earned that designation.

The Palestinian political structure is struggling with a power vacuum that makes statehood -- a major tenet of the road map -- even more remote. While Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat spoke of reviving the peace plan, observers said U.S. policy was in tatters and would have to be rewritten.

"Abbas is the victim of what many Palestinians see as a botched attempt by Israel and the U.S. to sideline their elected leader," said Palestinian analyst Khaled Abu Toameh. "The writing was on the wall from the very beginning.

U.S. UNDERESTIMATED ARAFAT

"It was clear that Arafat -- who has never agreed to share power with any Palestinian -- would do his utmost to undermine Abbas and bring about his downfall. But the Americans seemed to underestimate Arafat and refused to see the clear messages emanating from the rubble of Arafat's compound in Ramallah."

"Arafat has only one choice for leader: himself," Abu Toameh said. "Arafat has won another battle, but the Palestinian people have undoubtedly lost."

The Palestinian president has two weeks in which to name a new prime minister, but there are few obvious candidates.

Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Ahmed Qureia is the only veteran leader still in the frame, but he says he does not want the job. Finance Minister Salam Fayad, a political ingenue, has apparently ruled himself out. Another possibility is businessman Monib al-Masri, an Arafat loyalist whose appointment was blocked by Arafat's Fatah movement earlier this year.

There was also speculation that Arafat would ask Abbas to resume his post.

While Palestinian politicians are tied up choosing their new Cabinet, they will be unable to make any progress on the security front, leaving the way open for Hamas to renew its bombing campaign in Israel's streets. Any rise in terrorism will likely trigger a draconian Israeli response, perhaps including widespread assassinations of Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials and a possible invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Right-wing Israeli ministers are also calling for the expulsion of Arafat, which could unleash a wave of popular Palestinian protest, leading in turn to a renewed Israeli military crackdown on the West Bank.

An Israeli government statement issued on Saturday night described the resignation of Abbas as "an internal Palestinian matter," but added, "Israel will not countenance a situation in which control of the Palestinian leadership reverts back to Yasser Arafat or someone who does his bidding."

WHITE HOUSE PRAISES ABBAS

And taking a swipe at Arafat, the White House issued a statement that Abbas' appointment as prime minister was a milestone "in the development of new institutions to serve all the people, not just a corrupt few tainted by terror."

Palestinian officials say that only strong international pressure will save them from tough Israeli measures. "We urge the international community to have the Israeli government refrain from exploiting the internal Palestinian situation," said Erekat.

Saturday's dramatic events unfolded in rapid succession, shifting from Ramallah, to Europe, back to Gaza and then to Ramallah again.

In the morning, a courier delivered Abbas' resignation letter to Arafat at his battered Mukata headquarters in Ramallah. Abbas then went to the Palestinian Legislative Council and addressed legislators for the second time in 72 hours, explaining his reasons for resigning. He blamed Israel, the Arab media and Arafat himself for the failure of his government, which he said had been brought down by "harsh and dangerous domestic incitement."

Leaflets and graffiti appearing in Ramallah since Thursday have denounced Abbas, also known as Abu Mazen, and his security chief Mohammed Dahlan as "Zionist collaborators" and "CIA agents."

"The events of the past few days left a scar on Abu Mazen," said Kadoura Farres, a legislator and Fatah leader who mediated between Arafat and Abbas in recent weeks. "Abu Mazen is not built to take such a thing."

Then came news of the decision by European foreign ministers to outlaw Hamas, including a freeze on assets and a ban on any diplomatic contacts with the group. The Bush administration and Israel had been pushing strongly for such a ban, and the French surprised observers by agreeing.

In Gaza, meanwhile, Hamas leaders meeting at the apartment of Marwan Abu Ras, a university lecturer and senior Hamas official, were sitting down to lunch when they heard Israeli jet fighters overhead.

Israel has killed a dozen other Hamas leaders in the past three weeks in response to a Hamas suicide bomber who killed 22 people aboard a Jerusalem bus on Aug. 19.

Abbas tells parliament: Back me or sack me

Palestinian prime minister talks tough to critics

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, September 5, 2003

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank -- Embattled Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, locked in a power struggle with Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat and facing criticism over his failure to make good on promises of peace, delivered a veiled ultimatum to his disgruntled parliament Thursday: Support me or dismiss me.

"You either provide the resources of power and support those things, or you take it back," said Abbas, who was appointed to a shaky power-sharing position with Arafat after intense pressure from Washington and the European Union.

In an address marking the end of his first 100 days as premier, Abbas faced down his critics, but his hold on power appeared fragile.

Parliament scheduled a closed-door meeting for Saturday to discuss his speech and decide whether to move to a vote of confidence. Lawmakers said privately they hoped a compromise could avert such a showdown, which would throw U.S. plans for Middle East peace into disarray.

Abbas and Arafat have clashed repeatedly over the continuation of the armed struggle against Israel, the appointment of cabinet ministers, negotiations with Israel and, most recently, control of the security forces.

Abbas wants more control over the security forces in order to curb attacks against Israelis by Palestinian militants, but Arafat appears reluctant to cede any real power to his premier.

Even as Abbas made his way Thursday to the Palestinian Legislative Council in Ramallah, black-hooded members of Arafat's Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades ran amok outside, spray-painting insults against Abbas on the walls of the council building. Protesters carrying Arafat placards beat on a door to the building with a hatchet and clubs, chanting that they would defend their leader "with blood and fire." Minutes before, the demonstrators had been seen emerging from Arafat's office across town.

Abbas had hinted last week, when he called for a Legislative Council meeting, that he might resign if he did not receive more backing from parliament, and mediators from all sides worked frantically behind the scenes to avoid a public clash at Thursday's meeting.

Sensing a standoff, Israel issued a statement on Sunday saying it would "not negotiate with a new government formed under the instructions and influence of Arafat."

And Palestinian legislator Hatem Abdel Khader said several of his colleagues had received calls from U.S. and European officials advising them to support Abbas. "They told my colleagues this was advice, not an order, but we reject this outside interference in our Palestinian affairs," he said.

In his speech, Abbas only hinted at his conflict with Arafat. "Without a legitimate force in the hands of one authority . . . we will not advance one step on the political track," he said, in a reference to the U.S.-backed road map, which foresees Palestinian statehood by 2005.

But Arafat has outmaneuvered Abbas on several fronts. Earlier Thursday, Abbas' position as chief negotiator with Israel was undermined by the appointment of veteran Arafat loyalist Saeb Erekat to the cabinet with the title of minister for negotiations.

And under a plan to address the confrontation over security forces, Abbas' security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, is likely to be usurped by a Palestinian national security council that would give greater control to Arafat.

In public, Abbas remained supportive of Arafat, describing him Thursday as the "constitutional leader and historic leader" of the Palestinians. He called on Israel to lift its blockade of Arafat's headquarters, saying, "I believe that the siege of President Arafat is hurting our national dignity."

Legislators said that during his first 100 days in office, Abbas, who is known as Abu Mazen, had failed to deliver on many of his promises, but most put the blame on Israel.

"If Abu Mazen fails, he will fail because of the Israeli government," said former Palestinian cabinet minister Ziad Abu Zayyad. "He did a few positive things, but I'm worried because the Israelis did not give him enough time to do what he was planning to do and what he wanted to do."

Abbas portrayed a unilateral cease-fire, declared by the armed groups June 29, as his main achievement so far. He accused Israel of sabotaging the truce with "provocations," such as the arrests of militants, and of evading its obligations under the peace plan.

The truce was called off after an Aug. 19 suicide bombing in Jerusalem that killed 21 people and Israel's killing two days later of Hamas leader Ismail Abu Shanab.

The Bush administration and Israel have been pressing to sideline or even oust Arafat, but he remains popular -- perhaps more so since Washington has embraced Abbas.

"Everybody is still supporting Arafat, and (they) see Arafat as the first national leader of the Palestinian people," said Abu Zayyad. "Arafat will never be irrelevant, I can assure you."

Mark Heller of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University said Arafat had "undermined Abbas and sabotaged him in almost every conceivable way."

"Arafat is extremely jealous about his power and is unwilling to share it with anyone unless his back is up against a wall, which is, to a large extent, what has happened in the last few months as a result of foreign pressure, especially from the United States," Heller said.

Dr. Nabil Kukali, director of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, said he was confident Abbas and Arafat would patch up their differences.

"The Palestinians are tired of Israeli occupation, and they are not ready for conflict between their leaders," Kukali said. "The Palestinian leaders understand that, and they will solve their own problems."

But Professor Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University and a former Arafat-appointed PLO representative in Jerusalem, warned that the continuing rivalry between the two men could prove fatal for both.

"A continued struggle between them not only will lead to the downfall of the one," said Nusseibeh. "I believe that the downfall of the one is going to lead to the downfall of the other.

"This is a lose-lose situation for both of them. Neither of them should think that this is a struggle in which only one of them will survive, and the Palestinian people will be left with a much worse position at the end of it."