MAKEOVER OF HAMAS: SHIFT OR SMOKE SCREEN?

SYMBOLS OF HOPE REPLACE ICONS OF CONFLICT
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Ramallah, West Bank -- Can a sunflower replace a Kalashnikov assault rifle? Can the stern face of a holy martyr brandishing a gun be replaced by the yearning gaze of a young girl with flowers in her hair?

Wednesday's election for a Palestinian parliament could mark a dramatic new direction for the Palestinian people, and nowhere is that possibility more evident than on the walls of the West Bank and Gaza.

Gone, for the most part, are the faces of the dead, a virtual graveyard of photographic tombstones, featured in the ubiquitous posters dedicated to the shahid -- Palestinian "martyrs" killed in the 5-year intifada against Israel.

Equally absent are the images of masked, gun- and bomb-toting fighters promising resistance and victory. Even, the word "intifada," the word for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, has virtually disappeared. All of these have been replaced by flowers, cartoons, bright colors and slogans promising to build the future and bring hope to the children.

Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, labeled by Israel, the United States and Western Europe as a terrorist organization, has jettisoned its own name for election purposes, campaigning instead under the banner of the Change and Reformation Party.

The group's makeover, including the name change, has taken place largely under the tutelage of Nashat Aqtash, a media studies lecturer at Bir Zeit University, who also has advised Hamas candidates to tone down their anti-Israel rhetoric.

The party's campaign manifesto left out the call for the destruction of the state of Israel -- a central component of the organization's charter -- and Hamas candidates said they would continue with the 9-month old hudna, a military truce with the Jewish state.

Coincidentally, perhaps, the Islamic group's senior leader in the Gaza Strip said Monday that Hamas might even be willing to negotiate indirectly with the Jewish state once Wednesday's elections are out of the way.

"Negotiation is not a taboo," Mahmoud Zahar told reporters in Gaza City. "Negotiations are a means. If Israel has anything to offer on the issues of halting attacks, withdrawal, releasing prisoners ... then 1,000 means can be found."

Israeli officials have dismissed such changes as cosmetic campaign ploys and point to earlier statements by Hamas leaders that the party's extremist goals have not changed.

Indeed, later on Monday night, before crowds of thousands of core supporters, Zahar and other Hamas candidates said they would never give up their insistence on the destruction of Israel and the right to armed struggle.

"We are entering the legislative council to make it a project of resistance," he told a cheering crowd Monday night in the Zeitoun neighborhood, according to press accounts.

Referring to the ruling Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority, Zahar added, "Do you want to abandon the program of sacrifice and jihad for the program of fancy cars and big salaries?"

Still, according to opinion polls, Hamas is expected to do very well in Wednesday's vote, not so much because of its record of suicide bombings and other violent activities against Israel but due to its emphasis on social programs, which have struck a chord with Palestinians fed up with what they regard as the ruling Fatah party's incompetence and graft.

Polls say Palestinian voters have expressed more interest in cleaning up corruption and improving education than in security issues.

About 1.3 million registered Palestinian voters in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are eligible to cast ballots in the second parliamentary election in 10 years. More than 700 candidates are vying for 132 seats in parliament.

While it is not clear how genuine or deep are the changes in attitudes and policies, it is clear from both Hamas and the Fatah party campaigns that they know what image they need to project to win voter support.

"They are using images of children instead of weapons," said Steve Sabella, an award-winning Palestinian photographer and artist from East Jerusalem, who was commissioned by one party, which he would not name, to photograph a series of images of ordinary people for use in its campaign.

Mahmoud Abuhashhash, director of the culture and science program at the A.M. Qattan Foundation for the arts in Ramallah, believes the campaign, at least as reflected in the wall posters, marks a sea change in Palestinian politics.

"This is really phenomenal," he said. "The images of weapons are totally absent ... . The word muqawme -- resistance -- is mentioned here and there, but in a general way."

Abuhashhash traces the change to the election of Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority to succeed Yasser Arafat in 2005 and to the depiction of a Palestinian leader, for the first time on wall posters, without a gun, military uniform or resistance slogan.

Baha Boukhari, the veteran Fatah political cartoonist who designed that poster, said it was designed, in part, to express Palestinians aspirations that he says Abbas represents.

"We do not believe that God created us just to struggle, just to fight. We want to lead a normal life," Boukhari said.

While all the parties have replaced the familiar images of guns and resistance with portraits of the candidates running for parliament, Fatah has gone one step further with a series of posters conveying broader political messages.

In addition to photos of the late Yasser Arafat in his familiar Arab headdress, and of Marwan Barghouti, a highly popular Palestinian militant currently serving five life terms in an Israeli prison, its posters feature a new Fatah logo -- a yellow sunflower -- and a series of iconic symbols set against a fresh blue sky. One of them, a picture of a young girl, is meant to symbolize the new Palestinian generation.

Mounir Salameh, director of the Fatah campaign in the West Bank, said the sunflower logo was developed from the party's original color scheme, which was yellow.

"Like the sunflower, which always faces the light of the sun, the Palestinian people are looking for a place full of light under the sun on this Earth," Salameh said.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Mideast could take a radical new turn

Yasser Arafat's party may fall to radical Hamas group when Palestinians vote Wednesday

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Sunday, January 22, 2006
Page A - 1

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank - The Fatah campaign rally in the Anata refugee camp near Ramallah featured large posters of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the party election slogan: "The makers of history and builders of the future."

Former Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman gave a rousing speech, but he was virtually booed off the stage by local residents demanding to know why he hadn't been seen in Anata for years. His reception left local organizers red-faced.

The growing unpopularity of Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for decades, will be the central issue when Palestinians go to the polls Wednesday to elect a parliament for the first time in a decade, and only the second time in their history.

A Palestinian police officer stands guard at the Fatah campaign office in Ramallah. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Since the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it has been dominated by Fatah, the armed revolutionary movement founded by Arafat that became the governing party under his leadership. Now Hamas -- the militant Islamic group that has spearheaded the suicide bombing campaign against Israel -- has set its sights on Fatah's stranglehold on power.

Headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Fatah appears to be suffering from a popular backlash amid charges of mismanagement, corruption and incompetence.

Baha Boukhari, a prominent Palestinian political cartoonist, said he and his countrymen are proud of their fledgling democracy, but remain concerned about interference from Israel and changing political patterns at home.

"We in Palestine have become pioneers for this region, if you compare us with all the Arab countries around," said Boukhari. "In our democracy, we are taking greater steps than all these other countries. Even though we are under occupation, we still have more freedom and more democracy and more opportunity to translate what we believe into reality in our everyday life."

But Boukhari said he is concerned about opinion polls showing rising support for Hamas, which did surprisingly well in last year's municipal elections and is participating in national elections for the first time.

"As civilized people, we believe in democracy and we have to respect the result, even if people elect a party which doesn't represent what I believe," said Boukhari, a lifelong Fatah supporter. "If Hamas will win, I believe Palestinians did not struggle all this time to achieve this final result. Hamas is something different. Hamas is not Islam. I am Muslim, the majority of Palestinians are Muslims, but what these people are representing is extremist. We are struggling to live as a normal nation, as any nation in the world, not to become a theocracy."

Hamas leaders say they are a role model not only for the Palestinians, but for the whole region.

"We are the future of this area. Islam is the only resolution of the future of this area," said Mahmoud Ramahe, a Hamas candidate from Ramallah.

Wednesday's elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, or PLC, will be governed by a 2005 law that standardized the voter rolls, enlarged the council from 88 members to 132 and introduced a mixed system of constituencies and proportional representation.

A total of 1,340,673 registered voters are to elect the 132 PLC members -- 66 of them by proportional representation from national lists, and 66 to represent 11 districts in the West Bank and five in the Gaza Strip. Six district seats have been reserved for Christians, and each party must include at least three women among the top 12 candidates on its list for the national vote.

As with the Palestinian presidential election in January 2005, this week's voting will be monitored by dozens of international observers organized by the European Union and the National Democratic Institute -- a nonprofit group that promotes democracy worldwide -- under the leadership of former President Jimmy Carter.

The latest survey published by the Development Studies Program at Birzeit University near Ramallah gives Fatah 35 percent of the vote and Hamas 31.3 percent with 21 percent undecided. Because of the two-part voting system, pollsters said it was almost impossible to determine how these voting patterns would translate into numbers of seats, but Hamas has a chance of winning a majority in parliament.

Ramahe said Hamas would be pragmatic, participating in government and talking to Israeli officials, even though the group does not recognize Israel's right to exist.

"We must deal with the issues affecting the everyday lives of our people," he said. "If that means we must speak to Israeli officials about water, electricity or other such matters, we will do it because we must deal with the reality on the ground. This does not mean that we accept it."

However many seats Hamas takes, Ramahe said, they are a force with which Israel and the Western nations will have to contend. "If the United States and Europe want to deal with the problems of this area, they will have to deal with Hamas."

Israeli leaders say they will not talk to Hamas government ministers, although lower-level officials deal with elected Hamas officials at the municipal level. Both the United States, which classifies Hamas as a terrorist organization, and the European Union have threatened to cut aid to the Palestinian Authority if Hamas politicians are given a role in government before its militias lay down their arms.

"The view of the U.S. is that there should be no place in the political process for groups and individuals who refuse to denounce terror and violence, who do not recognize Israel's right to exist, and refuse to disarm," Assistant Secretary of State C. David Welch said after a recent meeting with Abbas. To the dismay of some Palestinians, Carter echoed those sentiments.

"While it is in the long-term interest of Palestinian democratic development, and likely in the long-term security interests of Israel, that a wide spectrum of groups participate in lawful and peaceful political processes, Hamas' current political participation, while simultaneously advocating violence, undermines a fundamental principle of democratic elections," said a statement issued by Carter's National Democratic Institute.

Even Fatah officials admit that the appeal of Hamas is largely due to antipathy toward the ruling party, especially its aging rulers who have not delivered the peace and prosperity Palestinians once expected.

"Fatah has led the Palestinian Authority for the past 10 years and is the ruling party in Palestine. That will create for the other groups a weapon in their hands to attack Fatah with all the mistakes and problems that have occurred in the Palestinian Authority," said Mounir Salameh, director of the Fatah election campaign in the West Bank.

"But Fatah will present the Palestinian people with the great achievements which we have brought them in the past 10 years -- the jobs we have created, the hospitals, schools, and miles of roads we have paved. We will demonstrate that we are the true saviors of the national program."

At Fatah campaign headquarters in Ramallah, Laila Jammal, a one-time UC Berkeley student from Daly City, was helping set up the office and brief canvassers.

"My family thinks I'm crazy moving back here," said Jammal, who was born in Acre, now part of Israel. "I've faced dangers from the Israelis, but I wouldn't be anywhere else. After touching the dangers, I am even more positive that we have to end our suffering and form an independent state, and I believe that Fatah should continue to lead that struggle."

Voters don't need to support Hamas to beat Fatah -- they just need to stay at home.

In municipal elections last year, Hamas captured Fatah strongholds such as El Bireh and Bethlehem in the West Bank because Fatah supporters simply didn't bother to vote.

The dwindling Christian community in Bethlehem is reeling from anti-Christian comments made by one of the newly elected Hamas City Council members, and a special effort is under way to get out the vote for moderate candidates on Wednesday.

"People are worried, especially after the municipality elections," said Mike Canavati, a prominent Christian businessman in Bethlehem. "Only 30 or 35 percent of the Christians went to vote. That's why Hamas took all these seats. This time we are going house to house, telling the people: 'You must go and vote for the good Muslim, for the non-fundamentalist Muslims.' I think we're going to succeed.

"If we don't vote, then for sure the Hamas will win a lot of seats. It will be terrible. The whole world is against fundamentalist Muslims. It will affect us in all ways. If this day comes, it will be the end of Christianity in this area," Canavati said.

Across town, the offices of the campaign to free Marwan Barghouti were working full out. Barghouti was convicted on five counts of murder by an Israeli court in May 2004 for his part in a string of deadly attacks. Despite his incarceration, he remains the leader of the Fatah "Young Guard," dedicated to democratizing and modernizing the ruling party. He threatened to run atop an independent list until the party leadership caved in and put him at the head of the Fatah candidates.

Barghouti is unlikely to be released in the near future, but his wife Fadwa, who is also running in the election, said a reinvigorated Fatah under her husband's leadership -- even from jail -- would be more appealing to voters.

"Marwan believes we should resist the occupation while trying to negotiate peace with Israel, a policy which has made him very popular among ordinary Palestinians," she said. "They also respect his stance on social issues and the democratization of Fatah."

In addition to the internal disputes, Palestinian leaders accuse Israel of interfering with the movement of candidates and election materials because of security checkpoints scattered throughout the West Bank and on the border of the Gaza Strip.

Israel says it will do all it can to ease the movement of voters on election day, but argues that lifting security restrictions completely will allow terrorists to reach their targets. Its concerns were realized Thursday, when a suicide bomber sent by Islamic Jihad -- which is not running candidates in the election -- blew himself up in Tel Aviv, injuring more than 20 people and killing himself.

All sides agreed that the attack was designed to provoke an Israeli security clampdown, threatening the conduct of the vote.

"The culprits must be punished," Abbas said in response to Thursday's suicide bombing. "They aim to sabotage the elections and the efforts of the Palestinian Authority to impose law and order."

Politics of the Palestinians

ELECTIONS

Where: West Bank, Gaza Strip, East Jerusalem

When: Wednesday

What's at stake: Election of Palestinian Legislative Council members, half elected from party lists and half representing 16 local districts.

Electorate: Limited to the areas occupied by Israel in June 1967, including 1.3 million registered voters living in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. To cast ballots, voters must have proof of age, identity, Palestinian citizenship and place of residence. Palestinian ID holders living abroad are also eligible to vote if they have registered and are in Palestinian territories on election day.

Palestinian Legislative Council: The PLC, the legislative arm of the Palestinian Authority, is an elected unicameral body with 132 members who serve 5-year terms. It enacts laws, votes on the prime minister's nomination by the president, and approves Cabinet positions proposed by the prime minister.

State-level districts: The 16 districts are Bethlehem, Deir al-Balah, Gaza City, Hebron, Jenin, Jericho, Jerusalem, Khan Yunis, Nablus, Northern Gaza, Qalqilya, Rafah, Ramallah, Salfit, Tubas and Tulkarem. Six seats in districts with significant Christian populations are reserved for Christian lawmakers.

President: The president of the Palestinian Authority is directly elected by Palestinians in a separate election and is considered the commander in chief of the armed forces. Mahmoud Abbas was elected in January 2005 to succeed Yasser Arafat, the first president, who died in 2004.

PARTIES

Twelve political slates of candidates are registered. The main parties are Fatah, which has dominated the Palestinian government since the Palestinian Authority was established, and Hamas, which is campaigning as the Change and Reformation Party.

Fatah: The dominant political force for many years, the party is struggling to shake off its reputation for corruption and cronyism. Leaders have been trying to patch over a division between veteran party elders and younger, more radical members who contend the political establishment needs shaking up. President Abbas, leader of the old guard, has attempted to improve security and end lawlessness, but Israelis complain he is foot-dragging on their demand that he disarm militias. Marwan Barghouti is a favorite of younger voters despite being imprisoned in Israel on murder charges.

Hamas: Outside the Palestinian territories, Hamas is best known for its violent campaigns against Israel -- unlike Fatah, it refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist, and the United States calls it a terrorist organization. In Gaza and the West Bank, the organization has earned a reputation for providing local services, such as preschools and health and welfare services, superior to those of the Palestinian Authority, and its candidates have done well in previous municipal elections.

Other slates and parties: The Third Way slate, headed by former Finance Minister Salam Fayyad, includes prominent Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi; Alternative slate, headed by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine Secretary-General Qais Abdel Karim; Independent Palestine slate (National Initiative), headed by Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi; Abu Ali Mustafa slate (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, or PFLP); the Abu Al-Abbas slate (Palestinian Liberation Front); the Freedom and Social Justice slate; the Popular Struggle Front slate; the Freedom and Independence slate (the Palestinian Arab Front); the Palestinian Justice slate (independent); and Waad (independent).

Sources: Council on Foreign Relations; The Jerusalem Fund; BBC News; Central Elections Commission-Palestine; Chronicle research by Lois Jermyn.

Nazareth Village re-creates life as Jesus knew it

Replica designed to improve understanding of Scriptures

Nazareth Village, near where Jesus was born, includes a first-century farm where donkeys pull wooden plows through the soil. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, December 23, 2005

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Nazareth, Israel -- On a rocky hillside in Nazareth, the town where Jesus grew up and spent much of his life, a familiar scene is taking shape. In the courtyard of a stone stable, surrounded by rough-hewn wooden farming implements, a young man and his wife are comforting their newborn son. They are dressed in simple, handwoven tunics, and the baby is lying on a bed of fresh straw in an animal's trough.

It is as if they had been transported back in time 2,000 years to the birth of Christ and the simple rural community where Mary and Joseph lived, probably less than a mile away. This is Nazareth Village, an authentic re-creation of a first-century Holy Land farm.

This week, the village was the scene for a dramatic retelling of the Nativity by torchlight, accompanied by readings from the Gospels and carols in Arabic for the local community. The play has been staged in Nazareth since 2000, and it draws thousands of spectators.

Although there are other Nativity plays in the Holy Land, this is probably the most authentic reconstruction of the birth of Nazareth's most famous son. The crowded courtyard is buzzing with the raucous sounds of donkeys, sheep and chickens that share the rough accommodation. The steady thud of hammers and chisels drift over from a nearby carpenter's workshop. The air is thick with the smoke of oil lamps, the fresh farmyard odors of animal dung and viscous white goat's milk cooking in a pot on an open fire.

The village was born a decade ago, after Dr. Nakhle Bishara, medical director of the Nazareth Hospital, urged his colleagues to take a patch of bare, rocky hillside next to the hospital and transform it into a center for pilgrims that would explain how Jesus lived in Nazareth.

"Nazareth today is a very busy city," said Bishara, a Christian Arab Israeli whose family has lived here for nine generations. "Two thousand years have so changed Nazareth that you can't recognize anything from Jesus' time today. ... If we can bring this back to life as it was at the time of Jesus, then we can help people who come to Nazareth."

Bishara enlisted the help of Professor Stephen Pfann, president of the University of the Holy Land in Jerusalem. On Pfann's first visit to the site, he was amazed to discover the remains of first-century pottery jars and a Roman-era wine press on the hillside.

"This was a first-century Jewish village, a stage upon which history was built," Pfann said. "In this environment, many of the New Testament stories come alive.

"Being here brings more meaning out of the Bible," he said. "We hope that people will emerge with a certain amount of culture shock and with an enhanced understanding of the Scriptures."

Nestled among the olive groves on the man-made agricultural terraces -- some dating back to the first-century farm -- a small rural community is coming to life. There are houses, a carpenter's workshop, a synagogue, stable, wine press, olive press, water cistern and stone quarries. The working farm has sheep, chickens and donkeys that pull wooden plows through the rocky soil.

Clothes, tools and even the food have been re-created as precise replicas of the daily materials used by Jews under the Roman occupation. More buildings are reconstructed each year.

Every detail of the village, from the crops to the buildings, is based on careful scholarship. Pfann and a team of scholars, archaeologists, architects and engineers have produced hundreds of pages of documented research and plans based on ancient writings, mosaics and archaeological discoveries. To finance their work, they have raised about $5 million so far, mainly from Christian donors abroad.

"We all grew up with this quaint notion of Jesus, the peaceful shepherd," said D. Michael Hostetler, the first director of the village. "But his was a time of occupation and turmoil. When he speaks about loving your enemy in the context of Roman brutality, it takes on special meaning and has even greater relevance to conditions today."

Modern research shows the phrase "no room at the inn" to be a simple linguistic mistake. "There were no inns in the type of village which Bethlehem was in the first century," said Claire Pfann, the wife of Stephen Pfann and also a teacher at the University of the Holy Land, referring to the town where Jesus was born. "The Greek word kataluma, or eliya in Aramaic -- used to describe the Nativity scene in the Gospel of Luke -- is always used to describe an upper room or guest room, which was typically found in the one or two patriarchal houses which would have been in such a village.

"Visitors would have stayed in these guest rooms, which would have been occupied because everyone had returned to Bethlehem for the census," she said. "Since they were full, the family had to share the stable under the house with the animals."

As Nazareth Village continues to grow, the organizers expect more revelations about the life of Jesus to help visitors to appreciate the times in which he lived and the challenges he faced.

"The village is a real message for all local people and foreigners to come and touch what real life was like here in the first century," said Nermine Haj, a local pharmacist and guide. "Jesus used parables that touched people's life, so they knew what he was talking about. He talked about materialistic things, but his words had deep spiritual meaning. We can really see it here in the village. It's very exciting to see how people used to live and how Jesus used all these everyday things to reach their hearts."

Assassination in Gaza City

Arafat cousin's slay spurs civil war fear

BY MAHMOUD HABBOUSH IN GAZA CITY, MATTHEW KALMAN IN JERUSALEM AND JONATHAN LEMIRE IN NEW YORK

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2005

IN A STUNNING CHALLENGE to the Palestinian leadership, masked militants assassinated Yasser Arafat's cousin yesterday, raising the specter of a possible civil war as Israel prepares to hand over control of the Gaza Strip.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas canceled next week's trip to the United Nations after the slaying of Gen. Moussa Arafat, 65, former head of the Palestinian Military Intelligence.

Militants stormed Arafat's Gaza City home after a shootout with his bodyguards. Arafat, an adviser to Abbas, was dragged out of his home in his pajamas and gunned down in the street. His eldest son, Manhal, was abducted.

The brutal predawn murder, claimed by a group called the Popular Resistance Committee, was seen as a direct challenge to Abbas' rule as he prepares to govern a fully liberated Gaza Strip after Israel's handover next week.

"If the Palestinian Authority doesn't recognize the danger of the corrupt officials, we will carry out a campaign to implement God's law by killing them," Abu Radwan, a PRC leader, told the Daily News.

"The Zionist occupation and the [Palestinian] corruption are the two sides for the same coin," said Radwan, who vowed there would be more violence if needed.

The killing prompted an angry Abbas to vow that his authority in Gaza would not be challenged - though he was forced to cancel his plan to attend the UN General Assembly convention and meet other world leaders, including Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

"This despicable crime won't affect my efforts to consolidate the rule of law and public order," Abbas told an emergency meeting of the Palestinian National Security Council yesterday.

Israel evacuated all 21 Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip last month and plans to withdraw its troops next Monday - leaving a power vacuum that hard-line militants are fighting Abbas' loyalists to fill.

Moussa Arafat clashed frequently with PRC militants - who believe his followers have been weak when negotiating with Israel - and few Palestinian security forces came to his aid during yesterday's 30-minute gun- and hand-grenade battle.

"I looked out of the window and saw two masked men escorting Manhal, and a third man was holding his father aloft on his shoulders," said shaken neighbor Mohammad Shamallakh, 20. "Moussa wasn't moving at all."

Spielberg hasn't finished his movie about the Mossad, but there's already criticism

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, August 1, 2005

Matthew Kalman, Dan Baron, Special to The Chronicle

Jerusalem -- Israeli spymasters have hit out at Steven Spielberg's new
movie about the Mossad, disputing its accuracy and its main theme.
"Munich," starring Eric Bana, Geoffrey Rush and Daniel Craig, follows the
Mossad agents who hunted down the Palestinian terrorists responsible for
the murder of 11 Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
More than 20 Black September terrorists were assassinated over a period of
at least two decades, but the Palestinian mastermind and one of the
original gunmen remain at large.
Yigal Eyal, a former Mossad agent, said: "The Munich massacre galvanized
Israel into deciding that if other countries could not guarantee its
citizens' safety, it would do so itself -- by whatever means."
Ilana Romano, the widow of Josef, the first Israeli athlete killed,
agreed, adding that the feeling Israel had to act on its own increased
when the West German government agreed to release three gunmen involved in
the Olympic massacre after Palestinians hijacked a suspiciously empty
Lufthansa flight in October of that same year.
"That was when reprisals really began," she said
She said she received a phone call after each killing of the Black
September team.
The movie is being filmed amid tight secrecy in Malta and other locations
around the world.
It is largely based on "Vengeance," a version of the Mossad missions by
George Jonas, which has been discredited by Mossad officials and Israeli
espionage experts.
According to Jonas, Israel largely abandoned its agents midmission in
Europe, where several were hunted down and killed by Palestinian
counterespionage teams.
Zvi Zamir, who headed Mossad at the time, said the version of events told
by Jonas was "not true."
"I am surprised that a director like him has chosen, out of all the
sources, to rely on this particular book," said Zamir of Spielberg's
project.
Spielberg has said his movie would show Israel's response "through the
eyes of the men who were sent to avenge that tragedy."
"By experiencing how the implacable resolve of these men to succeed in
their mission slowly gave way to troubling doubts about what they were
doing, I think we can learn something important about the tragic standoff
we find ourselves in today," said Spielberg.
"It's about how vengeance doesn't ... work -- blood breeds blood," actor
Daniel Craig told Empire magazine.
But Mossad operatives said in interviews that agents never suffered last-
minute pangs of conscience or balked at carrying out their duties.
"I know of no case of an intelligence agent backing out in the middle of
an operation for reasons of conscience," said Gad Shimron, a former Mossad
agent who was not involved in the Munich reprisals. "Before or after,
perhaps, but never midmission. The idea of an agent violating his contract
because he finds a mission morally problematic is pretty much unheard of.
These are dedicated professionals who invariably have proven their worth
in Israel's elite military units and fully realize the tough nature of the
business they are entering."
One of the Mossad assassins involved in the Black September missions said
there were serious inaccuracies in Jonas' book.
He said the code name Wrath of God attributed to the assassinations was a
fable. Each mission had a separate code name generated by clerks. Nor was
there a fixed team as described in the book. The personnel changed
according to each mission, with agents being seconded from other Israeli
units. He said the actual triggermen were only on the ground for a very
short period of time and required little preparation.
"The exposure of the hit team -- those with their fingers on the trigger,
rather than the various support agents -- is kept to an absolute minimum,"
he said. "You can expect to be flown out to the target at a couple hours'
notice, do the job and be back home by nightfall. There is no special
training needed for a mission that involves shooting; these things take
place at close range, usually with light handguns, and there is no mystery
about that."
The assassin said that the most famous scene in the book, where Prime
Minister Golda Meir summons the head of the hit team to give him her
personal blessing, was pure myth.
"It is unthinkable for the prime minister to summon a field agent for a
personal request that he undertake a mission. It's just not done," said
the agent.

Matthew Kalman is a member of the Chronicle Foreign Service; Dan Baron is
a Jerusalem-based writer and the co-author with Itay Gil of "The Citizen's
Guide to Stopping Suicide Attackers: Secrets of an Israeli
Counterterrorist."

Hamas, Fatah face off over Gaza

With imminent Israeli pullout, Palestinian factions vying for future control over area to be evacuated

GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, July 15, 2005

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

JERUSALEM -- With only six weeks left until Israel begins its unprecedented pullout from the Gaza Strip, Palestinian political factions are jockeying for position to see who can reap the most benefits.

They are also vying for physical control over the land to be evacuated -- more than 30 per cent of the Gaza Strip, including settlements, army outposts and access roads -- and, by extension, control of the entire area.

Yesterday, Hamas and soldiers of the Palestinian Authority waged fierce gun battles in northern Gaza, Reuters reported, after militants launched a rocket from the area that killed an Israeli woman.

The fighting was the worst in years among Palestinians in the occupied territory, underscoring the tough challenge Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas faces to consolidate his control in Gaza before the Israeli pullout.

Observers had already started questioning whether the security forces -- who are hand-picked for their loyalty to the mainstream Fatah grouping of Mr. Abbas -- are up to the job of controlling Gaza.

"I don't see that the Palestinian Authority has the intention or the capability to take control of the areas to be evacuated," said Martin Indyk, a former U.S. State Department official with special responsibility for Israeli-Palestinian affairs.

Politically and militarily, the main rival to Fatah is the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement, which appears to be partly shedding its terrorist past in favour of a new-found political pragmatism.

Hamas is now poised to play a major role in the government of the Gaza Strip after the Israeli pullout, a period which many observers see as a test of whether the Palestinians can run their own affairs in an area free of Israeli occupation.

The Palestinian leadership and Hamas are locked in a complex political dance over whether and how to share power in post-occupation Gaza, and what implications such an arrangement might have for the future of Palestinian politics.

Hamas has proposed the establishment of a "national-Islamic committee" to run Gaza, while the Palestinian Authority has invited Hamas and other factions to join the existing administration. Each side has rejected the other's proposal, for fear of ending up as the junior partner.

For decades, Fatah has been the dominant force in Palestinian politics. Recent surveys by leading pollster Khalil Shikaki suggest they would still romp home with 44 per cent of the vote if parliamentary elections were held tomorrow.

But Hamas, which has boycotted previous elections because it rejects the recognition of Israel implicit in the Oslo accords, took a strategic decision this year to enter politics, emerging as a potent political opposition.

Mr. Shikaki predicts Hamas would win 33 per cent in parliamentary elections.

In recent municipal elections Hamas won about 50 per cent of the vote in Gaza, while Fatah remained dominant in the West Bank.

The growing popularity of Hamas poses a potential threat to the traditional hegemony of Fatah, and also presents Israel and the international community with the dilemma of how to talk to a group that remains committed to the destruction of Israel and the perpetration of suicide-bomb attacks against civilians.

"The call [for coalition] is a result of a crisis within Fatah and the Palestinian Authority," said Ghazi Hamad, head of the Islamic Salvation Party and editor of the pro-Hamas weekly Al-Risala.

"I think Hamas will be very wary about getting involved, as they have no interest in solving Fatah's problems. Hamas does not want to be pushed into a government which is facing a crisis and which has problems."

Page 12

Jerusalem's gay pride marchers attacked

3 participants stabbed, 13 protesters arrested as ultra-Orthodox crowd tries to halt parade

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

San Francisco Chronicle Friday, July 1, 2005

Jerusalem - Violence marred the annual gay pride parade for the first time Thursday when an ultra-Orthodox man broke through heavy security and stabbed three of the participants, leaving them with light to moderate wounds.

Other protesters, most of them religious Jews, lined the mile-long route of the "Love Without Borders" march through central Jerusalem. Some held placards that read "You are corrupting our children" while others shouted insults. One placard read "Jerusalem is not San Francisco."

Thirteen protesters were arrested, including one man who threw a soiled diaper at the marchers then attacked a photographer trying to record the scene.

Outside the Great Synagogue, where about 100 protesters shouted anti-gay slogans behind a thick police cordon, two members of the Knesset (parliament) tried to stop the march by sitting in the middle of King George V Street, the city's main thoroughfare. They were eventually dragged away by police.

The violence -- in stark contrast to the peaceful events of previous years -- came after attempts by the ultra-Orthodox mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, to ban the march.

That decision was overturned by a Jerusalem court Sunday, when a judge ordered the municipality to provide the relevant permits, decorate the route with rainbow banners and pay $13,000 in damages to Jerusalem Open House, which organized the march. The mayor also was ordered to pay damages out of his own pocket.

Earlier, a rare coalition of Muslim, Jewish and Christian leaders had urged the cancellation of a separate event called World Pride, originally scheduled to be held in Jerusalem in August. After consultations with police, the organizers delayed that celebration until next year because it coincided with the date of the planned Israeli pullout from Gaza.

The controversy seemed to increase support for Thursday's event, which attracted about 8,000 people, about twice as many as last year. The procession through the city center ended with a large open-air dance party in a city park.

Hundreds of police escorted the marchers under the personal command of Jerusalem City Police Chief Ilan Franco. In an unprecedented security operation, armed paramilitary border police standing every 5 yards cordoned off the streets surrounding Liberty Bell Park to allow revelers to dance undisturbed into the night.

Jerusalem Open House director Hagay Elad blamed the violence on the mayor.

"What we saw here today is a direct result of the incitement that took place during the past few weeks against the homo-lesbian community," Elad said. "This is not the first time we have seen how incitement in Israel leads to physical violence, which begins with Mayor Uri Lupolianski and his associates. "

David Bernstein, 23, a real estate broker wearing the black hat, frock coat and side-curls of the ultra-Orthodox, watched the parade in silence but did not hide his disapproval.

"I don't believe there is such a thing as homosexuality," said Bernstein. "It's simply not natural. I think the mayor was right to try and stop this march, particularly here in the holy city of Jerusalem."

Beneath a banner identifying his group as "Proud diplomats in the foreign service," Ziv Nevo-Kulman, 35, a former Israeli cultural attache in Tokyo, said it was important for gays and lesbians to be able to express their identity openly in the nation's capital.

"It's still easier to be gay in Tel Aviv, but things are improving," Nevo- Kulman said. "The Israeli civil service is very liberal when it comes to granting equal rights for gay couples. When I was posted to Tokyo, my partner was with me and he enjoyed full rights as if he were a spouse."

A 30-year-old Palestinian chef who declined to give his name said he had to come to predominantly Jewish West Jerusalem to express his sexuality. "It's not possible to be openly gay in Palestinian society," he said.

In stark contrast to other gay pride events around the world, even in Tel Aviv, only a handful of drag queens and very little exposed flesh were on view. Dafna Stromza, spokeswoman for Jerusalem Open House, said the gay and lesbian community in Jerusalem wanted to be accepted into the cultural mosaic of the city and so purposely toned down public expressions of their sexuality.

"The message is one of tolerance and acceptance and pluralism," she said. "Many of the participants are religious or conservative. We hold tolerance in Jerusalem to be of the utmost importance. What the marchers are expressing is not their sexual identity, but their belief in pluralism and diversity."

Annessa Kernberg, a 17-year-old high school student from San Francisco, cheered the parade from the window of the hostel where she was staying with a group of teenagers on a United Synagogue Youth tour.

"It's something that's been suppressed in the Jewish religion, and I think it's something we should embrace," she said. "It feels like home."

Wronged royal wife ...or£32bn queen of the gold diggers?

‘It’s not about the money’ says wife of billionaire Saudi king after launching unprecedented legal action in British courts seeking £50million maintenance

MAIL ON SUNDAY
26 June 2005

By Elizabeth Sanderson in London and Matthew Kalman in Ramallah

THE woman inside the elegant town house in fashionable Rutland Gate, Kensington, just off Hyde Park, wanted to make certain facts clear to me.
She said she was sick of all the lies being told about her. She wanted to put the record straight.
Her enemies, friends of her husband, the billionaire King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, were engaged in a dirty war against her to blacken her name, she believed.
Saudi sources in London have suggested that she is a fan of plastic surgery and has had a number of nips and tucks at Harley Street; that she is a devotee of Scientology, whose followers believe that humans are temporary vessels for immortal souls called Thetans; that she is addicted to gambling and blew hundreds of thousands of pounds on the blackjack tables in London’s casinos; and, most damning of all, that she was unfaithful and has had relationships with a variety of men.
At the root of all this, of course, is money, namely the £50 million she is asking from him as a divorce settlement. So, I asked her, what is the truth of it all? Janan Harb decided it was time to hit back. Sometimes indignant, sometimes on the verge of tears, she said: ‘People say things about me. They tell lies. I don’t know why, maybe they are jealous. Yes, I am a Scientologist but I haven’t given hundreds of thousands of dollars to them like people say.’
Speaking in the clipped tones of an upper-class English lady, with only the slightest hint of her Palestinian roots, she continued: ‘And yes, I’ve had my nose done but that doesn’t mean I have lots of plastic surgery all the time. That’s just not true. And yes, I used to go to casinos but what is wrong with that?’
Certainly, it is not a crime. But the moment Janan decided to take on the might of the Royal House of Saud, her lifestyle was inevitably going to be subject to intense scrutiny. For in an unprecedented and astonishing manoeuvre, Janan, 58, is suing King Fahd through the British courts for what she calls ‘proper maintenance’.
Eighteen months ago, when she filed for maintenance under Section 27 of the Matrimonial Causes Act, the king tried to claim ‘sovereign immunity’. The then president of the High Court family division, Dame Elizabeth Butler-Schloss, agreed to the king’s anonymity and even went as far as listing the action as Maple v Maple.
But the Court of Appeal thought differently and ruled, last month, that the king’s identity was relevant.
A hearing is now expected in November, much to the dread of King Fahd, who is in hospital with pneumonia and breathing problems.
It is not the money that is the issue here. What obsesses the king is keeping secret the details of life within the Saudi kingdom. As always with stories regarding Saudi royals, there are lurid allegations of abusive behaviour.
In 2001, Janan was paid a substantial sum for entering into a binding deed of confidentiality covering all aspects of her past relationship with the king. So why the need for the court case?
Janan says it is not about the money but the principle. She feels bitter that she was discarded by the king and believes she deserves better treatment.
She said: ‘It is about taking responsibility for someone who lived with you. You don’t just leave people when you want. I myself take responsibility for a lot of people. It is my duty.’
But she doesn’t blame King Fahd personally for the dispute. ‘It is his advisers. He is sick. If it were up to him, he would not go to court.’
So who exactly is Janan Harb and what has brought her to London to carry out what appears, superficially at least, to be an act of sheer madness?
Due to the exotic nature of their marriage and the vast amount of money involved in the break-up, myth and legend have inevitably sprung up around a woman who, until a month ago, wasn’t even known outside the rarefied world of a dozen or so wealthy Arab women who flit between Europe and the Middle East
BUT certain facts are indisputable. Janan has lived on and off in London for at
least 30 years and is now considered westernised.
Perhaps in readiness for her court battle, she obtained a British passport six months ago. She lives alone in Knightsbridge in a lovely street where the houses are worth up to £10million each and has one maid in a small flat on the top floor. She does not own the property but rents for about £4,000 a month. She is in close touch with one of her daughters, Rania Bouiez, and her own mother, Jihan, who live in nearby Chelsea.
She once had an aerobics franchise in London with outlets in Europe and the Middle East and has an interest in a wide range of alternative therapies.
But much about Janan remains an mystery. Born a Palestinian Christian, she converted to Islam for her husband’s sake, before embracing Scientology. She claims to be still married to King Fahd although under Saudi marriage law, a man can divorce a woman without telling her.
Janan herself has added to the mystery as she refuses to discount stories that she has enjoyed a number of other relationships.
She is an elegant, intelligent woman who enjoys gambling in Mayfair’s exclusive casinos such as Aspinalls and The Ritz. One friend told me: ‘She always said Fahd had taught her how to gamble.
‘Blackjack is her game of choice and she thinks nothing of making a bet of two or three thousand pounds a time. She had credit facilities of £100,000 at all the major casinos in town. And she could easily do two or three casinos on any given night.’
Perhaps the contradictions in her life can be explained by her difficult childhood in the Middle East. Janan was born in Haifa in 1946 to George Harb, a restaurateur and Jihan, a seamstress from Nazareth.
When the Israeli War of Independence began in 1948, the Harbs moved to Bisa’an, now Bet She’an, in the Jordan Valley, then to Nazareth in Northern Israel and then to Jericho. After nine hard years they moved to Ramallah, then under Jordanian rule, with Janan, her older brother Jalal and her younger sister and brother, Jawana and Jawwad.
Janan’s mother, who still keeps a small apartment in Ramallah, confirmed the hardships. She said: ‘We had to keep moving home and we lost everything. We became refugees four times over.’
But the couple did manage to set up a modest, though successful, seven bedroom hotel and restaurant in an acre of land. The family lived in a small second-floor apartment next door.
Jihan said: ‘My daughter was a bright, happy, carefree child. Even though we were refugees and had very little, she was still happy. She was very good at her studies and very popular. She always had lots of friends. The hotel
was small, but we had a big garden with a very good restaurant which became famous for its food.’
It was here, at the Hotel Harb, that Janan first glimpsed a world far removed from her own.
Despite the modesty of their establishment, George and Jihan managed to attract an elite clientele from the wealthy Gulf states. The garden became one of the town’s favourite spots for music and parties, which neighbours still remember would sometimes last all night.
The parties and free-flowing alcohol set the Christian Harb family apart from the more traditional residents of Ramallah, particularly the growing Muslim community.
By the time Janan graduated from the Friends Girls’ School in Ramallah in 1967, the year the Israeli occupation began, she and her younger sister Jawana already had a reputation for being party girls. Janan was renowned for her beauty. Tall, olive-skinned, with lustrous dark hair and enormous brown eyes, one of the town’s photographers displayed a large portrait of her in his shop window.
One friend from Ramallah who knew the girls well said: ‘They wore modern clothes and went dancing.
‘They were very open and there were always lots of boys trailing after them. Ramallah, in those days, was a very old-fashioned society. Even other Christians didn’t really approve.’
Janan quickly found the town limiting. She had seen how the wealthy Arabs lived and in her late teens she left for the American University in pre-civil war Beirut, then a cosmopolitan city hailed as Paris of the Middle East.
What happened to her studies remains unclear as from there she moved to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia, took a job with Yardley cosmetics and was spotted by Fahd, then still a prince.
They were married in secret in 1969. By the time Janan told her parents, she was already installed in the vast, gilded world of the Saudi royal family. But for all its privilege it was not a happy time.
Saïd K. Aburish, journalist and the respected author of The Rise, Corruption And Coming Fall Of The House of Saud, said: ‘She would have had a very difficult time if she had remained a Christian. Even the staff would have given her a hard time.
‘In fact, some of the servants may have refused to serve her. Janan would have lived in the women’s quarters of the palaces which are completely cut off from the outside world.’
Due to the obsessively secretive nature of the Saudi court no one even knows the names of all of Fahd’s wives, let alone just how many there have been over the years.
Aburish said: ‘There are probably only three or four people in the world who know that.
‘Fahd could marry 500 times but he can only have four wives at a time and if he wants another he has to get rid of one of the four. He is also obliged to treat them all equally in every sense.
‘Of course, in reality, he decides on the ranking and obviously has his favourites. He would give some more money than others, some are allowed to breed and others are not. It’s up to him.
‘If Janan was got rid of as his wife, and that seems the most likely scenario, he could have done it even without her knowing.’
The bizarre nature of the break-up means that no one can be sure when it ended, although it is believed to have been sometime in the early Seventies.
JANAN’S post-Saudi life becomes decidedly sketchy – and possibly for very good reason. Members of the royal family are generous with the women in their life but their total loyalty is expected in return.
Aburish said: ‘With their support come responsibilities. She would have had to listen to them about how she lived her life.’
Perhaps this is why Janan refuses to be drawn on the subject of relationships with people other than the king. But friends and family agree that she has shared her life with other men – indeed she has a daughter to prove it.
Sources in Ramallah claim she married a wealthy American and went to live with him on Lake Michigan, but they were soon divorced.
And friends told me of at least two more relationships. An acquaintance of 30 years standing, said: ‘One was with a German baron. It didn’t work out because he was apparently not a baron at all and took all her money.’
Whatever the nature of these relationships, one thing is certain – the full details will inevitably come out in court – if things go that far.
But according to seasoned Saudi watchers, Janan need not be unduly worried.
For, as she knows only too well, the royal family will pay almost any price to keep their affairs private.
One royal insider said: ‘I very much doubt there will be an appeal in an open court and certainly no maintenance hearing.
‘The Saudis hate publicity and now that the British courts have decided the case can go ahead and in King Fahd’s name, they will almost certainly make a deal in private.
‘I doubt very much if King Fahd’s name will be mentioned in a British court connected with this again.’
Similarly, one imagines, the name Janan Harb is unlikely to be uttered again in the Saudi royal court.

Seed of extinct date palm sprouts after 2,000 years

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Sunday, June 12, 2005

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

The ancient Hebrews called the date palm the tree of life. "Methuselah," shown here, was planted Jan. 25; the seed was discovered during an excavation of Herod's palace. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Kibbutz Ketura, Israel -- It has five leaves, stands 14 inches high and is nicknamed Methuselah. It looks like an ordinary date palm seedling, but for UCLA- educated botanist Elaine Solowey, it is a piece of history brought back to life.

Planted on Jan. 25, the seedling growing in the black pot in Solowey's nursery on this kibbutz in Israel's Arava desert is 2,000 years old -- more than twice as old as the 900-year-old biblical character who lent his name to the young tree. It is the oldest seed ever known to produce a viable young tree.

The seed that produced Methuselah was discovered during archaeological excavations at King Herod's palace on Mount Masada, near the Dead Sea. Its age has been confirmed by carbon dating. Scientists hope that the unique seedling will eventually yield vital clues to the medicinal properties of the fruit of the Judean date tree, which was long thought to be extinct.

Solowey, originally from San Joaquin (Fresno County), teaches at the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies at Kibbutz Ketura, where she has nurtured more than 100 rare or near-extinct species back to life as part of a 10-year project to study plants and herbs used as ancient cures.

In collaboration with the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Center at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem, named in honor of its Southern California- based benefactor, Solowey grows plants and herbs used in Tibetan, Chinese and biblical medicine, as well as traditional folk remedies from other cultures to see whether their effectiveness can be scientifically proved.

In experiments praised by the Dalai Lama, for example, Borick Center Director Sarah Sallon has shown that ancient Tibetan cures for cardiovascular disease really do work.

The San Francisco Chronicle was granted the first viewing of the historic seedling, which sprouted about four weeks after planting. It has grown six leaves, but one has been removed for DNA testing so scientists can learn more about its relationship to its modern-day cousins.

The Judean date is chronicled in the Bible, Quran and ancient literature for its diverse powers -- from an aphrodisiac to a contraceptive -- and as a cure for a wide range of diseases including cancer, malaria and toothache.

For Christians, the palm is a symbol of peace associated with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. The ancient Hebrews called the date palm the "tree of life" because of the protein in its fruit and the shade given by its long leafy branches. The Arabs said there were as many uses for the date palm as there were days in the year.

Greek architects modeled their Ionic columns on the tree's tall, thin trunk and curling, bushy top. The Romans called it Phoenix dactylifera -- "the date-bearing phoenix" -- because it never died and appeared to be reborn in the desert where all other plant life perished.

Now Solowey and her colleagues have brought this phoenix of the desert back to life after 2,000 years.



Researchers Elaine Solowey (left) and Sarah Sallon show off seedling, whose DNA is being studied. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

The ancient seeds were found 30 years ago during archeological excavations on Mount Masada, the mountaintop fortress on the shore of the Dead Sea where King Herod built a spectacular palace. When the Romans conquered Palestine and laid waste to the Temple in Jerusalem, Masada was the last stand of a small band of Jewish rebels who held out against three Roman legions for several years before committing mass suicide in A.D. 73.

Archaeologist Ehud Netzer found the seeds, which were identified by the department of botanical archaeology at Israel's Bar-Ilan University. Then they were placed in storage, where they lay for 30 years until Sallon heard about the cache.

"When we asked if we could try and grow some of them, they said, 'You're mad,' but they gave us three seeds," she said.

Sallon took the seeds to Solowey, who has cultivated more than 3,000 date palms and rarities like the trees that produce the fragrant resins frankincense and myrrh. Solowey admits she was skeptical about the chances of success with this project.

"When I received the seeds from Sarah, I thought the chances of this experiment succeeding were less than zero," said Solowey, cradling the precious seedling in a specially quarantined section of her nursery on the kibbutz. "But Dr. Sallon insisted and I took this very seriously. Lotus seeds over 1,000 years old have been sprouted, and I realized that no one had done any similar work with dates, so why not give it our best shot -- and we were rewarded."

The three seeds were long and thin, grayish-brown in color. Solowey soaked them in warm water, and then added gibberellic acid, a potent growth hormone used to induce germination in reluctant seeds. Next, she added a special rooting hormone for woody plants called T8 and an enzyme-rich fertilizer to supplement the natural food inside it. She then planted it in sterile potting soil on the Jewish festival of trees, which this year fell on Jan. 25.

Solowey placed the pots in her nursery and tended to them each day for a month, not expecting anything to happen.

"Much to my astonishment, after five weeks, a small little date shoot came up," she says. "It was pale, almost whitish green. The first two leaves were abnormal-looking. They were very flat and very pale. The third leaf started to have the striations of a normal date plant. Now it looks perfectly normal to me.

"The only difference between this date seedling and any other date seedlings I've seen come up is the length of the third leaf. This is very unusual," she said, pointing out one very long, thin leaf growing out of the pot.

"It's certainly the oldest tree seed that's ever been sprouted. Wheat seeds from pharaohs' tombs have been sprouted, but none of the plants have survived for very long. Before this, the oldest seed grown was a lotus from China, which was 1,200 years old," she said. "I'm very excited. I wasn't expecting anything to happen. I'm really interested in finding out what the DNA testing is going to show. I know that date seeds can stay alive for several decades. To find out that they can stay alive for millennia is astonishing."

Date palms are either male or female, but it's too early to tell the sex of Methuselah. Normally, female trees begin to bear fruit after about five years.

"We have to figure out where we can put it so it can grow to maturity. Then we'll hope that it grows up and flowers so we can figure out whether it's male or female, and then it has offshoots and seeds so we can propagate it. It's very exciting to think that maybe someday we can eat 2,000-year-old dates, but there's a 50 percent chance that it's a male, in which case that won't happen," she said.

Sallon trained as a pediatrician and gastroenterologist, and she once worked with Mother Teresa at the Sisters of Charity orphanage in Calcutta. She founded the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Center 10 years ago and is a world-renowned expert on the medical properties of plants. "It feels remarkable to see this seed growing, to see it coming out of the soil after 2, 000 years. It's a very moving and exciting moment," she said.

The two researchers hope the reborn tree will provide valuable information about the Judean economy and society at the time of Jesus.

Once the seed sprouted, samples of seeds excavated from the same cache on Masada were sent to the University of Zurich for radio-carbon dating. The results came back last week, showing the samples were 2,000 years old, plus or minus a margin of error of 50 years, placing them during or just before the Masada revolt.

"Perhaps one of our ancestors was sitting there on the battlements of Masada eating his dates while the Roman armies were preparing for the final siege and perhaps nonchalantly spitting out a pip," said Sallon. "Two thousand years later, here I am at Kibbutz Ketura and it's grown."

The sixth leaf has been sent to the Volcani Centre, Israel's agricultural research institute, for DNA testing by date palm expert Yuval Cohen.

"I find it remarkable," said Cohen. "Two thousand years ago, during the Roman Empire, Israel was known for the quality of its dates. They were famous throughout the Roman Empire. But date growing as a commercial fruit export stopped at the end of 70 A.D., when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. From then, the tradition was lost.

"It's an interesting question what were the ancient dates like. We hope by genetic analysis, we can learn more about the character of the ancient date population."

When the Romans invaded ancient Judea, thick forests of date palms towering up to 80 feet high and 7 miles wide covered the Jordan River valley from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea in the south. The tree so defined the local economy that Emperor Vespasian celebrated the conquest by minting the "Judea Capta," a special bronze coin that showed the Jewish state as a weeping woman beneath a date palm.

Today, nothing remains of those mighty forests. The date palms in modern Israel were imported, mainly from California. The ancient Judean date, renowned for its succulence and famed for its many medicinal properties, had been lost to history.

Until now.




This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Bethlehem's star-crossed lovers

Christian girl runs off with young Muslim -- Vatican, U.S., Palestinian president intervene after street violence erupts

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

San Francisco Chronicle May 15, 2005



Bassem Sabat and his family received an apology from the family of the Muslim man who romanced his daughter, an 11th-grader. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Bethlehem -- A love feud straight out of "Romeo and Juliet" has erupted in the West Bank over the clandestine romance of a 16-year-old Christian schoolgirl and a wealthy Muslim eight years her senior.

As with the Capulets and Montagues, there was fighting in the streets and intervention by both church and state. But unlike Shakespeare's tale of star- crossed lovers, this modern-day version ended Saturday with thwarted marriage plans and an apology.

Adriana Sabat, an 11th-grader at St. Joseph's School in Bethlehem, disappeared from her home on May 6, two days after her family learned she had a secret sweetheart, 24-year-old Fadi Omar, and warned her to stop seeing him.

The incident -- the second elopement in less than a week involving an underage Christian girl and an older Muslim man -- brought to the surface simmering tensions between Muslim Palestinians and the dwindling Christian community in Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

Under Palestinian law, buttressed by strong social customs in this still- traditional society, girls under 18 cannot marry without their parents' formal consent. Young women rarely leave home without a chaperone, and Western-style boyfriend-girlfriend relationships are virtually unknown.

When Adriana's father attempted to bring her home from her hiding place in a village near Hebron early the next morning, he was rebuffed by armed men threatening to kill him. Violent demonstrations erupted in Bethlehem as young Christians vandalized homes and businesses owned by the Omar family. At least 15 Christians were injured when Palestinian police opened fire on the crowd. Two of them were hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and Christians complained that the police used undue force.

After two days of frantic searching and diplomatic negotiations involving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican and the U.S. State Department, a convoy of armored vehicles from the U.S. consul-general and the Catholic Patriarchate in Jerusalem swept into Hebron on May 7, picked up the girl and put her and her mother on a plane to the United States.

They are now staying with relatives in Michigan while Adriana's father, Bassem Sabat, a 43-year-old history teacher and tour guide, tries to piece his family back together and avoid more bloodshed.

In Bethlehem, the local governor has deployed armed police to protect Omar's home, and a gas station and two furniture stores owned by his family that were firebombed during two days of riots last weekend.

The governor ordered Omar to apologize to the Sabat family. For their part, Adriana's parents demanded that the young man be prosecuted for abducting their daughter and sought a guarantee that she will be protected from further advances if she returns to the West Bank.

At a sulha (reconciliation) ceremony held on Saturday, the Sabat family reportedly demanded the huge sum of 150,000 Jordanian dinars -- more than $200,000 -- and a public apology. This compares with the usual payment in the case of a killing of less than 50,000 dinars. The sulha was held in private, but Palestinian officials said the Sabats were persuaded to drop their monetary demand and accept the Omar family's apology.

Fadi Omar and his relatives refused to comment on the affair.

"I don't want to inflame intercommunity feeling, but someone has to tell the truth," Bassem Sabat told The Chronicle last week, in his first interview since the elopement rocked the city. "These Muslim men are preying on Christian girls because they are forbidden from going anywhere near Muslim girls. If this had been the other way round -- a Christian man running off with a Muslim teenager -- both of them would be dead within hours, and the man's family would have to leave the country."

Sabat was not exaggerating the passions such relationships set off. A few days earlier, an east Jerusalem man strangled two of his sisters in an "honor killing" -- a traditional Muslim punishment for girls whose morals appear to have been compromised. And on May 2, a Christian father in Ramallah killed his 22-year-old daughter after she told him she wanted to marry a Muslim man, triggering demonstrations by both Christian and Muslim women in that city.

Zahira Kamal, the Palestinian minister for women's affairs, has called for a new law allowing women over 18 to marry without the consent of their parents. She has also demanded increased sentences for men found guilty of killing female relatives. Under present law, Palestinian men convicted of "honor killings" serve only six months in prison.

In Bethlehem, tensions have been rising since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 brought an influx of Muslims into the mostly Christian city and its adjoining middle-class towns of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour. Christians accuse Muslims of taking over land and jobs and forcing them out of political power. Earlier this month, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both militant Muslim groups, won municipal elections over the secular Fatah party for the first time in Bethlehem's history.

Fadi Omar, son of a wealthy local businessman, was known around town for his lavish lifestyle and his sports car. He apparently spotted Adriana as she was coming home from school one day and obtained her cell phone number. A telephone romance blossomed.

On May 4, Bassem Sabat was summoned to the office of a local Palestinian security chief, where he found Fadi's older brother, Rami.

"He told me his brother loved my daughter and he was going to marry her," said Bassem. "He said she phones him every day. He said, 'Why not accept the love story and let them get married, across the different traditions?' "

But Sabat refused to bless the union.

"There are few enough Christians left in Bethlehem as it is," he said. "If she were older, it would be a different story. But she is still a young girl, and I cannot believe she understands the implications of the cultural tensions that she is stepping into."

Sabat said he reacted like any father concerned for the welfare of his teenage daughter.

"We took away her cell phone and grounded her," he said. "We sent her to stay with her grandmother, who lives in an apartment upstairs from ours, to protect her from outside influences. But last Friday morning (May 6), she told her grandmother she was going downstairs to collect some clothes, left the apartment and never came back."

The next time Sabat saw his daughter was more than 24 hours later. He said she was in a "safe house" in the village of Shayoukh near Hebron and was covered from head to toe in traditional Muslim garb.

"She told me she had come there of her own free will and that she wished to marry this young man, but the law is very clear that she cannot do so without the consent of her parents," said Sabat.

Because Adriana, who was born in Louisiana, has U.S. citizenship, her parents asked the Roman Catholic patriarch in Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, to contact U.S. authorities. Sabbah contacted the Vatican, which alerted the U.S. State Department and the U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem, officials at Sabbah's patriarchate told The Chronicle. Meanwhile, the Bethlehem governor contacted Abbas, the Palestinian president, who ordered Adriana to be returned to her family. She was driven from the safe house to the office of the governor of Hebron, where the diplomatic caravan picked her up and took her to the airport.

Within hours, U.S. and Vatican diplomats were on their way to Hebron to pick up the girl and put her on a midnight flight to stay with relatives in Michigan. The caravan stopped en route at the patriarch's Jerusalem headquarters to receive tickets from the U.S. consul-general.

Christian community leaders at the Al-Amal Catholic Social Club in Bethlehem last week, before Saturday's sulha, expressed their fury at the incident and the refusal of the local Palestinian police to arrest the young man.

"I am not in charge anymore," said Bassem Sabat. "The young men of our community do not want to see their Christian sisters with Muslim men. We are paying the price for this man's actions while he walks free. My family has been split up and my daughter's honor has been compromised. I don't want anyone to be hurt or killed, but I do want to see this man prosecuted. He should pay a price for what he did."

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Militants' patience for cease-fire is wearing thin

Militants Munif Remawi (left) and Mahmoud Remawi (right) had no objection to giving their real names or being photographed. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

United, ready: 2 fighters back truce -- but only to a point

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Page A - 3

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank -- Mahmoud Remawi was a year away from a law degree when his university career was interrupted. Munif Remawi was studying sociology.

The two cousins still look like the carefree students they once were, chatting animatedly in a Ramallah cafe. But the pistols tucked into their waistbands beneath their baggy tops as they snatch a rare hour in the fresh air betray their new lives. Both are in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah party that dominates the Palestinian government.

Unlike many of their comrades, the Remawis have no objection to giving their real names or being photographed. "Our names and faces are known to the Israelis. They are already trying to kill us. It makes no difference," says Munif, 27, with a shrug and a half-smile.

For security reasons, their sojourn in the cafe is too brief for them to order lunch. But their message is clear: Time is running out for new Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"The current cease-fire is for a limited period only," says Munif. "Unless the political dialogue produces real results from Israel, the intifada will resume."

Until last month, the two Remawis were hidden away with about two dozen of their Al-Aqsa comrades in a crumbling building in the Mukata, the presidential compound in Ramallah, where they enjoyed the protection of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then Abbas. They emerged, usually under cover of darkness, to attack Israeli settlers and soldiers before fleeing back to the Mukata for safety. Many of them have been hunted down and arrested or killed by Israeli security forces.

But after several Al-Aqsa gunmen smashed up a restaurant frequented by the Palestinian leadership and fired shots at Abbas' office building, the Palestinian president ordered them out of the compound.

Al-Aqsa supported the candidacy of Abbas and the tahdiyeh (calm) proclaimed in March after the Sharm el-Sheikh summit between Abbas and the leaders of Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

"I signed a document declaring that I submit to the authority of the Palestinian Authority and whatever agreement it makes with Israel or any other country," says Munif. "We all signed this document to prove that we are trying to be positive, that we are suspending attacks on Israel. But the Israelis are continuing with their policy. They are continuing to kill us, arrest us and grab our land to build the wall and the settlements." He was referring to the barrier Israel is erecting to divide Israel from Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and the announced expansion of Jewish settlements close to Jerusalem.

"We are united behind our leaders," says Mahmoud, 26. "If the politicians succeed in making the necessary progress toward independence, the liberation of our capital in Jerusalem and the right of return for the refugees in exile, there will be no reason to continue the intifada. But if there is no progress, the intifada will be resumed."

The two young men say they would like to go back to their studies and their lives, but feel compelled to continue the struggle as long as the Israeli military dominates the Palestinian territories.

Mahmoud, who is from the village of Beit Rima north of Ramallah, says he saw his family recently for the first time in three years. He has been engaged for four years to a woman from Jenin but has been unable to visit her, let alone get married.

"It's impossible for us to lead a normal life and get married as we want to," says Mahmoud. "The families of our fiancees keep finding reasons to postpone the wedding. They'd rather keep their daughters from becoming widows."

They refuse to talk about the specific operations in which they have been involved, and their only sign of discomfort is when asked if they approve of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

"Most revolutions in the world might have made mistakes, and it is right to see the results of the actions and correct them," says Mahmoud. "But for Palestinians who see their families cut down in their own homes, we have no other way to fight the Israeli Apaches (attack helicopters) and F-16s (fighter jets). These attacks restore the balance of fear, so Israeli civilians will put pressure on their government to stop the military attacks against our people."

In fact, the opposite happened. The worst month of suicide attacks -- March 2002, when dozens of Israeli civilians were killed, culminating in the suicide bombing that killed 29 people attending a Passover seder in Netanya -- triggered an all-out Israeli invasion of West Bank cities and a monthlong siege of Arafat's headquarters.

As the brief encounter ends, Mahmoud, the student-lawyer-turned-gunman who wants to get married, delivers a more hopeful message.

"Our struggle is not in order to die. It is in order to live in freedom and make a future for our kids," he says.

Hope dims for school pushing Mideast peace

Both sides hassle Palestinian project that bridges conflict

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Page A - 1
Saturday, April 16, 2005

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

El-Khadr, West Bank -- Amid stirrings of hope that Israelis and Palestinians can negotiate a peaceful settlement to their decades-long conflict, a school that has battled to promote peace and coexistence among children in the area faces extinction.

The Hope Flowers School, near Bethlehem, has survived threats from Palestinian bureaucrats and shells from Israeli tanks since its founding. Its programs promoting dialogue and contact between Israeli and Palestinian students have attracted worldwide attention and a visit in 1998 from then- first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But Hope Flowers now faces a demolition order from the Israeli government, and its education license has been frozen by the Palestinian Authority.

Perched in a valley between the village of El-Khadr south of Bethlehem and the sprawling Israeli settlement of Efrat, Hope Flowers has tried for years to bridge the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians through classroom projects and encounters between its Palestinian students and children from the other side.

"The idea of the school is to create a new generation of Palestinians and Israelis who believe in peace and coexistence," said school Principal Ibrahim Issa, 31, whose father, Hussein, was its founder. "We believe that by bringing many children together from both sides, we can create a new generation who will find a peaceful resolution to our conflict."

However, Israeli roadblocks erected after the Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 have prevented students from reaching the campus. Armed attacks by Hamas militants against Israeli soldiers and settlers in March 2002 triggered such heavy exchanges of fire that the campus had to be evacuated with the assistance of the Red Cross and the U.S. Consulate.

Fewer students

The violence has taken its toll. Enrollment fell from a high of 500 students in 1998 to just 120 last year. Since the uprising, or intifada, Hope Flowers has been forced to close its high school and now offers classes only for students age 12 and younger. This year, enrollment has grown to 180, and Issa is determined to keep it rising.

Now that Palestinian and Israeli schoolchildren in the area are unable to visit each other, however, Hope Flowers is carrying on its outreach through a program sponsored by Building Bridges, an Israeli-German-Palestinian program.

The school's philosophy of nonviolence and neighborliness has attracted support from donors in the United States and Europe. The largest single donor to the meager annual budget of $275,000 is the Orange County Middle East Peace Fund, which donates $35,000 to $55,000 in funds from individual donors each year.

The U.S. consul general intervened to save Hope Flowers when Israeli officials issued a demolition order in 1999, saying the school was constructed without the required permit, as many of the buildings in the area are. Issa says his father, who died in 2000, hoped the area would be transferred to Palestinian control before the Israeli order could be implemented, but then the intifada broke out, and the peace process ground to a halt.

Now, the demolition order has been renewed. Issa believes that the Israelis want to demolish the cafeteria and claim the land to build a section of the West Bank security barrier dividing Israel from Palestinian-controlled areas. He says plans for the barrier show it would cut to within 130 yards of the school cafeteria, well within the 164-yard no-man's-land required on either side of the wall. Maps issued by the Israeli government are not precise enough to show whether the fence will cut through the campus, as Issa fears.

A spokesman for the Israeli Civil Administration, which issued the demolition orders, said the order "has no connection whatsoever to the building of the security fence."

He added that officials were not aware that any of the buildings scheduled for destruction were part of a school. "If it is part of a school, it's possible that the Civil Administration will reconsider the demolition order," he said.

However, demolishing even the school cafeteria also would mean destroying the school's water system, which lies beneath it. Replacing the system would cost about $120,000 -- well beyond the school's means, Issa said.

The water is used in the school's greenhouses, whose crops help fund scholarships for poor students. Hope Flowers needs the money because the Palestinian Ministry of Education provides no financial support to the school. The ministry froze the school's license in September, saying a retaining wall above the schoolyard needed repair.

'They don't toe the line'

"They know we haven't got the $70,000 needed to repair the wall," he said. "It is just a pretext."

Palestinian officials declined to answer questions about the school.

Ruth Shapin, secretary of the Orange County Middle East Peace Fund, says the Palestinian Authority withholds support from the school "because they don't toe the line. They teach peace and democracy, including cooperation with people of goodwill on the Israeli side."

"It behooves the international community to protect this little school," she added.

But four years of pressure from all sides have taken their toll, even on erstwhile supporters.

An example to live by

Benjamin Waxman, a marketing consultant from Delaware who now lives in the neighboring settlement of Efrat and helped the school build a computer laboratory, was a longtime supporter.

"They were the genuine item, not faking it,'' said Waxman. "I'm convinced that whether we have one state or two states, we have to learn to live together."

Christina Cody, 25, of Ashland, Ore., volunteers at Hope Flowers, helping to organize trauma training sessions for teachers and counselors at nearby schools.

She witnessed the school's work during a Building Bridges session with German exchange students.

"There came a point when it was clear the Palestinian students had pro- Nazi feelings against Jews," she said. "The German students got involved and helped them to take a deeper look at those feelings by drawing on their own experiences in Germany. Even though they were only teenagers, they were able to help the Palestinian students understand where such anti-Jewish feelings could lead."

Palestinian gunmen shoot up restaurant favoured by PA

Posh eatery had played host to Canadian ministers and other visiting dignitaries

GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, April 1, 2005 Page A15

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

RAMALLAH -- Until the gunmen opened fire on Wednesday night, Darna was the smartest restaurant in Ramallah. Daylight yesterday revealed piles of broken furniture, shattered glass and bullet holes in the sparkling stainless-steel kitchen.

This week, Darna played host to Ken Dryden, the Minister of Social Development. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler was there a couple of months ago. Other visitors pictured on the kitchen wall include Kofi Annan, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

The attack on the prestigious restaurant, a favoured watering-hole for Palestinian ministers and socialites that opened in December of 2003, was carried out by angry members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the terrorist wing of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's mainstream Fatah group.

Officially, the Brigade denied any involvement, but the gunmen wore no masks and were easily identified by eyewitnesses as the fugitives who fled to the Mukata presidential compound in Ramallah under the protection of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to escape arrest or assassination by Israel.

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Mr. Abbas has been conducting intensive talks with the fugitives, ending with a request for several of them to leave the compound.

They refused, and instead went on a rampage through Ramallah, firing shots at Mr. Abbas's office and wrecking several restaurants. Across town, their supporters burned tires and threatened Palestinian police officers.

A Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the security forces ordered six of the fugitives to either hand over their weapons or leave the compound after "they were involved in kidnappings, blackmailing, harming people, shooting them."

"They were warned many times to stop their behaviour and actions," the official said.

Another security official warned that the security forces were "considering taking harsh steps against them."

"They have crossed the red line. They attacked the presidential headquarters. They are defying the Palestinian Authority and now we have to take harsh steps against them, otherwise they will control the city and spread chaos," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The fugitives were still reeling from the death of Mutasen Al-Aqra, 26, a leader and founder of the al-Aqsa Brigade who had been living in the Mukata for three years. He was killed in a mysterious car crash on Tuesday.

"We didn't do it," said Ramzi Abeid, a Mukata fugitive identified by many of those present at Darna as the leader of the rampaging gang.

"We are Fatah, we take our orders from Abu Mazen," he insisted, using Mr. Abbas's popular nom de guerre.

Off the record, the Brigade said the sacking of Darna was supposed to send a message to the Palestinian leadership not to ignore them. The venue was chosen as a place where senior officials routinely spend hundreds of dollars entertaining their friends, as a warning to end the still rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

Darna's proprietor, Osama Khalaf, gazed forlornly at the wreckage and quietly cursed those responsible.

"I hope this means the end of those gunmen," Mr. Khalaf said. "They are playing against their own people. The Palestinian Authority should take measures."

As visitors went by to express sympathy and young men toting Kalashnikov rifles stood guard outside, Mr. Khalaf said he would not be intimidated.

"I built this place," he said. "I invested during a very critical time: the invasions, the closures, the checkpoints. The Israelis didn't frighten us, so those people won't frighten us either. We will continue and become even more successful."

Yesterday, the dozen or so fugitives still living in the Mukata had disappeared. Green-uniformed paramilitary police patrolled the city in a show of strength.

The incident demonstrated the fragile nature of Mr. Abbas's attempt to dissuade the gunmen from the path of terrorism and incorporate them into his security services. He has been paying them 800 shekels a month (about $200 U.S.) and offered them jobs with the security forces, but they are demanding more money and a more specialized role that recognizes their patriotism in fighting Israel.

The confrontation with the Brigade is while Mr. Abbas tries to defuse the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, bringing them all under the political banner of an expanded Palestine Liberation Organization.