U.S. security officials train with the pros

Israeli troops in biological warfare gear secure the area in a mass-casualties toxicological exercise during a four-day conference. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Israelis demonstrate tools, tactics in fight against terrorism

Joanne Hayes-White, San Francisco's fire chief, greets an Israeli soldier at a high school during the drill. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, March 24, 2006
Page A - 12

Nes Ziona, Israel -- A young Israeli firefighter tore the shirt off his back and insisted San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White take it home as a memento of a biochemical terror training drill she had just observed.

"I read about you on the Internet," said the Israeli, still breathless after spending an hour inside an orange biochemical protection suit under the blazing sun during a mock chemical attack on a school. "You're the first woman fire chief in San Francisco. You're my hero!"

Hayes-White was observing the exercise as part of a four-day conference on counterterrorism that attracted 130 U.S. law enforcement, emergency services and homeland security officials, the largest such delegation ever hosted by Israel. Other officials in the 23-member California delegation included San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Greg Suhr, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and Erroll Southers, deputy director of the California Office of Homeland Security.

At Wednesday's chemical attack drill, simulating a poison-gas attack on a school, first on the scene were an ambulance and a police cruiser. As the "victims" collapsed, rescue personnel donned protective gear in different colors to distinguish between those securing the scene and those helping victims. Arriving firefighters were responsible for isolating the toxic material, while a police helicopter overhead kept an eye out for escaping terrorists and monitored traffic flow.

Within minutes, more than 50 security and rescue personnel were on the scene, under the command of the senior police officer. The senior medic performed triage, tagging all victims according to the seriousness of their injuries -- and within 20 minutes all were on their way to a hospital. Finally, all the suited emergency officers were washed down in special showers connected to fire trucks.

"That's smart," said a sheriff's officer from California. "Back home, we'd have to find a hydrant to get those showers going. We never thought to hook them up to the fire trucks."

"It was truly impressive," Hayes-White said of the exercise as she packed away the shirt to take home for her 12-year-old son.

"Our whole world changed after 9/11. It is something that we plan for now, but we have very little expertise in it. We've studied it, but we haven't really lived it. To come to a place like this, really you're learning from the true experts," she said.

On Tuesday, the Americans thought the day's exercise had started early when they arrived at the national headquarters of the Israeli Border Police in Jerusalem and saw a series of roadblocks set up and emergency vehicles screaming out of the gates, sirens wailing.

But this was no drill. They were caught in the middle of the real thing.

Israeli Police Chief Moshe Karadi welcomed his guests with the news that a Palestinian suicide bomber was loose in the city.

"They brought us in and gave us a step-by-step playback of the events as they were unfolding," said Hayes-White.

An hour later, after they were briefed about a dramatic helicopter and motorcycle chase through police roadblocks on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, Hayes-White and the U.S. delegates were told the suicide bomber had been captured, together with 15 pounds of explosives packed with nails and shrapnel. A suicide attack had been prevented, thanks to accurate intelligence and swift police reaction.

It was a real-time introduction to the pressures of security in Israel for participants in the four-day conference, hosted by the Border Police and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Participants attended intelligence briefings, counterterror drills, medical exercises and lectures from security, police and emergency services officials.

The Americans toured police surveillance facilities in the Old City of Jerusalem, visited a suicide-bomber exhibition at police headquarters and observed a full-blown counterterror exercise simulating a biochemical attack on a school, followed by emergency treatment of the mock victims at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center.

At Ben-Gurion Airport and the control center for Israel Railways, the officials viewed state-of-the-art closed-circuit TV facilities with what the Israelis call behavioral video -- computer software that triggers an alarm when an unusual incident appears on the monitor.

Paul MacMillan, deputy chief of Boston's transit police, said the Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority had been considering the installation of behavioral video. After seeing the Israeli system, he said he planned to recommend it: "We've been looking at it ... but we've never really seen it in actual operation."

The aim of the conference was to encourage cooperation in sharing information and training, and before the sessions ended, several U.S. officials were already planning joint training seminars with the Israelis for U.S. law enforcement officials.

Southers said he planned to hold a similar conference for state homeland security employees in conjunction with the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles. MacMillan said he would like to send his bomb-disposal teams to train in Israel, where police receive 200,000 alerts of suspicious packages every year.

"This country has excelled in safety and public security," Southers said of Israel. "What really strikes me here is that preparedness and security is a culture. It's something that we don't understand in the U.S. There are people in California who have zero resolve when it comes to this issue."

Suhr, the San Francisco deputy chief, said the trip had been "hugely useful." He said the analysis of mass-casualty incidents offered by lecturers were the best he had ever heard, and he intended to take them back home for training purposes.

"I've been doing this for 25 years, and I usually don't write anything. I just take the material they hand out," said Suhr. "This week, I've taken pages of notes because the things they say just strike you."

After four 16-hour days, the participants were joking grimly about graduating from the Israeli boot camp.

"The Israelis have kept us out of trouble," said one bleary-eyed participant. "I haven't even had time to buy gifts for my kids."

Likud hopeful tries to pick up the pieces

Leadership defects, and a party crumbles

BOSTON GLOBE / March 24, 2006

By Matthew Kalman Globe Correspondent

Part of a series examining candidates for the Israeli election on Tuesday.

JERUSALEM -- Shmuel Slavin looked tired as he returned to the Likud party's campaign headquarters in Jerusalem after another busy day on the hustings.

(Available here)

A first-hand lesson in fighting terror

Mass. officials attend Israeli conference

BOSTON GLOBE | March 24, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

JERUSALEM -- When Paul MacMillan, deputy chief of the MBTA transit police, saw roadblocks and heard wailing sirens as his convoy entered the headquarters of the Israeli Border Police on Tuesday, it seemed that a planned emergency drill had begun a day early. But this was no exercise.

MacMillan and 130 other senior US security officials attending a counterterrorism conference in Jerusalem found themselves caught up in an unfolding manhunt for a suspected Palestinian suicide bomber.

An hour later, after a dramatic helicopter and motorcycle chase through police roadblocks on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, Israeli police told the Americans that the would-be bomber had been captured, with 15 pounds of explosives packed with nails and shrapnel.

The blow-by-blow account of the operation provided a real-time introduction to Israeli security pressures for the participants in the four-day conference, designed to encourage information sharing and expertise between Israeli and US counterterrorism officials. The gathering boasted the largest group of US law enforcement, emergency services, and homeland security officials ever to assemble in Israel.

Other Bay State officials in attendance included Kenneth Kaiser, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, and Albert Sherman, vice chancellor of University of Massachusetts Medical School. The largest delegation came from California, including Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, the former police commissioner in Boston, and Joanne M. Hayes-White, chief of the San Francisco Fire Department.

MacMillan said the episode in Jerusalem illustrated how much his job had changed since the Sept. 11 attacks.

''If you told me when I started my career that I would be in Israel learning about emergency preparedness for a terrorist attack, I would have said: 'What are you talking about?' We could never have imagined at the beginning of our police careers that we would be involved in such a situation," he said.

But as the intelligence chief for the fourth-largest transit system in the United States, transporting 1.3 million passengers each day, MacMillan said his responsibility now goes well beyond the traditional problems of robberies and assaults.

''To say that Boston is a specific target, that's not an accurate statement. But they've hit two transit systems, in Madrid and London, and the general intelligence and logic would follow that they're eventually going to try and hit a transit system in the United States. . . . We certainly should prepare for it," he said.

The conference, hosted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Police, included intelligence briefings, counterterrorism drills, medical exercises, and lectures from security, police, and emergency services officials.

The participants toured police surveillance facilities in Jerusalem's Old City, visited a suicide-bomber exhibition at police headquarters, and observed a simulated biochemical attack on a school, followed by emergency treatment of the victims at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center.

At Ben-Gurion Airport and the control center for Israel Railways, the officials saw state of the art CCTV facilities with ''behavioral video" -- computer software that triggers an alarm when an unusual incident appears on the monitor.

MacMillan said the MBTA had been studying the installation of behavioral video and, after seeing the Israeli system in action, he would recommend it back home -- one of several tangible results of the trip.

He also said he would recommend cooperation with Israeli police in training Boston's bomb-disposal personnel.

Also under consideration is a training course in Massachusetts run by the Israeli police.

Following an earlier visit to Israel by Robert Smith, head of counterintelligence at the State Police, the Massachusetts command staff already has been through two courses run by senior officials from the Israeli security services.

Assistance has also run in the opposite direction. Sherman, and Dr. Richard Aghababian, chairman of emergency medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, have advised Israeli hospitals on developing emergency medical departments.

After watching a drill simulating an emergency room receiving victims of a large bio-chemical attack on Wednesday, Sherman said the Israelis had come a long way.

''I'm here to observe and learn and bring back to the Department of Public Health how the Israelis, who are regrettably the experts, do it differently to how we do it. In some cases it's better," said Sherman, who also serves on the Public Health Council, which sets public health policy for Massachusetts.

He said the Americans were impressed by what they saw.

''A smart man knows what he doesn't know. These people came to learn. There isn't a single person I've spoken to who doesn't have lots to bring back to their hometown," he said.

White, San Francisco's fire chief, said she found the conference ''truly impressive."

''Our whole world changed after 9/11. It is something that we plan for now, but we have very little expertise in it. To come to a place like this, really you're learning from the true experts," she said.

Conference participants debated the tension between counterterrorist measures and maintaining democracy, a concern that arose when security officials at Ben-Gurion explained that they were allowed to stop any car whose passengers appeared ''suspicious."

''It's a different mind set here. We're not allowed to do that. We have to have a specific plan in place on how we're going to do the stops," MacMillan said.

''It's a balancing act. We have a free and open society. If we want a dictatorship, we can lock down the country and not let anybody in and have government IDs and have everybody checked, but we're not going to live like that," MacMillan said.

An Israeli political campaign tries to push voters to the right

BOSTON GLOBE | March 21, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

RAMAT GAN, ISRAEL -- At age 12, Bat-Ami Fisher won't be able to vote for several years, but with barely a week to go before Israel's general election the bubbly pre-teen has been spending her evenings knocking on doors and explaining her political credo to complete strangers.

Bat-Ami is one of thousands of Israelis participating in ''Zazim Yemina" (Moving to the Right), a grass-roots political campaign to persuade voters not to support the Kadima Party of Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and elect a strong nationalist bloc to stop Olmert's plan to dismantle dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, has described the election as ''a national referendum on the Olmert-Kadima plan to give away land to Hamas for nothing in return." According to opinion polls, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the number one concern of Israeli voters.

One night last week, Bat-Ami was tramping the streets of Ramat Gan, a middle-class suburb of Tel Aviv, with her parents and 5-year-old twin brothers. The Fishers live in Shiloh, a settlement halfway between Ramallah and Nablus in the heart of the West Bank. If Olmert implements his West Bank plan, Bat-Ami and her family will lose their home.

Despite her youth, Bat-Ami is already a seasoned political activist. She spent a week last summer camped out in protest at Israel's disengagement from Gaza. That failed to stop the pullout, but this time she hoped to be more successful. With more than 20 percent of Israeli voters still undecided, a last-minute swing could have a big impact.

''I think we can convince them and it will help the situation. I want the majority of people to be convinced that, even if they don't vote for the right, at least they won't vote for Kadima," she said.

''Kadima is full of people who want to throw people out of their homes. We don't want that," she said.

Armed with a computer printout targeting the homes of undecided right-wing voters, the Fishers visited two apartment blocks last Thursday, each housing six families. They explained their concern at Olmert's plans and were politely received. One family even invited them in to supper.

''We do not represent a particular party. Most people understand the issue. Just not Kadima," explained Rafi Fisher, Bat-Ami's father.

''The effect we're trying to produce is that in another two or three days Kadima's seats in the polls will start to fall and that will create a wave," he said.

After recording the results of their interviews, they returned the printouts to the campaign organizers and then began the hour-long drive back home to the West Bank. On this particular night, they found only four families at home, but the Fishers still felt it was worthwhile.

''There's nothing else to be done. This is the best thing we have. Others are calling by phone from the settlement. I'll also start making calls the minute I get home. It's like the butterfly effect, which can cause a tornado. I don't know if we're the butterflies, the tornado, or something in between. Who knows what will happen after we talk to them?" he said.

The Zazim Yemina organizers hope that Bat-Ami and her friends will reach 200,000 households before election day -- a huge campaign in a country with just over 5 million eligible voters.

''Every evening we have 1,000 people calling, and over 1,000 going out to visit -- and the numbers are rising," said Yaakov Sternberg, one of the campaign's national organizers.

They are relying on a quirk of the Israeli political system in which no party in Israel's history has ever won an outright majority, so the governments have been a series of coalitions.

The headline result of next week's election already appears to be a foregone conclusion. Olmert's Kadima Party is widely expected to come in first, winning 39 Knesset seats, according to the latest poll in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

In order to reach a majority of 61 Knesset seats, Kadima must team up with coalition partners that share Olmert's vision of a unilateral disengagement from the West Bank. First in line will be Labor, with a predicted 19 seats, and the left-wing Meretz with 4. But if the right does better than expected, that will force Kadima to look further afield.

In that case, Kadima could also look to Shas, the party representing ultra-orthodox Sephardic Jews, which looks set to win about 11 seats, and with them the ultra-orthodox party, Yahdut Hatorah, with six. That would give Kadima a safe majority, but the religious parties will demand a high price for their support, which could create internal tensions with the left-wing Meretz Party. And while Shas craves government office after three years in opposition, most of its members oppose a West Bank disengagement.

A further shift rightward could tilt the balance completely, leaving Olmert with a Pyrrhic victory in which Kadima is the largest party but is unable to form a government because of the combined strength of the right-wing and religious parties.

Amid this confusion, it's small wonder that the nightly television campaign broadcasts have left voters both amused and baffled. Thirty-one parties are competing in the elections, with at least 11 expected to win Knesset seats.

Kadima's broadcasts are dominated by statesmanlike images of the incumbent, Ehud Olmert. Also center stage are Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Shin Bet security service chief Avi Dichter, vowing to target Palestinian terrorists.

Netanyahu's Likud Party has been struggling. Its broadcasts have become increasingly negative, attacking Kadima as a rag-bag of ''leftists." Labor, which has failed to put its key issues of domestic policy -- health, education, welfare services, and pensions -- on the agenda, has also been attacking Kadima leaders, accusing them of corruption.

Top marks for impact go to the outspoken Alei Yarok (''Green Leaf") Party, campaigning for the environment and the legalization of cannabis. Its video looks like a traditional Jewish wedding until the two white-clad brides embrace in a passionate kiss.

Secret democracy elevated Hamas

Underground campaign unified voters

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank -- Even though more Palestinians voted against Hamas than for its candidates in the Jan. 25 election, the militant Islamist group used the skills it had honed in organizing attacks on Israel to outwit the ruling Fatah party in capturing a comfortable majority of seats in the new parliament that was set to open Saturday.

Still basking from their stunning victory, Hamas leaders recently described how they won -- and how close they came to losing. In a series of interviews, senior Hamas election strategists told The Chronicle that their success was greatly helped by the failure of Fatah to unify its own ranks.

"We used scientific methods based on our study of the polls. We stayed united. We had a program which won the confidence of the voters. The Fatah candidates were split and they were putting up too many people in each district. It split their vote," said Farhat Assad, the West Bank campaign manager for Hamas.

Small secret cells of Hamas members gathered in the spring of 2005 to undertake their campaign, Assad and others said. Highly disciplined couriers moved through the underground, avoiding capture by Israeli forces and keeping their communication routes free of collaborators and possible discovery. Running the risk of arrest or assassination by Israeli security forces, these couriers brought back the decisions of local cells to the Shura Council, the secretive ruling body of Hamas, for final approval.

If the organizing techniques were familiar, the goal was not. Hamas was engaged in underground democracy -- party primaries to choose candidates for the Palestinian parliamentary election.

Hamas leaders said choosing the right candidates was one key to their success. But being a secret organization -- many of whose members were in hiding because of their anti-Israel activities -- Hamas politicians couldn't run the risk of meeting publicly to choose their candidates. Bajjes Nachleh, the Hamas campaign director for the West Bank, was arrested last year as he tried to organize the primaries.

So Hamas developed an extraordinary system of secret democracy, based on small cells of five or six people in each village who for security reasons could not be in contact with each other. They nominated a list from which the Shura Council and the 13-member Hamas High Election Committee -- another secret body -- chose the actual candidates.

In all districts except three, they won.

"In Ramallah city, we have dozens of such groups who are active workers, and we did the primaries in these groups. These groups do not know each other. Each group is four or five people and they keep separate for security reasons," said Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi, a newly elected Hamas councilman.

"The difference is in the people that Hamas selected," said Ramahi, an Italian-trained anesthesiologist. "Unlike the past, they are not all directors of mosques or involved mainly in religious studies. Many of us are professionals and intellectuals."

Half of the Hamas members taking part in the primaries -- about 6,000 people -- were in Israeli jails.

"Ironically, the process there was easier," said Ramahi. "There are 18 people in each prison cell. They simply voted among themselves and transmitted the results to the outside leaders through visitors or when one of them was released."

The leaders also decided to campaign as Change and Reform, a party banner first used for municipal elections in Gaza last year. The name combines a political message with a reference to two passages from the Quran that encourage personal development in order to deepen faith.

Assad, who spent three years in prison until his release last October, took over as West Bank campaign manager and suggested using public-opinion polls to put together a party platform.

"The polls all said the people's first concern was about corruption, and then the security situation," said Assad. "And they showed that 25 percent of the people cared about religion."

He commissioned further internal polling that confirmed his belief that Palestinians who traditionally did not support Hamas would respond to a message emphasizing an end to corruption, a clean and honest government and a strong stand against the Israeli occupation.

The party program was toned down -- deleting references to Hamas' charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel and the imposition of Islamic Shariah law. Finally, a batch of outside experts was called in to give advice on how to run the campaign. With the help of Yazid Khadr, a Hamas media expert, and the party leadership, the candidates decided how to answer journalists' questions. New briefings were sent out almost daily to keep candidates up to date.

Nashat Aqtash, a liberal lecturer in media studies at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was brought in to book advertising space and open a "media school" to groom candidates for interviews.

The final touch came when Assad and his colleagues gathered their activists and trained them in the dual national and district voting procedure that Fatah had adopted with the aim of ensuring they would win. "The day before the election, we held a meeting of the village committees and instructed them to tell people to vote for the national list and then for the right number of Change and Reform candidates in their district," he said.

Ramahi, the physician, said Fatah's sudden expansion weakened its character and undermined internal discipline.

"The people who organize our movement are a small number. Fatah wants to bring everyone to be one of their organization. We are not like that. We prefer to have only five or six people in each of the villages -- but if they are good people, they can change all of the village. The whole village becomes our supporters without becoming members of Hamas," he said.

Ramahi said secrecy and security remained important, because all Hamas members could be arrested by Israel at any time. The head of the Change and Reform list in Ramallah, Sheikh Hasan Yousef, is currently in an Israeli prison -- as is Marwan Barghouti, head of the Fatah list.

"There is a committee at the top, the leaders, but I am not part of this committee," Ramahi said. "The committee selected me to run. In these elections, Hamas did not bring their leaders and put them in the elections, because then Israel could come and arrest them all. ... Hamas has its leadership outside this parliament and inside its representatives."

One leader who stepped into the limelight is Sheikh Mohammed Abu Ter, 55, from the village of Umm Tuba on the southern edge of Jerusalem. Recognizable by his striking henna-red beard, the former Fatah fighter turned Hamas military chief, spent more than 25 years in Israeli jails for weapons offenses and other crimes, including a plot to poison Jerusalem's drinking water. He was released last year and took the second spot on the Hamas national list, putting him in line for a Cabinet position in the new Hamas-led government.

Abu Ter told The Chronicle his contribution to Hamas' success was suggesting candidates knock on every door.

"They were like the cells of a beehive in each city, " he said. "And they worked so hard because, unlike Fatah, they weren't being paid. Our people weren't working for money; they were working because they believed in the cause, and it showed.

"We had to work silently, like the water that works in a tree. You can't see it, but you see the results."

Matthew Kalman reports from the Mideast for the Chronicle Foreign Service. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

How Hamas swept in district elections, creating the appearance of a landslide

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Sunday, February 19, 2006
Page E - 5

Matthew Kalman

A close look at the final results of last month's Palestinian election shows that the apparent landslide that gave Hamas 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council and only 45 to the once-dominant Fatah movement was, in the words of one analyst, "an optical illusion."

Under a new system introduced by the Fatah-dominated council last year, the election was divided into two parts. Sixty-six seats were elected according to national lists of candidates, with seats apportioned according to the percentage of votes received by each party. The remaining 66 were allocated among 16 different districts, where voters cast a separate ballot for individuals to represent each district.

In the vote for the national lists, Hamas received 44.45 percent of the vote while Fatah scored 41.43 percent. This gave Hamas 29 seats to Fatah's 28, with nine seats for smaller parties. If the entire election been conducted on this model, Fatah could have stayed in power by cobbling together a coalition with two or three of the small parties.

But in the district elections, Hamas swept the board even though it attracted only a minority of votes. By running only one candidate, while multiple Fatah candidates canceled each other out, Hamas won 45 district seats to Fatah's 17, with four independents. Yet Hamas candidates received only 36.45 percent of total votes while Fatah and other non-Hamas candidates won 63.54 percent.

"In reality, a clear majority of Palestinians voted against the Hamas," said Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. "What happened is that Hamas presented a unified list in each district, while Fatah and others had a multiplicity of candidates, which caused great divisions."

'FATAH WON THE VOTE, BUT HAMAS WON THE ELECTION'

Militants emerge as power in politics

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Thursday, January 26, 2006
Page A - 1

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank - In a stunning success, the militant Hamas group gained enough seats in Wednesday's Palestinian parliamentary election to challenge the dominance of the ruling Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas was fighting its first national campaign against the well-oiled, well-financed election machine of Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for half a century. Based on exit polls, Fatah seemed certain to remain the largest party in the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council but, for the first time in its 10-year existence, to lose its absolute majority.

"Fatah won the vote, but Hamas won the election," said Khaled Abu Toameh, Palestinian affairs analyst for the Jerusalem Post.

Its strong showing opens the possibility of Hamas -- which has been responsible for spearheading a wave of suicide bomb attacks against Israel -- entering the Palestinian government. Observers and voters alike interpret the vote as a protest against Fatah after a decade of inept, corrupt rule that many Palestinians feel has brought them no nearer to peace and independence.

"I am voting for Hamas because they are honest and clean and good for the Palestinian people," said Bilal Jamil, 32, who was doing a brisk trade selling pastries in Ramallah's main Manara Square.

Seventy-five-year-old Issa Hassan Ibrahim cast his vote at the Friends School nearby. "I am voting for Hamas because they are the best people for the Palestinians. The others have failed us," he said.

Abbas now faces the tricky question of appointing a new government. He is not obliged to select ministers on the basis of their parliamentary strength, and Fatah leaders are divided on the question of whether to invite Hamas into the government. Hamas leaders are equally divided over whether they would accept.

"Even if Hamas does not become part of the new coalition, its strong presence in the Legislative Council will enable it to play a major role in future decision-making," Abu Toameh said. "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah will no longer be able to ignore the power of Hamas, which has now become a legitimate force." Final results are expected today after votes are tallied from the huge turnout, measured by the Palestinian Central Elections Commission at 77.69 percent of voters.

An exit poll by leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki projected 58 seats for Fatah in the council and 53 for the Change and Reform Party, as the Hamas party is called. A Bir Zeit University exit poll projected 63 seats for Fatah and 58 for Hamas. The remaining seats will be held by a variety of minor parties. Analysts warned that the exit polls would be unreliable because Palestinians were using a new electoral system, split between national party lists and local representatives.

On Wednesday, there was a carnival atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza. Despite growing tension in recent weeks and a number of shootings, the ballot went off without a hitch and without any serious incidents.

Streets were festooned with posters and flags. Cars drove by covered in banners, blaring songs in support of the different candidates. Youngsters milled around entrances to the heavily guarded polling stations, handing out election literature with good-natured rivalry.

Fatah and Hamas both hired fleets of minibuses to ferry voters to the polling booths in an effort to boost their numbers.

In Ramallah, the OneVoice, a Palestinian-Jewish peace organization, deployed three brightly dressed camels through the streets to encourage voters to exercise their democratic rights.

The ascendance of Hamas is worrying many secular and Christian Palestinians. Christine Shaheen, a Christian teenager from Ramallah, was canvassing energetically for Fatah outside a local polling station.

"Their policy is built on the religion, and there are a lot of things they are going to use against us. They will make the country all based on religion. We won't be able to wear clothes like this in the streets, we won't be able to walk with men. I am so worried," she said.

Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan Khatib said the peaceful balloting was an impressive celebration of the power of democracy, even while some Palestinian areas remain under continued Israeli occupation.

"We are very proud of our democracy and we are very proud of the high level of awareness and democracy among our people. This is not new. The Palestinian people have always been eager for democracy and elections whenever we have been allowed to do that," said Khatib.

But he said he shares concerns about Hamas becoming dominant in Palestinian society. "As an individual who believes in the two-state solution and as a secular Palestinian, I have concerns in this regard and I hope the secular groups will maintain a majority -- but this is democracy," he said.

The radical Islamist group has come a long way since it entered politics for the first time last year, sweeping to victory in a series of municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza. It had already won the gratitude of many Palestinians for its welfare programs, preschools and health clinics in areas neglected by the Palestinian Authority.

"Hamas is now closer than ever to fulfilling its goal of duplicating the Hezbollah model in Lebanon, where it would maintain its armed wing while having elected representatives in parliament," said Abu Toameh, the Palestinian journalist.

Hamas' success, the culmination of a sophisticated political campaign, could have repercussions throughout the Middle East for decades to come. Israel, the United States and Europe all consider Hamas a terrorist organization and refuse to deal with it. Israeli relations with the Palestinians are on hold until Israeli voters go to the polls on March 28 to choose a successor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains in a coma after a devastating stroke three weeks ago.

"The Europeans and the Americans are telling Hamas to choose between arms and parliament. We say we will go for arms and parliament, and there is no contradiction between the two of them," said Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza. Casting their votes on Wednesday, Hamas leaders showed no signs of heeding Abbas' call to lay down their arms and transform themselves into a regular loyal opposition party.

After voting in the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said the group "will not change a single word in its covenant" calling for the destruction of Israel. He said Hamas would continue its path of "resistance" against Israeli occupation in the West Bank even as it serves in the Palestinian parliament.

"Hamas will not turn into a political party. Hamas plays in all fields. It plays in the field of resistance," said al-Zahar.

Sheikh Mahmoud Abu Ter, head of the Hamas party list in Jerusalem, said voters were attracted by the movement's strong ideological program and its reputation for honesty.

"As a movement, we have an ideological program and a solid soul, and this is supporting us. Our views and our vision of the future (are) so clear to us and we are planning very effectively," said Abu Ter. "In the eyes of public opinion, we are considered clean and untouched by corruption. The people know us and know our transparency and trust us. Our transparency and beliefs -- this is what serves us in the Palestinian streets."

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."