NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, August 8th 2007
BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
JERUSALEM - Wielding sledgehammers and power saws, Israeli police in riot gear smashed through doors and walls in a predawn raid on an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank town of Hebron yesterday, destroying three homes.
Police - more than 3,000 officers backed by soldiers - battled with more than 200 demonstrators who pelted them with stones, light bulbs, oil, flour and water.
"We will never surrender!" settler leaders chanted through bullhorns.
Settlers were dragged shouting and screaming from the houses, located in a former Arab market. Three young activists who barricaded themselves inside one of the homes were evicted by an elite army unit usually tasked with rescuing victims of earthquakes and collapsed buildings.
Four soldiers, 14 police officers and 12 settlers were injured during the operation, a police spokesman said. Eleven settlers were detained briefly and two were arrested.
The illegal settlement was built at the site of the ancient Jewish Quarter of the city, close to the Tombs of the Patriarchs. Two families were evicted, along with protesters who had occupied a third house in the area.
Tensions remain high in Hebron, the only town in the West Bank where Jewish settlers live in the middle of the Palestinian population under heavy military protection.
Settler leaders vowed not to allow more West Bank outposts to be demolished. They said the Hebron houses, populated in protest at the murder of baby Shalhevet Pass by a Palestinian sniper in 2001, would be rebuilt.
"We will return to the Shalhevet neighborhood and the families will be back in their homes," said Noam Arnon, spokesman for the Israeli settlers in Hebron.
The raid triggered a political debate inside Israel after several soldiers refused to follow orders to oust the settlers.
The destruction of the settler homes in the heart of Hebron came as Israeli leaders floated a new peace plan seeking to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, with land inside Israel swapped for the larger settlement blocs.
Wednesday, 8 August 2007
Monday, 23 July 2007
No vacancy in Blair's bid for housing in Jerusalem
Hilltop compound sought, though his work is in West Bank
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, July 23, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Jerusalem -- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will find no space at the inn when he turns up today at Government House, the U.N. headquarters in Jerusalem where he has asked to live and work in his new job as Middle East special envoy.
His new diplomatic colleagues are already incensed at the way Blair's appointment was sprung by the United States last month on the Quartet -- representing the United Nations, European Union, Russia and United States -- and their dismay increased this week when Blair requested accommodations and offices for himself at Government House, a picturesque hilltop compound in southern Jerusalem built in 1930 to house the British High Commissioner under the Palestine Mandate.
It sits on the summit of the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas Iscariot is said to have betrayed Jesus for 30 shekels of silver, and has spectacular views to the north over the Dome of the Rock, the Old City of Jerusalem and southwards over Bethlehem, Herodion and the Judean Desert.
Francesco Manca, spokesman for the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization -- which controls Government House -- said there is no empty office space for Blair and the only available living quarters is a two-room apartment that is already occupied by the head of the truce organization, Australian Maj. Gen. Ian Campbell Gordon.
"At present we have nothing," Manca said. "The current situation in Government House is that we are looking for office space for our existing purposes without the addition of anyone new. We are already at the stage where we are using freight containers for extra office space. This is a usual U.N. solution in Sudan but not in Jerusalem. There is no empty house here."
Manca pointed out that Blair's predecessor, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, also considered Government House but set up his office at the American Colony Hotel across town.
"The idea of having Blair here cannot be implemented immediately. Even if this is chosen as the place, significant changes would have to take place to make it feasible," he said.
The prospect of Blair and perhaps a dozen support staff taking up residence in the already overcrowded compound at Government House has set diplomatic tongues wagging in Jerusalem.
Blair probably chose Government House because of its relative isolation and well-established security systems, but U.N. officials do not relish the prospect of hosting such a high-profile tenant who is considered a high-risk target because of his controversial involvement in the Middle East as prime minister.
Blair is considered so unpopular with ordinary Palestinians, who regarded Saddam Hussein as a hero and are firmly opposed to the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq, that it will be impossible for him to stay in Ramallah, even though his new job working with the Palestinians seems to demand it.
"For security reasons, he has to be in Jerusalem," said a U.N. official. "Security is a major problem. Because of his former role as prime minister he would be in danger in the West Bank."
An elegant sandstone chateau built in a 16-acre compound strategically located on a hilltop overlooking the Old City, Government House opened in 1930 to serve as the headquarters for the British high commissioner to Palestine. Since 1948, it has been the headquarters of UNTSO, set up to monitor the Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian cease-fires.
In 1994, the newly appointed special coordinator for the Middle East peace process and his staff (UNSCO) asked to set up their offices there, and were housed in freight containers and hastily constructed modern buildings set up in the grounds. Built in an octagon from locally quarried stone in a blend of traditional Arabic and Mediterranean styles, the main building is surrounded by shaded terraces set among the landscaped formal gardens with a huge ornamental fountain at their center.
The compound is hidden from view by pines and cypress trees, high walls, a severe gateway and modern security systems supplemented with razor wire, anti-car-bomb barricades and cameras.
Diplomats in Jerusalem already are smarting from Blair's comments at his first press conference as special envoy in Lisbon on Thursday, where he appeared to demand a wider political mandate than the narrow task of building Palestinian institutions, the role assigned him by the Quartet.
"If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it is very important to build the capacity of the institutions for this state to be a viable one," said Marc Otte, the EU special representative to the Middle East peace process. "That is the topic on which he will concentrate at the outset, for the time being. The rest, we'll see."
"He expects a political mandate. So far he does not have one," said another UN official. "Blair's focus is only now on building Palestinian institutions and fundraising to build those institutions. His political role is limited. He may be expecting a wider political role. But at the moment, he's not been granted that role. It's not part of his mandate," said the official.
"This might upset a lot of people, including other envoys of other countries. This is your role. You go outside that and it means you are overlapping other people's work. It's a big problem."
This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, July 23, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Jerusalem -- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will find no space at the inn when he turns up today at Government House, the U.N. headquarters in Jerusalem where he has asked to live and work in his new job as Middle East special envoy.
His new diplomatic colleagues are already incensed at the way Blair's appointment was sprung by the United States last month on the Quartet -- representing the United Nations, European Union, Russia and United States -- and their dismay increased this week when Blair requested accommodations and offices for himself at Government House, a picturesque hilltop compound in southern Jerusalem built in 1930 to house the British High Commissioner under the Palestine Mandate.
It sits on the summit of the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas Iscariot is said to have betrayed Jesus for 30 shekels of silver, and has spectacular views to the north over the Dome of the Rock, the Old City of Jerusalem and southwards over Bethlehem, Herodion and the Judean Desert.
Francesco Manca, spokesman for the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization -- which controls Government House -- said there is no empty office space for Blair and the only available living quarters is a two-room apartment that is already occupied by the head of the truce organization, Australian Maj. Gen. Ian Campbell Gordon.
"At present we have nothing," Manca said. "The current situation in Government House is that we are looking for office space for our existing purposes without the addition of anyone new. We are already at the stage where we are using freight containers for extra office space. This is a usual U.N. solution in Sudan but not in Jerusalem. There is no empty house here."
Manca pointed out that Blair's predecessor, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, also considered Government House but set up his office at the American Colony Hotel across town.
"The idea of having Blair here cannot be implemented immediately. Even if this is chosen as the place, significant changes would have to take place to make it feasible," he said.
The prospect of Blair and perhaps a dozen support staff taking up residence in the already overcrowded compound at Government House has set diplomatic tongues wagging in Jerusalem.
Blair probably chose Government House because of its relative isolation and well-established security systems, but U.N. officials do not relish the prospect of hosting such a high-profile tenant who is considered a high-risk target because of his controversial involvement in the Middle East as prime minister.
Blair is considered so unpopular with ordinary Palestinians, who regarded Saddam Hussein as a hero and are firmly opposed to the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq, that it will be impossible for him to stay in Ramallah, even though his new job working with the Palestinians seems to demand it.
"For security reasons, he has to be in Jerusalem," said a U.N. official. "Security is a major problem. Because of his former role as prime minister he would be in danger in the West Bank."
An elegant sandstone chateau built in a 16-acre compound strategically located on a hilltop overlooking the Old City, Government House opened in 1930 to serve as the headquarters for the British high commissioner to Palestine. Since 1948, it has been the headquarters of UNTSO, set up to monitor the Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian cease-fires.
In 1994, the newly appointed special coordinator for the Middle East peace process and his staff (UNSCO) asked to set up their offices there, and were housed in freight containers and hastily constructed modern buildings set up in the grounds. Built in an octagon from locally quarried stone in a blend of traditional Arabic and Mediterranean styles, the main building is surrounded by shaded terraces set among the landscaped formal gardens with a huge ornamental fountain at their center.
The compound is hidden from view by pines and cypress trees, high walls, a severe gateway and modern security systems supplemented with razor wire, anti-car-bomb barricades and cameras.
Diplomats in Jerusalem already are smarting from Blair's comments at his first press conference as special envoy in Lisbon on Thursday, where he appeared to demand a wider political mandate than the narrow task of building Palestinian institutions, the role assigned him by the Quartet.
"If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it is very important to build the capacity of the institutions for this state to be a viable one," said Marc Otte, the EU special representative to the Middle East peace process. "That is the topic on which he will concentrate at the outset, for the time being. The rest, we'll see."
"He expects a political mandate. So far he does not have one," said another UN official. "Blair's focus is only now on building Palestinian institutions and fundraising to build those institutions. His political role is limited. He may be expecting a wider political role. But at the moment, he's not been granted that role. It's not part of his mandate," said the official.
"This might upset a lot of people, including other envoys of other countries. This is your role. You go outside that and it means you are overlapping other people's work. It's a big problem."
This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Cinnamon cure for diseases
SUNDAY EXPRESS
22 July 2007
From Matthew Kalman
A PASSAGE from the Bible may hold the key to fighting the most dreaded diseases of the 21st century, using a cinnamon-based remedy developed by high priests of Old Testament times.
Zoology professor Michael Ovadia, of Tel Aviv University - a world-renowned expert on antidotes for snake venom - made the discovery after hearing a passage from the Bible which described temple priests anointing themselves with oil.
"The High Priests, the Cohens, would prepare a holy oil used on their bodies before they made a ritual animal sacrifice, " Ovadia said. "I had a hunch that this oil, prepared with cinnamon and other spices, played a role in preventing the spread of infectious agents to people."
The special properties of cinnamon have been known since ancient times, when it was used as a cure for many ailments including diabetes, coughing and sore throats. Today, cinnamon extracts boasting healing properties are widely available.
But simply munching a cinnamon stick will not cure HIV or flu.
"You cannot just take the cinnamon by itself, " Professor Ovadia said, "because the essential oils can be damaging to humans in high doses." But the sweet smell of cinnamon could be wafting through airports, railway stations and other crowded public places as a protection against HIV, herpes, bird flu and other dangerous viruses.
Patented cinnamon extract could be installed in air-conditioning systems, face masks and even aerosol sprays.
The Tel Aviv team's patented formula, codenamed VNF, can attack a broad range of viruses.
In animal tests, it stopped viruses in less than a minute.
Human testing is still some way off. But Dr Nissim Chen, of the university's business arm, said: "We think it could be used in vaccinations against avian influenza."
22 July 2007
From Matthew Kalman
A PASSAGE from the Bible may hold the key to fighting the most dreaded diseases of the 21st century, using a cinnamon-based remedy developed by high priests of Old Testament times.
Zoology professor Michael Ovadia, of Tel Aviv University - a world-renowned expert on antidotes for snake venom - made the discovery after hearing a passage from the Bible which described temple priests anointing themselves with oil.
"The High Priests, the Cohens, would prepare a holy oil used on their bodies before they made a ritual animal sacrifice, " Ovadia said. "I had a hunch that this oil, prepared with cinnamon and other spices, played a role in preventing the spread of infectious agents to people."
The special properties of cinnamon have been known since ancient times, when it was used as a cure for many ailments including diabetes, coughing and sore throats. Today, cinnamon extracts boasting healing properties are widely available.
But simply munching a cinnamon stick will not cure HIV or flu.
"You cannot just take the cinnamon by itself, " Professor Ovadia said, "because the essential oils can be damaging to humans in high doses." But the sweet smell of cinnamon could be wafting through airports, railway stations and other crowded public places as a protection against HIV, herpes, bird flu and other dangerous viruses.
Patented cinnamon extract could be installed in air-conditioning systems, face masks and even aerosol sprays.
The Tel Aviv team's patented formula, codenamed VNF, can attack a broad range of viruses.
In animal tests, it stopped viruses in less than a minute.
Human testing is still some way off. But Dr Nissim Chen, of the university's business arm, said: "We think it could be used in vaccinations against avian influenza."
Tuesday, 17 July 2007
Proposed Huge Jump in Israeli Tuition Prompts Renewed Threat of Student Strike
CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
By MATTHEW KALMAN
Jerusalem
Student leaders in Israel are threatening a nationwide undergraduate strike if the government imposes a 70-percent jump in tuition and carries out other recommendations of a committee that on Monday published a wide-ranging report on reforms in higher education.
The Shochat Committee's proposals include doubling the higher-education budget, to $2.5-billion; providing $225-million in new research funds; doubling the budget of Israel's National Science Foundation, to $120-million; providing special undergraduate scholarships in the humanities; and rewarding outstanding researchers and academics in an effort to stop an Israeli "brain drain" to the United States.
"The implementation of these reforms will be like injecting oxygen into a system that has suffered severe deterioration," said a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat, who led the committee. "This is the most comprehensive and thorough reform proposal to strengthen the higher-education system in Israel that has ever been presented."
Mr. Shochat said the reforms, if enacted, would increase access to higher education for all Israelis wishing to attend university, add 450 new lecturers to the academic staff, reduce class sizes, and improve centers of excellence in research and teaching.
The committee, composed of Education and Finance Ministry officials, academics, and a former university president, recommended "unprecedented aid systems for increasing accessibility." That goal would be attained through increased scholarships for students from poorer families and from sections of society where university attendance is not strongly encouraged.
But the most controversial aspect of the proposals was the recommendation to raise undergraduate tuition from about $2,000 to $3,500 a year.
Mr. Shochat said that most of the fee for each student should be absorbed by a long-term loan, which would only become repayable a year after graduation, and then only if the student was earning a wage comparable to a high-school teacher. He said students would actually pay less while studying, enabling everyone in Israeli society to attend college "irrespective of their socioeconomic status or the financial situation of their parents."
Students declined an invitation to sit on the committee, and ended a crippling 41-day strike in May with a promise from the government that they would be consulted before any of the proposals were adopted. On Monday they appeared to be poised to reject the reform program.
"We will not accept loans. We will not allow this farcical reform to go ahead," said Itai Shonshein, chairman of the National Union of Israeli Students.
He said the apparent doubling of the higher-education budget was "an illusion" because the budget had been halved in recent years.
"They are replacing the money taken by the government with the money of the students," he said.
Mr. Shonshein threatened that if the government did not allow the students to exercise a veto over the proposals, "the next school year will not open."
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
By MATTHEW KALMAN
Jerusalem
Student leaders in Israel are threatening a nationwide undergraduate strike if the government imposes a 70-percent jump in tuition and carries out other recommendations of a committee that on Monday published a wide-ranging report on reforms in higher education.
The Shochat Committee's proposals include doubling the higher-education budget, to $2.5-billion; providing $225-million in new research funds; doubling the budget of Israel's National Science Foundation, to $120-million; providing special undergraduate scholarships in the humanities; and rewarding outstanding researchers and academics in an effort to stop an Israeli "brain drain" to the United States.
"The implementation of these reforms will be like injecting oxygen into a system that has suffered severe deterioration," said a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat, who led the committee. "This is the most comprehensive and thorough reform proposal to strengthen the higher-education system in Israel that has ever been presented."
Mr. Shochat said the reforms, if enacted, would increase access to higher education for all Israelis wishing to attend university, add 450 new lecturers to the academic staff, reduce class sizes, and improve centers of excellence in research and teaching.
The committee, composed of Education and Finance Ministry officials, academics, and a former university president, recommended "unprecedented aid systems for increasing accessibility." That goal would be attained through increased scholarships for students from poorer families and from sections of society where university attendance is not strongly encouraged.
But the most controversial aspect of the proposals was the recommendation to raise undergraduate tuition from about $2,000 to $3,500 a year.
Mr. Shochat said that most of the fee for each student should be absorbed by a long-term loan, which would only become repayable a year after graduation, and then only if the student was earning a wage comparable to a high-school teacher. He said students would actually pay less while studying, enabling everyone in Israeli society to attend college "irrespective of their socioeconomic status or the financial situation of their parents."
Students declined an invitation to sit on the committee, and ended a crippling 41-day strike in May with a promise from the government that they would be consulted before any of the proposals were adopted. On Monday they appeared to be poised to reject the reform program.
"We will not accept loans. We will not allow this farcical reform to go ahead," said Itai Shonshein, chairman of the National Union of Israeli Students.
He said the apparent doubling of the higher-education budget was "an illusion" because the budget had been halved in recent years.
"They are replacing the money taken by the government with the money of the students," he said.
Mr. Shonshein threatened that if the government did not allow the students to exercise a veto over the proposals, "the next school year will not open."
Saturday, 7 July 2007
Palestinian Art Institute to Open in September
CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
July 7, 2007
By MATTHEW KALMAN
The first higher-education institution in the Palestinian territories dedicated solely to art has selected its first 12 students.
The International Academy of Art Palestine, which plans to open in September, will offer a four-year program and be based in Ramallah.
The academy, backed by the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art, has applied for accreditation from the Palestinian Ministry of Education to grant undergraduate degrees in contemporary visual arts.
The academy's project director, Maria C. Khoury, an education specialist who graduated from Harvard University and Boston University, said she hoped the academy would become "the international portal in the Arab world for contemporary art."
The academy has leased the historic Aref Al-Aref house in Ramallah, which housed the town's first Palestinian art gallery when it opened in 1979. The project is the brainchild of four Palestinian artists who wanted to establish a dedicated institute to teach a new generation of local artists and develop a curriculum appropriate to local conditions.
The money for the academy's first three years of operation was donated by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
http://chronicle.com
Section: International
Volume 53, Issue 45, Page A31
July 7, 2007
By MATTHEW KALMAN
The first higher-education institution in the Palestinian territories dedicated solely to art has selected its first 12 students.
The International Academy of Art Palestine, which plans to open in September, will offer a four-year program and be based in Ramallah.
The academy, backed by the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art, has applied for accreditation from the Palestinian Ministry of Education to grant undergraduate degrees in contemporary visual arts.
The academy's project director, Maria C. Khoury, an education specialist who graduated from Harvard University and Boston University, said she hoped the academy would become "the international portal in the Arab world for contemporary art."
The academy has leased the historic Aref Al-Aref house in Ramallah, which housed the town's first Palestinian art gallery when it opened in 1979. The project is the brainchild of four Palestinian artists who wanted to establish a dedicated institute to teach a new generation of local artists and develop a curriculum appropriate to local conditions.
The money for the academy's first three years of operation was donated by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.
http://chronicle.com
Section: International
Volume 53, Issue 45, Page A31
Thursday, 5 July 2007
Freed BBC journalist: Captivity like being buried alive
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, July 5th 2007
BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
JERUSALEM - BBC reporter Alan Johnston stepped into the bright sunshine yesterday after being held captive in a darkened room for 114 days and proclaimed: "It is unimaginably good to be free."
Johnston, 45, was snatched from his car in broad daylight on a side street in Gaza City on March 12 and held by a radical Islamic group calling itself the Army of Islam.
He was released early yesterday after Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, threatened to storm the militant stronghold where he was being held and kill his captors.
The freed journalist told reporters he was kept in isolation, unable to see sunlight.
"It was the most appalling experience, on and on, like being buried alive, removed from life," said Johnston, looking pale and gaunt but otherwise in good health despite his nearly four-month ordeal.
He said it was "always frightening" and "occasionally quite terrifying."
"I just didn't know when it would end or how it would end," he said.
Johnston called his captors "dangerous and unpredictable," but said he developed a "surreal, 'Odd Couple'" relationship with one "extraordinarily moody guard."
"I dreamt many times of being free again and always woke up in that room.... The last 16 weeks have been the very worst of my life."
Johnston said the one silver lining during his captivity was that he had a radio and was able to listen to his BBC colleagues.
"How many kidnap victims are able to sit and listen to their friends giving them messages of support from around the world? I felt at one point as though all the journalists in the world were coming to the rescue," Johnston said.
The reporter said he owed his release to Hamas. "I'm pretty sure that if Hamas hadn't come in and turned the heat on, I'd still be in that room."
Immediately after his release, Johnston was hustled off to a meeting with former Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who briefly draped a Palestinian flag around the reporter's shoulders.
Israel and the rival Palestinian party Fatah called Johnston's release a stage-managed Hamas publicity stunt.
"They released Johnston without getting anything in return because they want to make a good impression on the world," said Israeli cabinet minister Gideon Ezra.
Fatah officials said Hamas had given the kidnappers cash and weapons for Johnston's release.
Johnston was expected to spend some time resting at the British Consulate in east Jerusalem before flying home to see his family.
In Scotland, his parents said they were "overjoyed" to get a phone call from their son.
"It's been 114 days of a living nightmare and just to hear his voice," said his father, Graham Johnston.
"All he said was: 'Hello, Dad' and I [said]: 'Hello, son, I hear you're all right.' He said: 'I'm a 100%.'"
Sunday, 1 July 2007
HOW CAN BLAIR BE OUR PEACE ENVOY?
SUNDAY EXPRESS
Sunday July 1,2007
By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem
TONY Blair’s appointment as a Middle East peace envoy has been met with anger and derision across the region where he hopes to bring an end to decades of conflict.
Political commentators and ordinary citizens were united last night in condemning the former Prime Minister as little more than a puppet of American President George W Bush.
Officially, Palestinian moderates close to President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Mr Blair’s appointment. So did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who hailed him as a “true friend of the State of Israel”.
But behind the scenes, few expect Mr Blair to solve the intractable problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – some predicted he would not last long in his new job.
In Gaza, radical groups shrugged off Mr Blair’s appointment as an irrelevance.
“Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. “He makes no independent decisions and is practising terrorism against Arabs. Such a person cannot be a representative for peace.”
Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batch said: “I don’t think Tony Blair will do anything good, he is only obeying the United States and its crimes.
“He appears to be an on-off button controlled from the White House. How can such a person be a peacemaker after being a warmonger? He is not welcome at all here.”
Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, described Mr Blair as a “loser”.
“He lost control of the leadership of his country,” Mujahed said. “He was a loser in Iraq. So the international community is trying to hide his total failure by exporting him and sending him to the Palestinian territories. We don’t expect any success or help at all from this man.”
Political commentators were equally hostile towards Mr Blair. Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz warned that though he may have brought peace to Northern Ireland, he faces a far tougher task in the Middle East.
“Here, among our foes, the appetite for death has long since turned in upon itself,” Horovitz said, “and breaking the addiction may be beyond the powers of even the most energetic and persuasive of spurned British Prime Ministers.”
Mr Blair is the latest in a series of high-powered political emissaries to be sent to the Middle East since the start of the Palestinian intifada uprising in September 2000, by a quartet comprised of the US, United Nations, European Union and Russia.
The list includes American Senator George Mitchell, former CIA director George Tennet, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn and US General Keith Dayton. All have failed – particularly Dayton, whose plan to buttress Fatah fighters in the Gaza Strip against a Hamas takeover collapsed two weeks ago.
Even moderate voices cast doubt on the wisdom of handing the job to Mr Blair.
An editorial in Al Bayan, the government paper of the United Arab Emirates, said: “Certainly the man is endowed with great experience and competence, but is he capable of assuming such a mission at this precise moment, he who goes all the way as a Bush man?”
Ordinary Palestinians dismissed Mr Blair as just another western interloper, out of touch with the reality of Middle East life.
“He came here so many times and we are still in the same situation, actually things are worse,” said shopkeeper Mohammed Abu Amin, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “He does not understand the Palestinians and he does not seem able to get Israel to change its policies.”
Despite the onslaught of criticism, there was one voice prepared to speak up for Mr Blair. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice hailed his record “at the forefront of international efforts to promote peace and reconciliation around the world, from Northern Ireland to the Balkans and beyond”.
But Mr Blair’s highly restricted mandate is limited to building Palestinian institutions and critics claim it will allow little scope for his skill at peacemaking. Leaving him only to become a high-powered fund-raiser for the Palestinians who have received more international aid per head, in the past 15 years, than any other nation on earth.
Sunday July 1,2007
By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem
TONY Blair’s appointment as a Middle East peace envoy has been met with anger and derision across the region where he hopes to bring an end to decades of conflict.
Political commentators and ordinary citizens were united last night in condemning the former Prime Minister as little more than a puppet of American President George W Bush.
Officially, Palestinian moderates close to President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Mr Blair’s appointment. So did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who hailed him as a “true friend of the State of Israel”.
But behind the scenes, few expect Mr Blair to solve the intractable problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – some predicted he would not last long in his new job.
In Gaza, radical groups shrugged off Mr Blair’s appointment as an irrelevance.
“Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. “He makes no independent decisions and is practising terrorism against Arabs. Such a person cannot be a representative for peace.”
Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project.
Hamas
Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batch said: “I don’t think Tony Blair will do anything good, he is only obeying the United States and its crimes.
“He appears to be an on-off button controlled from the White House. How can such a person be a peacemaker after being a warmonger? He is not welcome at all here.”
Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, described Mr Blair as a “loser”.
“He lost control of the leadership of his country,” Mujahed said. “He was a loser in Iraq. So the international community is trying to hide his total failure by exporting him and sending him to the Palestinian territories. We don’t expect any success or help at all from this man.”
Political commentators were equally hostile towards Mr Blair. Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz warned that though he may have brought peace to Northern Ireland, he faces a far tougher task in the Middle East.
“Here, among our foes, the appetite for death has long since turned in upon itself,” Horovitz said, “and breaking the addiction may be beyond the powers of even the most energetic and persuasive of spurned British Prime Ministers.”
Mr Blair is the latest in a series of high-powered political emissaries to be sent to the Middle East since the start of the Palestinian intifada uprising in September 2000, by a quartet comprised of the US, United Nations, European Union and Russia.
The list includes American Senator George Mitchell, former CIA director George Tennet, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn and US General Keith Dayton. All have failed – particularly Dayton, whose plan to buttress Fatah fighters in the Gaza Strip against a Hamas takeover collapsed two weeks ago.
Even moderate voices cast doubt on the wisdom of handing the job to Mr Blair.
An editorial in Al Bayan, the government paper of the United Arab Emirates, said: “Certainly the man is endowed with great experience and competence, but is he capable of assuming such a mission at this precise moment, he who goes all the way as a Bush man?”
Ordinary Palestinians dismissed Mr Blair as just another western interloper, out of touch with the reality of Middle East life.
“He came here so many times and we are still in the same situation, actually things are worse,” said shopkeeper Mohammed Abu Amin, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “He does not understand the Palestinians and he does not seem able to get Israel to change its policies.”
Despite the onslaught of criticism, there was one voice prepared to speak up for Mr Blair. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice hailed his record “at the forefront of international efforts to promote peace and reconciliation around the world, from Northern Ireland to the Balkans and beyond”.
But Mr Blair’s highly restricted mandate is limited to building Palestinian institutions and critics claim it will allow little scope for his skill at peacemaking. Leaving him only to become a high-powered fund-raiser for the Palestinians who have received more international aid per head, in the past 15 years, than any other nation on earth.
Wednesday, 27 June 2007
Blair tactics in Mideast
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, June 27th 2007
BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem and
ELLEN TUMPOSKY in London
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Tony Blair, who is leaving 10 Downing St. today after 10 years as Britain's prime minister, is expected to take on a new role as a special Mideast peace envoy.
Members of the international Quartet - the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia - will announce the appointment simultaneously today, as long as some last-minute objections on Moscow's part can be resolved, officials said.
Quartet officials met in Jerusalem yesterday to discuss the post, said Marc Otte, the EU delegate to the Mideast peace process. He said he did not know what Russia's reservations were, but hoped they could be resolved.
"Prime Minister Blair ... has shown an interest and a readiness to be useful," Otte told the Daily News. "He offered to be of help in a particular juncture of the peace process."
In London, Blair's answer to reporters' questions suggested he was at least considering the job.
"I think that anybody who cares about greater peace and stability in the world knows that a lasting and enduring resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is essential," said Blair, who hands over power today to Gordon Brown.
Blair is expected to concentrate on political and economic reform to bolster the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.Israeli leaders welcomed the news of Blair's expected appointment.
A statement from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office called him "a true friend." An official from Abbas' Fatah Party, which now rules only the West Bank, said, "We need all the help we can get."
Wednesday, June 27th 2007
BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem and
ELLEN TUMPOSKY in London
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Tony Blair, who is leaving 10 Downing St. today after 10 years as Britain's prime minister, is expected to take on a new role as a special Mideast peace envoy.
Members of the international Quartet - the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia - will announce the appointment simultaneously today, as long as some last-minute objections on Moscow's part can be resolved, officials said.
Quartet officials met in Jerusalem yesterday to discuss the post, said Marc Otte, the EU delegate to the Mideast peace process. He said he did not know what Russia's reservations were, but hoped they could be resolved.
"Prime Minister Blair ... has shown an interest and a readiness to be useful," Otte told the Daily News. "He offered to be of help in a particular juncture of the peace process."
In London, Blair's answer to reporters' questions suggested he was at least considering the job.
"I think that anybody who cares about greater peace and stability in the world knows that a lasting and enduring resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is essential," said Blair, who hands over power today to Gordon Brown.
Blair is expected to concentrate on political and economic reform to bolster the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.Israeli leaders welcomed the news of Blair's expected appointment.
A statement from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office called him "a true friend." An official from Abbas' Fatah Party, which now rules only the West Bank, said, "We need all the help we can get."
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
Israel faces Hamas rule in Gaza
Territories tense as disruptions plague power, food, borders
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLETuesday, June 19, 2007 - Page A3
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Jerusalem -- While Israel, along with the United States and the European Union, moved Monday to lift sanctions against the Palestinian Authority -- partly in the hopes of reopening peace negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- Israeli leaders now have to grapple with the practical implications of the Hamas conquest of the Gaza Strip.
Most immediately, Israel faces a potential humanitarian crisis confronting the territories' 1.4 million inhabitants.
This was apparent Monday at the Erez crossing, the main crossing between Gaza and Israel, where at least 150 men, women and children have been stranded for two days without food and water in blazing heat.
"We have no milk, water or food. My child's milk is running out. We have no money. We are under siege," said one 22-year-old woman who had been waiting with her 3-month-old baby since Saturday for permission to cross Israel and reach her family in the West Bank. "We can't return to Gaza. My husband is threatened, that is why we are trying to run," said the woman, who would not give her name.
Stranded residents gathered in the concrete tunnel that links the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the border crossing until Monday evening, when Palestinian gunmen from the radical Popular Resistance Committees attacked them and the Israeli positions beyond with machine guns and hand grenades. At least two people were reportedly killed, including a senior Fatah security officer.
Israeli Justice Minister Daniel Friedman said the residents should be allowed through to the West Bank. "Israel should ease their passage, as long as they are not Hamas people or endanger Israeli security," he said.
But Guy Bechor, head of Middle Eastern studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, disagreed. "As soon as we let one of them through, millions will want to follow," he said.
And the trouble at the border is just one of many problems.
Thousands of Gazans used to work inside Israel, but since the second Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000, the border has been closed to all but a few. Since then, unemployment inside the Gaza Strip has reached as high as 50 percent. In addition, Israeli reprisals for Palestinian terror attacks have destroyed roads, power lines and factories suspected of producing bombs and rockets.
Israeli security measures against arms smuggling include the closure of the local airport and a frequent ban on fishing. Under the economic clauses of the 1994 Oslo Peace Accords, all goods imported to Gaza must first pass through Israel, which also supplies the coastal strip of territory with fresh water, electricity, fresh fruit and vegetables, medical supplies and gasoline.
The immediate consequence of last week's Hamas coup was the cessation of these essential supplies. Thousands of tons of fresh fruit and vegetables were destroyed, causing shortages inside the Strip. Dor Alon, the private gasoline company that supplies fuel for vehicles and operates Gaza's only power plant generating electricity, halted supplies Sunday when officials found they were unable to contact their Palestinian colleagues on the other side. The flow resumed Monday.
But while there were calls for Israel to move food and medical supplies into Gaza, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the minister of infrastructure, said Israel should restrict the movement to just one crossing, via the town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.
"I am stopping everything until I understand what is going on there," said Ben-Eliezer.
But Egypt may not be willing to pick up the slack, following the failure of a power-sharing agreement it had tried to broker between Hamas and Fatah.
"Israeli illusions aside, neither Egypt nor Jordan is about to take over responsibility for, respectively, Gaza and the West Bank, thereby letting Israel off the hook," wrote Yossi Alpher, co-editor of the respected bitterlemons.org, a joint Israeli-Palestinian Web site.
Meanwhile, there were reports that Israel is contemplating a major military assault on Gaza should the newly empowered Hamas escalate attacks from the territory. While there appeared to be no immediate plans for such an invasion -- despite the resumption of rocket attacks on Israeli territory Monday night -- some observers think a military operation is probably unavoidable over the long term.
"Eventually, I'm afraid, Israel will be forced to initiate a comprehensive operation against this Iranian military base which is being established on our southern border," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of Israel's parliamentary committee for defense and foreign affairs. "We must dictate the circumstances of that operation and not be dragged into it by developing events."
Bechor, however, called for Israel to "disengage" completely from Gaza.
"There are processes in the Middle East which little Israel is unable to change," he said. "Alongside political Islam is a process sweeping the entire Middle East. Israel cannot stop it. The rise of Shia Islam and the fall of Sunni Islam. The collapse of Arab nationalism -- in this case of Palestinian nationalism.
"These are unstoppable processes, and all Israel can do is defend herself. We are doomed if we try to become involved in these huge processes."
This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Monday, 18 June 2007
Abbas swears in government
But Hamas says it won't talk to 'illegitimate & illegal' body
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, June 18th 2007
BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
JERUSALEM - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new emergency government yesterday, a move that was met with derision by the Islamic militants who now rule the violence-ravaged Gaza Strip.
The developments came a day after Hamas completed its conquest of Gaza
by ransacking Yasser Arafat's beachfront villa, stealing even the late
leader's Nobel Peace medal.
In the West Bank, where Abbas' Fatah Party remained in control, Finance
Minister Salam Fayyad was named the new prime minister, in place of
Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh.
"The first priority of our government is security and the security
situation," Fayyad, who lived and studied in the U.S. for 20 years, told
reporters after the brief ceremony in Ramallah.
"The mission will be difficult and hard, but not impossible," he said.
But Hamas denounced the new government as "illegitimate and illegal."
"We will not recognize it. We will not work with it," said Hamas
spokesman Ismail Radwan.
The United States, Israel and European states indicated they would
release tax revenues and donor funds to Fayyad's new government, after a
15-month embargo of the Hamas-led administration pushed the Palestinian
Authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
At least 160 Palestinians were killed and 796 were wounded in last
week's fighting, the Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights reported.
The dead included 45 civilians as well as Fatah fighters who were
executed in the streets.
Al-Mizan said the death toll could still rise because many people were
missing and there were dozens of people with serious wounds. Hundreds of
senior Fatah officials have fled Gaza for the West Bank with Israel's
permission, but many civilians weren't so lucky.
At least 150 men, women and children were stranded yesterday without
food and water in blazing heat at the Erez border crossing. Israeli
soldiers fired tear gas and shot in the air as the crowd neared the
heavily fortified checkpoint.
One 22-year-old woman said she had been waiting with her 3-month-old
baby since Saturday for permission to cross Israel and reach her family
in the West Bank.
"We have no milk, water or food. My child's milk is running out. We have
no money. We are under siege. They don't agree to let us cross through
Erez, but we can't return to Gaza. My husband is threatened, that is why
we are trying to run," she said.
As Israel wondered how to react to the new militant Islamic state on its
southern border, the northern city of Kiryat Shmona came under rocket
fire yesterday for the first time since last year's Lebanon war.
At least three rockets were fired from Lebanon, apparently by a small
Palestinian group. They caused damage but no casualties.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, June 18th 2007
BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
JERUSALEM - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new emergency government yesterday, a move that was met with derision by the Islamic militants who now rule the violence-ravaged Gaza Strip.
The developments came a day after Hamas completed its conquest of Gaza
by ransacking Yasser Arafat's beachfront villa, stealing even the late
leader's Nobel Peace medal.
In the West Bank, where Abbas' Fatah Party remained in control, Finance
Minister Salam Fayyad was named the new prime minister, in place of
Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh.
"The first priority of our government is security and the security
situation," Fayyad, who lived and studied in the U.S. for 20 years, told
reporters after the brief ceremony in Ramallah.
"The mission will be difficult and hard, but not impossible," he said.
But Hamas denounced the new government as "illegitimate and illegal."
"We will not recognize it. We will not work with it," said Hamas
spokesman Ismail Radwan.
The United States, Israel and European states indicated they would
release tax revenues and donor funds to Fayyad's new government, after a
15-month embargo of the Hamas-led administration pushed the Palestinian
Authority to the brink of bankruptcy.
At least 160 Palestinians were killed and 796 were wounded in last
week's fighting, the Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights reported.
The dead included 45 civilians as well as Fatah fighters who were
executed in the streets.
Al-Mizan said the death toll could still rise because many people were
missing and there were dozens of people with serious wounds. Hundreds of
senior Fatah officials have fled Gaza for the West Bank with Israel's
permission, but many civilians weren't so lucky.
At least 150 men, women and children were stranded yesterday without
food and water in blazing heat at the Erez border crossing. Israeli
soldiers fired tear gas and shot in the air as the crowd neared the
heavily fortified checkpoint.
One 22-year-old woman said she had been waiting with her 3-month-old
baby since Saturday for permission to cross Israel and reach her family
in the West Bank.
"We have no milk, water or food. My child's milk is running out. We have
no money. We are under siege. They don't agree to let us cross through
Erez, but we can't return to Gaza. My husband is threatened, that is why
we are trying to run," she said.
As Israel wondered how to react to the new militant Islamic state on its
southern border, the northern city of Kiryat Shmona came under rocket
fire yesterday for the first time since last year's Lebanon war.
At least three rockets were fired from Lebanon, apparently by a small
Palestinian group. They caused damage but no casualties.
Friday, 15 June 2007
The day terror won
Hamas overruns the Gaza Strip
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, June 15th 2007
By MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem
and CORKY SIEMASZKO in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Israel has a radical Islamic state sitting on its doorstep.
Hamas militants seized control of the Gaza Strip yesterday and deposed
the Palestinian political party that recognizes the Jewish state - and
then proceeded to shoot vanquished Fatah Party fighters in the street
like dogs.
"The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived," Islam Shahawan, a
spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and
dissolved his coalition government, firing the Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh. But Hamas just laughed.
"Hamas rejects the Abbas decision," senior Hamas official Sami Abu
Zuhri said. "In practical terms these decisions are worthless."
Nizar Rayan, another prominent Hamas official, called on "Abbas' army
of prostitutes to surrender or else they will be executed in public."
By nightfall, green Hamas flags were flying from the rooftops of the
presidential compound and other Palestinian Authority bastions while
Hamas fighters boasted they had "executed" Samih al-Madhoun, a close
ally of Abbas' top security aide.
Other Fatah fighters loyal to Abbas were marched half-naked from the
hated Preventive Security Service complex in Gaza City. Witnesses
reported that some were later executed gangland-style by masked Hamas
militiamen. "This is a real coup against the Palestinian Authority,"
said Nabil Amr, a top Abbas aide.
Unable and unwilling to intervene, the Israelis watched with growing
despair as Hamas - bankrolled by Iran and bent on destroying the
Jewish state - took over a territory they had just turned over to the
Palestinian Authority in 2005.
"Hamas has to stop terrorizing the Palestinian people," White House
spokesman Tony Snow said.
Secretary of State Rice telephoned Abbas in the West Bank but could do
little more than voice her support for the beleaguered Palestinian
leader.
Meanwhile, there was mayhem in Gaza City as Hamas murdered Fatah men -
sometimes while the victims' wives and children looked on, witnesses
said.
"They are executing them one by one," a witness who gave his name as
Amjad told The Associated Press. "They are carrying one of them on
their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and
shooting."
Abbas, who had been banking on his far more numerous Fatah fighters to
hold off Hamas, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back.
But the order came too late.
His forces were already routed by the better-armed and
better-disciplined Hamas fighters. The death toll was at least 80 and
expected to climb.
Fatah and Hamas have battled sporadically since Hamas shocked the
world last year by winning the parliamentary elections. The latest
round of violence started on Sunday and exploded into a full-fledged
war yesterday.
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, June 15th 2007
By MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem
and CORKY SIEMASZKO in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Israel has a radical Islamic state sitting on its doorstep.
Hamas militants seized control of the Gaza Strip yesterday and deposed
the Palestinian political party that recognizes the Jewish state - and
then proceeded to shoot vanquished Fatah Party fighters in the street
like dogs.
"The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived," Islam Shahawan, a
spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and
dissolved his coalition government, firing the Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh. But Hamas just laughed.
"Hamas rejects the Abbas decision," senior Hamas official Sami Abu
Zuhri said. "In practical terms these decisions are worthless."
Nizar Rayan, another prominent Hamas official, called on "Abbas' army
of prostitutes to surrender or else they will be executed in public."
By nightfall, green Hamas flags were flying from the rooftops of the
presidential compound and other Palestinian Authority bastions while
Hamas fighters boasted they had "executed" Samih al-Madhoun, a close
ally of Abbas' top security aide.
Other Fatah fighters loyal to Abbas were marched half-naked from the
hated Preventive Security Service complex in Gaza City. Witnesses
reported that some were later executed gangland-style by masked Hamas
militiamen. "This is a real coup against the Palestinian Authority,"
said Nabil Amr, a top Abbas aide.
Unable and unwilling to intervene, the Israelis watched with growing
despair as Hamas - bankrolled by Iran and bent on destroying the
Jewish state - took over a territory they had just turned over to the
Palestinian Authority in 2005.
"Hamas has to stop terrorizing the Palestinian people," White House
spokesman Tony Snow said.
Secretary of State Rice telephoned Abbas in the West Bank but could do
little more than voice her support for the beleaguered Palestinian
leader.
Meanwhile, there was mayhem in Gaza City as Hamas murdered Fatah men -
sometimes while the victims' wives and children looked on, witnesses
said.
"They are executing them one by one," a witness who gave his name as
Amjad told The Associated Press. "They are carrying one of them on
their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and
shooting."
Abbas, who had been banking on his far more numerous Fatah fighters to
hold off Hamas, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back.
But the order came too late.
His forces were already routed by the better-armed and
better-disciplined Hamas fighters. The death toll was at least 80 and
expected to climb.
Fatah and Hamas have battled sporadically since Hamas shocked the
world last year by winning the parliamentary elections. The latest
round of violence started on Sunday and exploded into a full-fledged
war yesterday.
Hamas' takeover of Gaza ratchets up tension
TWO STATES: End of an era for Fatah as ruling force
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, June 15, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Jerusalem -- The green flag of Hamas, emblazoned with verses from the
Quran, fluttered over the Palestinian Authority security headquarters
in Gaza Thursday, signaling the end of an era and plunging the region
into an even more uncertain and volatile future.
The conquest of Gaza, in less than a week of fighting that killed at
least 90 people in the past five days, marks the beginning of an
Islamic ministate, home to 1.4 million people along a coastal strip of
the Mediterranean. It also ratchets up tension with Israel, a
sovereign country Hamas has vowed to eliminate and continues to
bombard with rockets.
"This is a real coup against the Palestinian Authority," said Nabil
Amr, a top aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who
declared a state of emergency and dissolved the Hamas-led unity
government. Abbas also ordered his forces to round up Hamas operatives
in the West Bank, where Fatah remains largely in control of 2 million
Palestinians. In Ramallah, angry supporters torched the office of
three Hamas lawmakers.
Abbas' decrees appeared to have little impact on Hamas, or on facts on
the ground, except perhaps for the emergence of two rival Palestinian
governments -- one in Gaza, the other in the West Bank.
"Hamas rejects the Abbas decisions. In practical terms these decisions
are worthless," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. (Hamas)
"Prime Minister (Ismail) Haniyeh remains the head of the government
even if it was dissolved by the president."
"How can you declare a state of emergency if you don't have a
government to enforce it?" added Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel.
Hamas also dominates the Palestinian Legislative Council, which would
need to approve any new government, noted Bardaweel, who said Gaza
would now become a safer area. "Now we can start implementing our
security plan for imposing law and order," he said.
On Thursday, Hamas fighters captured Gaza City's three main security
compounds and marched half-naked Fatah fighters with arms raised from
the main security building. Eyewitnesses reported that some Fatah
officers were dragged out of the Preventive Security headquarters in
the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood and later killed gangland-style by masked
Hamas militiamen.
But Hamas' military moves, clearly planned long in advance, and the
total collapse of U.S.-trained and -equipped Fatah security forces,
left many observers, both here and abroad, in shock. Fatah, which has
suffered from corruption and a lack of leadership, is estimated to
have twice as many gunmen as Hamas.
In past years, the United States, the European Union and other
European states have poured millions of dollars into Abbas'
presidential guard and lavished Fatah with training, weapons and other
equipment, believing the secular group would stem the rise of Hamas,
by force if necessary. That illusion was shattered Thursday as dozens
of U.S.-trained fighters were marched out of Fatah-dominated security
installations in their underwear.
"The Palestinian Authority has failed because for 15 years it failed
to achieve any of its goals, above all Palestinian statehood," said
Ali Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University.
"Israel has also contributed to its downfall by building the
(security) wall, turning the West Bank into cantons and weakening the
Palestinian security forces. This explosion was going to happen
because there is no political vision for people to look forward to."
Bernard Sabella of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees
of the Middle East Council of Churches said the situation was
deteriorating into "madness."
"This developing situation will further impoverish and disempower our
people," Sabella wrote in an e-mail message to his supporters. "The
infighting in Gaza definitely gives a break to Israel as it diverts
attention from the root cause of overall instability in the Holy Land,
which is Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and control over our
people."
For now, Israeli leaders are working on a response to the Hamas
victory. Most observers say Israel does not want to be dragged back
into Gaza, which it abandoned two years ago after nearly four decades
of occupation. But the Jewish state still controls the supply of food,
medicine, water and electricity into Gaza, as well as its access. The
government must now decide how to isolate a Hamas-governed Gaza Strip
without triggering a major humanitarian crisis.
Guy Bechor, head of Middle Eastern studies at the Interdisciplinary
Center in Herzliya, said the latest developments marked a de facto
completion of Israel's disengagement from Gaza.
"This has ended the illusions of arrangements and understandings with
respect to Gaza," said Bechor. "Electricity, water -- all the things
which should have been cut off with the disengagement. In effect, the
real disengagement has finally occurred this evening."
Meanwhile, Calev Ben Dor, an analyst at the Reut Institute think tank
in Tel Aviv, said separating the Hamas-led Gaza from the
Fatah-governed West Bank might be advantageous for Israel.
"It may offer the best opportunity in years to break the current
political stalemate by facilitating the creation of an effective
address in the West Bank with which Israel can promote a political
process," he wrote in the Jerusalem Post.
This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, June 15, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Jerusalem -- The green flag of Hamas, emblazoned with verses from the
Quran, fluttered over the Palestinian Authority security headquarters
in Gaza Thursday, signaling the end of an era and plunging the region
into an even more uncertain and volatile future.
The conquest of Gaza, in less than a week of fighting that killed at
least 90 people in the past five days, marks the beginning of an
Islamic ministate, home to 1.4 million people along a coastal strip of
the Mediterranean. It also ratchets up tension with Israel, a
sovereign country Hamas has vowed to eliminate and continues to
bombard with rockets.
"This is a real coup against the Palestinian Authority," said Nabil
Amr, a top aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who
declared a state of emergency and dissolved the Hamas-led unity
government. Abbas also ordered his forces to round up Hamas operatives
in the West Bank, where Fatah remains largely in control of 2 million
Palestinians. In Ramallah, angry supporters torched the office of
three Hamas lawmakers.
Abbas' decrees appeared to have little impact on Hamas, or on facts on
the ground, except perhaps for the emergence of two rival Palestinian
governments -- one in Gaza, the other in the West Bank.
"Hamas rejects the Abbas decisions. In practical terms these decisions
are worthless," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. (Hamas)
"Prime Minister (Ismail) Haniyeh remains the head of the government
even if it was dissolved by the president."
"How can you declare a state of emergency if you don't have a
government to enforce it?" added Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel.
Hamas also dominates the Palestinian Legislative Council, which would
need to approve any new government, noted Bardaweel, who said Gaza
would now become a safer area. "Now we can start implementing our
security plan for imposing law and order," he said.
On Thursday, Hamas fighters captured Gaza City's three main security
compounds and marched half-naked Fatah fighters with arms raised from
the main security building. Eyewitnesses reported that some Fatah
officers were dragged out of the Preventive Security headquarters in
the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood and later killed gangland-style by masked
Hamas militiamen.
But Hamas' military moves, clearly planned long in advance, and the
total collapse of U.S.-trained and -equipped Fatah security forces,
left many observers, both here and abroad, in shock. Fatah, which has
suffered from corruption and a lack of leadership, is estimated to
have twice as many gunmen as Hamas.
In past years, the United States, the European Union and other
European states have poured millions of dollars into Abbas'
presidential guard and lavished Fatah with training, weapons and other
equipment, believing the secular group would stem the rise of Hamas,
by force if necessary. That illusion was shattered Thursday as dozens
of U.S.-trained fighters were marched out of Fatah-dominated security
installations in their underwear.
"The Palestinian Authority has failed because for 15 years it failed
to achieve any of its goals, above all Palestinian statehood," said
Ali Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University.
"Israel has also contributed to its downfall by building the
(security) wall, turning the West Bank into cantons and weakening the
Palestinian security forces. This explosion was going to happen
because there is no political vision for people to look forward to."
Bernard Sabella of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees
of the Middle East Council of Churches said the situation was
deteriorating into "madness."
"This developing situation will further impoverish and disempower our
people," Sabella wrote in an e-mail message to his supporters. "The
infighting in Gaza definitely gives a break to Israel as it diverts
attention from the root cause of overall instability in the Holy Land,
which is Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and control over our
people."
For now, Israeli leaders are working on a response to the Hamas
victory. Most observers say Israel does not want to be dragged back
into Gaza, which it abandoned two years ago after nearly four decades
of occupation. But the Jewish state still controls the supply of food,
medicine, water and electricity into Gaza, as well as its access. The
government must now decide how to isolate a Hamas-governed Gaza Strip
without triggering a major humanitarian crisis.
Guy Bechor, head of Middle Eastern studies at the Interdisciplinary
Center in Herzliya, said the latest developments marked a de facto
completion of Israel's disengagement from Gaza.
"This has ended the illusions of arrangements and understandings with
respect to Gaza," said Bechor. "Electricity, water -- all the things
which should have been cut off with the disengagement. In effect, the
real disengagement has finally occurred this evening."
Meanwhile, Calev Ben Dor, an analyst at the Reut Institute think tank
in Tel Aviv, said separating the Hamas-led Gaza from the
Fatah-governed West Bank might be advantageous for Israel.
"It may offer the best opportunity in years to break the current
political stalemate by facilitating the creation of an effective
address in the West Bank with which Israel can promote a political
process," he wrote in the Jerusalem Post.
This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, 3 June 2007
First A victor -- then 40 years of stalemate
Effects of the war continue to haunt life in the Mideast
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Page E1
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem -- Four decades after Israel's staggering military victory in the Six Day War, the peoples of the Middle East are still reeling from its aftershocks.
A new generation of leaders now governs the countries that fought in 1967, but not a single day has passed since that has not been dominated by its legacy, and the battle for peace remains unresolved 40 years later.
The Israeli conquest and subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with their large Arab populations brought the young state of Israel state face to face with the paradox that had haunted the Zionist movement since its inception at the end of the 19th century: How could the desire to establish a Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish homeland mapped out in the Bible be reconciled with the future of the Palestinian Arabs who had been living in that same land for centuries?
Before June 5, 1967, Israel appeared to be a David facing a Goliath-like coalition of 22 Arab states sworn to its destruction. Six days later, Israel had emerged as a regional superpower, finally ending centuries of Jewish victimhood but forcing its leaders to confront the responsibilities of victory and military might.
For the Palestinians, still reeling from the "Naqba" -- the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948, which turned 600,000 Palestinians into refugees -- the Israeli victory galvanized Palestinian nationalism. The war's outcome convinced Palestinians that Arab leaders' promises were worthless, and they resolved to take charge of the struggle against Israel.
The Arab states whose forces had been shattered were shocked at their defeat, but it had a strangely calming effect on them. The previous decades had been riven with inter-Arab rivalry, coups and wars. The Egyptians had tried to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan 11 times. But after 1967, the vanquished governments stopped fighting each other and united in their opposition to Israel.
"Forty years later, we are still grappling with the outcome of this war," says historian Michael Oren, author of "Six Days of War" and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center think tank in Jerusalem. "For statesmen and military leaders throughout the Middle East, the Six Day War has never really ended.
"All other developments since then, from the two Palestinian intifada uprisings, the Israeli settlements to the rise of Hamas, can all be traced back to these six very short, intense and fateful days," he says.
On June 5, 1967, Mohammed Abdel Al-Latif was a 33-year-old stone mason. That morning, he remembers standing near his house on the edge of Anata, northeast of Jerusalem, when he heard the drone of an engine and saw an Israeli warplane float into the summer sky. A Jordanian tank was stationed on the next hill. Seconds later, a bomb dropped from the plane and ripped the tank open, sending out blast waves and shrapnel that blew Al-Latif off his feet.
"We were one of only a few families left in the village," says Al-Latif. "The others had run off to hide in the caves in the desert or fled across the Jordan River."
Soon after, Jordanian jeeps carrying posters of King Hussein appeared on the hill, driving toward the village. Al-Latif went out to greet them, but suddenly realized they were full of Israeli soldiers and bristling with guns.
"I thought they were going to kill me, so I ran toward the jeep and jumped in," Al-Latif recalls. "I thought that if they shot me like that, they would probably kill one of their own as well."
But they didn't. They sent him back with a message for villagers to stay in their houses for three days and nothing would happen.
But something did happen -- the Israeli occupation.
Since 1967, the population of Anata has grown from around 8,000 to more than 50,000, and the houses have expanded past Al-Latif's home into the surrounding countryside. But the hill where that Jordanian tank blew up is now covered with the whitewashed, red-roofed houses of Pisgat Zeev, an Israeli suburb of Jerusalem built, says Al-Latif, on land confiscated from Anata. To the north, the view is broken by the towering gray concrete slabs of the Israeli security barrier, built to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. And to the east, on the road to Jericho, a sprawling Israeli military base sits on yet more of the hills where Al-Latif used to graze his father's cattle.
In 1967, says Al-Latif, the village counted 36,000 dunams -- 9,000 acres -- of land. Today it has just 800 dunams -- 200 acres.
"For me, the occupation means no stability, never knowing what will happen next," he says. "I am ashamed to invite friends from Jerusalem, because they will be stopped or humiliated at the checkpoints."
"The Israelis don't want peace," says Al-Latif's younger brother, Abdel Rahman. "Look at the settlements, look at how they have taken all the land. They are like a frog blowing themselves up. Soon the frog will be as big as an elephant, and it will explode."
By June 12, 1967, Israel had conquered the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. But grabbing land was not Israel's initial intention, Oren says.
"The Israeli plan was extremely simple," he says. "It was to neutralize the first of three defense lines the Egyptians constructed across the Sinai Desert, and the Israeli Air Force was going to neutralize the Egyptian Air Force, preferably on the ground. That was it. Take out the Egyptians, give them a bloody nose."
David Rubinger, the celebrated Time photographer who snapped the iconic portrait of three young Israeli paratroopers at the Western Wall on the day Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem, likened the mood in Israel before June 5 to preparing for the gallows.
"In the weeks before the war, there was a sense of doom. The national stadium was prepared for 40,000 graves -- and even if we thought we might win, it would be a costly victory," says Rubinger. "We went from being doomed to having an empire. It was like a condemned man with the noose around his neck suddenly being told that not only was he going to live, he was going to be the king. The nation went a little nuts."
Days after the end of the war, future President Chaim Herzog, then Israel's first military governor of the West Bank, met with a group of Palestinian notables at the East Jerusalem home of Anwar Nuseibeh, a former Jordanian Cabinet minister and scion of a family that traced its roots in Jerusalem back 1400 years. Nuseibeh's younger brother Mohammed, then a 30-year-old engineer and now proprietor of the family's hotel, was among those present.
"Herzog came and discussed the options with us, and it was clear that the Israelis had not decided what to do," Nuseibeh says. "They had not planned what would come after such a victory. But some of their intentions became clear when one day soon after the war, a convoy of buses appeared at the Damascus Gate, and it was announced that anyone wanting to leave the city and go to Jordan would be taken for free. But not many did."
"Nobody expected Israel to occupy Jerusalem, let alone the whole of the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights," says Hanna Siniora, former editor of the PLO-backed East Jerusalem newspaper Al Fajr and now co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. He was a 29-year-old student assisting at his father's pharmacy near the Damascus Gate in the Old City on the morning the war began.
"Everybody was thinking that maybe this will lead to a kind of opening the way for a political solution," he says.
Stunned Arab leaders met in Khartoum, Sudan, in September 1967, and decided on three negatives that would haunt peace efforts for decades after: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.
"The Arabs were humiliated. First you have to regain your credibility, and then you have the possibility of coming to terms," says Siniora.
Across the Jordan River, a young radical named Yasser Arafat was busy in the two years after the war taking over the Palestine Liberation Organization with his armed Fatah movement, transforming it from a diplomatic lobby to a military force that launched a bloody series of attacks on Israeli civilian targets, airliners and Olympic athletes, as well as attempting a coup in Jordan.
An Israeli religious nationalist movement sprang up, determined to hang on to the biblical territories. Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful) began creating settlements on sites that combined historical or religious significance with military strategy. Caravan homes sprang up on commanding hilltops near the sites of Abraham's tomb in Hebron and Jacob's dream in Bethel. In 1972 there were 1,500 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. By 1983 there were 23,700. Today there are a quarter-million.
But the settlement enterprise convinced most Palestinians the Israelis were not serious about peace. If there was to be an agreement, Israel would have to exchange the land conquered in 1967 in return for recognition by the Arabs. This formula of land for peace was written into U.N. Resolution 242 in November 1967, and remains the central motif of Israeli-Arab peacemaking.
Yossi Klein Halevi, Oren's colleague at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, says the continuation of the occupation not only has denied the Palestinians their independence, but clearly has damaged Israeli society.
"Generally speaking, the impact has been disastrous, both in terms of demographics and the moral erosion of parts of Israeli society," he says. "The occupation has had an almost unequivocal negative effect on Israeli society."
The Palestinians have always felt subservient. They see the occupation, with its ID checks and military patrols, as a daily humiliation in which fragile freedoms are withdrawn the instant the Israelis feel their security is threatened.
Israel's policies have produced some disastrous errors, among them the decision to nurture a religious Islamic group called Hamas in the mid-1980s as a counterweight to Fatah and the PLO.
In 1993, when Israel and the PLO ended a seven-year uprising with the breakthrough Oslo Accords, it was hoped they were finally on the road to creating two neighborly states. Arafat agreed to suppress Hamas in return for control of the territory. But Israel was unwilling to remove the settlers or give up its larger settlements, and the Palestinians refused to forgo the right of the refugees from the pre-1948 borders -- now some 4 million -- to return to their original homes, a move that would up-end Israel's Jewish majority.
When talks broke down at Camp David in the summer of 2000, the process collapsed. A bloody new intifada erupted, one that included the grim new practice of suicide bombings. Israeli military leaders lashed out, in the mistaken belief they could crush the Palestinians by force as they had crushed the Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians in 1967.
If the occupation had debased Israelis, the Palestinians, too, began to realize that their methods of resistance were undermining the fabric of their own society.
"The resistance began as something clean and upright, but then it became corrupted by money, it became the richest resistance movement in the history of mankind, and its leaders began buying cars and villas and sending their children to expensive schools," says Munther Dajani, dean of the Faculty of Arts at Al Quds University and former chairman of its political science department.
"The Palestinians never had this culture of death. We are not Shiites. The Palestinian people have always been moderate -- but if you destroy my house, kill my children and arrest my brother, that is bound to breed desperate people who take desperate actions," he says.
With Hamas in power and the cement blocks of Israel's security barrier snaking their way through the West Bank, the two sides seem as far as apart as ever. Their inability to overcome the past and find a solution is rooted in their diametrically opposed understanding of the Six Day War.
Israelis remain traumatized by the period before the war, when annihilation seemed likely. Many are unwilling to take risks for peace because they fear one mistake could destroy the state of Israel.
Palestinians remain spellbound by the war and its aftermath. They regard Israel as a superpower that should make the first move toward peace .
Yet Dajani is hopeful the time has finally arrived.
"The second intifada was successful in that it taught the Israelis their big dream has ended -- that they cannot swallow the Palestinians whole without getting indigestion," he says. "And the Palestinians seem finally to understand that Israel is here to stay. Perhaps both sides have finally paid the price necessary to make peace."
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Page E1
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem -- Four decades after Israel's staggering military victory in the Six Day War, the peoples of the Middle East are still reeling from its aftershocks.
A new generation of leaders now governs the countries that fought in 1967, but not a single day has passed since that has not been dominated by its legacy, and the battle for peace remains unresolved 40 years later.
The Israeli conquest and subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with their large Arab populations brought the young state of Israel state face to face with the paradox that had haunted the Zionist movement since its inception at the end of the 19th century: How could the desire to establish a Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish homeland mapped out in the Bible be reconciled with the future of the Palestinian Arabs who had been living in that same land for centuries?
Before June 5, 1967, Israel appeared to be a David facing a Goliath-like coalition of 22 Arab states sworn to its destruction. Six days later, Israel had emerged as a regional superpower, finally ending centuries of Jewish victimhood but forcing its leaders to confront the responsibilities of victory and military might.
For the Palestinians, still reeling from the "Naqba" -- the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948, which turned 600,000 Palestinians into refugees -- the Israeli victory galvanized Palestinian nationalism. The war's outcome convinced Palestinians that Arab leaders' promises were worthless, and they resolved to take charge of the struggle against Israel.
The Arab states whose forces had been shattered were shocked at their defeat, but it had a strangely calming effect on them. The previous decades had been riven with inter-Arab rivalry, coups and wars. The Egyptians had tried to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan 11 times. But after 1967, the vanquished governments stopped fighting each other and united in their opposition to Israel.
"Forty years later, we are still grappling with the outcome of this war," says historian Michael Oren, author of "Six Days of War" and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center think tank in Jerusalem. "For statesmen and military leaders throughout the Middle East, the Six Day War has never really ended.
"All other developments since then, from the two Palestinian intifada uprisings, the Israeli settlements to the rise of Hamas, can all be traced back to these six very short, intense and fateful days," he says.
On June 5, 1967, Mohammed Abdel Al-Latif was a 33-year-old stone mason. That morning, he remembers standing near his house on the edge of Anata, northeast of Jerusalem, when he heard the drone of an engine and saw an Israeli warplane float into the summer sky. A Jordanian tank was stationed on the next hill. Seconds later, a bomb dropped from the plane and ripped the tank open, sending out blast waves and shrapnel that blew Al-Latif off his feet.
"We were one of only a few families left in the village," says Al-Latif. "The others had run off to hide in the caves in the desert or fled across the Jordan River."
Soon after, Jordanian jeeps carrying posters of King Hussein appeared on the hill, driving toward the village. Al-Latif went out to greet them, but suddenly realized they were full of Israeli soldiers and bristling with guns.
"I thought they were going to kill me, so I ran toward the jeep and jumped in," Al-Latif recalls. "I thought that if they shot me like that, they would probably kill one of their own as well."
But they didn't. They sent him back with a message for villagers to stay in their houses for three days and nothing would happen.
But something did happen -- the Israeli occupation.
Since 1967, the population of Anata has grown from around 8,000 to more than 50,000, and the houses have expanded past Al-Latif's home into the surrounding countryside. But the hill where that Jordanian tank blew up is now covered with the whitewashed, red-roofed houses of Pisgat Zeev, an Israeli suburb of Jerusalem built, says Al-Latif, on land confiscated from Anata. To the north, the view is broken by the towering gray concrete slabs of the Israeli security barrier, built to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. And to the east, on the road to Jericho, a sprawling Israeli military base sits on yet more of the hills where Al-Latif used to graze his father's cattle.
In 1967, says Al-Latif, the village counted 36,000 dunams -- 9,000 acres -- of land. Today it has just 800 dunams -- 200 acres.
"For me, the occupation means no stability, never knowing what will happen next," he says. "I am ashamed to invite friends from Jerusalem, because they will be stopped or humiliated at the checkpoints."
"The Israelis don't want peace," says Al-Latif's younger brother, Abdel Rahman. "Look at the settlements, look at how they have taken all the land. They are like a frog blowing themselves up. Soon the frog will be as big as an elephant, and it will explode."
By June 12, 1967, Israel had conquered the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. But grabbing land was not Israel's initial intention, Oren says.
"The Israeli plan was extremely simple," he says. "It was to neutralize the first of three defense lines the Egyptians constructed across the Sinai Desert, and the Israeli Air Force was going to neutralize the Egyptian Air Force, preferably on the ground. That was it. Take out the Egyptians, give them a bloody nose."
David Rubinger, the celebrated Time photographer who snapped the iconic portrait of three young Israeli paratroopers at the Western Wall on the day Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem, likened the mood in Israel before June 5 to preparing for the gallows.
"In the weeks before the war, there was a sense of doom. The national stadium was prepared for 40,000 graves -- and even if we thought we might win, it would be a costly victory," says Rubinger. "We went from being doomed to having an empire. It was like a condemned man with the noose around his neck suddenly being told that not only was he going to live, he was going to be the king. The nation went a little nuts."
Days after the end of the war, future President Chaim Herzog, then Israel's first military governor of the West Bank, met with a group of Palestinian notables at the East Jerusalem home of Anwar Nuseibeh, a former Jordanian Cabinet minister and scion of a family that traced its roots in Jerusalem back 1400 years. Nuseibeh's younger brother Mohammed, then a 30-year-old engineer and now proprietor of the family's hotel, was among those present.
"Herzog came and discussed the options with us, and it was clear that the Israelis had not decided what to do," Nuseibeh says. "They had not planned what would come after such a victory. But some of their intentions became clear when one day soon after the war, a convoy of buses appeared at the Damascus Gate, and it was announced that anyone wanting to leave the city and go to Jordan would be taken for free. But not many did."
"Nobody expected Israel to occupy Jerusalem, let alone the whole of the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights," says Hanna Siniora, former editor of the PLO-backed East Jerusalem newspaper Al Fajr and now co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. He was a 29-year-old student assisting at his father's pharmacy near the Damascus Gate in the Old City on the morning the war began.
"Everybody was thinking that maybe this will lead to a kind of opening the way for a political solution," he says.
Stunned Arab leaders met in Khartoum, Sudan, in September 1967, and decided on three negatives that would haunt peace efforts for decades after: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.
"The Arabs were humiliated. First you have to regain your credibility, and then you have the possibility of coming to terms," says Siniora.
Across the Jordan River, a young radical named Yasser Arafat was busy in the two years after the war taking over the Palestine Liberation Organization with his armed Fatah movement, transforming it from a diplomatic lobby to a military force that launched a bloody series of attacks on Israeli civilian targets, airliners and Olympic athletes, as well as attempting a coup in Jordan.
An Israeli religious nationalist movement sprang up, determined to hang on to the biblical territories. Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful) began creating settlements on sites that combined historical or religious significance with military strategy. Caravan homes sprang up on commanding hilltops near the sites of Abraham's tomb in Hebron and Jacob's dream in Bethel. In 1972 there were 1,500 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. By 1983 there were 23,700. Today there are a quarter-million.
But the settlement enterprise convinced most Palestinians the Israelis were not serious about peace. If there was to be an agreement, Israel would have to exchange the land conquered in 1967 in return for recognition by the Arabs. This formula of land for peace was written into U.N. Resolution 242 in November 1967, and remains the central motif of Israeli-Arab peacemaking.
Yossi Klein Halevi, Oren's colleague at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, says the continuation of the occupation not only has denied the Palestinians their independence, but clearly has damaged Israeli society.
"Generally speaking, the impact has been disastrous, both in terms of demographics and the moral erosion of parts of Israeli society," he says. "The occupation has had an almost unequivocal negative effect on Israeli society."
The Palestinians have always felt subservient. They see the occupation, with its ID checks and military patrols, as a daily humiliation in which fragile freedoms are withdrawn the instant the Israelis feel their security is threatened.
Israel's policies have produced some disastrous errors, among them the decision to nurture a religious Islamic group called Hamas in the mid-1980s as a counterweight to Fatah and the PLO.
In 1993, when Israel and the PLO ended a seven-year uprising with the breakthrough Oslo Accords, it was hoped they were finally on the road to creating two neighborly states. Arafat agreed to suppress Hamas in return for control of the territory. But Israel was unwilling to remove the settlers or give up its larger settlements, and the Palestinians refused to forgo the right of the refugees from the pre-1948 borders -- now some 4 million -- to return to their original homes, a move that would up-end Israel's Jewish majority.
When talks broke down at Camp David in the summer of 2000, the process collapsed. A bloody new intifada erupted, one that included the grim new practice of suicide bombings. Israeli military leaders lashed out, in the mistaken belief they could crush the Palestinians by force as they had crushed the Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians in 1967.
If the occupation had debased Israelis, the Palestinians, too, began to realize that their methods of resistance were undermining the fabric of their own society.
"The resistance began as something clean and upright, but then it became corrupted by money, it became the richest resistance movement in the history of mankind, and its leaders began buying cars and villas and sending their children to expensive schools," says Munther Dajani, dean of the Faculty of Arts at Al Quds University and former chairman of its political science department.
"The Palestinians never had this culture of death. We are not Shiites. The Palestinian people have always been moderate -- but if you destroy my house, kill my children and arrest my brother, that is bound to breed desperate people who take desperate actions," he says.
With Hamas in power and the cement blocks of Israel's security barrier snaking their way through the West Bank, the two sides seem as far as apart as ever. Their inability to overcome the past and find a solution is rooted in their diametrically opposed understanding of the Six Day War.
Israelis remain traumatized by the period before the war, when annihilation seemed likely. Many are unwilling to take risks for peace because they fear one mistake could destroy the state of Israel.
Palestinians remain spellbound by the war and its aftermath. They regard Israel as a superpower that should make the first move toward peace .
Yet Dajani is hopeful the time has finally arrived.
"The second intifada was successful in that it taught the Israelis their big dream has ended -- that they cannot swallow the Palestinians whole without getting indigestion," he says. "And the Palestinians seem finally to understand that Israel is here to stay. Perhaps both sides have finally paid the price necessary to make peace."
Thursday, 31 May 2007
The trouble begins when Jews stop being invisible
THE INDEPENDENT
May 31, 1997
Matthew Kalman
Later this month, BBC's Omnibus will broadcast a documentary on the Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London. This bold experiment in 1920s suburban living has become an exclusive, largely white, middle-class enclave whose tree-lined streets and smart, red-brick houses have become a magnet for comfort-seeking residents as diverse as Lulu, King Constantine, Lord Soper, Martin Bell, the Sultan of Brunei and Richard & Judy.
A large part of the programme is devoted to the controversy surrounding the eruv, a plan to erect a symbolic boundary around several square miles of north London, including parts of the Garden Suburb.
According to orthodox law, Jews are not permitted to push …
May 31, 1997
Matthew Kalman
Later this month, BBC's Omnibus will broadcast a documentary on the Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London. This bold experiment in 1920s suburban living has become an exclusive, largely white, middle-class enclave whose tree-lined streets and smart, red-brick houses have become a magnet for comfort-seeking residents as diverse as Lulu, King Constantine, Lord Soper, Martin Bell, the Sultan of Brunei and Richard & Judy.
A large part of the programme is devoted to the controversy surrounding the eruv, a plan to erect a symbolic boundary around several square miles of north London, including parts of the Garden Suburb.
According to orthodox law, Jews are not permitted to push …
Tuesday, 8 May 2007
Herod's tomb reportedly found inside his desert palace
Ruled at time of Jesus' birth
 Standing in front of a projected image of a mesa rising more than 2,475 feet above sea level, Israeli Professor of Archaeology Ehud Netzer speaks during a press conference at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem 08 May 2007. Netzer said that the tomb of King Herod, famed for expanding the Jewish second temple during his reign in the first century BC, had been discovered in the Israeli occupied West Bank, some 7.5 miles south of Jerusalem. (Menahem Kahana/AFP/Getty Images) |
JERUSALEM -- The tomb of King Herod, the legendary Jewish monarch and ally of the Romans who ruled at the time of Jesus' birth, has been discovered in one of his palaces 2,000 years after his death, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced last night.
A Hebrew University team found the grave at Herodion, a stunning volcano-shaped desert fortress 5 miles southeast of Bethlehem. The team was led by Professor Ehud Netzer, who has been researching the site since 1972.
Herod the Great ruled the ancient kingdom of Judea from around 37 BC to 4 BC.
He built lavish palaces, seaports, aqueducts, and temples, including the magnificent Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and the vast Mediterranean seaport complex and hippodrome at Caesarea.
The massive stones of the outer wall of the Temple Mount still stand today in the Old City of Jerusalem, where they are known as the Western Wall.
He also constructed an elegant winter palace on the north face of Masada, an imposing mesa overlooking the Dead Sea where Jewish rebel forces held out for a year against three Roman legions, decades after Herod's death.
Herodion, a series of underground tunnels hewn out of a mountain and topped with a magnificent palace complete with bathhouses, is regarded as one of the most astonishing engineering feats of the ancient world.
Herod was descended from the Edomites, a tribe of ancient enemies of the Jews who converted to Judaism in about 120 BC. When Palestine was under Roman rule, Herod's father became chief minister of Judea. Herod was made governor of Galilee when he was just 25 years old.
After the assassination of Julius Caesar, Herod became a protege of Mark Antony and Caesar's great-nephew Octavian.
In 39 BC, Herod invaded Judea to win the country back for the Romans and was made king.
The location of Herod's grave has long been a mystery among archeologists. The Roman historian Josephus Flavius wrote that Herod was buried at Herodion, but the grave had not been found until now. It seemed unlikely that a monarch who spent such huge sums on erecting monuments and palaces that have lasted for centuries did not plan his own colossal tomb.
Tuesday, 1 May 2007
He won't be war casualty, Olmert vows
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, Tuesday, May 1st 2007
By Matthew Kalman Special To The News
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was fighting for his political life last night after a damning report found him personally responsible for a series of "severe failures" in last year's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But Olmert, who was elected with a large majority just over a year ago, said in a televised statement that he would not step down.
"It would be incorrect to resign and I do not intend to do so," he said.
"There were failures by the main decision-makers with myself at their head," Olmert admitted, but said he would work to correct the problems outlined in the 300-page Winograd Committee report.
Members of Olmert's governing coalition joined calls from opposition lawmakers for him to resign over his mishandling of the war in which more than 1 million Israelis were forced to flee their homes and live in underground shelters for a month as Hezbollah rained thousands of rockets on northern Israel.
More than 150 Israelis and 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the war, which began last July 12 when two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and eight more were killed in a cross-border ambush by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The report accused him of making rushed decisions at the outset of the war, and for failing to consult with either military or nonmilitary experts.
Amid rumors of a growing mutiny within his own party and the possible fall of his coalition government, demonstrators began gathering outside Olmert's official residence in Jerusalem to demand his resignation.
The acid test will come Thursday, when critics have promised to bring hundreds of thousands of Israelis to a demonstration in Tel Aviv to force Olmert to quit.
By Matthew Kalman Special To The News
JERUSALEM - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was fighting for his political life last night after a damning report found him personally responsible for a series of "severe failures" in last year's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But Olmert, who was elected with a large majority just over a year ago, said in a televised statement that he would not step down.
"It would be incorrect to resign and I do not intend to do so," he said.
"There were failures by the main decision-makers with myself at their head," Olmert admitted, but said he would work to correct the problems outlined in the 300-page Winograd Committee report.
Members of Olmert's governing coalition joined calls from opposition lawmakers for him to resign over his mishandling of the war in which more than 1 million Israelis were forced to flee their homes and live in underground shelters for a month as Hezbollah rained thousands of rockets on northern Israel.
More than 150 Israelis and 1,000 Lebanese were killed in the war, which began last July 12 when two Israeli soldiers were kidnapped and eight more were killed in a cross-border ambush by Hezbollah guerrillas.
The report accused him of making rushed decisions at the outset of the war, and for failing to consult with either military or nonmilitary experts.
Amid rumors of a growing mutiny within his own party and the possible fall of his coalition government, demonstrators began gathering outside Olmert's official residence in Jerusalem to demand his resignation.
The acid test will come Thursday, when critics have promised to bring hundreds of thousands of Israelis to a demonstration in Tel Aviv to force Olmert to quit.
Thursday, 29 March 2007
Bolstering Bluetooth
THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
THE WIRED CAMPUS BLOG
March 29, 2007
Bluetooth is getting its first filling, thanks to researchers from Tel Aviv University's electrical-engineering school. The technology -- which passes data between cellphones, laptops, and other devices over short-range radio frequencies -- is already widely used, but the team at Tel Aviv discovered that it had some disturbing security holes.
Avishai Wool, a professor at the university, and Yaniv Shaked, a graduate student, say Bluetooth is vulnerable to "snipers" -- hackers who quickly breach cellphone security systems in order to place calls and browse address books. Skilled hackers can exploit Bluetooth's "pairing" technology, through which machines communicate with each other, to eavesdrop on communications from as much as a mile away, Mr. Wool says.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a commission that develops standards for the wireless technology, has already heeded the Israeli scientists' warning and developed a new security system that should solve the pairing problem. "It'll be more difficult for hackers to get into your cellphones and steal your address books and stuff," says Mr. Wool. -- Matthew Kalman
THE WIRED CAMPUS BLOG
March 29, 2007
Bluetooth is getting its first filling, thanks to researchers from Tel Aviv University's electrical-engineering school. The technology -- which passes data between cellphones, laptops, and other devices over short-range radio frequencies -- is already widely used, but the team at Tel Aviv discovered that it had some disturbing security holes.
Avishai Wool, a professor at the university, and Yaniv Shaked, a graduate student, say Bluetooth is vulnerable to "snipers" -- hackers who quickly breach cellphone security systems in order to place calls and browse address books. Skilled hackers can exploit Bluetooth's "pairing" technology, through which machines communicate with each other, to eavesdrop on communications from as much as a mile away, Mr. Wool says.
The Bluetooth Special Interest Group, a commission that develops standards for the wireless technology, has already heeded the Israeli scientists' warning and developed a new security system that should solve the pairing problem. "It'll be more difficult for hackers to get into your cellphones and steal your address books and stuff," says Mr. Wool. -- Matthew Kalman
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
New Islamic party seeks the center
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Ramallah, West Bank -- A new Palestinian movement being launched today is aimed at the moderate middle of Muslim politics.
Wasatia -- Arabic for "moderation" -- is the first Islamic religious party to advocate a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a tolerant, democratic society at home.
The new party is the brainchild of political science Professor Mohammed Dajani, director of the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem.
Dajani hopes to build Wasatia into a movement with a social and political wing that will eventually compete with Hamas for the votes of what he calls the silent majority of Palestinians.
"Wasatia is a term from the Quran which means 'centrism,' 'balance' or 'moderation,' " Dajani said. "The new party will foster a culture of moderation and attract Palestinian voters who are moderate in their religious beliefs. The existing Palestinian Islamic parties breed radicalism and fundamentalism."
Dajani said most Palestinians are proud of their Muslim heritage and respect the religious identity of Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but many are uncomfortable with the fundamentalism of those groups -- and after years of disastrous armed resistance, also are tired also of their extreme militarism.
"We want to foster a culture of moderation so that our children do not grow up just with the literature of hate and violence," he said. "We want our children to grow up in a culture where people can co-exist in peace and harmony."
Palestinian politics are now dominated by Hamas -- a hard-line Islamic party that refuses to recognize Israel -- and by Fatah. The two parties have just formed a power-sharing government.
The meeting this evening brings together Islamic religious leaders from several West Bank towns, former prisoners in Israeli jails, women, intellectuals and youth. They are expected to endorse a founding platform that blends verses from the Quran, extolling the virtues of moderation and tolerance, with calls for a negotiated peace with Israel and solutions to the acute economic, social and political crises plaguing Palestinian society.
In common with the mainstream Fatah movement, the Wasatia platform calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But in contrast to all other major Palestinian parties, it does not endorse the return of the estimated 4 million Palestinian refugees to their homes in what is now Israel.
"I would say to the refugees: 'Move on with your life.' We cannot let the past bury the future, even though it should always be remembered," said Dajani.
Among the founders of Wasatia is Bashar Azzeh, a doctoral student in conflict system management who spent seven years studying and working in Kentucky before returning to the West Bank to work for a Palestinian development organization.
"The image of Islam in the United States is that it is extremist, but we have found that hardliners are not the majority among Palestinians," Azzeh said. "I have been to the villages and talked to people. There is a feeling that people have tried violence, they have tried everything, and this is what we need now. People want a moderate political culture and an end to violence and ignorance. They want a reflection of what we are."
Surveys suggest that many of those who swept Hamas to power in the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections were casting votes against the institutional corruption of Fatah. A poll by Near East Consulting found that 54 percent of Hamas voters also supported the peace process with Israel. "A moderate, centrist Islamic party will take support from Hamas voters who will not vote for secular parties," said Hanna Siniora, a veteran Palestinian activist and publisher of the Jerusalem Times.
But Mahdi Abdel Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, said that centrist parties won only six of 132 seats in last January's election.
"Without alliances with powerful elites in society, this new initiative will be born dead," said Abdel Hadi.
Nicolas Pelham, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Jerusalem, agreed that Wasatia faces a major challenge.
"Political power relies on patronage," said Pelham. "Those factions which do maintain some form of popular allegiance are those which can offer services and jobs and some access to the remaining centers of power or salaries."
Dajani said that Wasatia will spend the next year building itself as a movement, undertaking voluntary work, creating new jobs and economic opportunities.
"Charity and voluntarism -- this is Islam," he said. "The creation of new jobs does not have to be related to arms and violence."
This article appeared on page A - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Ramallah, West Bank -- A new Palestinian movement being launched today is aimed at the moderate middle of Muslim politics.
Wasatia -- Arabic for "moderation" -- is the first Islamic religious party to advocate a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a tolerant, democratic society at home.
The new party is the brainchild of political science Professor Mohammed Dajani, director of the American Studies Institute at Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem.
Dajani hopes to build Wasatia into a movement with a social and political wing that will eventually compete with Hamas for the votes of what he calls the silent majority of Palestinians.
"Wasatia is a term from the Quran which means 'centrism,' 'balance' or 'moderation,' " Dajani said. "The new party will foster a culture of moderation and attract Palestinian voters who are moderate in their religious beliefs. The existing Palestinian Islamic parties breed radicalism and fundamentalism."
Dajani said most Palestinians are proud of their Muslim heritage and respect the religious identity of Islamic groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but many are uncomfortable with the fundamentalism of those groups -- and after years of disastrous armed resistance, also are tired also of their extreme militarism.
"We want to foster a culture of moderation so that our children do not grow up just with the literature of hate and violence," he said. "We want our children to grow up in a culture where people can co-exist in peace and harmony."
Palestinian politics are now dominated by Hamas -- a hard-line Islamic party that refuses to recognize Israel -- and by Fatah. The two parties have just formed a power-sharing government.
The meeting this evening brings together Islamic religious leaders from several West Bank towns, former prisoners in Israeli jails, women, intellectuals and youth. They are expected to endorse a founding platform that blends verses from the Quran, extolling the virtues of moderation and tolerance, with calls for a negotiated peace with Israel and solutions to the acute economic, social and political crises plaguing Palestinian society.
In common with the mainstream Fatah movement, the Wasatia platform calls for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But in contrast to all other major Palestinian parties, it does not endorse the return of the estimated 4 million Palestinian refugees to their homes in what is now Israel.
"I would say to the refugees: 'Move on with your life.' We cannot let the past bury the future, even though it should always be remembered," said Dajani.
Among the founders of Wasatia is Bashar Azzeh, a doctoral student in conflict system management who spent seven years studying and working in Kentucky before returning to the West Bank to work for a Palestinian development organization.
"The image of Islam in the United States is that it is extremist, but we have found that hardliners are not the majority among Palestinians," Azzeh said. "I have been to the villages and talked to people. There is a feeling that people have tried violence, they have tried everything, and this is what we need now. People want a moderate political culture and an end to violence and ignorance. They want a reflection of what we are."
Surveys suggest that many of those who swept Hamas to power in the January 2006 Palestinian Legislative Council elections were casting votes against the institutional corruption of Fatah. A poll by Near East Consulting found that 54 percent of Hamas voters also supported the peace process with Israel. "A moderate, centrist Islamic party will take support from Hamas voters who will not vote for secular parties," said Hanna Siniora, a veteran Palestinian activist and publisher of the Jerusalem Times.
But Mahdi Abdel Hadi, director of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, said that centrist parties won only six of 132 seats in last January's election.
"Without alliances with powerful elites in society, this new initiative will be born dead," said Abdel Hadi.
Nicolas Pelham, a senior analyst for the International Crisis Group in Jerusalem, agreed that Wasatia faces a major challenge.
"Political power relies on patronage," said Pelham. "Those factions which do maintain some form of popular allegiance are those which can offer services and jobs and some access to the remaining centers of power or salaries."
Dajani said that Wasatia will spend the next year building itself as a movement, undertaking voluntary work, creating new jobs and economic opportunities.
"Charity and voluntarism -- this is Islam," he said. "The creation of new jobs does not have to be related to arms and violence."
This article appeared on page A - 7 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, 16 March 2007
A troubled region shows its funny face
Giant portraits' goal to erode Israeli-Palestinian stereotypes
Members of the "Face2Face" crew plaster giant photographs on the separation barrier in Bethlehem. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, March 16, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Bethlehem, West Bank -- Palestinians and Israelis were confronted last week with a larger-than-life image -- of themselves.
Thirty-foot portraits of taxi drivers, teachers, religious leaders and others from each side of the conflict were pasted in pairs on walls and buildings around the country, including the controversial Israeli security barrier. They appeared in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Hebron, Abu Dis, Tel Aviv and Haifa.
The photographs are part of a project titled "Face2Face," the work of self-styled French "artivists" JR and Marco -- they refuse to reveal their full names -- who first carried out a similar headline-grabbing project in Paris after riots there last year.
"I'm an artist-photographer who chooses the streets as the gallery," JR said as he climbed a ladder to paste the huge photographs on the exterior of a cement security wall surrounding an Israeli army base in Bethlehem. "Basically, I take pictures that I paste in the street, and I do this all around the world in different places, and the place where I put the photos is important for how the people will understand it."
"These people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families," he said. "We want that, at last, everyone laughs and thinks when he sees the portrait of the other and his own portrait."
Not everyone found it funny. The Face2Face duo was arrested March 3 by Israeli soldiers in Hebron, held for several hours and expelled from the town. A few days later, they were briefly detained by Israeli police in the old city of Jerusalem before being released with smiles and laughter all around and allowed to continue their project.
The photographs were purposely distorted in an effort to break through the stereotypes that each side has about the other.
"Palestinians and Israelis both suffer from the conflict, but although they are neighbors, they only see each other through the media. Both ignore the sufferings and the fears of the other," JR said.
"For an Israeli, a Palestinian is a terrorist who commits suicide attacks on a marketplace, killing women and children. For a Palestinian, an Israeli is an occupation soldier who humiliates him at the checkpoint and shoots civilians and ambulances. The reality is infinitely more complex," he said.
The photographs of 40 Israelis and Palestinians and one Christian priest were taken last summer using a 28mm wide-angle lens from very close up, and the subjects were asked to make funny faces expressing their feelings.
"I take a 28mm lens and I go 10 centimeters from you, so you have to know that something's going to happen with this picture," JR said.
Ayman Abu Alzulof, a Palestinian actor and tour guide from the West Bank town of Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem, said he agreed to be photographed because he knew the images would be seen on both sides of the border.
"It shows that both parties look like each other, as human beings, as races. It's difficult to differentiate between a Palestinian face and an Israeli face. It will also show that we live here," Alzulof said. "I think a lot of people will talk about it."
Marco, the other French artivist behind the project, said the two of them were trying to reflect a complexity not always obvious to people abroad. "Things are much more complex than what we thought, than what we were told by the media and by people on both sides before we arrived," Marco said.
"We saw people that within five minutes were in favor of war, in favor of peace, on both sides. It's very complex. People sometimes are good and bad at the same time. It's very ambivalent. That's something magic, and when you show them our pictures, sometimes we see Palestinians laughing when they see Israelis and vice versa, which is very funny, because they're not used to laughing when they see the others."
Not everyone in Bethlehem appreciated their efforts. Sheikh Taleb Awadallah, a local Muslim religious leader, said the huge distorted faces looked like the devil.
"This wall is evil," he said, pointing at the towering gray cement blocks of the Israeli security barrier. "But these pictures are more evil."
There are 19 double images -- a Palestinian and an Israeli -- in the collection. The single triptych is of three clerics: Rabbi Eliyahu McLean, Muslim Sheikh Abdul-Aziz Bukhari and Brother Jack Duncan, a Catholic.
"The Torah teaches that every human being is created in the image of God, so if everyone has different faces that they're given, those are also the faces of God," McLean said.
His words were reflected, like his photograph, by his Muslim opposite number.
"I see God's image in everyone," Bukhari said. "So if you see God's image in every person you look at, regardless what religion he has, when you love God and respect God, so you have to respect the person in front of you."
Marco said the setting was as important as the content. When JR was invited to exhibit a similar project in France at Paris City Hall, he agreed only on the condition that his images were displayed on huge billboards in Place Hotel de Ville, the square outside the building.
"I would qualify JR as an artivist, not an artist. It means that he uses all the ways that are available, including viral marketing (contagious publicity, through word of mouth, to generate buzz) and whatever, to show what he does," Marco said. "It's not activism, it's not art, it's something in between where you show your ideas and you display them the way people are open to see them. ... It's street art. It's second-generation street art. It's what comes after graffiti, the same family."
The artivists said they were not deterred by their brushes with Israeli security.
"In Hebron, it was a heavy situation, maybe more complicated than another city," JR said. "We came there to post really close to an army base, and they didn't know how to react. Also, maybe I shouldn't have posted on a door."
This article appeared on page A - 19 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, 9 March 2007
Heart lifeline linked to your mobile
DAILY MAIL March 9, 2007
By Matthew Kalman
A DEVICE enabling heart patients to be monitored via their mobile phone was being hailed last night as a potential lifesaver.
It is a portable electrocardiograph machine, so small that it can be used in the home, in the car or on holiday.
But crucially it can also be linked to a mobile to send real-time pictures of the heart's performance to a doctor anywhere in the world.
Erez Alroy, head of Shahal, the Israeli company behind the Cardio-Sen-C, said it would make taking an ECG as easy as taking your temperature.
The unit is connected to a dedicated medical control centre which can switch it on and off by remote control. Patients who suffer from heart disease, or are recovering from bypass surgery, or simply feel they are at risk, would be able to measure their heart activity at any time without travelling to hospital.
Digital transmission ensures the highest quality monitoring.
'We believe in the future more and more people will have various medical measuring devices at home,' said Mr Alroy. 'When people don't feel well, it can take time to make the decision to go to a physician or a clinic.
'Maybe they put it off until the next day. This is crucial time, when there can be irreversible damage to the heart muscle.'
It will also benefit heart patients who are wary of going on holiday for fear of being too far away from a doctor or clinic to measure their condition.
'We have customers who are transmitting their ECG from any part of the world you can imagine,' said Mr Alroy.
'Most people hesitate before going to a local doctor abroad. They are worried about problems with the language, about the lack of medical history.
'We find that people prefer to call the centre back home, where they can speak their own language and then take instructions.'
By Matthew Kalman
A DEVICE enabling heart patients to be monitored via their mobile phone was being hailed last night as a potential lifesaver.
It is a portable electrocardiograph machine, so small that it can be used in the home, in the car or on holiday.
But crucially it can also be linked to a mobile to send real-time pictures of the heart's performance to a doctor anywhere in the world.
Erez Alroy, head of Shahal, the Israeli company behind the Cardio-Sen-C, said it would make taking an ECG as easy as taking your temperature.
The unit is connected to a dedicated medical control centre which can switch it on and off by remote control. Patients who suffer from heart disease, or are recovering from bypass surgery, or simply feel they are at risk, would be able to measure their heart activity at any time without travelling to hospital.
Digital transmission ensures the highest quality monitoring.
'We believe in the future more and more people will have various medical measuring devices at home,' said Mr Alroy. 'When people don't feel well, it can take time to make the decision to go to a physician or a clinic.
'Maybe they put it off until the next day. This is crucial time, when there can be irreversible damage to the heart muscle.'
It will also benefit heart patients who are wary of going on holiday for fear of being too far away from a doctor or clinic to measure their condition.
'We have customers who are transmitting their ECG from any part of the world you can imagine,' said Mr Alroy.
'Most people hesitate before going to a local doctor abroad. They are worried about problems with the language, about the lack of medical history.
'We find that people prefer to call the centre back home, where they can speak their own language and then take instructions.'
Thursday, 8 March 2007
Israel's Hezbollah war: the best laid plans
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
BLOG: THE ROSS REPORT
Thursday, March 08, 2007
From Matthew Kalman, JerusalemLast summer's war in Lebanon was "planned months in advance" according to today's edition of the Israeli daily, Haaretz.
According to the newspaper, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told the Winograd Commission, set up to inquire into Israeli shortcomings in the war, that Israeli leaders had already decided how to respond if Hezbollah repeated its October 2000 kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers on the border with Lebanon.
Olmert said that in March 2006, he "asked the army commanders whether operational plans existed for such a possibility, and they said yes. He asked to see the plans, and they asked why. He responded that he did not want to make a snap decision in the case of an abduction, and preferred to decide at that moment. Presented with the options, he selected a moderate plan that included air attacks accompanied by a limited ground operation."
In fact, as the Chronicle reported in the early days of the hostilities, such planning had been long been underway. ('Israel set war plan more than a year ago')
"Of all of Israel's wars since 1948, this was the one for which Israel was most prepared," Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, told the Chronicle at the time.
The outcome, as we now know, was a disaster -- both for Lebanon and for Israel.
Responding to the Chronicle story, some commentators made great play of the revelation that the Israeli assault was not a sudden reaction to perceived aggression, but a military action planned well in advance.
Much of that commentary was distorted.
For example, the Diplomatic Times Review asserted that the Chronicle's "analysis suggests that the attack on Hezbollah inside Lebanon was going to take place regardless of Hezbollah's action."
Guardian columnist George Monbiot, quoting the Chronicle story, concluded that "Israel's assault, then, was premeditated: it was simply waiting for an appropriate excuse. It was also unnecessary."
However necessary, or unnecessary, Israel's invasion of Lebanon was -- and the criticism of the war's execution has been unremitting inside Israel -- the Haaretz report shows that Olmert was not simply waiting for an "excuse," he was seeking to plan for a crisis which seemed likely to happen (and did) after the abduction of Israeli Cpl. Gilad Shalit (still being held) in a Palestinian raid across the border with Gaza.
"During deliberations last June, following Shalit's abduction, Olmert told the committee he was certain there would be a similar attempt to kidnap soldiers on the Lebanese border. He ordered the IDF to prevent this," according to Haaretz.
Posted By: Foreign and National Desk (Email) | March 08 2007 at 06:45 PM
Wednesday, 7 March 2007
Palestinians not happy with Obama
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
BLOG: THE ROSS REPORT
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
From Matthew Kalman, JerusalemSome Palestinians are feeling betrayed by Barack Obama. They say the man who at one time called for an "even-handed" approach to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. has done a policy U-turn now that he's running for president.
Speaking to a forum at the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee in Chicago on Friday (prepared text here), Obama called for "a clear and strong commitment to the security of Israel: our strongest ally in the region and its only established democracy."
He went futher, condemning "the smuggling of weapons and cash by Iran into Gaza" and vowing to continue "our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel" to "help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza."
Ali Abunimah, founder of The Electronic Intifada, criticized Obama's "about-face."
"Obama offered not a single word of criticism of Israel, of its relentless settlement and wall construction, of the closures that make life unlivable for millions of Palestinians," Abunimah wrote in an editorial.
"While constantly emphasizing his concern about the threat Israelis face from Palestinians, Obama said nothing about the exponentially more lethal threat Israelis present to Palestinians."
He said Obama used to be more supportive of the Palestinian cause and recalled hearing him at a Chicago fundraiser in 2000.
"On that occasion and others Obama was forthright in his criticism of US policy and his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."
But then began a "gradual shift" towards the pro-Israel camp.
"The last time I spoke to Obama was in the winter of 2004 at a gathering in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. He was in the midst of a primary campaign to secure the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat he now occupies. But at that time polls showed him trailing.
"As he came in from the cold and took off his coat, I went up to greet him. He responded warmly, and volunteered, 'Hey, I'm sorry I haven't said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I'm hoping when things calm down I can be more up front.'"
Mohammed Dajani, director of American Studies at Al Quds University in Jerusalem which Obama visited last year, has more confidence in Obama.
"His support for peace and a peaceful solution to the problem is much more valuable than his support for one side or another," Dajani todl me.
Walid Awad, a spokesman for President Abbas's Fatah party, said, in an interview, that Obama's pro-Israel statements were to be "expected really."
"Obama is a new face in America and he has to please everybody, most of all the Jewish lobby over there, so he cannot win without showing some inclination towards Israel," he said.
"Americans who want to be elected into office always are very keen on showing their support for Israel. The Jewish vote is important because the Jews supply the money and if he gets on wrong side of them he has no chance at all.
"It's like Mrs Clinton. Earlier she was pro-Palestinian and then she changed her attitudes. This is the format of the way things go in the United States.
"What matters to Obama most is to get the votes. If gets the votes by being pro-Israeli and pro-Jews he will do it. Hopefully once he gets the votes something will change."
------------
Matthew Kalman is a Chronicle Foreign Service correspondent, based in Jerusalem.
Posted By: Foreign and National Desk (Email) | March 07 2007 at 12:32 PM
Friday, 2 March 2007
Medical care for Palestinian children
U.S. group arranges local and overseas treatment
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLEFriday, March 2, 2007
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
Jebaliya Refugee Camp, Gaza -- Smiling and laughing, Oday el-Jamal was playing soccer in the garden when visitors came calling at the family home in the Jebaliya refugee camp north of Gaza City.
The handsome 7-year-old with unruly brown hair seemed not to have a care in the world -- until he removed his sneakers and rolled down his trousers to reveal a leg that ended in a fleshy stump just below his knee. The rest of his leg and the foot that moments before had been kicking a soccer ball across the yard was made from metal and plastic.
Oday's leg was blown off last September by shrapnel from an Israeli tank shell, which destroyed the house next door and sent jagged pieces of debris flying into his garden as he played there. His left foot was still intact, but only just, the bones twisted and deformed. His whole body was covered with angry pink craters, his young skin punctured by the deadly shards of metal.
This month, Oday will be in San Francisco, where doctors at UCSF Hospital will perform corrective surgery on his left foot and he will be fitted with a prosthetic right leg made just for him and taught how to use it.
"We thought he was dead," said his mother, Karima el-Jamal. "He was playing out in the garden and we heard an explosion, and next thing we knew the ambulance had rushed him off to Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. When we got there, he was in intensive care. The doctors said it was touch and go.
After a few days, the little boy was transferred to Soroka, an Israeli hospital in Beersheba, where he remained for two months before he was transferred to Alyn, a specialist Israeli orthopedic center in Jerusalem.
"The Israeli doctors did everything for him. They operated on the wounds in his abdomen and tried to save his leg, but they couldn't," she said.
He was fitted there with a temporary artificial leg, which is already broken. Although the Israelis agreed to treat Oday, because of the political tensions between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, he and his mother were unable to stay in Israel any longer. Back in Gaza, he cannot receive the care he needs to resume normal life.
His case came to the attention of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, which contacted Walter Racette, director of orthotics and prosthetics in the UCSF department of orthopedic surgery. Racette agreed to donate the services required so Oday can be fitted with a prosthesis and learn to use his new leg. His mother will stay with Oday during his recovery.
Oday is just one of hundreds of Palestinian children to benefit from the work of the Palestine Children's Relief Fund, a charity based in Ohio that every year sends dozens of young patients in need of surgery to the United States and Europe, and brings in teams of specialist doctors to treat urgent cases in the West Bank and Gaza.
Last year, the charity raised close to $40 million. According to director Steve Sosebee, it has provided medical services worth more than $400 million, none of which was normally available to Palestinians.
One recent afternoon in Ramallah General Hospital in the West Bank, Dr. Aijaz Hashmi, a pediatric heart surgeon from Loma Linda University Children's Hospital in San Bernardino County, was inserting a catheter into the heart of Randa Abu Shamsiyeh, a 12-year-old girl from Hebron who was born with a heart defect that dramatically reduces the amount of oxygen in her blood.
"This should have been treated 10 years ago, and cannot be done here because they don't have the necessary post-operative care," said Hashmi, who was ending a whirlwind week of clinics and operations.
It was Hashmi's first time in the West Bank. He came with a team of doctors and nurses from Loma Linda who saw more than 130 heart patients in clinics in Jenin, Ramallah and Bethlehem, and performed eight procedures.
"It's extremely rewarding, very gratifying," he said. "If we don't do this, who else is going to do it? We're blessed that we can take the time off."
This article appeared on page A - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle
Losing the truth in Jesus's "lost tomb"
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
THE ROSS REPORT BLOG
Posted March 02 2007 at 09:29 AM
From Matthew Kalman, Jerusalem
The story has been hyped, the questions raised, and the critics heard from. On Sunday night, when the James Cameron-produced "documentary" airs on American television, viewers get to form their own opinions.
Is a first-century tomb discovered 27 years ago at a Jerusalem construction site really the lost burial place of Jesus Christ? Could the astounding claim that Jesus is buried alongside Mary Magdalene and their hitherto unknown son, Judah, in a large family plot -- which also contained the remains of Jesus's mother Mary -- be true?
Back in 2003, I was asked by the documentary's director, Simcha Jacobovici, to locate many the inscribed burial boxes or ossuaries that are featured in the documentary. I was working as a researcher on Jacobovici's previous documentary about the supposed burial box of James, brother of Jesus.
The ossuaries were stored in the warehouse belonging to the Israel Antiquities Authority. Jacobovici asked for samples of the bone fragments inside the boxes so they could be tested for DNA. He said at the time he wanted to see if the DNA from the supposed Jesus family tomb matched the fragments in the James ossuary. But Jacobovici couldn't test the James fragments because they were long since lost. So that avenue of proof didn't exist.
Jesus's supposed tomb was discovered during construction work in 1980. It was explored and mapped by British archeologist Shimon Gibson. The ossuaries were removed and have been on display at local museums and the antiquities warehouse. The inscriptions with the names Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Judah were published more than 20 years ago. The ossuaries and the tomb were pronounced as the possible burial place of Jesus in a 1996 BBC documentary.
But the assertions not only fly in the face of Christian teaching, they are refuted by the Israeli archeologist, Amos Kloner, who wrote the official report on the tomb.
"The claim that [Jesus's] burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell," said Kloner. "With all due respect, [Cameron and Jacobovici] are not archeologists," he said.
Archeologists acknowledge that the artifacts they discover and study rarely provide concrete answers to the questions about the ancient world -- even less so about "the truth of the Bible," a quest that books like 'The Da Vinci Code' has made so fashionable.
The results are unproven, highly dubious claims, advanced by special effects, marketing campaigns and breathless media coverage of a the kind that accompany 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus.'
"You have to have a publicist, you have to have somebody that says, boy, this is something, let's put this out, right," Professor James Tabor, author of "The Jesus Dynasty," says in Cameron's film.
In the background there exists a multi-million-dollar market in antiquities -- especially in relics that "prove" the Bible. Such items are often stolen from ancient tombs and smuggled out to collectors. Alongside the illicit trade in genuine artifacts, there is an even bigger trade in high-priced forgeries.
The most notorious modern-day case is currently being heard in a Jerusalem courtroom, where an Israeli collector is accused of faking an inscription to create the stone ossuary of Jesus's brother James, which caused a sensation when it was revealed to the world in 2002.
Jacobovici's film about the James ossuary was also broadcast by the Discovery Channel. He even appeared as a defense witness in the Jerusalem trial. Jacobovici claims that the James box is not only genuine but also came from the "lost tomb."
"Absolute nonsense," says Kloner, who catalogued all the burial boxes in the tomb.
Equally questionable are dramatizations in 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' which viewers are led to believe consists of real footage of bulldozers crashing into caves, archeologists brushing dust from inscriptions and draughtsmen mapping out underground tunnels.
One of the opening sequences, for example, has the caption "Jerusalem, Israel 1980" over scenes filmed less than 18 months ago. Jacobovici himself is shown locating the supposed Jesus ossuary in the warehouse as if for the first time, even though I had led him to it more than three years ago.
The scenes are fakes -- just like the fake artifacts sold to gullible tourists.
-------
Matthew Kalman is a Chronicle Foreign Service correspondent, based in Jerusalem.
THE ROSS REPORT BLOG
Posted March 02 2007 at 09:29 AM
From Matthew Kalman, Jerusalem
The story has been hyped, the questions raised, and the critics heard from. On Sunday night, when the James Cameron-produced "documentary" airs on American television, viewers get to form their own opinions.
Is a first-century tomb discovered 27 years ago at a Jerusalem construction site really the lost burial place of Jesus Christ? Could the astounding claim that Jesus is buried alongside Mary Magdalene and their hitherto unknown son, Judah, in a large family plot -- which also contained the remains of Jesus's mother Mary -- be true?
Back in 2003, I was asked by the documentary's director, Simcha Jacobovici, to locate many the inscribed burial boxes or ossuaries that are featured in the documentary. I was working as a researcher on Jacobovici's previous documentary about the supposed burial box of James, brother of Jesus.
The ossuaries were stored in the warehouse belonging to the Israel Antiquities Authority. Jacobovici asked for samples of the bone fragments inside the boxes so they could be tested for DNA. He said at the time he wanted to see if the DNA from the supposed Jesus family tomb matched the fragments in the James ossuary. But Jacobovici couldn't test the James fragments because they were long since lost. So that avenue of proof didn't exist.
Jesus's supposed tomb was discovered during construction work in 1980. It was explored and mapped by British archeologist Shimon Gibson. The ossuaries were removed and have been on display at local museums and the antiquities warehouse. The inscriptions with the names Jesus, Mary, Joseph and Judah were published more than 20 years ago. The ossuaries and the tomb were pronounced as the possible burial place of Jesus in a 1996 BBC documentary.
But the assertions not only fly in the face of Christian teaching, they are refuted by the Israeli archeologist, Amos Kloner, who wrote the official report on the tomb.
"The claim that [Jesus's] burial site has been found is not based on any proof, and is only an attempt to sell," said Kloner. "With all due respect, [Cameron and Jacobovici] are not archeologists," he said.
Archeologists acknowledge that the artifacts they discover and study rarely provide concrete answers to the questions about the ancient world -- even less so about "the truth of the Bible," a quest that books like 'The Da Vinci Code' has made so fashionable.
The results are unproven, highly dubious claims, advanced by special effects, marketing campaigns and breathless media coverage of a the kind that accompany 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus.'
"You have to have a publicist, you have to have somebody that says, boy, this is something, let's put this out, right," Professor James Tabor, author of "The Jesus Dynasty," says in Cameron's film.
In the background there exists a multi-million-dollar market in antiquities -- especially in relics that "prove" the Bible. Such items are often stolen from ancient tombs and smuggled out to collectors. Alongside the illicit trade in genuine artifacts, there is an even bigger trade in high-priced forgeries.
The most notorious modern-day case is currently being heard in a Jerusalem courtroom, where an Israeli collector is accused of faking an inscription to create the stone ossuary of Jesus's brother James, which caused a sensation when it was revealed to the world in 2002.
Jacobovici's film about the James ossuary was also broadcast by the Discovery Channel. He even appeared as a defense witness in the Jerusalem trial. Jacobovici claims that the James box is not only genuine but also came from the "lost tomb."
"Absolute nonsense," says Kloner, who catalogued all the burial boxes in the tomb.
Equally questionable are dramatizations in 'The Lost Tomb of Jesus' which viewers are led to believe consists of real footage of bulldozers crashing into caves, archeologists brushing dust from inscriptions and draughtsmen mapping out underground tunnels.
One of the opening sequences, for example, has the caption "Jerusalem, Israel 1980" over scenes filmed less than 18 months ago. Jacobovici himself is shown locating the supposed Jesus ossuary in the warehouse as if for the first time, even though I had led him to it more than three years ago.
The scenes are fakes -- just like the fake artifacts sold to gullible tourists.
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Matthew Kalman is a Chronicle Foreign Service correspondent, based in Jerusalem.
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