Palestinian Students in Gaza Ask Egypt to Allow Entrance to Universities

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
NEWS TICKER
October 05, 2009, 09:27 AM ET

Palestinian students in Gaza have appealed to Egypt to open the Rafah border crossing so they can begin studying at Egyptian universities. Dozens of students with valid Egyptian residence permits who are enrolled in college in Egypt told the Ma'an news agency their classes had already begun but they were unable to reach them because of border restrictions that limit the number of Palestinians entering Egypt to a few hundred each day, even when the crossing is open.

Israeli University in West Bank Is Disqualified From Architecture Competition

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
NEWS TICKER
September 22, 2009, 08:39 AM ET

An Israeli college that reached the finals of a Spanish environmental-architecture competition has been disqualified because it is situated in an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank. The college, the Ariel University Center of Samaria, was among 20 university architecture departments from around the world selected for the finals of the Solar Decathlon, sponsored by Spain's Housing Ministry, after a two-year competition. The college, which has 10,000 students, including many Arabs, had been awarded a 100,000-euro grant by the competition's organizers to build a model house for the finals, slated for Madrid in June 2010. But Ariel's involvement was terminated after a campaign led by Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine, a pro-Palestinian group.

An Israeli Professor Tests the Limits of Academic Freedom

Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev

Neve Gordon's call for a worldwide boycott of Israel as "an apartheid state" has raised a fierce debate about academic freedom far beyond the confines of his campus at Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev.

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
September 13, 2009

By Matthew Kalman
JERUSALEM

A bitter and very public debate in Israel has raised difficult questions about how far an academic can go in criticizing his own institution while continuing to work there.

Last month Neve Gordon, chairman of the department of politics and government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, branded Israel an "apartheid state" in an op-ed essay in the Los Angeles Times. He called for an "international boycott" of his country, including his own university.

The university's president, Rivka Carmi, quickly shot back an angry response. In the same newspaper and in a letter to faculty members, she noted that Mr. Gordon, a tenured professor, could not be "readily dismissed." But, she said, he had "forfeited his ability to work effectively within the academic setting."

Both Mr. Gordon's attack on Israel and Ms. Carmi's attack on one of her faculty members have inspired impassioned debates in Israel and beyond.

The Israeli Social Science Network, an online forum that usually carries notices of conferences and opportunities for financial support, was transformed into a heated intellectual battleground as Israeli academics debated the implications for academic freedom in the country. Nearly 200 tenured faculty members in Israel signed a petition supporting Mr. Gordon's right to freedom of expression.

Chilling Factor?

The professor's future at Ben-Gurion seems assured by the legal protection he enjoys through tenure, but many of his colleagues say they find his position untenable. Many others support and admire him, while still others disagree vehemently with his opinions but defend his right to express them. Nagging questions persist about whether the controversy will dissuade junior faculty members and students from freely expressing their opinions.

"I was not surprised by the fact that the president of the university and people in Israel disagreed with me and even disagreed with me vehemently," Mr. Gordon said in an interview with The Chronicle. "I think it's part of some of the people's job, and I think that's what they were supposed to do."

But he said that suggestions he should leave Israel or be sacked "went just overboard."

Ms. Carmi said she had spent years defending the right of her rebellious political-science professor to express his radical views about Israeli policy, but that this time he had gone too far.

"If I had lived in South Africa when it was an apartheid country, I would have left," she told The Chronicle. "I wouldn't be able to live in a country that I believed was an apartheid state."

"I don't understand how he can carry on doing his job in an institution that he is damaging by his very public comments. I don't understand how he can condemn the university and continue to take the salary that it pays," Ms. Carmi said.

"There is an inherent contradiction between calling for academic boycotts and fulfilling the responsibilities of leading an academic department in research collaboration, publications, and international conferences," she said.

Ms. Carmi said Mr. Gordon's opinion essay had branded Ben-Gurion as a radical, left-wing university and was endangering potential donations, crucial for future development. Several major donors have written to say they will no longer support the university unless action is taken against him, she said.

Mr. Gordon said he accepted that there was "tension" between his support for a boycott and his duties as department chairman, and he said he had considered stepping down. But he called Ms. Carmi's comments "a form of harassment and intimidation."

"My stepping down as department chair would have caused so much damage to academic freedom in Israel that we could not do it," he said. "If someone has to lose his position as department chair because of his opinion, however controversial, it creates a precedent."

'A Disservice' to Peace

Alon Tal, a veteran peace activist and associate professor of desert ecology at the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research at the university, said Mr. Gordon had done "a disservice" to the peace camp and undermined the work toward Israeli-Palestinian coexistence at which the university excels.

"The country is in a state of war—let's not lose that context," Mr. Tal told The Chronicle. "People forget that. And you go to our enemies and you give them comfort and you strengthen their activities, and most of all you take actions that you know will damage your own university that supports you. That I find unacceptable."

He said Mr. Gordon should resign as department head and apologize. "When you take on a position as a head of department, you represent an institution. You don't represent just yourself," Mr. Tal said.

Uri Ram, head of Ben-Gurion's sociology department, agreed but drew different conclusions.

"There is a tension between a call to boycott Israeli universities and working in them and promoting them," he said. "Yet it should be left to Dr. Gordon to decide whether he can perform properly as department chair with this contradiction or not. He should not be sanctioned with discharge because he expressed an opinion. He is entitled unequivocally to freedom of expression."

Mr. Ram said he would resign as department head if Mr. Gordon was forced to step down, and he urged his colleagues to do the same.

'The Stakes Are Quite High'

The online petition in support of Mr. Gordon's academic freedom was started by Alon Harel, a law professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He said he "vehemently" disagreed with Mr. Gordon's opinions but warned that it would be "death for Ben-Gurion University" if Mr. Gordon were not allowed to express them.

"The stakes are quite high. The stakes are the future of Israeli academia," he said. "It would be a great loss to Israeli universities if people completing their Ph.D.'s and looking for a job believe they cannot teach at Ben-Gurion because their positions are ones that the president of the university does not tolerate."

Cary Nelson, president of the American Association of University Professors, said he was disturbed by Ms. Carmi's attitude but encouraged by the debate it had aroused.

"The kind of statements that Rivka Carmi has made have an immense chilling effect on untenured faculty from exercising the same freedom of speech," he said. "If Neve Gordon had been untenured and had written this op-ed and then came up for tenure, a president who says this oversteps the boundaries of academic freedom would seem implicitly willing to fire him."

"One of the greatest challenges for any nation-state is to protect the free-speech rights of its citizens and its faculty members during times of war," Mr. Nelson continued. "My own country has repeatedly failed that challenge. Israel is hardly alone in finding it difficult to meet the challenge of sustaining freedoms in wartime. The rest of the countries in the Middle East wouldn't even consider such a thing. In Syria they already would have shot him. In Iran they'd just beat him to death in a jail."

"I do think it is valid in thinking about the status of these freedoms in Israel," Mr. Nelson said, "to recognize that Israel is practically the only country in the Middle East where you could even have this debate."

Antiquities Authority chief: Top scholars were suspected of ties to forgery group

THE JERUSALEM POST
Sep. 8, 2009

MATTHEW KALMAN

A world-famous French scholar who authenticated one of the Israel Museum's prize exhibits and Israel's leading analyst of ancient semitic inscriptions were once suspected of being part of an "international forgery industry," it was revealed on Tuesday.

Shuka Dorfman, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said that both Prof. Andre Lemaire of the Sorbonne and Ada Yardeni, Israel's leading epigrapher, had been under suspicion as the Authority prepared its case against those accused of faking dozens of priceless archeological items, including a burial box possibly connected to Jesus.

Dorfman divulged this information as part of the testimony he was giving at the Jerusalem District Court in the long-running trial of two men accused of dealing in fake antiquities.

The trial, which began in 2005, followed an indictment that Dorfman described at the time as "the tip of the iceberg" of an international forgery network.

Oded Golan, a Tel Aviv collector, is charged with forging the inscription on a 60 cm.-long limestone burial box, or ossuary, that reads "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus."

The ossuary was exhibited in Toronto in 2002 and hailed by scholars as the first physical link ever discovered to the family of Jesus. But when it was returned to Israel, an Antiquities Authority committee of experts determined it was fake.

Golan is also accused of forging an inscribed stone tablet supposedly from the First Temple, and dozens of other ancient items.

Robert Deutsch, a prominent antiquities dealer based in Jaffa, was also charged with forgery, but the prosecution has been forced to retract many of the original charges after they were challenged in court.

Many of the world's top archeological experts have testified as both prosecution and defense witnesses in proceedings that already run to more than 9,000 pages.

Judge Aharon Farkash has wondered aloud in court how he could determine the authenticity of the items if the professors could not agree among themselves.

Deutsch called Dorfman to give evidence as a defense witness after the prosecution refused to put him or his deputy, Uzi Dahari, on the stand.

Dorfman said the anti-theft unit of the Antiquities Authority believed the items were forged by an international group of experts and dealers that included the two defendants.

He said the suspects at one time included Prof. Lemaire, a paleographer at the Sorbonne in Paris.

Lemaire was the first scholar to study an ivory pomegranate believed to have been used in the First Temple. The thumb-sized pomegranate is inscribed in ancient Hebrew: "Sacred donation for the priests in the House of God."

It was purchased nearly 20 years ago by a private philanthropist for $550,000 and donated to the Israel Museum after its authenticity was verified by experts.

Lemaire said he discovered the item in 1979 when an antiquities dealer in the Old City of Jerusalem showed him the tiny ornament over a cup of tea.

Lemaire photographed it and published his findings two years later in the respected Revue Biblique journal. In 1984, he published his findings in English, triggering worldwide interest.

In 2002, Lemaire published the first study of the James ossuary in the Biblical Archeology Review after seeing the burial box at the home of Oded Golan.

The pomegranate was later inspected and the inscription on it found to be suspect by a separate Antiquities Authority inquiry. Dorfman told the court they decided not to bring criminal charges against eight suspects identified in that case.

Lemaire was questioned by Antiquities Authority inspectors during a two-year investigation, but apparently was never told that he was under suspicion.

Under questioning by Deutsch's attorney, Hagai Sitton, Dorfman was challenged to justify the sweeping statements he made at a press conference in December 2005, the day the defendants were charged.

"We know there are antiquity forgeries - it's not a new thing. But the extent and the drama in attempting to fake history didn't allow us as a government body not to become involved," Dorfman told the press conference.

"I believe we have revealed only the tip of the iceberg. This industry encircles the world, involves millions of dollars," he said.

"I said there was an industry involved in making all these fakes," Dorfman told the court on Tuesday. "In my view, it looked like an entire industry, not a single forger."

Dorfman said he took responsibility for the prosecution, which has run into difficulties as the trial has wound on, but Dorfman himself cast doubt on the reliability of much of the testimony of the prosecution's star witness, billionaire antiquities collector Shlomo Moussaieff. According to the indictment, Moussaieff was duped into paying huge sums for several of the allegedly fake items, but his version of events has been repeatedly questioned.

Asked to comment on one story told by Moussaieff, Dorfman responded, "He is not telling the truth, plain and simple."

In another setback for the prosecution, Judge Farkash agreed to recall an expert on isotopes from the Geological Survey of Israel to explain apparent contradictions between testimony given to the court and research submitted to a scientific journal three weeks earlier.

The Burial Box of Jesus' Brother: A Case Against Fraud

By Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem
Saturday, Sep. 05, 2009


The world of biblical archaeology was stirred in 2002 by the unveiling of a limestone burial box with the Aramaic inscription Yaakov bar Yosef akhui di Yeshua ("James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus"). Allegedly dating to an era contemporaneous with Christ, the names were a tantalizing collation of potentially great significance: James was indeed the name of a New Testament personage known as the brother of Jesus, both ostensibly the sons of Joseph the carpenter, husband of Mary. If its dates were genuine, the burial box — or ossuary — could well be circumstantial evidence for the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, a tenet supported only by gospels and scripture written, at the earliest, a generation after his crucifixion and, of course, by the faith of hundreds of millions through 2,000 years.

Experts, however, declared the ossuary a modern-day forgery. It was seized by Israeli police and its owner, Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan, was arrested and charged with counterfeiting the ossuary and dozens of other items. Golan and co-defendant Robert Deutsch were put on trial in the Jerusalem District Court in 2005. Deutsch is accused of forging other valuables, though not the ossuary. Both men deny all charges. (Read a review of a book on fraudulent biblical relics and the ossuary of James.)

Their trial is still continuing. Many of the world's top archaeological experts have testified as both prosecution and defense witnesses in proceedings that already run to more than 9,000 pages. And while the original charges against the ossuary appear to have been popularly accepted as conventional wisdom, they seem to be headed for trouble in the courtroom. Judge Aharon Farkash, who has a degree in archaeology, has wondered aloud in court how he can determine the authenticity of the items if the professors cannot agree among themselves. (Read a story from TIME's archive on the ossuary of James.)

The director of the Israel Antiquities Authority will soon take the witness stand for the first time since he declared, in December 2004, that the ossuary and other items seized in a two-year investigation were the "tip of the iceberg" of an international conspiracy that placed countless fakes in collections and museums around the world. He promised more arrests. But no other fake items have been seized, no-one else has been arrested, and Judge Farkash has hinted strongly that the prosecution case is foundering.

Next week, defense attorneys will present evidence suggesting that scientists testifying for the prosecution have disproved their own findings against the ossuary. The scientific evidence against Golan is largely based on measurements of the oxygen isotopic composition (in technical terms, d18O — Delta 18 Oxygen) of the thin crust — or patina — covering the ossuary inscription.

Scientists are unsure exactly how the patina is formed but most agree it is composed of deposits of solid calcium carbonate that come by way of rain or groundwater. It can contain particles added by wind and perhaps biological. Additionally, depending on the levels of acidity, it may also involve a chemical reaction with the surface of the object. Some scientists say the process is similar to the way stalagmites grow in caves; others disagree.

Testifying for the prosecution, Miryam Bar-Matthews and Avner Ayalon from the Geological Survey of Israel recorded isotopic values as low as -10.2 permil (parts per thousand) in patina found within the inscription on the ossuary. (It is believed that the lower the number permil, the wetter the season was when it was created.) "The patina could not have been created in the Judean Hills or the surrounding area in a natural way," Bar-Matthews told the court in October 2007. With the exception of one letter in the word Yeshua ("Jesus"), she said, "the patina in the other letters is not natural."

Bar-Matthews and Ayalon based on their research on stalagmites in a cave near Jerusalem, where isotopic data showed rainfall and surface temperatures over many centuries, they concluded that the climate in the past 2,000 years could not have produced the patina on the ossuary. As they wrote with Professor Yuval Goren — another prosecution witness and professor of archaeology at Tel Aviv University — in the Journal of Archeological Science in 2004, "the patina covering the letters was artificially prepared, most probably with hot water, and deposited onto the underlying letters." The article states: "There is no evidence for the existence of water with such low d18O values in the area during this time span. The range of rain and groundwater d18O values in the Judean Mountains region during the last 3,000 years could not have been lower than approx -6 permil." Pressed by defense counsel, Bar-Matthews declared that an isotopic value lower than -6.5 permil for the ossuary was "impossible."

However, a subsequent paper by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon with their American colleagues Ian Orland and John Valley studied samples from a stalagmite that apparently grew from about 200 B.C. to 1100 A.D. And that showed isotopes as low as -8.5 permil, with annual rainfall in the Roman era reaching double the amounts the scientists had previously calculated. The article, published in the 2009 issue of Quaternary Research, was submitted for publication on October 11, 2007, before Bar-Matthews and Ayalon gave evidence at the ossuary trial.

The defense expects to use these esoteric contradictions against the prosecution when the trial resumes on Sunday. Defense expert Prof Joel Kronfeld of the Department of Geophysics at Tel Aviv University says the new data shatters the prosecution case. "I think this is amazing — it blows my mind," Kronfeld told TIME. "The findings in this study stand in complete contradiction to the assumptions presented by Ayalon and Bar-Matthews, and shed new light on the theory they presented to the court. They not only undercut their own arguments for determining that the patina on several items was not natural but rather quite the opposite. These data can support the authenticity of the items."

Bar-Matthews, however, argues the data from her later study are "irrelevant" to the ossuary trial. She and her colleagues say that the very low values representing wet seasons were "noise" that should not be taken in isolation since patina takes many years to form. Patina's isotopic value would represent an average figure, not just the low winter results. "It's like comparing tomatoes and gloves," Bar-Matthews told TIME. "There is no scenario where we can get light isotopic values below -6 permil also in Jerusalem under natural conditions."

The defense is likely to point out that the tests on the ossuary carried out by Bar-Matthews and Ayalon also found traces of patina in at least two other letters of the inscription with isotopes of -4.65 and -5.82 permil — well within the original range they suggested. Bar-Matthews and Ayalon discounted these results, saying the results had been corrupted either from the limestone of the box or from a nearby crack that had been recently repaired.

The trouble with this kind evidence is, of course, that the formation of patina isn't yet explainable in science everyone can agree on. The patina on one letter could be the result of one particularly wet winter that happened to leave its evidence on the ossuary — but perhaps not in a stalagmite in a cave. Or vice versa. "The analogy between the formation of cave deposits and the formation of patina on archeological objects is imprecise and more work is needed," says Professor Aldo Shemesh, an isotope expert at the Weizmann Institute who was also called as a defense expert. In the end, it is a numbers game — figuring on averages of statistics over which all the experts disagree. Says Shemesh: "Scientific debates should be discussed and resolved in peer-reviewed literature and scientific conferences, not in court." But a judge in Jerusalem has to decide on the "facts" as he sees them, for Jesus' sake.

Israel Bars Some Foreign Academics Who Teach in the West Bank

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
September 3, 2009

By Matthew Kalman
Ramallah, West Bank

Israel has clamped down on the movement of foreign academics teaching at Palestinian universities in the West Bank, barring some from entering the region altogether or stamping "Palestinian Authority only" in the passports of others, preventing them from entering Israel.

An English-language instructor from Ireland who taught for several years at the Arab American University, in Jenin, was refused entry on August 23 when she returned to the West Bank to take up a new position at Bethlehem University and is now unable to teach. A Canadian instructor of Iranian descent was given the "Palestinian Authority only" stamp when he arrived on Sunday to teach at the Arab American University's English Language Center. A British lecturer in Middle East politics had to cancel a planned lecture at Birzeit University this year after she was denied entry by Israeli immigration officials.

The Irish instructor, who asked not to be named, said she had been teaching English at the Arab American University since 2007. Although the Israeli authorities refused to issue her a work permit, in the past they had always accepted her employment contract and extended her tourist visa to the contract's end date.

She left the West Bank for Jordan on August 20 and returned via the Allenby Bridge, which connects the West Bank with Jordan, on August 23, with 11 days left on her visa.

"I was due to take up a new position at Bethlehem University on August 24. I had a letter from the university on official paper, but it was all very different this time," she told The Chronicle from Jordan, where she was stranded. "I was kept waiting for four hours and then the immigration officer started screaming at me about a lack of work permit."

After lengthy interrogation by a plainclothes security officer and an Israeli Ministry of the Interior official, she was photographed, fingerprinted, and told her request to enter was denied.

"It is greatly to be regretted, she was a valued employee," said Graham Stott, chair of the department of modern languages at the Arab American University.

Mr. Stott said several lecturers who were allowed in were issued visas restricting them to the Palestinian Authority areas only.

"For some the restrictive visa is not problematic because they are here to work in Jenin, and they are quite happy to leave via Jordan and so it doesn't really affect them. For others who had planned to visit Israel it seriously compromises their position and their ability to do research," Mr. Stott said.

Information for travelers posted on the Web site of the U.S. Consulate General in Jerusalem confirms the recent change in policy.

"Anyone indicating that they either have connections to the West Bank or are planning to travel to the West Bank, may get this stamp," which does not permit them to enter into or return to Israel. "The Consulate can do nothing to assist in getting this visa status changed," the Web site states. It is not clear when or why the new visas were introduced. The Israeli Defense Ministry directed all inquiries to the coordinator of Israeli government activities in the territories. A spokesman for the coordinator directed inquiries to the country's Interior Ministry, where a spokesperson did not return calls seeking comment.

The new visa being stamped in tourists' passports has been criticized for unfairly limiting the movements of visitors with Palestinian relatives or friends, whose first stop may be the West Bank but who intend to visit Israel as well. Many Americans of Palestinian origin but who lack Palestinian passports have been turned back on arrival at Ben Gurion Airport and told they can enter only from Jordan via the Allenby Bridge.

Hanadi Abu-Taha, administrative assistant at the Arabic-language-teaching program at Birzeit University, told The Chronicle that two American students and one Japanese student were turned back at the Jordanian-Israeli border at the end of August.

"None of them is from a Palestinian background. Students who came through Ben Gurion Airport managed to enter, but those who came through the land crossing from Jordan were refused. We don't know why," Miss Taha said.

"Because of the visa problems we have shortened the semester from four to three months, which is the length of the Israeli tourist visa. It is causing major disruption," she said.

Toufic Haddad, a Palestinian-American activist who revealed the new policy on his blog in early August said the new visa was a violation of the 1995 Israeli-Palestinian Agreement (known as the Oslo II Accords), which allows for most foreign tourists to pass from the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Israel.

"Most visiting faculty have been granted a one-year single-entry visa if they are associated with an educational institution, but some haven't," said Salwa Duaibis, coordinator of the Right to Enter Campaign, a group advocating unfettered access to the Palestinian Authority areas. "I have a feeling there isn't much effort put into making sure the regulations are understood by the police at the border."

Ms. Duaibis said that foreign students enter on tourist visas and can be forced to leave after three months. "Universities cannot plan their academic year properly and neither students nor professors can rely on the arrangement 100 percent," she said.

Olmert's Indictment: Secular Justice or a Sign from God?

By Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem
Monday, Aug. 31, 2009

On the eve of the 2001 Israeli general election that would sweep Ariel Sharon to power, Ehud Olmert, then the mayor of Jerusalem and Sharon's right-hand man, explained why the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak had been brought down. Olmert pointed out that, at the Camp David peace talks, Barak had offered the Palestinians almost all the West Bank and half of Jerusalem. Olmert declared, "This shows that anyone who dares to raise his hand against Jerusalem will be wiped out."

Now Olmert himself has been "wiped out." Months after offering the Palestinians a deal similar to Barak's, he was forced to resign last year as Israel's prime minister over a string of corruption allegations. On Sunday he became the only Israeli prime minister ever indicted on criminal charges, part of a scandal that will prevent him from returning to power anytime soon.

The 60-page indictment charges Olmert with multiple counts of fraud, breach of faith and deception. Prosecutors say Olmert double-billed for trips abroad on behalf of various charities and public bodies, including the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash payments from Long Island financier Morris Talansky. Olmert vigorously denies the charges and says he will fight to clear his name.

Many religious Israelis believe that Olmert's woes are a divine punishment for reneging on his promise never to divide Jerusalem. According to one poll, more than a quarter of all Israelis and a majority of the religious, believe that Ariel Sharon's massive stroke in January 2006 was a punishment for ordering Israel's withdrawal from Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005 and considering a Palestinian state. "No question about it," Rabbi Shalom Dov Wolpe, a leader of the Chabad Hasidic movement in Israel told TIME. "He fought against the people of Israel, against the land of Israel, against the Torah of Israel, against God." Olmert, says Wolpe, "is getting his punishment."

But there may be a more earthly kind of justice at work. Olmert is the fourth senior Israeli politician to face criminal charges in the past year. Former president Moshe Katsav is on trial for rape (he has denied the charge); Olmert's former finance minister Avraham Hirschson was sentenced to five years for theft and money laundering; and former health minister Shlomo Benizri of the Shas Party is about to start a prison sentence for bribery. "It reflects the growing toughness of the enforcement agencies, their ability and their will to confront the highest ranks of politics in order to root out corrupt people," says Professor Moshe Maor of the Hebrew University.

Secular justice, nevertheless, can still have apocalyptic repercussions — in this case for Olmert's party. Kadima leaders were torn between their loyalty to Olmert, who founded the party with Sharon in 2005, and their desire not to be tainted by the criminal prosecution. "On this difficult day, we must not forget Olmert's rich contributions," said Kadima legislator Yoel Hasson. But Kadima's right wing could take advantage of the crisis to split the party and cross over to the Likud, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been trying to woo them for months. Such a move would bolster Netanyahu's shaky coalition that depends for its survival on small, right-wing parties that champion unlimited Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

"There's a whole shift in the political spectrum. We could be, if Netanyahu handles this correctly, on the verge of a new political dynamic," says political commentator Moshe Dann. "Kadima are fighting among themselves. If Netanyahu can convince members of Kadima that it is in their and the national interest to join his government, he will ensure his survival, eliminate Kadima as a serious rival, and establish himself as Israel's most important political leader."

It was Olmert's resignation and the subsequent ouster of his center-right Kadima party from government earlier this year that resurrected Netanyahu's career. Now his coalition's opposition to territorial concessions in the West Bank has put it on a collision course with the Palestinians and the Obama administration. Some Israelis continue to see the hand of God in all this. Settler leaders said they hoped that Netanyahu, whom they forced from power in 1999 for making concessions to the Palestinians at the Wye River peace summit, would take note. Says David Ha-Ivri, spokesman for the Samaria Regional Council, a settler organization: "We always hope that the fear of God will protect public officials from making bad moves. In our belief and understanding, eroding away our rights on the land of Israel is a bad move. I hope that this reflects on Netanyahu and strengthens him in the position of holding on to the land of Israel."

East Jerusalem Arabs feel squeeze as Jews push into communities

Burgeoning development of apartments harming urban relations, critics say

TORONTO STAR, Aug 28, 2009

Matthew Kalman
SPECIAL TO THE STAR

JERUSALEM – Ahmed Abedat was wondering this week how much longer he will be able to enjoy the spectacular view from his grocery shop in Ras Al-Amud – from the ancient Mount of Olives cemetery across the valley to the majestic golden Dome of the Rock soaring above the walls of Jerusalem's Old City.

Abedat's father opened the store a half-century ago under Jordanian rule, when Ras Al-Amud was the first bend out of Jerusalem on the ancient road to Jericho. The shop continued to thrive after the 1967 Six Day War, when the Israelis captured East Jerusalem and the West Bank, despite an Israeli security checkpoint 100 metres down the road outside the regional headquarters of the Israeli police.

Today the checkpoint has gone, replaced by Israel's nine-metre high concrete security barrier that severs the road to Jericho and cuts off East Jerusalem from nearby villages. The police station is empty, slated as the site of new houses for 104 Jewish families.

Abedat, 60, never thought he would miss the police and the checkpoint, but as he counted his meagre $5 in takings one morning this week he doubted aloud whether his little store will be able to continue. He doesn't expect any business from his new neighbours.

"They don't talk to us. They never come to my shop to buy anything. We hardly see them," Abedat told the Star. "They want the Arabs to leave Jerusalem. They want it for themselves."

"They" are the Israeli residents of Ma'aleh HaZeitim, a half-finished compound behind Abedat's grocery. With the police station site, Ras Al-Amud will soon be home to 1,000 Israelis, the largest concentration of Jews in any Arab-populated neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. Israeli groups that encourage such migration say they are merely returning to the Jewish heartland of Jerusalem. Palestinians describe them as settlers.

"There's no reason in the world why the Jewish people can't live here and other places like it," said Daniel Luria, executive director of Ateret Cohanim, an educational organization that builds yeshivas and student housing. "This is the heart of Jerusalem, the homeland of the Jewish people and the pumping-station of the Jewish world."

The site is owned by Irving Moskowitz, a Miami casino billionaire who has spent millions of dollars buying up properties in East Jerusalem for right-wing religious groups. Moskowitz's money has helped move 50 Jewish families into the Palestinian village of Silwan, site of the ancient city of King David, as well as purchase houses in the Muslim and Christian Quarters of the Old City.

Last month, the United States demanded that Israel halt plans for 20 apartments in another Moskowitz property in Sheikh Jarrah, north of the Old City. Approval for another 200 units nearby is pending. The issue sparked a collision between the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration.

U.S. special envoy George Mitchell is trying to get Israel to freeze its construction of Jewish settlements, a Palestinian condition for resuming peace talks. He has also asked Arab states to offer gestures toward normalization of ties with Israel. A Israeli delegation will meet the U.S. envoy again next week.

Palestinian mapping expert Khalil Tafakgi said the police station project was part of a plan to keep East Jerusalem under Israeli control.

"The aim of this outpost inside the Palestinian built-up area is so as to not divide Jerusalem another time. It means that Jerusalem, east and west, will be under Israel's control and East Jerusalem will not be capital of the Palestinian state. This is the aim," said Tafakgi.

Ateret Cohanim argues that the property deals are legal.

Its opponents say that moving ultra-nationalist Jews into the heart of Arab neighbourhoods is causing irreparable damage to urban relations.

"The whole issue of settlement in East Jerusalem, which all countries except Israel recognize as occupied territory, is part of what is contributing to tension in the city rather than the good faith that could lead to a negotiated peace," said Sarah Kramer, associate director of Ir Amim, a group working for Israeli-Palestinian coexistence.

The West Bank's English Settler

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Shira Gilad is spending her honeymoon on Ramat Migron - an illegal outpost on the West Bank

Israel's Visa Rule: If You Visit Palestine, Stay There

By Matthew Kalman / Ramallah
Saturday, Aug. 22, 2009

When Canadian businessman Sam Ismail brought his wife and five children to visit his brother's family in Ramallah last week, he planned to stay for 10 days and tour both Israel and the Palestinian territories. They had flown into Amman, crossed over to the West Bank. Knowing that Palestinian Authority license plates are banned in Israel, Ismail reserved a car at an Israeli rental company. But, when he got to Israeli border control, he was shocked to discover that his Canadian passport was stamped "Palestinian Authority Only." "Last time they came, they visited Acre, Haifa, Jerusalem — the whole country," Ismail's brother Nedal, who lives in the West Bank, told TIME. "This time they packed up after 96 hours and spent the extra week in Jordan instead."

Ismail had fallen afoul of an Israeli border policy, quietly begun in June, that bars foreigners who say they are visiting the Palestinian Authority from entering Israel. Israel says the visa helps to exclude visitors who threaten security. According to Israeli Interior Ministry spokeswoman Sabine Haddad, the procedure is based on an unpublished 2006 decision by the Israeli interior and defense ministers that "any foreign national who wants to enter the Palestinian Authority must have a permit issued by the army, and entry is permitted only into PA territory."

Palestinians say it violates international law and the promise of unhindered movement for foreign travelers under the 1995 Oslo II Accords. "Israel wishes to strictly regulate travel of visitors who come to the country, especially those curious to see the West Bank," says Toufic Haddad, a Palestinian-American activist. (Read about Ezra Nawi, the Israeli activist jailed for aiding Arabs.)

The policy has affected U.S. citizens. This week, Betty Najjab, an American from Centreville, Virginia and the widow of a Palestinian, was given one of the new visa stamps after visiting in-laws in Jordan. She told TIME she didn’t know if she would be able to fly home: the return leg of her ticket departs from Israel’s Ben-Gurion airport. "We have made it quite known to the Israeli Government... that we expect all American citizens to be treated the same regardless of their national origin," U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told reporters this week. "These kinds of restrictions we consider unacceptable."

"It is being applied in an arbitrary manner," Salwa Duaibis, Coordinator for the Right to Enter Campaign in Ramallah, told TIME. "It depends on the discretion of the person sitting at the border. If you want to go and visit family in Jerusalem and you get this visa, then your whole plans are thrown out of the window."

The new policy is alienating businessmen like Khaled Sabawi of London, Ontario whose family has for years fostered investment in Palestine and whose father Mohamed was on the board of the Peres Peace Center. Sabawi runs the Ramallah-based MENA Geothermal, one of the first green energy companies in the Middle East. He has spent nearly three years traveling between Canada and Ramallah on three-month Israeli tourist visas. Last January, Sabawi was suddenly turned back at the border crossing from Jordan. Subsequently, he was denied entry twice. Since June, his visa has restricted him to Palestinian territory. Says Sabawi: "I find myself being racially profiled, interrogated by security officials and forced to wait for up to eight hours at the border."

"I can't meet with Israelis any more and lots of our equipment comes from Israeli manufacturers. I can't buy from them if I can't meet them to negotiate," Sabawi told TIME. "We will withdraw our investments if we can't be here to oversee our businesses. It will simply be too risky for us to invest in Palestine."

Huckabee's First 2012 Campaign Stop: Israel

By Matthew Kalman / Har Bracha
Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2009

Har Bracha — the Mount of Blessing — is a windswept hilltop settlement of Jews overlooking the Palestinian city of Nablus. According to biblical tradition, it is where Joshua and the children of Israel first entered the Holy Land. And, on Aug. 18, Mike Huckabee — a Baptist preacher, two-time governor of Arkansas and once and perhaps future Republican presidential candidate — received a heartfelt blessing from the local Orthodox Jewish minister. Rabbi Eliezer Melamed prayed that Huckabee would become President so that he could emulate the ancient Persian king Cyrus the Great, who encouraged the Jews to rebuild Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. Said the rabbi: "We hope that under Mike Huckabee's presidency, he will be like Cyrus and push us to rebuild the temple and bring the final redemption."

"You have imposed upon me a rather significant role," Huckabee replied. "[To] train the Jewish people to love Israel. You're going to ask a Baptist to do that?" But speaking to TIME, he uttered words that would warm the hearts of Jewish settlers. "Do the Palestinians need a place to call their own?" he asked rhetorically. "If that's very important, then that should be accommodated. But can it be accommodated on the exact same property that Jews currently occupy? The answer is no, it can't. And so we can kid ourselves all day long and try to perpetuate this idea of having two governments running the same country, but it's not worked out and it's not realistic."

The three-day visit is Huckabee's 11th trip to Israel. The Arkansan, who is widely expected to seek the presidency again, in 2012, visited sites heavily weighted toward one side in the Middle East conflict: Israeli homes in predominantly Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and Israeli settlements on the West Bank, including an outpost considered illegal even by the current Israeli government. He explored underground tunnels in the ancient city of King David, which are slowly being excavated from underneath the Palestinian village of Silwan in East Jerusalem; he also visited the place where Jacob dreamed of a ladder leading up to heaven, in the West Bank settlement of Beth-El, next to an Israeli military base on the outskirts of the Palestinian city of Ramallah.

"It's inconceivable that we would ever understand how two sovereign governments would control the very same piece of real estate. We don't know how that would work," Huckabee said, elaborating on his opposition to the two-state solution. He compared the ban on Israeli settlements in Arab areas of East Jerusalem and the West Bank to segregation between black and white Americans in the deep South during his childhood. He called for "integration" between Israelis and Arabs.

The Obama Administration has been at odds with the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over settlement activity in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and Huckabee has used his trip to accuse Obama of zigzagging on pledges he made to Israel during the 2008 campaign. "Our primary concern ought to be whether or not Iran is weaponizing nuclear material, not whether 20 peaceful Jewish families happen to be moving into a neighborhood in their own country," he said.

As for his own ambitions, Huckabee remained coy, saying it was "just too early to determine" whether he will run in 2012. He said the vast amount of financing that is required to run risks limiting candidates to "the very rich." "I would have to know that my candidacy would be credible enough and likely lead to a victory; otherwise, I'm far better off doing what I'm doing, and probably will have a greater level of voice and influence on the process with radio and television." (Huckabee now hosts a television show on Fox.)

Huckabee was in Israel as a guest of the Jewish Reclamation Project of Ateret Cohanim, an Israeli educational foundation that aims to strengthen the Israeli presence in occupied East Jerusalem through the purchase of property for study centers and the families of students and teachers. Against bitter opposition from Palestinian groups and left-wing Israeli organizations, Ateret Cohanim has established yeshiva study institutes in the Muslim and Christian quarters of Jerusalem's Old City and encouraged housing projects for nearly 1,000 Jews in Arab neighborhoods where Jewish residents were forced to leave more than 60 years ago because of wars and unrest. The group boasts of its activities in "hot areas" of East Jerusalem. Its plans to develop 20 new Israeli homes were denounced last month by the Obama Administration. Huckabee told TIME that he purchased his own air ticket and was not a member of Ateret Cohanim. "I have no personal connection," he said. "I don't think they would let me in since I'm not Jewish."

Joseph D. Frager, a New York physician who is chairman of the Jerusalem Reclamation Project and on the board of Ateret Cohanim, said he organized the trip because he believes Huckabee "understands the Middle East probably better than most political leaders in America." Frager told TIME, "I compare Huckabee to Winston Churchill a lot, because Churchill was a fundamentalist Christian, [which] very [few] people realize. Huckabee has the same type of fundamentalist Christian background that enables him to understand the dynamics of the state of Israel, Judea and Samaria in particular, and of course, Jerusalem. Mike Huckabee represents the majority of Americans, fundamentalist Christians or not. The majority of Americans' views are a lot more closely aligned with Governor Huckabee than they are with President Obama."

But perhaps not with the views of all Israelis. Peace Now leader Yariv Oppenheimer was among several dozen protesters who greeted Huckabee on Aug. 17. "It's very easy to live in America and tell us to keep fighting the Palestinians," Oppenheimer told TIME. "We deeply believe that the two-state solution is an Israeli interest, and before someone from abroad comes to speak to us about taking over land and neglecting peace, he should remember that he is not the one who will have to fight in the army, stand at the checkpoints and continue to fight wars because there is no vision for peace in this country." (See pictures of the divided city of Jerusalem.)

Huckabee was certainly unwelcome in the eyes of Palestinians. Dimitri Diliani, a newly elected member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, said the former governor was "stupid" and "un-American." "He is damaging to the official U.S. policy regarding illegal settlement activities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem," Diliani told TIME. "He represents a petty politician looking for petty support from the American right, whose heydays are far behind us. Settlement activity is criminal in nature. In being the icing on the cake in the eyes of the fanatics in the Israeli settlement movement, he is an example of how low a politician will go to get an audience."

Grounded Pilots, Flying Soldiers

THE MEDIA LINE
Thursday, August 6th

Generations Clash at Fatah Congress

Reporter: Matthew Kalman
THE MEDIA LINE Tuesday, August 4th

Fatah leader warns of party split

JERUSALEM POST, Aug. 3, 2009

As more than 2,000 delegates gathered in Bethlehem for the long-delayed Sixth Fatah Congress, the leader of Fatah in Bethlehem warned of a split in the party if the leadership denies a role to the younger generation who launched a wave of violence against Israel in the second intifada.

"There will be a clear split within Fatah," Abdullah Abu Hadid, secretary of Fatah in Bethlehem and a leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, told The Media Line in an exclusive interview. "We have the leaders of the first and second intifadas and the real leaders of the Palestinian people, the leaders of the Palestinian street."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been struggling to stay in control of the movement after they lost an election in 2006 to Hamas and were expelled from Gaza in a bloody coup the following year.

"I think that what's known as the Old Guard in Fatah gave what it could and it has nothing more to give," Abu Hadid said. "The movement needs to have new blood in its leadership, a young leadership."

"The sixth Fatah conference is drowning in oppression with people who have nothing to do with Fatah or its history," he added. "They just want to choose an Oslo leadership with a Zionist-American plan."

The gathering is the first meeting of the Fatah congress for more than 20 years and a rare opportunity to refresh the ranks of its aging leaders. Four of its 21-member ruling central committee have died and the surviving members, including Abbas, are all aged over 65. The congress will elect a new central committee and a new 120-member revolutionary council.

Abu Hadid said he wanted to see Marwan Barghouti, the former Fatah West Bank secretary-general now serving five life terms for murder in an Israeli jail, elected to the central committee and even as leader.

He said the jailed leader was "Fatah's savior and salvation" but warned that his appointment to the central committee would not be enough to stem a rebellion within the ranks.

Abu Hadid warned of a "third intifada" directed this time against the Palestinian leaders as well as the Israelis. He said the sense of frustration among ordinary Palestinians - at the lack of progress in talks with Israel, the economic situation and the corruption of senior officials - was worse today than in the weeks preceding the outbreak of the last intifada in 2000.

"If there's a third intifada, it will be in order to change the course of negotiations, to change the conduct of the Palestinian Authority, and change the conduct of the current leadership," he said. "The people won't enter a direct confrontation with the Israelis without correcting things at home and without amending things domestically."

"It's worse now than it was in 2000," he continued. "The Palestinian street is impoverished, the prices are rising without stop, Palestinian dignity is diminishing, Israelis are being hostile in Judaizing Jerusalem, demolishing houses in Jerusalem, arresting Palestinians on a daily basis, and the leadership isn't capable of protecting people."

But Thiab Ayyoush, president of Palestine Ahliya University and a former deputy minister who has been nominated for a seat on the revolutionary council, said there could be a compromise between the different generations.

"This conference is seen by most of the Palestinians, if not all, as very important because after our experience of building the Palestinian state since 1994 it is the first time that we have a real opportunity to examine and see what was done through these years," said Prof Ayyoush.

"We can't say that the old people are expired," he said. "We can't say this because we're still in need, you know, for their wisdom and their experience. However, we would like also to see the young people participate in this movement and have their role, their active role."

"Marwan Barghouti is one of the main leaders of the intifada and the people who are qualified for leadership," Ayyoush added. "We respect him. He spent a lot of years in the Israeli prisons and I think he is qualified but there are many persons who are also qualified."

Prof Ayyoush said the differences between the Fatah factions were more about style than about substance.

Gay vs. Orthodox: A Deadly Turn in Israel's Culture War?

Monday, Aug. 03, 2009
By Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem

Israeli police launched a citywide manhunt through Tel Aviv for the masked, black-clad gunman who opened fire with a pistol at a gay youth club on Saturday night, Aug. 1, killing two and wounding 15 more. While the authorities have been careful not to speculate on a motive for the crime, the city's stunned gay community was not hesitant about assigning blame for the atmosphere they believe was conducive to the crime. Pointing to Orthodox Jewish gay-bashers, gay activists say the shots fired in the club for teenagers — the most serious in a series of verbal and physical attacks on their community — were a violent manifestation of Israel's ongoing culture war. The attack spotlights the tensions within Israeli society as it tries to balance Western liberalism and Orthodox Jewish values.

Tel Aviv is considered one of the world's favorite gay holiday destinations, celebrated for its nightlife, carefree beaches and tolerant atmosphere. In 2005, the city launched the country's first municipally funded gay center, and in 2007, the Israel Ministry of Tourism launched a marketing campaign specifically targeting the gay community, featuring photographs of tattooed, yarmulka-clad men kissing. In many areas of Israel, gay couples are treated as equals. They can adopt children and enjoy equal inheritance rights. The Israeli diplomatic service was one of the first to grant full rights to gay partners. (See a video about Jerusalem's gay-pride parade.)

But the Tel Aviv that is the epitome of Israeli gay rights is only a short bus ride from one of the more inflexible Orthodox communities in the country, Bnei Brak. And in all matters connected to religion, gay rights are considered subservient to traditional Jewish teaching, in which male homosexuality is outlawed and lesbians simply do not exist.

Israel has long struggled with the demands of modern society and the increasingly strident calls from the ultra-Orthodox to bring public life more in line with rigid Jewish teachings. There is no separation of church and state in Israel, where religious facilities — including those for the Muslim and Christian communities — are funded by the government but controlled by the religious establishment. There is a wary standoff between the state judicial system and the religious courts, leading to increasingly frequent showdowns over cases involving divorce and religious conversion. (Read how opposition to gay rights unites Israel's contentious faiths.)

Passions can run high. Advertising billboards featuring scantily clad women are periodically destroyed. There is a legal battle under way over demands to run separate public buses for men and women on routes serving ultra-Orthodox neighborhoods. Recently Jerusalem has seen weekly protests over a municipal decision to open a parking lot on the Sabbath. Last year, a former Health Minister from the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party blamed a series of small earth tremors on the rise of homosexual activity. Earlier, Shas had led religious opposition to gay couples' being granted the right to adopt children.

Nitzan Horowitz, a gay lawmaker from the left-wing Meretz Party, blamed the attack on "years of unremitting incitement from parliamentarians, rabbis and public figures." He added, "I attribute this to the general incitement and hate with which we have been contending for years in this community." Shas, however, was quick to condemn Saturday's killings. "We are shocked and bereaved, and denounce without reservation the murderous incident that targeted Tel Aviv's gay community," the party said in a statement. Israel's chief rabbis described the killings as "an unthinkable, vile crime."

Still, the ultra-Orthodox and the gay community have been known to come to physical blows. Gay activists recall the 2005 pride march in Jerusalem, when an ultra-Orthodox man leaped into the crowd and stabbed three marchers before he could be restrained by police. The violence came after the city's ultra-Orthodox mayor had tried to ban the march but was overruled in court. The following year, police ordered 12,000 officers to protect a few hundred marchers from possible ultra-Orthodox violence. Even Tel Aviv has not been exempt from gay-bashing. Gay activist Shlomi Laufer, writing in Tel Aviv's daily Yedioth Ahronoth, recalled two men embracing on the boardwalk being spat on and others being chased with baseball bats and even stabbed.

"The problems in Israeli society run very deep," Saar Netanel, a gay leader and former Jerusalem city councilor who opened the city's only gay bar, tells TIME. He explains that while Jews are united by their conflict with the Palestinians, the obsession with security comes at the expense of dealing with other social issues. "There are more than two societies here," says Netanel. "It's a very diverse population in Israel. There is one part of Israel, my camp, for whom the temple is the Supreme Court and we believe in democracy and we want a liberal and modern country; and there is a part of Israel that wants a more religious country — some of them even want the rule of Jewish law, not a democracy. They don't believe in the courts — they believe in the law of the Torah."

For many Israelis, Saturday's killings recalled the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995, when a lone shooter capped months of hate-filled rhetoric against Israel's elder statesman by gunning him down as he left a peace rally in the same city. "The pistol did not act on its own, the gunman did not act on his own — what stood behind him was incitement and hatred," Labor lawmaker Shelly Yachimovich said at an impromptu gathering near the site of the shootings on Sunday, consciously echoing comments made after Rabin's assassination.

Israel’s Mini Spy in the Sky

Written by Matthew Kalman
THE MEDIA LINE Thursday, July 30, 2009

[Lachish training base, Israel] The Israeli army has unveiled its latest tactical weapon – a miniature spy-in-the-sky that can be launched by an infantry unit in the battlefield to see over hills up to 10 miles away.

Called the Skylark I-LE, it weighs only about 15 pounds and has a wingspan of about nine feet. Carried in a backpack by a foot soldier, it can be assembled by a two-man team and ready for launch by catapult in less than 10 minutes. It is then controlled by a simple laptop computer system.

The Skylark does not carry any weapons. Instead it has a payload of advanced optical and thermal imaging that can send high-resolution images directly to the field unit 24 hours a day, in light or darkness, enabling them to track enemy movements, problems with the terrain, or the presence of non-combatants on the battlefield.

It can also be used for force protection and perimeter security, using surveillance to defend against threats within a 10-mile range.

Although it looks like a remote-controlled toy, it carries an onboard computer, advanced avionics and a high-tech stabilizing payload based on much larger unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

Each mini-Skylark costs about $50,000. Elbit Systems, the Israeli manufacturer, says the tiny craft has already logged more than 3,000 operational missions with allied forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During the Second Lebanon war in 2006, Skylark mini-UAVs were operated by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) units performing close-range reconnaissance missions in support of the ground forces, providing valuable real-time intelligence. Because they are small and almost silent, Skylarks were able to operate at very low altitudes practically undetectable.

The Skylark flew more than 600 operational hours for the IDF during Operation Cast Lead in Gaza last January.

“Before the infantry got in Gaza our teams threw the UAVs over Gaza and searched the entire area where they were going to go and said if it was clear, not clear, if you should go or take another route because it would be hard to walk there, or if there was an enemy over there,” Sgt David Tzoor, commander of an IDF artillery unit, told The Media Line in an exclusive interview at the Lachish training base in southern Israel.

“You can watch the enemy before it comes to you or before you are going to attack it, to plan all sorts of operations,” Tzoor said. “It can direct fire to any given target. The operator on the ground system operates the camera and gives the plane commands.”

“You can’t identify someone’s face but you can say if it’s a woman or a man or if he carries a weapon,” he said. “If it’s a dog, if it’s a cow, for example – you can detect those kinds of things.”

Tom Zayderman, chief instructor for manufacturers Elbit Systems, says you shouldn’t judge the Skylark by its small size.

“It’s the size of a toy aircraft but it’s much smarter than a toy aircraft,” Zayderman told The Media Line. “It has a flight control computer in it. You have the payload which is the camera. It looks easy and simple but it’s very complicated avionics and electricity inside of it, so it’s very different.”

“It’s pretty easy to operate,” said Zayderman. “You don’t need any experience. It’s a very friendly system and it’s based on the concept of autopilot autonomous flight. It allows the operator to focus on the image, to focus on the mission and the UAV will do all the flight by itself.”

“It can handle sandy areas like in Iraq and Afghanistan where the Skylark One has had a lot of flight operational hours, and here in Israel in a very rocky area,” he said.

The Skylark can stay airborne for more than three hours and when it’s time to land the operator sends a command that inflates a small airbag under the fuselage and cuts the engine. It simply floats back to the ground, ready to be used again.

Peace Process at “Five to Midnight” Warns UN Envoy

Written by Matthew Kalman
THE MEDIA LINE Wednesday, July 29, 2009



The United Nations’ senior diplomat in Jerusalem has urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders to join the US-led drive to restart peace talks and called for the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Robert Serry, the UN special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, called for a halt to Israeli construction in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and condemned the fact that “not one spade has been put in the ground” to help Palestinians in Gaza reconstruct their homes after the war there last January.

“Time is not on our side here,” Serry told The Media Line in an exclusive interview at UN headquarters in Jerusalem.

“It may be five to midnight,” Serry warned. “I think the international community is aware of that – you see this determined drive on the part of the international community. I hope the parties are also ready for it.”

“Sometimes when I drive around here in the West Bank or in Jerusalem, see how Palestinians and Israelis are living very near to each other but also in a continued situation of conflict, it is almost as if the situation resembles two Siamese twins deeply unhappy to live in one body and increasingly unable to separate,” he said. “That’s why I believe it is very important that there is a determined drive this time.”

Earlier in the week, Serry condemned the eviction of Palestinians from a disputed home in East Jerusalem whose ownership is claimed by Israelis.

“Jerusalem is of course dear to the hearts of both Israelis and Palestinians,” he said.

“Israelis and Palestinians are living together in this beautiful city. What we have seen lately is an upsurge of house demolitions, eviction orders either imposed or actually already carried out, and also some Israeli activities, construction activities, in the city. This comes right at the time when the international community, under the renewed, vigorous leadership of the United States is trying actually to resume negotiations.”

“In that situation, to have these kinds of things in Jerusalem which can easily inflame the tensions here - which according to the UN also have no basis in international law - that’s just very unhelpful,” he added.

Serry said he was encouraged by the efforts of US envoy George Mitchell to hammer out an Israeli agreement to freeze West Bank settlements in return for confidence-building measures from Arab states.

“We have to convince that government that it is in the interests of all Israelis to have a peace process leading to the two-state solution. Netanyahu has accepted that goal now I think, which is important. There are important discussions ongoing now on the need for a credible settlements freeze and based on that I think parties will have to resume the negotiations and conclude them soon,” he said.

“We don’t want a process for the sake of a process, which we have seen too often here in the Middle East. So I very much welcome the American initiative to re-commit the parties to their commitments.”

But Serry said he was disappointed at the stalemate over efforts to begin the reconstruction of Gaza, where thousands of Palestinian homes and facilities were damaged during Operation Cast Lead last January.

“The present situation for us is completely unacceptable,” he said.

“What is it – six months now that we’ve had a devastating war in Gaza and not one spade has been put in the ground to help thousands of Gaza families actually to rebuild their affected homes. We have put on the table a very practical proposal to kick-start some reconstruction, doing it also under the flag of the United Nations. We believe that we can also then reassure everybody that the materials imported will be used for their intended purpose.”

He said a proposal put forward months ago by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has not yet been adopted and suggested that Israel was holding out for the release of Gilad Shalit, the soldier captured by Hamas more than three years ago and held incommunicado in Gaza.

“I met yesterday with President Abbas who reassured me of full Palestinian support,” he said. “I think we also have very important backing from the Quartet and certainly also Egypt would like to see an improvement. If you ask me what is the real issue on the Israeli side, I think it is Gilad Shalit. We are aware of a kind of cabinet decision that Israel will allow humanitarian goods to pass the crossings into Gaza and that is indeed happening – although also not really very satisfactory to us. But they will not allow any serious amounts of construction materials to go into Gaza as long as that issue is not resolved.”

“Let me make it very clear that at the United Nations every month when I brief the security council we are calling for his release,” said Serry. “Of course the very fact that Hamas is holding him is a human rights violation. The very fact that he hasn’t been visited by for instance the ICRC for over three years now. I’m aware that negotiations are ongoing. I very much hope that both parties will be able to resolve this issue and I really call also on Hamas to negotiate now in good faith so that we hopefully see his release very, very soon in the context of a prisoner exchange.”

Jersey's Corruption Scandal: The Israeli Connection

Two men are taken into custody in New Jersey on July 23 during a federal probe of public corruption and international money-laundering
Amy Newman / The Record / MCT / Landov

By Matthew Kalman / Jerusalem
TIME.com Tuesday, Jul. 28, 2009

The mass arrests in the New Jersey corruption scandal last week were big news — in Israel. Images of prominent rabbis and Jewish businessmen being cuffed and arrested after morning prayers filled the front pages under headlines trumpeting the discovery of the "Jewish laundry" used to bribe prominent New Jersey officials allegedly using Israeli charities. In particular, Israeli commentators seized on the connection between several of those arrested and prominent figures in Shas, the ultra-orthodox Sephardi Torah Guardians Party, founded by the octogenarian Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, who remains its spiritual leader.

Among those arrested on July 23 were Rabbi Eliahu Ben Haim and Rabbi Edmund Nahum, who are reportedly close to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef and his son, Rabbi David Yosef. Ben Haim and Nahum were allegedly major fundraisers for Shas and Yosef family networks of educational institutions. According to a report on Israeli television, Rabbi David Yosef was also said to have been the target of Solomon Dwek, the FBI's chief informant, who asked the rabbi to help him launder a check for $25,000. David Yosef reportedly declined.

Leaders of Shas, which won 11 seats in the Knesset and is the fourth largest member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government, told TIME the party has no connection to the scandal. Roei Lachmanovich, spokesman for Shas Party leader Eli Yishai, told TIME that fundraising by the American rabbis for Sephardi institutions in Israel did not mean they were connected to Shas. He said that Shas institutions — including the rabbinical schools, or yeshivas — received their budget directly from the Israeli government and denied that Shas had been involved in any money-laundering or illegal activity. Furthermore, he said that Rabbi David Yosef was not a member of Shas and did not represent the party. "Besides the fact that he is Rabbi Ovadia Yosef's son, he has no formal connection to the Shas organization," said Lachmanovich.

One of those arrested was a Brooklyn man, Levy Izhak Rosenbaum, who was charged with trading in human organs. In Jerusalem's ultra-orthodox community this week, Rosenbaum, who claimed to be a real estate dealer, was described as a macher (fixer) who assisted renal patients in finding appropriate medical treatment in the United States. According to the official complaint, however, Rosenbaum planned to give an Israeli donor $10,000 and then charge the client who requested the kidney $160,000. The payment would be laundered through what Rosenbaum described first as a "congregation," then as a charity. According to published reports, Rosenbaum ran the Brooklyn branch of Kav Lachayim, a charity for sick children that was once supported by convicted financier Bernie Madoff.

The Shas media reacted to the entire scandal with countercharges of anti-Semitism. Yitzhak Kakun, editor of the Shas newspaper Yom Le'Yom told the Jerusalem Post: "The FBI purposely attempted to arrest as many rabbis as possible at once in an attempt to humiliate them." Meanwhile, Nissim Ze'ev, a Shas Knesset member, said, "The U.S. police are trying to make it seem as though there is some kind of Jewish mafia."

This is not the first time, however, that the Shas party has been embroiled in a corruption controversy. Two Shas ministers have been convicted on corruption charges in recent years. Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies in Jerusalem, explains that some parts of the ultra-orthodox community tend to disregard secular law, despite a tenacious adherence to the minutest detail of Jewish religious ritual. Says Halevi: "You have a kind of borderless community that in its best expressions maintains international charity efforts that are second to none. But the dark side of this is a mentality that often too easily slides into rationalizations for acts that cannot be rationalized, with the idea that the end justifies the means. Here we are raising money for charitable institutions, and therefore we're allowed to cut corners." Halevi adds: "There have been other examples in the past of drug-running happening under cover of certain religious institutions here. There have been too many examples of abuse in the past."

Palestinians Take on Israeli Troops in an Imaginary Game of 'Wall Soccer'

The Media Line
Published Sunday, July 26, 2009

In recent weeks, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been reduced to an imaginary game of soccer.

It all began with a seemingly innocent ball in a TV advertisement for Cellcom, Israel's leading cellphone provider.

The advertisement opens with a squad of Israeli soldiers driving along a walled section of the barrier built by Israel to separate the West Bank from Israel.

Suddenly, something hits the hood of the soldiers' Jeep. Leaping from the vehicle ready for battle, the soldiers quickly realize it was a loose soccer ball kicked, presumably, by Palestinians playing soccer on the other side of the barrier.

The soldiers kick the ball back over the wall, call in 'reinforcements' and within minutes over two dozen Israeli soldiers are playing soccer over the wall with unnamed, unseen Palestinians on the other side. The soldiers cheer each other on and jump around happily to a soundtrack of upbeat, heartening music extolling Cellcom’s products.

"At the end of the day, what do we all really want?" the voiceover asks rhetorically. "To have a little fun."

To many Israeli viewers, such advertisements cleverly bring much-needed wit to an otherwise bleak situation, eliciting feelings of hope and camaraderie between the populations on both sides of the barrier.

But to the Palestinians living on the other side of that barrier, however, the advertisement was an Israeli company trying to financially capitalize on a naive fantasy of brotherly rapport created in the minds of Israelis unaware of the reality the barrier symbolizes for them.

The original advert:



Simple parodies, most produced by Israelis, began appearing immediately. One depicted Israel responding to the soccer ball with a missile strike. The soldiers, seen in the original Cellcom advertisement cheering on the soccer game taking place across the wall, are seen in the parody cheering and dancing as missiles are dropped on Palestinian territories.

"What do we all really want?" asks the original Cellcom voiceover as the missiles strike home. "To have a little fun."




Another parody depicts soldiers repeatedly kicking a soccer ball onto a bound, blindfolded Palestinian on the other side of the barrier.



Activists in the West Bank village of Bi'lin, a hot spot of activism against the Israeli barrier, took the parody to a new level, trying to incorporate efforts to kick around a soccer ball into their weekly demonstration against the barrier.

"I wish that commercial were reality," Iyad Burnat, head of the Bi'lin Popular Committee, told The Media Line. "But soldiers do not 'play' with us, and this is not our choice."

"We often try to speak with the soldiers and say let's talk, or even play together," he said, "but each week we have non-violent protests against the barrier and they respond very violently."

"We are always trying to come up with new strategies for non-violent resistance," Burnat explained. "When we saw what they had on Israeli TV it was suggested that we use the soccer ball idea to show the soldiers that these are non-violent demonstrations - we are just playing football... But they responded with the usual tear gas, rubber bullets and high-pressured water cannons."

Bi'lin's residents' efforts to play soccer with the Israeli soldiers were filmed and used to produce yet another sarcastic parody of the original advertisement. In the clip, which has been viewed over 110,000 times, documentary footage of the Palestinian activists trying to play soccer near the barrier as Israeli soldiers respond with tear gas is contrasted with the optimistic soundtrack from the original Cellcom advertisement.



"This barrier causes extensive suffering to us and many other Palestinians," Muhammad Hatib, a Bi'lin resident and member of the Bi'lin Popular Committee, told The Media Line. "We want to show the reality, so we started playing football and kicked it over to the army."

"The army's response was violence, tear gas and grenades," Hatib continued. "No one expected any other behaviour. Every week we hold non-violent protests and a lot of us have been killed and injured."

Bi'lin residents, who have been engaged in a long battle with Israel over the presence of the Israeli barrier in the village, argue the Israeli cellular company was seeking to profit off false Israeli impressions of the morality of the country's armed forces.

"They didn't even show the faces of Palestinians, as if there is no one on the other side," Hatib added. "They just showed a beautiful and kind army, as if all they do is play soccer, dance and smile."

A number of Cellcom employees interviewed by The Media Line did not feel the controversy was deserved.

"Some workers felt it was fine, some didn't, but people are talking about our company and that's the point," said one mid-level Cellcom employee, who asked not to be named.

"Personally I didn't understand why they made such a big deal," the Cellcom employee added. "It's a nice clip actually. It's dark humor but doesn't cross the line and it shows that actually we do have something in common... not everyone wants wars."

Kobi Snitz, an Israeli activist who regularly attends the Bi'lin demonstrations, said the Cellcom advertisement plays on a common distortion in many Israelis' approach to the conflict.

"To tell jokes about Palestinians and the situation they face is not unusual in Israel," he told The Media Line. "What makes this ad attractive to Israelis is the idea that the soldiers are decent people and the situation is not only tolerable, but something that can be made light of."

"That's an offensive distortion," he said. "For a sense of perspective, imagine the reaction if someone made a funny commercial exploiting Jewish suffering throughout history. That wouldn't be seen as funny."

It is not clear how long the soccer protest strategies will continue, but Bi'lin residents say without reciprocation from the Israeli side, they may soon run out of balls.

"We had three soccer balls," Bi'lin resident Hatib added. "We played a bit and then kicked two of them over the barrier. But after the first two balls weren't returned some kids took the last ball and said 'it's not worth it, the Israelis will never really kick it back.'"

Israel to U.S.: Keep Out of Jerusalem

Written by Matthew Kalman
THE MEDIA LINE : Sunday, July 19, 2009

JERUSALEM - Israeli leaders demanded on Sunday that the United States stop interfering with construction plans in East Jerusalem.

Jerusalem City Councillor Yakir Segev said the State Department was making “a grave mistake” in protesting a new residential project in the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah.

“I think it will be right for the U.S. and the international community not to interfere with the micro-management of municipal affairs in Jerusalem,” Segev told The Media Line.

“It is not a matter for the international community. It’s a free country and a free market,” said Segev.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu led a chorus of angry comment after Israel’s ambassador in Washington was summoned to the U.S. State Department over plans to build 20 private homes on the site of the Shepherd’s Hotel.

But Palestinian officials welcomed the American intervention and condemned the new houses as “settlements” that undermined peace talks.

The former Shepherd’s Hotel is in an area of luxurious Arab villas which was captured by Israel along with East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War. It was bought in the 1980s by American businessman Irving Moskowitz, who is a key figure behind efforts to purchase buildings in East Jerusalem to house Israelis. The area is now part of the Jerusalem Municipality, whose planning committee approved the construction of the housing project.

Ambassador Michael Oren was summoned to the State Department last Friday where US officials said the project should be halted in line with the U.S. demand for a freeze on all settlement building in the West Bank.

But Netanyahu said that Jerusalem was in a separate category.

“United Jerusalem is the capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel,” Netanyahu told ministers at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem. “Our sovereignty over it is cannot be challenged. Residents of Jerusalem may purchase apartments in all parts of the city.”

“In recent years hundreds of apartments in Jewish neighborhoods and in the western part of the city have been purchased by – or rented to – Arab residents and we did not interfere,” he said.

“We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and purchase in all parts of Jerusalem,” the Prime Minister continued. “I can only describe to myself what would happen if someone would propose that Jews could not live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome. There would certainly be a major international outcry.”

The local planning committee of the Jerusalem Municipality said it “operates according to equal criteria for all issues of construction permits, without regard to race, creed, gender, religion, or national identity of the resident or property owner. The acquisition of the land that includes the Shepherd’s Hotel was legal and received the necessary renovation and construction.”

Yakir Segev, the Jerusalem City Council member responsible for East Jerusalem, told The Media Line that the US State Department had no place in determining “a local planning issue.”

“I think it’s a grave mistake,” Segev told The Media Line. “The issue with the lands and houses is totally different from the West Bank.”

“You can argue whether Israeli settlements in the West Bank are right or not, but in Jerusalem it’s all private land, and if a certain Arab citizen wants to sell his house to a Jewish one, it’s not a matter for the municipality to interfere,” he continued. “It is of course not a matter for the international community. It’s a free country and a free market. The same with an Arab citizen who wants to buy a house in a Jewish neighborhood – no one is going to prohibit him from doing that.”

The building was originally constructed in the 1930s for Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the pro-Nazi mufti of Jerusalem who was eventually deported by the British during the Second World War. The British Mandate authorities confiscated the building after his deportation and used it as a British military base. After the 1949 War of Independence it was transferred to the Jordanians who added to the building and it became the Shepherd’s Hotel.

After the 1967 Six Day War, the Israeli government took over the building and used it for the Ministry of Justice and as a district courthouse. In November 1985 it was purchased in a public tender by C and M Properties – believed to be one of Moskowitz’s companies – and then rented back to the Israeli government who used it as a base for their Border Police units for some 15 years. It has been abandoned ever since, pending planning approvals.

The site is known to the Palestinians as Karm Al-Mufti, because of its association with Husseini.

Palestinian leaders have accused Israel and private entrepeneurs like Moskowitz of “Judaizing” East Jerusalem. Segev said that “only a few hundred” Jews live inside Arab neighborhoods that were annexed by Jordan after the end of the British Mandate.

Jordan expelled all surviving Jewish residents from the Old City, East Jerusalem and the West Bank after the 1949 armistice. But more than 200,000 Israelis - Jews and Arabs - now live in large new neighborhoods built across the old border inside the expanded Jerusalem municipal boundary.

Ahmad A-Ruweidi, head of the Jerusalem unit at the Palestinian president’s office, hailed the US intervention as “a positive step.”

“There’s now pressure but this came late,” A-Ruweidi told The Media Line. “This should have happened a long time ago. The settlements should have stopped in Jerusalem. Jerusalem is an occupied city and Israel’s actions on the ground won’t change the fact that it’s an occupied city.”

“The people in the streets of Jerusalem would never accept Abu Mazen conducting negotiations with Israel if there were settlements and house demolitions in Jerusalem,” he said.

A-Ruweidi rejected the idea that it was a purely local municipal issue and said the Palestinian Authority would continue to bring international pressure to bear on the Israelis regarding construction in Jerusalem.

“The Palestinian presidency is in constant contact with all the international parties relevant to the political process in the Middle East and especially with the US administration, the Quartet, European countries, non-aligned countries and with Arab and Muslim countries,” he said. “The world now has a united position against settlements and house demolitions in Jerusalem. The settlements constitute a humanitarian crime.”