After Abbas

Faced with upheaval across the Middle East, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called elections for September. But it’s unclear who might run to succeed him, if the aging leader really does step down.

By Matthew Kalman|March 15, 2011

The day after Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced ^[1] that elections for the president and legislative council of the Palestinian Authority would be held by September. Forty-eight hours later, he asked for the resignation of the current Cabinet. “The new government should concentrate its efforts on mobilizing its energies to prepare national institutions for the establishment of an independent state of Palestine before the deadline of next September,” Abbas said.

The Palestinian leader has just seven months to reach a working relationship with Hamas, which controls Gaza and which rejects the PA government, or the elections cannot be held in Gaza. Early indications are not promising. Hamas spokesmen flatly rejected the idea of rapprochement, despite an offer from Fatah Central Committee member Nabil Sha’ath to travel there and agree to “any conditions” the group might demand. “I don’t know if there will be an independent state around September and if we will see another president in the coming months or even after September,” Nabil Amr, a former Palestinian Cabinet minister and ambassador to Cairo and Moscow, told me. A confidant of both Yasser Arafat and Abbas, Amr has become a gadfly critic of the leaders he once advised.

While Abbas’ commitment to the September deadline could be dismissed as Palestinian rhetoric in the style of Yasser Arafat’s pledge to declare an independent state in September 2000, this time the Palestinian leadership may have no choice, given the wave of popular revolts rolling across the Arab world and the Palestinians’ own internal problems. A week after the fall of the Tunisian government in January, Al Jazeera began publishing the “Palestine Papers ^[2]”—a WikiLeaks-style trove of documents detailing confidential peace talks between Palestinian negotiators and Israel that portrayed the Palestinian team as weak and desperate. Chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat initially denounced the documents as forgeries, but he was later forced to confirm their authenticity and resigned. Meanwhile, attention shifted to events ^[3] in Egypt, where mass demonstrations led to Mubarak’s resignation on February 11.

The loss of Erekat, a key confidante, was a serious problem for Abbas. Even worse was the fall of Mubarak, a stout supporter of Fatah and opponent of Hamas. “The Palestinian leaders don’t have a good response to what is happening,” says analyst Hani al-Masri at the Palestine Media, Research and Studies Centre ^[4]. “They are afraid because they lost their big friend and ally.” Al-Masri adds that the only way to achieve the unity with Hamas necessary to conduct elections and a breakthrough in the peace talks that will bring about independence by the September deadline is for the Palestinian leaders to change both their tactics and leadership. “Abu Mazen”—as Abbas is known—“must say seriously that he is not running in the next election,” says al-Masri. “We must prepare ourselves for the future.”

Hafez Barghouti, editor of the semi-official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida and a veteran Fatah insider, says the party is failing to prepare for the inevitable generational handover of power. “Abu Mazen is old and he doesn’t want to be like the Arab leaders, to be fired by the people,” says Barghouti. “But I don’t know who will be the new leader. From Fatah I don’t see anybody. I cannot see a good leader or a popular leader now from Fatah. Fatah till now is sleeping.”

Hatem Abdel Kader, a former Palestinian minister for Jerusalem and a prominent leader of the young guard with close connections to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah, echoes Amr’s call for Fatah to get its act together while still maintaining his support for Abbas.

“Fatah is the movement of our people, Fatah is the leader of our national project, and only Fatah can achieve our national project—but we need to clean up our home,” says Abdel Kader. “Right now we haven’t any choice, only Abu Mazen. After Abu Mazen, I don’t know.”

The absence of any natural successor to Abbas either now or in the future is likely to spell trouble for Fatah, for the Palestinian national movement, and for Israelis hoping for a peace partner. Observers agree that while Palestinian Prime Minster Salam Fayyad has built enormous political capital with his “Homestretch to Freedom” plan ^[5] for Palestinian statehood, his closeness ^[6] to the Americans makes him an object of suspicion, and there is no chance he can win an election as an independent.

“Salam Fayyad is a good man, but he is not from Fatah,” says pollster Nabil Kukali, director-general of the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion in Beit Sahour. “If Fatah will support Fayyad I’m sure he will win the elections. But if Fatah have their own candidate it will be very difficult for Fayyad.”

Several members of the Palestinian Central Committee who were elected in 2009 appear to have dropped out of contention for a leadership role. Saeb Erekat’s chances were probably destroyed by the Palestine Papers leaks. Tawfik Tirawi, a former head of Palestinian General Intelligence, prefers to play a backroom role as chief security adviser to Abbas. Jibril Rajoub, former head of Preventive Security in the West Bank, is reveling in his new job as head of the Palestinian Olympic Committee and Football Association and refuses to discuss anything except soccer and athletics.

Polls suggest that the potential candidate likely to win the largest majority in a post-Abbas presidential election is Marwan Barghouti ^[7], currently serving five life terms in an Israeli jail for his part in launching terror attacks against Israelis during the intifada. While Fatah leaders respect Barghouti, they rule out his candidacy as impractical.

“Marwan Barghouti could be an excellent candidate, but he is in an Israeli prison,” says Hanna Siniora, a veteran Fatah leader in Jerusalem. Amr concurs: “I like him and he’s my friend, but who will nominate a president in prison? It will be a joke.”

Recent events also suggest that Abbas, far from encouraging a smooth leadership transition, is working hard to deter would-be successors from staking a claim to the presidency. Until November, one obvious front-runner was Mohammed Dahlan, 49, the feared former commander of Palestinian Preventive Security in Gaza. Dahlan’s U.S.-trained and -equipped forces were roundly defeated by the Hamas Executive Force and expelled from Gaza in 2007. Some 400 Fatah fighters and activists were killed in that battle. But Dahlan bounced back from that humiliation to secure a seat on the Central Committee in 2009. Dahlan had established close ties with U.S. and British intelligence during his tenure as Gaza security chief and amassed a sizable personal fortune, with which he began to build a power base in the West Bank.

But last fall, Dahlan was suddenly stripped ^[8] of his official duties and accused of financial and other misdeeds after he criticized the business dealings of the president’s family. An unprecedented attack on Dahlan published by the PLO’s official WAFA news agency announced a full-scale investigation into Dahlan’s alleged corruption and linked him to a plot to overthrow Abbas also involving Nasser al-Kidwa, Yasser Arafat’s nephew and a former foreign minister and PLO representative to the United Nations—and another possible successor to Abbas.

Indeed, al-Kidwa’s name comes up frequently in conversations with senior Fatah officials about successors. Now 57, al-Kidwa was talent-spotted in his teens by his uncle and charged with turning the General Union of Palestinian Students into an international force to help Fatah consolidate its control of the PLO while also serving as a nursery for future Palestinian leaders.

In the modest basement office he now occupies as the head of the Yasser Arafat Foundation ^[9], al-Kidwa is clearly caught between a desire to continue his uncle’s legacy, his frustration at the current leadership’s lack of progress in the peace process, and his shock at the public accusation that he was plotting with Dahlan to overthrow Abbas.

Al-Kidwa bears an uncanny resemblance to his late uncle—he favors business suits over military fatigues—but Fatah kingmakers are divided as to whether he has what it takes to fill Arafat’s shoes. His supporters cite his rich diplomatic experience, impressive intellect, and his freedom from the taint of corruption that swirls around many other Fatah officials. Detractors say he is largely untried on the domestic scene and his profile since returning from diplomatic service has been too low to attract much following among the 400,000 registered members of Fatah.

One Israeli diplomat who frequently locked horns with al-Kidwa at the United Nations said he was a force to be reckoned with. “He is very intelligent, extremely slippery, and he can be unnecessarily aggressive,” said the Israeli. Many Palestinians may feel that is exactly the kind of person they could use right now at the helm of their drifting ship.

Al-Kidwa says the conspiracy allegations published by the official news agency are symptomatic of a leadership that has lost touch with its own people and frozen democratic institutions like the legislative council.

“We are seeing a decrease in the amount of tolerance of other opinions, of opposition, of dissent,” says al-Kidwa. “There is an absence of democratic check and balance and a muting of opposition generally, especially after the military coup d’etat in Gaza. This led to more accumulation, more centralization of power. Part of this is not our making. Part of this is a result of the Hamas military coup in Gaza, the situation here, the lack of progress in the peace process. But irrespective of whose fault this might be, the results are not nice.”

He denounces the Hamas regime in Gaza as “authoritarian and merciless” but says the priority must be a power-sharing agreement that will allow Hamas to fully participate in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority without needing to join a government whose peaceful program they would be unable to endorse. He is confident that Hamas can be persuaded to drop its demands for Israel’s destruction.

“They have a really very serious problem,” al-Kidwa says of Hamas. “They don’t have answers either for the Palestinian people or for themselves.”

While he praises Salam Fayyad as “a serious man” and lauds his achievements in recent years, he says the idea that building institutions ^[10]can bring a Palestinian state into existence is “deeply flawed” in the absence of a coherent political program, both at home and internationally. He says there should be much more pressure on the Israelis from the United Nations and other international institutions to produce an agreement, since direct negotiations have clearly failed.

Evidently, he has thought long and hard about the new policies that could be pursued under a new leader. Will he run in the planned election, if it happens? “I’m not sure, to tell you the truth,” al-Kidwa replies. “There is total confusion when it comes to whatever might happen next.”

Matthew Kalman ^[11] is a foreign correspondent and filmmaker based in Jerusalem.

Debate erupts over Middle East peace talks

Revelations in leaked documents that Palestinians made major concessions spark anger.

GLOBAL POST January 24, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

JERUSALEM — In June 2008, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian peace negotiator, warned a conference at Tel Aviv University that time was running out for a negotiated settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"This is the time for both of our leaders to decide,” Erekat said. "No one else will make these decisions for us. Not the United States, not Europe and no one else. I hope action will be taken. Every issue on the negotiating table has a solution."

“If we don't reach a settlement, there is a chance Hamas will take over the West Bank too and we will disappear,” he warned at the time.

On Sunday night, Al Jazeera revealed just how far Erekat and his colleagues were prepared to go to achieve that elusive peace deal with the publication of 1,600 documents leaked from Erekat’s own Negotiations Affairs Department office in Jericho.

The revelations were greeted with uproar from critics of the Palestinian leadership and accusations of forgery from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Some commentators said Abbas had been exposed as a cowering weakling unable to match the Israelis’ negotiating pressures. Others said the concessions revealed in the documents were old news and represented a Palestinian stance that had remained virtually unchanged for a decade.

Observers wondered who could be behind the leak and whether it was connected to an investigation announced last month into the activities of Mohammed Dahlan, a former Gaza strongman and leader of Fatah.

According to the leaked notes, maps and charts from secret meetings between Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. negotiators held between March 2008 and January 2010, dubbed the “Palestine Papers” by Al Jazeera, Palestinian leaders were prepared to cede large areas of Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem and the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees, as well as allowing the continued presence of more than 300,000 Israeli settlers, in return for a peace deal finally granting Palestinian independence.

Hamas denounced Erekat for making “free concessions” and “unprecedented compromises” over Jerusalem.

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said the documents revealed attempts by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority to undermine the rights of the Palestinian people and its compliance with Israel’s attempts to crush armed resistance.

"We consider these documents are further evidence of the security and political decadence which the PA stooped to," Abu Zuhri said at a press conference.

Erekat hit back by denouncing the trickle of documents planned by Al Jazeera in the coming week as “theater.”

“This is part of a campaign targeting President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority at a time when we are going to the U.N. Security Council regarding the settlements," Erekat said, challenging Al Jazeera to name their sources.

"We have not gone back on our position,” he declared. “If we had given ground on the refugees and made such concessions, why hasn't Israel agreed to sign a peace accord?" he said, according to Al Jazeera.

As hundreds of enraged Fatah loyalists marched on the Al Jazeera bureau in Ramallah, Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Yasser Abed Rabbo called a press conference to denounce the Doha-based TV network and the Emir of Qatar, who he accused of orchestrating a politically motivated campaign.

Ironically, in a meeting at a Jerusalem hotel in May 2008 included in the documents, former Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei told Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni: “Iran is against us. Qatar is against us.”

Further controversy is expected as Al Jazeera rolls out more notes of talks on refugees and security coordination with Israel, including evidence that the Palestinians downgraded their demand on refugees from the right of return for up to four million people to just 100,000, and that Israeli officials gave Ramallah advanced warning of their attack on Hamas in Gaza in December 2008.

That accusation was swiftly denied by Amos Gilad, the Israeli defense ministry official who handled contacts with the Palestinians at the time.

“This is an example of imprecision,” Gilad told Israel Radio. “Our towns were being murderously attacked. We warned Hamas there would be consequences and we briefed everyone in the world. The Palestinians received a general briefing that Israel could not continue to tolerate these attacks and one of the responses that could be expected would be a resort to military measures. We never conveyed in any manner any concrete plans to any foreigners as far as I am aware.”

After reading the entire trove of documents, retired CIA officer Robert L. Grenier told Al Jazeera that the Palestinians’ “failure to make any long-term, tangible gains for their people — despite their complicity in the process, despite their documented willingness to make far-reaching concessions, and despite having accepted American and Israeli support to repress their enemies and maintain themselves in power with at best threadbare legitimacy.”

But some local observers doubted that the uproar would have any long-term effect on the secure power base of the Palestinian leadership.

Professor Thiab Ayyoush, president of Palestine Ahliya University in Bethlehem and a veteran member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, told GlobalPost that while many Palestinians would be shocked to learn that Erekat was prepared to cede parts of Jerusalem, most of the positions expressed in the documents were well-known to insiders.

“I am familiar with most of what I heard. But many of our people and even many members of the Fatah Revolutionary Council do not have an idea about what has been said, so it will be embarrassing for sure,” Ayyoush said. “The position of Abu Mazen is very strong now. It is better than at any time before.”

Ron Pundak, one of the original architects of the Oslo peace process who is now director-general of the Peres Center for Peace, said the Palestinian position shown in the records was almost unchanged from the Camp David and Taba talks in 2000 and 2001.

"What Al Jazeera is trying to do is to smear the PLO negotiators,” Pundak told GlobalPost.

“These positions were the same positions that the Palestinians were conveying since Camp David, through Taba. The only issue here is that the resolution is a bit finer. It’s amazing to see how close the two sides were to an agreement," he said. "This is the real conclusion.”

After failed peace talks, US aid to Israel questioned

GLOBALPOST January 20, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

An Israeli soldier prays on his tank during a military exercise near the Israeli town of Katzrin, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, on Nov. 10, 2009. (Menaham Kahana/AFP/Getty Images)

JERUSALEM, Israel — The role of the United States as the largest single donor to both Israel and the Palestinians was thrown into sharp relief last November when the Israeli government rejected 20 U.S. F35 Joint Strike Fighter jets worth $2.75 billion in return for extending a West Bank settlement freeze by 90 days.

The offer — some called it a “bribe” — of military material equal in value to nearly an entire year’s worth of U.S. aid to Israel, renewed questions about the purpose of U.S. aid in the region and whether it might be more effectively deployed to better serve American strategic interests.

Israel receives more U.S. foreign aid than any other country, now around $3 billion every year. It is used only for military purposes — Israel voluntarily gave up U.S. civil aid more than a decade ago. Seventy percent of the aid is earmarked for purchases from U.S. companies.

According to the State Department’s latest budget justification for foreign operations, “U.S. assistance will help ensure that Israel maintains its qualitative military edge over potential threats, and prevent a shift in the security balance of the region. U.S. assistance is also aimed at ensuring for Israel the security it requires to make concessions necessary for comprehensive regional peace.”

This alliance is expressed in regular joint military training exercises, intelligence-sharing, a free trade agreement between the two countries, regular White House visits by Israeli leaders and frequent top-level consultations at all levels of government and the military.

In a secret cable setting the scene for a visit to Israel by Deputy Secretary of State James B. Steinberg in November 2009, published by WikiLeaks, James B. Cunningham, the U.S. Ambassador in Tel Aviv, reported that “Israelis from the prime minister on down to the average citizen are deeply appreciative of the strong security and mil-mil cooperation with the U.S. The U.S.-Israeli security relationship remains strong … The United States remains committed to Israel's Qualitative Military Edge.”

The United States, meanwhile, is also the single largest donor to the Palestinian Authority — a point underlined by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when she pointed out recently that wealthy Arab states had failed to honor millions of dollars in pledges to the Palestinians made at donor conferences. In 2010 the United States earmarked $500 million in direct assistance and a further $228 million for Palestinian refugees through the United Nations.

“U.S. aid is important in terms of size and also in political importance,” a Palestinian Authority official told GlobalPost, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The money that we receive from the U.S. is almost 30 percent of the donor aid that comes to Palestine.”

The official welcomed U.S. President Barack Obama’s tougher policy on settlement building and his efforts to push Israel to conclude a peace deal, but said it seemed hampered by the “domestic complications” of being firm with Israel.

“The American administration is pushing with all of its strength to try to reach a settlement and basically achieve some progress at the political level. Unfortunately all of these efforts have been unsuccessful so far, but we continue to be hopeful,” the official said.

After the F35 debacle in November, Andrew Sullivan suggested in the Huffington Post that it was time to end the aid “because a) Israel doesn't need it and b) we need the money and c) it doesn't seem sensible to me to keep rewarding an ally that refuses to offer minimal cooperation.”

“It's time for the U.S. to assert its own interests and goals,” Sullivan argued.

Sam Bahour, a Palestinian-American businessman who relocated from Ohio to Ramallah to help build the Palestinian economy, said U.S. aid is simply “underwriting the occupation.”

“Instead of putting the burden of cost of being an occupier on the lap of the Israelis, they are underwriting them and allowing the Israelis to perpetuate occupation, almost cost free,” Bahour told GlobalPost.

“The U.S. national interest is to end the occupation. They’ve said it’s in the U.S. national interest to have a Palestinian state. So what are they waiting for to use their leverage — financial as well as others — to make that happen?”

But New Jersey Congressman Steve Rothman said, “the argument that American military aid to Israel is damaging to the United States is not only erroneous, it hurts the national security interests of this country and threatens the survival of Israel.”

Israeli leaders say U.S. aid to Israel should be seen as the most effective part of the U.S. defense budget.

“Since Israel is the most dependable and strongest ally of the U.S. here in this very unpredictable region, we save America a lot of troops and material,” Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, told GlobalPost, adding that $3 billion was about 2 percent of U.S. military spending in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

“To serve the same interests and objectives of the U.S. in the region without Israel would either have been impossible or it would have taken enormous resources, multiplying U.S. aid to Israel by one hundred times or more. The return on the investment in Israel is very evident and very big,” Ayalon said.

Critics of Israel have long argued that it is time the United States used the aid money to greater diplomatic effect.

But Gerald Steinberg, professor of politics at Bar-Ilan University, said U.S. presidents since John F. Kennedy — who threatened to stop all financial transfers in 1963 over Israel’s refusal to permit inspection of its nuclear program — have learned that financial threats will not budge Israeli governments on vital policies.

“For core issues, the threat to withhold U.S. aid will only make Israel more reluctant to take risks and increase the sense of Israeli isolation,” Steinberg told GlobalPost.

“The only way that Israel is going to be convinced to take security risks like withdrawal is by convincing Israel that those risks are offset, that Israel’s security is guaranteed. That will make Israel more willing to take the risks on the ground that will advance the peace process.”

In Jerusalem, Students Hold a Rare Conversation Across Checkpoints

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
January 16, 2011

Yael Gidanian for The Chronicle

Students from Bethlehem U. and the Hebrew U. of Jerusalem meet in a program organized by the Interfaith Encounter Association.

By Matthew Kalman
Jerusalem

The distance between Bethlehem University, in the West Bank, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem is only about four miles, but it has not been easy to traverse for a group of 20 students from the two institutions. In trying to meet to spend time in each other's company, they have had to navigate military checkpoints, a demanding bureaucracy, and a deep cultural divide.

Against a backdrop of increasing tension and threats of boycotts between Israelis and Palestinians, the students have started a rare effort to pursue dialogue across the political and religious chasm.

On a recent afternoon, dusk is gathering in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City as the students meet in the Austrian Hospice here. Outside, the fruit and vegetable merchants on the Via Dolorosa offer the last of the day's produce, their cries mingling with the muezzin's call from the nearby al-Aqsa Mosque and the hymns of Christian pilgrims retracing the last steps of Jesus.

It's an appropriate setting for a cultural exchange. Today the students are comparing the place of the olive tree and olive oil in their religious traditions.

At this, their fourth meeting, the participants greet each other like old friends, chatting easily in a mix of English, Arabic, and Hebrew. The young Israeli men favor slightly longer hair, but otherwise the two groups—to an outsider, at least—are indistinguishable. As they chat, they share coffee, cold drinks, and baklava from a local shop. The participants learn, with nods of recognition, that the olive tree, its wood, and its oil feature prominently in all three religious traditions, as well as in the history of the surrounding countryside.

The meetings consciously avoid politics, covering religious and cultural ideas instead. Those give each meeting a focus and allow the students to plan projects together. Today they decide to organize the joint distribution of olive oil from West Bank farmers.

The only division emerges as they take their first break: The smokers congregate outside, on the balcony, and the nonsmokers remain inside. Each group is about half Israeli, half Palestinian.

Following months of planning, the first meeting, early last year, was canceled after days of fighting and riots that had left the Bethlehem students facing strong objections from their friends to the idea of meeting Israelis.

Traveling to Jerusalem is no easy matter. Each West Bank student must submit an application to the Israeli military two weeks in advance, then travel to the regional military headquarters, several miles from Bethlehem, to receive a permit—if it is granted—and then pass through a grim military checkpoint of electric gates, barbed wire, and metal turnstiles.

Two meetings were canceled because the military had issued permits for the wrong date, and another for the wrong time. Nour Abu Katta, 22, a Muslim in the first year of a master's program in European studies at Al-Quds University, says it's worth the hassle. He was enrolled at Bethlehem University when the group started and still coordinates the Palestinian participants.

"I believe in negotiations. I believe that if we don't break this ice, if we don't meet and talk, we won't reach the point where we can end this conflict," says Mr. Abu Katta. "If guns and those ways had a point, they could have achieved something 20, 30 years ago. They have been struggling for 60 years, and they have achieved nothing except violence and more violence."

The Oslo peace process, started in 1993, spawned dozens of Israeli-Palestinian dialogue groups, but many fell victim to the violence of the second intifada, which erupted in September 2000. After several Israelis were killed in Palestinian-controlled areas, Israel banned its citizens from going there and denied most Palestinians entry to Israel, in an effort to halt suicide bombers. Now the construction of a security barrier between Israel and the West Bank has sealed the division between the two peoples.

Attitudes on both sides have hardened. Involvement with Israelis has been branded as "normalization" by many Palestinian groups—a searing insult in the local political lexicon—suggesting that such meetings are akin to collaborating with the Israelis. Among many Israelis, meetings with Palestinians are dismissed as a waste of time.

The students at the Austrian Hospice represent a tiny vanguard of young people on each side prepared to challenge those taboos. Only a handful of dialogue groups still operate regularly. This one meets under the auspices of the Interfaith Encounter Association, a nonprofit group based in Jerusalem. Of its more than 20 active interfaith-dialogue groups, only six bring together Israelis and Palestinians. Three of those are student groups.

"Some people say it's a good thing we are doing, that it's worthwhile looking for peace," says Mr. Abu Katta. "Other people say this conflict will not end with dialogue, that it is not beneficial at all. I am hopeful that if it doesn't end the conflict, it might make it easier to be ended."

Sally Zaghmout, a Christian who is a second-year student in business administration at Bethlehem, says none of her friends will come along with her to meet Israelis.

"They say there's no purpose doing all this," says Ms. Zaghmout, 19, whose grandfather fled Haifa during Israel's war of independence, in 1948, and whose parents waged a 10-year battle to return a decade ago. Her friends, she adds, "say we're trying to send the picture that everything is good while the real situation is not like that."

"I try to convince them," she says. "It's true we're small, and we're not really affecting the government, but we're growing slowly. At least we're trying to do something instead of not doing anything at all."

Netta Hazan, 24, a Jewish student of Middle East studies at Hebrew University, says her eyes were opened to the Palestinian narrative through her courses. And working as a waitress in a Jerusalem hotel, she met Palestinians for the first time as equals.

"It's very unusual for Israelis of my age to have Palestinian friends, I'm like one in a million," says Ms. Hazan, who has learned Arabic and is involved in several groups connecting Israelis and Palestinians. "Because of it, I don't have a lot of Israeli friends. When my Israeli friends saw I was becoming more and more in relations with Palestinians, they didn't accept me and my activities. I lost most of my friends from high school or the army."

"My family is very right-wing." she says. "I have five brothers and sisters, and to speak with them about the occupation or the Palestinians—they just don't care." Ms. Hazan travels regularly to Palestinian areas, but many Israelis are scared to go. "They think it's the Wild West," she says.

Yehuda Stolov, coordinator of the Interfaith Encounter Association, says only half the number of Israelis who normally register for events held inside Israel do so when they have to cross the security barrier, even with permits from the army.

But students, he says, are especially suited to these activities, for both intellectual and practical reasons. "Students are more active, they are more willing to do things, they are more willing to go out of their way," he says. "Their routine life is less routine, so it's easier for them to do new things."

"It's very important that we are students," Ms. Hazan agrees. "You can speak more openly with students because they have some basic education, their minds are more open, they are more open to new things. It's easier."

She also believes it is worthwhile: "I think that peace will come from us, from the people. Not from the politicians, not from anyone else. Only from us."

Company Sues for Right to Sell Einstein Disguise

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION January 16, 2011

Reg Speller, Fox Photos, Getty Images

In 1935 a dance troupe used a mask to portray Albert Einstein, among other celebrities, as part of a revue. No lawsuits were filed, but then the physicist was still alive at the time.

Enlarge Image

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

More than half a century after Albert Einstein's death, companies continue to challenge Hebrew University of Jerusalem's tight grasp on the physicist's likeness.

In the latest effort, Forum Novel­ties Inc., a costume wholesaler in Melville, N.Y., filed a lawsuit last month in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York against the university and its licensing agent, GreenLight LLC, asserting the company's right to sell an Einstein costume as part of its "Heroes in Disguise" line.

Retailing for $11 to $26, the costume was described by one online shopper as a good value and a "perfect fit for elementary-age mad scientists."

Einstein died in 1955 and bequeathed his intellectual property to Hebrew University, where he was a founding governor. In 2009, Einstein's image earned $10-million in royalties, down from $18-million in 2008, according to Forbes, which listed him as the eighth-highest-earning dead celebrity. Last year, the university sued General Motors over ads with a raunchy Einstein image in People magazine and denied permission for the dead scientist's picture to appear in vodka ads or at a Madonna concert. But GreenLight said it was pleased to help when Chrysler wanted to use a photo of Einstein in a television commercial "to imbue the rugged but intelligently designed Ram truck with human attributes like 'brain' and 'brawn.' "

According to its court filing, Forum argues that the university "cannot 'inherit' rights from Albert Einstein that did not exist at the time of his death." The company maintains that Einstein's bequest could not have included his image because in New Jersey, where he died at age 76, he would have had a right of publicity only if he had exploited his name commercially before he died. Forum also claims a First Amendment defense, saying the costume is "intended to be worn by children acting in historically based school plays and in every day play."

Lloyd J. Jassin, an intellectual-property lawyer in Manhattan, observed on his firm's blog, Copylaw: "Forum is hoping that the court will see its Einstein disguise kit not just as a commercial product, but as an expressive or communicative work, like a biographic book or film conveying some historical fact."

"The case ultimately turns on New Jersey law," Mr. Jassin wrote. "New Jersey was the place where Einstein last lived. As such, that state's law governs the post-mortem right-of-publicity issue."

The university said that while it was confident it would prevail in court, it was disappointed that Forum Novelties had rejected negotiations and pursued legal action.

Israel planned to push Gaza Strip to 'brink of financial collapse' in bid to shatter Hamas, diplomatic cables reveal

DAILY MAIL 5th January 2011

By Matthew Kalman

Israel told America it hoped to push the Gaza Strip to the 'brink of collapse', leaked diplomatic cables reveal.

Hamas, which won a parliamentary election in 2006, seized control of the narrow coastal strip in 2007 in an armed coup, leading both Egypt and Israel to seal their borders with the territory and impose a crippling economic blockade.

The resistance group is shunned by the international community for its refusal to recognise Israel, renounce violence or accepting existing Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

Protest: Leaked diplomatic cables have revealed the blockade imposed by Israel on the Gaza Strip was designed to bring it to the 'edge of financial collapse'

Diplomatic cables released by the WikiLeaks site reveal that Israeli policy was designed to cripple Hamas, stop daily rocket fire at the south of the country and secure the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, who remains in captivity more than four years after his abduction.

One cable, dated November 3, 2008, was issued seven weeks before Israel launched an attack on the territory that left more than 1,000 dead and thousands more homeless.

It said: 'As part of their overall embargo against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge.'

It added that Israel wanted the territory's economy 'functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis'.

Tough: A Palestinian man inspects damaged to a smuggling tunnel on Rafah, Gaza, after an Israeli air strike last night

Shunned: Israel launched an attack on Hamas in Gaza in December 2008 and has kept up tight economic sanctions in a bid to clampdown on the group

Israel allowed basic foodstuffs and medicines into the territory, but humanitarian groups said the policy pushed thousands of people below the poverty line and left them depended on UN handouts.

U.S. diplomats reported that Israel's designation of Gaza as a 'hostile entity' had led to a clampdown on economic cooperation, including the transfer of banknotes in shekels - the official currency in both Israel and Palestinian activities.

The cable added: 'Decisions on shekels in circulation in Gaza and the territory's economy in general are treated by the government of Israel as security matters.

Captured: The cables, released by WikiLeaks, also reveal Israel wanted to secure the release of soldier Gilad Shalit being held by Hamas

'The National Security Council (NSC) abides by the principal that Gaza should receive just enough money for the basic needs of the population, but is not interested in returning the Gazan economy to a state of normal commerce and business.

'The agency... will not permit any large scale transfer of assets from Ramallah-based banks to their branches in Gaza for fear of improving the purchasing power of entities wishing to harm Israel.'

A subsequent cable, dated December 4, 2008, reported a phone conversation between the U.S. Embassy economic affairs officer and Udi Levi - Counterterrorism Finance Bureau Director at the NSC - which the American used 'to press for release of 250million shekels to the Gaza banking system'.

It added: 'Mr Levi said continued rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza, stalemate in negotiations on release of Hamas-held Israeli Defence Force soldier Gilad Shalit, and new information on Hamas access to the Palestinian Authority salary payments funded by the requested transfer all made it unlikely that the GOI would honour the request.'

Mr Levi said banks in Gaza were being forced by Hamas to pretend they had a liquidity crisis in order to pressurise Israel into allowing more cash into the territory.

'He offered to share all GOI information on the topic in a meeting with relevant U.S. government officials at their earliest convenience.

'We will take him up on that offer and report,' the cable added.

Israel arrests two staff members at the British consulate office in Jerusalem on terror plot charges

DAILY MAIL 4th January 2011

By Matthew Kalman

A Hamas spokesman speaks during a news conference in Gaza City in September last year. Two staff at the British consulate in Jerusalem were arrested yesterday on terror charges, accused of working with two Hamas operatives

Two staff members at the British consulate in Jerusalem were arrested yesterday on terror charges.

Israel’s Shin Bet security service accuses them of supplying weapons for a planned attack on the city’s Teddy football stadium.

The unnamed Palestinians were allegedly working with two Hamas operatives detained in November.

Musa Hamada and Bassem Omeri were indicted in the Jerusalem district court on Sunday and charged with planning a terror attack and membership of a terrorist organisation.

The Shin Bet said the suspects were ‘systematically checking how best to launch a rocket while the stadium was crowded with people during a game’.

‘The two visited a hillside across the stadium in order to survey the area for their attack,’ it said.

Israeli officials said the pair acquired a number of rifles from contacts in East Jerusalem, including the two members of the staff of the British consulate general there, which represents UK interests with the Palestinian Authority.

The Shin Bet said all the suspects were arrested, questioned and confessed to their involvement in buying the weapons.

A Foreign Office spokesman confirmed last night that two local members of staff at the consulate had been arrested.

He said: ‘We are aware of reports that they may be charged with the illegal sale of weapons. We are urgently seeking confirmation of the charges.

‘We have been told by the Israeli authorities that the investigation into our two employees is unrelated to the work they do at the consulate. It is not appropriate to comment further on what is an ongoing legal process.’

The Shin Bet said the terror plot was connected to a larger terror network.

Hamada has allegedly visited Saudi Arabia a number of times, where he met up with a representative of the Muslim Brotherhood radical group.

Eugene Perchikov, suspected in deaths of mistress & Manhattan widow, commits suicide in Israeli jail

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, January 3rd 2011

By Matthew Kalman
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM -- A man wanted by New York prosecutors in the unexplained deaths of his Brooklyn mistress and a Manhattan widow committed suicide in an Israeli jail, authorities said Monday.

Eugene Perchikov, 62, was found dead in the cell he shared with seven other prisoners at the Russian Compound police jail in central Jerusalem, where he was being held as he fought extradition to New York.

The families of both women believe Perchikov, who had medical training, offed them with the same "perfect murder" method he described in one of several creepy mysteries he wrote more than a decade ago -- fatal drugs that leave no traces in a victim's body.

Perchikov, a Russian emigre, had taken hefty life insurance policies out on the two -- and fled the U.S. after collecting $1 million for the death of his mistress, 48-year-old dressmaker Larysa Vasserman.

The suspect is also believed to have used his medical training in his own demise: Jailers say he cut himself with a disposable razor in a place on his body that would have fatal results.

The Daily News reported last October after Perchikov's arrest that he had been indicted by a Manhattan grand jury in connection with the double murder mystery.

The nature of the charges were under seal, but Israeli authorities say that extradition papers filed in Jerusalem District Court described him as wanted for the murders of both Vasserman and Tatiana Korkhova, 54.

Vasserman, a lonely divorcee who met Perchikov through a personal ad, died in her Brooklyn apartment in 2002. Korkhova, a widowed bookkeeper who knew Perchikov from Russia, was found dead in her Manhattan home in 2004.

In both cases, the medical examiner could not determine the cause of death.

Both women had been persuaded by Perchikov to take out multiple life insurance policies - using fraudulent information - naming him as beneficiary, court papers charge. Perchikov was only able to collect on one of the three policies taken out by Vasserman.

He was arrested by Israeli police at Ben-Gurion airport in October after a three-year manhunt. He apparently lived with his wife in Herzliya, Israel but she had denied any knowledge of his whereabouts.

Perchikov wrote his eerie murder mysteries under the pen name Eugene Pepperou.

A suit filed by Korkhova's estate claims she was given "an overdose of norepinephrine, a method of murder which Perchikov described in detail in the short story."

The lawyer representing both women's estates hired prominent pathologist Cyril Wecht to review their deaths.

He found a scenario Perchikov described in his self-published volume of short stories - in which a murder victim is killed with an undetectable injection of norepinephrine - was plausible.

A suit filed by Vasserman's family against Perchikov and the insurance companies was dismissed.

The Israeli Prison Service and the police have opened an investigation into his death. His lawyer, Mechael Ironi, told the Haaretz newspaper that he believed Perchikov stood a good chance of beating the extradition request.

Did first humans come out of Middle East and not Africa? Israeli discovery forces scientists to re-examine evolution of modern man

DAILY MAIL 27th December 2010

By Matthew Kalman

Scientists could be forced to re-write the history of the evolution of modern man after the discovery of 400,000-year-old human remains.

Until now, researchers believed that homo sapiens, the direct descendants of modern man, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and gradually migrated north, through the Middle East, to Europe and Asia.

Recently, discoveries of early human remains in China and Spain have cast doubt on the 'Out of Africa' theory, but no-one was certain.

Professor Avi Gopher, a researcher from Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, holds a pre-historic tooth at Qesem cave, an excavation site near the town of Rosh Ha'ayin

The new discovery of pre-historic human remains by Israeli university explorers in a cave near Ben-Gurion airport could force scientists to re-think earlier theories.

Early humans: Middle Awash Aramis, Ethiopia, where the first 'modern' human beings were thought to have been discovered

Archeologists from Tel Aviv University say eight human-like teeth found in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin – 10 miles from Israel’s international airport - are 400,000 years' old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, making them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered anywhere in the world.

The size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man. Until now, the earliest examples found were in Africa, dating back only 200,000 years.

Other scientists have argued that human beings originated in Africa before moving to other regions 150,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens discovered in Middle Awash, Ethiopia, from 160,000 years ago were believed to be the oldest 'modern' human beings.

Other remains previously found in Israeli caves are thought to have been more recent and 80,000 to 100,000 years old.

The findings of Professor Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Institute of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthroplogy, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East.

The Qesem cave was discovered in 2000 and has been the focus of intense study ever since.

A group of international and Israeli researchers have discovered pre-historic artefacts and human remains at the site that may prove the earliest existence of modern man was about 400,000 years ago.

Along with the teeth – the parts of the human skeleton that survive the longest – the researchers found evidence of a sophisticated early human society that used sharpened flakes of stone to cut meat and other impressive prehistoric tools.

The Israeli scientists said the remains found in the cave suggested the systematic production of flint blades, the habitual use of fire, evidence of hunting, cutting and sharing of animal meat, and mining raw materials to produce flint tools from rocks below ground.

'A diversified assemblage of flint blades was manufactured and used,' the Tel Aviv scientists wrote, describing the tools they found in the cave.

'Thick-edged blades, shaped through retouch, were used for scraping semi-hard materials such as wood or hide, whereas blades with straight, sharp working edges were used to cut soft tissues.'

The explorers said they were continuing to investigate the cave and its contents, expecting to make more discoveries that would shed further light on human evolution in pre-historic times.

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Armageddon Fortress May Hold Keys to History

AOL NEWS, Dec 26, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

MEGIDDO, Israel -- The Book of Revelation says the biblical fortress of Armageddon will be the site of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil at the end of time. Scientists believe it could also be the place where time begins -- at least for archaeology.

In a groundbreaking new project, scholars are using the rich archaeological remains that soar more than 50 feet above the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel to synchronize the clocks of the ancient world and create the first definitive calendar of human history.

Wikimedia Commons

The ruins atop Megiddo in Israel may look like just another hill, but the mound is man-made, containing the remains of 29 cities built one on top of the other from 3,000 to 300 B.C.

The word "Armageddon" comes from the Hebrew Har Megiddo, which means mountain of Megiddo, where Revelation says the final battle will take place. To the untrained observer, the modern-day site of Megiddo looks like one more hill in the Carmel mountain range near Haifa. But the vast mound is entirely man-made, containing the remains of 29 separate cities built one on top of the other by a succession of civilizations from 3,000 to 300 B.C.

More than a century of excavations has revealed a complex network of houses, stables, temples and palaces protected by massive fortifications and watered by two natural springs.

The treasures discovered at the site have posed as many questions as they have answered about the history of the ancient world. A vast, centuries-old temple deep within the mound is the largest yet discovered from that period in the Levant but its purpose and rituals -- including several large, perfectly round black stone altars just a few inches high -- are unknown.

It was around this time that stone inscriptions and records on clay tablets and papyrus began to record human history in the area. The Bible, the most monumental work of all, emerged during this period. Early archaeologists used the Bible as a guide, relating their finds to events described there and allocating them to biblical figures.

The Megiddo Expedition

Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University looks over the archaeological dig which is located in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. Finkelstein is the current director of the excavation.

The legendary Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin identified one impressive Iron Age gateway as the remains of a city built by Solomon in the 10th century B.C., but the current director of the excavation, Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, rocked the scholarly world when he declared the remains to be at least 100 years later. Finkelstein's theory threw the traditional view of the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms into disarray and cast doubt on whether the biblical giants had ever truly been "kings" at all.

Now Finkelstein, together with Tel Aviv University physicist Eli Piazetsky, is spearheading an international effort to settle the chronology once and for all. A scientific conference at Megiddo, "Synchronizing Clocks at Armageddon," launched a project to analyze 10 separate Iron Age destruction layers using four state-of-the-art scientific techniques: radiocarbon dating, optical luminescence, archaeo-magnetism and rehydroxilation -- a new method pioneered in Britain within the last two years.

Megiddo is the only place in the world with so many destruction layers -- archaeological strata resulting from a calamity such as a fire, earthquake or conquest -- that resulted from a specific event in history.

Finkelstein told AOL News that the site provides "a very dense, accurate and reliable ladder for the dating of the different monuments and the layers."

"These destruction layers can serve as anchors for the entire system of dating," Finkelstein said. "Megiddo is the only site which has 10 layers with radiocarbon results for the period 1300 to 800 B.C.E."

Scientists hope that by analyzing the archaeological strata they can nail each layer to a specific year or decade, using the physical data from Megiddo to set the clocks of history and create a definitive timeline that can be used as a basis for accurately dating all archaeological sites.

The Megiddo Expedition

Part of the Tel Aviv University team work on some of their discoveries at the archaeological dig which is located in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel.

It's an ambitious undertaking and one with profound implications for historical scholarship. A definitive timeline for the Levant could also unlock the secrets of ancient Greece, where specific historical dates before about 600 B.C. are basically guesswork. One conundrum that has perplexed scholars for years is a major discrepancy between the dating of sites in the Levant and those with similar pottery and other artifacts in the Aegean Basin.

"For many years the traditional dating of strata in the Levant were about 100 years earlier than that of the Aegean. There was similar pottery that we date to the 10th century and they date to the ninth. The question was, who's right?" said Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, director of the excavation at Tell es-Safi, believed to be the ancient city of Gath, home of Goliath.

"The problem is that the Aegean does not have an independent chronology for the Iron Age," Finkelstein said. In the absence of a historical record, dating of pottery from ancient Greece has relied on Greek pottery found in Middle East excavations. New doubts cast by Finkelstein about the dating of sites in Israel have thrown the ancient Greece timeline into further disarray.

The new project will take samples from Megiddo and other sites where dates are fairly certain and subject them to a battery of four different scientific tests:

Radiocarbon, or carbon-14 dating, measures the decline of a naturally occurring radioisotope to fix the date it was deposited at the site. It can be used for animal remains, plants and even olive pits. But it cannot determine the age of inorganic material like pottery; some materials, including wood, can give false results; and it requires a complex statistical calibration that on 3,000-year-old items produces inaccuracies of up to 300 years.

Archaeo-magnetism measures changes in the Earth's magnetic intensity and magnetic north over centuries to date pottery and cooking ovens. Optical luminescence is in its infancy. It measures the effect of the sun's rays on quartz particles to determine when certain minerals were last exposed to sunlight.

Rehydroxilation is a method recently developed in Britain that measures the amount of moisture absorbed from the atmosphere by oven-fired clay. Experiments suggest that it can accurately date bricks and pottery from 50 to 2,000 years old. The team has taken some 5,000-year-old pottery samples back to the lab at Manchester University to see if they get similar results.

They believe the method has the potential to become as important for ceramics as radiocarbon dating is for organic materials.

"Making the various tools for dating archaeological finds more accurate is very important," said Maeir, whose own excavation is part of the project. But he warned that rehydroxilation may not provide magic answers. Like carbon-14 dating, it involves a statistical manipulation that is likely to result in similar disputes between scholars.

"If they did reach a clear-cut model which would be agreed upon by the overall majority, it could have a whole slew of historical implications," he said. "It changes your understanding of what was going on from a political, from an economic point of view at these various sites. This could in theory have very broad implications for our ability to interpret the historical scenarios."

Slum-Touring Millionaires Put Off the Ritz in Israel

AOL NEWS Dec 19, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

JERUSALEM -- Ronald L. Gallatin is a retired attorney, a CPA and a former managing director at Lehman Brothers credited with creating some of Wall Street's most ingenious investment instruments. His wife, Meryl, is a prominent philanthropist in Florida charity circles. But when they visit Israel, they prefer hanging around soup kitchens and drug addict drop-in centers rather than fancy restaurants.

Over the past seven years, the Gallatins have given more than $2 million of their own money and raised more than $4 million from friends for a charity they set up "to fill in the cracks" left by social services in the U.S., Israel and Latin America. They also promise donors that 100 percent of funds will be donated to the causes listed on their website for Hands On Tzedakah, so the Gallatins also absorb all the administrative costs of their charity, including one or more trips each year to Israel.

They use their own money to seed all the projects and then encourage their donors to identify one where their donation should be applied.

The Gallatins are just two clients of Arnie Draiman, a travel guide with a difference. Draiman takes tourists off the beaten track to show millionaires and other would-be donors the darkest underbelly of Israeli society, helping them target their charity where it will have the most effect.

Arnie Draiman shows would-be donors the darker side of Israeli society, helping them target their charity where it will have the most effect.

"I want to teach them how to give their money away efficiently and effectively," Draiman said.

He said there was an increasing interest among tourists to Israel in welfare and assistance projects -- the flip-side of the sun-drenched beaches, nonstop nightlife and centuries-old religious culture projected by official government advertising.

"Our trips aren't about museum hopping," Meryl Gallatin told AOL News during a recent visit to Crossroads, a cash-strapped drop-in center for at-risk youth in downtown Jerusalem. "We're here to do due diligence on behalf of our donors. This is a different kind of tourism."

Not all of Draiman's tourists are millionaire philanthropists. Parents bring their bar mitzvah boys and bat mitzvah girls to tour projects as part of the preparation for their coming of age as a lesson in social responsibility. Newly married couples, flush with their own good fortune, want to engage with people less fortunate than themselves. American religious and community leaders also come to Draiman to see the reality of Israeli society so they can better understand the country.

At first, some projects didn't understand why they should host visitors who weren't about to make a donation. Over time, they have adopted Draiman's long-term view.

"I have countless examples of people who have visited a place and later gone back and included it in their wedding registry or a bar mitzvah boy has included it in his bar mitzvah project," Draiman said.

He said the key to the attraction of his tours is the term "tzedakah" -- an ancient Hebrew phrase that combines "righteousness," "charity" and "justice."

"I use the word in the broadest terms possible to include not only money but your time and your effort and anything that goes into making the world a better place to be," Draiman said. "A lot of it revolves around the money, the financial end, but it's more than that. Tzedakah is translated best as 'righteous giving' or 'giving rightly.'"

Draiman's work has brought him into contact with people he labels "heroes" -- ordinary individuals who help the people around them in an extraordinary way.

"If someone calls me up on the phone and says, 'I've got this really great place I want you to hear about,' I'll listen. But if you call me up and say, 'I want you to meet this incredible person,' my ears really prick up," he said.

Some of Draiman's favorite heroes include Bracha Kapach, the wife of a Jerusalem rabbi who feeds more than 1,100 poor people every week and more than 20,000 at Passover; the "chicken lady" who provided a fresh chicken every week for several hundred poor families even when she was well into her 90s; and Avshalom Beni, who uses dogs and cats to provide therapy for Holocaust survivors and children with behavioral problems.

When Draiman introduces philanthropists like the Gallatins to these unsung heroes, lives can be changed on all sides.

One recent afternoon, the Gallatins arrived at Crossroads, a cause they have supported for several years, for their first meeting with its new director, Robbie Sassoon. A skeptical Ron Gallatin grilled Sassoon about the center's projects and finances with a ferocity that would not have been out of place in a Manhattan boardroom.

"We treat making the decision of how our donors' money is spent as the highest level of fiduciary responsibility," Ron Gallatin said. "Our donors give to HOT [Hands On Tzedakah] because they trust us to have meetings like this one and know that we are making sure that every one of their dollars goes directly to help someone in profound need. Our donors know that HOT has no expenses and that we do not permit our partners to charge any administrative charges on any project we support. The donor is truly seeing his whole dollar helping the people he wants helped."

After a half hour, the former Wall Street guru sat back, pronounced himself satisfied and proceeded to write out a check that was much larger than the one he had planned. Then they were off to their fourth meeting of the day, in a five-day trip that contained no tourist visits at all.

"This is not depressing," Meryl Gallatin said. "It's the feelgood of making a difference. It's being able to go back after seeing a success story."

None of it, the Gallatins said, could be achieved with confidence without having someone like Draiman to advise them.

"Arnie comes with us on many of our site visits and interprets far more than the language. He helps us understand cultural nuances that can only be understood by someone living in Israel," Meryl Gallatin said. "You cannot have absentee management. We hold all of our Israeli partners to a very high standard of accountability and use Arnie to monitor them when we aren't here. What we are trying to do doesn't work without someone like him on the ground."

"I'm in their face, much more than if they filled out a form once a year," Draiman agreed.

New Stars Light Up Bethlehem Nightlife

AOL NEWS, Dec 19, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- For as long as anyone can remember, young people have had nothing much to do in Bethlehem after nightfall. When the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen finally quit the streets in 2005, restaurants and cafes continued to observe an unofficial 10 p.m. curfew, and anyone seeking some action had to head north to Ramallah, a tortuous, hourlong journey through military checkpoints and death-defying mountain roads.

"I spend my evenings at home on the Internet because there is nothing to do here for people our age," said Sally Zaghmout, 19, a student at Bethlehem University. "There are no bowling alleys, no cinemas, no big fields where you can go and play sports. It's really hard. If people of my age go to discos some gossip will start because it's a really conservative country and everybody knows everybody."

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Twin brothers Firas and Ruslan Mukarker opened Taboo, the first venue in Bethlehem to stay open every night until dawn.

But this season, something is happening in Bethlehem. In recent months, a growing number of hip nightspots have opened around town, drawing packed crowds until well past midnight -- a signal, perhaps, of a new confidence on the part of young entrepreneurs and a shift toward some kind of normality after a decade of violence and economic privation.

Bethlehem's economy fell to pieces after the outbreak of the intifada uprising in September 2000. Tourists, who provide the city's main source of income, stopped coming. On Star Street, the traditional gateway to the old city, 88 of the 102 shops are still shuttered. Thousands of residents emigrated.

When the intifada ended in 2005, Bethlehem, recognized by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, was surrounded by an Israeli security barrier and military checkpoints that cut off its residents from nearby Jerusalem and deterred all but the most determined pilgrims.

The first signs of life after dark appeared in 2006 when a local entrepreneur opened a late-night disco, discreetly situated on the upper floor of a failed holiday complex in Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem. A hefty entrance charge and a couples-only policy kept out troublemakers. Now renamed the Layal Lounge, the club attracts crowds from all over the West Bank from Thursday to Saturday nights.

The same year, twin brothers Firas and Ruslan Mukarker opened Taboo, the first venue to stay open every night until dawn. Taboo's chill-out music, tiger-skin wall-hangings, soft red lighting, display of African masks and nude paintings announced a new generation of Christian Bethlehem nightlife.

"In 2006 it was the first place called a bar in Bethlehem, it was something really new," Firas Mukarker told AOL News. "We called it Taboo because there was pork and alcohol. No one had the guts to put pork on the menu. We were the first in Palestine."

But the successes in Beit Jala didn't catch on inside the city itself. The Palestinian economy remained depressed and unemployment in Bethlehem stayed close to 40 percent. In 2008, Mike Canawati, a prominent local businessman, opened the Square on Manger Square, opposite the Church of the Nativity. Spread over three floors and with an international menu, the Square brought the new nightlife into the middle of town for the first time.

"We started this new trend of staying open until 1 a.m.," Canawati said. "Two years ago there was nowhere else in this area open until that late. Now there are a few. We serve European food -- Italian, French. Our menu was the first of its kind in Bethlehem. We wanted to make something new. Not everybody wants to eat kebab and lamb chops and hummus."

Now the tourists have returned. Khouloud Daibes-Abu Dayyeh, the Palestinian minister of tourism, said that nearly 1.5 million people will have visited Bethlehem by the end of 2010, up 60 percent over last year and an all-time record.

Unemployment in Bethlehem has fallen to 22 percent. A dozen new souvenir shops have opened in recent months, and property owners are scrambling to turn every available building into accommodation for tourists.

Samir Hazboun, chairman of the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told AOL News the number of hotels has grown from six in 1995 to 31 today, with three more under construction and four others in the planning stages.

The new investors have benefited from a series of economic reforms that have made bank loans widely available to Palestinians for the first time in living memory. The result has been a massive 9 percent growth in gross domestic product over the last year and rising employment across the West Bank.

Jihad al-Wazir, head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, said the new regulations had freed up some $750 million in loans for individuals and the 94 percent of local businesses that have four employees or fewer.

"There was a tremendous increase in lending," said Wazir. "The Palestinian economy is dependent on these very small-scale enterprises that are the drivers of the economy. It's great that the entrepreneurial spirit is catching up. People see other young kids doing the new projects and so they emulate it and so it starts a chain reaction where the overall impact is very positive."

Sami Matar and his business partner, David Salti, secured a loan to transform a shop wrecked in intifada gun battles, in the shadow of an Israeli military watchtower in the security wall, into the Divano Cafe and Restaurant, a classy new nightspot with a European menu that boasts the largest aquarium in the West Bank and the most extensive cocktail menu in Bethlehem.

"I wanted a mixture of something elegant and cool," said Matar, 27. "We wanted it to be friendly. The classic restaurants here aren't cool. I lived in the U.S. for two years. I wanted to create something like you would find there."

The result is a youthful mix of soft couches, subtle red lighting, dark wood paneling and European-style wall paintings where the elegant presentation of the food matches the ambiance. It appears to be a winning formula. Divano is packed every night, mainly with locals, and it's impossible to get a table after 6 p.m. without a prior booking. Divano serves about 200 every day and has to turn away another 50.

Outside the restaurant, the grim concrete wall and watchtower across the street surrounding the shrine at Rachel's Tomb is a reminder that the venture could be destroyed at any moment by a new outbreak of violence.

"It's a risk," Matar acknowledged. "I know that and my partner knows that, but we couldn't find a better place than this. We will trust in God."

Harry Potter and the Deeply Appreciative Professor

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW December 5, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

More than a decade has passed since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by an unknown author through a minor London publisher. It is hard to recall that before the blockbuster movies, before the chocolate frogs, before the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park, in Orlando, Harry Potter was neither a Warner Bros. franchise nor a commercial cliché but a series of fantasy stories that transported an entire generation of kids away from their TV sets and video games and into the delights of the old-fashioned printed word.

The sensation in Britain was so great that by the time J.K. Rowling's third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was published, in July 1999—two years before the release of the first movie—booksellers were asked to keep it off their shelves until late afternoon for fear that thousands of children would skip school to buy it. The British edition had an initial printing of a quarter of a million copies. In 2000, The New York Times created a new list of children's best sellers so the Potter series wouldn't crowd adult authors out of the coveted top 10 spots.

Not everyone was impressed by this youthful literary revival. Harold Bloom famously described the books as "rubbish." "The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible," he said.

Shira Wolosky disputes that assessment in The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests (Palgrave Macmillan). Wolosky, an English professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sees in the works genuine literary depth, invention, construction, and imagination...

(Full article here)

In Biblical Valley, 'David vs. Goliath' Battle Rages Over Oil Shale

AOL NEWS Saturday, Dec 4

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

ELAH VALLEY, Israel (Dec. 4) -- A baron from the prominent Rothschild family is teaming up with media mogul Rupert Murdoch in an attempt to break Israel's foreign oil dependency by mining vast amounts of oil shale in the unspoiled Elah Valley, where the Bible says David fought Goliath.

But their business plan has morphed into a family battle all its own because of some unexpected opposition from Lord Jacob Rothschild's second cousin, a celebrated eco-campaigner.

David de Rothschild gave up the chance to enter his family's multibillion-dollar banking business and instead has emerged as a "green" leader lauded by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. He describes his cousin's plans to heat up rocks beneath the Judean Hills as "very serious" and has promised to investigate.

Andreas Rentz, Hubert Burda Media / Getty Images

David de Rothschild disagrees with his cousin's plan to mine oil shale in Israel's Elah Valley.

Oil shale mining involves heating the ground to transform buried, tar-like organic compounds into oil, and then extracting it. But the process is criticized for being an inefficient way of getting energy, because it takes so much energy to heat up the ground and create the oil, and then drill for it. Al Gore has described the practice as "utter insanity."

Such technology is economical only when the price of oil is very high, as is the case right now. And Lord Rothschild has said he believes oil shale mining "could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world."

His cousin David disagrees. "I as an individual actively discourage environmentally harmful activities," he wrote in a letter to Green Prophet, an environmental website focusing on the Middle East. But he acknowledged that he's "part of a large family with many diverse opinions."

"I cannot be held responsible for other people's actions despite my best efforts, even family members," David de Rothschild wrote.

Aside from concerns about the Rothschild project's energy efficiency, it would also involve bulldozing dozens of deep trenches, each more than two miles long, through some of Israel's most picturesque and archaeologically significant landscape.

The Elah Valley is where tradition holds that the young shepherd boy who would become King David faced off against the Philistine giant Goliath, and vanquished him with a slingshot and a pebble. In addition to disfiguring the biblical site, the oil mining project's trenches would cut through farms, vineyards and a network of 1,000 historic underground caves where the rebels of Bar Kochba hid from the Romans in the first century.

In August, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense filed a petition with the Israeli High Court demanding that the drilling license be revoked, charging that it was issued "without any plan and without any indication of the resulting effect on the environment."

The valley is zoned in the Israeli National Master Plan as green space. But under Israel's 1952 Oil Act, oil companies can bypass planning and other regulations in the hunt for energy resources. Israel's minister for environmental protection, Gilad Erdan, has promised to change the antiquated law.

Hagit Teshler, 44, a college lecturer who lives in the tiny community of Srigim-Li-On at the foot of the valley, was among more than 1,000 residents and campaigners who gathered Friday on a hill overlooking a test-drilling site late last month, to protest the venture.

"The industry that they want to build is an experimental industry that doesn't exist in any other place in the world," Teshler told AOL News. "In the U.S., it's very hard for them to get past the laws, so they come here. We don't know anything about the ramifications of this experiment, what damage it will do. They are heating the ground to very high temperatures. We don't know what gases will come out of this, or what damage will be caused to the air and the water.

"Most of the ministers, except for Gilad Erdan, are very much in favor of the oil industry because they believe that it will free Israel energy-wise from all our neighbors. But the oil that is produced is very low quality that will need a whole other industry to make it available as fuel for cars. Israel doesn't know what it's getting into," she said.

Mining the reserves of shale oil embedded in the rock would require a huge amount of electrical power -- equivalent to half of Israel's entire national supply, plus millions of cubic feet of water in a country entering its worst drought in modern history.

Lord Rothschild, based in London, is one of Israel's largest benefactors. He donates millions of dollars a year to social, educational and cultural projects in Israel through Yad Hanadiv, a family foundation founded by his ancestors. Major gifts include university fellowships, the Supreme Court building and a new National Library currently under construction.

Last month, Lord Rothschild and Murdoch, the American-Australian media tycoon, jointly acquired 11 percent of the Genie Energy Corp. unit Genie Oil and Gas Inc. for $11 million. Genie Energy, a subsidiary of the huge IDT Corp., owns 89 percent of Israel Energy Initiatives, which has an exclusive shale oil exploration and production license from the Israeli government for 238 square miles of the Judean hills southwest of Jerusalem, on the border with the West Bank.

This area, known as the Adullam district, was a major population center in biblical times and boasts a rich variety of significant archaeological sites from the cave network and Roman amphitheater of Bet Guvrin in the south, to the Elah Valley where David fought Goliath in the north. Today, it is an area of pastoral stillness, home to several small rural communities known as moshavim, with vineyards, olive groves, forests and farmland.

Israel Energy Initiatives believes that its shale oil cracking technology can free the world from dependence on Arab oil and turn Israel into an energy powerhouse able to produce 300 billion barrels of non-conventional oil at a cost of up to $40 per barrel.

Effie Eitam, a former minister of national infrastructure who is now president of Israel Energy Initiatives, told Haaretz that Lord Rothschild had "a strong history of supporting the environment. He asked a great many questions on this point, and was persuaded that when the pilot is completed in two years, very few question marks will remain."

But after a series of protests organized by local residents, Tafline Laylin, a Cairo-based analyst with Green Prophet, contacted David de Rothschild, urging him to persuade his cousin to withdraw from a deal that she believes could "unleash a miserable chain of ecological and social reactions."

"The in-situ technology requires that 5-kilometer-long trenches are dug in order to reach the underlying rock. This is then heated to 350 degrees Celsius and in part releases a gas that is converted to sulfur-rich fuel. Three hundred such trenches will be necessary to produce 300,000 barrels of oil (per day). Also, the safety of heating up the rock has yet to be established and could release at least 15 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere," Laylin warned.

"We urge the Rothschild family, and you as its eco-diplomat, to rescind its shares in what could be one of the most devastating projects to hit Israel's soil," she wrote.

The response from the young Rothschild was swift, setting the stage for a family showdown.

He wrote that he would "continue to write to not only family members but also other individuals and business about how their actions influence the world environmentally in the hope that they will place a greater significance on this area and seek clean alternatives that can help us tread more lightly."

"I do consider the 'Oil Shale Exploration' to be a very serious and pressing matter and something that I will look into further as a priority," de Rothschild wrote. "[I] promise to explore this matter further."