One man's stand against an Israeli settlement

Matthew Kalman reports from Jerusalem on a Palestinian farmer's extraordinary story

Thursday, 18 August 2011

QUIQUE KIERSZENBAUM

Said Ayid on his land next to Har Homa, also known as Jabal Abu Ghneim, where he has lived for 73 years

Said Ayid was born under the British Mandate, grew up in Jordan, raised his eight children under Israeli occupation and now lives on the edge of a sprawling new Israeli neighbourhood under the token protection of the Palestinian Authority.

But throughout those 73 years he has not moved an inch.

Two weeks ago, the Israeli government announced the addition of 930 new units in Har Homa, the new neighbourhood built in the past decade on the adjacent hillside south of Jerusalem, occupied by Israel in the Six Day War of 1967.

That number might have been higher, but Mr Ayid's tiny farm is the next parcel in line and he refuses to sell. His stubborn reluctance to leave his home has become a solitary stand against the concrete sprawl threatening his land and his livelihood.

"This was my grandfather's house. I was born here. I've lived every minute of my 73 years right here. I never even went to school. As long as I am alive, I will not leave my land," Mr Ayid told The Independent as Israeli bulldozers gouged out another few metres of his property.

In 1998, Robin Cook, who was then the British foreign secretary, provoked a diplomatic dispute with the Israelis when he visited the future site of Har Homa, then a pine-covered hilltop known to the Palestinians as Jabal Abu Ghneim that overlooked Bethlehem and the adjacent village of Beit Sahour. Mr Cook was accompanied by senior Palestinian officials and hundreds of protesters.

The politicians and protesters gave up the fight years ago, and the Palestinian Authority, while praising Mr Ayid's "steadfastness", have lifted neither finger nor chequebook to help him.

"My son went to the President's office in Ramallah to ask Abu Mazen (the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas) for help, but they did nothing," Mr Ayid said. "Thousands of Palestinians used to come here and protest but in they end they achieved nothing."

Mr Ayid inherited 25 dunams (6.25 acres) from his father, but seven years ago a platoon of Israeli soldiers and paramilitary border police arrived, sealing off 1.5 acres of his property that lay within the expanded municipal boundary of Jerusalem. He watched in frustration as bulldozers tore apart the agricultural terraces where he grew wheat and laid the foundations for two large residential blocks. The land was expropriated by an Israeli government order. He fought the decision in the Israeli courts without success.

Israel offered him compensation but he rejected it, refusing even to discuss a figure for fear that it would legitimise the next step: eviction.

"I refused to accept it on principle. If I signed an agreement allowing them to take that part of the land, they will take the rest," he said.

Twice, Israeli officials have appeared on his doorstep offering to buy the remaining property.

"They said 'name your price' but even if they gave me $10m (£6m) what's the use? How could I ever face God if I sold my land? Even if they fill the valley with their money I wouldn't take it," he said. "One day I will die. If I am poor I will die, if I am rich I will die. If I lose my land, the money doesn't mean anything."

Today, Mr Ayid scrapes a living for his extended family of 50 by tending a handful of goats and sheep and growing wheat and olives as the towering blocks of Har Homa form a spreading arc from west to north to east around his land.

To the south, the Israelis built an anti-terrorist security barrier five years ago across a route used by suicide bombers to enter Jerusalem from Bethlehem. Now Mr Ayid is completely encircled.

His grandfather owned another 2.5 acres of olive groves a 10-minute walk away in Beit Sahour. His brothers moved there before 1967. Today they cannot enter Jerusalem, while his Israeli permit allows him access only to his land. For medical treatment, food and emergencies, he must take an expensive half-hour trip through an Israeli checkpoint via Bethlehem.

"Since they built the wall, I have been isolated, cut off from Beit Sahour and Bethlehem. I'm sure they would love to take this land next," he said.

One morning during Ramadan he watched as Israeli surveyors mapped out a new access road and sewage line within the property he still retains. He will not be connected to the new drain, nor to the fresh water supply piped to the edge of his property. Instead he must draw water from a well. An Israeli electricity grid ends a few metres away, but his power comes from a line his father hooked up decades ago.

When the plans for Har Homa were first approved by the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, they seemed uncontroversial to the Israelis. The new project was one of a ring of southern Jerusalem neighbourhoods planned to secure Israeli control of Jerusalem. Located within the newly extended municipal boundary of Jerusalem, one-quarter of it would be built on land bought for Jewish settlement back in the 1930s that was subsequently occupied – illegally, in Israel's view – by Jordan.

But then came the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords, accompanied by the rapid northward expansion of Bethlehem, and the Palestinian demand for an Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders. Although Mr Rabin had no intention of ceding land in Jerusalem, the Har Homa plan suddenly seemed untimely and it was shelved.

Under Jerusalem's right-wing mayor, Ehud Olmert, and the right-wing, pro-settler government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the plan was revived and, despite international condemnation, building began in 1999. Today, 20,000 Israelis live in Har Homa and thousands more will populate the homes now being built. Palestinians say that, in addition to being built on illegally occupied land, the completed neighbourhood will form a physical barrier between Bethlehem and Beit Sahour to the south and the East Jerusalem villages of Um Tuba, Beit Safafa and Tsur Baher to the north.

"This plan changes the potential border between Israel and Palestine in Jerusalem more than any other East Jerusalem plan that has been approved in recent years and will make a permanent status agreement on Jerusalem incrementally more difficult," said Danny Seidemann, a human-rights lawyer who is a critic of Israeli policies in East Jerusalem.

Mass protests and tent cities shake Israeli government

The Irish Times - Monday, August 15, 2011

Incensed by low pay, soaring living costs, economic inequality and high poverty rates, people have taken to the streets, writes MATTHEW KALMAN in Tel Aviv

DAPHNI LEEF is an unlikely revolutionary. The 25-year-old Israeli film school graduate comes from a comfortable, middle-class home and wants to direct movies.

But last month Leef pitched a tent in the middle of Tel Aviv’s smartest neighbourhood to protest rising living costs, sparking nationwide protests of more than 300,000 demonstrators, rattling the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and turning swathes of Israel’s cities into hippy-style tent communes.

Some Israeli politicians have dismissed Leef as a spoilt, drug-taking, middle-class fake, but she said the past month had changed her view of her country forever.“People seem driven,” said Leef in an interview near the leafy boulevard where she first pitched her tent. “It just keeps getting bigger and bigger.

“I think people feel it just has to work. We demand social justice. We don’t want to negotiate it. We just want it. I am very proud for the first time in 25 years, genuinely proud, to be a part of this Israeli public,” she said. “I am proud to be here. Proud to fight for the social rights that we deserve. And I am very proud to be a part of such a non-violent uprising. I think it’s unbelievable.

“We’re fighting for very basic things,” she said. “Being able to keep a roof over our heads, to have a decent education system, a healthcare system, employment and welfare.” Two months ago, Leef received an eviction order from her Tel Aviv apartment. During fruitless weeks searching for a home within reach of her film-editing job she discovered that rents had doubled in five years.

“I couldn’t find anything in my range. Everything was ridiculously expensive and in a horrible state,” she said.

“Then I started crunching the numbers. I’m supposed to be the best-case scenario. I’m 25 and I do not have a family to support. I have an occupation. And for some reason I can’t find a way to finish the month without going further into debt.” Leef had read about Hooverville, the tent city in New York’s Central Park during the Great Depression in the 1920s. On Bastille Day, July 14th, she invited her Facebook friends to pitch camp on the grassy, tree-shaded median of the elegant Rothschild Boulevard. Ten people turned up and went to sleep. They awoke to a social revolution.

“In less than four days we were 1,500 people. By the end of the week we were 5,000,” she said.

Tent cities sprang up across Israel, accompanied by large, peaceful demonstrations. The protests followed strikes by doctors, social workers and municipal workers over low pay and tough conditions.

Leef said people were incensed by low pay, the high cost of living and confusion about Israel’s supposed economic boom.

“If we’re not making money, but the country is, then where does the money go?” she asked.

At first, the campers were ridiculed by government ministers, but the tents multiplied, questions were raised in parliament and debates erupted on television. Finally, Netanyahu appointed a government committee to negotiate and draft new policies.

But Leef said she would not be negotiating. “This is not two governments, one against the other,” she said. “You have the people demanding to be treated with respect, for the priorities to change, for the system to change, and then you have the government, the people we elected, who we pay to do their job. Being a film student, I don’t think I should be in negotiation with them. I don’t have the knowledge. I can talk to you from the place where I’m aching from, but I don’t know what’s going on in the budget. I have no clue.”

Stav Shaffir (26), a graduate student in history and philosophy and one of the original campers, was clearer about possible demands.

“We feel like the government started a war on its people,” she said, suggesting a tax increase for top earners from 40 per cent to 55 per cent, and a cut in VAT.

“We want to change the economic system from neo-liberal to a welfare state,” she said.

This week there were more than 1,000 tents lining Rothschild Boulevard, symbol of Tel Aviv’s recent makeover from dusty backwater to hip vacation destination. Beneath the billboards offering million-dollar holiday homes, next to the sushi and espresso bars, washing lines hung across the cycle path and the grass verge was covered with mattresses and old sofas. There were communal kitchens, blow-up paddling pools and hundreds of posters demanding free education, cheaper housing, more jobs, better transport and social equality.

Volunteers offered haircuts, legal advice, first aid and childcare. There were tents of religious and secular, Arabs and Jews. People played guitars, smoked water pipes, watched TV on large screens and smooched.

As a tribute to the Egyptian revolutionaries, the meeting-point where the protesters gather each night to debate, listen and hear visiting lecturers is called “Tahrir Corner”. Leef said she admired the Arab Spring but insisted her aim was to change priorities, not the government.

“If you’re an elected public official and for a month it just gets bigger and bigger, people screaming out their pain, how can you ignore it?” she said.

Outside one tent, Dana Turgeman (32), an artist, designer and single parent from Hadera in northern Israel, watched as four-year-old Muoar worked on his colouring book.

“My rent has just been increased from €500 to €600 per month. By the time I’ve paid for rent and kindergarten and babysitters and food and electricity, my bills are more than twice what I can earn,” she said.

“I have debts of €20,000. I’ve borrowed from my parents, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles but I’ll never be able to pay them back. I used to think it was just me. Now I know I’m not alone. Something in this country has to change.”

Since the 1990s, Israel’s economy has been transformed. Rapid privatisation and a high- tech revolution remade Israel as a world leader in information and medical technology. The country sailed through the world economic crisis. Unemployment is below 7 per cent. Last year, the economy grew faster than the United States, Britain, Japan, Germany or France.

But the new wealth has failed to reach the Israeli middle class. The OECD says Israel’s poverty rate is twice the average of other developed countries, while its welfare and education spending is significantly lower. Thirty-nine per cent of Israelis find it “difficult” or “very difficult” to live on their current incomes.

Economic reform delivered wealth into a handful of pockets, replacing creaking socialism with cartel-based capitalism. A 2010 report revealed 10 large business groups controlled 30 per cent of the market value of public companies, while 16 control half the country’s money.

Shaffir said the tent cities were a new beginning.

“We have built a new society, with schools and kindergartens and lectures and kitchens that serve three meals a day and we’ve even developed a special sign language that allows us to hold discussions and vote with over 100 people at a time,” she said . “It has to work, it must work, and it will work, because this won’t happen for another 10 to 15 years.”

Palestinians to apply for UN statehood next month

THE INDEPENDENT, Monday 15 August 2011

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will present a request for formal recognition of statehood to the United Nations on 20 September, officials confirmed this weekend, saying they have the support of 117 UN member states.

Israel and the US oppose the idea, saying it is a unilateral move in a process that should be negotiated between the parties. European nations have yet to decide their vote.

Officials in Ramallah said Palestine would seek recognition as the 194th member state of the United Nations, echoing UN General Assembly resolution 194 of December 1948, which refers to the return or compensation of refugees following the establishment of Israel.

Mr Abbas will personally hand the request to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who will refer it to Lebanon, the current president of the UN Security Council.

The United States has already said it will cast a veto in the Security Council, depriving the process of any legal value, but the Palestinians hope to win a solid majority and a moral victory in the General Assembly.

Mr Abbas told a meeting of his Fatah faction that the decision to seek UN recognition was "a result of Israeli intransigence and refusal to hold serious negotiations that would lead to ending the Israeli occupation and establishing an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital," according to the Palestinian news agency WAFA.

Mr Abbas added that "seeking UN recognition does not oppose the peace process and does not aim to isolate Israel. Rather, it will reinforce the two-state solution," WAFA reported.

Israeli President Shimon Peres, who held four rounds of secret peace talks with Mr Abbas before they were abandoned in August on the orders of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said: "A UN declaration would be meaningless and only prolong the conflict. I hope that both sides return to the negotiating table before September."

Palestinian Foreign Minister Riyad Al-Malki said the UN had "a moral, legal, political and historical responsibility to recognise Palestine as a state and grant it full membership".

Some Israeli leaders have voiced strong concerns about the emerging Palestinian bid. They fear that large-scale rallies could turn violent, plunging the region into another bloody intifada. The Israeli daily Haaretz said the tone of Israeli government reaction bordered on "hysteria".

Palestinians attack East Jerusalem settlement approval

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

THE INDEPENDENT Friday, 12 August 2011

The Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has accused Israel of "a total disregard for Palestinian rights" after its Interior Ministry announced the approval for the construction of more than 4,000 housing units in East Jerusalem.

The Interior Minister Eli Yishai said he had authorised the building of 625 homes in Pisgat Zeev, 1,600 in Ramat Shlomo, and 2,000 in Givat Hamatos. The Israeli government says the project had been given the green light to help solve a severe housing shortage.

The neighbourhoods were all built by Israel across the pre-1967 border in territory previously held by Jordan that was captured by Israel in the Six-Day War and annexed to Jerusalem. Legally, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem are permitted to live in such suburbs, but very few actually do. Ramat Shlomo is designated as a strictly ultra-orthodox Jewish area.

Last week, Israel was internationally condemned when it announced it was building 930 units in Har Homa, an Israeli suburb built across the Green Line on the southern outskirts of Jerusalem close to Bethlehem. Critics included the EU and the US State Department, which said it was "deeply concerned".

In a statement, Mr Fayyad condemned the decision, describing the areas as "occupied territory that belongs to Palestinians". "The Government of Israel continues to expand settlement activity while it makes claims that it wants to return to the negotiation table," he said. "Their actions clearly demonstrate Israel's intentions to conduct their affairs outside the realm of international law and show total disregard for Palestinian rights. The Palestinian government calls upon the international community to take immediate action to force Israel to comply with international law and cease and desist from its illegal expansion and annexation of Palestinian land."

Robert Serry, the UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, said he was "alarmed" by the Israeli announcement and noted that the Ramat Shlomo plan "was already condemned by the Quartet on 12 March 2010 during an initial planning stage". "This provocative action undermines ongoing efforts by the international community to bring the parties back to negotiations and shape a positive agenda," he said.

The 1,600 units in Ramat Shlomo will be built almost immediately. The project caused a major rift in Israel-US relations when it was announced in the middle of the first official trip to the country by US Vice-President Joe Biden last year. "[The projects] are being approved because of the economic crisis here in Israel. They are looking for a place to build in Jerusalem, and these will help," said Interior Ministry spokesman, Roi Lachmanovich. "This is nothing political, it's just economic."

The Israeli government has been rattled in recent weeks by mass demonstrations demanding a solution to the country's severe housing shortage. Peace Now accused the Israeli government of "cynically using the current housing crisis in Israel to promote construction in the settlements".

Tool Creates Fresh Web Apps from Aging Code

Visual WebGui makes an application accessible via the Web without altering its code.

Published by MIT

Friday, August 12, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

A tool that lets developers turn existing software into fully functional browser-based applications is becoming an increasingly popular way to make business applications accessible via the Web.

Visual WebGui, an application originally run on a Web server using virtualization software and a layer of code that renders its interface functional in the modern Web standard HTML5, lets companies offer Web access to their applications without completely rewriting the code.

While it is possible to access applications through a browser using just virtualization, this can be slow for data-heavy business applications such as those used by banks and insurance companies. It also requires installing an application on the user's computer.

Made by Gizmox, of Tel Aviv, Israel, Visual WebGui is being used by companies and institutions such as SAP, IBM, Visa, Thomson Reuters, Shell, Texas Instruments, and Goodyear. So far, the company says, 35,000 apps built using its platform are in production. In June, Citrix, a major supplier of remote-desktop software, announced an investment of $2.5 million. The Gizmox platform works with Microsoft's .Net development, and Microsoft is partnering with Gizmox by promoting the software through its marketing platform.

"We decided we were going to look at the basic architecture of the Web and change whatever [was] necessary to reproduce the experience of the desktop in terms of richness, performance, user experience, and security," says Gizmox CEO Navot Peled. "We call it transposition. We can take a code that was written basically for an architecture that was targeting the desktop, put it through some processes and some tools, and generate code from the other side that can run on top of a Web server and be a Web application, cloud application, or mobile application."

Gizmox generates income by charging about 20 cents per line of code to use the company's code-conversion tools. The largest program so far had 7.5 million lines.

The technology requires 10 percent of the bandwidth and 50 percent of processing power of other virtualization-based solutions, enabling it to function on tablets and smart phones with lower-power CPUs.

"Anyone who can take corporate applications built on Microsoft tools and turn them into Web apps in a secure way—that's important," says Jonathan Medved, a venture capitalist turned mobile entrepreneur. "Anything that keeps them in the game relative to the burgeoning world of Web apps is very strategic for Microsoft, and for players like Citrix who have built themselves on Microsoft foundations."

Hamas-Fatah deal in sight after prisoner release agreed

The Irish Times - Wednesday, August 10, 2011

MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem

PALESTINIAN FACTIONS Fatah and Hamas have moved towards healing a deadly rift by agreeing a mutual release of prisoners and the appointment of joint committees to address outstanding grievances.

The breakthrough after months of stalemate came ahead of a push for UN recognition in September.

After lengthy talks in Cairo, Fatah representative Azzam Al-Ahmad said: “Today’s meeting was very successful and it revived the reconciliation agreement, hindering all attempts to fold it. Our adherence to this agreement was also confirmed in this meeting.”

Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zahri said the agreement was “important, because it is a reassuring message to the Palestinian people and it reflects the seriousness of both parties in implementing it”.

Fatah, the ruling party of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, has been locked in a bitter dispute with the Hamas Islamic Resistance Movement since 2007 when Hamas fighters staged a bloody coup and ejected Fatah from the Gaza Strip.

Hundreds of loyalists were killed in the fighting, most of them from Fatah.

Since then, Hamas has governed the Gaza Strip while Fatah has ruled the West Bank, although it has continued to pay the salaries of thousands of civil servants and prisoners’ and martyrs’ families in Gaza. Each side has arrested the other’s supporters in the territory they control and traded accusations over collaborating with or provoking Israel.

Last May, the two sides agreed to establish an interim government made up of independent political figures that would prepare for long overdue elections.

Mr Abbas met Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal publicly in Cairo to seal the deal. However a follow- up meeting planned for June collapsed amid mutual recrimination.

So far, no interim government has been formed and the promised co-operation on security issues has not materialised.

There is disagreement over the future of prime minister Salam Fayyad. Mr Fayyad is seen by many as the architect of an economic boom in the West Bank and one of the few Palestinian leaders trusted by western donors, but Hamas wants him replaced.

To further complicate matters, the unity deal has been attacked by Israel and the United States which say the deal will legitimise Hamas terror tactics. The Islamic resistance movement refuses to negotiate peace or to recognise Israel’s right to exist.

The committees set up during talks in Cairo at the weekend will address remaining grievances over the granting of passports, social reconciliation, institutions affiliated to each side shut down in Gaza and the West Bank and prisoners.

Ma’an News agency reported that there are 70 Hamas prisoners in the West Bank and 37 Fatah prisoners in Gaza.

Khaled Amayreh, a prominent critic of the Palestinian Authority based in Hebron, said that while the renewed commitment was welcome, Palestinians were waiting to see concrete results after years of on-off talks between Fatah and Hamas.

“We hope and pray that . . . we reach the moment when the rift and all its scars, ramifications and repercussions will be a thing of the past,” Mr Amayreh said.

“The release of political prisoners, which is supposed to take place before the end of Ramadan, will be a real breakthrough,” he added.

But Omar Shaban, head of the Gaza think tank Palthink, was more sceptical.

“Political unity is an illusion,” he said.

British aid cash is handed to families of suicide bombers

LONDON DAILY MAIL, 8 Aug 2011

From Matthew Kalman
in Jerusalem

BRITISH aid cash is being given to the families of suicide bombers, it was claimed last night.

The Palestinian Authority, which gets £86million of British aid a year, has authorised payments of almost £5million to the families of ‘martyrs’.

Another £3million has been given to 5,500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails. The payments, using taxpayers’ cash donated from Britain and the European Union, have been described as ‘ludicrous’ by one Tory MP.

The Palestinian Authority, which oversees the West Bank, has introduced a new law which pays the families of suicide bombers out of its civil service budget.

According to the official Palestinian daily newspaper, AlHayat Al-Jadida, payments to the families of ‘martyrs’ – those killed fighting Israel, including suicide bombers – totalled 3.5 per cent of the budget.

‘ Every terrorist in prison, including those whose acts led to the deaths of Israeli civilians, are on the PA payroll,’ said Itamar Marcus, of Palestinian Media Watch.

‘The salary goes directly to the terrorist or the terrorist’s family, and prisoners receive their salaries from the day of arrest.’

Tory MP Philip Davies said the payments were ‘ludicrous’. He added: ‘People think overseas aid is to try to alleviate terrible poverty in places where they can’t afford to look after themselves. But it’s being put to these kind of purposes.

‘It would be bad enough at the best of times, but at a time when we have got no money, it is utterly inexcusable.’

Last month, Britain committed to giving £86million a year in aid to the Palestinian Authority until 2015.

The payments to families and prisoners are on a sliding scale, from £250 a month for prisoners sentenced to less than three years, to a maximum of £2,140 a month for anyone serving more than 30 years. The payments compare with salaries of £515 for a regular Palestinian civil servant and £480 for officers in the Palestinian security forces.

Minister of State Alan Duncan said in February: ‘We are very careful how we spend our money in the occupied Palestinian territories. We would abhor any money falling into the hands of extremists.’

The Government is under pressure for the amount of aid it is handing out at a time of austerity. It plans to increase foreign aid payments by 35 per cent to £11.4billion by 2015. This comes despite several scandals involving aid. Last week, it was revealed that money to Ethiopia was being used as a political tool and those who oppose the government do not receive handouts.

David Cameron has admitted that the controversial pledge to spend billions more on international aid was a ‘difficult commitment’ at a time when spending programmes were being slashed at home.

The Prime Minister admitted that some aid had been ‘ wasted’, but continued to dismiss ‘aid sceptics’.

COMMENT Aid for terrorists

BARELY a week goes by without new evidence that much of Britain’s bloated overseas aid budget is ending up in the wrong hands.

It is simply unacceptable that money that Britain sends to the Palestinian Authority – £86million a year until 2015 – may be going to terrorists and the families of suicide bombers.

Palestinians in Israeli prisons, many of whom are terrorists, have been placed by the Palestinian Authority on its official payroll as civil servants – and the longer their sentence, the bigger their salary. It also makes payments to the relatives of ‘martyrs’ killed fighting Israel, including suicide bombers.

At a time of austerity, as this paper has strongly argued, the Government’s spendthrift attitude to our aid budget is beyond comprehension. It may be right that we should support the Palestinian government. But only if every penny of our aid is monitored to ensure it does not end up in the wrong hands.

Netanyahu may be forced to destroy settlers' homes

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

THE INDEPENDENT, Saturday, 23 July 2011

The government of Benjamin Netanyahu is on course for its first major clash with Israeli settlers in the West Bank, before a court deadline expires tomorrow to destroy three homes which have been built without permission in a hilltop outpost near Ramallah.

Israel's high court last month ordered the destruction within 45 days of three permanent dwellings in Migron, an outpost of 48 families mostly living in caravans.

The dwellings were built illegally on land owned by Palestinians. If the government complies, it will be the first time Israel has destroyed permanent settler buildings since 2006, when the bulldozing of nine houses in the Amona outpost triggered violent clashes with Israeli police.

Although illegal, even under Israeli law, Migron was given more than $1m (£612,000) by the Israeli ministry of housing and has a road, water, phone lines, electricity and a permanent army patrol. The high court ordered its closure more than three years ago.

Community leaders and politicians, including prominent members of Mr Netanyahu's ruling Likud Party, pledged their support for the settlers.

Young Israelis in tent-city protests over rising prices

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

THE INDEPENDENT, Friday, 22 July 2011

AFP/ GETTY IMAGES

Israeli demonstrators block a main junction in Tel Aviv

Israeli consumers, frustrated after years of spiralling food and housing prices, burst on to the streets of Tel Aviv this week with a popular protest that has transformed one of the city's smartest neighbourhoods into a hippie-style campsite.

Students and other demonstrators pitched hundreds of tents along Rothschild Boulevard, more famous for its Unesco-protected Bauhaus-style architecture and European-style cafes, to protest about rising prices that they claim are forcing young people out of the city.

The organisers are demanding government action to calm the inflated housing market that has seen rents rise in Tel Aviv by more than 60 per cent in four years. Protestors have also starting camping out in Jerusalem with other tent cities springing up from Beersheba in the south to Haifa and Kiryat Shemona in the north.

News of the protests spread through social media, echoing a successful Facebook campaign last month when consumers forced down the spiralling price of dairy products.

Critics have accused the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of being in thrall to a handful of economic oligarchs who effectively control much of Israel's economy.

"The Israeli public – in all fields – is captive to forces with narrow interests," said an editorial in the daily Maariv newspaper.

In Jerusalem, 40 demonstrators occupied the garden of a home in the exclusive Kfar David neighbourhood. One focus of the protests is the large number of city-centre dwellings built for and bought by wealthy foreigners who leave them empty for most of the year.

A rally on Saturday near the Habima Theatre in Tel Aviv will be the first test of the movement's political muscle. "Israel's government continues to disappoint us, and we feel betrayed," said Daphni Leef, the founder of the protest movement. "The struggle is moving on to the next level. We call on all the tent cities to arrive at Habima Square for a rally that will make the upper echelon shake."

"It's our nation, and it's time to give it back to the people," she added.

Israelis earn on average about 100,000 shekels (£18,000) a year and spend between a half and one-third of their salaries on housing. Food and other costs have also spiralled in recent years, making Tel Aviv the most expensive city in the Middle East.

Many politicians visited the tent cities to show support for the protest but were turned away. Police intervened after one demonstrator poured a bottle of beer over Ron Huldai, the mayor of Tel Aviv.

Defying Boycott Vote, U. of Johannesburg Continues Partnership With Israeli Institution

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

NEWS TICKER July 8, 2011, 2:26 pm

Israel’s Ben-Gurion University and the University of Johannesburg have reinstated a collaborative water-research agreement, defying a vote last March by the South African institution’s faculty senate to cut ties with the Israeli university, reports The Jerusalem Post. The faculty vote had been hailed as the first major success of an international academic boycott campaign against Israel, though the vice chancellor of the Johannesburg university said afterward that the university would not boycott Ben-Gurion.

On Friday, the two universities signed a contract to continue their joint research on water purification and the conversion of algae into energy with the cooperation of scientists from the University of California at Los Angeles and the University of Ghent.

The senate vote followed a decision in September 2010 to end links with its Israeli counterpart if it found “direct or indirect military implications” to the relationship. The senate had called on Ben-Gurion to form partnerships with Palestinian universities and ordered a review of the ties between the two institutions. University of Johannesburg officials had told the senate before the vote in March that no Palestinian university had been found to join Ben-Gurion in the project. The Israeli university has several joint projects with Palestinian universities, researchers, and students.

A Less Wasteful Way to Deal with Wastewater

Published by MIT

An Israeli company aims to commercialize microbial fuel-cell technology.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

An Israeli company called Emefcy has developed a process that promises to decrease the energy drain of wastewater treatment. This week, Energy Technology Ventures—a joint venture between GE, NRG Energy, and ConocoPhillips—invested in the company, marking the venture's first-ever investment in a non-U.S. company.

Conventional wastewater treatment consumes 2 percent of global power capacity, some 80,000 megawatts, at a cost of $40 billion per year.

Using conventional microbial fuel-cell technology and its own proprietary engineering, Emefcy harvests energy from wastewater, generating enough to power the entire treatment process. In the treatment of particularly carbon-rich industrial wastewater, the company says, the process produces excess electricity that can be fed back into the grid at a profit.

In microbial fuel cells, naturally occurring microorganisms oxidize wastewater. An anode and cathode, placed a critical distance apart in the water, create an electrical circuit from the electrons gained from this oxidation.

Ely Cohen, Emefcy's vice president of marketing, says the company's process reduces the total cost of wastewater treatment by 30 to 40 percent by eliminating spending on energy, and also reduces the amount of sludge that must be trucked away afterward by up to 80 percent.

Traditional wastewater treatment involves forcing air through the water to aerate it. This is also important to the activity of the microbial cells. Emefcy exposes more wastewater to air but without the energy-intensive process of pumping air through water. Instead, the wastewater flows through a "biogenic reactor" made of tubes 1.7 meters in diameter and four meters high. Inside the tubes, water and air flow alongside each other separated by a membrane.

"The reactor is split into two areas," says Emefcy CEO Eytan Levy. "In one area there is a lot of wastewater but there is no air. In the other area there is air but no wastewater. These two areas are separated by a membrane wall and both areas are connected to an electrically-conductive surface on which the bacteria grows."

The electrons produced by the bacteria flow towards the oxygen in the air through nanowires made of naturally-occurring hair-like projections found on the surface of the microbes. "Under these reactor conditions the bacteria develop the ability to convert these pili to become electrically conductive and it behaves just like a metallic wire," says Levy.

The electrodes used are made of a coated plastic, which makes them cheaper, and easier to maintain.

Each stack can process 10 cubic meters of wastewater a day, and has a planned lifespan of 15 years. Stacks can be added on a modular basis, avoiding the need for a large up-front investment in infrastructure. Emefcy hope to begin industrial production this month, with first sales targeted for early 2012.

Itamar Willner, a professor at the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University, and author of a recent review of biofuel cell technology in the journal Fuel Cells, says using microbial fuel cells for the decontamination of wastewater remains "a challenge."

"There is a tremendous difference between a demo system and upscaling to thousands of tons of wastewater, and a difference between artificially contaminated water used for laboratory testing and the real world, where you have different waste and different materials," says Willner.

Lital Alfonta, an assistant professor in the Department of Biotechnology Engineering at Ben-Gurion University, who develops genetically engineered microbial fuel cells, says there has been growing excitement at international conferences over the progress made by Emefcy.

"They use very cheap materials that still give them the highest possible power output," says Alfonta. "They also immensely improved the approach by stacking their electrodes, giving a much higher surface area."

But Alfonta says that 80 percent of the energy generated by the microbes is lost in the process, because the electrons never reach the electrodes. She is researching whether the microbes can be genetically engineered to improve the efficiency of the electron transfer between the microorganism and the fuel cell's electrode.

For the moment, Emefcy will be content if its stacks prove to be energy-neutral, with a little surplus from the industrial wastewater treatment.

"If you're an organization that's looking for renewable energy, don't come to us," says Cohen. "Go to wind. Go to solar. If you have a wastewater problem, come to us and we'll find a way that is very cost-effective and to a certain extent it could even be an energy-positive solution."

Cost-cutting exercise sees Blair on move – into millionaires' row

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

THE INDEPENDENT Monday, 27 June 2011

QUIQUE KIERSZENBAUM

Tony Blair's new seven-storey site in East Jerusalem

After four years in five-star luxury, Tony Blair is moving out of the American Colony Hotel into a purpose-built seven-storey building now under construction in Sheikh Jarrah: the millionaires' row of East Jerusalem.

The new building will replace the 15 rooms Mr Blair's team rents at the American Colony for more than £1m each year. Since he was appointed as representative of the Middle East Quartet in 2007, his office and accommodation for his dozen-strong staff have been located on the fourth floor of Jerusalem's best known hotel.

The former prime minister's departure will remove a steady source of income from the American Colony just as hotel bookings in the region begin to plummet in response to the wave of unrest sweeping the Middle East.

The lease at the hotel originally expired on 30 June, but has been extended to the middle of the month to allow the completion of building work at the new location on Nablus Road.

When The Independent visited the new building on Sunday it was still under construction. Workers were hanging off the outside of the building fitting aluminium window frames. The site is screened by a high metal fence and at least five CCTV cameras, suggesting that Mr Blair's team have already installed some of the watertight security systems necessary to protect the former prime minister.

The Quartet will lease the new building from the influential Nashashibi family, who have constructed the block from local sandstone and smoked glass on land owned for decades by their family. Mr Blair and his team spend about one week in four in Jerusalem. He spends the rest of his time working for his foundation, and on commercial activities.

Officials say the move is intended to reduce costs and simplify security, though with a lease costing the Quartet about £750,000 a year, the new building will not be cheap. Sub-tenants from carefully-vetted organisations will occupy some of the space in order to offset the cost of the lease.

A spokesman said: "Yes, the Office of the Quartet Representative will be moving out of the American Colony Hotel, to an office building elsewhere in East Jerusalem this summer. This will reduce our office costs and provide more suitable office accommodation."

The move also suggests Mr Blair and the Quartet are digging in for a long haul and may be expanding their operations.

The building will house sleeping accommodation for Mr Blair and his travelling advisers, including the 24-hour security detail provided by the Scotland Yard diplomatic protection unit, but it is not clear who will provide housekeeping and laundry services.

Israel Vulnerable to Cyber Attack, Leaders Warn

A conference on cyber warfare in Tel Aviv reveals Israel's weaknesses—but a strategy to solve them is already in hand.

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW Wednesday, June 15, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

The outgoing head of Israel's internal security service Shin Bet and the head of the country's cyber task force, among others, warned at a conference on cyber warfare at Tel Aviv University last week that strategic Israeli installations are essentially unguarded against cyber attack.

Around the world, a series of high-profile security breaches have afflicted major government and commercial institutions in recent weeks, including the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin, Sony, and Citibank. Earlier this month, hackers compromised the computer systems at two Israeli diplomatic legations in the U.S. and put them out of service for several hours.

Last year, it was discovered that cyber warfare had broken new ground with the Stuxnet worm attack, which targeted the control systems of nuclear plants. The U.S. and Israel have been accused of designing the worm, which disabled the Iranian nuclear plant at Natanz by causing extreme temperature variations, and which went undetected for months, perhaps years. Several speakers at the conference referred to Stuxnet as a game changer because it brought cyber warfare into the realm of offensive acts against critical infrastructure. But there was no public acknowledgement or even hint that Israel was indeed responsible for the worm. Instead, discussion focused on the country's defense against cyber attack.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the conference, "The more computerized we get, the more vulnerable we become. There is therefore no choice but to deal with this in a more systematic and focused manner."

The outgoing Shin Bet chief, Yuval Diskin, blamed China for some recent computer security breaches around the world and said the Chinese government's cyber command now comprises "the largest number of hackers on earth." He said there was evidence that on April 8, 2010, China diverted 15 percent of U.S. Internet traffic through its routers. (He was referring to an incident described in the report of the Congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission released last November. The attack lasted for 18 minutes and appears to have been a case of IP hijacking or BGP hijacking—the takeover of whole blocks of website addresses by corrupting Internet network routing.) Cyber warfare is already "an existing reality," he said.

Diskin asserted that Israeli networks critical to cell-phone communications, transport systems, finance, and the supply of electricity and water are all wide open to attack, and that this constitutes "a major threat to national security" because Israel, like all modern states, relies heavily on such systems to function normally.

In May 2011 the Israeli government appointed a National Cybernetic Taskforce led by Isaac Ben-Israel, a professor at Tel Aviv University, reserve major general, and former head of the Administration for the Development of Weapons and Technological Infrastructure at the Israeli Defense Ministry. The task force submitted a report last month that made a series of recommendations for defending Israel's strategic infrastructure from cyber attack.

The measures recommended include the establishment of a national cyber authority to oversee the protection of Israel's critical systems, the development of an Israeli research supercomputer, protocols to identify attacks in progress and repair any damage caused, and the creation of a simulation center to train and certify engineers who will specialize in system protection.

Ben-Israel told the conference that while Israeli military and intelligence networks are well protected, the country currently has "no defense for critical installations such as the electricity network." He warned, "You have systems that each one by itself is not critical, but someone who wants to attack Israel can attack three or four of these sub-critical systems in parallel and together will achieve the effect of paralyzing the country."

Ben-Israel also hinted that the government may be considering mounting an offense. "It's not enough to remain passive and defend yourself. You also have to do all sorts of things, but I won't talk about that," he said.

Danny Dolev, a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a member of the task force, agreed that Israel's civilian computer systems are "wide open, a weak point." He said, "To defend Israel, we need to develop sensing of many things happening at once, which individually may seem unimportant but as soon as we look at their correlation, suddenly something happens."

Other experts urged the adoption of new kinds of security measures, observing that technologies such as the firewall, which identifies potentially malicious inbound network traffic, cannot guard against attacks by people or malicious programs already within an organization's security cordon.

Nimrod Kozlovski, an adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University and chairman of Altal Security, said current security protocols were based on the outdated concept of "trusted" and "untrusted" people trying to access a system. But today's threats may come from a "trusted" person within the system—like Bradley Manning, who is accused of downloading thousands of U.S. diplomatic cables and passing them to WikiLeaks.

William Beer, director of the OneSecurity Practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers London and an adviser to the British government, said, "The current approach to cyber security is failing. People engaged in securing cyberspace face the challenge of continuing to raise their game faster than the attackers."

Despite Promises of Research Funds, Israeli Colleges Feel Slighted

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION June 8, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

The announcement in April that Israeli colleges will be allowed to seek government funds for research has ended a decade-long battle, but college heads say the war is not yet won.

Colleges here have been fighting the country's eight research universities for accreditation and public financing since the colleges emerged in the 1970s as satellite campuses of the existing universities. Many colleges chafed at being subservient to their parent institutions, unable to make their own decisions.

But with the rapid expansion of Israel's population came growing pressure to offer more options for higher education. In 1995 the colleges were granted independent status and then were placed under the supervision of the Council for Higher Education, which oversees higher-education policy and financing in Israel. By 2006 there were 21 publicly subsidized colleges that couldn't use those funds to back research.

Meanwhile, there was a parallel development of 14 privately funded colleges, beginning with the College of Management Academic Studies, or COMAS, founded in Rishon LeZiyyon in 1978 as a school of business studies. COMAS has expanded into broader academic programs, and with 12,000 students, it is now the largest college in Israel. Private colleges like COMAS are also regulated—but not financed—by the Council for Higher Education.

The colleges helped nearly triple the number of students in higher education, from 76,000 in 1990 to 237,000 in 2010, and now teach a majority of Israeli undergraduates. But public colleges remain tightly controlled both in student numbers and the courses they can offer, including a ban on teaching law.

Aliza Shenhar, president of the publicly funded Max Stern Yezreel Valley College in northern Israel and chairperson of the Committee of College Presidents, has said the two-tier system is unsustainable.

"Strengthening access to higher education, the goal underlying the establishment of the public colleges, created a binary academic system under which these colleges concentrated exclusively on teaching, whereas universities dealt with teaching and research," Ms. Shenhar wrote recently in the journal Kivunim Hadashim.

The system "puts college faculty members at a competitive disadvantage, while also hamstringing the colleges' development and their ability to develop new fields of study," she wrote.

Competing Interests

The colleges' fight for funds coincided with a decade-long crisis, from 2000 to 2010, in which the Israeli government slashed some 20 percent of the budget for higher education.

Shlomo Grossman, chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education from 2003 to 2009, said the colleges received as much backing as possible at a difficult time.

"The main issue while I was chairman was to keep the system working, mainly to enable the universities to run both teaching and research, and the colleges to establish their infrastructure and facilities and to get a body of students," he said. "Due to the shortage in the budget, we couldn't support research in colleges."

Today, Mr. Grossman said, the government is focused on reversing a brain drain that has caused the country to lose 25 percent of its scientists. "The top priority is to bring back the brains that we lost," he said. "The second priority is to help the colleges to continue developing."

But Seev Neumann, president of COMAS, questioned the government's commitment to research financing for colleges. He said he feared the announcement of as-yet-undetermined research funds for colleges was "lip service."

He noted that another recent project, which will provide some $2-billion over the next five years for 30 "centers of excellence" to lure scientists back to Israel, is off limits to private colleges and some public ones.

"Even within the universities, it will create a system where some researchers who are part of the centers of excellence are getting better terms, better equipment, better laboratories than their colleagues," he said. "It's going to create tremendous tension."

Mr. Neumann said he had the flexibility to decide on acceptable salary ranges and was not bound by issues of tenure. But he said the private colleges still suffered from "discrimination." They are banned from offering doctoral degrees and must wait four to five years for new courses to be approved.

Despite these restrictions, the colleges are attracting growing numbers of students and international recognition. Today nearly 15 percent of Israeli students study at private colleges like COMAS, which has a joint business-studies program with the City University of New York and is pursuing more overseas partnerships. The private Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya has a joint master's program in European studies with Heinrich Heine University at Düsseldorf, and student-exchange agreements with 40 universities worldwide.

Philanthropist Plans to Double $100-Million Gift to Israeli Institution

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

GLOBAL NEWS TICKER June 6, 2011, 11:46 am

Alfred Mann, the billionaire Jewish philanthropist, says he is redistributing his billion-dollar pledge to universities around the world, giving more money to fewer institutions, starting with the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa. He established in 2007 the Alfred Mann Institute at the Technion, which commercializes medical technologies developed at the Technion with a gift of $100-million, but he now intends to double the donation.

“My original plan was to donate $100-million to 12 universities around the world, in other words $1.2-billion altogether,” Mr. Mann told the Israeli business newspaper Globes, “but I now think that I should invest more in fewer institutions, and invest more in each company.”

Some universities in the United States have declined Mr. Mann’s donations because of concerns about the strings attached to them regarding patent rights.

Arabic Social Startup Stays Local

d1g.com shows the value of building a social networking site around local customs.

Published by MIT

Friday, June 3, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

In Arab culture, a diwan is a traditional ruling council, a social watering hole, and a political forum. A website called d1g.com (pronounced "diwanji") aims to replicate this institution online.

Launched in 2007, d1g.com is a platform for sharing videos, photos, audio, a forum, and a Q&A facility. Users can create new diwans around any subject. While less successful in the region than the U.S. giants Facebook and Twitter, the site is one of the Arab world's fastest-growing social-media and content-sharing websites, with more than 13 million users, 4.8 million unique monthly visitors, and 15 million videos. The company streams more Arabic videos than anyone else—600 terabytes of data per month. Many attribute the site's success to its adherence to local customs.

"People are crying out for quality Arabic content," says Marwan S. Juma, Jordan's former minister of information, communications, and technology. "There is clearly a niche there, a huge opportunity. It's not only the content, it's the culturalization. How can you make your content relevant to a regional audience? It's not a question of taking something in English and translating it."

Almost 100 percent of d1g's content is user-generated, and the small amount produced by the company is developed in Arabic in-house. Early diwans covered everything from movies to motorcycles. But d1g.com became the most popular Arab social-media site (after Facebook and Twitter) when a user created the "Egyptstreet" diwan during the Egyptian revolution.

"We saw a huge spike in our traffic," says Fouad Jeryes, who oversees business development at the company's offices in central Amman. Unique visitors rose from three million to five million per month, and visits per month grew from six million to 13 million.

Although Facebook and Twitter, which both have Arabic functionality, dominate social networking in the Middle East, Jeryes says many users still prefer local sites. "From content to user interface, d1g.com is tailored to address the needs of Arab users and fit our culture," says Jeryes.

The technology is also designed with the local audience in mind. Outside Jordan, broadband in the Arab world is generally capped at 1,024 or 512 kilobits per second, and many users are on dialup modems—a challenge for video streaming.

"If you put a video on YouTube and a video on d1g, and you stream them both to your computer, d1g will actually stream faster—to the Arab region at least," says Jeryes. "We take a hit on the quality in terms of getting the video delivered to the user."

Abdelmajeed Shamlawi, CEO of Jordan's Information Technology Association, agrees that non-English-speaking Arabs remain wary of global sites. "On Twitter and Facebook, I don't think that people are actually going for the Arabic versions," says Shamlawi. "In Saudi, the number of page views of d1g is almost equivalent to Facebook. It's not the Arabic content, it's the Arabic culture. It's user behavior."

Suspicion of foreigners is compounded by concerns about privacy and censorship, both required in traditional Arab societies. Fifty d1g moderators check each upload and remove material that could be culturally offensive or politically dangerous.

Mahmoud Jalajel, a Jordanian blogger and tech entrepreneur, says Arab society is not ready for an unfettered Web. "If you open a forum and your father opens the same forum and finds nudity, he will ban the whole family from the Internet. It's a cultural thing that it has to be this way."

Israel Announces First Grants in $350-Million Program to Reverse Brain Drain

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

GLOBAL NEWS TICKER May 31, 2011, 12:15 pm

The Israeli government has announced the first three grants in its $350-million program to create 30 Centers of Research Excellence to lure Israeli scholars back from abroad. The first centers will be established in molecular science, led by the Hebrew University professor Howard Cedar; in cognitive processes, led by the Weizmann Institute of Science professor Yadin Dudai; and in computer science, led by the Tel Aviv University professor Yishay Mansour. The three centers have already signed up 11 Israeli scholars currently at U.S. institutions including Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities and the University of California at Berkeley. “In the framework of the national program to establish centers of excellence, some 300 leading Israeli scholars from the best universities in the world are expected to return to Israel,” said Manuel Trajtenberg, chairman of the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Israel Council for Higher Education.

The award caps a good month for the Cedar family. Mr. Cedar’s son Joseph, a leading Israeli movie director and Oscar nominee, just won the award for best screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival for his movie Footnote, about competing father-son Talmud scholars at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Retired U.S. Academic Is Arrested in Israel on Suspicion of Antiquities Trafficking

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION May 18, 2011

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

A retired American college lecturer has been arrested in Israel on suspicion of trafficking in stolen antiquities and attempting to smuggle them out of the country.

John L. Lund, 70, a motivational speaker, author, and tour guide, was detained late Monday by Israeli customs and antiquities agents as he prepared to board a plane at Ben Gurion Airport. Mr. Lund is an expert on Egyptian history, is the author of How to Hug a Porcupine: Dealing With Toxic and Difficult to Love Personalities, and, according to his Web site, has lectured in history as an adjunct faculty member at universities in California, Idaho, Utah, and Washington.

A search of his belongings revealed a stash of ancient silver and bronze coins that he was attempting to take out of Israel without a permit, as well as $20,000 and other evidence from the illegal sales of ancient coins, clay oil lamps, and glass and pottery vessels, said a statement from the Israel Antiquities Authority. Mr. Lund had been acting as a guide to two groups touring Israel.

One of the items retrieved by officials was a rare Roman lamp bearing an incised decoration of a seven-branched menorah. Such items are not permitted to be taken abroad without an export license from the antiquities agency.

Mr. Lund was allowed to leave Israel after posting a bond of $7,500. Israeli police expect to file charges in the near future.

"The sale of antiquities without a permit and the export of antiquities from Israel without permission are criminal offenses for which the penalty prescribed by law is up to three years' imprisonment," said Amir Ganor, director of the Israel Antiquities Authority Unit for the Prevention of Antiquities Robbery, in the written statement.

Contacted by phone at his home in Utah, Mr. Lund categorically denied that he had trafficked in any stolen antiquities or attempted to smuggle any items out of the country. "I’m not trying to smuggle anything," he said.

He said he had brought coins, the inscribed oil lamp, and a few other items from his personal collection to use as visual aids for his lectures.

Agency officials said they were first alerted to Mr. Lund's alleged trafficking two weeks ago by a sale at a Jerusalem hotel where he offered items to a group of American tourists he was guiding. Mr. Lund was detained, and a search of his room revealed "hundreds of ancient archaeological artifacts in his possession, ... which had allegedly been stolen by antiquities robbers from different sites throughout the country," the agency said in the statement.

He was questioned and released, but officials continued their surveillance. "He resumed his evil ways and continued selling antiquities to tourists—this time to another group that arrived in Israel," said the Antiquities Authority.

On Monday officials searched the luggage of a group that had been guided by Mr. Lund as they prepared to cross the border from Eilat to Egypt. They found 20 of the group carrying dozens of illegally purchased archaeological items, including Roman-era bronze and silver coins, 1,500-year-old clay oil lamps, and ancient pottery and glass vessels. The items appeared to have been stolen from tombs and antiquities sites and most were allegedly purchased from Mr. Lund. The travelers were permitted to leave after the items were confiscated.

Mr. Lund said he had bought items from authorized dealers to pass on to the group at no profit and said that no one in the group had any stolen antiquities.

Israel left reeling after deadly border breach

THE INDEPENDENT Tuesday, 17 May 2011

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

Palestinian mourners with the body of a protester killed in Sunday's march

Israeli security and intelligence chiefs traded accusations yesterday over who allowed more than 100 protesters to cross the heavily guarded border with Syria, as Palestinians marked the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in a string of incidents that left 15 unarmed protesters dead and Israel's doctrine of border deterrence in tatters.

Israeli leaders believe that the simultaneous appearance of thousands of civilians marching towards three sensitive borders in different parts of the country suggested a co-ordinated campaign.

Ahead of September's expected approval of Palestinian independence by the United Nations General Assembly, the Israelis fear that the Iranian-backed military efforts that link Gaza, Lebanon and Syria will be supplemented by further mass political action to which Israel currently has no response except gunfire.

The Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is also coming under increased pressure to produce a peace proposal, if only to recover the diplomatic initiative from the Palestinians, who seem to be on a roll.

Palestinian representatives from Hamas and Fatah met yesterday in Cairo to flesh out an agreement to end their mutual hostility and form a unity government to prepare for new elections.

As military engineers repaired the breach in the border fence made on Sunday, Israeli security forces flooded the area, searching for infiltrators who had failed to return to Syria.

Israel police spokesman Mickey Rosenfeld said police carried out house-to-house searches in Majdal Shams village throughout the night. One man who hid overnight in the village was captured in a taxi en route to Jerusalem.

Israeli military commanders blamed faulty intelligence for the border breach while intelligence chiefs said the local commanders were at fault for failing to prepare their ground forces. Only about a dozen soldiers were on duty when the crowd burst across the border.

Observers pointed out that the protests had been publicised on Facebook for months and it did not take intelligence training to notice hundreds of buses arriving on the Syrian side of the border.

Acknowledging that Sunday's events were "not good", Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, the chief of staff of Israel's armed forces, praised his troops for not inflicting higher casualties in what rapidly developed into an impossible situation.

Alex Fishman, a commentator at the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth, said: "What we witnessed yesterday on the Syrian border was a failure." He warned of "more attempted mass marches into Israeli territory... Marches and flotillas to implement the right of return will gather more and more momentum."

"The state of Israel has a systemic problem," Mr Fishman said. "Except for deterrence, it has no means to prevent tens and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians – who succeed in getting organised and in realising the dream of return with their own feet – from breaking across its borders."

But Israel's border deterrence was shattered by Sunday's marchers, who simply walked through a minefield thought to be deadly. Not a single landmine exploded. Shaul Mofaz, the chairman of the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee, told colleagues that Sunday was merely a curtain-raiser and was likely to be replayed unless the Government produced a peace plan.

"The Israeli Government is burying its head in the sand. Without any peace initiative, yesterday's events will repeat themselves in September," Mr Mofaz said. "The present Government, headed by Netanyahu, isn't initiating anything."

Protesters shot dead by Israel as Arab Spring crosses borders

THE INDEPENDENT Monday, 16 May 2011

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

A Palestinian throws stones at Israeli police at a checkpoint near Ramallah

The Arab spring finally found its way to Israel's borders yesterday, with deadly results.

At least eight people were reported killed after Palestinians marched on three different frontier posts with Lebanon, Syria and Gaza to commemorate the 63rd anniversary of the Nakba ("catastrophe") of the founding of Israel on 15 May, 1948, and the creation of the Palestinian refugee crisis.

Two people were killed and more than 100 wounded after Israeli troops opened fire when 200 protesters broke through the border fence between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and marched to the centre of the village of Majdal Shams. The village has been under Israeli control since the 1967 Six Day War. It was the first time anyone had breached the heavily guarded border fence, which is flanked by minefields and patrolled by the UN, Israeli and Syrian forces.

Syria condemned the shootings as "criminal acts" by Israel, while Israeli officials said the deadly "provocation"bore "the fingerprints of Iran".

"I instructed the Israel Defence Forces to act with maximum restraint but to prevent any infiltration into our borders," said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "Everyone should know that we are determined to protect our borders and our sovereignty."

The worst incident occurred when thousands of protesters, transported to the southern Lebanese village of Maroun Al-Ras by bus, threatened to break down the border fence after hanging flags on the barbed wire and singing songs. Israeli and Lebanese troops both fired warning shots to disperse the crowd and five people were reported killed.

Eyewitness Matthew Cassel reported on Twitter: "Lebanese army started shooting in air non-stop. There was a stampede, refugees running away."

There were more deaths in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians marched through a Hamas checkpoint towards the Erez border crossing with Israel. Border guards opened fire with tank shells and machine-guns. Medics in Gaza said one person was killed and more than 40 injured.

There were also violent clashes between Palestinian demonstrators and Israeli security forces in Hebron, East Jerusalem, Kalandia and Wallajeh.

Palestinians demonstrated throughout the West Bank and Gaza. The main rally was held in the West Bank city of Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian Authority government. Mohammed Elayan, of the Higher National Committee for Commemorating the Nakba, told thousands of people: "The Palestinian people are today more solid in confronting occupation and the policy of ethnic cleansing. The Zionist conspiracy against our people will be destroyed in the face of our steadfastness."

Earlier, Ismail Haniyeh, the outgoing Hamas prime minister, told thousands of worshippers at a Gaza mosque that Palestinians would mark Nakba Day this year "with great hope of bringing to an end the Zionist project in Palestine".

Mr Netanyahu retorted that were was "no place... for denying the existence of the State of Israel". "I regret that there are extremists among Israeli Arabs and in neighbouring countries who have turned the day on which the State of Israel was established, the day on which the Israeli democracy was established, into a day of incitement, violence and rage," he told cabinet ministers in Jerusalem.

The mass breaching of the border with Syria left Israeli security chiefs floundering, after weeks of announcements that they were expecting trouble on Sunday. "The Israel Defence Forces were ready," protested Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai. But eyewitnesses in Majdal Shams said only a handful of Israeli soldiers were on duty on Sunday and were taken by surprise when more than 1,000 buses appeared on the Syrian side of the border.

"I don't think they were really prepared for anything to happen on this side. It took more than an hour for the back-up to come," said Majdal Shams resident Shefaa Abu Jabal. "They crossed into the village and not even one landmine exploded, even though we've learned all of our lives that this place is full of landmines."

The local residents greeted the infiltrators like heroes, joining them as they marched towards the main square singing and waving Palestinian flags.

Ahmed, a Palestinian refugee from the Yarmouk camp, denied the Israeli army's claims that the event was planned by Iran. "We didn't really plan," he said. "We got a bit excited and we decided come on, let's do it. We didn't plan to cross. The army said we could stand near the border. The army didn't know. I don't think the Syrian army would have let us in if they knew."

What is the 'catastrophe'?

* Every 15 May, Palestinians commemorate the "Nakba" ("catastrophe") of the declaration of independence of the state of Israel in 1948.

The Palestinians and their Arab allies had hoped to prevent the establishment of the Jewish state by force of arms. But their defeat led to the double "catastrophe" of losing territory and transforming those Palestinians who had fled during the fighting into stateless refugees.

In recent years, protests have been marked by clashes between Israeli security forces and stone-throwing Palestinian youths, but yesterday was the first time the commemorations had descended into such widespread violence. Across the West Bank and Gaza, thousands took to the streets, holding old keys to symbolise their dreams of reclaiming the property they lost when Israel was created.

For the most part, the demonstrations passed off peacefully within Palestinian-controlled areas. But they encountered opposition when they approached checkpoints guarded by Israeli forces.

Thousands of Palestinians staged marches from Gaza City to the Erez border crossing with Israel. At least 15 unarmed marchers were reported wounded after Israeli forces opened fire to halt the crowd's progress. The Israeli warning shots included at least two tank shells and machine-gun fire at open fields close to the protestors.

At the Kalandia refugee camp north of Jerusalem, hundreds of Palestinian youths threw stones and Molotov cocktails at Israeli forces, who fired tear-gas and rubber bullets. There were clashes too in Hebron, Wallajeh and East Jerusalem.

Matthew Kalman

Who will lead the Palestinians?

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|TABLET March 15, 2011

The day after Hosni Mubarak fell in Egypt, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced 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”— 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 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. “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 for Palestinian statehood, his closeness 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, 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 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, 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 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.”

Israeli University Sues Google to Remove Former Student’s Blog

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

May 6, 2011, 3:11 pm

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem—The Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, in Haifa, has filed suit against Google demanding that it remove a blog by a former student that the institute says slanders the Technion’s program for American medical students.

The blogger posted critical articles and personal denunciations about the Technion American Medical Students program, known as TeAMS, on www.technionteams.blogspot.com, where he warns prospective students not to enter the program, leveling serious allegations of corruption against the university and its staff.

The blog alleges that only 20 percent of students in the past two years have secured residencies in the United States after graduation and says the university is “evasive with information and withholds it from people in order to lure potential applicants from North America.”

“We have brought these issues to the school’s attention since 2006 in e-mails, class meetings, letters, etc., and the school appears not to do anything,” the blog states.

The blogger also filed complaints with the U.S. Department of Education against TeAMS. The Israeli daily Haaretz reports that an investigative lawyer for the Oversight Committee of the U.S. Congress recently informed the blogger he was interested in examining the allegations against the Technion.

The Technion responded to the blog allegations on its Web site, declaring them slanderous and inaccurate. On April 17, the Technion filed suit in Haifa District Court against Google, which owns Blogger, the company that hosts Blogspot. The university also filed a motion for a temporary restraining order, demanding that Google “remove published items that defame and insult the Technion in general, its staff, and in particular one of the flagship programs of the faculty of medicine.”

The Technion’s lawyers argued that, as the owner of Blogger, Google is responsible for deleting the blog, which they say is “entirely dedicated to slander.”

Google said the court lacked jurisdiction to rule on the case. But in a hearing on April 28, Judge Menahem Raniel of the Haifa District Court rejected that claim.

“This is the first time an Israeli court determined the responsibility of World Google as a provider of Web-hosting services to remove defamatory statements on the Internet,” the Technion stated on its Web site this week.

By Friday, Google had not yet shut down the site, but in any case the blog has now been transferred to a new site, www.technionteams.com, hosted by another service provider.

“Rather than investing in fixing the corruption at the Technion Medical School, the Technion Medical School has decided to pay lawyers to make a feeble attempt to once again cover up the continued abuses of the American medical students,” writes a blogger who identifies himself as “Joe Caro” in a new post on the controversial blog.

“The plain truth is that the TeAMS program continues to have an abysmal rate of postgraduate placement with an annual revenue stream exceeding $3,000,000/year. Most often, the American students are at the Technion as a hope of last resort to become a physician after being rejected from all American medical schools and the other American programs in Israel. After investing in excess of $100,000/each into their Technion education, most of the recent graduates have nothing to show except loans due to the US Government,” says the writer.

“I can attest to malfeasance that the Technion appears to be engaged in,” a former student told Haaretz. “The environment was abusive, and when wrongdoings were brought to the school’s attention they reacted in a very defensive and threatening manner.”

Cameron threatens to recognise Palestine state unless Israel opens peace talks

DAILY MAIL 4th May 2011

By Tim Shipman and Matthew Kalman

Britain is prepared to formally recognise a Palestinian state unless Israel opens peace talks with the Palestinians.

David Cameron last night warned Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu that the UK is prepared to recognise an independent Palestine at a United Nations meeting in September.

British diplomats described the threat as one of Britain’s few ‘levers’ to press Israel to join talks with Palestinian officials.

Tough talking: David Cameron (right) last night warned Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu that the UK is prepared to recognise an independent Palestine at a United Nations meeting in September

The two prime ministers met in Downing Street last night after rival Palestinian factions endorsed a unity agreement yesterday.

The deal ends four years of bitterness and violence between the dominant Fatah movement of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement that rules Gaza.

Palestinian leaders hailed the deal as a major step towards an independent state. They plan to form an interim government and hold long-delayed elections within a year.

Mr Cameron turned the screws on Israel last night after Mr Netanyahu said: 'What happened today is a tremendous blow to peace and a great victory for terrorism.'

But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said at the reconciliation ceremony that Israel’s opposition to the reconciliation, was an excuse to 'evade a peace deal'.

Mr Abbas said. 'The state of Palestine must be born this year.’

He is expected to call for unilateral recognition from world powers at a UN meeting in September, a call likely to be backed by Arab countries and Latin America, with the USA opposed.

A senior Downing Street source made clear Britain is ready to recognise a Palestinian state.

‘Our clear preference is for a negotiated settlement where everyone can endorse a two state solution,’ the source said.

‘But if there is no agreement to enter talks that could force the issue.
‘The best way for the Israelis to avoid a unilateral declaration is to engage in peace talks.’

Britain has already beefed up its diplomatic presence with the Palestinians, upgrading its presence in Jerusalem from a delegation to a mission earlier this year.

The Prime Minister told Mr Netanyahu that he understood Israel’s nervousness about the sweeping changes in the Middle East but insisted that the Arab Spring is ‘an opportunity not a threat’.

Resistance: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said that Israel's opposition to the reconciliation, was an excuse to 'evade a peace deal'

Mr Cameron warned that failure to engage in talks with the Palestinians would ‘fuel hate and radicalisation’.

He also told Israel that opting for talks on a two state solution was necessary to silence Israel’s critics who say the country is not interested in peace.

Officials said Mr Cameron hoped to influence what Mr Netanyahu says when he makes a speech to the US Congress in a couple of months time.

The prime minister’s spokesman also urged the newly re-united Palestinian factions to do a deal: ‘The Prime Minister made clear we hope Palestinian unity between Fatah and Hamas will be a step forward but we will judge any Palestinian government on its actions.

‘We want the Palestinian government that emerges to reject violence and engage in a meaningful peace process.’

The new government in Egypt helped broker the truce after Hamas had a change in heart and finally accepted a deal first offered two years ago.

Mr Abbas said it had “turned forever the black page of division. Hamas is part of the Palestinian people’.

Hamas politburo chief Khaled Mashaal said the rivalry with Fatah was over. 'Hamas’s only conflict is with Israel,' he said.

Mashaal hinted at a change in policy when he said, 'We want an independent Palestinian state with sovereignty in the West Bank and Gaza.'

Hamas has always sought the destruction of Israel. Mashaal has not said whether the new state will live at peace with its neighbour or continue fighting.

Hamas spearheaded suicide bombings against Israel and entered Palestinian politics in 2006, promptly defeating Fatah in parliamentary elections. But the refusal of Hamas to renounce violence and recognize peace agreements with Israel led to the collapse of a unity government.

In 2007, Hamas ousted Fatah from Gaza in a bloody coup that left more than 400 Fatah supporters dead. Fatah retaliated by arresting Hamas supporters in the West Bank and stopping funds.

Some of those tensions remained yesterday. The ceremony was delayed nearly two hours when Abbas refused to allow Mashaal to join him on the podium.

Tony Blair, envoy for the Middle East Quartet of the UN, EU, US and Russia, said the international community supports Palestinian reconciliation but will demand that the new unity government recognize Israel’s right to exist and renounce violence.

Blair said Hamas must have “a change of heart” for the government to succeed.