USA TODAY
February 25, 2002
By Matthew Kalman
RAMALLAH, West Bank -- For the first time in as long as anyone can recall, Yasser Arafat has a fixed routine.
The famously secret movements of the man who rarely slept two nights in the same place for fear of assassination have become public knowledge now that he is limiting himself to a square half-mile -- the size of his headquarters -- in the West Bank city of Ramallah.
Since Dec. 3, when Israeli missiles destroyed his helicopters, Arafat has been confined to Ramallah and has remained in the El-Mukata'ah presidential compound. For those 2 1/2 months, Israeli tanks have been stationed a few yards from his office. The 72-year-old Palestinian leader has become the most famous prisoner in the Middle East.
Israel says Arafat can leave any time he wants; all he has to do is arrest the men responsible for the death of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, who was gunned down at a Jerusalem hotel in October. Arafat says he is unable -- the Israelis say he is unwilling -- to catch the assassins. So he remains in Ramallah.
No longer able to roam the world (Arafat claims to have visited every country except Australia), unable to partake in international meetings and red-carpet receptions, Arafat presides mostly over a series of rooms. The change in Arafat's lifestyle is striking. His movements, once confidential and always unexpected, now are predictable and even choreographed.
He begins the day about 11 a.m. in the large new meeting hall of El Mukata'ah. He grants a public audience every morning to hundreds of Palestinian well-wishers at gatherings orchestrated by the newly created Committee of Popular Protection for the Palestinian National Project, which Arafat chairs.
''There are daily popular marches to the president's office and to the governate in support of the president and also to emphasize the steadfastness of the Palestinian people,'' says Nahla Qoura, a leader of Arafat's Fatah movement who helps organize the rallies. Many in the audience are employees of the Palestinian Authority.
'Arafat will defeat you'
Each morning, the crowd gathers in nearby Manara Square and marches to the compound carrying banners and posters of Arafat. The people chant and sing as they are shepherded into the conference hall.
The cheerleader, a short, bespectacled man in his 50s, is hoisted up by the crowd and produces a sheet of paper from his pocket. He is Abu Ali Muqbel, a Palestinian poet. A year ago, he was imprisoned and his head was shaved as punishment for chanting anti-Arafat couplets. Now he appears every day at the appointed time to lead the invited crowds in praising the Palestinian leader.
''With our blood, with our souls, we will redeem Abu Amar!'' he reads, invoking Arafat's nom de guerre. Turning his words on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, he says, ''Oh, Sharon, oh Sharon, you coward, Arafat will defeat you!''
The crowd roars its approval as Arafat, standing on a table protected with tissue paper, flashes a V-sign for victory. Smiling, he asks the crowd for calm and launches into his daily monologue.
''You see the tanks across the street?'' he asks in Arabic. ''This is the same tank Sharon sent to me in Beirut.'' As defense minister in 1982, Sharon ordered the invasion of Lebanon that resulted in the expulsion of Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization from their headquarters in Beirut.
''He didn't frighten me then, and he doesn't scare me now,'' Arafat says. ''I don't care even if the tank comes to my bedroom. Palestinian stones can defeat these tanks and those who are behind them.''
The crowd goes wild. Within minutes, some will be outside, throwing stones at the Israeli tanks in what has become a daily ritual. Some youths form a circle in front of Arafat and begin chanting: ''Oh suiciders, oh suiciders, give us more blood in Jaffa Street! Give us more attacks!'' The reference is to one of Jerusalem's major thoroughfares; Jaffa Street has been the site of three suicide attacks in the past six months.
Arafat, who condemns suicide attacks in daily press interviews, looks on with a huge smile on his face. ''We will march toward Jerusalem, millions will be martyred,'' he says, pounding the lectern. The crowd roars its approval.
This morning, he deviates slightly from the script and does not begin chanting ''Jihad, jihad, jihad,'' the call for holy war, which is broadcast regularly on Palestinian television.
Then Arafat, surrounded by bodyguards, heads for his office on the second floor. He receives visitors in private -- diplomats, Palestinian officials and others -- until 3 p.m., when he takes his midafternoon nap. He will not be awakened unless it is urgent. After 6 p.m., Arafat is back at his desk, plowing through a pile of notes on small pieces of paper written by aides, supplicants from various ministries and organizations, and private individuals.
He signs each chit and hands it to an assistant. An aide says half-jokingly that Arafat has two pens, signing in red to indicate someone will get money, signing in blue if the request is to be ignored.
Hummus and politics
By early evening, the office of Arafat spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeineh is flooded with interview requests from reporters from all over the world. Dozens wait at the Grand Park Hotel in Ramallah, hoping to be selected. The chosen few are taken to the presidential compound. Arafat's evening performance begins after 9 p.m. and is strictly by invitation.
As dozens of gray-haired, moustachioed, chain-smoking officials go in and out of Arafat's office, visitors are escorted to a large, empty room nearby. On one wall hangs a huge picture of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem -- a symbol of the current uprising, which was two days old when Israeli police shot dead seven Palestinian demonstrators in the mosque compound in September 2000.
A table large enough to seat 20 dominates the room. Cheeses, cucumbers, pickles and hummus fill dishes set out. The meal begins with zucchini soup. When everyone is seated, Arafat enters. There is no fixed seating arrangement. Waiters dressed in white shirts and black waistcoats hover. The guests are an eclectic mix of senior Palestinian officials, journalists and special visitors. This evening, there are three different media crews and a couple of people hoping for a private meeting. There are no bodyguards.
Around the table on different nights are such familiar faces as PLO deputy leader Abu Mazen, West Bank Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti and Mohammed Shtayeh, director of the Palestinian Economic Development Corp. Arafat says Mazen is a possible successor; Barghouti is wanted by Israel for allegedly planning several murders and terror attacks.
Arafat enters, sits and without a word grabs a piece of lettuce and begins eating. There is small talk. He is asked whether he remembers his early career as an engineer in Kuwait. A smile spreads across his face, and he reminisces.
In front of Arafat is a dish filled with what looks like molasses. It is a special dish made with honey, he explains to one of his visitors. ''This is very healthy, it makes you strong,'' he says as he dips some bread into the mixture and hands a small piece to each of the guests around him. It is a ritual he repeats every evening.
Suddenly, Arafat switches the conversation to politics and what he calls Israel's destruction of the Palestinian economy.
''Do you know that the Israelis have uprooted 50% of the olive trees in the West Bank and Gaza? These trees were the only source of income for tens of thousands of families.'' His assertion goes unchallenged, even though it's believed to be an exaggeration. The correspondents don't want to jeopardize their interviews.
Shifting to Arabic from English, Arafat continues, ''Add to this that they are holding more than $1 billion in tax revenue which they collect for us'' -- a reference to taxes on Palestinian goods and services that Israel stopped transferring to the Palestinian Authority to protest the violence.
Persistent rumors
As he talks, he sinks back in his chair, but his tunic, supported by the rigid bulletproof vest he wears underneath, remains where it is. It is as if his chest has suddenly inflated. Beneath the flak jacket, he appears painfully thin. His hands shake uncontrollably and he stammers even in Arabic. There are rumors, consistently denied, that Arafat suffers from Parkinson's disease and is still affected by injuries suffered in a plane crash in 1992.
Arafat's apparent ill health and advancing age have fueled private speculation about who will succeed him, but no Palestinian dared raise the subject in public until two weeks ago, when Arafat set out the constitutional procedure. It appears he is not yet ready to relinquish power. The Palestinian leader was involved in a confrontation last week with his main security chief, Col. Jibril Rajoub, during which Arafat reportedly drew his gun and accused Rajoub of seeking the top position.
After an hour, Abu Rudeineh announces it is time for the more formal individual interviews. Arafat is escorted from the room and into his office. A doctor who has been on hand follows with a medical bag. No one will discuss what medication the president is taking. As the interviewer is admitted, Abu Rudeineh commands: ''No questions about his private life. No questions about his wife, his daughter, where he sleeps or where he showers. Be serious, talk politics.''
Arafat spends up to an hour with each reporter, repeating prepared mini-speeches he has been reciting for weeks. He vows that Palestinians will ultimately have their own independent state.
Any journalist who departs from the script is thrown out. When the BBC's Lyse Doucet dares to question whether Arafat has really imprisoned Islamic terrorists, he angrily declares the interview over and has her escorted from the building.
The last journalists leave at 1 a.m. Arafat returns to his office and continues his paperwork until about 3 a.m., when he goes to sleep, according to his aides.
Efraim Inbar, chairman of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University, says he believes Arafat will remain in power until he dies but will never establish a Palestinian state.
''Arafat is such a towering figure in the Palestinian national movement that he will never be replaced, nor allow anyone else to develop,'' Inbar says. ''He succeeded in bringing the Palestinian issue to the attention of the world, and he brought the PLO to Palestine itself. But he failed to establish a state even when he had the opportunity to do so.''
At 11 the next morning, Arafat will awake to another noisy demonstration of supporters. Yet another group of reporters will make their way to the Grand Park Hotel, ready to be charmed and dined by the king of Ramallah.
Monday, 25 February 2002
Thursday, 10 January 2002
Arafat under pressure
01/10/2002 - Updated 04:28 PM ET
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — A congressional delegation to Israel and the Palestinian Authority cancelled a planned meeting with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat scheduled for Thursday after examining "evidence beyond a reasonable doubt" of direct involvement by the Palestinian Authority in weapons smuggling and terrorism.
The move to cancel the meeting came hours before a senior U.S. official said there is substantial evidence that the Palestinian Authority was involved in an attempt to smuggle 50 tons of weapons to Gaza and that Arafat knew about the shipment. The remark came after Israeli intelligence officials briefed State Department officials on the smuggling operation. The boat carrying the weapons was intercepted and seized by Israeli commandos last Thursday.
Secretary of State Colin Powell phoned Arafat on Wednesday and stressed "the urgent need for a full explanation" of the smuggling attempt, which he called "deeply troubling," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.
The U.S. representatives visiting Israel, who also were briefed by Israeli intelligence, said they had seen evidence of Arafat's personal involvement in the shipload of illegal weapons from Iran being smuggled into the Palestinian Authority.
A U.S. official in Israel said the State Department would reevaluate its relationship with the Palestinian Authority in light of the revelations about the arms shipment.
Representative Peter Deutsch (D-FL) told reporters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem Wednesday that the Palestinian leader had gone back on the fundamental pledge of peace he made to Israel in the Oslo Accords, which provided the basis for U.S. engagement with the Palestine Liberation Organization, previously considered a terrorist organization.
"It is clear that the weapons were meant to be sent to the Palestinian Authority for their continuation of terrorism and violence," said Deutsch. "This incident presents a clear indication of Chairman Arafat's failure to act against terrorism."
Congressman Gary Ackerman (D — NY), a ranking member of the House Sub-Committee on the Middle East and South Asia, said the delegation had unanimously agreed to cancel their meeting with Arafat after receiving "a full intelligence briefing" from Israeli officials about the weapons haul, which included rockets, missiles, mines and 1.5 tons of sophisticated explosives.
The delegation said, "a meeting with the Palestinian leadership would send the wrong message about both Congress's views on terrorism and on the leadership of Chairman Arafat, in particular."
Ackerman said the representatives had seen "irrefutable facts that seemed to indicate beyond any reasonable doubt that the Palestinian Authority and Arafat personally were involved with the ship and the purchase of the weapons and the plan to transfer them to the Palestinian Authority."
The representatives' decision to boycott Arafat led to the collapse of their entire program in the Palestinian Authority. Palestinian Legislative Council Speaker Abu Ala and PLO Jerusalem leader Sari Nusseibeh both cancelled their planned meetings with the US delegation. The other members of the group are Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and Barney Frank (D-MA).
"We do think the peace process is salvageable," said Ackerman. "We have just finished meeting with Prime Minister Sharon and we believe the prime minister is committed to the peace process."
But Ackerman warned, echoing Israel's recent declaration that Arafat was no longer relevant, "Unless Arafat gets back to the peace process he will have rendered himself insignificant and squandered all the good will that a peace prize winner would have had." He was referring to Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize, which he won jointly with assassinated Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin for their efforts to establish a peace process.
"Arafat's signature on the Oslo Accords seems to have been written with invisible ink," Ackerman said.
Contributing: Barbara Slavin in Washington
Sunday, 23 December 2001
Oh little town of silent streets, how still it is
USA TODAY
23 December 2001
By Matthew Kalman
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — In the city where the Bible says Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, Christians might not be in the right mood to celebrate this Christmas.
After 15 months of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel, Bethlehem is a city ravaged by grief, damaged by violence and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Normally, just before Christmas, Manger Square would be packed with pilgrims standing in line for hours to enter the Church of the Nativity, descend into the grotto and kiss the silver star marking the traditional site of the holy infant's birth. But this year, often not a single pilgrim or foreign tourist is in evidence. The grotto is empty and eerily silent. Souvenir shops have been shuttered.
Michael Giacaman usually keeps his souvenir shop open on Christmas Eve well past midnight to serve the floods of tourists who flock to the traditional processions and singing of carols.
This year, his plans have changed: "I might open for half a day," says Giacaman, surveying the empty square from the doorway of his shop. Two years ago, with millennium celebrations at their height, he sold an armful of mother-and-pearl and olive wood souvenirs to visiting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Now, days go by without any sales.
"No tourists come here, so the shop sells nothing," he says. "We've had to export all our olive wood souvenirs to America."
In his office overlooking the square, Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser is counting the cost of the violence.
"We have 22 people dead and 150 injured," says Nasser. "The commercial center was badly damaged by Israeli tanks, which caused about $15 million of damage in 10 days. Our entire yearly budget is only $3 million. We have 70% unemployment, zero tourists in the hotels and maybe three restaurants open out of 86."
He says at least 500 residents have emigrated to escape the situation. "This Christmas, there is no peace, no joy and no stability," he sighs. "Fifty percent of our population are children, and they are the worst affected. I see it in my own grandchildren. They cannot sleep alone — they are haunted by the sounds of gunfire and missiles."
Most of Bethlehem's 28,000 residents are Muslims. Officially, they are united against the common enemy, Israel. Privately, many Christians blame their Muslim neighbors for inviting Israeli reprisals by shooting at the nearby Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Some Christians have been shot in mysterious circumstances, including an elderly former city councilor who refused to follow the instructions of the masked Palestinian gunmen who roam the streets.
The signs of increasing Muslim extremism are clear to see. Opposite the empty Church of the Nativity stands the Mosque of Omar, adorned with a huge banner pledging allegiance to the terrorist Islamic Jihad group, supposedly outlawed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "Our goal is Allah, our model is Mohammed, our constitution is the Koran, our path is Jihad (holy war)," proclaims the banner. "Dying for the sake of Allah is our highest wish."
Such a public display of Islamic fundamentalism in one of Christendom's holiest sites would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
As this Christmas approaches, the people of Bethlehem have seen too much death to focus on that holiest of births.
"Each year, we are newly born with Christ in this city," says Nasser. "Bethlehem belongs to all Christians. They should come and visit us, particularly now. We need their solidarity to survive."
But the only visitors are people such as Trevor Baumgartner, a 27-year-old child-care provider from Seattle who has come to Bethlehem for the first time to join a group protesting human rights abuses in Israel. He has been in Bethlehem for several days of political training and has not yet visited the Church of the Nativity.
"We here are choosing to engage in this fight through non-violent theory and practice on the ground, and part of that is being here," he says. "I guess you could call this a pilgrimage."
23 December 2001
By Matthew Kalman
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — In the city where the Bible says Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, Christians might not be in the right mood to celebrate this Christmas.
After 15 months of the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, against Israel, Bethlehem is a city ravaged by grief, damaged by violence and teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
Normally, just before Christmas, Manger Square would be packed with pilgrims standing in line for hours to enter the Church of the Nativity, descend into the grotto and kiss the silver star marking the traditional site of the holy infant's birth. But this year, often not a single pilgrim or foreign tourist is in evidence. The grotto is empty and eerily silent. Souvenir shops have been shuttered.
Michael Giacaman usually keeps his souvenir shop open on Christmas Eve well past midnight to serve the floods of tourists who flock to the traditional processions and singing of carols.
This year, his plans have changed: "I might open for half a day," says Giacaman, surveying the empty square from the doorway of his shop. Two years ago, with millennium celebrations at their height, he sold an armful of mother-and-pearl and olive wood souvenirs to visiting Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Now, days go by without any sales.
"No tourists come here, so the shop sells nothing," he says. "We've had to export all our olive wood souvenirs to America."
In his office overlooking the square, Bethlehem Mayor Hanna Nasser is counting the cost of the violence.
"We have 22 people dead and 150 injured," says Nasser. "The commercial center was badly damaged by Israeli tanks, which caused about $15 million of damage in 10 days. Our entire yearly budget is only $3 million. We have 70% unemployment, zero tourists in the hotels and maybe three restaurants open out of 86."
He says at least 500 residents have emigrated to escape the situation. "This Christmas, there is no peace, no joy and no stability," he sighs. "Fifty percent of our population are children, and they are the worst affected. I see it in my own grandchildren. They cannot sleep alone — they are haunted by the sounds of gunfire and missiles."
Most of Bethlehem's 28,000 residents are Muslims. Officially, they are united against the common enemy, Israel. Privately, many Christians blame their Muslim neighbors for inviting Israeli reprisals by shooting at the nearby Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo. Some Christians have been shot in mysterious circumstances, including an elderly former city councilor who refused to follow the instructions of the masked Palestinian gunmen who roam the streets.
The signs of increasing Muslim extremism are clear to see. Opposite the empty Church of the Nativity stands the Mosque of Omar, adorned with a huge banner pledging allegiance to the terrorist Islamic Jihad group, supposedly outlawed by Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. "Our goal is Allah, our model is Mohammed, our constitution is the Koran, our path is Jihad (holy war)," proclaims the banner. "Dying for the sake of Allah is our highest wish."
Such a public display of Islamic fundamentalism in one of Christendom's holiest sites would have been unthinkable even a year ago.
As this Christmas approaches, the people of Bethlehem have seen too much death to focus on that holiest of births.
"Each year, we are newly born with Christ in this city," says Nasser. "Bethlehem belongs to all Christians. They should come and visit us, particularly now. We need their solidarity to survive."
But the only visitors are people such as Trevor Baumgartner, a 27-year-old child-care provider from Seattle who has come to Bethlehem for the first time to join a group protesting human rights abuses in Israel. He has been in Bethlehem for several days of political training and has not yet visited the Church of the Nativity.
"We here are choosing to engage in this fight through non-violent theory and practice on the ground, and part of that is being here," he says. "I guess you could call this a pilgrimage."
Arafat vows to defy Israel's ban
23 December 2001
By Matthew Kalman USA TODAY
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Sunday that he would defy an Israeli ban and travel here for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Israeli officials have demanded that Arafat arrest the assassins of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi before they allow him to leave Ramallah. He has been confined to that West Bank city since early this month, when Israel destroyed his helicopters and demanded he fight Palestinian terrorism.
"No one can prevent me from reaching Bethlehem," Arafat said in Ramallah. Although he is Muslim, Arafat has gone to Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations each year since 1995, when the town was turned over to Palestinian authorities. "It is my duty, and I will see to it that I fulfill it," he said. "I will go there even if I have to go on foot."
The mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, said he would boycott midnight Mass tonight at the Church of the Nativity — believed to mark the birthplace of Jesus — if Arafat can't attend.
Last Christmas, the Israeli secret service escorted Arafat's convoy by road back from Bethlehem to Ramallah because his helicopter was grounded by driving rain. This year, Israeli tanks and ground forces are blockading Ramallah to prevent Arafat from leaving the city.
Israel has lifted restrictions on Palestinian Christians traveling in and out of the West Bank, so they can attend Christmas services in Jerusalem or Bethlehem.
Israel said Arafat had been given information on the assassins who killed Zeevi on Oct. 17 but was doing nothing to apprehend them, to disband terrorist organizations or to stop attacks on Israel.
Arafat has been under pressure from the United States and the European Union to crack down on militants. This month, he ordered radical groups to end suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. Over the weekend, both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations agreed to suspend such attacks in Israel.
Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdul Rahman said he had asked Pope John Paul II "to intervene to stop this attack on religious traditions and against the Palestinian people."
Also Sunday, a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed as "imaginary and without any foundation" newspaper reports of a secret peace agreement between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and a Palestinian official. The reports said Peres and Abu Ala, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, had agreed on the establishment of a Palestinian state "within eight months" in Gaza and the 42% of the West Bank currently under full or partial Palestinian control.
The latest wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence is in its 15th month.
By Matthew Kalman USA TODAY
BETHLEHEM, West Bank — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said Sunday that he would defy an Israeli ban and travel here for midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
Israeli officials have demanded that Arafat arrest the assassins of Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi before they allow him to leave Ramallah. He has been confined to that West Bank city since early this month, when Israel destroyed his helicopters and demanded he fight Palestinian terrorism.
"No one can prevent me from reaching Bethlehem," Arafat said in Ramallah. Although he is Muslim, Arafat has gone to Bethlehem for Christmas celebrations each year since 1995, when the town was turned over to Palestinian authorities. "It is my duty, and I will see to it that I fulfill it," he said. "I will go there even if I have to go on foot."
The mayor of Bethlehem, Hanna Nasser, said he would boycott midnight Mass tonight at the Church of the Nativity — believed to mark the birthplace of Jesus — if Arafat can't attend.
Last Christmas, the Israeli secret service escorted Arafat's convoy by road back from Bethlehem to Ramallah because his helicopter was grounded by driving rain. This year, Israeli tanks and ground forces are blockading Ramallah to prevent Arafat from leaving the city.
Israel has lifted restrictions on Palestinian Christians traveling in and out of the West Bank, so they can attend Christmas services in Jerusalem or Bethlehem.
Israel said Arafat had been given information on the assassins who killed Zeevi on Oct. 17 but was doing nothing to apprehend them, to disband terrorist organizations or to stop attacks on Israel.
Arafat has been under pressure from the United States and the European Union to crack down on militants. This month, he ordered radical groups to end suicide attacks on Israeli civilians. Over the weekend, both the Hamas and Islamic Jihad organizations agreed to suspend such attacks in Israel.
Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdul Rahman said he had asked Pope John Paul II "to intervene to stop this attack on religious traditions and against the Palestinian people."
Also Sunday, a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon dismissed as "imaginary and without any foundation" newspaper reports of a secret peace agreement between Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and a Palestinian official. The reports said Peres and Abu Ala, speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, had agreed on the establishment of a Palestinian state "within eight months" in Gaza and the 42% of the West Bank currently under full or partial Palestinian control.
The latest wave of Palestinian-Israeli violence is in its 15th month.
Sunday, 16 December 2001
Arafat's call for peace met with skepticism
USA TODAY
16 December 2001
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in a televised address Sunday to the Israeli and Palestinian people, called for an end to "armed attacks" and suicide bombings against Israel.
He also called for peace talks and said he wished to see a real Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital coexisting with Israel.
Arafat's address crushed hopes that he would issue a clear call for an end to the 15-month intifada (uprising) against Israel. He did not mention Hamas or Islamic Jihad by name. The militant Palestinian groups have been declared terrorist organizations by the United States and the European Union.
The Palestinian leader has been under intense pressure from the international community to rein in terrorists who have stepped up a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians.
In response to Sunday's address, Israeli and U.S. leaders said they were still waiting for Arafat to take action against terrorists. "Nobody heard anything we haven't heard before," Israeli Cabinet Minister Matan Vilnai said. "The proof will be in his actions, not his words."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Arafat's words "constructive" but said, "He must turn these important words into effective and sustained action against terror and violence."
Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking on Fox News Sunday, blamed the Palestinians for the breakdown of truce talks mediated by special envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni. Powell recalled Zinni to Washington over the weekend amid a new wave of Palestinian attacks and Israeli retaliation. "We sent Gen. Zinni over to try to get that dialogue going, and all of that was blown up by these terrorist organizations on the Palestinian side," he said.
Reading a prepared statement in a broadcast marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Arafat said, "I reaffirm the comprehensive and immediate cessation of all armed attacks, and I renew my call for a comprehensive halt of any attacks or operations, especially the suicide attacks which we have always condemned."
Arafat called for a renewal of the dialogue that produced "the peace of the brave" — a reference to his 1993 peace accord with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. "We are not asking for the impossible, and we do not pose any threat to Israel's existence," he assured Israelis.
Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian security forces closed down offices and institutions linked to Hamas, which has taken responsibility for a wave of recent attacks in which more than 40 Israelis have died.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, continued military operations in Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza. More than a dozen Palestinians were killed over the weekend. Last week, Israel said it was cutting ties with Arafat and would be responsible for the security of its citizens.
16 December 2001
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, in a televised address Sunday to the Israeli and Palestinian people, called for an end to "armed attacks" and suicide bombings against Israel.
He also called for peace talks and said he wished to see a real Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital coexisting with Israel.
Arafat's address crushed hopes that he would issue a clear call for an end to the 15-month intifada (uprising) against Israel. He did not mention Hamas or Islamic Jihad by name. The militant Palestinian groups have been declared terrorist organizations by the United States and the European Union.
The Palestinian leader has been under intense pressure from the international community to rein in terrorists who have stepped up a campaign of suicide bombings and attacks on Israeli civilians.
In response to Sunday's address, Israeli and U.S. leaders said they were still waiting for Arafat to take action against terrorists. "Nobody heard anything we haven't heard before," Israeli Cabinet Minister Matan Vilnai said. "The proof will be in his actions, not his words."
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher called Arafat's words "constructive" but said, "He must turn these important words into effective and sustained action against terror and violence."
Secretary of State Colin Powell, speaking on Fox News Sunday, blamed the Palestinians for the breakdown of truce talks mediated by special envoy Gen. Anthony Zinni. Powell recalled Zinni to Washington over the weekend amid a new wave of Palestinian attacks and Israeli retaliation. "We sent Gen. Zinni over to try to get that dialogue going, and all of that was blown up by these terrorist organizations on the Palestinian side," he said.
Reading a prepared statement in a broadcast marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, Arafat said, "I reaffirm the comprehensive and immediate cessation of all armed attacks, and I renew my call for a comprehensive halt of any attacks or operations, especially the suicide attacks which we have always condemned."
Arafat called for a renewal of the dialogue that produced "the peace of the brave" — a reference to his 1993 peace accord with prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, who was assassinated in 1995. "We are not asking for the impossible, and we do not pose any threat to Israel's existence," he assured Israelis.
Earlier on Sunday, Palestinian security forces closed down offices and institutions linked to Hamas, which has taken responsibility for a wave of recent attacks in which more than 40 Israelis have died.
Israeli forces, meanwhile, continued military operations in Palestinian towns and villages throughout the West Bank and Gaza. More than a dozen Palestinians were killed over the weekend. Last week, Israel said it was cutting ties with Arafat and would be responsible for the security of its citizens.
Thursday, 13 December 2001
U.S. envoy weighs giving up his cease-fire mission
13 December 2001
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
RAMALLAH, West Bank — U.S. peace envoy Anthony Zinni was considering whether to continue his 2-week cease-fire mission in the face of Israel's refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leader's failure to carry out his promise to close down extremist installations.
Zinni has been trying to negotiate a cease-fire and create an atmosphere in which Arafat could move decisively against the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. He will decide by Sunday whether to give up on his efforts. The United States and Israel have labeled both Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations. They are responsible for a new wave of bloody attacks against Israelis.
Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles Thursday at security targets in Gaza and in the West Bank, including a Palestinian government building in Ramallah and an office of Arafat's Fatah organization in Jenin. The attacks were retaliation for Wednesday's terrorist ambush near an Israeli settlement that killed 10 Israelis.
A U.S. official familiar with Zinni's efforts said the main stumbling block to implementing a cease-fire was Arafat's refusal to make the "hard decision" to end terrorist activity.
But Israel also came under renewed scrutiny for declaring it will cut off contact with Arafat. Secretary of State Colin Powell directed Zinni and U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer on Thursday to seek an explanation from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Israeli Cabinet's action. He also referred to Arafat as "the elected head of the Palestinian Authority."
Israeli Cabinet ministers announced early Thursday that contact with Arafat was being cut. But they stressed there were no plans to topple him. "We have reached the point where Arafat has ceased being relevant as far as Israel is concerned to deal with the whole question of terrorism," Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said. "From today onward, we will do everything we have to as a nation to defend ourselves."
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a senior Arafat adviser, called Israel's new attacks "a formal declaration of war."
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
RAMALLAH, West Bank — U.S. peace envoy Anthony Zinni was considering whether to continue his 2-week cease-fire mission in the face of Israel's refusal to deal with Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leader's failure to carry out his promise to close down extremist installations.
Zinni has been trying to negotiate a cease-fire and create an atmosphere in which Arafat could move decisively against the militant Hamas and Islamic Jihad groups. He will decide by Sunday whether to give up on his efforts. The United States and Israel have labeled both Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations. They are responsible for a new wave of bloody attacks against Israelis.
Israeli helicopter gunships fired missiles Thursday at security targets in Gaza and in the West Bank, including a Palestinian government building in Ramallah and an office of Arafat's Fatah organization in Jenin. The attacks were retaliation for Wednesday's terrorist ambush near an Israeli settlement that killed 10 Israelis.
A U.S. official familiar with Zinni's efforts said the main stumbling block to implementing a cease-fire was Arafat's refusal to make the "hard decision" to end terrorist activity.
But Israel also came under renewed scrutiny for declaring it will cut off contact with Arafat. Secretary of State Colin Powell directed Zinni and U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer on Thursday to seek an explanation from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Israeli Cabinet's action. He also referred to Arafat as "the elected head of the Palestinian Authority."
Israeli Cabinet ministers announced early Thursday that contact with Arafat was being cut. But they stressed there were no plans to topple him. "We have reached the point where Arafat has ceased being relevant as far as Israel is concerned to deal with the whole question of terrorism," Justice Minister Meir Sheetrit said. "From today onward, we will do everything we have to as a nation to defend ourselves."
Nabil Abu Rudeineh, a senior Arafat adviser, called Israel's new attacks "a formal declaration of war."
Tuesday, 11 December 2001
Europe adds Hamas, Islamic Jihad to terrorist list
December 11, 2001
By Matthew Kalman and Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — The European Union labeled the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad "terrorist networks" for the first time Monday. The EU demanded that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dismantle the groups and order an end to armed attacks on Israel.
The decision by the EU to add Hamas and Islamic Jihad to its list of international terrorist groups — a list that also includes Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization — puts Europe more closely in line with U.S. policy, which strongly supports Israel. The move, Israelis say, also indicates that Western nations are united in their frustration with Arafat.
"I think certainly the American effort here and the terrorist attacks last week were eye-opening" to European foreign ministers, said Danny Seaman, director of Israel's government press office. "Many of them are coming to the conclusion that Arafat isn't doing anything."
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ziad Abu Zayad said the EU is mistaken in its impression of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He said the two organizations should be regarded as Islamic resistance to Israeli occupation: "These groups are not international terrorist groups."
Israel didn't escape criticism Monday from the EU, which often has blamed the Israelis for violence in the region that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives in 14 months. The EU foreign ministers called on Israel to withdraw its forces from Palestinian-ruled areas, freeze the size of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and end its practice of having security forces assassinate suspected Palestinian terrorists.
Meanwhile, violence on both sides continued. Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian teenager and toddler Monday in an attempt to assassinate an alleged Islamic Jihad terrorist in Hebron in the West Bank.
In the attack, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying Mohammed Ayoub Sidr, 26, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad who Israel says is responsible for suicide bombings in Jerusalem and shooting attacks near Hebron. Sidr was injured in the attack. Burhan Himuni, 3, who was riding in the car, and Shadi Arafe, 13, who was in a taxi nearby, were killed.
In the past 2 weeks, Israeli civilians have been hit by a wave of suicide bomb attacks.
Islamic Jihad took responsibility for an attack Sunday in Haifa that injured 29 people. Hamas admitted responsibility for suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that killed 25 a week earlier. Israel retaliated after last week's bombings with fighter-jet attacks on Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad installations.
Also Monday, as U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni met with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in an attempt to restart peace negotiations, Palestinian forces fired several mortars into Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.
By Matthew Kalman and Donna Leinwand, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — The European Union labeled the Palestinian groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad "terrorist networks" for the first time Monday. The EU demanded that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat dismantle the groups and order an end to armed attacks on Israel.
The decision by the EU to add Hamas and Islamic Jihad to its list of international terrorist groups — a list that also includes Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization — puts Europe more closely in line with U.S. policy, which strongly supports Israel. The move, Israelis say, also indicates that Western nations are united in their frustration with Arafat.
"I think certainly the American effort here and the terrorist attacks last week were eye-opening" to European foreign ministers, said Danny Seaman, director of Israel's government press office. "Many of them are coming to the conclusion that Arafat isn't doing anything."
Palestinian Cabinet Minister Ziad Abu Zayad said the EU is mistaken in its impression of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. He said the two organizations should be regarded as Islamic resistance to Israeli occupation: "These groups are not international terrorist groups."
Israel didn't escape criticism Monday from the EU, which often has blamed the Israelis for violence in the region that has claimed nearly 1,000 lives in 14 months. The EU foreign ministers called on Israel to withdraw its forces from Palestinian-ruled areas, freeze the size of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza and end its practice of having security forces assassinate suspected Palestinian terrorists.
Meanwhile, violence on both sides continued. Israeli security forces killed a Palestinian teenager and toddler Monday in an attempt to assassinate an alleged Islamic Jihad terrorist in Hebron in the West Bank.
In the attack, Israeli helicopters fired missiles at a car carrying Mohammed Ayoub Sidr, 26, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad who Israel says is responsible for suicide bombings in Jerusalem and shooting attacks near Hebron. Sidr was injured in the attack. Burhan Himuni, 3, who was riding in the car, and Shadi Arafe, 13, who was in a taxi nearby, were killed.
In the past 2 weeks, Israeli civilians have been hit by a wave of suicide bomb attacks.
Islamic Jihad took responsibility for an attack Sunday in Haifa that injured 29 people. Hamas admitted responsibility for suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that killed 25 a week earlier. Israel retaliated after last week's bombings with fighter-jet attacks on Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad installations.
Also Monday, as U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni met with Palestinian and Israeli leaders in an attempt to restart peace negotiations, Palestinian forces fired several mortars into Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip.
Friday, 7 December 2001
Saudis airing anti-Semitic TV series for Ramadan Based on Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The National Post (Canada)
December 7, 2001
By Matthew Kalman
A major Arabic TV channel has produced a 30-part dramatization of the notorious anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to be broadcast throughout the Arab world as a special program for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Horseman Without a Horse is a multi-million-dollar production starring leading Egyptian actor Muhammad Subhi in 14 different roles with a large international cast from Egypt, Syria and France. The program was made by Arab Radio and Television (ART) a popular satellite channel based in Jedda, Saudi Arabia.
Roz Al-Youssuf, an Egyptian weekly, said in an admiring preview that the series successfully debunks Jewish claims that the Protocols – the supposed minutes of the Jewish clique that controls the world – were a forgery invented by anti-Semitic propagandists in Tsarist Russia.
"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations and racism," the paper reported.
The Protocols, which first surfaced in Russia at the end of the 19th century, have fed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that suggest Jews seek to exercise world domination through control of the media, banking system and political movements.
They were popular in Nazi Germany and are required reading among neo-Nazi groups to this day. The Protocols have sold thousands of copies in several Arabic editions and are particularly popular in Egypt and Syria.
News of the ART production comes as Dubai TV continues its nightly broadcast of Terrorman – a Ramadan satire depicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, drinking the blood of Arab children.
Since Sept. 11, one often-repeated fantasy that has been pushed is that the Israeli Mossad was behind the World Trade Center attack – a gruesome twist on the Jewish conspiracy theory that finds its most potent statement in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
December 7, 2001
By Matthew Kalman
A major Arabic TV channel has produced a 30-part dramatization of the notorious anti-Semitic Protocols of the Elders of Zion, to be broadcast throughout the Arab world as a special program for the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Horseman Without a Horse is a multi-million-dollar production starring leading Egyptian actor Muhammad Subhi in 14 different roles with a large international cast from Egypt, Syria and France. The program was made by Arab Radio and Television (ART) a popular satellite channel based in Jedda, Saudi Arabia.
Roz Al-Youssuf, an Egyptian weekly, said in an admiring preview that the series successfully debunks Jewish claims that the Protocols – the supposed minutes of the Jewish clique that controls the world – were a forgery invented by anti-Semitic propagandists in Tsarist Russia.
"For the first time, the series' writer courageously tackles the 24 Protocols of the Elders of Zion, revealing them and clarifying that they are the central line that still, to this very day, dominates Israel's policy, political aspirations and racism," the paper reported.
The Protocols, which first surfaced in Russia at the end of the 19th century, have fed anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that suggest Jews seek to exercise world domination through control of the media, banking system and political movements.
They were popular in Nazi Germany and are required reading among neo-Nazi groups to this day. The Protocols have sold thousands of copies in several Arabic editions and are particularly popular in Egypt and Syria.
News of the ART production comes as Dubai TV continues its nightly broadcast of Terrorman – a Ramadan satire depicting Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, drinking the blood of Arab children.
Since Sept. 11, one often-repeated fantasy that has been pushed is that the Israeli Mossad was behind the World Trade Center attack – a gruesome twist on the Jewish conspiracy theory that finds its most potent statement in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
Tuesday, 4 December 2001
U.S. raids Texas charity called front for Hamas
USA TODAY
4 December 2001
By Judy Keen and Matthew Kalman
President Bush, moving to fulfill his pledge to dismantle all terrorist groups with global reach, announced Tuesday that authorities had raided a Texas charity he said is a front for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The announcement of the first U.S. crackdown on a U.S. group with no known links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network underscores the administration's anger with Palestinians' role in Middle East violence.
On Tuesday, Israel launched a second wave of airstrikes on Palestinian Authority facilities in the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for weekend suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that killed 25 Israeli civilians.
U.S. officials said action against the charity was accelerated after Hamas, which is on a State Department list of terror groups, claimed credit for last weekend's bombings.
Bush said the Treasury Department has frozen the assets of the Holy Land Foundation, based in Richardson, Texas. The group raised $13 million from Americans last year. Authorities closed its offices in Texas, California, New Jersey and Illinois. They also blocked the accounts of a bank and holding company with ties to Hamas that are based in the West Bank.
Bush said the money raised by the foundation helped Hamas recruit and train suicide bombers and support their families. "Those who do business with terror will do no business with the United States or anywhere else the United States can reach," he said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement from the foundation denying that it gives money to Hamas. The statement said the foundation "has been unfairly targeted in the nationwide smear campaign to undermine Muslims and the institutions that serve them."
In a speech to Congress on Sept. 20, Bush said the war on terrorism "begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." Michael Zeldin, an official in the Clinton Justice Department, called Tuesday's action "the first objective proof" that Bush plans to go after all terrorists.
In the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeared to enter a dramatic new phase Tuesday as Israel branded Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority a "supporter of terrorism" and stepped up airstrikes on Palestinian targets.
Two Palestinians were reported killed and dozens injured as Israeli helicopter gunships and fighter bombers fired missiles at eight Palestinian facilities in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel said the buildings had been used as terror bases. "All eight targets that were attacked were installations of security forces operating at the behest of the Palestinian Authority," Israeli army spokesman Ron Kittrey said.
Israeli security officials said a third of Israel's casualties in the past 14 months of violence have been suffered in attacks by "moderate" groups allied to Arafat.
Israeli bulldozers also wrecked the runway at Gaza International Airport. This move and Monday's destruction of Arafat's helicopters in Gaza City effectively consigned the Palestinian leader and other senior officials to the Palestinian-controlled territories.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said attacks on Palestinian installations prevented Arafat from meeting Israel's demand that he round up terrorists. He accused Israel of "tying Mr. Arafat's arms and legs, throwing him into the sea and telling him to swim."
The Palestinian Authority said it rounded up more than 100 militants after the weekend attacks, but Israel said those arrested were not senior commanders.
Israeli officials insisted they had no intention of toppling Arafat, but they said Israel had put peace talks on hold until it had completed its "war against the terrorism on our own doorstep."
Making his first public comments since the Israeli offensive began, Arafat hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, telling CNN, "He doesn't want a peace process to start."
The new Israeli policy was hammered out at a stormy Cabinet meeting where right-wing ministers led by Sharon voted to adopt a resolution branding the Palestinian Authority "an entity that supports terrorism, and must be dealt with accordingly."
Labor Party ministers led by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres refused to participate in the vote. Peres told reporters in Bucharest Tuesday that his party might consider quitting Sharon's coalition if it tries to topple Arafat. Former Israeli foreign minister David Levy, a member of the Labor Party, worried about the Israeli move linking the Palestinian Authority with terrorism. "Is Arafat a partner, or is he our bin Laden?"
Palestinian leaders said Israel is making a grave mistake. "It is a most dangerous decision," said Hussein A-Sheikh, senior Fatah leader on the West Bank. "Israel now regards the entire Palestinian people as the enemy."
Keen reported from Washington; Kalman reported from Jerusalem.
4 December 2001
By Judy Keen and Matthew Kalman
President Bush, moving to fulfill his pledge to dismantle all terrorist groups with global reach, announced Tuesday that authorities had raided a Texas charity he said is a front for the Palestinian militant group Hamas. The announcement of the first U.S. crackdown on a U.S. group with no known links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network underscores the administration's anger with Palestinians' role in Middle East violence.
On Tuesday, Israel launched a second wave of airstrikes on Palestinian Authority facilities in the West Bank and Gaza in retaliation for weekend suicide bombings in Jerusalem and Haifa that killed 25 Israeli civilians.
U.S. officials said action against the charity was accelerated after Hamas, which is on a State Department list of terror groups, claimed credit for last weekend's bombings.
Bush said the Treasury Department has frozen the assets of the Holy Land Foundation, based in Richardson, Texas. The group raised $13 million from Americans last year. Authorities closed its offices in Texas, California, New Jersey and Illinois. They also blocked the accounts of a bank and holding company with ties to Hamas that are based in the West Bank.
Bush said the money raised by the foundation helped Hamas recruit and train suicide bombers and support their families. "Those who do business with terror will do no business with the United States or anywhere else the United States can reach," he said.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a statement from the foundation denying that it gives money to Hamas. The statement said the foundation "has been unfairly targeted in the nationwide smear campaign to undermine Muslims and the institutions that serve them."
In a speech to Congress on Sept. 20, Bush said the war on terrorism "begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated." Michael Zeldin, an official in the Clinton Justice Department, called Tuesday's action "the first objective proof" that Bush plans to go after all terrorists.
In the Middle East, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeared to enter a dramatic new phase Tuesday as Israel branded Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority a "supporter of terrorism" and stepped up airstrikes on Palestinian targets.
Two Palestinians were reported killed and dozens injured as Israeli helicopter gunships and fighter bombers fired missiles at eight Palestinian facilities in the West Bank and Gaza. Israel said the buildings had been used as terror bases. "All eight targets that were attacked were installations of security forces operating at the behest of the Palestinian Authority," Israeli army spokesman Ron Kittrey said.
Israeli security officials said a third of Israel's casualties in the past 14 months of violence have been suffered in attacks by "moderate" groups allied to Arafat.
Israeli bulldozers also wrecked the runway at Gaza International Airport. This move and Monday's destruction of Arafat's helicopters in Gaza City effectively consigned the Palestinian leader and other senior officials to the Palestinian-controlled territories.
Palestinian Cabinet minister Saeb Erekat said attacks on Palestinian installations prevented Arafat from meeting Israel's demand that he round up terrorists. He accused Israel of "tying Mr. Arafat's arms and legs, throwing him into the sea and telling him to swim."
The Palestinian Authority said it rounded up more than 100 militants after the weekend attacks, but Israel said those arrested were not senior commanders.
Israeli officials insisted they had no intention of toppling Arafat, but they said Israel had put peace talks on hold until it had completed its "war against the terrorism on our own doorstep."
Making his first public comments since the Israeli offensive began, Arafat hit back at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, telling CNN, "He doesn't want a peace process to start."
The new Israeli policy was hammered out at a stormy Cabinet meeting where right-wing ministers led by Sharon voted to adopt a resolution branding the Palestinian Authority "an entity that supports terrorism, and must be dealt with accordingly."
Labor Party ministers led by Foreign Minister Shimon Peres refused to participate in the vote. Peres told reporters in Bucharest Tuesday that his party might consider quitting Sharon's coalition if it tries to topple Arafat. Former Israeli foreign minister David Levy, a member of the Labor Party, worried about the Israeli move linking the Palestinian Authority with terrorism. "Is Arafat a partner, or is he our bin Laden?"
Palestinian leaders said Israel is making a grave mistake. "It is a most dangerous decision," said Hussein A-Sheikh, senior Fatah leader on the West Bank. "Israel now regards the entire Palestinian people as the enemy."
Keen reported from Washington; Kalman reported from Jerusalem.
Friday, 23 November 2001
Boys killed on walk to school as Israeli tank shell explodes
DAILY MAIL, November 23, 2001
From Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem
FIVE Palestinian boys were killed yesterday when one of them apparently kicked an unexploded Israeli tank shell as they walked to school in the Gaza Strip.
Witnesses said the youngsters - aged seven to 14 and all members of the same extended family - were blown to pieces by the blast.
Ahmed al-Asttal, a 22-year- old farmer wounded in the blast and a relative of the dead boys, said: 'I thought that the ground was shaking beneath my feet and I was so afraid.
'I couldn't walk. I looked at myself and I saw blood all over my clothes.'
A Palestinian commander in the area, Colonel Khaled Abu al-Ula, said the boys, including two pairs of brothers, had kicked or tripped over the unexploded round.
'After an investigation by our forces and by our explosives expert we can say that it is a tank shell which had not exploded,' he said.
He blamed Israel for the tragedy, saying its army 'continues to fire these bombs and shells at residential areas'.
Israeli officials expressed regret and offered condolences to the families.
But they said if the blast was caused by a tank shell, it had probably been fired earlier in the week in response to a Palestinian mortar attack from the area, in the Khan Younis refugee refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.
'There was no Israeli military activity in that area today,' said Israeli government spokesman Arye Mekel.
Palestinians have been firing mortars at Israeli soldiers and settlements every day for the past week, often from positions within civilian areas.
A youth who saw the carnage, 15-year- old Fateh al-Astel, said: 'We looked behind us and saw children running.
'I saw dismembered bodies. Half a body here, hands several metres away, another half a body in another place.'
Schoolchildren gathered in the crater left by the explosion, picking up the burnt remains of the boys' backpacks and school books.
Last night, Palestinian president Yasser Arafat blamed Israel for the youngsters' deaths.
He accused it of continued violations and warned of 'an escalation which is dangerous'.
Palestinian officials had initially said the boys were killed when an Israeli tank opened fire, but later admitted the unexploded ordnance had been lying there for some days.
From Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem
FIVE Palestinian boys were killed yesterday when one of them apparently kicked an unexploded Israeli tank shell as they walked to school in the Gaza Strip.
Witnesses said the youngsters - aged seven to 14 and all members of the same extended family - were blown to pieces by the blast.
Ahmed al-Asttal, a 22-year- old farmer wounded in the blast and a relative of the dead boys, said: 'I thought that the ground was shaking beneath my feet and I was so afraid.
'I couldn't walk. I looked at myself and I saw blood all over my clothes.'
A Palestinian commander in the area, Colonel Khaled Abu al-Ula, said the boys, including two pairs of brothers, had kicked or tripped over the unexploded round.
'After an investigation by our forces and by our explosives expert we can say that it is a tank shell which had not exploded,' he said.
He blamed Israel for the tragedy, saying its army 'continues to fire these bombs and shells at residential areas'.
Israeli officials expressed regret and offered condolences to the families.
But they said if the blast was caused by a tank shell, it had probably been fired earlier in the week in response to a Palestinian mortar attack from the area, in the Khan Younis refugee refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip.
'There was no Israeli military activity in that area today,' said Israeli government spokesman Arye Mekel.
Palestinians have been firing mortars at Israeli soldiers and settlements every day for the past week, often from positions within civilian areas.
A youth who saw the carnage, 15-year- old Fateh al-Astel, said: 'We looked behind us and saw children running.
'I saw dismembered bodies. Half a body here, hands several metres away, another half a body in another place.'
Schoolchildren gathered in the crater left by the explosion, picking up the burnt remains of the boys' backpacks and school books.
Last night, Palestinian president Yasser Arafat blamed Israel for the youngsters' deaths.
He accused it of continued violations and warned of 'an escalation which is dangerous'.
Palestinian officials had initially said the boys were killed when an Israeli tank opened fire, but later admitted the unexploded ordnance had been lying there for some days.
Wednesday, 17 October 2001
Gunmen assassinate Israel's tourism minister
17 October 2001
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — The Middle East was plunged deeper into crisis after a Palestinian group assassinated a right-wing Israeli Cabinet minister in a Jerusalem hotel early Wednesday. It was the first time an Israeli minister has been killed by an Arab terrorist. "The situation today has changed, and will never again be like it was yesterday," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told ministers at an emergency Cabinet session called after the murder of Rehavam Zeevi, 75.
Israel's tourism minister and leader of the National Alliance party was shot in the face at point-blank range outside his hotel room. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist group that is the second-largest faction of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed responsibility. It said it assassinated Zeevi in revenge for Israel's killing of the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa. He died in a missile attack by an Israeli helicopter gunship at his West Bank office in Ramallah in August.
The United States condemned the killing and called on Arafat to rein in terrorists.
"Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority must move now to find and arrest all those responsible for this act," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
Sharon and left-wing opposition leader Yossi Sarid also said Arafat must immediately arrest those responsible or face serious consequences. "Only despicable terrorists can dream of assassinating an elected official in a democratic state," Sharon said at a somber session of the Knesset.
He added, "The full responsibility falls squarely on Arafat, as someone who has controlled, and continues to control, terrorism, and as one who has not — to this day — taken even one serious step to prevent terrorism."
Israel reimposed a blockade on Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank. The blockade had been lifted 2 days ago as part of a truce Sept. 26.
Late Wednesday, a suicide bomber wounded two Israeli soldiers and killed himself on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip.
However, despite his accusation, Sharon appeared to rule out immediate military retaliation, giving the Palestinian leader a chance to follow through on his vow to apprehend the killers.
Zeevi and his seven-member party, angry at Sharon for new concessions to the Palestinians, resigned from the government Monday. Their resignation was due to take effect Wednesday. After the assassination, Zeevi's colleague Avigdor Lieberman said he would stay in the coalition.
Born in Jerusalem, Zeevi served in the pre-state militia that fought for an independent Jewish state. He was a career soldier, rising to the rank of major general. Zeevi served as adviser to several prime ministers before entering the Knesset in 1988 as leader of the ultranationalist Moledet Party. The party advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, by agreement, from the West Bank and Gaza.
Zeevi was found mortally wounded outside the door of his room at the Hyatt Hotel by his wife, Yael.
The Rev. Andrew Hocking, a tourist from California, was staying in the room opposite Zeevi's. He said he went into the hall when he heard Yael Zeevi's screams. "I thought she was being attacked; that's what it sounded like," he said, adding that he did not hear gunfire. "I saw her kneeling over him, and he'd obviously been shot. Blood was everywhere. ... It was pretty obvious to me he was already dead."
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — The Middle East was plunged deeper into crisis after a Palestinian group assassinated a right-wing Israeli Cabinet minister in a Jerusalem hotel early Wednesday. It was the first time an Israeli minister has been killed by an Arab terrorist. "The situation today has changed, and will never again be like it was yesterday," Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told ministers at an emergency Cabinet session called after the murder of Rehavam Zeevi, 75.
Israel's tourism minister and leader of the National Alliance party was shot in the face at point-blank range outside his hotel room. The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist group that is the second-largest faction of Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed responsibility. It said it assassinated Zeevi in revenge for Israel's killing of the group's leader, Abu Ali Mustafa. He died in a missile attack by an Israeli helicopter gunship at his West Bank office in Ramallah in August.
The United States condemned the killing and called on Arafat to rein in terrorists.
"Chairman Arafat and the Palestinian Authority must move now to find and arrest all those responsible for this act," State Department spokesman Philip Reeker said.
Sharon and left-wing opposition leader Yossi Sarid also said Arafat must immediately arrest those responsible or face serious consequences. "Only despicable terrorists can dream of assassinating an elected official in a democratic state," Sharon said at a somber session of the Knesset.
He added, "The full responsibility falls squarely on Arafat, as someone who has controlled, and continues to control, terrorism, and as one who has not — to this day — taken even one serious step to prevent terrorism."
Israel reimposed a blockade on Ramallah and other parts of the West Bank. The blockade had been lifted 2 days ago as part of a truce Sept. 26.
Late Wednesday, a suicide bomber wounded two Israeli soldiers and killed himself on the Israeli side of the border with the Gaza Strip.
However, despite his accusation, Sharon appeared to rule out immediate military retaliation, giving the Palestinian leader a chance to follow through on his vow to apprehend the killers.
Zeevi and his seven-member party, angry at Sharon for new concessions to the Palestinians, resigned from the government Monday. Their resignation was due to take effect Wednesday. After the assassination, Zeevi's colleague Avigdor Lieberman said he would stay in the coalition.
Born in Jerusalem, Zeevi served in the pre-state militia that fought for an independent Jewish state. He was a career soldier, rising to the rank of major general. Zeevi served as adviser to several prime ministers before entering the Knesset in 1988 as leader of the ultranationalist Moledet Party. The party advocated the "transfer" of Palestinians, by agreement, from the West Bank and Gaza.
Zeevi was found mortally wounded outside the door of his room at the Hyatt Hotel by his wife, Yael.
The Rev. Andrew Hocking, a tourist from California, was staying in the room opposite Zeevi's. He said he went into the hall when he heard Yael Zeevi's screams. "I thought she was being attacked; that's what it sounded like," he said, adding that he did not hear gunfire. "I saw her kneeling over him, and he'd obviously been shot. Blood was everywhere. ... It was pretty obvious to me he was already dead."
Tuesday, 9 October 2001
Palestinian police begin cracking down
By Matthew Kalman,
USA TODAY, 9 October 2001
JERUSALEM — Thousands of students took to the streets of Gaza on Monday to demonstrate support for Osama bin Laden and denounce U.S.-led strikes on targets in Afghanistan. Palestinian police, under orders from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to maintain calm, shot dead two demonstrators and wounded 50 others. Israel has called on Arafat to enforce a cease-fire by reining in and arresting militants who have been conducting attacks against Israelis.
Palestinian police opened fire with live ammunition and tear gas. Palestinian officials banned filming of the riots to suppress footage of Palestinians hailing bin Laden as their hero at an anti-American demonstration organized by the extremist Hamas group. Hamas has historically been Arafat's rival and pledged to wreck his interim peace deals with Israel.
Palestinian leaders are still smarting from international condemnation of the celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the USA.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the Gaza protests would test the Palestinian Authority's ability to control militants.
Israeli leaders, who expressed full support for the U.S. campaign against the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, said their security officials had been sharing operational anti-terror intelligence with U.S. officials since the attacks.
Israeli officials said they believed their country is no more vulnerable as a result of the attacks in Afghanistan. "Israel is not participating in this war and people should remain calm for the moment," Ben-Eliezer said. "We do not expect any attack on Israel."
USA TODAY, 9 October 2001
JERUSALEM — Thousands of students took to the streets of Gaza on Monday to demonstrate support for Osama bin Laden and denounce U.S.-led strikes on targets in Afghanistan. Palestinian police, under orders from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to maintain calm, shot dead two demonstrators and wounded 50 others. Israel has called on Arafat to enforce a cease-fire by reining in and arresting militants who have been conducting attacks against Israelis.
Palestinian police opened fire with live ammunition and tear gas. Palestinian officials banned filming of the riots to suppress footage of Palestinians hailing bin Laden as their hero at an anti-American demonstration organized by the extremist Hamas group. Hamas has historically been Arafat's rival and pledged to wreck his interim peace deals with Israel.
Palestinian leaders are still smarting from international condemnation of the celebrations in the West Bank and Gaza after the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the USA.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer said the Gaza protests would test the Palestinian Authority's ability to control militants.
Israeli leaders, who expressed full support for the U.S. campaign against the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, said their security officials had been sharing operational anti-terror intelligence with U.S. officials since the attacks.
Israeli officials said they believed their country is no more vulnerable as a result of the attacks in Afghanistan. "Israel is not participating in this war and people should remain calm for the moment," Ben-Eliezer said. "We do not expect any attack on Israel."
Wednesday, 12 September 2001
Palestinian leaders try to repair image
12 September 2001
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — Palestinian leaders moved Wednesday to repair the political damage done by news footage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after hearing of Tuesday's terror strikes in the USA. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority's president, was filmed donating blood for the victims. Arab League spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi hastily organized a candlelight vigil at the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem nearly 24 hours after hundreds of Israelis flocked to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in a spontaneous outpouring of grief. Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman used tougher measures to avoid an international backlash in response to apparent Palestinian jubilation. Abdel Rahman called international news agencies and said the safety of their staff could not be guaranteed unless they withdrew the embarrassing footage of Palestinian police firing joyfully in the air.
Such threats appeared to succeed in suppressing immediate release of video showing large street celebrations in Ramallah, Bethlehem and other West Bank towns.
Israelis, hundreds of whom lined up to donate blood and leave flowers at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Tuesday's strikes may have helped convey to Americans a little of what they have been feeling over the past year of violence. The Palestinian territories have been closed for most of that time to prevent attacks inside Israel, and the Israeli government has targeted and assassinated more than 50 suspected terrorists.
"Now that they are experiencing this horror, Americans and other foreign countries might begin to realize how we Israelis feel every day," said Shira Buchler, 23, a teacher in Jerusalem. "The only way to rid the world of terror is to hunt down these animals before they destroy us all. If we keep giving Arafat chance after chance, the terror groups he is giving sanctuary to will just grow and grow."
Former U.S. secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger hinted that the United States might have to adopt measures similar to Israel's. "This really is a war with terrorism, and we need to be prepared to act as if we are at war," Eagleburger told CNN on Tuesday. "And that does not necessarily mean that you have to strike back only at those that you know were the perpetrators of this thing."
Using Saudi financier Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, where bin Laden has received safe haven, as a starting point, Eagleburger suggested a policy of targeting terrorists and the governments that support them. "We do know that the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan has mothered Osama Bin Laden for years," he said. "They need to be hit."
He added that the policy should not be limited to bin Laden: "There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them, even if they are not immediately, directly involved in this thing."
Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University in Israel said this sounds similar to Israeli policy towards Palestinian terrorism. "There are clear indications that the U.S. public and officials are suddenly aware of the Israeli situation," he said. "Potentially, it's a very fundamental shift, with the U.S. taking the lead rather than staying neutral and acting cautiously."
He said that Americans, armed with a new understanding of the "horrifying nature of terror" and the willingness of people to commit suicide in order to kill thousands, may understand the thinking in Israel. "Previously, it was not understandable from the perspective of America that this hatred could exist and that Israel was doing its best to protect itself from that," Steinberg said.
Israel intensified its hunt for Palestinian militants Wednesday. It raided a West Bank town and two nearby villages. Seven Palestinians, including three suspected Islamic militants and an 11-year-old girl, were killed.
Senior Palestinian officials accused Israel of exploiting the world's horror over the terror in the USA to step up its strikes against Palestinian targets. Ashrawi said Israel is "using this tremendous tragedy as a cover for an escalation against the Palestinians."
In Bethlehem's Dehaishe refugee camp, Palestinian community leaders condemned the strikes in the USA and said there had been no celebrations Tuesday. But even after much prompting in Arabic to stay on message, ordinary Palestinians were unable to stifle their pleasure at America's downfall.
"I've never been so happy in my life as when I heard the news," said Khalil Abu Laban, a father of seven. "The Americans are responsible for everything. 'The friend of your enemy is your enemy,' " he said, quoting from religious texts. "I am against killing of innocent civilians, but the Americans are bad. This is good for us, the Palestinians."
"The Jews are assassinating, destroying and wounding Palestinians every day," said his wife, Aisheh. "Let them feel the suffering we have been feeling for a long time."
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — Palestinian leaders moved Wednesday to repair the political damage done by news footage of Palestinians celebrating in the streets after hearing of Tuesday's terror strikes in the USA. Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Authority's president, was filmed donating blood for the victims. Arab League spokeswoman Hanan Ashrawi hastily organized a candlelight vigil at the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem nearly 24 hours after hundreds of Israelis flocked to the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv in a spontaneous outpouring of grief. Palestinian Cabinet Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman used tougher measures to avoid an international backlash in response to apparent Palestinian jubilation. Abdel Rahman called international news agencies and said the safety of their staff could not be guaranteed unless they withdrew the embarrassing footage of Palestinian police firing joyfully in the air.
Such threats appeared to succeed in suppressing immediate release of video showing large street celebrations in Ramallah, Bethlehem and other West Bank towns.
Israelis, hundreds of whom lined up to donate blood and leave flowers at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, said Tuesday's strikes may have helped convey to Americans a little of what they have been feeling over the past year of violence. The Palestinian territories have been closed for most of that time to prevent attacks inside Israel, and the Israeli government has targeted and assassinated more than 50 suspected terrorists.
"Now that they are experiencing this horror, Americans and other foreign countries might begin to realize how we Israelis feel every day," said Shira Buchler, 23, a teacher in Jerusalem. "The only way to rid the world of terror is to hunt down these animals before they destroy us all. If we keep giving Arafat chance after chance, the terror groups he is giving sanctuary to will just grow and grow."
Former U.S. secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger hinted that the United States might have to adopt measures similar to Israel's. "This really is a war with terrorism, and we need to be prepared to act as if we are at war," Eagleburger told CNN on Tuesday. "And that does not necessarily mean that you have to strike back only at those that you know were the perpetrators of this thing."
Using Saudi financier Osama bin Laden and Afghanistan, where bin Laden has received safe haven, as a starting point, Eagleburger suggested a policy of targeting terrorists and the governments that support them. "We do know that the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan has mothered Osama Bin Laden for years," he said. "They need to be hit."
He added that the policy should not be limited to bin Laden: "There is only one way to begin to deal with people like this, and that is you have to kill some of them, even if they are not immediately, directly involved in this thing."
Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University in Israel said this sounds similar to Israeli policy towards Palestinian terrorism. "There are clear indications that the U.S. public and officials are suddenly aware of the Israeli situation," he said. "Potentially, it's a very fundamental shift, with the U.S. taking the lead rather than staying neutral and acting cautiously."
He said that Americans, armed with a new understanding of the "horrifying nature of terror" and the willingness of people to commit suicide in order to kill thousands, may understand the thinking in Israel. "Previously, it was not understandable from the perspective of America that this hatred could exist and that Israel was doing its best to protect itself from that," Steinberg said.
Israel intensified its hunt for Palestinian militants Wednesday. It raided a West Bank town and two nearby villages. Seven Palestinians, including three suspected Islamic militants and an 11-year-old girl, were killed.
Senior Palestinian officials accused Israel of exploiting the world's horror over the terror in the USA to step up its strikes against Palestinian targets. Ashrawi said Israel is "using this tremendous tragedy as a cover for an escalation against the Palestinians."
In Bethlehem's Dehaishe refugee camp, Palestinian community leaders condemned the strikes in the USA and said there had been no celebrations Tuesday. But even after much prompting in Arabic to stay on message, ordinary Palestinians were unable to stifle their pleasure at America's downfall.
"I've never been so happy in my life as when I heard the news," said Khalil Abu Laban, a father of seven. "The Americans are responsible for everything. 'The friend of your enemy is your enemy,' " he said, quoting from religious texts. "I am against killing of innocent civilians, but the Americans are bad. This is good for us, the Palestinians."
"The Jews are assassinating, destroying and wounding Palestinians every day," said his wife, Aisheh. "Let them feel the suffering we have been feeling for a long time."
Monday, 10 September 2001
Suicide bomb dismays Arab citizens of Israel
By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY 10 September 2001
DEIR HANNA, Israel - The shock waves of Sunday's suicide bombing in a train station in northern Israel were being felt Monday by the million or more Palestinian Arabs who are Israeli citizens.
Initial reports said the terrorist who blew himself up in Nahariya, killing three off-duty Israeli soldiers and injuring dozens more, was 48-year-old Muhammed Shaker Habashi, from the village of Abu Snan, about 30 miles from here in the Galilee, the northern part of Israel.
Israeli Arab leaders and organizations lined up Monday to denounce the attack. "It's very serious," said Shawki Khatib, chairman of the Israeli Arab Leadership Monitoring Committee, which represents Israel's Arab citizens. "We condemn such people, and we spit them out - not only those who carry out such attacks, but even those who think in this direction."
Khatib and other Israeli Arab leaders warn against concluding that Sunday's attack indicated a new extremist tendency within their community. "This does not indicate a trend and it is not a turning point," said Abdel Malik Dahamshe, one of 10 Arab members elected to the Knesset, Israel's 120-seat parliament. "We have proven ourselves for 53 years. We don't need to prove afresh twice each day that we are citizens."
Israeli observers said Sunday's suicide bombing has generated greater concern throughout the country that the attack by one of their own will add a dangerous new dimension to the 11-month conflict. Writing in Monday's daily Ma'ariv, Israeli commentator Chemi Shalev said, "For much of the public, a suicide bomber from among the Israeli Arabs is a nightmare that has come true."
Relations between Israel's Jewish majority and Arab minority have always been complex. From the founding of the Jewish state in 1948 until 1966, Israeli Arabs lived under military rule. The Druse, members of a religion that grew out of Islam centuries ago but that Muslims no longer recognize as part of Islam, make up about 10% of Israeli Arabs. Christians represent 12%-15% of the Arab citizens. All have long complained of discrimination by the Jewish majority. Despite recent attempts to bridge the gap, Arab Israeli communities suffer from a deficiency of health, welfare, education and transport services.
Palestinian activists had been largely unsuccessful, until lately, in their attempts to exploit the feelings of alienation among Israeli Arabs. Despite feelings of solidarity with the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, who often are relatives, Israeli Arabs have been absent from any active role in the recent intifada, or uprising, that has claimed more than 700 lives, most of them Palestinians.
However, with the rise of the extreme religious Islamic movement in the past decade, these feelings have shifted toward political activity on behalf of the Palestinian struggle for independence.
Fundamentalist Muslim groups are trying to enlist young Palestinians to fight and even sacrifice themselves for their cause: an independent Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel. For the first time, observers say, it appears their message is reaching inside Israel to Arab citizens.
"This confers legitimacy on those on the Jewish side who recently began to claim that Israeli Arabs are a fifth column," said Elie Rekhess, a professor of Israeli Arab politics at Tel Aviv University, alluding to a group within a society that helps the enemy.
Thirteen Israeli Arabs were shot dead by Israeli police during a wave of riots in northern Israel last October. The unrest died down after a few days. Since then, Israeli Arabs have been largely quiet, especially after the Israeli government set up an official commission of inquiry into last year's riots. In Deir Hanna, Sunday's suicide bombing hit especially hard. The village's 15,000 Muslims, Christians and Druse were still reeling from the arrests Thursday of four local 16-year-olds on suspicion of planting a bomb at a major intersection 3 miles away.
Israeli security officials say they believe the teens were recruited by a Fatah group loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the West Bank town of Jenin. Two of the teens have confessed, Israeli police and their Israeli Arab lawyer say.
But Rasmiyeh Khatib, whose nephew is among the teen suspects under arrest, said Israeli Arabs are good citizens. "We are loyal to the state. We don't want problems. My nephew is a good boy who was led astray. I'm sure he didn't know what he was doing. They played with his head."
In Abu Snan, home to the suspected suicide bomber Habashi, there was outrage that the village could should have produced a terrorist. Most residents are Druse. The highest-ranking Druse soldier in the country, Maj. Gen. Yusef Mishlev, comes from the village.
Sheik Mohanna, the local Druse leader whose son died fighting for the Israeli army in Lebanon, expressed the shock of his community. "Abu Snan has given its best sons for the sake of the country. We are in trauma here in the village. Such people have no place amongst us, none."
Wednesday, 20 June 2001
Hostility comes across, down
20 June 2001
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — When Palestinians turn to the crossword pages of their daily newspapers, they may be looking for a few minutes' respite from the grinding Middle East conflict and a chance to flex their literary muscles. But a new analysis of the word games in the Palestinian press reveals that even during their hard-earned leisure time, readers are being fed a diet of anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic rhetoric.
One clue in the mass-circulation Al-Quds newspaper on Dec. 20 asked for a three-letter word to describe "the Jewish trait (spelled backward)." The answer: gdr, an Arabic word meaning "treachery" or "someone who stabs you in the back." The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida asked on Feb. 18, 1999, for a word to describe the "Jewish center for eternalizing the holocaust and the lies." The answer: Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
The crossword puzzles are just one reflection of the deep-seated antagonism toward Jews and the existence of the state of Israel — hostility that has remained untempered in the years since the signing in 1993 of the first peace agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.
"The Palestinian media serves as a window into the internal Palestinian world," says Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, the group that produced the report. "These problematic messages are not published in the Palestinian Authority newspapers during times of particular tension. Rather, these have appeared over the past number of years as a routine part of Palestinian culture and amusement, reflecting normative Palestinian thinking."
Since September, when Palestinian-Israeli fighting escalated into a new regional conflict, Israelis have accused the Palestinian media of actively inciting anti-Israel feeling by depicting heroic images of Arab terrorists and Palestinian children with guns. In the past six months, at least 458 people have died, 375 of them Palestinians.
Limor Livnat, Israeli education minister, says the failure to accept the existence of Israel is embedded in the Palestinian education system, including 14 textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority in September 2000 with financial backing from the European Union.
"These schoolbooks do not teach coexistence and compromise with Israel, but faithfulness and commitment to the struggle for the 'liberation of Palestine,' " Livnat says. "Peace with Israel is not presented as a goal or discussed as an option. Israel's name does not appear on any regional map, and its land is included in the 'state of Palestine.' "
Historical events also have sometimes been revised in the crossword puzzles, apparently to reflect Palestinian views. A mentally unstable Australian Christian tourist who in 1969 set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, was described as a "settler" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 6, 2000). Most of the people referred to as "settlers" in Palestinian areas are Jews. And the murder of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra refugee camp in Beirut by Lebanese Christian Falangists in 1982 was described as a "massacre carried out by the Zionists" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 9, 1999). Palestinians blame Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was defense minister at the time of the massacre, for allowing the Falangist attack.
Perhaps the most insidious references from the Israeli standpoint are those that mention towns, deserts, mountains and rivers. When Al-Hayat Al-Jadida asked for a five-letter word describing a "Palestinian desert (spelled backward)" on May 26, 2000, the answer was the Negev, in southern Israel.
Critics say the refusal to identify geographical locations as part of Israel reinforces the idea that the Jewish state is not a legitimate entity, despite Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's assurance to then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993 that "the PLO recognizes the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security."
For their part, the mainstream Israeli media appear to have accepted the idea of an independent Palestinian state, although the label "Palestine" still is largely taboo in the media because it is seen as implying the destruction of Israel. Although racist statements about Palestinians occur in the Israeli media, they are rare and are condemned.
Hafez Barghouti, editor of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, says the reference to the Holocaust as "lies" was a simple typing error. "The word should have been butula — heroism. But the typist changed one letter by mistake and it came out as batala — lies or denial," Barghouti says. That incident aside, he says he cannot see what the fuss is about.
"They steal our land, they kick us out, they kill us, and now they come to settle accounts with us over words," Barghouti says. "It's very strange that they find time to go over crossword puzzles. ... Instead of searching through crosswords, they should examine the graves of the Palestinians who have died since September to find out how they were killed."
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
JERUSALEM — When Palestinians turn to the crossword pages of their daily newspapers, they may be looking for a few minutes' respite from the grinding Middle East conflict and a chance to flex their literary muscles. But a new analysis of the word games in the Palestinian press reveals that even during their hard-earned leisure time, readers are being fed a diet of anti-Israeli and even anti-Semitic rhetoric.
One clue in the mass-circulation Al-Quds newspaper on Dec. 20 asked for a three-letter word to describe "the Jewish trait (spelled backward)." The answer: gdr, an Arabic word meaning "treachery" or "someone who stabs you in the back." The official Palestinian Authority daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida asked on Feb. 18, 1999, for a word to describe the "Jewish center for eternalizing the holocaust and the lies." The answer: Yad Vashem, the official Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem.
The crossword puzzles are just one reflection of the deep-seated antagonism toward Jews and the existence of the state of Israel — hostility that has remained untempered in the years since the signing in 1993 of the first peace agreement between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.
"The Palestinian media serves as a window into the internal Palestinian world," says Itamar Marcus, director of Palestinian Media Watch, the group that produced the report. "These problematic messages are not published in the Palestinian Authority newspapers during times of particular tension. Rather, these have appeared over the past number of years as a routine part of Palestinian culture and amusement, reflecting normative Palestinian thinking."
Since September, when Palestinian-Israeli fighting escalated into a new regional conflict, Israelis have accused the Palestinian media of actively inciting anti-Israel feeling by depicting heroic images of Arab terrorists and Palestinian children with guns. In the past six months, at least 458 people have died, 375 of them Palestinians.
Limor Livnat, Israeli education minister, says the failure to accept the existence of Israel is embedded in the Palestinian education system, including 14 textbooks published by the Palestinian Authority in September 2000 with financial backing from the European Union.
"These schoolbooks do not teach coexistence and compromise with Israel, but faithfulness and commitment to the struggle for the 'liberation of Palestine,' " Livnat says. "Peace with Israel is not presented as a goal or discussed as an option. Israel's name does not appear on any regional map, and its land is included in the 'state of Palestine.' "
Historical events also have sometimes been revised in the crossword puzzles, apparently to reflect Palestinian views. A mentally unstable Australian Christian tourist who in 1969 set fire to the Al-Aqsa mosque, an Islamic shrine in Jerusalem, was described as a "settler" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Feb. 6, 2000). Most of the people referred to as "settlers" in Palestinian areas are Jews. And the murder of hundreds of Palestinians at the Sabra refugee camp in Beirut by Lebanese Christian Falangists in 1982 was described as a "massacre carried out by the Zionists" (Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Jan. 9, 1999). Palestinians blame Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who was defense minister at the time of the massacre, for allowing the Falangist attack.
Perhaps the most insidious references from the Israeli standpoint are those that mention towns, deserts, mountains and rivers. When Al-Hayat Al-Jadida asked for a five-letter word describing a "Palestinian desert (spelled backward)" on May 26, 2000, the answer was the Negev, in southern Israel.
Critics say the refusal to identify geographical locations as part of Israel reinforces the idea that the Jewish state is not a legitimate entity, despite Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's assurance to then-prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in September 1993 that "the PLO recognizes the right of the state of Israel to exist in peace and security."
For their part, the mainstream Israeli media appear to have accepted the idea of an independent Palestinian state, although the label "Palestine" still is largely taboo in the media because it is seen as implying the destruction of Israel. Although racist statements about Palestinians occur in the Israeli media, they are rare and are condemned.
Hafez Barghouti, editor of Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, says the reference to the Holocaust as "lies" was a simple typing error. "The word should have been butula — heroism. But the typist changed one letter by mistake and it came out as batala — lies or denial," Barghouti says. That incident aside, he says he cannot see what the fuss is about.
"They steal our land, they kick us out, they kill us, and now they come to settle accounts with us over words," Barghouti says. "It's very strange that they find time to go over crossword puzzles. ... Instead of searching through crosswords, they should examine the graves of the Palestinians who have died since September to find out how they were killed."
Wednesday, 30 May 2001
Rajoub vs Arafat
Statement accuses security chief of U.S.-endorsed plot to oust Arafat
By Matthew Kalman
USA TODAY
30 May 2001 - Page 7A
JERUSALEM -- The powerful Palestinian security chief in the West Bank was accused late Wednesday of heading a U.S.-Israeli plot to overthrow Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Col. Jibril Rajoub, 54, commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security force in the West Bank, was denounced in a signed leaflet issued by a faction of his own political group, the Fatah movement, which reports to Arafat and has the loyalty of most Palestinians.
The leaflet could be the first sign of a serious split within the highest ranks of the Palestinian Authority, which governs some parts of the Palestinian territories and seeks an independent Palestinian state.
The leaflet alleges that there is an ''Israeli plan based on assassinating brother Abu Amar (Arafat) or deporting him from the homeland to create an alternative leadership that would be prepared to succumb to America and Israel.''
It names Arafat's deputy Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as a co-conspirator with Rajoub in the alleged plot to overthrow Arafat, citing ''the recent visit of Abu Mazen to America and his meeting with (Secretary of State) Colin Powell, who proposed to him the American plan.''
The statement calls on Rajoub's estimated 10,000 armed loyalists to rise up against him. The men who back Rajoub represent a significant portion -- perhaps as much as 20% -- of the armed Palestinian forces in the West Bank and Gaza. Rajoub's men are the only Palestinian security agency that has not been accused by Israel of participating in the current uprising, which has claimed more than 550 lives. Contacted by telephone late Wednesday, Rajoub called the leaflet a ''shameless forgery.''
He said, ''Fatah has nothing to do with such a big lie. It's not published by Fatah.''
But sources within Fatah, which is divided among various factions, confirmed the leaflet's authenticity.
Some Israeli politicians have openly talked about the need to replace Arafat with a more pragmatic leader willing to sign a peace deal.
This is not the first time Rajoub has been mentioned as a potential successor to Arafat, 72. Four years ago, the Palestinian leader formally dismissed Rajoub after the younger man made a high-profile visit to the USA and was touted as a possible heir to Arafat. But Rajoub was soon reinstated.
Since then, Rajoub's power has grown and he has played a central role in diplomatic negotiations and security coordination with Israel and the United States. Many of his men have received CIA training as part of the CIA's security coordination effort.
Analysts were surprised that such a document would surface, and some expressed doubts about the leaflet's authenticity. They agreed, however, that many Palestinian activists are concerned that a deal to end the eight-month intifada, or uprising, without tangible gains is in the works.
''There are certainly fears that Israel and the United States are trying to undermine Arafat, but I would be extremely surprised if these fears would be expressed in a document like this,'' said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland.
David Schenker, an expert on Palestinian politics at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also expressed caution about the document.
If it is authentic, however, the leaflet reflected ''splits that until now have been below the surface,'' Schenker said.
Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian security commanders met in Gaza late Wednesday for the second time this week to discuss security. Both sides said the meetings would continue next week.
JERUSALEM -- The powerful Palestinian security chief in the West Bank was accused late Wednesday of heading a U.S.-Israeli plot to overthrow Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Col. Jibril Rajoub, 54, commander of the Palestinian Preventive Security force in the West Bank, was denounced in a signed leaflet issued by a faction of his own political group, the Fatah movement, which reports to Arafat and has the loyalty of most Palestinians.
The leaflet could be the first sign of a serious split within the highest ranks of the Palestinian Authority, which governs some parts of the Palestinian territories and seeks an independent Palestinian state.
The leaflet alleges that there is an ''Israeli plan based on assassinating brother Abu Amar (Arafat) or deporting him from the homeland to create an alternative leadership that would be prepared to succumb to America and Israel.''
It names Arafat's deputy Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as a co-conspirator with Rajoub in the alleged plot to overthrow Arafat, citing ''the recent visit of Abu Mazen to America and his meeting with (Secretary of State) Colin Powell, who proposed to him the American plan.''
The statement calls on Rajoub's estimated 10,000 armed loyalists to rise up against him. The men who back Rajoub represent a significant portion -- perhaps as much as 20% -- of the armed Palestinian forces in the West Bank and Gaza. Rajoub's men are the only Palestinian security agency that has not been accused by Israel of participating in the current uprising, which has claimed more than 550 lives. Contacted by telephone late Wednesday, Rajoub called the leaflet a ''shameless forgery.''
He said, ''Fatah has nothing to do with such a big lie. It's not published by Fatah.''
But sources within Fatah, which is divided among various factions, confirmed the leaflet's authenticity.
Some Israeli politicians have openly talked about the need to replace Arafat with a more pragmatic leader willing to sign a peace deal.
This is not the first time Rajoub has been mentioned as a potential successor to Arafat, 72. Four years ago, the Palestinian leader formally dismissed Rajoub after the younger man made a high-profile visit to the USA and was touted as a possible heir to Arafat. But Rajoub was soon reinstated.
Since then, Rajoub's power has grown and he has played a central role in diplomatic negotiations and security coordination with Israel and the United States. Many of his men have received CIA training as part of the CIA's security coordination effort.
Analysts were surprised that such a document would surface, and some expressed doubts about the leaflet's authenticity. They agreed, however, that many Palestinian activists are concerned that a deal to end the eight-month intifada, or uprising, without tangible gains is in the works.
''There are certainly fears that Israel and the United States are trying to undermine Arafat, but I would be extremely surprised if these fears would be expressed in a document like this,'' said Shibley Telhami, a Middle East expert at the University of Maryland.
David Schenker, an expert on Palestinian politics at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, also expressed caution about the document.
If it is authentic, however, the leaflet reflected ''splits that until now have been below the surface,'' Schenker said.
Meanwhile, Israeli and Palestinian security commanders met in Gaza late Wednesday for the second time this week to discuss security. Both sides said the meetings would continue next week.
Tuesday, 29 May 2001
Kidnappings in Gaza
U.S., British citizens targeted in Mideast
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
May 29, 2001
JERUSALEM — Palestinian forces intensified their attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday as diplomats made progress in efforts to renew negotiations to end eight months of violence. In the Gaza Strip, Newsweek bureau chief Josh Hammer, an American, and British photographer Gary Knight, were kidnapped and held for five hours by a group loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Hammer, Knight and a Palestinian driver and translator were kidnapped by the Fatah Hawks in the Gaza Strip.
They were told their detention was a "symbolic" kidnapping to protest British and American support for Israel in the current Palestinian revolt.
Hammer and Knight had gone to Gaza to interview the Hawks as the militia members fired mortars at Israeli settlements.
The group released them unharmed, but warned that U.S. and British nationals would be targeted in the future. "We have no other choice but to strike at and threaten American and British interests," the Hawks said in a statement. The group also denounced U.S. and British "bias" in favor of Israel.
Hammer said Palestinian officials told him Arafat was outraged over the kidnapping. Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Palestinian security chief, quoted Arafat as saying, "This isn't the Palestinian way."
Just before the journalists were released, two Palestinian suicide bombers died near an Israeli settlement in the southern Gaza Strip as they tried to attack an Israeli military position.
One blew himself up as he approached the soldiers; the second man was shot and killed. No others were injured.
In Jericho, a Palestinian was killed by an Israeli undercover unit.
In the West Bank, Palestinians were blamed in separate drive-by shootings. Two women who were citizens of both the United States and Israel were killed in one; an Israeli man died in another.
Israeli officials said there had been more than 100 attacks by Palestinian forces since Israel called a unilateral cease-fire last week.
Meanwhile, according to reports out of a U.S.-mediated meeting of senior officials from both sides in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the Palestinians rejected an Israeli call for a cease-fire.
JERUSALEM — Palestinian forces intensified their attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in the West Bank and Gaza on Tuesday as diplomats made progress in efforts to renew negotiations to end eight months of violence. In the Gaza Strip, Newsweek bureau chief Josh Hammer, an American, and British photographer Gary Knight, were kidnapped and held for five hours by a group loyal to Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Hammer, Knight and a Palestinian driver and translator were kidnapped by the Fatah Hawks in the Gaza Strip.
They were told their detention was a "symbolic" kidnapping to protest British and American support for Israel in the current Palestinian revolt.
Hammer and Knight had gone to Gaza to interview the Hawks as the militia members fired mortars at Israeli settlements.
The group released them unharmed, but warned that U.S. and British nationals would be targeted in the future. "We have no other choice but to strike at and threaten American and British interests," the Hawks said in a statement. The group also denounced U.S. and British "bias" in favor of Israel.
Hammer said Palestinian officials told him Arafat was outraged over the kidnapping. Mohammed Dahlan, a senior Palestinian security chief, quoted Arafat as saying, "This isn't the Palestinian way."
Just before the journalists were released, two Palestinian suicide bombers died near an Israeli settlement in the southern Gaza Strip as they tried to attack an Israeli military position.
One blew himself up as he approached the soldiers; the second man was shot and killed. No others were injured.
In Jericho, a Palestinian was killed by an Israeli undercover unit.
In the West Bank, Palestinians were blamed in separate drive-by shootings. Two women who were citizens of both the United States and Israel were killed in one; an Israeli man died in another.
Israeli officials said there had been more than 100 attacks by Palestinian forces since Israel called a unilateral cease-fire last week.
Meanwhile, according to reports out of a U.S.-mediated meeting of senior officials from both sides in the West Bank town of Ramallah, the Palestinians rejected an Israeli call for a cease-fire.
Friday, 25 May 2001
Wedding disaster; 'The floor just opened up ... then I saw my brothers fall'
DAILY MAIL
May 25, 2001
By MATTHEW KALMAN
AT LEAST 15 wedding guests were killed and around 300 injured last night when a four-storey hall collapsed in Jerusalem.
Many were trapped under the rubble.
Scores more were taken to hospital after the tragedy in the Jewish half of the city.
Police said the collapse was caused by a structural failure and not a terrorist attack.
'People are trapped, people are dying here,' said one distressed witness.
Some 700 guests were celebrating on the top floor of the building when part of it caved in. Tons of masonry were sent plunging on to the floor below which also collapsed.
Wedding guests fell through the building and huge quantities of concrete and masonry landed on top of them.
'There was no blast,' said guest Yochi Bar-Zani. 'The floor opened up under me. I saw my brothers fall inside and I fell on top of them, burying them.'
'Three floors and the ceiling fell down,' said Shmuel Dimant, 27, blood streaming down his face.
'People were dancing and all of a sudden the dance floor collapsed, and all the tables around it fell through,' said Rami Mordechai, who said he was at the wedding but at a distance from the part of the floor that crumbled.
'People were flying through the air, the orchestra, the loudspeakers, everything fell,' said Efraim Rino, his voice choking as he told Israeli TV that some of the victims were his relatives.
One man described how he fell holding the hand of his ten-year- old son. He said both were rescued from beneath the rubble.
'Daddy, don't be frightened I'm with you,' he said his son told him. 'Then we fell through one floor and another.' Rescue workers used their bare hands to pull chunks of concrete off trapped wedding guests.
The collapse left a gaping hole with metal reinforcement cables hanging at twisted angles from the sides.
The bride was taken to Bikur Holim hospital in downtown Jerusalem, where a doctor said she was not seriously injured The casualty status of a person whose injury may or may not require hospitalization; medical authority does not classify as very seriously injured, seriously injured, or incapacitating illness or injury; and the person can communicate with the next of kin. Also called NSI. See also casualty status. .
Sara Pinhas, a relative of the groom, said dancers had lifted the father of the bride on a chair when suddenly he fell.
'Then we felt the whole building collapse, everything fell down. We managed to climb down the side of the building,' she said.
Dozens of ambulances from as far away as Tel Aviv 40 miles to the west were summoned to the Versailles Banqueting Suite as rescuers laid out the injured on pavements and car parks outside.
Fleets of rescue and emergency vehicles could be heard racing through the streets as every hospital in the city cleared its emergency room and went on to a disaster footing.
Units of the Israeli army who helped rescue victims of the Turkish earthquake and Nairobi bombings searched through the rubble.
Israeli interior minister Eli Ishai said 'at least 15 people were killed'.
Relatives gathered outside the hospitals, desperately seeking news of their loved ones. Some were covered with blood. Others said they helped pull victims out of the wreckage before beingtaken for treatment themselves.
Doctors said there were many children among the injured, including a three-month-old baby.
Dudu Adi, the owner of the hall, stood weeping at the scene. He said: 'The building is 12 years old and we have never had any problems with it.'
Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert said: 'This does not seem to have any links to any political or terrorist act but it is a grave disaster for us. This is a terrible, terrible tragedy.'
May 25, 2001
By MATTHEW KALMAN
AT LEAST 15 wedding guests were killed and around 300 injured last night when a four-storey hall collapsed in Jerusalem.
Many were trapped under the rubble.
Scores more were taken to hospital after the tragedy in the Jewish half of the city.
Police said the collapse was caused by a structural failure and not a terrorist attack.
'People are trapped, people are dying here,' said one distressed witness.
Some 700 guests were celebrating on the top floor of the building when part of it caved in. Tons of masonry were sent plunging on to the floor below which also collapsed.
Wedding guests fell through the building and huge quantities of concrete and masonry landed on top of them.
'There was no blast,' said guest Yochi Bar-Zani. 'The floor opened up under me. I saw my brothers fall inside and I fell on top of them, burying them.'
'Three floors and the ceiling fell down,' said Shmuel Dimant, 27, blood streaming down his face.
'People were dancing and all of a sudden the dance floor collapsed, and all the tables around it fell through,' said Rami Mordechai, who said he was at the wedding but at a distance from the part of the floor that crumbled.
'People were flying through the air, the orchestra, the loudspeakers, everything fell,' said Efraim Rino, his voice choking as he told Israeli TV that some of the victims were his relatives.
One man described how he fell holding the hand of his ten-year- old son. He said both were rescued from beneath the rubble.
'Daddy, don't be frightened I'm with you,' he said his son told him. 'Then we fell through one floor and another.' Rescue workers used their bare hands to pull chunks of concrete off trapped wedding guests.
The collapse left a gaping hole with metal reinforcement cables hanging at twisted angles from the sides.
The bride was taken to Bikur Holim hospital in downtown Jerusalem, where a doctor said she was not seriously injured The casualty status of a person whose injury may or may not require hospitalization; medical authority does not classify as very seriously injured, seriously injured, or incapacitating illness or injury; and the person can communicate with the next of kin. Also called NSI. See also casualty status. .
Sara Pinhas, a relative of the groom, said dancers had lifted the father of the bride on a chair when suddenly he fell.
'Then we felt the whole building collapse, everything fell down. We managed to climb down the side of the building,' she said.
Dozens of ambulances from as far away as Tel Aviv 40 miles to the west were summoned to the Versailles Banqueting Suite as rescuers laid out the injured on pavements and car parks outside.
Fleets of rescue and emergency vehicles could be heard racing through the streets as every hospital in the city cleared its emergency room and went on to a disaster footing.
Units of the Israeli army who helped rescue victims of the Turkish earthquake and Nairobi bombings searched through the rubble.
Israeli interior minister Eli Ishai said 'at least 15 people were killed'.
Relatives gathered outside the hospitals, desperately seeking news of their loved ones. Some were covered with blood. Others said they helped pull victims out of the wreckage before beingtaken for treatment themselves.
Doctors said there were many children among the injured, including a three-month-old baby.
Dudu Adi, the owner of the hall, stood weeping at the scene. He said: 'The building is 12 years old and we have never had any problems with it.'
Jerusalem mayor Ehud Olmert said: 'This does not seem to have any links to any political or terrorist act but it is a grave disaster for us. This is a terrible, terrible tragedy.'
Tuesday, 22 May 2001
Mitchell Report
Palestinians reject Sharon's calls for cease-fire
By Matthew Kalman, USA TODAY
06/20/2001 - Updated 04:07 PM ET
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Tuesday for a total cease-fire with the Palestinians in response to an international commission's report that outlined a plan for peace talks. "I call on our neighbors to stop the violence immediately and return to the negotiating table," Sharon said. "If there is a cease-fire, we will uphold it." However, Sharon refused to accept the Mitchell Commission's recommendation that Israel freeze construction in existing settlements.
A senior Palestinian official, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, dismissed the offer. "We reject everything Sharon said about a cease-fire," he said.
Soon after Sharon's statement, fierce fighting broke out in southern Jerusalem between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.
Sharon said he accepted the report of a team headed by former U.S. senator George Mitchell that was released Monday and endorsed by Washington.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer ordered the Israeli army to stop all firing except "when life is in danger" and called on the Palestinians to "immediately stop violence and terrorism as a first step toward a return to the negotiating table."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer welcomed Sharon's call for a cease-fire and said President Bush would "welcome a similar statement" from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Sharon said he accepted the formula of the Mitchell Commission: a cease-fire, followed by a cooling-off period, confidence-building measures and finally, peace talks. The commission also called for the Israelis to only use non-lethal force against Palestinians who attack outposts with rocks, and that the Palestinians must arrest the Hamas terrorists who are attacking Israelis.
The report also called for a freeze on construction at existing settlements that house 200,000 or more Israelis. Sharon said Israel would not expand the borders of any settlements. But he insisted that Israel has an obligation to permit new housing within existing settlements to accommodate the "natural growth" of the thousands of families living there. On Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell called the settlement issue "a key element that has to be dealt with" but declined to call for a freeze.
Palestinian leaders say Israel's occupation of Palestinian land must end before they stop the unrest.
"It is the Israelis who are the terrorists — the Israeli occupation, the Israeli policies, expanding settlements, confiscation of land," Palestinian security chief Col. Jibril Rajoub said.
Contributing: Wire reports
JERUSALEM — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called Tuesday for a total cease-fire with the Palestinians in response to an international commission's report that outlined a plan for peace talks. "I call on our neighbors to stop the violence immediately and return to the negotiating table," Sharon said. "If there is a cease-fire, we will uphold it." However, Sharon refused to accept the Mitchell Commission's recommendation that Israel freeze construction in existing settlements.
A senior Palestinian official, Ahmed Abdel Rahman, dismissed the offer. "We reject everything Sharon said about a cease-fire," he said.
Soon after Sharon's statement, fierce fighting broke out in southern Jerusalem between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen.
Sharon said he accepted the report of a team headed by former U.S. senator George Mitchell that was released Monday and endorsed by Washington.
Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer ordered the Israeli army to stop all firing except "when life is in danger" and called on the Palestinians to "immediately stop violence and terrorism as a first step toward a return to the negotiating table."
White House spokesman Ari Fleischer welcomed Sharon's call for a cease-fire and said President Bush would "welcome a similar statement" from Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
Sharon said he accepted the formula of the Mitchell Commission: a cease-fire, followed by a cooling-off period, confidence-building measures and finally, peace talks. The commission also called for the Israelis to only use non-lethal force against Palestinians who attack outposts with rocks, and that the Palestinians must arrest the Hamas terrorists who are attacking Israelis.
The report also called for a freeze on construction at existing settlements that house 200,000 or more Israelis. Sharon said Israel would not expand the borders of any settlements. But he insisted that Israel has an obligation to permit new housing within existing settlements to accommodate the "natural growth" of the thousands of families living there. On Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell called the settlement issue "a key element that has to be dealt with" but declined to call for a freeze.
Palestinian leaders say Israel's occupation of Palestinian land must end before they stop the unrest.
"It is the Israelis who are the terrorists — the Israeli occupation, the Israeli policies, expanding settlements, confiscation of land," Palestinian security chief Col. Jibril Rajoub said.
Contributing: Wire reports
Wednesday, 16 May 2001
Three minutes free of violence
There was a brief, quiet interlude as Palestinians contemplated Israel's founding, MATTHEW KALMAN says
The Globe and Mail,
Wednesday, May 16, 2001
By Matthew Kalman
RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- For three minutes yesterday, Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip stood in silent contemplation to mark the 53rd anniversary of what they call the naqba, the catastrophe of the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
On a day otherwise filled with violence, traffic stopped and even children stood at attention.
The exact moment that commemoration was to begin was broadcast over Voice of Palestine Radio, followed by the Palestinian national anthem -- My Homeland, My Homeland.
It looked strikingly like events in Israel last month, when citizens stopped in their tracks -- as they do every year -- to silently mourn the dead of the Holocaust and then the fallen soldiers of more than a half-century of conflict.
Air-raid sirens mark the moment of commemoration on the Israeli side of the Israeli-Palestinian divide.
The similarity between the two ceremonies was not coincidental. Just as the Israelis place great emphasis on the Holocaust, which proves for them the necessity of an independent Jewish homeland, so the Palestinians want the world to remember their suffering, which they say continues to this day and demands the solution of an independent Palestinian homeland.
For decades, the Palestinian national movement has shadowed the institutions and the symbols of the prestate Zionists and then the Israelis, with each side creating a mirror image of the other.
For Israelis, May 15, 1948, was a day of joy and independence, later to symbolize their victory over the invading armies of several Arab states. For Palestinians, it triggered the flight of more than 600,000 refugees to those same neighbouring Arab countries, most of them never to return.
(Israel celebrated its 53rd anniversary last month, in accord with the Hebrew calendar.)
The gap between such conflicting interpretations of the same events has widened over the years as history itself has become a central motif in the identity of Israelis and Palestinians.
"We are trying to refresh the memory of all that there is another side to this story of 1948 -- the side of tragedy, expulsions and demolishing houses," Ahmed Tibi, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, said yesterday. "We are not only talking about the past. We are talking about a past that is being carried on in these days by the . . . Israeli occupation."
Israeli and Palestinian scholars disagree fundamentally -- and also among themselves -- over the events of the past century.
In Israel, a school of "new historians" has challenged official versions of Zionist history, which barely mention the 400 Palestinian villages destroyed in the 1948 war of independence, or the killings of Arab civilians.
Some Palestinian scholars, meanwhile, were deeply embarrassed this week when colleagues attended a seminar in Jordan dedicated to proving that the Holocaust was exaggerated. Many Palestinians complain that even if the Holocaust did occur, it is unfair that Israel was created on their land with the assistance of European powers.
Meir Litvak, a professor of Middle East history at Tel Aviv University, said the Palestinians have drawn on many of the symbols and institutions of the Zionist movement -- from the Palestinian declaration of independence to the creation of a Palestine National Fund modelled on the Jewish National Fund.
"The similarity and emulation is there. It doesn't mean it is not authentic, but there is borrowing -- conscious or unconscious -- from the Israeli example," he said.
"The Palestinian national movement is still in evolution and has not yet completed its nation-building. Part of that process is the establishment of institutions and holidays. . . . This is typical of every national movement."
This sense of national movement has been reinforced in the Palestinian community by the fighting of the past seven months, said Mahmoud Darwish, a prominent Palestinian poet.
"We are not looking back to dig up the evidence of a past crime, for the naqba is an extended present that promises to continue in the future," Mr. Darwish said in a speech broadcast over Voice of Palestine.
"We do not need anything to help us remember the human tragedy we have been living for the past 53 years: We continue to live in the here and now. We continue to resist its consequences, here and now, on the land of our homeland, the only homeland we have."
Of course, many Israelis, convinced that history proves they can live nowhere but in a country with a Jewish majority, express similar sentiments in support of the rightness of their own cause.
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