Bethlehem's star-crossed lovers

Christian girl runs off with young Muslim -- Vatican, U.S., Palestinian president intervene after street violence erupts

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

San Francisco Chronicle May 15, 2005



Bassem Sabat and his family received an apology from the family of the Muslim man who romanced his daughter, an 11th-grader. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Bethlehem -- A love feud straight out of "Romeo and Juliet" has erupted in the West Bank over the clandestine romance of a 16-year-old Christian schoolgirl and a wealthy Muslim eight years her senior.

As with the Capulets and Montagues, there was fighting in the streets and intervention by both church and state. But unlike Shakespeare's tale of star- crossed lovers, this modern-day version ended Saturday with thwarted marriage plans and an apology.

Adriana Sabat, an 11th-grader at St. Joseph's School in Bethlehem, disappeared from her home on May 6, two days after her family learned she had a secret sweetheart, 24-year-old Fadi Omar, and warned her to stop seeing him.

The incident -- the second elopement in less than a week involving an underage Christian girl and an older Muslim man -- brought to the surface simmering tensions between Muslim Palestinians and the dwindling Christian community in Bethlehem, the traditional birthplace of Jesus.

Under Palestinian law, buttressed by strong social customs in this still- traditional society, girls under 18 cannot marry without their parents' formal consent. Young women rarely leave home without a chaperone, and Western-style boyfriend-girlfriend relationships are virtually unknown.

When Adriana's father attempted to bring her home from her hiding place in a village near Hebron early the next morning, he was rebuffed by armed men threatening to kill him. Violent demonstrations erupted in Bethlehem as young Christians vandalized homes and businesses owned by the Omar family. At least 15 Christians were injured when Palestinian police opened fire on the crowd. Two of them were hospitalized with gunshot wounds, and Christians complained that the police used undue force.

After two days of frantic searching and diplomatic negotiations involving Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, the Vatican and the U.S. State Department, a convoy of armored vehicles from the U.S. consul-general and the Catholic Patriarchate in Jerusalem swept into Hebron on May 7, picked up the girl and put her and her mother on a plane to the United States.

They are now staying with relatives in Michigan while Adriana's father, Bassem Sabat, a 43-year-old history teacher and tour guide, tries to piece his family back together and avoid more bloodshed.

In Bethlehem, the local governor has deployed armed police to protect Omar's home, and a gas station and two furniture stores owned by his family that were firebombed during two days of riots last weekend.

The governor ordered Omar to apologize to the Sabat family. For their part, Adriana's parents demanded that the young man be prosecuted for abducting their daughter and sought a guarantee that she will be protected from further advances if she returns to the West Bank.

At a sulha (reconciliation) ceremony held on Saturday, the Sabat family reportedly demanded the huge sum of 150,000 Jordanian dinars -- more than $200,000 -- and a public apology. This compares with the usual payment in the case of a killing of less than 50,000 dinars. The sulha was held in private, but Palestinian officials said the Sabats were persuaded to drop their monetary demand and accept the Omar family's apology.

Fadi Omar and his relatives refused to comment on the affair.

"I don't want to inflame intercommunity feeling, but someone has to tell the truth," Bassem Sabat told The Chronicle last week, in his first interview since the elopement rocked the city. "These Muslim men are preying on Christian girls because they are forbidden from going anywhere near Muslim girls. If this had been the other way round -- a Christian man running off with a Muslim teenager -- both of them would be dead within hours, and the man's family would have to leave the country."

Sabat was not exaggerating the passions such relationships set off. A few days earlier, an east Jerusalem man strangled two of his sisters in an "honor killing" -- a traditional Muslim punishment for girls whose morals appear to have been compromised. And on May 2, a Christian father in Ramallah killed his 22-year-old daughter after she told him she wanted to marry a Muslim man, triggering demonstrations by both Christian and Muslim women in that city.

Zahira Kamal, the Palestinian minister for women's affairs, has called for a new law allowing women over 18 to marry without the consent of their parents. She has also demanded increased sentences for men found guilty of killing female relatives. Under present law, Palestinian men convicted of "honor killings" serve only six months in prison.

In Bethlehem, tensions have been rising since the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994 brought an influx of Muslims into the mostly Christian city and its adjoining middle-class towns of Beit Jala and Beit Sahour. Christians accuse Muslims of taking over land and jobs and forcing them out of political power. Earlier this month, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, both militant Muslim groups, won municipal elections over the secular Fatah party for the first time in Bethlehem's history.

Fadi Omar, son of a wealthy local businessman, was known around town for his lavish lifestyle and his sports car. He apparently spotted Adriana as she was coming home from school one day and obtained her cell phone number. A telephone romance blossomed.

On May 4, Bassem Sabat was summoned to the office of a local Palestinian security chief, where he found Fadi's older brother, Rami.

"He told me his brother loved my daughter and he was going to marry her," said Bassem. "He said she phones him every day. He said, 'Why not accept the love story and let them get married, across the different traditions?' "

But Sabat refused to bless the union.

"There are few enough Christians left in Bethlehem as it is," he said. "If she were older, it would be a different story. But she is still a young girl, and I cannot believe she understands the implications of the cultural tensions that she is stepping into."

Sabat said he reacted like any father concerned for the welfare of his teenage daughter.

"We took away her cell phone and grounded her," he said. "We sent her to stay with her grandmother, who lives in an apartment upstairs from ours, to protect her from outside influences. But last Friday morning (May 6), she told her grandmother she was going downstairs to collect some clothes, left the apartment and never came back."

The next time Sabat saw his daughter was more than 24 hours later. He said she was in a "safe house" in the village of Shayoukh near Hebron and was covered from head to toe in traditional Muslim garb.

"She told me she had come there of her own free will and that she wished to marry this young man, but the law is very clear that she cannot do so without the consent of her parents," said Sabat.

Because Adriana, who was born in Louisiana, has U.S. citizenship, her parents asked the Roman Catholic patriarch in Jerusalem, Michel Sabbah, to contact U.S. authorities. Sabbah contacted the Vatican, which alerted the U.S. State Department and the U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem, officials at Sabbah's patriarchate told The Chronicle. Meanwhile, the Bethlehem governor contacted Abbas, the Palestinian president, who ordered Adriana to be returned to her family. She was driven from the safe house to the office of the governor of Hebron, where the diplomatic caravan picked her up and took her to the airport.

Within hours, U.S. and Vatican diplomats were on their way to Hebron to pick up the girl and put her on a midnight flight to stay with relatives in Michigan. The caravan stopped en route at the patriarch's Jerusalem headquarters to receive tickets from the U.S. consul-general.

Christian community leaders at the Al-Amal Catholic Social Club in Bethlehem last week, before Saturday's sulha, expressed their fury at the incident and the refusal of the local Palestinian police to arrest the young man.

"I am not in charge anymore," said Bassem Sabat. "The young men of our community do not want to see their Christian sisters with Muslim men. We are paying the price for this man's actions while he walks free. My family has been split up and my daughter's honor has been compromised. I don't want anyone to be hurt or killed, but I do want to see this man prosecuted. He should pay a price for what he did."

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Militants' patience for cease-fire is wearing thin

Militants Munif Remawi (left) and Mahmoud Remawi (right) had no objection to giving their real names or being photographed. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

United, ready: 2 fighters back truce -- but only to a point

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Page A - 3

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank -- Mahmoud Remawi was a year away from a law degree when his university career was interrupted. Munif Remawi was studying sociology.

The two cousins still look like the carefree students they once were, chatting animatedly in a Ramallah cafe. But the pistols tucked into their waistbands beneath their baggy tops as they snatch a rare hour in the fresh air betray their new lives. Both are in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of the Fatah party that dominates the Palestinian government.

Unlike many of their comrades, the Remawis have no objection to giving their real names or being photographed. "Our names and faces are known to the Israelis. They are already trying to kill us. It makes no difference," says Munif, 27, with a shrug and a half-smile.

For security reasons, their sojourn in the cafe is too brief for them to order lunch. But their message is clear: Time is running out for new Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"The current cease-fire is for a limited period only," says Munif. "Unless the political dialogue produces real results from Israel, the intifada will resume."

Until last month, the two Remawis were hidden away with about two dozen of their Al-Aqsa comrades in a crumbling building in the Mukata, the presidential compound in Ramallah, where they enjoyed the protection of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and then Abbas. They emerged, usually under cover of darkness, to attack Israeli settlers and soldiers before fleeing back to the Mukata for safety. Many of them have been hunted down and arrested or killed by Israeli security forces.

But after several Al-Aqsa gunmen smashed up a restaurant frequented by the Palestinian leadership and fired shots at Abbas' office building, the Palestinian president ordered them out of the compound.

Al-Aqsa supported the candidacy of Abbas and the tahdiyeh (calm) proclaimed in March after the Sharm el-Sheikh summit between Abbas and the leaders of Israel, Egypt and Jordan.

"I signed a document declaring that I submit to the authority of the Palestinian Authority and whatever agreement it makes with Israel or any other country," says Munif. "We all signed this document to prove that we are trying to be positive, that we are suspending attacks on Israel. But the Israelis are continuing with their policy. They are continuing to kill us, arrest us and grab our land to build the wall and the settlements." He was referring to the barrier Israel is erecting to divide Israel from Palestinian-controlled areas in the West Bank and the announced expansion of Jewish settlements close to Jerusalem.

"We are united behind our leaders," says Mahmoud, 26. "If the politicians succeed in making the necessary progress toward independence, the liberation of our capital in Jerusalem and the right of return for the refugees in exile, there will be no reason to continue the intifada. But if there is no progress, the intifada will be resumed."

The two young men say they would like to go back to their studies and their lives, but feel compelled to continue the struggle as long as the Israeli military dominates the Palestinian territories.

Mahmoud, who is from the village of Beit Rima north of Ramallah, says he saw his family recently for the first time in three years. He has been engaged for four years to a woman from Jenin but has been unable to visit her, let alone get married.

"It's impossible for us to lead a normal life and get married as we want to," says Mahmoud. "The families of our fiancees keep finding reasons to postpone the wedding. They'd rather keep their daughters from becoming widows."

They refuse to talk about the specific operations in which they have been involved, and their only sign of discomfort is when asked if they approve of suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.

"Most revolutions in the world might have made mistakes, and it is right to see the results of the actions and correct them," says Mahmoud. "But for Palestinians who see their families cut down in their own homes, we have no other way to fight the Israeli Apaches (attack helicopters) and F-16s (fighter jets). These attacks restore the balance of fear, so Israeli civilians will put pressure on their government to stop the military attacks against our people."

In fact, the opposite happened. The worst month of suicide attacks -- March 2002, when dozens of Israeli civilians were killed, culminating in the suicide bombing that killed 29 people attending a Passover seder in Netanya -- triggered an all-out Israeli invasion of West Bank cities and a monthlong siege of Arafat's headquarters.

As the brief encounter ends, Mahmoud, the student-lawyer-turned-gunman who wants to get married, delivers a more hopeful message.

"Our struggle is not in order to die. It is in order to live in freedom and make a future for our kids," he says.

Hope dims for school pushing Mideast peace

Both sides hassle Palestinian project that bridges conflict

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Page A - 1
Saturday, April 16, 2005

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

El-Khadr, West Bank -- Amid stirrings of hope that Israelis and Palestinians can negotiate a peaceful settlement to their decades-long conflict, a school that has battled to promote peace and coexistence among children in the area faces extinction.

The Hope Flowers School, near Bethlehem, has survived threats from Palestinian bureaucrats and shells from Israeli tanks since its founding. Its programs promoting dialogue and contact between Israeli and Palestinian students have attracted worldwide attention and a visit in 1998 from then- first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But Hope Flowers now faces a demolition order from the Israeli government, and its education license has been frozen by the Palestinian Authority.

Perched in a valley between the village of El-Khadr south of Bethlehem and the sprawling Israeli settlement of Efrat, Hope Flowers has tried for years to bridge the gulf between Israelis and Palestinians through classroom projects and encounters between its Palestinian students and children from the other side.

"The idea of the school is to create a new generation of Palestinians and Israelis who believe in peace and coexistence," said school Principal Ibrahim Issa, 31, whose father, Hussein, was its founder. "We believe that by bringing many children together from both sides, we can create a new generation who will find a peaceful resolution to our conflict."

However, Israeli roadblocks erected after the Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000 have prevented students from reaching the campus. Armed attacks by Hamas militants against Israeli soldiers and settlers in March 2002 triggered such heavy exchanges of fire that the campus had to be evacuated with the assistance of the Red Cross and the U.S. Consulate.

Fewer students

The violence has taken its toll. Enrollment fell from a high of 500 students in 1998 to just 120 last year. Since the uprising, or intifada, Hope Flowers has been forced to close its high school and now offers classes only for students age 12 and younger. This year, enrollment has grown to 180, and Issa is determined to keep it rising.

Now that Palestinian and Israeli schoolchildren in the area are unable to visit each other, however, Hope Flowers is carrying on its outreach through a program sponsored by Building Bridges, an Israeli-German-Palestinian program.

The school's philosophy of nonviolence and neighborliness has attracted support from donors in the United States and Europe. The largest single donor to the meager annual budget of $275,000 is the Orange County Middle East Peace Fund, which donates $35,000 to $55,000 in funds from individual donors each year.

The U.S. consul general intervened to save Hope Flowers when Israeli officials issued a demolition order in 1999, saying the school was constructed without the required permit, as many of the buildings in the area are. Issa says his father, who died in 2000, hoped the area would be transferred to Palestinian control before the Israeli order could be implemented, but then the intifada broke out, and the peace process ground to a halt.

Now, the demolition order has been renewed. Issa believes that the Israelis want to demolish the cafeteria and claim the land to build a section of the West Bank security barrier dividing Israel from Palestinian-controlled areas. He says plans for the barrier show it would cut to within 130 yards of the school cafeteria, well within the 164-yard no-man's-land required on either side of the wall. Maps issued by the Israeli government are not precise enough to show whether the fence will cut through the campus, as Issa fears.

A spokesman for the Israeli Civil Administration, which issued the demolition orders, said the order "has no connection whatsoever to the building of the security fence."

He added that officials were not aware that any of the buildings scheduled for destruction were part of a school. "If it is part of a school, it's possible that the Civil Administration will reconsider the demolition order," he said.

However, demolishing even the school cafeteria also would mean destroying the school's water system, which lies beneath it. Replacing the system would cost about $120,000 -- well beyond the school's means, Issa said.

The water is used in the school's greenhouses, whose crops help fund scholarships for poor students. Hope Flowers needs the money because the Palestinian Ministry of Education provides no financial support to the school. The ministry froze the school's license in September, saying a retaining wall above the schoolyard needed repair.

'They don't toe the line'

"They know we haven't got the $70,000 needed to repair the wall," he said. "It is just a pretext."

Palestinian officials declined to answer questions about the school.

Ruth Shapin, secretary of the Orange County Middle East Peace Fund, says the Palestinian Authority withholds support from the school "because they don't toe the line. They teach peace and democracy, including cooperation with people of goodwill on the Israeli side."

"It behooves the international community to protect this little school," she added.

But four years of pressure from all sides have taken their toll, even on erstwhile supporters.

An example to live by

Benjamin Waxman, a marketing consultant from Delaware who now lives in the neighboring settlement of Efrat and helped the school build a computer laboratory, was a longtime supporter.

"They were the genuine item, not faking it,'' said Waxman. "I'm convinced that whether we have one state or two states, we have to learn to live together."

Christina Cody, 25, of Ashland, Ore., volunteers at Hope Flowers, helping to organize trauma training sessions for teachers and counselors at nearby schools.

She witnessed the school's work during a Building Bridges session with German exchange students.

"There came a point when it was clear the Palestinian students had pro- Nazi feelings against Jews," she said. "The German students got involved and helped them to take a deeper look at those feelings by drawing on their own experiences in Germany. Even though they were only teenagers, they were able to help the Palestinian students understand where such anti-Jewish feelings could lead."

Palestinian gunmen shoot up restaurant favoured by PA

Posh eatery had played host to Canadian ministers and other visiting dignitaries

GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, April 1, 2005 Page A15

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Special to The Globe and Mail

RAMALLAH -- Until the gunmen opened fire on Wednesday night, Darna was the smartest restaurant in Ramallah. Daylight yesterday revealed piles of broken furniture, shattered glass and bullet holes in the sparkling stainless-steel kitchen.

This week, Darna played host to Ken Dryden, the Minister of Social Development. Justice Minister Irwin Cotler was there a couple of months ago. Other visitors pictured on the kitchen wall include Kofi Annan, British Foreign Minister Jack Straw and former U.S. president Jimmy Carter.

The attack on the prestigious restaurant, a favoured watering-hole for Palestinian ministers and socialites that opened in December of 2003, was carried out by angry members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the terrorist wing of Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas's mainstream Fatah group.

Officially, the Brigade denied any involvement, but the gunmen wore no masks and were easily identified by eyewitnesses as the fugitives who fled to the Mukata presidential compound in Ramallah under the protection of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to escape arrest or assassination by Israel.

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Mr. Abbas has been conducting intensive talks with the fugitives, ending with a request for several of them to leave the compound.

They refused, and instead went on a rampage through Ramallah, firing shots at Mr. Abbas's office and wrecking several restaurants. Across town, their supporters burned tires and threatened Palestinian police officers.

A Palestinian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the security forces ordered six of the fugitives to either hand over their weapons or leave the compound after "they were involved in kidnappings, blackmailing, harming people, shooting them."

"They were warned many times to stop their behaviour and actions," the official said.

Another security official warned that the security forces were "considering taking harsh steps against them."

"They have crossed the red line. They attacked the presidential headquarters. They are defying the Palestinian Authority and now we have to take harsh steps against them, otherwise they will control the city and spread chaos," the official said on condition of anonymity.

The fugitives were still reeling from the death of Mutasen Al-Aqra, 26, a leader and founder of the al-Aqsa Brigade who had been living in the Mukata for three years. He was killed in a mysterious car crash on Tuesday.

"We didn't do it," said Ramzi Abeid, a Mukata fugitive identified by many of those present at Darna as the leader of the rampaging gang.

"We are Fatah, we take our orders from Abu Mazen," he insisted, using Mr. Abbas's popular nom de guerre.

Off the record, the Brigade said the sacking of Darna was supposed to send a message to the Palestinian leadership not to ignore them. The venue was chosen as a place where senior officials routinely spend hundreds of dollars entertaining their friends, as a warning to end the still rampant corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

Darna's proprietor, Osama Khalaf, gazed forlornly at the wreckage and quietly cursed those responsible.

"I hope this means the end of those gunmen," Mr. Khalaf said. "They are playing against their own people. The Palestinian Authority should take measures."

As visitors went by to express sympathy and young men toting Kalashnikov rifles stood guard outside, Mr. Khalaf said he would not be intimidated.

"I built this place," he said. "I invested during a very critical time: the invasions, the closures, the checkpoints. The Israelis didn't frighten us, so those people won't frighten us either. We will continue and become even more successful."

Yesterday, the dozen or so fugitives still living in the Mukata had disappeared. Green-uniformed paramilitary police patrolled the city in a show of strength.

The incident demonstrated the fragile nature of Mr. Abbas's attempt to dissuade the gunmen from the path of terrorism and incorporate them into his security services. He has been paying them 800 shekels a month (about $200 U.S.) and offered them jobs with the security forces, but they are demanding more money and a more specialized role that recognizes their patriotism in fighting Israel.

The confrontation with the Brigade is while Mr. Abbas tries to defuse the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, bringing them all under the political banner of an expanded Palestine Liberation Organization.

Key to the Sepulchre

Muslim family holds key to sacred sepulchre

For centuries, their ancestors have opened door to church where Jesus believed buried

Matthew Kalman, 

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, Sunday, March 27, 2005

Wajeeh Y. Nuseibeh, Custodian and Door-Keeper of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre opens the door of the church every day. Photo by David Blumenfeld/Special to The Chronicle Photo: David Blumenfeld/Special To The Chronicle

Jerusalem - Every morning at 4 a.m., Wajeeh Nuseibeh walks through the walled Old City of Jerusalem to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the most revered shrine in Christendom. He takes an ancient 12-inch iron key, climbs a small ladder and opens the huge wooden doors to the place that most Christians believe is the site of the crucifixion, tomb and resurrection of Jesus.

Every evening at nightfall, after three raps of an iron doorknocker spaced out over half an hour, Nuseibeh closes up and places the key in safekeeping.

He inherited the job from his father and grandfather, in a chain stretching back more than 1,300 years. But surprisingly, Nuseibeh, doorkeeper of the site of the crucifixion, is, like his ancestors, a Muslim.

"It goes from father to son, from one generation to the next," said Nuseibeh, a small, dapper 55-year-old man in a suit and tie. "I was 15 when I first opened the church. I thought it was fun. As I grew up I realized it is a big responsibility."

This weekend, thousands of Christians flock to the Holy Sepulchre for Easter services, processions and the ancient ceremony of the Holy Fire, in which Nuseibeh plays a central role. The ceremony, held on Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, symbolizes the resurrection of Christ.

Worshipers pack into the church, trying to get as close as possible to the marble-clad tomb, or sepulchre, where they believe Jesus' body was laid. The oil lamps inside the mausoleum that contains the tomb are extinguished, and a huge stone is rolled across the entrance, which is then sealed shut by Greek Orthodox priests.

"If there are no oil lamps lit, the tomb will be sealed with wax. I am the witness. I put my stamp, the name of the family, in the wax on the tomb," Nuseibeh said.

What happens next looks like a miracle. The Orthodox patriarch begins to pray, and a bluish Holy Fire begins to emanate from within the tomb, lighting the lamps and sometimes flying around the church over the heads of the assembled worshipers and even lighting the candles of believers. Nuseibeh has been the official witness at this ceremony for more than 20 years.

The church is a major attraction for both pilgrims and tourists. A vast warren of chapels, tunnels and caves, with architectural remnants that date back to the 4th century, it spans a broad range of traditions, from the westernized cathedral of the Catholics to the icons of the Orthodox churches. It houses the final stations on the Via Dolorosa -- the last journey of Jesus to the crucifixion.

The church is jealously managed by five competing and often disputatious Christian denominations -- Roman Catholic (also called Latin here), Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic and Syrian Orthodox (sometimes called Jacobite). There also is a small Ethiopian Orthodox chapel on the roof. Sometimes the tensions over the right to clean or to pray in a particular area of the church spill over into violence. Nuseibeh's family has helped keep the peace between them since Caliph Omar Ibn Kattab first conquered Jerusalem for the Muslims in 638. The only gap was during 88 years of Crusader rule in the 12th century.

According to family history, when Salah A-Din recaptured Jerusalem in 1191, he promised English King Richard the Lion Heart he would invite the Nuseibeh family to resume their role as custodians.

Since that time, the Judeh family, also Muslims, have been given the key for safekeeping overnight, but only the Nuseibehs serve as doorkeeper.

Once a year, the three biggest denominations -- Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian -- publicly renew their request to Nuseibeh to be the "custodian and doorkeeper," as written on his business card and multimedia Web site (www.nuseibehfamily.com).

About 100 years ago, the key was stolen. Although it was eventually recovered, a spare now is kept in a locked room inside the church.

For his hereditary labor, Nuseibeh receives $15 every month, an income he supplements by giving tours of the church. But the ancient honor is worth more to him than the token payment. When tensions boil over between the denominations, Nuseibeh is the one who calms the waters.

"Like all brothers, they sometimes have problems. We help them settle their disputes. We are the neutral people in the church. We are the United Nations. We help preserve peace in this holy place," he said.

Nuseibeh said he still becomes anxious before the big ceremonies or when important visitors arrive. "I realize there are thousands of people waiting to go into the church, and they are waiting for me to open it, and I start to imagine what will be happen if the lock will be broken or the key is damaged and I can't open the door."

But that has never happened in the 20 years since he took over from his father. He hopes that one day his son Obadah, now 21, will step into his footsteps, but that's not certain. "He is at college, studying to be a sports trainer," Nuseibeh said. "Maybe he will not follow me, and then my brother or my cousin will take over."

Nuseibeh said he is deeply touched by the Christian rituals and feels a close affinity with the church, but he does not pray there.

"I know every stone. It is like my home," he said. "But I go to pray at the Omar Mosque next door."

Canadians observe Israeli security

GLOBE & MAIL
Tuesday, March 8, 2005 - Page A12

By MATTHEW KALMAN

BET HORON POLICE TRAINING BASE, WEST BANK -- Commissioner Gwenneth Boniface of the Ontario Provincial Police looked on as a battered white Peugot appeared from the hills near the West Bank city of Ramallah. Seconds later, two Israeli police jeeps screeched to a halt, blocking it front and rear.

"Put your hands out of the window and throw the keys on the roof," the police ordered through a loudspeaker as armed officers took up their positions, their M16 rifles trained on the vehicle.

One by one, the suspects were ordered out of the car on the side nearest the police and told to lift their shirts, turn around and lie on the ground. The second suspect was wearing a zip-up jacket. He removed it, revealing a suicide bomb belt strapped around his torso. Suddenly, he produced a pistol and began running toward the Israeli jeep, firing as he ran. The police opened fire, cutting him down.

Fortunately, it was just a demonstration for the benefit of Commissioner Boniface and 20 colleagues from her police force and the Ontario government.

The Canadians were spending the day as observers at Beit Horon, a training base for the Israeli border police, but earlier in the day, they got closer than they might have liked to the real thing. They were visiting the emergency room at Jerusalem's Hadassah University Hospital when two ambulances screamed to a halt outside and medics rushed in, carrying two border policemen wounded by a Palestinian sniper in the West Bank city of Hebron.

It was the last day of a week-long Israeli visit by the Canadian law-enforcement officials, headed by Ontario Community Safety and Correctional Services Minister Monte Kwinter and former Toronto police chief Julian Fantino, who has been appointed as the province's new head of emergency response. The trip took them from the Golan Heights to the Dead Sea, and from an Israeli correctional facility to a briefing with the Palestinian security adviser to the Middle Eastern peace negotiations.

Their Israeli hosts, whose battle gear and assault rifles lay thrown over chairs in their office, seconds away in case needed for action, initially thought the Canadians looked too smart to be serious in their full-dress royal blue uniforms, medals and shiny-peaked caps. But the visitors said they learned some useful lessons.

Commissioner Boniface, the most senior commander on the trip, said she hopes Toronto will never witness scenes such as the ones acted out at Beit Horon, but she noted that behind the scenes there is "a paramilitary structure in policing in Canada," with special units similar to the Israeli fighters.

"The type of skill and specialization would not be on a par, but in the same range," she said. "What is important is to understand what is happening around the world so when you watch the operation of your own people, you watch it in that context."

Mr. Fantino said he was most impressed by the "seamless" co-ordination of Israeli security and emergency services at the scenes of attacks, and said he hopes the same can be achieved in Canada. Everything has changed since the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he said, and Canadians need to be prepared for the worst.

Israeli teens impress Garneau with project

GLOBE & MAIL
Saturday, March 5, 2005 - Page A17

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

TEL AVIV -- Canada's first astronaut Marc Garneau has seen a lot of things most ordinary mortals never will. But even he was taken aback by the school project of a group of Israeli teenagers this week.

Mr. Garneau could hardly believe it when 15-year-old Tal Pritzker and his fellow students in the Space Technology group at the Meyerhoff Technical School in Tel Aviv showed him their latest project: a satellite and earth-tracking station that should be ready for launch in about two years.

"I'm amazed by what you've done," he told them. "I'd like to hire you all. It was very impressive. I don't think I've ever met youngsters who are so well informed."

"I was bowled over," he said in an interview. "There is a school named after me, the Marc Garneau Collegiate Institute, where we teach space sciences, but they've never actually built a satellite."

Mr. Garneau, president of the Canadian Space Agency, is leading a week-long trade mission to Israel to sign a co-operation agreement with the Israel Space Agency on Earth observation, small satellites and encouraging young people to learn about space.

It is both his and the agency's first visit to Israel. He is accompanied by representatives of six Canadian companies that are active in space technology and eager to explore commercial projects for the first time with their Israeli counterparts.

"Space gives us a unique perspective on our world. Seen from space, the Earth is one tiny, fragile, blue planet in an ocean of infinity. It's clear we need to work together and to help each other if we're going to preserve this planet," he told the students.

During his first flight, Mr. Garneau said he watched with alarm as a pall of smoke covering one million square kilometres settled in the upper atmosphere from the burning of the Amazonian rain forests. As the shuttle continued on its orbit, he saw evidence of man-made disasters across the globe.

Over Kazakhstan, he saw the dried-up Sea of Aral, once the fourth-largest body of inland water in the world, drained by the Soviets for irrigation. "It had terrible effects. It dried up, then the minerals in the dried-up areas blew over the land and essentially sterilized it."

Mr. Garneau said that Canadian scientists are working on programs triggered by space observation and exploration to tackle these and other environmental problems, including climate change and the depletion of the ozone layer.

The five-year, $5-billion budget for space research just announced by the government will keep Canada at the cutting edge, he added.

"We've learned a great deal about computer technology by rising to the challenge of sending rockets into space," he said. "The technology that we developed to build the robotic arm for the U.S. space shuttle, the Canadarm, in the early '80s, is now being used to perform robotic surgery."

Canadian medical scientists have gleaned vital information on bone loss from osteoporosis which occurs at 10 times the normal rate in astronauts because of weightlessness. A direct result has been the development of a new type of fake bone, Skelite, that can be used to help people heal faster after surgery.

Future uncertain for the living and the dead

Fate of a tiny cemetery in the Gaza Strip preoccupies loved one facing eviction

GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, March 4, 2005 - Page A10

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

GUSH KATIF CEMETERY, GAZA STRIP -- On the eve of the 12th anniversary of his son's death, Shlomo Yulis sat by the grave in this hilltop cemetery and looked out over the sand dunes at the sun sinking into the blue waters of the Mediterranean.

If all goes to plan, Mr. Yulis and his family will be evicted from their homes in July when Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip. They have received no official information about what compensation they will receive or where they will go. Their fears have been increased by the fact that no one has told them what will happen to the grave of Etai, who died in 1993 at the age of 14 after a three-year battle with leukemia.

As the 7,000 residents of the Gush Katif settlement prepare to fight a last-ditch political battle to save their homes and jobs, fears for the fate of the 46 dead lying in the community's tiny cemetery is adding to the pain of the living.

"He wanted to be buried here, because this was where he was born and lived all his life," said Mr. Yulis, a retired teacher.

"Just before he died, there was talk of moving us out and he hesitated, thinking of the pain it would cause us to have to move his grave. But in the end he decided he wanted it to be here. I can't believe that they will come and put 46 families through this suffering. It's wicked."

The cemetery was established in 1987, when a young local boy died of an illness. The residents believed it was an act of faith that their presence in the area would be permanent and peaceful. But the second grave they dug was for the local rabbi, killed in a terrorist attack at the entrance to his settlement. Four other local terror victims are buried alongside him.

Eliezer Orbach, director of the Gush Katif Religious Council, which supervises the cemetery, said the burials continued even after the talk of disengagement began last year.

"A few months ago, a soldier called Eli Lutati was killed in an attack on an army outpost nearby," Mr. Orbach said. "We asked the father where his son should be buried, because there was already talk about what [Israeli Prime Minister] Ariel Sharon was planning. He said it didn't interest him. He said we live here, he will be buried here and God will help us."

Mr. Orbach said there were religious objections to moving the dead once they were buried in the Holy Land, but they were not insurmountable. But he added that no plans have been prepared because no one from the Israeli government or army has contacted the settlers directly.

Gush Katif residents said this week they do not believe the planned disengagement will ever occur. In a place where more than 5,400 mortar shells and other missiles have landed in the past four years and only one person has been killed, it is not surprising to hear the religious members of the community speak of miracles.

Mr. Orbach has been told by at least two revered rabbis that the disengagement plan will be reversed before July.

Mr. Yulis, who was born in the ultra-orthodox Mea Shearim neighbourhood in Jerusalem, said his faith remains strong. "God wouldn't have done all these miracles for us in the past four years if He meant us to leave."

Battling against his faith is the thought of his son's remains being shipped from place to place or, even worse in his view, being left to their fate.

"They cannot leave my son here so those animals will come and defile his grave as they defiled the cemetery on the Mount of Olives," he said, referring to the ancient Jewish cemetery in Jerusalem that was systematically desecrated under Jordanian rule until 1967.

The "animals," he said, are not the local Palestinians, with whom Mr. Yulis and the other settlers of Gush Katif have enjoyed amiable relations for 10 years. He said he was referring to the "people from Tunis" who arrived with the late Yasser Arafat, who was the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, after the Oslo accords in 1994, and turned the place into "a bad dream."

"When we arrived, there was nothing here -- no green, no buildings, just sand," Mr. Yulis said.

"The locals thought we were crazy wanting to live here, but they welcomed us. We gave them work and it built the local economy. We went shopping in Khan Younis and Dir Al-Balah. The prosperity grew. Then Arafat and his men came and spoiled everything.

"The settlements support 3,000 families from Khan Younis. They don't want this either. What for?"

Mr. Yulis, 66, and his wife, Udi, moved to this deserted patch of the Gaza Strip beachfront between the Arab town of Khan Younis and the sea in 1982. The area, occupied by Egypt in 1948, was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

A lifelong member of Mr. Sharon's Likud Party and its various predecessors, he said he feels betrayed by his own leader. "He took my vote and did the precise opposite of what he promised before the election. I feel as though he has spat in my face."

Palestinians keep the peace in Gaza

Calm has returned as security forces show their determination to stop militants

GLOBE & MAIL
Wednesday, March 2, 2005 - Page A11

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

KHAN YOUNIS, GAZA STRIP -- From September, 2000, Palestinian militants in Khan Younis launched daily mortar attacks at the Israeli settlement of Neve Dekalim, only a few hundred metres away.

They sent suicide bombers to attack settlers and soldiers, fired at their houses and cars with Kalashnikovs, drove bomb-laden jeeps into their buses and tunnelled beneath their fortifications to detonate explosives.

In response, the Israelis ringed the city with concrete and barbed wire roadblocks. Soldiers' guns poke out from between the sandbags of fortified positions. Israeli troops have invaded the outskirts of the town, razing homes and buildings that could be used to fire on the soldiers and settlers. They have uprooted olive groves and orchards, "shaving" the land to deprive the militants of cover.

Now, after four years of bloody violence, Khan Younis is quiet. And Major Mahmoud Massoud, who commands a patrol of the Palestinian National Security Forces in a neighbourhood called Hayal al-Amal, wants to keep it that way.

"The people here want calm," Major Massoud said, reflecting on the climate of hope that has spread through Gaza since Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made clear his determination to withdraw from the territory and dismantle Jewish settlements there."After four years they are tired. They also want Israel to do the same thing, to stop the fighting and withdraw.

"We all accept the new policy of our government, and we welcome the Israeli decision to withdraw from Gaza. People are happy now. They want to feel freedom and liberty, an end to occupation."

Major Massoud, whose police station was destroyed by Israeli warplanes in 2001 after a Palestinian terror attack, runs his operation from a rundown shack of cinder blocks and corrugated iron.

His men patrol a half-kilometre stretch where the 170,000 residents of Khan Younis face Neve Dekalim, the largest settlement in Gaza with 2,700 inhabitants.

This is where Israeli tanks used to rumble into town, and where masked Palestinians used to pour out of jeeps to fire off a hasty mortar round before diving back into the crowded streets.

Major Massoud's force has grown from three to 30 men since last month's summit meeting between Mr. Sharon and Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas. They have new Mitsubishi jeeps and now patrol 24 hours a day.

They would like a real police station to replace their tatty shack, and radios to use instead of their own cellphones. But orders from Mr. Abbas to halt the attacks by militants are already being put into effect.

Last week, a car full of masked men pulled up after midnight with a mortar ready to launch at the settlement. Major Massoud said his men were on the scene in seconds.

"We went to them and talked to them," he said. "We said we are in a period of tahdiyeh [calm], and their actions will affect the peace process. They got back in their car and drove away. I don't know what happened after that.

"Our orders are to talk to them, to stop anyone trying to launch missiles. If they don't listen, our orders are to call our commanders and they will deal with them.

"But we would use force if we have to, even if I have to shoot at them."

Major Massoud, 56, was born in the Jabalya refugee camp north of Gaza City. He left for Lebanon in 1967 and joined guerrillas of the Palestine Liberation Organization, returning to Gaza in 1994. After decades of struggle, he said, it was time to stop the fighting.

Jamil Bakr, an 18-year-old student from the neighbourhood, said the local people support the security forces. "They keep us safe," he said. "This will help us to gain our freedom."

South of Khan Younis, along a road that passes through the fields and white-domed greenhouses of the Morag settlement, is a favourite spot for mortar and gun attacks. This sector is under the command of Lieutenant Rami Kandil, who is 22 years old and a contemporary of the militants. He and his men have been on 24-hour patrol here since the summit.

"We were out on patrol near Gadid settlement one night last week when we found a group trying to launch a Kassam rocket," Lt. Kandil said. "We confronted the group and confiscated their weapons. They ran away.

"Our obligation is to stop the rockets and missiles. If I have to arrest them, I will, but I won't shoot at them."

He added: "We feel we are protecting the agreements reached by our political leaders. We are sometimes criticized by our friends who ask why we want to protect the Israelis, but this is the way we can achieve security."

With his young colleagues nodding in agreement, Lt. Kandil continued: "After four years of fighting, everyone is tired. The people want to start a new stage in their lives."

In the town's security headquarters, Colonel Jamal Kayed, commander of the Palestinian National Security Forces for the southern Gaza Strip, fingered a set of wooden prayer beads and offered coffee to his guests.

He has been in the job just two weeks. Mr. Abbas fired his predecessor and dozens of senior officers last month for failing to halt the mortar fire.

"We are under strict orders to prevent infiltration to the Israeli side, to stop the firing of missiles and stop the firing of mortars," he said. "But we must also see something from the Israelis so the people feel that the situation has really changed and they can live peacefully in their own homes."

Col. Kayed was born in 1958 in Ein al-Hilweh refugee camp in Lebanon. He fought with the PLO and attended military training schools in Yemen, Algeria, Iraq, India and Pakistan before returning to Gaza with the late PLO leader Yasser Arafat in 1994.

He said he and the 2,451 men he commands would preserve the fragile calm until Israel's planned withdrawal from Gaza in July. Then he plans to lead them as they take control of the newly liberated lands.

Time is running out, militant warns

Fragile calm will shatter if Mideast peace process stalls, Fatah fighter says

GLOBE & MAIL
Tuesday, February 22, 2005

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

GAZA CITY -- Abu Thaer is a hunted man. He wears a hood and carries a Kalashnikov assault rifle. He meets at secret locations through trusted intermediaries. He says his proudest moment was a deadly suicide bombing in Jerusalem in January of 2004, in which 10 bus passengers were killed.

Abu Thaer commands the Ayman Judeh cell, the Gaza City chapter of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant wing of Fatah, named after a former leader who was killed in an Israeli helicopter missile strike in January, 2004.

For now, the group has agreed to a period of "calm" so that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas can try to restart the Middle East peace process. But time is running out. Abu Thaer accuses Israel of violating the fragile ceasefire and says his patience is nearly ended.

"We committed to continue the calm for four to six months, on condition that the Israeli government is committed to calm the situation on all fronts," he said in an exclusive interview at a Gaza City safe house.

"The Israelis are breaking this commitment, daily and continuously. We are not going to be very patient if they continue doing this. It's impossible to see the blood of our people and to remain silent."

Men like Abu Thaer and his colleagues will determine the future of the fragile new calm, and probably also the fate of Mr. Abbas's administration. If they decide the Israelis or their new leader are not moving fast enough and renew their mortar, rocket and suicide attacks on Israel, the new-found hope in the Middle East could unravel quickly.

Israel denies it has violated the ceasefire, hammered out at the Sharm el-Sheikh summit two weeks ago. On the contrary, Israeli officials say, hundreds of Palestinian workers and merchants are once again being allowed across the border to work in Israel, and yesterday, 500 Palestinian prisoners were released amid scenes of widespread joy.

Ten of the released prisoners went home to Gaza, where they were escorted by a convoy of cars flying the yellow flags of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and trucks crowded with men firing their Kalashnikovs into the air in celebration.

Israel plans to release another 400 prisoners and has begun preparations to withdraw all settlers and soldiers from the Gaza Strip in July.

But Abu Thaer wants more.

"We have given Abu Mazen a chance to calm the situation and we have laid down conditions so in the future we will be able to achieve a hudna or ceasefire," he said, using Mr. Abbas's popular nom de guerre.

Those conditions include the formal announcement by both sides of a ceasefire, which Israel has not yet made, and a commitment to release all 7,500 Palestinian prisoners still held in Israeli jails.

"We have accepted what Abu Mazen has done in small steps and welcomed it, but we want the release of all prisoners. I repeat: all of them," he said.

The Palestinian leader will have to persuade Israel that the release of all the prisoners will not swell the ranks of the militants. But that is not the only fight on his hands. Mr. Abbas must also persuade his own people, including men like Abu Thaer, that he is a strong leader.

Abu Thaer and his men say they voted for Mr. Abbas because of his promise to reform the corruption-riddled Palestinian Authority and they will insist on those reforms if he is to retain their support.

But yesterday, Mr. Abbas failed to win approval for his new cabinet after the Palestinian Legislative Council argued that several "corrupt" ministers remained after an extensive government reshuffle.

Mr. Abbas has also proposed that militants from the al-Aqsa Brigades and their counterparts in Hamas and Islamic Jihad be incorporated into the official Palestinian security services who are now deployed throughout the Gaza Strip, with the specific mission of halting attacks by those groups.

But a straw poll of Abu Thaer and six of his comrades showed little support for that option. While the men said they support the deployment and the new sense of security it has brought to ordinary Palestinians, only three of the seven said they would join the official security forces, and then only after a final peace treaty was signed with Israel.

"Resistance will continue as long as the occupation continues," said Abu Thaer, insisting that Israel must also quit the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

"We are brothers, we are partners in our homeland. If the Israeli violations continue, a son of the Palestinian Authority will not stand against the sons of the people here. He will stand beside the resistance, to defend the sons of his people."

But Abu Thaer said that for the first time, he saw some hope of peace emerging after four years of violence and bloodshed.

"I heard [U.S. President] George Bush say he has a vision for peace of two states. We hope that he will achieve what he is talking about. It's up to the Israeli government. If they are serious about peace, they have to evacuate all settlements and withdraw completely from all Palestinian land.

"We do see a change in the Israelis. We do not know how far this change goes, but we are hopeful. Maybe it will lead to peace, to George Bush's vision."

Israeli cabinet agrees to Gaza withdrawal

GLOBE & MAIL
Monday, February 21, 2005 - Page A1

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail

JERUSALEM -- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon signed a historic decree last night ordering Israeli settlers to quit the Gaza Strip by July 20.

Earlier yesterday, the Israel cabinet voted 17-5 in favour of a complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and parts of the northern West Bank.

The vote came after Israel's approval last week of a financial compensation package for departing settlers.

The Israeli cabinet also approved a more controversial measure: a new route for the so-called security barrier in the West Bank, but one that encompasses more than 6 per cent of West Bank land, including the large Jewish settlement blocs of Gush Etzion and Maaleh Adumim, both near Jerusalem.

"Israel is creating facts on the ground in the West Bank," Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi said. "Sharon wants payback in the West Bank for the disengagement from Gaza, particularly Jerusalem."

The route, changed after intervention by the Israeli High Court, brings the barrier closer to the old Green Line border, but will still leave about 7 per cent of the West Bank and 10,000 Palestinian residents on the Israeli side.

Palestinian cabinet minister Saeb Erekat warned that Israel's insistence on building the barrier "will undermine efforts being exerted to revive the peace process."

Mr. Sharon described the decision to evacuate the settlements as "a vital step for the future of the state of Israel.

"I am convinced that the step which was taken today is the right one in ensuring the future of Israel as a Jewish democratic state," he said.

The vote came amid growing signs of hope in the age-old conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours. For the first time, an Egyptian newspaper published an interview with Mr. Sharon, and Jordan returned its ambassador to Tel Aviv after a four-year absence. Egypt has also named its new ambassador.

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said his people would bid farewell to the Israeli occupiers with "flowers."

The militant Hamas group hailed the disengagement decision as a victory, calling it the "fruit of Palestinian resistance."

Israel also announced it would release a first group of 500 Palestinian prisoners today and allow several exiles to return to the West Bank.

A group of 16 suspected Palestinian militants banished to Gaza were welcomed back to Ramallah by Mr. Abbas yesterday.

"This is the beginning of the freedom of all the Palestinians who were transferred to Gaza and outside of Palestine," Mr. Abbas told them.

"Our agreement with Israel is to bring all of you back, and I think in the next two weeks everyone will be able to come to their homes. We promised our people that you would come back and that has happened," he said.

Yesterday's cabinet vote was the first time Israel has agreed to remove permanent settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

The Israeli decision comes two weeks after a summit meeting between Mr. Sharon and Mr. Abbas, which ended the four-year intifada.

About 7,000 settlers in 18 communities, the oldest of them established in 1972, and a large army garrison will quit the Gaza Strip, leaving the area completely under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

Four settlements in the northern West Bank will also be abandoned.

Settler leaders vowed to mount a defiant, but non-violent, struggle against the decision.

"We have reached the day where we now have to gather everyone together to fight against this law, and we must do it in such a way that it is not violent and that no one will raise their hand against a soldier or police officer," settler leader Pinchas Wallerstein said. "It is a difficult struggle. We must wreck the implementation of this law and do everything we can to ensure that this law will not be enacted."

"This will not be an easy day, nor will it be a happy day," Mr. Sharon told the cabinet before the vote.

"The evacuation of communities from Gaza and northern Samaria is a very difficult step. It is difficult for the residents, for the citizens of Israel and for me, and I am certain that it is difficult for the members of the cabinet."

The five ministers opposing the withdrawal were led by Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Mr. Sharon's main rival for the leadership of the Likud Party.

"I believe that a national referendum is the only thing that can stop the division that is tearing apart our people," Mr. Netanyahu said. "I am voting according to my conscience against the plan since it is not being accompanied by a decision to hold a national referendum."

Mideast training program backfires Palestinian security officers schooled by U.S. later used tactics against Israel

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Monday, February 14, 2005

Page A - 1

Bethlehem, West Bank -- In June 1998, somewhere near CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., two rows of men in military fatigues posed for their graduation photo.

All of them were officers in Palestinian General Intelligence Service, charged with hunting down terrorists and preventing attacks on Israel. They had just completed a training course, paid for by the U.S. government, in which they learned firearms and counterterrorist tactics.

But the graduation photo holds a stark warning for the Bush administration as it gets more involved in Middle East peacemaking. Some of the men in the picture later swapped sides and began using the skills they learned in Virginia against the Israelis.

Such training courses, which were suspended with the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000, will be an integral part of Washington's aid package for the new government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

"There will need to be some international effort, and the United States is prepared to play a major role in that, to help in the training of the Palestinian security forces and in making sure that they are security forces that are part of the solution, not part of the problem," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said earlier this month on the London stop of her European tour.

Lt. Gen. William Ward, Rice's newly named Mideast security coordinator, will visit the region this month to "start looking at how to build Palestinian security forces," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.

"What we're really all talking about is helping the Palestinian security forces get organized, get equipped, get trained and get the command structure that allows them to take care of security problems," Boucher said.

The men in the 1998 photo came from Bethlehem, Jericho and Nablus, which all became flash points in the four-year uprising, called the intifada. Kneeling fourth from the left in the front row is Raafat Bajali. In December 2001, Bajali was killed when a bomb he was making blew up in his face. He had become a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant wing of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement, said some of his comrades in the General Intelligence unit.

Bajali died in a fourth-floor apartment near Bethlehem's Manger Square, the home of Nedal Zedok, a colleague in the Palestinian security forces who also was moonlighting for Al-Aqsa. Zedok, too, was killed in the explosion.

Standing in the back row, second from the left, is Khaled Abu Nijmeh, from Deheisheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, according to two of his colleagues who are also pictured.

By 2001, he had become one of the most-wanted Palestinian militants in the city, suspected of involvement in a string of suicide bombings and shooting attacks against Israelis. In May 2002, he was one of 13 gunmen escorted from the Church of the Nativity siege in Bethlehem, flown to Cyprus and then to exile in Europe. Three of the group, including Abu Nijmeh, were given asylum in Italy.

"I am a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and a first sergeant in Palestinian General Intelligence," Abu Nijmeh, now 36, told The Chronicle from his temporary home in Rome. "I personally received a course in antiterrorism and VIP protection.

"I was not alone. Many Palestinian security people were trained by the Americans. We hope they will continue helping us."

Abu Nijmeh and his 12 comrades will be allowed to return to Bethlehem under the cease-fire agreement reached last week between Israel and the Palestinians.

Israeli warnings

As Israeli commentators had been warning for years, the CIA inadvertently helped train future adversaries -- as it has done in other countries, including the anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan who ended up as Taliban and al Qaeda militants.

"This has proven to be a very risky undertaking," said Israeli political analyst Gerald Steinberg of Bar-Ilan University. "Both the CIA and British efforts to train Palestinians during the Oslo process helped strengthen terrorist capabilities."

A U.S. official, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said that if previous U.S. aid went to train would-be militants, "obviously steps will be taken so that any future training does not lead to a similar outcome."

The Palestinian security forces were created in the aftermath of the 1993 Oslo accords by Arafat to maintain order in newly autonomous Palestinian territories. The recruits were supposed to serve as the police force for the Palestinian Authority and to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel. The CIA and British intelligence services helped provide training and equipment.

But Arafat also used the new police forces to keep himself in power. Based on longtime loyalties within his Fatah political faction, he created 14 separate, often overlapping, security services -- including a naval intelligence unit in the landlocked West Bank.

Palestinian security forces were doubling as militants in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades and in Hamas, an Islamic group that has claimed credit for many anti-Israel attacks. Zedok, who was killed by Bajali's bomb, was among those dismissed from the security force after their connections were exposed by Israel. Others, including the Al-Aqsa founder and commander in Ramallah, Khaled al-Shawish, found refuge in Arafat's West Bank headquarters.

Clinton connection

The training given to hundreds of Palestinian security officials between 1996 and 2000 was sanctioned by a presidential order in 1996 by then-President Bill Clinton, who was deeply involved in peace-making efforts.

The order created a covert program that provided tens of millions of dollars to enhance the professionalism of the Palestinian security services and help combat anti-Israel terrorism. Under the arrangement, CIA contractors trained the Palestinians in firearms, counterterrorism, interrogation techniques and bureaucratic organization. The Palestinian graduates in the photo were instructed by International Training Inc., a private security- training firm that does contract work for the CIA.

The United States, the European Union and Britain also provided advanced radio communications systems, computers, vehicles and other equipment.

In October 1998, the Wye Plantation agreement -- hammered out between Clinton, Arafat and then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at a summit in rural Maryland -- formalized the assistance provided by the CIA to Palestinian security, in cooperation with a special security adviser appointed by the European Union, a British former intelligence officer named Alastair Crooke. It was Crooke who escorted Abu Nijmeh and the 12 other exiles from Bethlehem to Cyprus in May 2002 while CIA officers cleared Palestinian weapons from the Church of the Nativity, officials involved in the operation said.

Even before the intifada broke out in 2000, the Israeli government was becoming concerned about the inadvertent help to Palestinian militants. In November 1999, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak asked Washington to scale back its assistance to the Palestinian security forces.

"In recent conversations with senior U.S. officials, Israeli representatives expressed their concerns about the risk that sensitive information on antiterror methods and antiterror technology would be passed from the Palestinian Authority on to terror groups," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported at that time.

"The American aid to the Palestinians carries a great danger, because it is impossible to know exactly what the Palestinians are receiving, or who ultimately receives it," a Barak aide told Haaretz.

The Israeli warning was borne out by the graduation photo. Bajali and Abu Nijmeh, the two Al-Aqsa members, were not unusual in combining service in the Palestinian security forces with activity in an underground militia. When the Church of the Nativity siege ended in May 2002, Abu Nijmeh was just one of several security officers among the 13 men deported to Europe and 26 more banished from the West Bank to Gaza.

Among his colleagues when he joined General Intelligence, "there were five or six who were deported abroad and another 10 (from the West Bank) to Gaza," said one Palestinian officer pictured in the photo of the Class of 1998, who still is in the security forces and asked that his name not be used.

CIA session

The certificate -- complete with gold-leaf seal -- that the 1998 graduates received from International Training Inc. refers only to an "antiterrorist driving and motorcade operations" course. But the CIA-sponsored session provided firearms training as well, the officer and other participants in the course who spoke to The Chronicle confirmed. "They trained us on pistols and MP5 machine guns," said the officer. "There were fixed targets and moving targets in front of us."

He said the training was shrouded in tight secrecy, and in a manner that foreshadowed future problems.

"We arrived in Washington, then they took us in another plane," he said. "We were in Virginia for a day or two, then they took us to a military base where they trained us.

"I was shocked by one thing -- when they put us on the plane, its windows were blackened," he said. "And when they put us on a bus, the windows were covered. I asked our escort, 'Why have you covered the windows of the bus and the airplane?'

"He replied, 'For the moment we are friends, but we could also become enemies. It's not in our interest to show you the security bases.'

Abbas to push militants to stick to ceasefire

GLOBE & MAIL
Saturday, February 12, 2005 - Page A13

By MATTHEW KALMAN
Special to The Globe and Mail, with a report from AP

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas left for the Gaza Strip last night to push militants to adhere to the fragile ceasefire with Israel, while the focus of international peacemaking shifted to next month's reconstruction conference.

Mr. Abbas plans to meet with members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad today in an effort to enforce the ceasefire he reached with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon last week in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. But the militants insisted that they will stop their attacks only when they are satisfied that Israel will stop pursuing them and release Palestinian prisoners.

"Hamas still wants a truce, but needs this truce to be with Israeli obligations," spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri said.

Israel has pledged to cease all its military activity against all Palestinians everywhere, and vowed to release 900 of the 8,000 Palestinian prisoners it is holding. But Hamas and Islamic Jihad say they are withholding approval of the agreement.

Mr. Abbas fired dozens of Palestinian senior security officials in Gaza this week for failing to stop a barrage of mortars on Jewish settlements. Israeli officials praised the move, but warned yesterday they have limited patience for such violence. "We still have a policy of restraint and civilian gestures in order to strengthen [Mr. Abbas], but it must be remembered this won't last forever," deputy defence minister Zeev Boim told Israel Radio.

As the sides work to sort out the truce on the ground, the diplomatic focus is turning toward London, where international donors are to meet March 1 to discuss how to rebuild the shattered Palestinian economy.

The meeting, organized by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, will also look at ways to bolster the Palestinian security forces, whose equipment and buildings have been devastated by Israeli attacks during the 4-year intifada.

"We want to use that meeting to help the Palestinians build the institutions which they will need to build in turn and to govern a viable state, and we want to help Abu Mazen and his ministers respond effectively to Israel's disengagement from Gaza and the four settlements in the West Bank," British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said yesterday, referring to the Palestinian leader by his nom de guerre.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew announced this week that he will attend the London conference, where he will join U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and counterparts from the European Union, several Arab states and other senior officials from the international community.

Israeli officials said yesterday that although they support the conference, they will not attend.

"We wish the conference every success and we will help to implement its decisions where we can, but we do not think it is appropriate for us to be there physically," an aide to Mr. Sharon said.

In preparation for the conference, the Palestinian Authority has drawn up a thick dossier setting out its needs for the next three years.

The dossier was drawn by the Palestinian finance ministry and ministry of planning in consultation with the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program. It calls for $1.5-billion (U.S.) in international aid each year. One-third of the money is to come from the United States, but Canada, Russia and European Union countries have also been given the dossier.

Palestinian officials said this week that Mr. Pettigrew has offered to accommodate senior Palestinian police officers on RCMP training courses, either in Canada or the Palestinian territories.

"The Canadians in the past did play an active role in this field, and I'm pretty sure that we do need their assistance and I'm pretty sure that they will have a role to play in the future -- either in the issue of reorganizing or supplying with equipment to the security services or in other fields," said General Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian National Security Council.

Mr. Pettigrew also discussed Canadian assistance in children's development, judicial reform and improving local government.

Militants aim to destroy Mideast truce

GLOBE & MAIL
Friday, February 11, 2005

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Ramallah, West Bank - Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas fired three senior security commanders yesterday and sent a stern message to those trying to sabotage the Palestinian ceasefire with Israel, after militants fired a barrage of mortars at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli and U.S. officials praised Mr. Abbas for taking "an unprecedented step" in dismissing the three, members of former leader Yasser Arafat's old guard.

And both sides accused the Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah of provoking the violence in order to disrupt the truce reached by Mr. Abbas and Israel's Ariel Sharon at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, this week.

"We know that orders have been issued from Lebanon for some parties to continue and not accept what happened [in Egypt]," one senior Palestinian official said.

Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew, who met both Mr. Sharon and Mr. Abbas yesterday as part of a weeklong trip to the region, told reporters that he will deliver a warning of his own to the governments of Lebanon and its patron Syria when he visits those countries today.

"The attempts by extremists trying to prevent and derail this very important progress have to stop," Mr. Pettigrew said in French after meeting Palestinian leaders in Ramallah. "I am going to tell the Syrians and the Lebanese that if you really want to help the Palestinians, you must reinforce the authority and the credibility of president Abbas in his determination to follow this path."

A Hezbollah spokesman denied this week that the group is trying to disrupt the calm. But Wednesday night, Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah called for Palestinians to continue fighting. And during Mr. Pettigrew's meeting with Mr. Abbas at the muqata compound in Ramallah, senior Palestinian officials said they know the Lebanese-based group is pushing Palestinian militants to continue their uprising.

The official said Hezbollah is spending big moneyinducing militant groups to continue the violence, including yesterday's attacks, in which 50 mortar bombs and rockets hit settlements in Gaza. There were no casualties in the violence, which officials said was carried out by the Hamas organization.

Palestinian officials said those fired included Abdel-Razek al-Majaydeh, public security chief for the West Bank and Gaza; Palestinian Authority police chief Saeb al-Ajez; and Omar Ashour, commander of the security forces in the southern Gaza Strip. Six lower-ranking officials also lost their jobs.

Before Mr. Pettigrew left for Beirut, he told reporters yesterday that his meetings with Palestinian and Israeli leaders were very successful and constructive.

He said he has offered Canada's help in two key areas - border management and police training.

"We have developed in the last few years in North America, certainly on the Canadian side, great expertise in border management, where we had to accommodate security requirements of the United States post-Sept. 11, with a very fluid border where goods and people could cross," he said.

Perhaps the most unusual assistance Mr. Pettigrew handed to Palestinian officials was a gift of $750,000 from Canada's Jewish community, in the form of medical supplies for a children's hospital in the West Bank city of Hebron. The gift, funded by Walter Arbib of Toronto, was received enthusiastically by Mr. Abbas and his officials.

"We appreciate that gesture," deputy foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah said. "It has more value than the monetary value because it's coming from our cousins, the Jewish community in Canada."

Former NDP leader Alexa McDonough, who is travelling with the Foreign Minister as her party's foreign affairs critic, was effusive in her praise for Mr. Pettigrew's mission, which will have taken the delegation to Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories by the time it ends Saturday.

"... I will say that I really applaud Pettigrew's conduct. I think he had really acquitted himself extremely well on behalf of Canada and I felt really quite pleased to be associated with his very skillful diplomacy," she said last night in a telephone interview.

Fresh start in Sharm el-Sheikh

ABBAS, SHARON VOW END TO VIOLENCE

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, February 9th 2005

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt and MAHMOUD HABBOUSH in Gaza City DAILY NEWS WRITERS With Kenneth R. Bazinet in Washington

THE LEADERS OF ISRAEL and the Palestinian Authority bridged four years of bitter violence with a historic handshake yesterday as they pledged to restart the peace process.

After Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reached over a table to grasp his hand, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a new start for the two sides.

"The calm that will be witnessed in our territory starting today is the start of a new phase, a start of peace, hope," Abbas said. "Let us replace the language of bullets and bombs with good dialogue."

"For the first time in a long time, there is hope in our region for a better future for us and our grandchildren," Sharon said.

In Paris, a delighted Secretary of State Rice called the joint Israeli-Palestinian ceasefire pledge "the best chance for peace we are likely to see for years to come."

But in Israeli-occupied Gaza, Hamas militants whose suicide attacks sabotaged earlier attempts at ending the Palestinian intifadeh were doubtful about this one.

"This summit didn't meet the expectations of our people," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zohri told the Daily News. "We were expecting to see real pressure exerted on Israel."

Khader Habib, a leader of militant Islamic Jihad, added, "The Palestinian people wanted to hear much more than this."

In their first summit since the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat last year, the Palestinians agreed to stop attacks on Israelis, and Sharon called a halt to military operations.

The Egyptians and Jordanians pledged to return ambassadors to the Jewish state for the first time since September 2000, when an uprising erupted, leaving 3,350 Palestinians and 970 Israelis dead.

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak praised the "new positive spirit" of the age-old enemies and urged them to take "urgent, serious and quick steps" to bring peace for their people. "It is a long and difficult path but we have started today," he said.

Outside, the Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh was sealed off by soldiers, and police sentries manned checkpoints to prevent suicide attacks.

Both sides still have to hammer out the details of releasing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails and declaring an amnesty for fugitive terrorist suspects.

Among the Israeli concessions is the suspension of its hunt for suspected terrorists; that development means the 13 Palestinians exiled to Europe after the Church of the Nativity siege in 2002 will be able to return home.

Q & A.

What's really new?
The Israelis and Palestinians are talking at the highest levels: Ariel Sharon and President Bush had refused to deal with the late Yasser Arafat. But both consider his successor, Mahmoud Abbas, a partner for peace.

What happened yesterday?

Sharon and Abbas met in Egypt and formalized what they called an end to hostilities. Sharon even invited Abbas to his ranch in the Negev desert.

Are the terrorists onboard?

No. But Abbas has expressed a willingness to crack down on them if there are new attacks. The true test will be how he reacts if there is new violence.

What's next?

Abbas and Sharon will meet with Bush at the White House, a powerful sign that America is engaged once more in bringing peace. Negotiators, meanwhile, will tackle the major stumbling blocks: settlements, the security wall, the Palestinian demand of "right of return" to land that is now Israel's, and the future of Jerusalem.

Abbas wins Palestinian presidency

Hopes high for new peace negotiations

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, January 10, 2005

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Page A - 1

Ramallah, West Bank -- Mahmoud Abbas declared victory late Sunday in the election to succeed Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president, raising hopes of a new era for the Middle East.

"We offer this victory to the soul of the brother martyr Yasser Arafat and to all Palestinians," Abbas told jubilant supporters here shortly before midnight. "There is a difficult mission ahead to build our state, to achieve security for our people ... to give our prisoners freedom, our fugitives a life in dignity, to reach our goal of an independent state," he said.

Abbas' words gave an indication of the difficulties he faces -- persuading Palestinian militants to stop attacking Israel and persuading Israel to lift the military occupation that makes ordinary life all but impossible in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, rooting out the endemic corruption that marked Arafat's presidency, rebuilding Palestinian institutions and putting the economy in order. The former Palestinian prime minister, who has vocally opposed armed conflict with Israel, must forge a working relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to revive the peace process and rebuild ties with the United States that frayed badly during Arafat's final years.

Exit polls gave Abbas, popularly known as Abu Mazen, more than two-thirds of the vote in the first democratic succession of the Palestinian Authority leadership. The election was called to fill the post left vacant in November by the death of Arafat, who was elected as the first president in 1996.

The elections committee said turnout exceeded 65 percent of the 1.8 million eligible voters. Official results were to be announced today, followed by Abbas' swearing-in ceremony at the Palestinian Legislative Council.

"I think this vote shows a change in the Palestinian street," said Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Sharon. "We certainly welcome this and hope that from this mandate Abu Mazen will lead the Palestinian people on the path of reconciliation."

Sharon had said before the election that he would begin talks with the winner on his plan to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip.

President Bush also welcomed Abbas' victory, calling it "a historic day for the Palestinian people."

"Palestinians throughout the West Bank and Gaza took a key step toward building a democratic future by choosing a new president in elections that observers describe as largely free and fair," Bush said. "The United States stands ready to help the Palestinian people realize their aspirations."

Polling began at 7 a.m. Sunday at nearly 3,000 sites in schools and public buildings in the West Bank and Gaza, and six designated post offices in East Jerusalem. Sunday's vote was monitored by nearly 20,000 domestic observers, representing each of the seven candidates, and nearly 1,000 foreign observers headed by former President Jimmy Carter and former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard.

Israel relaxed checkpoints and removed several earthen barriers on main roads in the West Bank and Gaza, allowing Palestinians greater freedom of movement between some cities for the first time in months. A national holiday was declared, and many Palestinians took the opportunity to travel to visit relatives after they had voted.

Mustafa Barghouti, who finished second in the balloting with about 20 percent of the vote, according to exit polls, accused Abbas supporters of "massive voting fraud." He said he had washed off the supposedly indelible ink smeared on voters' thumbs to prevent multiple voting.

"People are being bused in and are voting four or five times," said Barghouti's campaign spokeswoman.

There was no independent confirmation of the accusations.

The Palestinian Central Elections Committee extended voting by two hours because of what it called logistical problems caused in part by Israeli checkpoints. The Associated Press, citing an unnamed election official, said the extension came under pressure from Fatah, Abbas' party, which was concerned a low turnout could weaken their candidate.

Barghouti and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights both protested the two-hour extension and the sudden decision in midafternoon to allow balloting by people who did not appear on registration lists.

The views of voters highlighted the challenges ahead. Peace and effective government were on their minds, but so were the stumbling blocks that have interfered with achieving a final peace deal, such as the fate of Palestinians who fled or were ousted from Israel in its multiple Arab wars and establishing a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem.

Nihad Abu Ghosh, 70, wearing a dark jacket and traditional kaffiyeh headdress, voted at the Friends Boys School in central Ramallah. He said he was a refugee from the West Bank village of Amwas, which was destroyed by Israel in the 1967 Six Day War.

"I don't think this election will achieve anything," he said. "Bush and Sharon have already decided they will not allow refugees to return, they will not give back Jerusalem and they will not return to the pre-1967 borders. The only way there will be peace is to change the mentality of the Israelis."

But Hanin Yousef, a 20-year-old student at Bir Zeit University who was voting for the first time, was optimistic. "I hope we are putting Palestine on the right track," she said as she stood with her mother at the same polling site. "We need a good, strong government. We need peace."

Across town, in the battered Mukata compound where Arafat spent his final years, Khaled Shawish slipped out of hiding to a polling booth 50 yards across the courtyard to vote for Abbas.

Shawish, 32, a founder and commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the militant wing of Arafat's Fatah group, has been hiding in the compound for nearly three years, confined to a wheelchair after taking nine Israeli bullets in a gunbattle in 2001. But he was determined to vote for Abbas, a man he hails as his "symbol and leader," as he once did Arafat.

And so, with a pistol concealed in a holster under his flak jacket, he was carried downstairs and wheeled across the courtyard to the Mukata's meeting hall, where British Prime Minister Tony Blair greeted Abbas two weeks ago.

"Everyone said that after the death of Arafat, there would be chaos and the Palestinians would fight each other over the transfer of power, but that didn't happen and it won't happen," said Shawish. "If Abbas calls on me to lay down my gun, then I will, because I trust him not to do that until he has secured all my rights and the rights of my people."

Israelis were divided on the effect Abbas' election would have on the peace process.

"We can only welcome the conclusion of the first democratic election in the Arab world, but now the true test of that election is whether the new Palestinian president can eliminate the culture in which terrorism thrives, including the constant adoration of 'martyrs' in Palestinian media and school textbooks," said Michael Oren, author of "Six Days of War" and a senior fellow of the Shalem Centre think tank in Jerusalem.

Yossi Beilin, leader of the dovish Yahad party and architect of the Oslo Accords, the 1994 pact between Israel and the Palestinians that led the way to establishment of the Palestinian Authority, said he hoped Israel would seize the opportunity presented by the election of Abbas.

"It is the beginning of a new era of partnership," said Beilin. "This is the biggest change in the past four years. Our prime minister can no longer say he has no partner. I'm afraid that Sharon is not too happy to have a partner. He is still mourning the death of Arafat, because Arafat was Sharon's best alibi for doing nothing.

"Abu Mazen is a very honest person," said Beilin. "He is modest, even shy. He hates politics and he hates campaigning. But he sees his duty as a mission, and he has a real commitment to peace."

Who Will Get Arafat's Millions?

San Francisco Chronicle | Monday, November 08, 2004

Matthew Kalman

Ramallah, West Bank - The wife of Yasser Arafat was locked in a bitter dispute with Palestinian officials over the fate of his vast secret fortune as the Palestinian leader lay apparently near death in a French hospital, according to a report on the Arab TV network Al-Jazeera.

Arafat's secret assets have been estimated at anywhere between $200 million (Forbes magazine) and $6 billion (U.S. and Israeli intelligence). Forbes listed him ninth in its ranking of the world's wealthiest heads of state -- even though he is a ruler without a country and many of his people are refugees.

In Paris, the struggle over Arafat's hidden millions threatened to overshadow his final days. His wife, Suha Arafat, hopes to inherit at least part of his fortune. But, according to Al-Jazeera, Palestinian leaders demand that it be handed over to the Palestinian people.

The assets are managed in a complex network of bank accounts, holding companies and stocks whose details are known only to his closest confidant, financial adviser Mohammed Rashid.

Suha Arafat has access to some of the money, but apparently even she does not know all the ins and outs of the secret accounts. Al-Jazeera reported that she asked Rashid to make out a list of Arafat's assets and that he refused, saying he would report only to the Palestinian Authority.

According to Al-Jazeera, Arafat had written a will leaving at least some of his fortune to his wife and their 9-year-old daughter Zahwa, but other reports said Arafat has no will, leaving most of his fortune in the hands of Rashid.

When the 75-year-old Palestinian leader was flown to a military hospital outside Paris on Oct. 29, Suha Arafat took control of his medical care, although the couple have lived apart for nearly four years.

Thirty years younger than Arafat, the Christian, Sorbonne-educated Suha Tawil married the Palestinian leader in a secret ceremony in 1992 in Tunisia, where she worked for the Palestine Liberation Organization. After Arafat's return to the Palestinian territories in 1994, she played the part of Palestinian first lady, but spent most of her time in Paris. She left the family's home in Gaza in January 2001 and took Zahwa to Paris, where they have lived ever since at the five-star Bristol Hotel.

French officials earlier this year began investigating the transfer of $11.5 million from Swiss bank accounts to accounts in France controlled by Suha Arafat.

"What is so strange for the Palestinian president to send any amount of money to his family and his wife, who is protecting the Palestinian interests abroad, and the money came and will come legally?" she told an interviewer from Al-Hayat, an Arab-language newspaper published in London.

With Arafat apparently near death, questions linger about what has happened to the billions in aid money from the international community to build the nascent Palestinian state. Many suspect that Suha Arafat's luxurious lifestyle -- as well as the cars, villas and expensive education of other prominent Palestinian families -- was bought with cash stolen from international donors and tax revenues.

In 1997, the Palestinian Authority's own officials found that $323 million -- more than a third of the total budget -- had gone missing. The International Monetary Fund said last year that $750 million had been "diverted" from the Palestinian budget up to the year 2000. Identifying Arafat's personal fortune and separating it from numerous secret bank accounts in the name of the PLO and Fatah, his political faction, will be no easy task.

Jean-Claude Robard, a Swiss investment adviser, told Al-Jazeera that Arafat opened his first secret bank account in 1965 with a $50,000 check from the emir of Kuwait. Since then, Robard said, Arafat has set up other accounts in Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg and the Cayman Islands. Robard said Arafat also owns a number of hotels and holiday resorts in Spain, Italy, France, Switzerland and Austria and is the main shareholder in two cellular telephone companies operating in Tunisia and Algeria.

After the Oslo peace accords were finalized in 1994, tax and customs revenues collected by Israel on Palestinian salaries and goods were transferred to a personal account in Arafat's name held at an Israeli bank branch in Tel Aviv. Between 1996 and 2000, Israel paid more than $500 million in tax revenues on oil sales alone into Arafat's personal account, according to a report by the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

In December 2002, an Israeli accountant named Ozrad Lev said in an interview with the Israeli daily Maariv that he was involved in the illegal transfer of $300 million in Palestinian funds to Arafat through a secret Swiss account. The funds were transferred from an official Palestinian account at a branch of the Arab Bank in Ramallah by Arafat and one of his top aides, said Lev.

He also said he helped open and manage the Swiss account with Yossi Ginossar, a former Israeli security official with widespread Palestinian business dealings who died earlier this year.

Lev told Maariv that the account was opened at the Swiss bank Lombard Odier & Cie in April 1997 using copies of Arafat's personal documents, including his passport. The account was opened in the name of a front company, Ledbury, which was later changed to Crouper.

Two years ago, American accountant Jim Prince told CBS' "60 Minutes" that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with investments in companies such as a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the United States and the Cayman Islands.

Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds, including Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat, Prince said, adding that none of these dealings was made public.

Al-Jazeera said some of Arafat's businesses are in partnership with Arab politicians, former officials and entrepreneurs, including Rifaat Assad, a brother of the late Syrian President Hafez Assad, and Barzan Al-Takriti, a half-brother of deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Al-Takriti now is under arrest in Baghdad.