Israel's deputy prime minister forced to cancel UK trip after warning he could be arrested for 'war crimes'

Daily Mail, 2nd November 2010
By Jason Groves and Matthew Kalman

Israel's deputy prime minister Dan Meridor was forced to cancel a visit to London this week following warnings he could be arrested for alleged war crimes.

Mr Meridor, the Israeli minister for intelligence and atomic energy, pulled out of an event in London on Monday night after the British Foreign Office and Ministry of Justice warned him he could face an arrest warrant from pro-Palestinian activists.

The incident is an embarrassment for Foreign Secretary William Hague, who was due to arrive in Israel tonight for talks with president Shimon Peres.

Mr Meridor, 63, is the latest high-profile Israeli politician to cancel a visit to London because of concerns about possible arrest.

Embarrassment: Dan Meridor (left) was due to be in London this week while British Foreign Secretary William Hague is on a visit to Israel

In November last year the former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni pulled out of a trip to the UK after a British court issued a warrant for her arrest over alleged war crimes in Gaza.

At the time the then Foreign Secretary David Miliband ordered an ‘urgent’ review of the law, which allows members of the public to bring private prosecutions for alleged war crimes. Unlike most offences war crimes carry a so-called universal jurisdiction in British law, which means that foreigners can be arrested in the UK for alleged crimes committed abroad.

Labour Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced in March that the law would be changed to end private prosecutions for war crimes.

The new Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke said in July that the coalition Government was also determined to act. Mr Clarke said the law would be changed to require the approval of the Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer before any private prosecution for war crimes could be brought. He said the change in the law would be brought forward at the ‘first opportunity’.

Critics claim the move would send a dangerous signal about Britain’s attitude to war crimes.

But Education Secretary Michael Gove, who was at the dinner Mr Meridor was due to attend, told fellow guests that ministers remained determined to change the law.

Ministers are concerned that the current law makes it too easy for activists to launch politically-motivated proecutions.

Controversial: Mr Meridor was allegedly part of the group who discussed storming an international aid flotilla which tried to reach Gaza in May

Israeli leaders say that Britain cannot play a meaningful role in the Middle East peace process if senior officials cannot travel to Britain without fear of being arrested.

Mr Meridor is a member of a tight-knit group within the Israeli government which reportedly discussed the planned arrival of an international flotilla in Gaza in May. The incident ended with a raid by Israeli commandos, which led to the deaths of nine Turkish activists and brought worldwide condemnation.

It is thought that activists planned to ask a British court to issue an arrest warrant relating to Mr Meridor’s alleged involvement in the planning of the raid.

He had been due to speak at a conference organised by the Britain Israel Communications & Research Centre. Chief executive Lorna Fitzsimons said: “Israeli law officers did not think they should take the risk. Foreign Secretary William Hague intervened and the British government tried to make it work. They are committed to changing the law and it cannot come soon enough.”

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘This was Mr Meridor’s decision to take.’

Can Housing Preserve Mideast's Christians?

AOL News Monday, November 1st, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Nov. 1) -- Only days after a special Vatican Synod on the Middle East ended a week of deliberation about the rapidly shrinking Christian communities in the Arab world and Israel, Christians faced a massacre in Baghdad and renewed troubles in Jerusalem.

Fifty-eight people including a priest were reported dead Sunday after Iraqi troops stormed the Catholic Sayidat al-Najat church in Baghdad where gunmen linked with al-Qaida had taken dozens of hostages and begun killing them. It was just the latest bout of the anti-Christian violence that has sparked a massive wave of emigration from the troubled country in recent years.

In Jerusalem, it remained unclear what caused a blaze early Friday morning that swept through the Alliance Church on Prophets Street, next door to the Jewish ultra-orthodox neighborhood of Mea Shearim. The use of the church by evangelical and Jewish messianic groups aroused suspicions that the fire could have been started deliberately, but Jerusalem police said their initial investigation did not appear to suggest arson.

Decades of discrimination, poverty and occasional violence have taken their toll on the Christians of the Middle East. Tens of thousands have left the region in recent years. Reversing the decline of the rapidly shrinking Christian communities in Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Egypt and the Holy Land were high on the agenda of last week's Vatican Synod.

While the problem of violence in Iraq and elsewhere seems intractable for many Christians, in the Holy Land, church officials have hit on a novel solution: real estate.

Churches in Jerusalem and the West Bank, alarmed by the rapid rate of Christian emigration and the creeping loss of some church-owned land to Palestinian gangsters, have initiated a major building program to provide affordable housing to Christian families.

A 2006 survey carried out by Sabeel, a Christian think-tank in Jerusalem, showed that the 2005 Christian population of 160,000 in Israel and the West Bank had barely grown since 1945 due to massive emigration caused by continuous warfare, occupation and discrimination. More Palestinian Christians now live in Chile than in the Holy Land, where Christians account for less than 2 percent of the population. In cities like Bethlehem and Ramallah, which a generation ago had Christian majorities, they are now outnumbered by Muslims.

"There is a glaring shortage of houses in Jerusalem, at least at affordable prices," said Father Ibrahim Faltas, bursar of the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. "We really want to help halt Christian emigration by making these houses available. Having a space of one's own and a house of one's own is an encouragement to put down roots and stay in this land."

The Custody owns 500 homes in the Old City of Jerusalem and more than 200 outside the walls. A recent ceremony handing over the keys to 68 apartments in 20 three-floor buildings of three- to six-room apartments near Jerusalem went on until 5 a.m.

"It was a magnificent night," said the Custos, Pierbattista Pizzaballa, lamenting only that there was a waiting list of 700 families who had hoped to receive one of the 68 homes.

The Custody project "Jerusalem: Stones of the Memory" has completed 100 refurbishments since 2007 at a cost of about $2 million. It has another 320 housing units in the pipeline at an estimated cost of about $10 million. Similar projects have been initiated by the Armenian, Lutheran and Orthodox churches in Jerusalem, Bethany, Bethlehem and Ramallah.

"The real danger is that immigration has become the easy solution for all problems, a trend followed by the young and in many circumstances endorsed and encouraged by the older generation," notes the Arab Orthodox Charitable Society in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. "Beit Sahour, home to the largest Greek Orthodox community in the Holy Land, is at stake of losing its strong Christian identity, preserved by the community against all odds thus far. Bethlehem and Beit Jala have succumbed long ago to the temptation of immigration and lost their Christian majority." The society has its own building project, "Dwellings for Newly Married Young Couples."

Monsignor William Shomali, auxiliary bishop at the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, chairs a monthly gathering of Catholic church and charitable affiliates to monitor developments in the Catholic community. Among the projects under construction are 80 apartments in the southern Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Safafa being built with the legal and technical assistance of the Patriarchate.

"These people came to us and said, 'We are homeless. We can not own a house.' They were young, either newly married or about to get married, and they had a problem of housing. It is cheaper to build a housing project than for everyone to build his own house because of the land and building license. So they put the project under our care," Shomali told AOL News.

Christian families traditionally were not landowners in the villages that have now become suburbs of Jerusalem, Ramallah and other major cities. That put them at a disadvantage when the population began to grow and land prices started rising.

Israeli restrictions on granting building permits to Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem have exacerbated the problem. Church figures show that while Palestinians make up 35 percent of the city's population, they receive only 7 percent of building licenses granted each year -- a policy that the church describes as "demographic control."

"The Christian families used to live in the Old City where there was not a lot of space to expand," Shomali said. "They were satisfied. They were in houses owned by the Franciscans or the Greek Orthodox Church. So they didn't think to buy outside the Old City when land was less valuable than it is today. Fewer people thought of it. This is the error committed by our community."

Jack Amer, 27, is hoping to move to his new home in the Beit Safafa project with his wife of two years and their infant son in 2012, thanks to a $150,000 mortgage from the Arab Bank. Amer, a native of Jerusalem who is now chief accountant at the Latin Patriarchate, told AOL News that it would have been impossible to raise a mortgage without the backing of the church.

"No banks can give us the loans that will help us because we have no guarantees," Amer said. "The church is helping Arab people to stay in Jerusalem and to let their sons and daughters stay here also.

"The Patriarch and the priests are taking all their time to help people stay in this place. We need to stay in Jerusalem. It's like you are in a war. You have to protect your rights," he said.

New Fund Will Try to Revive Humanities Departments in Israel

David Blumenfeld for The Chronicle

In the Hebrew U. of Jerusalem's humanities department, only 14 freshmen enrolled this year in the once-prestigious Hebrew-literature program.

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

19 October, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

As part of an overhaul of higher-education financing in Israel, a newly created $9-million fund for the humanities will try to attract more students and top faculty members to the field and encourage cooperation among humanities departments at Israeli universities.

(Full article)

Repair of War-Scarred Palestinian Landmark Yields Hope

AOL News October 18th, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Oct. 18) -- Even before it was finished, Albert Abu Zgheibreh's majestic new home in Beit Jala earned a special name in the neighborhood: Al Qasr -- The Palace.

With its fine stone carvings, sweeping balconies and soaring arches, the three-story, 16,000-square-foot house stood on a promontory with commanding views across the valley from Bethlehem to the southern Jerusalem suburb of Gilo.


But in 2000, before its owner had even moved in, the opulent building was used as a snipers' nest by Palestinian gunmen and shelled to pieces by Israeli tanks. For nearly a decade, the ravaged beauty has stood abandoned in silent testimony to the brutal violence that engulfed this lazy town for years on end.

Now Palestinian and Israeli security chiefs are helping the millionaire owner rebuild the building. Some find grounds for optimism in the fact that a site that epitomizes the intifada is being restored with the quiet blessing of the gunmen and soldiers who brought about its destruction.

The Palestinian Authority is providing an armed guard of a dozen policemen every night to guard the site until a sophisticated electronic security system can be installed. And the commander of Israeli army's local Etzion Brigade, Col. Eran Markov, made a rare entrance into Palestinian-controlled territory to visit the site one recent morning and see how work was proceeding.

"It is a symbol of hope," said Fakhri Ghneim, a friend and business partner of Abu Zgheibreh who is supervising the 40 workers on the five-month, million-dollar repair program on behalf of the absent landlord. "We ask for peace. We pray for peace. We want to live in peace. We have had enough of living in terror. It will be good for both Palestinians and Israelis."

When the intifada uprising erupted in the autumn of 2000, the house was still bare on the inside and Abu Zgheibreh was away in Panama tending to his business interests. Taking advantage of its strategic position, Fatah gunmen sneaked inside and began shooting at the houses in Gilo, just half a mile away. At first they used their Palestinian police-issue Kalashnikov AK-47 semi-automatics and stolen Israeli army M-16s, but they caught the Israelis unawares when one night they began firing with two heavy machine-guns -- a belt-fed Browning M2 .50-caliber and a Russian-made BKC.

It was the first time that Jerusalem had come under sustained attack since the 1967 war. The Israeli army responded with tank shells and heavy machine-gun fire from three directions. The Israeli fire smashed in the roof, punched holes in the walls, destroyed many of the second-floor balconies and shattered most of the hand-carved stonework around the windows. An anti-sniper wall was hastily erected across the southern edge of Gilo to keep the residents safe. It was only taken down a few weeks ago.

For the residents of Beit Jala, the intifada was a catastrophe. Though Muslims had become a majority in Beit Jala and neighboring Bethlehem, the town's original Christian inhabitants generally wanted no part in the uprising and its suicide bombings. Many of the town's residents had close personal and business ties in Jerusalem, which the intifada brought to an end.

One of those who lost his business as a result was Fakhri Ghneim. "I have a quarry in Gilo, just over there," he told AOL News, pointing at the nearby Israeli neighborhood. "Now it's forbidden for me to enter Jerusalem. I haven't seen it for 10 years."

Abu Atef, a leader of the Fatah shabab ("youth") gunmen who later joined the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, told AOL News that they actually stopped shooting from the house itself after a few days because it was too dangerous, but they managed to draw the returning Israeli fire back to the palace again and again. As a result, none of the gunmen were killed inside the house, although several were hit nearby. He said it became a rite of passage for the most daring gunmen to take their turn behind the M2. Among those who gained their spurs in the nightly gun battles were at least three members of the Abayat family, the shabab leaders. Two were later killed in attacks by the Israeli army. Another is serving several life sentences in an Israeli prison.

Several residents of Beit Jala were killed in the firefights sparked by the gunmen, but the neighbors always divided the blame between the Israeli army and the Fatah fighters who had invaded their quiet neighborhood.

"The first time we came to shoot, the neighbors were OK, but after their houses began to be damaged from the Israeli tanks, people became very angry and tried to push us to another area to shoot," Abu Atef admits. "They didn't give us any help, not even a drink of water when the guys were thirsty. Even now they don't like us."

He said he welcomed Abu Zgheibreh's imminent return to the newly renovated palace as a natural development, but saw it as a sign that the sacrifices made by him and his friends had passed into history.

"They forgot the shabab," said Abu Atef. "They forgot the intifada, everything. Now the Palestinian Authority and Israel have cleaned everything out. All the weapons are gone. Does it mean there'll be peace? Maybe."

Program in Israel Pays Single Moms to Go to College

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION October 17, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

A college in Israel has been swamped with applications after it advertised a special deal that is aimed specifically at new students who are single moms: free babysitting, free tuition, special study hours, and an annual stipend. As a result, 48 mothers, most of them over 30, will begin studying this semester at Tel Hai Academic College for their bachelor's degrees in human resources, with an optional elective of interdisciplinary studies.

The course work is spread over four years instead of three, and classes are concentrated into a single day so the moms need be away from jobs, homes, and children for only one day each week. Students who volunteer at a community child-care program will provide free babysitting, and an organization that helps underprivileged people, the Rashi Foundation, is covering the tuition and providing each student with a cash grant of about $1,600 per year.

Yona Chen, president of the college, says the program arose from community-outreach projects that involve two-thirds of Tel Hai's 3,200 students.

"Our social workers identified the population of single mothers as a group in the society facing more economic difficulties and challenges in allocating time to study," he says. "It seems to be a great success."

The college is situated in a low-income region near Lebanon that came under extensive rocket fire in the 2006 war with Hezbollah.

In Israel, Mr. Chen notes, salaries for government jobs are tied to level of education, and private employers are more willing to give management roles to college graduates.

"There's a big jump in salary between a high-school graduate and a university graduate," he says.

Inbal Arad, a 37-year-old holistic therapist and the single mother of a 5-year-old girl, says she had not been able to consider pursuing a degree until she saw the Tel Hai advertisements.

"Financially and practically, it's not been possible," she says. "For me it's an opportunity to study and get a B.A., but in a way that actually fits into my life. Otherwise I can't afford it. I can't be a full-time student."

Israel Gets Close Look at Archenemy Ahmadinejad

AOL News Thursday, October 14th

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Oct. 14) -- "Like a landlord visiting his domain," according to the Israeli Foreign Ministry, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his flower-strewn progress through southern Lebanon today to deliver a triumphant, tub-thumping speech at the Hezbollah stronghold of Bint Jbeil, just two miles from the Israeli border.

"The world should know that eventually the Zionists will be forced to go and will not last long. They are enemies of humanity and will have no choice but to surrender. Occupied Palestine will be liberated from the yoke of the occupation with the help of resistance and faith in resistance," Ahmadinejad told an ecstatic crowd at the same soccer stadium where Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah gave his victory speech after the war of 2006, which saw the town largely reduced to rubble.

"The Zionists will have to leave and return to the countries they came from," he said, taking a moment to inform his audience that "the Zionists are responsible for the economic crisis and air pollution in the world."

In Maroun al-Ras, a village that saw heavy fighting in 2006 just a few hundred yards from the Israeli border, Hezbollah had erected a large viewing platform decorated with flags and a huge portrait of the Iranian leader gazing toward Israel. But Ahmadinejad failed to show up there, much to the disappointment of Israeli villagers across the fence, who had waited patiently with binoculars on the opposite hilltops.

Nasrallah himself apparently remained in the bunker where he is said to have been hiding for most of the past four years in fear of Israeli assassination. He failed to emerge even for Ahmadinejad's rally in Beirut on Wednesday, which he addressed by video. But his remote-control influence over the fate of Lebanon in partnership with Ahmadinejad's Iran is in no doubt.

Hezbollah forces, armed and financed by Iran, control large swathes of the country, with their headquarters in the southern Beirut suburbs and missile batteries and underground command posts scattered throughout the south of the country. Nasrallah's party lost the 2009 Lebanese elections but was the most powerful voice in the makeup of the government headed by Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

Nasrallah and Ahmadinejad have both raised alarms over the pending conclusions of a U.N.-appointed investigation into the 2005 assassination of Hariri's father, Rafik, the former prime minister. If it finds that Hezbollah agents were involved, as many observers suggest it will, the two warn that Lebanon will be plunged back into civil war.

Israeli leaders have no doubts about the intentions of the man who has hoped aloud on many occasions that their country will disappear from the world's maps. One right-wing opposition Israeli MP said Ahmadinejad should be assassinated, comparing the opportunity should it arise to killing Adolf Hitler before World War II. Israelis view the Iranian president's military support for Hezbollah and blood-curdling rhetoric as clear signals that he intends to continue using southern Lebanon as a launchpad for his ongoing battle against Israel.

"The Iranian president invested a fortune in Lebanon. However, his millions were not invested in education or welfare for the residents of Lebanon, but in arming Hezbollah and bolstering Nasrallah's rule in Lebanon," Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai said.

"Make no mistake. Most of the residents we see on TV did not come to greet Ahmadinejad out of love; they were forced to do so, because those are the rules of Ahmadinejad's game; he came to promote his interests at the expense of the Lebanese citizens," he said.

That view was echoed by Diana Nemeh, a Beirut-based commentator who has sharply criticized the visit.

"He's not interested in Lebanon's interests. He's just interested in Hezbollah and being against Israel and the U.S.," Nemeh told AOL News. "It's a bit shocking to me the way it's being portrayed on TV. It makes it look as though all of Lebanon, all the Lebanese people are welcoming his visit, which is not true at all. The other people that welcomed him, that really wanted him here, the Hezbollah and the Shia, he basically paid his way into their lives. He gave money in 2006 to rebuild after the war. Nothing's for free. He bought the right to say the south of Lebanon is Iran's border with Israel."

Iranian analyst Meir Javedanfar, director of Meepas analysts and co-author of "The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran," said Ahmadinejad's aim was to reverse his increasing unpopularity at home and send a signal to his enemies abroad.

"By going to a country where the Islamic Republic is genuinely popular, Ahmadinejad 's main goal from this visit is to boost his flagging image and influence," Javedanfar told AOL News. "He also wants to send a message of warning to anyone who is thinking of taking Hezbollah on, if the organization is found guilty of killing Hariri, and finally to send a message to Israel that Iran is on its border. Should Israel attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Iran could retaliate from much closer by."

Google Earth Photos Reveal Syrian Scuds

AOL News Tuesday, October 12th

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Oct. 12) -- Israeli defense experts were still sounding alarms this week over Google Earth images made public Friday by the Israeli daily Haaretz. The satellite photos, taken March 22, show Scud missiles ready for deployment at a Syrian base at Adra, where earlier reports suggest Syria is training Hezbollah militants in the use of missiles that threaten large parts of Israel.

The photos show five 11-meter-long Scuds at the Adra base. Three are on trucks in a car park. Two others are in a training area where 20 to 25 people can be made out along with about 20 vehicles. One of the two missiles appears to be mounted on a mobile launcher; another is on the ground.

Earlier reports have suggested that the Adra base, located in a deep valley surrounded by 400-meter mountains, has concrete tunnels leading deep underground where the missiles are apparently stored in protected silos.


View Larger Map

In 2006, Hezbollah rocket fire into Israel precipitated Israeli air strikes and a ground invasion of Lebanon. Hezbollah's month-long barrage of rockets deeply unsettled Israel; with Scud missiles, Hezbollah can strike all the major cities in Israel.

In April, the Kuwaiti newspaper Al Rai reported that Syrian President Bashar Assad was arming Hezbollah with Scuds, a report Assad denied but both the U.S. and Israel later confirmed. Hezbollah sources told Al Rai that the group had the capability to launch 15 tons of explosives at Israel every day in the case of another war between the two sides, and went on to claim that Hezbollah possesses a wide range of missiles with a heavy payload, including the 1-ton Zilzal missile and half-ton Fateh 110 and M600 missiles.

In May, the Sunday Times reported that shipments of weapons from the Adra base were going to Hezbollah, and that Iran was sending missiles and other weapons to that base via Damascus airport nearby. The paper also said Hezbollah had been given a section of the base for barracks, warehouses and a fleet of trucks to transport weapons to the Lebanese border, which is just 25 miles away.

Assad has entered a close strategic partnership with Iran, Hezbollah's primary political and financial master. According to the Pentagon, Hezbollah receives up to $200 million from Iran each year, in addition to arms.

Jeffrey White, former head of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency's Office for Middle East/Africa Regional Military Assessments and now defense fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said last month that Hezbollah is "preparing for war."

"It has built up its rocket and missile forces and air defenses, and now has four times as many rockets and more accurate missiles than in 2006," White said.

The Google Earth photos also show extensive construction at military bases throughout Syria.

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South and Central Asian Affairs in June, Danielle Pletka, vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, said "Hezbollah is effectively a state within a state in Lebanon, with an ever growing and ever more sophisticated long-range arsenal. It is untrammeled by the Lebanese government to which it belongs and answerable to no one in that nation, but rather to the dictatorships in Damascus and Tehran."

Energetic efforts by the Obama administration to engage Syria and pry Assad away from his relationship with Tehran have so far proved fruitless. In an interview in The Wall Street Journal in September, published as he was meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem downplayed the prospects of renewed talks with Israel and voiced opposition to many of Washington's regional initiatives.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad plans soon to visit Lebanon, where Hezbollah has seized power over large swaths of the country. On his itinerary: a visit to the Lebanon-Israel border so he can throw rocks at Israeli soldiers.

Israeli Icon Moshe Dayan Exposed as Bumbler

AOL News Wednesday, October 6th

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Oct. 6) -- Newly declassified documents from the Israel State Archives have shattered the image of Moshe Dayan, Israel's legendary one-eyed war hero, and portray him as panic-strickened and responsible for a string of errors that nearly lost his country the 1973 Yom Kippur War.

Minutes of War Cabinet meetings published to coincide with today's 37th anniversary of the outbreak of the war show that Dayan and his Cabinet colleagues ignored vital intelligence warning them of an impending Egyptian attack and completely misread the Egyptian military capability and the war aims of President Anwar Sadat.


Max Nash, AP
Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan is shown during a press conference following the opening of Egypt-Israel peace talks in 1978. Newly declassified documents blame him for a series of strategic errors during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Israel lost 2,569 soldiers during the three-week conflict, together with strategic outposts on the Suez Canal and one-sixth of the Sinai Peninsula that Israel had seized from Egypt in the lightning victory masterminded by Dayan in the 1967 Six-Day War. Egypt and Syria lost 10,000 and 4,000 troops, respectively. Dayan died in 1981.

Israeli leaders meeting at 8 a.m. on Oct. 6, 1973, just six hours before the Egyptian attack, dismissed a dramatic message relayed by Chief of Staff David Elazar from Ashraf Marwan, an Egyptian billionaire who spied for Israel, that war was imminent.

Despite strong signs to the contrary, Dayan rejected Elazar's warning that war was about to break out and strongly opposed a vital call-up of 200,000 Israeli reserves, which Elazar said -- correctly -- would give Israel "a huge advantage and save many lives."

"I believe we can complete the call-up tomorrow," Dayan retorted. He was overruled by Prime Minister Golda Meir. The war broke out at 2 p.m. later that same day.

The minutes show the chief of military intelligence, Eli Zeira, foundering around in the dark.

"Despite the fact that they are prepared, I believe that they know they will lose. Sadat is not in a position whereby he has to go to war," Zeira advised the fateful gathering. Military intelligence had also failed to discover that Egypt and Syria had both been supplied with new, Soviet-made infrared sights for their tanks, giving them a substantial tactical advantage in the first two days of the war.

Meeting the following afternoon, 25 hours after the outbreak of fighting, the Cabinet heard that Israeli forces were being overrun in Sinai and advised them to flee, leaving the wounded to be captured by the Egyptians.

Dayan is quoted in the minutes as already acknowledging his mistakes.

"I didn't sufficiently appreciate the strength of the enemy and his fighting force," Dayan said. "I also exaggerated in assessing our forces and their ability to cope. The Arabs are much better fighters than before. They have many arms at their disposal. The missiles are a difficult umbrella that is hard for our air force to pierce."

He also said, "Our moral advantage cannot withstand this mass" and proposed bombing civilian targets in Damascus, Syria -- a suggestion rejected by the Cabinet.

The picture that emerges is of a defense minister in panic. But after the war, Dayan did not take responsibility for the strategic errors that almost led to Israel's defeat -- a scenario that was turned around by brilliant tactics from Elazar and his generals and an extraordinary counterattack into Egypt led by Brig. Gen. Ariel Sharon, the future prime minister.

The war was launched on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, with most reservists at home or in synagogue, and so easy to contact in the era before mobile phones. The introduction of the reserve units reversed the course of the battle, and the tide turned in Israel's favor. When a U.N.-sponsored cease-fire was declared on Oct. 25, Israel was back in control of the Golan Heights and within artillery range of Damascus. In the south, Sharon's division had crossed the Suez Canal, encircled the Egyptian army and was 100 miles from Cairo.

The Agranat Commission found that Elazar and Zeira were responsible for the intelligence and military failures, and they retired in disgrace. But the minutes of the War Cabinet show that Elazar's prophetic warnings were repeatedly shot down by Dayan.

Dayan also encouraged the prime minister to misinterpret Sadat's intentions, stoking her fears of a doomsday scenario in which Egypt was about "to conquer Israel, finish off the Jews." Ministers even considered using nuclear weapons.

But after the war, it became clear that Sadat, who actually wanted a peace deal with Israel, had despaired of ever retrieving the Sinai through diplomacy and decided he would have to fight a limited war first.

In the aftermath of the war, Meir's ruling Labor Party lost power for the first time in Israel's 30-year history to the right-wing Likud Party of Menachem Begin, who went on to make peace with Sadat and return Sinai to Egypt.

Dayan's shortcomings have been hinted at before. Chaim Herzog, the former general and president, wrote a book after 1973 that heaped criticism on the Agranat Commission and accused Dayan of ceasing to function while the fighting was still going on.

Moti Ashkenazi, commander of the northernmost Israeli outpost on the Suez Canal in 1967, opposite Port Said, began campaigning for the resignation of the Cabinet the day he arrived home from the war.

"Dayan's admission is new to me -- in public he hid and avoided any admission of these mistakes," said Ashkenazi. "At the head of the whole system we had a man who was an ignoramus about his own military forces and even more of an ignoramus in his assessment of the other side -- but he was regarded as Mr. Security."

Avigail Goldschmidt, who was a secretary in the prime minister's office, said she remembers the day that Elazar was forced to resign.

"He came into the secretariat and said Moshe Dayan had hung him out to dry. I was heartbroken for him. Then Dayan came out smiling from ear to ear. I said to Moshe Dayan, 'Comfort him. Say something,' but he treated him like a piece of trash and said nothing. At that moment, I didn't care if they fired me. I said to Dayan, 'Not only are you missing an eye, you're missing a heart.'"

The Haaretz Hebrew daily said the minutes laid bare the "shortsightedness, complacence and misguided intelligence that preceded the war," and hoped the soldiers in that confrontation, now members of today's Israeli Cabinet, had learned the appropriate lessons. "They bear responsibility for pursuing peace and compromise over stagnation and the threat of renewed war," the paper said.

Judge Considers Verdict in 5-Year-Long Jesus Forgery Trial

AOL News, October 5th

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Oct. 5) -- The discovery in 2002 of a limestone burial box with the Hebrew inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" electrified the world of archaeology. If genuine, the burial box, or ossuary, would be the only archaeological artifact yet found with a possible direct link to Jesus of Nazareth.

Amid international fanfare, the ossuary went on display at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum and swiftly spawned numerous articles, scholarly studies, several documentary movies and at least four books.

But experts at the Israel Antiquities Authority declared it a modern-day forgery. Israeli police seized the burial box and arrested its owner, Tel Aviv collector Oded Golan. In December 2004 he was charged with faking the ossuary and dozens of other items, including an inscribed tablet linked to King Joash, which, if authentic, would be the only physical evidence from the Temple of Solomon.

AFP / Getty Images

Oded Golan points to the Hebrew inscription "James son of Joseph brother of Jesus" on the burial box at the center of a five-year forgery trial in Israel.

The indictment leveled 44 charges of forgery, fraud and deception against Golan and 13 lesser counts against a co-defendant, antiquities dealer Robert Deutsch. The trial of Golan, Deutsch and three other defendants opened at the Jerusalem District Court in September 2005.

Last Sunday, the defense ended its summing up with just two men left in the dock, bringing to an end five years of court proceedings that spanned 116 sessions, 133 witnesses, 200 exhibits and nearly 12,000 pages of witness testimony. The prosecution summation alone ran to 653 pages.

Yet despite the flood of strong scientific testimony, the feeling in the tiny courtroom, where fewer than a dozen people (including only one reporter) have followed the proceedings, was that the prosecution had failed to prove the items were forgeries or that Golan and Deutsch had faked them.

Judge Aharon Farkash, the wheelchair-bound polymath who has overseen the marathon trial, wondered aloud on several occasions how he could be expected to deliver a legal ruling on what was essentially a scientific question that the experts themselves could not resolve.

In October 2008, just three years into the proceedings, Farkash pointedly asked whether the trial should continue after the prosecution and Golan had presented their evidence.

"Have you really proved beyond a reasonable doubt that these artifacts are fakes as charged in the indictment? The experts disagreed among themselves," Farkash told the prosecutor.

Summing up last March, lead prosecutor Dan Bahat made a startling admission. "If the ossuary had been the only thing on trial, we probably would not have carried on with the process," he said.

Bahat was not even in court to hear the judge wrap up the trial and retire to consider his verdict.

Scientists and lawyers have spent months arguing over the patina -- a thin crust of material formed by micro-organisms that covers all ancient objects. The prosecution accuse Golan of creating a fake patina, which he applied to new inscriptions on ancient objects. Defense experts say there is patina inside the grooves of the inscriptions that could not have been formed in the past two centuries.

Golan said he had never faked anything.

"I feel that I succeeded to prove that the most important items should be at least 200 years old. They could not be forged because there is ancient, authentic, natural patina which has been developed gradually over at least 200 years in both the James ossuary and the Joash tablet," Golan told AOL News.

"They lost the case, there's no question. On the main issues they were completely wrong. They are not forgeries. It's not only that they could not prove there was a forgery. With the James ossuary and the Joash tablet, I believe that we proved their authenticity with experts in patina, in geology, in stone, in engraving," he said.

At times, the courtroom has seemed more like a doctoral seminar than a legal proceeding. The world's leading experts on archaeology, biblical history, Semitic languages, ancient stones and inscriptions, geology, isotopes (both stable and carbon-14), biology, chemistry, microscopy and glue have participated in an often fascinating and sometimes embarrassing collision of scholarship and criminal law.

The court has heard from grave robbers, dealers in the shady antiquities market, billionaire collectors and tireless investigators who spend freezing nights in the desert waiting to catch tomb raiders. There have been stories of mysterious Egyptian forgers, cash payments of thousands of dollars in parked cars on West Bank back roads, sting operations at airport customs and warehouses crammed full of priceless ancient artifacts.

Judge Farkash said Sunday he would try to plow through all that material and deliver a verdict as soon as possible. It could take several months.

The criminal, scholarly and scientific implications of his verdict are immense. If genuine, the artifacts are of historic importance and worth millions. An acquittal would be a severe setback for the Israel Antiquities Authority and its special investigators, who accused Golan and his co-defendants of making millions of dollars as part of an international chain of forgers planting sophisticated fakes in the world's museums. It would also be an acute embarrassment for the isotope experts at the Israel Geological Survey and professor Yuval Goren of Tel Aviv University, who spent many days on the stand defending scientific tests they said showed the items must be fakes.

A guilty verdict, on the other hand, would destroy the reputation of one of the world's leading collectors of biblical antiquities and drive the entire Israeli market underground. The Israel Antiquities Authority has made no secret of its desire to shut down the trade in Bible-era artifacts, which they believe encourages grave robbers, who spirit the choicest finds out of the country.

Government officials and many scholars say the market is riddled with forgeries, and they are skeptical of any item that does not come from a licensed, supervised excavation where its provenance can be proved. But Golan said he had never seen a forgery that wasn't immediately obvious and pointed out that some of Israel's greatest archaeological treasures came from dealers. Indeed, the most striking example is one of the most important biblical finds ever: the Dead Sea Scrolls, which a Bedouin shepherd sold to an Israeli professor half a century ago.

Palestinians Blink in Settlement Poker Match

AOL News Monday, September 27th, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News
JERUSALEM (Sept. 27) -- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to have emerged victorious -- for now -- after a tense weekend of brinkmanship over West Bank settlement building that wrong-footed the Obama administration, divided the Palestinian leadership and perhaps humiliated both of them.

Netanyahu's refusal to heed President Barack Obama's plea at the United Nations on Friday to extend a 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement building was a snub to the U.S. president and created major complications for the Palestinians.

Ariel Schalit, AP
The expiration of an Israeli moratorium on new construction in West Bank settlements Monday threw fledgling peace talks into turmoil. Here, contractors check a map at a settlement construction site.

Senior Palestinian officials in Ramallah told AOL News today there was now a clear split between the cabinet of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the negotiating team headed by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over whether to continue the peace talks that began in Washington in early September.

As tractors and bulldozers fanned out through the disputed area where the Palestinians hope to build their independent state, Netanyahu called on Abbas "to continue the good and sincere talks that we have just started, in order to reach an historic peace agreement between our two peoples."

"My intentions to achieve peace are serious and genuine," Netanyahu said.

"I say to President Abbas: For the future of both our peoples, let us focus on what is really important. Let us proceed in accelerated, sincere and continuous talks in order to bring about an historic peace framework agreement within one year," he said.

Only last week, Abbas said Israel "must choose between settlements and peace" and described peace talks without a construction freeze as "a waste of time."

But speaking alongside President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in Paris on Monday, Abbas appeared to blink first in the tense diplomatic poker game with Netanyahu.

"We are not rushing to respond, and we will study the consequences and their effect on the negotiations," Abbas said. "After meetings and consultations, we will formulate a stance and provide the Palestinian response to the cessation of the freeze."

Abbas, who had refused even to meet Netanyahu until nine months into the construction moratorium, said he would convene the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Central Committee of its main Fatah faction to formulate a unified Palestinian response before the matter is discussed at a special meeting of the Arab League in Cairo on Oct. 4.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian Authority cabinet, meeting in Ramallah today, issued a hardline statement that berated "Israeli attempts to bypass the terms of reference of the peace process and the Quartet Statement, which clearly states the need for a settlement freeze."

"The cabinet warned of the dangers of unleashing settlers to build new settlement posts and expand settlements in the West Bank including Jerusalem, in light of Israeli government refusal to extend the settlement freeze," the statement added.

A senior Palestinian official told AOL News that the cabinet had been caught off-guard by Abbas' more moderate response in Paris.

"The Cabinet statement was repeating the things that the president was saying until today. The president said what he said in Paris after the Cabinet meeting," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He said the Palestinian leadership was expecting Abbas to suspend the peace talks if the freeze was broken.

He said that chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat was still in the United States, apparently trying to work out an arrangement that would permit some building while allowing the talks to continue.

One formula would be to impose a "quiet freeze" under which Israel would slow building permits to a trickle and allow construction only in the major settlement blocs that are likely to be involved in a land-swap with the Palestinians in any peace deal.

That way, Netanyahu can hold together his right-wing coalition while pursuing the chance of peacemaking with the Palestinians.

Gerald Steinberg, professor of political science at Bar-Ilan University, said it was "far too early to tell" if this game plan could produce results, but it was the only way for Netanyahu to stay at the table.

"Obama forced Netanyahu into a 10-month freeze, which was very difficult from an Israeli political perspective. Netanyahu got nothing in return that he could then use to justify extending the freeze. The peace talks are all about land for peace.

"Israel put land on the table, but the Palestinians didn't put their peace cards on the table," Steinberg told AOL News.

"Now we will hear lots of angry words and rhetoric at the Arab League, and we may have a short period of time for other pieces of the puzzle to be put in place," Steinberg said. "The Israelis will be waiting for the Palestinians to give ground on core issues like refugees. If those are in play, Netanyahu can implement a de facto freeze on the ground, but he needs a Palestinian quid pro quo."

While Netanyahu is under pressure to push ahead with settlement building from many members of his own government, and even his own party, Abbas is under pressure to quit the talks.

"I want to appeal to my brothers in the Palestinian Authority who have said that they do not want to renew talks with the enemy if the settlement of the territories continues," Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told the Syrian parliament.

"Negotiations not held from a position of power are absurd. Netanyahu is not the man who can bring peace to the region."

There are threats also from within the Palestinian leader's own Fatah movement.

The Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the military wing of Fatah largely disbanded after their disastrous adoption of suicide bombings during the intifada uprising, warned that its fighters would teach the Israeli settlers "unforgettable lessons" if building continues.

Palestinian Professors and Students Condemn Efforts to Expand Study Abroad in Israel

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

GLOBAL NEWS TICKER September 27, 2010

Palestinian professors and students in Gaza have condemned plans by eight U.S. universities to offer study-abroad programs in partnership with Israeli colleges. An open letter published on the Web site of the Lebanese Campaign for the Boycott of Zionism, signed by the University Teachers’ Association in Palestine and the Palestinian Students’ Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel, accused the American universities of supporting "Israeli academia's entrenched involvement in ... a long-running subjugation of a people along medieval lines of race and religion." The institutions under scrutiny include Barnard College, Michigan State University, the University of Florida, and the business schools of the University of Maryland and of Washington University in St. Louis.

Israeli Settlement Freeze Ends; Peace Hopes in Doubt

AOL News Sunday September 26th, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

KIRYAT NETAFIM, West Bank (Sept. 26) -- A pregnant Israeli woman gave birth Sunday night soon after she was wounded in a gun attack on two Israeli cars driving through the West Bank. The shooting incident underscored the knife-edge atmosphere as Israel marked the end of a 10-month moratorium on West Bank settlement construction that the Palestinians say must continue if peace talks are to make any progress.

Four Israelis were gunned down in the same area of the southern West Bank on Aug. 31, and there have been several days of rioting in Jerusalem after an Israeli security guard shot dead a Palestinian on Sept. 24.

In settlements across the West Bank and Likud Party gatherings elsewhere, opponents of the freeze gathered to declare a renewal of construction while Israeli, Palestinian and American officials scrambled to piece together a formula that would allow the two-week-old peace talks to go forward.

Jack Guez, AFP/Getty Images

Men work at a construction site in the West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel on Sunday, hours before the end of a freeze on settlement construction.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged settler leaders and right-wingers in his own Likud Party to tamp down their pronouncements on Sunday, but he was largely ignored.

The outspoken statements of hardliners from within his own political movement suggested that he must either abandon peace talks or follow the previous Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and create a new political alignment in Israel if he wants to continue negotiations and enjoy a parliamentary majority.

More than 300,000 Israelis live in West Bank settlements, and another 100,000-plus live in new neighborhoods built in East Jerusalem, both occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War. Palestinians say that both areas are within the territory of their future state and have demanded an end to all Israeli construction while peace talks continue.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told Jewish intellectuals in Paris on Sunday that continuing peace talks without a settlement freeze was "a waste of time." Last week he told the United Nations that "Israel must choose between peace and the continuation of settlements."

But settler leaders said they would not agree to a further moratorium in order to placate Palestinian and American demands.

"For 10 months we've been frozen. The government has restricted the building for Jewish people throughout Judea and Samaria," said Samaria Liason Office director David Ha'Ivri, using the biblical description of the West Bank. "Today the building freeze has come to an end."

"Our building in Judea and Samaria has nothing to do with the peace process. Our building has to do with Zionism, it has to do with the return of the Jewish people to our homeland," Ha'Ivri told AOL News. "This area, Judea and Samaria, is the core, the heartland of the Jewish national homeland. Through great miracles of God's hand we have returned to our homeland and we are building here. We will continue to build here regardless of our aspirations to peace with our neighbors and we call on our neighbors to live with us in peace."

In the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Netafim near Nablus, right-wing leaders gathered to pour the first cement for the cornerstone of a new daycare center they said had been blocked by the freeze. Gershon Mesika, head of the Samaria Regional Council, said 35 babies had been born in the settlement during the past year and would soon be using the new facility. He said the freeze had been "born in sin."

The ceremony was attended by Danny Danon, deputy speaker of the Knesset and chairman of World Likud, the international wing of Netanyahu's own party.

Settler leaders chose Kiryat Netafim for the symbolic restart of construction because it represented the national consensus on settlements that has guided Israeli policy for the past generation. The community, now numbering 620 people, was founded 30 years ago and has grown under governments led by all of Israel's major parties, from right to left.

Zeev Elkin, Likud Party chief whip, issued a veiled warning to Netanyahu as he hosted a political gathering at his home in the settlement of Kfar Eldad.

"This is a symbolic gathering place, in one of the frozen communities. Kfar Eldad has people who have been living in caravans for 20 years and have not been able to build their homes. This reality is about to end tonight, and life in Judea and Samaria will return to normal," Eldad declared.

Thousands more Likud activists attended a gathering at the home of Likud minister Yisrael Katz to listen to their host declare that "Hebron, Shiloh and Beit El" – three settlements that are almost certain to be handed over to the Palestinians in any peace deal -- were "part of this historic homeland that belongs to the Jewish people."

"In every future arrangement, we must preserve the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and the residents that live there," said Katz.

Olmert's Revenge Lifts Israeli Security Veil

AOL News: Tuesday, September 21st

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Sept. 21) -- A raucous feud between two former Israeli prime ministers has apparently exposed a closely guarded state security secret, embarrassed the sitting defense minister and left the country's military censor flailing.

Ehud Olmert, the disgraced former premier currently on trial for corruption and bribery, has been dumping loudly on former premier Ehud Barak, the current defense minister. In an extract from his forthcoming memoirs and in a public speech on Sunday, Ehud O. has accused Ehud B. of being indecisive and hesitant -- not qualities Israelis value in the man who might have to order an attack on Iran's nuclear weapons.

Olmert also accused Barak -- Israel's most highly decorated military commander -- of trying to prevent "daring security operations" when Olmert was prime minister.

AFP / Getty Images

Former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, left, has accused Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, right, of trying to prevent "daring security operations" when Olmert was prime minister.

Barak described the charges as "pathetic remarks not worthy of a response."

The country's largest newspaper put Olmert's comments on its front page alongside large photos of a site in Syria where a nuclear reactor under construction was mysteriously bombed in September 2007. Israel has never officially confirmed its role in the Syrian raid, whose target remained a mystery until the CIA held a press conference -- complete with spy videos -- nearly a year later.

Olmert himself threw a fit soon after the raid when then opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu let it slip in a TV interview that he had been let in on the decision.

"I was privy to the matter from the outset, and I gave my backing. But it's too early to be discussing this," Netanyahu boasted.

Olmert was careful not to utter the word "Syria" himself this weekend, but his spin doctors have been hard at work in the background making sure that reporters understood the hint.

Stories of divisions between Olmert, Barak and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi have been an open secret for some time. Ashkenazi said in a recent interview that he and Barak had disagreed over an operation involving an enemy target. The souring of relations between Barak and Ashkenazi led to a humiliating showdown earlier in the summer when the military chief was abruptly informed he would not be staying on for a customary fourth year in his post.

"Olmert's blabbering has made many journalists very angry, because they have been trying to publish this story or similar stories for months," Shuki Tausig, acting editor of The Seventh Eye, an Israeli media magazine, told AOL News. "Now, in order to take revenge on some political rivals, he is coming out with these so-called secrets."

The episode has also raised questions about the nature of Israel's far-reaching censorship laws, which give the military censor a wide range of powers to prevent the publication of material that could harm state security.

"In this day and age, you simply cannot exert centralized control over information or military secrets, as they are attempting and failing to do. Especially when powerful figures are chafing to expose them," said Richard Silverstein, author of the Tikun Olam blog that regularly exposes Israeli security stories.

Many Israelis welcomed the bombing raid against Syria, a country that backs Hezbollah and Hamas and has close ties with Iran.

"They were trying the beginnings of a nuclear weapons program, that's pretty clear. Any nuclear facility built by Israel's declared enemies -- and by that I don't mean countries in the Persian Gulf -- is cause for concern," said Joshua Teitelbaum, Senior Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Israeli journalists acquiesced to the initial silence over the Syrian raid but believe it was made moot by Netanyahu's boasting and the subsequent CIA briefing.

Olmert's critics suspect that his fighting talk is an attempt at revenge against Barak, who forced Olmert to resign as prime minister over mounting accusations of financial and administrative impropriety. The controversy may also be aimed at pumping up sales for his memoirs. But Israelis are not impressed at the way that closely guarded military secrets can apparently be sacrificed for the sake of a personal vendetta.

Olmert, who served as prime minister from 2006 to 2009, is currently on trial for multiple counts of fraud and bribery and is being investigated for other alleged corrupt practices, including a huge and unsightly real estate development in Jerusalem. His tactics against Barak could see him charged with additional offenses. On Monday, the Ometz citizen's movement for good government called on the attorney general to put Olmert on trial for revealing state secrets.

"It appears that the prospect of selling a lot of books in Israel and selling the rights to an overseas publisher has tempted Olmert once again to open his big mouth -- and for which I'm deeply grateful, I might add," Silverstein said.

Bombs, Blockades and Unemployment Hamper Gaza's Economy

AOL News September 18, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (Sept. 18) -- Abu Jihad didn't seem too concerned about the Israeli spy drones circling overhead as he showed the entrance to his smuggling tunnel that stretches more than half a mile 75 feet below the Gaza-Egypt border. He didn't flinch as the sound in the sky grew into the unmistakable roar of an Israeli F16 fighter-bomber seeking out its target somewhere in the vicinity.

"The Israelis don't bomb civilian tunnels like mine. They bomb the tunnels used to smuggle weapons across from Egypt. I don't do that," he said.

Abu Jihad -- his preferred pseudonym -- said he was more interested in protecting the $300,000 he invested in building the tunnel and the average $20,000 a day he has been earning smuggling consumer goods of all sorts into Gaza. On the best days, he could make as much as $50,000.

But since Israel loosened import restrictions on Gaza in July, his best days may be behind him. And while Gaza's economy has boomed with the freer access to consumer goods, international experts say it remains distorted by the continued blockade, an oversized public sector and rampant unemployment.

Just a half-hour after Abu Jihad ushered visitors through his tunnel on Sept. 15, Israeli jets bombed this Gaza border town, destroying what Israel said was "a Hamas-operated tunnel located on the Rafah border in the southern Gaza Strip" about half a mile away from Abu Jihad's enterprise.

The air strikes came in response to nine mortars and a Grad missile fired into Israel. The Hamas-controlled territory continues to be the launch pad for almost daily attacks against Israel, and the ruling Islamist resistance group refuses to countenance any chances of peace with the Jewish state.

When Israel controlled this area before 2005, many thought the government was exaggerating when it said there were 200 tunnels dug underneath the border. These days, a network of at least 1,200 tunnels has kept the local economy alive during a three-year Israeli blockade. They are all officially registered as "trading projects" with the Rafah Municipality. An operating license costs about $2,500. The fees probably go to the Hamas government, which also collects import duties on the smuggled goods from the merchants who order them.

Abu Jihad says proudly that only about 20 or 30 of the tunnels are as deep and wide as his. He has strong winches at either end, which pull a steel cable attached to a long, boatlike sled made of fiberglass that is filled with goods and pulled from end to end. It is powered by electricity from Egypt that is often interrupted, but a backup generator is on hand for power outages.

When business was at its height, Abu Jihad could charge $2,000 per ton. He once smuggled a cow -- "A small one," he said -- and sent out several desperately ill babies for medical treatment in Cairo hospitals.

He is undeterred by the occasional Israeli air strikes and unaffected by a steel barrier sunk by the Egyptians along the border to a depth of about 50 feet. Colleagues with tunnels nearer the surface either cut through the barrier with a blowtorch or simply dug underneath it and carried on.

But Abu Jihad's business was brought to a sudden halt in July when Israel eased its embargo on consumer goods and began allowing merchants to truck most previously banned items into Gaza through land crossings from Israel. He said he hasn't worked for more than a month. About 6,000 Gazans previously employed in the tunnels are suddenly out of a job. For the first time in three years, the border area around the tunnel openings in Rafah -- many hidden rather obviously beneath flimsy tents -- is almost silent.

The shops are now full of food and clothes. Even luxury electronic goods like washing machines and flat-screen televisions are readily available in sparkling showrooms in Gaza City. According to an International Monetary Fund report produced for a conference next week of international donors to the Palestinian Authority, Gaza's economy has grown by a startling 16 percent this year, compared with just 1 percent in 2009 at the height of the blockade.

But the IMF warns that the situation is far from healthy. The official rate of unemployment has risen from 36 percent to 39 percent in the past year alone.

Employment rates among Gaza's rapidly growing population of 1.5 million are kept artificially high by a bloated public service sector. The largest employer is the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority, which pays more than 60,000 public servants not to work under the Hamas-controlled Gaza regime.

Hamas itself employs about 35,000 people as civil servants and security officials, while the U.N. Relief and Works Agency that services the half-million refugees in the coastal strip employs another 11,000 people, as well as providing food aid and welfare to the 150,000 refugee families who make up a third of the population. The U.N. World Food Program gives aid to another 60,000 families, and the European Union supports another 40,000 hardship cases.

A World Bank report prepared for the donors conference says the situation is not likely to improve as long as Israel supplies consumer goods but not raw materials that could help rebuild a self-sufficient private sector in Gaza's economy and create new jobs.

"Exports from Gaza continue to remain prohibited, which, combined with the restrictions on entry of some raw materials and inputs, precludes the revival of the private sector," the report says.

The World Bank says per-capita gross domestic product in Gaza is $800, compared with $1,600 in the West Bank and $2,200 a decade ago. Economist Omar Shaban, president of PalThink, a Gaza-based strategic studies think tank, says easing the blockade has ended the careers of men like Jihad, but it has not ended Israel's political and economic suppression of Gaza.

"Why do we need to be poor? Why do you look at me as a person who just needs food?" Shaban asked AOL News. "I need books, I need software, I need toys. I can be part of the civilization of the world. This area has a huge potential. Before the new Israeli policy, we used to have five soft drinks. Now we have seven. I'm still in prison, regardless of the food you provide me. I want to be free. It's not about food."

8 U.S. Colleges Join in Promoting Israel for Study Abroad

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION September 8, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

As part of an effort to raise Israel's profile as a study-abroad destination, eight American universities are starting or expanding programs to send students there.

The projects, which start in 2011 and 2012, were spurred by $400,000 in grants from Masa Israel Journey, a New York nonprofit financially supported by the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel.

In the past decade, the Palestinian uprising and two wars have created security concerns that helped lead to a drop in the number of American students choosing to study in Israel.

Israel is 22nd out of the top 25 study-abroad destinations for students from the United States, according to the Institute of International Education, which advised Masa on the programs.

A total of 2,322 American students participated in study abroad in Israel in 2007-8, the most recent year for which data are available, and 2,226 the previous year. By contrast, more than 30,000 went to Britain, the top destination, in 2007-8.

Avi Rubel, director of Masa's North American operations, said that it was too early to know how many students would participate in the new programs, but that he hoped to propel Israel into the top 15 study-abroad destinations in the coming years.

Students wanted to study in Israel, he said, but not all were attracted by the academic programs traditionally offered to them, which have focused on Middle Eastern studies, Hebrew, and religious studies.

"In business, Israel is one of the centers of entrepreneurship in the world. You can have an amazing academic experience and an internship on par with London or anywhere else—it just hasn't been available until now," he said.

"In the research we did with students, they told us that they would go to Israel if those things were available," Mr. Rubel said. "We think students have Israel on their radar screen as a place they would like to go but are actually choosing other destinations because the course work and those experiences haven't been available."

The institutions receiving money from Masa are Arizona State University, Barnard College, Case Western Reserve University, Michigan State University, the New Jersey state-university system, the University of Florida, and the business schools of the University of Maryland and of Washington University in St. Louis.

Some of these efforts are building on existing programs.

Michigan State, for example, has partnerships with four Israeli universities and has sent 101 students to Israel since 2005, 30 of them in the past two months.

"What we hope is that students will choose to study abroad for academic reasons and have an experience that they can't have here on the East Lansing campus," said Cindy Felbeck Chalou, associate director of the university's study-abroad office. "We hope that students will gain from a cross-cultural experience, not only learning about the host country and their people but gaining a perspective of the U.S. that they couldn't gain unless they went abroad and were looking through another set of lenses."

West Bank Settler Says He'd Sacrifice Again for Peace

AOL NEWS September 7, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

TEKOA, West Bank (Sept. 7) -- From his kitchen window in this West Bank settlement south of Bethlehem, Seth Mandell enjoys a spectacular view across the rolling biblical landscape of the Judean desert toward 2,000-year-old Herodion, the stunning hilltop palace and tomb of King Herod.

If the peace talks launched in Washington last week between Israel and the Palestinians deliver on their promise to conclude a peace deal within a year, it's a view Mandell might have to give up sooner than he planned. His hilltop community of some 15,000 is about five miles from the pre-1967 "Green Line" border between Israel and the West Bank. It is also four miles beyond the 400-mile-long security barrier, which was erected by Israel to stop suicide bombers and will likely become the basis of a future border with the emerging Palestinian state.

"Tekoa is on the wrong side of the security fence," Mandell, a resident of this eclectic community since 1999, tells AOL News. "If you told me that the destruction of the village of Tekoa would mean that tomorrow we would have peace in the Middle East, we would all leave -- all but a small minority. We are willing to sacrifice for peace. The whole country is willing to sacrifice for peace, except for a minority of ideologues."

Mandell does not say that lightly, for his sacrifices have already gone deeper than most. In May 2001, Mandell's son Koby, then 13, was brutally beaten to death in a cave near his home along with Yosef Ishran, 14. It was during the height of the Palestinian intifada, with terrorist killings and Israeli reprisals almost every day. The two friends had skipped school to go hiking in the picturesque valley that leads from this hilltop down to the Dead Sea, but political circumstances transformed a schoolboy prank into a deadly tragedy.

"For myself and for my kids, this is really our home," says Mandell. "This is where Koby grew up. I still have relationships built on what happened to Koby. Even though Tekoa has grown considerably in the last couple of years, I walk into the grocery store and I still know most of the people there. On an emotional level, we are woven into the fabric of this village, of the people here. More than the material loss, which I think we'll be compensated for, it would be a ripping apart of a whole lifestyle. It's more than a bunch of houses, more than a bunch of families, it's almost a unique organism that is unable to be duplicated."

"That'll be the real sense of loss. There is no place like Tekoa. It's a place where you can be yourself, be as intensely religious as you want, and yet be as laid-back and tolerant as you like. That's a big loss for my kids, a big loss for my wife and I. Not as big a loss, however, as losing my son," he reflects.

Mandell, a former Hillel campus rabbi from College Park, Md., and his wife Sherri, a writer and poet, stayed on in Tekoa after the murders. They decided to channel their grief into helping others and created the Koby Mandell Foundation, which every year provides support for more than 800 women and children bereaved through the sudden death of a loved one in a terror attack.

After more than two years without major terror attacks, Camp Koby, the flagship summer event of the foundation, this year opened its doors to children bereaved in other circumstances of sudden death, such as traffic accidents and heart attacks. The experiment was a huge success, says Mandell, with the newcomers easily mixing with the terror family victims, many of whom have been coming to Camp Koby for five years.

"I thought the era of terror attacks was in abeyance, I thought there was a lull. God willing, we're still in the lull," he says.

But now Mandell is preparing to contact the seven children orphaned in last week's attack by Hamas gunmen on a car driving through the West Bank, which killed four residents of the Bet Haggai settlement, including a pregnant woman and a kindergarten teacher for children with special needs.

The attack reinforced Mandell's belief that the willingness of most Israelis to compromise for the sake of peace is not reflected on the Palestinian side.

"Every time there's been a threat of peace, then war breaks out. Every time there's a concession made by the Israelis it has ended up with an intifada or attacks," he says. "I see no evidence that making concessions in terms of land has any peaceful effect. If it did, things would be different."

"I'm completely pessimistic. I don't think the framework necessary for a peaceful resolution exists. There's not enough agreement on the essential issues," he says.

On Sunday, Mandell's pessimism was echoed by Avigdor Lieberman, Israel's foreign minister, who declined to attend the ceremonial opening of the peace talks in Washington. Lieberman bluntly told supporters of his Yisrael Beiteinu ("Israel Our Home") Party that the leaders in Washington were "peddling illusions."

"It must be understood that signing a comprehensive agreement in which both sides agree to end the conflict and end all of their claims and recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people is a goal that is not achievable in the next year or in the next generation, so any historic compromises or painful concessions won't help," said Lieberman.

Lieberman himself lives on the next hill north from Tekoa, in the West Bank settlement of Nokedim. The foreign minister, an avowedly secular immigrant from the former Soviet Union, comes from a political culture light years away from Mandell's liberal American upbringing. But the two share a bleak assessment of the current peace process, where settlements loom as only one of a host of intractable differences.

Abbas Flies Home to Violent Opposition

AOL News, September 3rd, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

RAMALLAH, West Bank (Sept. 3) -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas flew back from Washington after his first direct peace talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to an uncertain welcome and an unpredictable political future.

Abbas, already governing on borrowed time since his constitutional term of office expired in January 2009, now appears to be ruling alone as well. Hamas, its rejectionist allies and their Iranian patrons denounced the Washington talks from the start. And once they were under way, Abbas was deserted by key members of his own Fatah group, including imprisoned leader Marwan Barghouti and Gaza strongman Mohammed Dahlan.

Saul Loeb, AFP / Getty Images
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has been deserted by key members of Fatah and faces a power struggle at home.

On the ground back home, there is a power struggle going on between independent moderates like Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, who believes the unborn Palestinian state can be induced through institution building and economic growth, and extremists like Hamas, who favor a Cesarean section through violence.

Tuesday night's attack by Hamas gunmen that killed four Israeli settler civilians, and a similar attack on Wednesday that nearly claimed the lives of a settler rabbi and his wife, could put into question years of confidence-building security measures. The core of that effort, now in question, was to replace Israeli occupation forces with American- and European-trained Palestinian security forces organized by U.S. Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton.

Responding to months of quiet, Israel had dialed back its forces in the West Bank and removed dozens of military checkpoints. The easing contributed to a spike in economic growth in the West Bank and a tangible improvement in the quality of life of its Palestinian residents. The Hamas attacks were designed to warn Abbas -- and Israel -- that the Palestinian president's rule in the West Bank is as fragile as it was in Gaza, where Hamas overthrew Fatah in 2007 in a violent coup in which more than 400 Fatah supporters were put to death and many more brutally maimed.

"We will liberate the West Bank the same way we liberated the Gaza Strip, through resistance attacks," said Abu Obeideh, spokesman for Ezzadeen Al-Qassem, the armed wing of Hamas.

To forestall any such effort, Palestinian security forces unleashed a massive crackdown on Tuesday night, arresting at least 300 Hamas sympathizers and summoning hundreds more for questioning.

"We will arrest anyone who tries to harm the national interests of our people and to undermine the Palestinian security forces," said Gen. Adnan Damiri, a Palestinian security spokesman.

By Thursday, Palestinian security chiefs said they had found the car involved in Tuesday's killings, arrested two suspects and identified a third.

But Abbas' security forces are caught between a hammer and anvil. By solving Tuesday's killings and bringing the perpetrators to justice, they will play directly into the hands of Hamas, who accuse them of being Israel's proxy militia.

"They have become agents of Israeli security," says Mahmoud Ramahi, a Hamas lawmaker released in 2009 after more than two years in Israeli detention.

Meanwhile, Abbas' own supporters were already distancing themselves from the widely expected failure of the talks launched in Washington this week.

Barghouti and Dahlan, until now fiercely loyal members of the Fatah Central Committee and both potential future leaders, each criticized Abbas' decision to begin peace talks.

Dahlan told the Arabic daily Asharq Al-Awsat the talks were a replay of previous rounds of "negotiations without results" and chided the Americans -- once his paymasters -- for becoming Netanyahu's spin doctors. Barghouti, in written responses from his Israeli jail cell to questions from Reuters, agreed that the talks "are destined to fail" and said they were "without a popular foundation."

That assessment seemed borne out by popular responses to the talks from Palestinians back home. In Manara Square, the central Ramallah venue for political rallies of all kinds, three silent, black-clad figures stood this week holding placards that declared, "Yes to negotiations with Israel." Passers-by said they were employees of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service. Larger meetings opposing the talks were broken up by anonymous young men.

In Israeli-controlled East Jerusalem, evening Ramadan prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque turned into a political rally on Wednesday, with hundreds of worshippers chanting anti-Abbas slogans and condemning the mass arrests in the West Bank.

"It would have been better if the Palestinian Authority had focused on national reconciliation with Hamas before agreeing to these talks," Hatem Abdel-Kader, a prominent Fatah leader in Jerusalem, told AOL News.

"These talks have deepened divisions and increased tensions among the Palestinians, especially because of the feeling that the Palestinian leadership went to Washington against its will," he said.

Abbas' journey home coincided with the last Friday of Ramadan, marked as "Jerusalem Day" in Iran, where hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to demand the liberation of Jerusalem, the annihilation of Israel and punishment for the United States.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who backs Hamas and other extreme groups with both cash and weapons, accused Abbas and his negotiating team of being accomplices to Israeli atrocities against Palestinians.

"We ask, Who will conduct the talks? Who do they represent? Who gave him the legitimacy to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians? Who has the right to cede part of Palestine to enemies? The region's nations will not allow anyone to give up even one centimeter of Palestine," said Ahmadinejad.

"These talks are doomed to fail," he said, adding, "But more important is that the Zionist regime itself is doomed to collapse anyway."