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."
Tuesday, 22 February 2005
Monday, 21 February 2005
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."
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."
Monday, 14 February 2005
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.'
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.'
Saturday, 12 February 2005
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.
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.
Friday, 11 February 2005
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.
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.
Wednesday, 9 February 2005
Fresh start in Sharm el-Sheikh
ABBAS, SHARON VOW END TO VIOLENCE
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Wednesday, February 9th 2005BY 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.
Monday, 10 January 2005
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."
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."
Monday, 8 November 2004
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.
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.
Wednesday, 1 September 2004
Suicide attacks return
BUS BOMBS ROCK ISRAEL
16 killed, 80 hurt in 2 attacks
BY MATTHEW KALMAN IN RAMALLAH, WEST BANK AND BILL HUTCHINSON IN NEW YORK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2004
PALESTINIAN terrorists killed 16 commuters in Israel yesterday in twin suicide bus bombings that could have spilled more blood had it not been for a heroic bus driver. The first bomb detonated at 3 p.m. on a No. 6 bus in the bustling southern town of Beersheba - near the West Bank city of Hebron, where the bombers are believed to have come from. As the bus exploded in flames, passengers, including a 3-year-old boy, died in their seats.
Bus driver Yaakov Cohen - traveling right behind - got a sickening feeling he was next. "I saw the first explosion and thought, 'My God, I've got to get out of here.' " He swerved around the burning bus and jolted to a stop. "I opened the doors and most of my passengers got off the bus," Cohen said. "Then I felt the explosion. I don't know why I thought to open the doors, but at least some of the people were able to escape."
As for the others, he said, "I couldn't cope with the sight. "It was terrible, terrible. . . . I don't want to describe what I saw," said Cohen, who was among 80 people injured in the attacks.
The Hamas terror group claimed responsibility for the blasts. None of the passengers who boarded Cohen's bus had looked suspicious, he said. "Believe me, I look and check. It is very hard to identify a bomber. . . . I don't know how anyone can," he said.
The suicide bombings - which ended nearly six months without such an attack in Israel and were the deadliest in nearly a year - also killed the two men, who wore explosive belts under their clothes. Earlier yesterday, Israeli soldiers at a Gaza border checkpoint nabbed a would-be suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt hidden in his underwear.
Hamas said in a statement the bus bombings were retaliation for the assassinations this year of two leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The last suicide bombing in Israel killed 11 people March 14 in the port city of Ashdod. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the latest violence would not derail plans to pull out of the Gaza Strip or part of the West Bank, nor would it stop the controversial security fence being built around its borders. "Israel will keep fighting terror with all its might," Sharon said.
BY MATTHEW KALMAN IN RAMALLAH, WEST BANK AND BILL HUTCHINSON IN NEW YORK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2004
PALESTINIAN terrorists killed 16 commuters in Israel yesterday in twin suicide bus bombings that could have spilled more blood had it not been for a heroic bus driver. The first bomb detonated at 3 p.m. on a No. 6 bus in the bustling southern town of Beersheba - near the West Bank city of Hebron, where the bombers are believed to have come from. As the bus exploded in flames, passengers, including a 3-year-old boy, died in their seats.
Bus driver Yaakov Cohen - traveling right behind - got a sickening feeling he was next. "I saw the first explosion and thought, 'My God, I've got to get out of here.' " He swerved around the burning bus and jolted to a stop. "I opened the doors and most of my passengers got off the bus," Cohen said. "Then I felt the explosion. I don't know why I thought to open the doors, but at least some of the people were able to escape."
As for the others, he said, "I couldn't cope with the sight. "It was terrible, terrible. . . . I don't want to describe what I saw," said Cohen, who was among 80 people injured in the attacks.
The Hamas terror group claimed responsibility for the blasts. None of the passengers who boarded Cohen's bus had looked suspicious, he said. "Believe me, I look and check. It is very hard to identify a bomber. . . . I don't know how anyone can," he said.
The suicide bombings - which ended nearly six months without such an attack in Israel and were the deadliest in nearly a year - also killed the two men, who wore explosive belts under their clothes. Earlier yesterday, Israeli soldiers at a Gaza border checkpoint nabbed a would-be suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt hidden in his underwear.
Hamas said in a statement the bus bombings were retaliation for the assassinations this year of two leaders, Sheik Ahmed Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi. The last suicide bombing in Israel killed 11 people March 14 in the port city of Ashdod. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said the latest violence would not derail plans to pull out of the Gaza Strip or part of the West Bank, nor would it stop the controversial security fence being built around its borders. "Israel will keep fighting terror with all its might," Sharon said.
Monday, 23 August 2004
New Jersey governor scandal
GOLAN OFF FOR VISIT - WITH FEMALE PAL
BY MATTHEW KALMAN IN RISHON LEZION, ISRAEL AND DAVE GOLDINER IN NEW YORK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2004
GOLAN CIPEL TOOK OFF yesterday for a vacation with a female friend to escape the New Jersey gay sex scandal. Cipel, 35, gave the slip to reporters tracking the downfall of Gov. Jim McGreevey and headed to the friend's house for a little platonic R&R.
BY MATTHEW KALMAN IN RISHON LEZION, ISRAEL AND DAVE GOLDINER IN NEW YORK
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2004
GOLAN CIPEL TOOK OFF yesterday for a vacation with a female friend to escape the New Jersey gay sex scandal. Cipel, 35, gave the slip to reporters tracking the downfall of Gov. Jim McGreevey and headed to the friend's house for a little platonic R&R.
"Golan isn't here. He has a woman friend, a buddy. He went over there and he's at her place," his father, retired cabbie Avraham Cipel, told the Daily News. "He's feeling great. He's getting himself organized. Everything's okay.
"The dad and Cipel's childhood friend Guy Horesh-Gunin identified the woman by her first name, Anat. The two met when Cipel was working as a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York, they said. "Anat and Golan know each other from his first work in the U.S.," said Horesh-Gunin. "They've known each other for six, seven years but there's no romantic involvement."
The getaway comes as a welcome break for Golan Cipel, a former McGreevey aide who fled to his homeland after the governor admitted he was gay and announced his resignation. McGreevey told the world he had a "consensual" relationship with a man who tried to blackmail him into keeping quiet. But Cipel insists he is straight and was sexually harassed by the governor. The Israeli man is considering a lawsuit and plans to return next month to the U.S. Horesh-Gunin said Cipel's mood was "very, very good."
He said Cipel was confident the governor's blackmail claims would be proved false. "So far, the governor's accusations against him are turning out to be untrue," said Horesh-Gunin. He said Cipel had not been contacted by the FBI but would welcome an investigation by the bureau. "Golan would be very happy about an FBI investigation," he said. "It will help him clear his name."
Meanwhile, powerful U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine said he would not pressure the governor to quit before the Nov. 15 date he set. Corzine conceded there is a "crisis of confidence" in the Garden State and said he would consider a future run for governor. "If there is an ability to try to bring some orderliness to it, some independence, a commitment to good government, and people think that I'm the one to best do that, then I'm prepared to do that," Corzine said.
Corzine, who also heads the national Democratic senate campaign committee, told McGreevey he could run in a special election that would be called if the governor stepped down before Sept. 3. But he said it would not be right to force McGreevey's hand.
"The dad and Cipel's childhood friend Guy Horesh-Gunin identified the woman by her first name, Anat. The two met when Cipel was working as a spokesman for the Israeli Consulate in New York, they said. "Anat and Golan know each other from his first work in the U.S.," said Horesh-Gunin. "They've known each other for six, seven years but there's no romantic involvement."
The getaway comes as a welcome break for Golan Cipel, a former McGreevey aide who fled to his homeland after the governor admitted he was gay and announced his resignation. McGreevey told the world he had a "consensual" relationship with a man who tried to blackmail him into keeping quiet. But Cipel insists he is straight and was sexually harassed by the governor. The Israeli man is considering a lawsuit and plans to return next month to the U.S. Horesh-Gunin said Cipel's mood was "very, very good."
He said Cipel was confident the governor's blackmail claims would be proved false. "So far, the governor's accusations against him are turning out to be untrue," said Horesh-Gunin. He said Cipel had not been contacted by the FBI but would welcome an investigation by the bureau. "Golan would be very happy about an FBI investigation," he said. "It will help him clear his name."
Meanwhile, powerful U.S. Sen. Jon Corzine said he would not pressure the governor to quit before the Nov. 15 date he set. Corzine conceded there is a "crisis of confidence" in the Garden State and said he would consider a future run for governor. "If there is an ability to try to bring some orderliness to it, some independence, a commitment to good government, and people think that I'm the one to best do that, then I'm prepared to do that," Corzine said.
Corzine, who also heads the national Democratic senate campaign committee, told McGreevey he could run in a special election that would be called if the governor stepped down before Sept. 3. But he said it would not be right to force McGreevey's hand.
Thursday, 19 August 2004
I WAS CIPEL'S LOVER... ... and he's still in love with the gov, says prof
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, August 19th 2004
BY RALPH R. ORTEGA, ALISON GENDAR and NANCY DILLON DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS With Ellen Tumposky, Matthew Kalman and Ellen Locker
THE MYSTERY MAN who claims to be Golan Cipel's ex-lover said yesterday that not only is the handsome Israeli gay - he's also still in love with Gov. Jim McGreevey.
"Golan says he's not gay? He could have fooled me," Dr. David Miller of Livingston, N.J., told the Daily News yesterday, as he claimed that he had a gay affair with the ex-McGreevey aide.
"We love each other. Is that a crime? We're lovers," said Miller, 51, an openly gay man and divorced father of two.
In a manic, disjointed interview, Miller said that Cipel had made a pillow-talk confession: He still carries a torch for McGreevey.
"Cipel never complained about the governor. They were in love," Miller said outside his home.
Miller also claimed to reporters that he is a CIA operative who takes pills doled out by the intelligence agency to make his skin darker so he can infiltrate unnamed groups.
He offered no mementos, letters or photos as proof of his relationship with Cipel.
He called Cipel a "gold digger" and said he believes the Israeli national was egged on by McGreevey's enemies to claim the governor sexually assaulted him.
The Daily News reported yesterday that an unidentified college professor had reported his affair to the governor's aides.
If true, Miller could wreck Cipel's claims of being a straight man victimized by McGreevey's predatory advances.
Miller - who insisted on speaking Spanish because, he said, he hates the United States - told reporters he met Cipel in Israel through family friends and that he still had a soft spot for him.
"Despite his problems, I'm going to go visit him," said Miller, shirtless and wearing purple shorts.
Cipel, who fled the spotlight for his family's home outside Tel Aviv, denied these latest stories about his sex life. "I never had any relationship with any man, so I don't know what they want from me," Cipel told a close friend yesterday who spoke to The News.
Cipel called Miller's tale "ridiculous and laughable," and said it was now open season on him - "anyone can get up now and claim he had an affair."
A statement from Cipel's media consultant characterized the story as "a blatant lie and manipulation," and part of the governor's ongoing smear campaign.
Miller, a doctor and adjunct professor at Montclair State University, said he had already given a deposition in the federal probe into McGreevey's charges that Cipel tried to blackmail him by claiming sexual harassment.
He said Cipel fled the country "because he was scared when he learned there was a federal investigation into extortion."
Sources told The News that the governor's office took Miller's allegation seriously and was having private investigators check it out.
Yesterday, McGreevey's spokesman Micah Rasmussen denied that. "We couldn't care less if Cipel has ex-boyfriends," Rasmussen said.
Sources said Miller had wanted to get his tale to the governor, and so three days ago contacted New Jersey lawyer Philip Vinick.
"It was a strange call. . . . I know nothing about him, or the truth of what he said," Vinick said.
Miller's own story is reminiscent of McGreevey's coming-out tale. The doctor said he was a happily married man with two children, when, at age 38, he acknowledged he was gay.
"One hundred thousand dollars worth of therapy later and I still don't understand," Miller said.
Saturday, 12 June 2004
The legacy of Reb Shlomo's daughter
JERUSALEM — Special to The Globe and Mail
Published
Centuries ago, the rabbis banned Jewish women from singing in public, fearing the effect their voices might have on men. Hearing Neshama Carlebach at an open-air concert in Jerusalem last week, you could understand their concern.
Like most of the women in her predominantly Orthodox Jewish audience, Carlebach is dressed demurely enough in an ankle-length skirt and high-necked, long-sleeved blouse. But her extraordinary voice, traversing a range from soaring folk melodies to throaty jazz-blues, is exactly the kind of immodest instrument the rabbis had in mind.
Her concerts have the flavour of a spiritualist revival somewhere between Woodstock and the Western Wall. The audiences on her latest tour of Israel are predominantly religious twentysomethings, many of them dressed in flowing, hippie-style robes. The audience breaks into spontaneous freestyle dance, their flailing hands reminiscent of 1960s folk festivals, but the severe head scarves of the young married women and separation between men and women seem more suited to an Orthodox synagogue service.
When the encores finally end, you realize this is no mere musical recital.
There is no backstage. Carlebach waits beside the instruments as a long, patient line forms and the audience approaches her one by one. Some ask for autographs. Some just want a hug.
Carlebach acknowledges the influence of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday, but for Jewish audiences around the world, the 29-year-old is more than just a singer -- she's the reincarnation of a legend.
Her father, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, was a towering figure in modern Jewish life, a yeshiva-trained Hasidic rabbi and 1960s hippie who became a wandering minstrel and the leading Jewish songwriter of the century. Most modern Jewish music, from synagogue liturgy to youth-group dance tunes, was composed or inspired by "Reb Shlomo." An unconventional figure, in the Summer of Love in 1967, he founded the House of Love and Prayer in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, a commune that fused Jewish tradition with folk rock and Hasidic teachings, creating a new form of Jewish worship.
"Shlomo Carlebach was God's gift to the Jewish people after the Holocaust -- he created a model for post-Holocaust Jewish spirituality," says Yossi Klein Halevy, a Jewish social commentator and fellow of the Shalem Centre in Jerusalem.
"He was the most important creator of Jewish religious music of the 20th century. Jews will be singing their prayers to Shlomo melodies for centuries to come," says Klein Halevy.
Many of his tunes have become standards, from the anthemic Am YisraelChai (The People of Israel Live) to the haunting melody for the biblical verse Veshomru (They Shall Observe), which welcomes the Sabbath on a Friday evening.
Some of Neshama's earliest memories are of accompanying her father to perform in strange places.
"I was with my father when he would sing in prisons and, by the time he was finished, the prisoners were dancing with the guards -- you didn't even know who was who," she says.
Neshama, his eldest daughter, grew up in Toronto and studied drama at Ryerson University before taking a degree in humanities from York University. She aspired to be a Broadway actress until her father's death in 1994 at age 69 thrust her into the limelight.
Two weeks before he died, they finished recording an album together. There were a string of concert dates left to fill. Even as the family sat in mourning, she was asked whether she would take his place, and she agreed.
"I was catapulted without even realizing what was happening with my life into this new business, into this new life," she says.
"I'm so grateful. Not only did it give me an opportunity to really mourn my father in a beautiful, expressive and incredible way, but it really gave me an opportunity to find out what my true mission was in this world -- and this was it.
"My mission is very similar to his -- to bring peace and love. I'm very innocently, naively optimistic. Music speaks to the soul like nothing else.
"When you're capable of singing and coming together in song, the world can change."
"There are all these barriers we put up around ourselves, and somehow when you have a song, the song just breaks down all the walls," she says.
Her music is interspersed with stories about her father, related in language peppered with modern Yiddishisms. He existed, she says, on a diet of "pep pills and coffee," constantly in demand by acolytes and hangers-on and rarely at home. The constant touring, the peace and love he preached to his audiences and his "openness with women" as Neshama describes it, got him into trouble with the Orthodox and destroyed his marriage. Her parents separated when she was 5, although she says they remained in love. She says they were planning to reunite when he died.
Neshama is passionate about the need to give women a voice in modern Jewish life, which is why she ignores the rabbinical prohibition on singing in public.
"The world is changing and women need to have a place. When they can sing, when they have a voice, they feel like they have a place," she says.
Still, many Orthodox women prefer her to perform without men around and half of her concerts are women-only.
"I do them mostly because a lot of women just feel more comfortable that way," she says. "There's always a moment or two when there's this incredible singing, all the women together. You have this incredible harmony and even silence.
"There's always fidgeting when there's men around," she says. "Women have such a spiritual depth and talent within the music, and connection that you just don't have with men. I do love men, but there's always a different quality that happens when it's only women."
She married last August and now lives in New York, but a decade after her father's death, she is constantly touring and about to release a sixth CD with her keyboard player and musical director David Morgan. Tomorrow, she plays her first public performance in Vancouver, at the Vancouver Rowing Club.
Some people criticize Neshama for coasting on her father's coattails when she clearly has the talent to do much more. She says she has been recording a mainstream album with Morgan, 35, who studied jazz in New Orleans with Ellis Marsalis.
Morgan says they are composing more of their own material and he has encouraged Carlebach to broaden her repertoire, but Shlomo continues to cast a long shadow.
"There's two audiences out there," says Morgan. "There are people who miss Shlomo so much they just want him back and they feel like Neshama should be carrying on his legacy and just doing his music. Then there's people who feel like we should be doing more of our own things. For us, it's somewhere in the middle. We would always do his music, but in our own way. If Jakob Dylan only did his dad's music all the time, people would think he's pathetic."
Neshama Carlebach performs for the Or Shalom Community at 7 p.m. tomorrow at the Vancouver Rowing Club in Stanley Park (604-872-1614); and in Hamilton on June 21, a show for women only at the Adas Israel Congregation (905-528-0039).
Saturday, 5 June 2004
Minister takes cover from firing
JERUSALEM — Special to The Globe and Mail
Published
Jerusalem was transformed into the setting for a real-life political "Where's Waldo?" yesterday as two right-wing cabinet ministers took evasive action in an effort to sabotage Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plans to dismiss them.
Mr. Sharon sent letters of dismissal to Avigdor Lieberman and Benny Elon of the right-wing National Union Party in an effort make sure his proposal to withdraw from the Gaza Strip would pass a cabinet vote planned for tomorrow. Both ministers are fiercely opposed to the plan.
Mr. Elon went into hiding to evade the letter of dismissal, which only takes effect 48 hours after it is delivered to him personally, and so complicates the cabinet vote.
"By the end of 2005 there will be no Jew in Gaza," Mr. Sharon told supporters this week. "I plan to uphold my commitments and pass the decision Sunday."
The dismissal of the two ministers would leave a cabinet majority in favour of Mr. Sharon's pullout plan, but puts his coalition government at risk of collapse.
He invited the two National Union ministers to his office at 9 a.m. yesterday to receive the dismissal letters, but they refused to attend. Cabinet Secretary Yisrael Maimon dispatched envoys to their homes, but they weren't there.
Messengers caught up with Mr. Lieberman as he exercised in a gym, but Mr. Elon, who lives in the West Bank settlement of Bet El near Ramallah, was in hiding last night.
Speaking to Israel Radio yesterday by telephone, Mr. Elon vowed to avoid being served with the letter and threatened to attend tomorrow's cabinet meeting and vote against the plan.
He described Mr. Sharon's moves as undemocratic and a step "that disgraces the government and efforts at maintaining a legitimate law-abiding government." He added that Mr. Sharon had informed him by phone that he was fired, but that wasn't good enough.
Mr. Sharon's decision to get tough with opponents within the cabinet of his coalition government followed a week of fruitless talks with his main Likud rival, Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and other Likud hard-liners aimed at finding a compromise formula for the Gaza withdrawal plan.
Mr. Sharon wants to remove all 7,500 Israeli settlers and the hundreds of soldiers guarding them from the Gaza Strip by the end of next year and says he will push ahead although members of his own party voted against the plan last month.
"He feels confident enough to push this thing to the breaking point," said Mark Heller of the Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. "It's an indication of Sharon's determination to push through and let the chips fall where they may."
The Prime Minister has taken a major risk in firing the two ministers. Their departure from the cabinet leaves him with only 61 seats in the 120-seat Knesset. Either the firings or a cabinet vote in favour of the pullout plan could lead to the departure of the National Religious Party, which has six seats, causing the collapse of Mr. Sharon's coalition government.
But his determination to withdraw from Gaza could win the support of Shimon Peres's Labour opposition, which might even join a national unity government to get the job done.
A Gaza pullout would be hugely popular with the wider Israeli public. A poll published yesterday by Haaretz newspaper showed 60 per cent in favour and only 34 per cent opposed.
There is also talk of Mr. Sharon calling a general election and joining Mr. Peres in a new, broad-based centre party that could dominate Israeli politics and rescue the country from years of instability caused by dependence on tiny fringe parties.
After initial skepticism, Palestinian and Arab leaders are also warming to the pullout idea. Last week, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak signalled for the first time that Egypt would be willing to guarantee security in the Gaza Strip after an Israeli withdrawal. Until now, Mr. Mubarak has been careful not to get directly involved in the murky and dangerous world of Gaza's warring militias.
Palestinian security chief Mohammed Dahlan said he would be pleased to take control of any area vacated by Israel. After initial doubts, Palestinian prime minister Ahmed Qureia has adopted the same policy.
Friday, 4 June 2004
Bodyguards assigned to Jerusalem mayor after he allows gay pride parade
JERUSALEM — Special to the Globe and Mail
Published
Israel's secret service assigned two bodyguards to Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski yesterday after ultrareligious groups threatened him for permitting the city's Gay Pride march to go ahead.
At the same time, event organizers accused Mr. Lupolianski, the city's first ultra-Orthodox Jewish mayor, of undermining the event by not giving it the level of municipal support it has enjoyed in the past.
About 3,000 homosexual, lesbian and bisexual Israelis, some in army uniform and others in full drag, marched through the city centre to a lively party in a park, under a banner proclaiming "Love Without Borders."
"This is exactly the message this city needs: that we can have a pluralistic society in which all people can co-exist," said Noa Sattath, head of Open House, the city's gay and lesbian centre, which organized the third annual event.
A small group of protesters heckled the parade-goers, while some ultraorthodox Jewish leaders condemned the event as "ugly" and unsuitable for the holy city.
Dozens of armed police escorted the marchers, who carried rainbow banners and large clusters of balloons. Many participants wore large rabbit ears, a response to remarks by David Basri, a well-known Kabbalistic rabbi, who has derided gays as "subhuman" and said they would be reincarnated as rabbits.
One Israeli soldier in full uniform, who gave her name as Reuma, said she was not gay but wanted to add her support to the marchers.
"Kudos to them," she said. "I'm very proud to support them and very pleased they want to express their identity in this way."
Sharon Omer, a 27-year-old software programmer from Tel Aviv, said it is difficult to be gay in Jerusalem because of the city's "heavy religious presence."
"In Tel Aviv people pay no notice if gay people walk hand in hand or kiss in public, but Jerusalem is such a conservative city," said Ms. Omer.
Still, Jerusalem is planning to host the World Pride international gathering next summer.
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