Israeli barrier draws artists to a cause

The concrete portion of Israel’s West Bank security barrier has become an inviting canvas for artists from around the world who sympathize with the Palestinians. Above, a mural by a foreign artist near the Bethlehem checkpoint. (David Blumenfeld for the Boston Globe)

Many Palestinians object to paintings as disguising reality

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent | April 27, 2006

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- For Israelis, the 451-mile security barrier snaking through the West Bank has been highly effective in keeping out would-be suicide bombers. For Palestinians, it's an ugly symbol of Israeli control over every aspect of their lives.

For European artists who sympathize with the Palestinian cause, the concrete urban portion of the barrier has become the world's most inviting canvas. Some Palestinians say they appreciate that artistic support. But many Palestinian artists have expressed outrage, saying the art disguises the reality of the wall.

Most of the barrier is being built through the wilderness close to the Green Line, the old West Bank border between Israel and Jordan before the 1967 Six-Day War. On those isolated hills, the barrier is a see-through fence equipped with electronic sensors, topped with barbed wire and flanked by an anti-tank ditch.

The five percent of the barrier that passes between houses in urban areas is a much narrower and starker 30-foot-high, gray cement wall. It has been daubed with slogans, posters, and even advertisements by local shopkeepers. But it is the eye-catching paintings adorning these sections of the barrier that have ignited a sharp debate.

Tayseer Barakat, curator of the Ziryab Gallery in Ramallah and founder of the League of Palestinian Artists, organized ''3 Cities Against the Wall" -- an international exhibition involving artists in New York, Ramallah, and Tel Aviv, as a protest against the barrier. Barakat said he was fiercely opposed to anyone attempting to hide the ugliness of the concrete slabs. ''The wall should be torn down, not made to be beautiful," he said.

On the northern edge of Bethlehem, on the road that used to lead to Jerusalem, the wall looms darkly over the Al-Aida refugee camp, and is covered in graffiti. Rounding one corner, two huge empty armchairs suddenly appear on the wall, with a pastoral scene of snow-covered mountains on the wall between them.

''When I see these two chairs, I understand there is no one sitting there to talk about our situation, on both sides. There is a very beautiful place through the window, but we can't see it because of the wall," said Mohammed Fathi, a local souvenir salesman. ''We don't have many visitors these days, but they all come here to see the wall. It's become like a place of pilgrimage."

The painting is the work of Banksy, the pen-name for the anonymous, radical British graffiti artist, who came to the area in August to paint nine thought-provoking illustrations on the wall. One shows a ladder providing an escape route; others appear to depict dreamlike scenery of tropical islands and rolling European countryside beyond the wall. Another shows a silhouette of a girl holding a bunch of balloons, apparently rising gently to freedom.

Returning to Britain, Banksy recorded on his website a conversation with an elderly Palestinian who told the artist his painting made the wall beautiful. But when Banksy thanked him, the old man chided him: ''We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home."

Catherine Yass, a British artist who was a finalist for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2002, came to the Sakakini Arts Center in Ramallah earlier this year for the opening of her film ''Wall" -- a video installation tracking the Israeli barrier between Jerusalem and Abu Dis in silence.

''When I first saw the wall I had a very immediate reaction, and I felt like I was both blinded and made dumb," said Yass. ''It does not tell you the history or the context, it tells you more about the visceral effect, a gut reaction."

Yass said the wall had not contributed to Israeli security but instead symbolized a form of oppression for which, as a Jewish artist, she felt partly responsible.

''The wall almost looks like a modernist sculpture from the 1970s," she said. ''It's very disturbing that something as oppressive as the wall can have the aesthetics of modernism."

The Israeli side of the wall features little artwork but a lot of graffiti from opponents of the barrier. In March 2004 an Israeli fashion house, Comme il Faut, launched its summer catalogue with a fashion parade in the shadow of the concrete slabs that owner Sybil Goldfinger said was designed to ''raise awareness." Many Palestinians were appalled.

The Israelis say the barrier helped reduce the number of deaths from Palestinian suicide attacks inside Israel from 144 in 2003 to none this year, until a suicide bomber blew himself up in Tel Aviv on April 17, killing nine and injuring more than 60. Palestinians fear that the barrier, which at points cuts deep into West Bank land that Palestinians consider theirs, will be a unilaterally imposed border for any future independent state.

Fatin Farhat, director of culture at the Sakakini Center, said almost all the art -- as opposed to graffiti -- has been painted by foreigners. She said she had met dozens of foreign artists who wanted to use the wall as a canvas and she always tried to dissuade them.

''My main fear is the institutionalization of the wall," said Farhat. ''I get tens of artists every day who want to work on the wall. I say, 'Look, the Palestinian experience is not only identified by the wall.' Nonetheless, I know that the wall is the epitome of the siege, so it's easier to work with because it's solid, it's there, it's concrete, it's big."

Veteran Palestinian political cartoonist Baha Boukhari uses the wall almost daily in his newspaper cartoons -- crushing the dove of peace, or as a nightmarish, endless maze. But he said he rarely went near the barrier in his hometown of Ramallah, because he found it so depressing.

''I do not encourage people to paint it, to use it as a canvas," Boukhari said. ''I am against that. Leave it to show that it is very ugly. I don't like it to be nice. I like it to be in a very ugly, dirty, not acceptable for any normal person."

But Steve Sabella, a Palestinian artist and photographer living on the Israeli side of the barrier in East Jerusalem, said the protest art should be welcomed. Sabella curated an exhibition by photographer Andrea Merli in Italy about the wall, including its copious images and graffiti.

He recalled that when Israel erected similar concrete block walls in 2000 to shield the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo from shooting attacks by Palestinian gunmen in the Al-Aida refugee camp, Israeli residents turned it into a trompe l'oeil, painting on it the pastoral scenery -- including the Arab villages -- now hidden from view.

''Who said that art was always about aesthetics and beauty?" he asked. ''Art could be ugly . . . An artist can be an activist, trying to give the world a new truth."

Bombings rock Egypt; 30 killed

Local extremists loosely connected to bin Laden eyed

BOSTON GLOBE | April 25, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

JERUSALEM -- Coordinated bombings of three sites in the Egyptian holiday resort of Dahab last night killed at least 30 people and wounded more than 100, authorities said. It was the third deadly attack against tourist targets in the Sinai region in the last 18 months.

The three blasts in the Red Sea resort occurred almost simultaneously shortly after 7 p.m. local time. At least 20 people were reported killed in the el-Mashrabiyah Hotel, where a device apparently exploded in the hotel restaurant.

Other bombs exploded in a nearby supermarket and in a cafeteria.

Egyptian and Israeli analysts said the attacks bore the hallmarks of Al Qaeda, which had struck using similar methods in the region. Egyptian security officials said the blasts appear to have involved sophisticated devices detonated by remote control, and not by suicide bombers.

''I heard three explosions within five minutes, one after another," witness Ahmad Samir told an Arab-language television network. ''The explosions were only about 50 meters from each other. The police came with their sirens blaring. People carried the wounded to the hospital. People were in panic."

Imad Ashmawi, who owns a hotel, said the carnage in the street was shocking.

''I was in the hotel and I heard three explosions," Ashmawi said in a TV interview. ''I went out and saw people dead and wounded lying on the ground. I helped the police take the wounded to the hospital. It was a terrible sight. You can imagine it. There were bodies and limbs scattered everywhere."

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but Egypt's president, Hosni Mubarak, condemned the explosions.

''The president stressed the need to . . . track down those responsible for this wicked terrorist act, so that they pay the penalty by force of law," said the official Egyptian news agency MENA.

The attack came in the middle of a five-day Egyptian holiday following a weekend of Easter celebrations by the Greek Orthodox, the largest Christian group in the region. Dahab was full of local tourists and visitors from Europe.

It was the third time in the past 18 months that the Sinai peninsula has been targeted by terrorists. A total of 32 people were killed in October 2004 when suicide bombers drove a vehicle packed with explosives into the Hilton Hotel at Taba, near the Israeli border, and detonated another bomb at the nearby resort of Ras A-Satan. Another 88 people were killed in July 2005 in coordinated suicide bombings in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the southern tip of the peninsula.

Suspicion immediately fell on Al Qaeda, which claimed responsibility for the two previous attacks.

One Egyptian analyst said it was probably the work of local Islamic extremists loosely connected to Osama bin Laden, who had warned in a new audio tape released on Sunday of a long war with what he called a Crusader-Zionist campaign against Islam.

''I believe this is the work of small local cells connected with Al Qaeda," Amr Shoubaki, an expert on Islamist groups at the Al Ahram Center for Strategic and Political Studies in Cairo, said in a television interview.

''Their goal is to damage the Egyptian economy and to express anger and frustration at the arrest by the Egyptian authorities of 4,000 people since the attacks in Taba and Sharm el Sheikh," Shoubaki said. ''There is a mushrooming of cells in Sinai. Their main goal is revenge."

Egypt relies heavily on foreign tourism and is one of the world's most popular holiday destinations. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his family have taken their Christmas vacation in Sharm el-Sheikh for the past four years.

The Egyptian tourism industry was badly hit when Islamic terrorists opened fire on a group of foreign holidaymakers in Luxor in November 1997, killing 71 people, but had shown signs of recovery.

The latest bombings came only five days after Egyptian authorities announced the dramatic discovery and arrest of a large Islamic terror cell.

''Security forces recently arrested 22 people who were active in the secret organization called al-Taifa al-Mansur [The Victorious Sect]. The terror activists were arrested in various neighborhoods in Cairo and south of the Egyptian capital," the Egyptian interior ministry announced in a statement broadcast April 19 on state television.

''The accused planned to carry out terrorist operations against tourism sites, a strike against the natural gas pipeline around Cairo, and other sensitive sites through the placing of devices. They also examined the possibility of striking Muslim religious figures and Copts, as well as youths in entertainment districts. The heads of the organizations communicated with foreign elements in order to train activists abroad," said the statement.

Israeli military analyst Zeev Schiff, writing on the website of the Hebrew-language daily Haaretz, said yesterday's attacks illustrated Egypt's failure to halt Al Qaeda activity in the Sinai wilderness.

''The radical Islamic terror organization clearly continues to operate adjacent to the border with Israel," wrote Schiff. ''It also smuggles explosive material from the same area. It emerged recently that Al-Qaeda is also trying to set up a base in the Gaza Strip so as to infiltrate from there into Israel to carry out attacks."

Shalom Cohen, the Israeli ambassador to Egypt, said there were no Israelis among the dead, probably because the blasts came several days after the end of the Passover holiday, when an estimated 25,000 Israeli tourists traveled to Sinai despite previous attacks and a stark warning from Danny Arditi, head of the Israeli Government Counter-Terrorism Bureau, that there was intelligence indicating impending attacks or kidnappings.

''The warnings in our hands lead to small organizations affiliated with Al Qaeda in one way or another," Arditi told the Israeli news website Ynet. ''A month ago we issued a travel warning to Israelis against traveling to Egypt, including Sinai, following relatively reliable intelligence on intentions to carry out terror attacks against foreign and Israeli tourists."

Following the blasts, emergency services in the Israeli resort of Eilat were placed on alert and the border with Egypt was closed. Acting Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert telephoned Mubarak to express condolences and offer logistical support.

Barrier-wall art divides Palestinians

Most want structure to remain ugly symbol of strife, oppression

San Francisco Chronicle
Sunday, April 23, 2006

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Bethlehem, West Bank -- On the northern edge of Bethlehem, on the road that once led to Jerusalem, a wall of tall cement blocks looms darkly over the Al-Aida refugee camp. Much of it is covered in graffiti, but around one corner two huge, empty two-dimensional armchairs suddenly appear, with a pastoral scene of snow-covered mountains on view in the window between them.

"When I see these two chairs, I understand there is no one sitting there to talk about our situation, on both sides," Mohammed Fathi, a local souvenir salesman said of the painting. "There is a very beautiful place through the window, but we can't see it because of the wall."

For Palestinians, the 451-mile-long security barrier snaking through the West Bank is an ugly symbol of everything they hate about the Israelis.

For Israelis, it's the most effective way they have yet discovered to protect themselves from the wave of suicide bombings that has marked the second Palestinian uprising, or intifada. Monday's deadly Islamic Jihad attack at a Tel Aviv fast-food stall, in which the bomber and nine others were killed, was the first suicide bombing to kill Israelis on their side of the barrier in 2006. In all of 2003, before the barrier was begun, there were 144 deaths.

But for many artists, it has become the world's most inviting canvas.

The eye-catching paintings that adorn some sections of the barrier have ignited a sharp debate among Palestinian artists. Tayseer Barakat, curator of the Ziryab Gallery in Ramallah and founder of the League of Palestinian Artists, said he was fiercely opposed to anyone attempting to hide the ugliness of the barrier.

"The wall should be torn down, not made to be beautiful," he said.

In November, Barakat organized "3 Cities Against the Wall" -- an international exhibition in New York, Ramallah and Tel Aviv involving dozens of Palestinian, Israeli, American and European artists protesting the existence of the barrier (www.3citiesagainstthewall.net).

Most of the barrier is being built through the wilderness close to the Green Line, the old West Bank border between Israel and Jordan before the 1967 Six Day War. Across isolated hills, the route is delineated by a chain-link fence equipped with electronic sensors and topped with barbed wire. Running alongside is a 50-yard-wide "exclusion zone" with an anti-tank ditch, patrol roads and more barbed wire.

The 5 percent of the length that passes between houses in urban areas is a narrower, starker 30-foot-high gray cement wall that has been daubed with slogans, posters, even advertisements for local shops.

The painting of the two chairs flanking the window is the work of the radical British graffiti artist who goes by the name Banksy, who came to the West Bank in August to paint nine thought-provoking illustrations on the wall. One shows a ladder providing an escape route. Others appear to depict dreamlike scenery of tropical islands and rolling European countryside beyond the wall. Another shows a silhouette of a girl holding a bunch of balloons, apparently rising gently to freedom.

Returning to Britain, Banksy recorded on his Web site (www.banksy.co.uk) a conversation with an elderly Palestinian who told the artist his paintings made the wall beautiful. But when Banksy thanked him, the old man responded: "We don't want it to be beautiful, we hate this wall. Go home."

Fathi, the souvenir salesman, also was concerned with the international infatuation with the barrier. "I used to sell my bead necklaces by the Church of the Nativity. We don't have many visitors these days, but they all come here to see the wall. It's become like a place of pilgrimage," he said.

Catherine Yass, a British artist who was short-listed for the prestigious Turner Prize in 2002, came to the Sakakini Arts Center in Ramallah earlier this year for the opening of her film "Wall" -- a video installation tracking about half a mile on the Israeli side of the barrier between Jerusalem and Abu Dis, in haunting silence.

"When I first saw the wall, I had a very immediate reaction, and I felt like I was both blinded and made dumb," Yass said. "It does not tell you the history or the context, it tells you more about the visceral effect, a gut reaction."

Yass said she did not believe the wall had contributed to Israeli security, but instead symbolized a form of oppression for which, as a Jew, she said she felt partly responsible.

"The wall almost looks like a modernist sculpture from the 1970s," she said. "It's very disturbing that something as oppressive as the wall can have the aesthetics of modernism."

Fatin Farhat, director of culture at the Sakakini Center, said almost all the art -- as opposed to the graffiti -- on the wall has been painted by foreigners. She said she had met dozens of foreign artists who wanted to use the wall as a canvas, and she always tried to dissuade them.

"My main fear is the institutionalization of the wall," said Farhat. "I get tens of artists every day who want to work on the wall. I say, 'Look, the Palestinian experience is not only identified by the wall.' Nonetheless, I know that the wall is the epitome of the siege, so it's easier to work with because it's solid, it's there, it's concrete, it's big. So many artists find it much easier than to deal with more complex issues that have to do with Palestinian society."

"Leave it ugly and terrible and call for its demolition -- definitely, definitely," she said. "The only future I see for the wall is for it to be demolished."

Veteran Palestinian political cartoonist Baha Boukhari uses the wall almost daily in his newspaper cartoons -- crushing the dove of peace, for example, or as a nightmarish, endless maze. But he admitted he rarely went near the wall in his hometown of Ramallah, because he found it so depressing. He said he would never paint on it and objected to its use by artists.

"I do not encourage people to paint it, to use it as a canvas," Boukhari said. "I am against that. Leave it to show that it is very ugly. I don't like it to be nice. I like it to be in a very ugly, dirty, not acceptable for any normal person. ... Whether they paint it or leave it as it is, I just want this wall to be removed."

But Steve Sabella, a Palestinian artist and photographer living on the Israeli side of the barrier in East Jerusalem, said the protest art should be welcomed. Sabella curated an Italian exhibition about the wall by photographer Andrea Merli, including its copious images and graffiti.

He recalled that when Israel erected concrete-block walls in 2000 to shield the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo from shooting attacks by Palestinian gunmen in the Al-Aida refugee camp, Israeli residents immediately turned it into a trompe l'oeil, painting on it the pastoral scenery -- including the Arab villages -- now hidden from view.

The artists "are not painting like the Israelis are doing," Sabella said. "I see it as a giant ugly canvas."

"Who said that art was always about aesthetics and beauty?" he asked. "Art could be ugly. There is this feeling that art is about aesthetics, about beauty. But I don't think so. Art has many purposes and the artist has many roles in life. An artist can be an activist, trying to give the world a new truth, to show the world something they don't know about. I agree. Paint on the f -- wall."

U.S. security officials train with the pros

Israeli troops in biological warfare gear secure the area in a mass-casualties toxicological exercise during a four-day conference. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Israelis demonstrate tools, tactics in fight against terrorism

Joanne Hayes-White, San Francisco's fire chief, greets an Israeli soldier at a high school during the drill. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, March 24, 2006
Page A - 12

Nes Ziona, Israel -- A young Israeli firefighter tore the shirt off his back and insisted San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White take it home as a memento of a biochemical terror training drill she had just observed.

"I read about you on the Internet," said the Israeli, still breathless after spending an hour inside an orange biochemical protection suit under the blazing sun during a mock chemical attack on a school. "You're the first woman fire chief in San Francisco. You're my hero!"

Hayes-White was observing the exercise as part of a four-day conference on counterterrorism that attracted 130 U.S. law enforcement, emergency services and homeland security officials, the largest such delegation ever hosted by Israel. Other officials in the 23-member California delegation included San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Greg Suhr, Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and Erroll Southers, deputy director of the California Office of Homeland Security.

At Wednesday's chemical attack drill, simulating a poison-gas attack on a school, first on the scene were an ambulance and a police cruiser. As the "victims" collapsed, rescue personnel donned protective gear in different colors to distinguish between those securing the scene and those helping victims. Arriving firefighters were responsible for isolating the toxic material, while a police helicopter overhead kept an eye out for escaping terrorists and monitored traffic flow.

Within minutes, more than 50 security and rescue personnel were on the scene, under the command of the senior police officer. The senior medic performed triage, tagging all victims according to the seriousness of their injuries -- and within 20 minutes all were on their way to a hospital. Finally, all the suited emergency officers were washed down in special showers connected to fire trucks.

"That's smart," said a sheriff's officer from California. "Back home, we'd have to find a hydrant to get those showers going. We never thought to hook them up to the fire trucks."

"It was truly impressive," Hayes-White said of the exercise as she packed away the shirt to take home for her 12-year-old son.

"Our whole world changed after 9/11. It is something that we plan for now, but we have very little expertise in it. We've studied it, but we haven't really lived it. To come to a place like this, really you're learning from the true experts," she said.

On Tuesday, the Americans thought the day's exercise had started early when they arrived at the national headquarters of the Israeli Border Police in Jerusalem and saw a series of roadblocks set up and emergency vehicles screaming out of the gates, sirens wailing.

But this was no drill. They were caught in the middle of the real thing.

Israeli Police Chief Moshe Karadi welcomed his guests with the news that a Palestinian suicide bomber was loose in the city.

"They brought us in and gave us a step-by-step playback of the events as they were unfolding," said Hayes-White.

An hour later, after they were briefed about a dramatic helicopter and motorcycle chase through police roadblocks on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, Hayes-White and the U.S. delegates were told the suicide bomber had been captured, together with 15 pounds of explosives packed with nails and shrapnel. A suicide attack had been prevented, thanks to accurate intelligence and swift police reaction.

It was a real-time introduction to the pressures of security in Israel for participants in the four-day conference, hosted by the Border Police and the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Participants attended intelligence briefings, counterterror drills, medical exercises and lectures from security, police and emergency services officials.

The Americans toured police surveillance facilities in the Old City of Jerusalem, visited a suicide-bomber exhibition at police headquarters and observed a full-blown counterterror exercise simulating a biochemical attack on a school, followed by emergency treatment of the mock victims at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center.

At Ben-Gurion Airport and the control center for Israel Railways, the officials viewed state-of-the-art closed-circuit TV facilities with what the Israelis call behavioral video -- computer software that triggers an alarm when an unusual incident appears on the monitor.

Paul MacMillan, deputy chief of Boston's transit police, said the Massachusetts Bay Transport Authority had been considering the installation of behavioral video. After seeing the Israeli system, he said he planned to recommend it: "We've been looking at it ... but we've never really seen it in actual operation."

The aim of the conference was to encourage cooperation in sharing information and training, and before the sessions ended, several U.S. officials were already planning joint training seminars with the Israelis for U.S. law enforcement officials.

Southers said he planned to hold a similar conference for state homeland security employees in conjunction with the Israeli Consulate in Los Angeles. MacMillan said he would like to send his bomb-disposal teams to train in Israel, where police receive 200,000 alerts of suspicious packages every year.

"This country has excelled in safety and public security," Southers said of Israel. "What really strikes me here is that preparedness and security is a culture. It's something that we don't understand in the U.S. There are people in California who have zero resolve when it comes to this issue."

Suhr, the San Francisco deputy chief, said the trip had been "hugely useful." He said the analysis of mass-casualty incidents offered by lecturers were the best he had ever heard, and he intended to take them back home for training purposes.

"I've been doing this for 25 years, and I usually don't write anything. I just take the material they hand out," said Suhr. "This week, I've taken pages of notes because the things they say just strike you."

After four 16-hour days, the participants were joking grimly about graduating from the Israeli boot camp.

"The Israelis have kept us out of trouble," said one bleary-eyed participant. "I haven't even had time to buy gifts for my kids."

Likud hopeful tries to pick up the pieces

Leadership defects, and a party crumbles

BOSTON GLOBE / March 24, 2006

By Matthew Kalman Globe Correspondent

Part of a series examining candidates for the Israeli election on Tuesday.

JERUSALEM -- Shmuel Slavin looked tired as he returned to the Likud party's campaign headquarters in Jerusalem after another busy day on the hustings.

(Available here)

A first-hand lesson in fighting terror

Mass. officials attend Israeli conference

BOSTON GLOBE | March 24, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

JERUSALEM -- When Paul MacMillan, deputy chief of the MBTA transit police, saw roadblocks and heard wailing sirens as his convoy entered the headquarters of the Israeli Border Police on Tuesday, it seemed that a planned emergency drill had begun a day early. But this was no exercise.

MacMillan and 130 other senior US security officials attending a counterterrorism conference in Jerusalem found themselves caught up in an unfolding manhunt for a suspected Palestinian suicide bomber.

An hour later, after a dramatic helicopter and motorcycle chase through police roadblocks on the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv highway, Israeli police told the Americans that the would-be bomber had been captured, with 15 pounds of explosives packed with nails and shrapnel.

The blow-by-blow account of the operation provided a real-time introduction to Israeli security pressures for the participants in the four-day conference, designed to encourage information sharing and expertise between Israeli and US counterterrorism officials. The gathering boasted the largest group of US law enforcement, emergency services, and homeland security officials ever to assemble in Israel.

Other Bay State officials in attendance included Kenneth Kaiser, special agent in charge of the FBI's Boston office, and Albert Sherman, vice chancellor of University of Massachusetts Medical School. The largest delegation came from California, including Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, the former police commissioner in Boston, and Joanne M. Hayes-White, chief of the San Francisco Fire Department.

MacMillan said the episode in Jerusalem illustrated how much his job had changed since the Sept. 11 attacks.

''If you told me when I started my career that I would be in Israel learning about emergency preparedness for a terrorist attack, I would have said: 'What are you talking about?' We could never have imagined at the beginning of our police careers that we would be involved in such a situation," he said.

But as the intelligence chief for the fourth-largest transit system in the United States, transporting 1.3 million passengers each day, MacMillan said his responsibility now goes well beyond the traditional problems of robberies and assaults.

''To say that Boston is a specific target, that's not an accurate statement. But they've hit two transit systems, in Madrid and London, and the general intelligence and logic would follow that they're eventually going to try and hit a transit system in the United States. . . . We certainly should prepare for it," he said.

The conference, hosted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Police, included intelligence briefings, counterterrorism drills, medical exercises, and lectures from security, police, and emergency services officials.

The participants toured police surveillance facilities in Jerusalem's Old City, visited a suicide-bomber exhibition at police headquarters, and observed a simulated biochemical attack on a school, followed by emergency treatment of the victims at the Assaf Harofeh Medical Center.

At Ben-Gurion Airport and the control center for Israel Railways, the officials saw state of the art CCTV facilities with ''behavioral video" -- computer software that triggers an alarm when an unusual incident appears on the monitor.

MacMillan said the MBTA had been studying the installation of behavioral video and, after seeing the Israeli system in action, he would recommend it back home -- one of several tangible results of the trip.

He also said he would recommend cooperation with Israeli police in training Boston's bomb-disposal personnel.

Also under consideration is a training course in Massachusetts run by the Israeli police.

Following an earlier visit to Israel by Robert Smith, head of counterintelligence at the State Police, the Massachusetts command staff already has been through two courses run by senior officials from the Israeli security services.

Assistance has also run in the opposite direction. Sherman, and Dr. Richard Aghababian, chairman of emergency medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, have advised Israeli hospitals on developing emergency medical departments.

After watching a drill simulating an emergency room receiving victims of a large bio-chemical attack on Wednesday, Sherman said the Israelis had come a long way.

''I'm here to observe and learn and bring back to the Department of Public Health how the Israelis, who are regrettably the experts, do it differently to how we do it. In some cases it's better," said Sherman, who also serves on the Public Health Council, which sets public health policy for Massachusetts.

He said the Americans were impressed by what they saw.

''A smart man knows what he doesn't know. These people came to learn. There isn't a single person I've spoken to who doesn't have lots to bring back to their hometown," he said.

White, San Francisco's fire chief, said she found the conference ''truly impressive."

''Our whole world changed after 9/11. It is something that we plan for now, but we have very little expertise in it. To come to a place like this, really you're learning from the true experts," she said.

Conference participants debated the tension between counterterrorist measures and maintaining democracy, a concern that arose when security officials at Ben-Gurion explained that they were allowed to stop any car whose passengers appeared ''suspicious."

''It's a different mind set here. We're not allowed to do that. We have to have a specific plan in place on how we're going to do the stops," MacMillan said.

''It's a balancing act. We have a free and open society. If we want a dictatorship, we can lock down the country and not let anybody in and have government IDs and have everybody checked, but we're not going to live like that," MacMillan said.

An Israeli political campaign tries to push voters to the right

BOSTON GLOBE | March 21, 2006

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

RAMAT GAN, ISRAEL -- At age 12, Bat-Ami Fisher won't be able to vote for several years, but with barely a week to go before Israel's general election the bubbly pre-teen has been spending her evenings knocking on doors and explaining her political credo to complete strangers.

Bat-Ami is one of thousands of Israelis participating in ''Zazim Yemina" (Moving to the Right), a grass-roots political campaign to persuade voters not to support the Kadima Party of Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and elect a strong nationalist bloc to stop Olmert's plan to dismantle dozens of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud Party, has described the election as ''a national referendum on the Olmert-Kadima plan to give away land to Hamas for nothing in return." According to opinion polls, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the number one concern of Israeli voters.

One night last week, Bat-Ami was tramping the streets of Ramat Gan, a middle-class suburb of Tel Aviv, with her parents and 5-year-old twin brothers. The Fishers live in Shiloh, a settlement halfway between Ramallah and Nablus in the heart of the West Bank. If Olmert implements his West Bank plan, Bat-Ami and her family will lose their home.

Despite her youth, Bat-Ami is already a seasoned political activist. She spent a week last summer camped out in protest at Israel's disengagement from Gaza. That failed to stop the pullout, but this time she hoped to be more successful. With more than 20 percent of Israeli voters still undecided, a last-minute swing could have a big impact.

''I think we can convince them and it will help the situation. I want the majority of people to be convinced that, even if they don't vote for the right, at least they won't vote for Kadima," she said.

''Kadima is full of people who want to throw people out of their homes. We don't want that," she said.

Armed with a computer printout targeting the homes of undecided right-wing voters, the Fishers visited two apartment blocks last Thursday, each housing six families. They explained their concern at Olmert's plans and were politely received. One family even invited them in to supper.

''We do not represent a particular party. Most people understand the issue. Just not Kadima," explained Rafi Fisher, Bat-Ami's father.

''The effect we're trying to produce is that in another two or three days Kadima's seats in the polls will start to fall and that will create a wave," he said.

After recording the results of their interviews, they returned the printouts to the campaign organizers and then began the hour-long drive back home to the West Bank. On this particular night, they found only four families at home, but the Fishers still felt it was worthwhile.

''There's nothing else to be done. This is the best thing we have. Others are calling by phone from the settlement. I'll also start making calls the minute I get home. It's like the butterfly effect, which can cause a tornado. I don't know if we're the butterflies, the tornado, or something in between. Who knows what will happen after we talk to them?" he said.

The Zazim Yemina organizers hope that Bat-Ami and her friends will reach 200,000 households before election day -- a huge campaign in a country with just over 5 million eligible voters.

''Every evening we have 1,000 people calling, and over 1,000 going out to visit -- and the numbers are rising," said Yaakov Sternberg, one of the campaign's national organizers.

They are relying on a quirk of the Israeli political system in which no party in Israel's history has ever won an outright majority, so the governments have been a series of coalitions.

The headline result of next week's election already appears to be a foregone conclusion. Olmert's Kadima Party is widely expected to come in first, winning 39 Knesset seats, according to the latest poll in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.

In order to reach a majority of 61 Knesset seats, Kadima must team up with coalition partners that share Olmert's vision of a unilateral disengagement from the West Bank. First in line will be Labor, with a predicted 19 seats, and the left-wing Meretz with 4. But if the right does better than expected, that will force Kadima to look further afield.

In that case, Kadima could also look to Shas, the party representing ultra-orthodox Sephardic Jews, which looks set to win about 11 seats, and with them the ultra-orthodox party, Yahdut Hatorah, with six. That would give Kadima a safe majority, but the religious parties will demand a high price for their support, which could create internal tensions with the left-wing Meretz Party. And while Shas craves government office after three years in opposition, most of its members oppose a West Bank disengagement.

A further shift rightward could tilt the balance completely, leaving Olmert with a Pyrrhic victory in which Kadima is the largest party but is unable to form a government because of the combined strength of the right-wing and religious parties.

Amid this confusion, it's small wonder that the nightly television campaign broadcasts have left voters both amused and baffled. Thirty-one parties are competing in the elections, with at least 11 expected to win Knesset seats.

Kadima's broadcasts are dominated by statesmanlike images of the incumbent, Ehud Olmert. Also center stage are Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and former Shin Bet security service chief Avi Dichter, vowing to target Palestinian terrorists.

Netanyahu's Likud Party has been struggling. Its broadcasts have become increasingly negative, attacking Kadima as a rag-bag of ''leftists." Labor, which has failed to put its key issues of domestic policy -- health, education, welfare services, and pensions -- on the agenda, has also been attacking Kadima leaders, accusing them of corruption.

Top marks for impact go to the outspoken Alei Yarok (''Green Leaf") Party, campaigning for the environment and the legalization of cannabis. Its video looks like a traditional Jewish wedding until the two white-clad brides embrace in a passionate kiss.

Secret democracy elevated Hamas

Underground campaign unified voters

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Sunday, February 19, 2006

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank -- Even though more Palestinians voted against Hamas than for its candidates in the Jan. 25 election, the militant Islamist group used the skills it had honed in organizing attacks on Israel to outwit the ruling Fatah party in capturing a comfortable majority of seats in the new parliament that was set to open Saturday.

Still basking from their stunning victory, Hamas leaders recently described how they won -- and how close they came to losing. In a series of interviews, senior Hamas election strategists told The Chronicle that their success was greatly helped by the failure of Fatah to unify its own ranks.

"We used scientific methods based on our study of the polls. We stayed united. We had a program which won the confidence of the voters. The Fatah candidates were split and they were putting up too many people in each district. It split their vote," said Farhat Assad, the West Bank campaign manager for Hamas.

Small secret cells of Hamas members gathered in the spring of 2005 to undertake their campaign, Assad and others said. Highly disciplined couriers moved through the underground, avoiding capture by Israeli forces and keeping their communication routes free of collaborators and possible discovery. Running the risk of arrest or assassination by Israeli security forces, these couriers brought back the decisions of local cells to the Shura Council, the secretive ruling body of Hamas, for final approval.

If the organizing techniques were familiar, the goal was not. Hamas was engaged in underground democracy -- party primaries to choose candidates for the Palestinian parliamentary election.

Hamas leaders said choosing the right candidates was one key to their success. But being a secret organization -- many of whose members were in hiding because of their anti-Israel activities -- Hamas politicians couldn't run the risk of meeting publicly to choose their candidates. Bajjes Nachleh, the Hamas campaign director for the West Bank, was arrested last year as he tried to organize the primaries.

So Hamas developed an extraordinary system of secret democracy, based on small cells of five or six people in each village who for security reasons could not be in contact with each other. They nominated a list from which the Shura Council and the 13-member Hamas High Election Committee -- another secret body -- chose the actual candidates.

In all districts except three, they won.

"In Ramallah city, we have dozens of such groups who are active workers, and we did the primaries in these groups. These groups do not know each other. Each group is four or five people and they keep separate for security reasons," said Dr. Mahmoud Ramahi, a newly elected Hamas councilman.

"The difference is in the people that Hamas selected," said Ramahi, an Italian-trained anesthesiologist. "Unlike the past, they are not all directors of mosques or involved mainly in religious studies. Many of us are professionals and intellectuals."

Half of the Hamas members taking part in the primaries -- about 6,000 people -- were in Israeli jails.

"Ironically, the process there was easier," said Ramahi. "There are 18 people in each prison cell. They simply voted among themselves and transmitted the results to the outside leaders through visitors or when one of them was released."

The leaders also decided to campaign as Change and Reform, a party banner first used for municipal elections in Gaza last year. The name combines a political message with a reference to two passages from the Quran that encourage personal development in order to deepen faith.

Assad, who spent three years in prison until his release last October, took over as West Bank campaign manager and suggested using public-opinion polls to put together a party platform.

"The polls all said the people's first concern was about corruption, and then the security situation," said Assad. "And they showed that 25 percent of the people cared about religion."

He commissioned further internal polling that confirmed his belief that Palestinians who traditionally did not support Hamas would respond to a message emphasizing an end to corruption, a clean and honest government and a strong stand against the Israeli occupation.

The party program was toned down -- deleting references to Hamas' charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel and the imposition of Islamic Shariah law. Finally, a batch of outside experts was called in to give advice on how to run the campaign. With the help of Yazid Khadr, a Hamas media expert, and the party leadership, the candidates decided how to answer journalists' questions. New briefings were sent out almost daily to keep candidates up to date.

Nashat Aqtash, a liberal lecturer in media studies at Birzeit University in the West Bank, was brought in to book advertising space and open a "media school" to groom candidates for interviews.

The final touch came when Assad and his colleagues gathered their activists and trained them in the dual national and district voting procedure that Fatah had adopted with the aim of ensuring they would win. "The day before the election, we held a meeting of the village committees and instructed them to tell people to vote for the national list and then for the right number of Change and Reform candidates in their district," he said.

Ramahi, the physician, said Fatah's sudden expansion weakened its character and undermined internal discipline.

"The people who organize our movement are a small number. Fatah wants to bring everyone to be one of their organization. We are not like that. We prefer to have only five or six people in each of the villages -- but if they are good people, they can change all of the village. The whole village becomes our supporters without becoming members of Hamas," he said.

Ramahi said secrecy and security remained important, because all Hamas members could be arrested by Israel at any time. The head of the Change and Reform list in Ramallah, Sheikh Hasan Yousef, is currently in an Israeli prison -- as is Marwan Barghouti, head of the Fatah list.

"There is a committee at the top, the leaders, but I am not part of this committee," Ramahi said. "The committee selected me to run. In these elections, Hamas did not bring their leaders and put them in the elections, because then Israel could come and arrest them all. ... Hamas has its leadership outside this parliament and inside its representatives."

One leader who stepped into the limelight is Sheikh Mohammed Abu Ter, 55, from the village of Umm Tuba on the southern edge of Jerusalem. Recognizable by his striking henna-red beard, the former Fatah fighter turned Hamas military chief, spent more than 25 years in Israeli jails for weapons offenses and other crimes, including a plot to poison Jerusalem's drinking water. He was released last year and took the second spot on the Hamas national list, putting him in line for a Cabinet position in the new Hamas-led government.

Abu Ter told The Chronicle his contribution to Hamas' success was suggesting candidates knock on every door.

"They were like the cells of a beehive in each city, " he said. "And they worked so hard because, unlike Fatah, they weren't being paid. Our people weren't working for money; they were working because they believed in the cause, and it showed.

"We had to work silently, like the water that works in a tree. You can't see it, but you see the results."

Matthew Kalman reports from the Mideast for the Chronicle Foreign Service. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 5 of the San Francisco Chronicle

How Hamas swept in district elections, creating the appearance of a landslide

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

Sunday, February 19, 2006
Page E - 5

Matthew Kalman

A close look at the final results of last month's Palestinian election shows that the apparent landslide that gave Hamas 74 of the 132 seats in the Palestinian Legislative Council and only 45 to the once-dominant Fatah movement was, in the words of one analyst, "an optical illusion."

Under a new system introduced by the Fatah-dominated council last year, the election was divided into two parts. Sixty-six seats were elected according to national lists of candidates, with seats apportioned according to the percentage of votes received by each party. The remaining 66 were allocated among 16 different districts, where voters cast a separate ballot for individuals to represent each district.

In the vote for the national lists, Hamas received 44.45 percent of the vote while Fatah scored 41.43 percent. This gave Hamas 29 seats to Fatah's 28, with nine seats for smaller parties. If the entire election been conducted on this model, Fatah could have stayed in power by cobbling together a coalition with two or three of the small parties.

But in the district elections, Hamas swept the board even though it attracted only a minority of votes. By running only one candidate, while multiple Fatah candidates canceled each other out, Hamas won 45 district seats to Fatah's 17, with four independents. Yet Hamas candidates received only 36.45 percent of total votes while Fatah and other non-Hamas candidates won 63.54 percent.

"In reality, a clear majority of Palestinians voted against the Hamas," said Gershon Baskin, co-director of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. "What happened is that Hamas presented a unified list in each district, while Fatah and others had a multiplicity of candidates, which caused great divisions."

'FATAH WON THE VOTE, BUT HAMAS WON THE ELECTION'

Militants emerge as power in politics

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Thursday, January 26, 2006
Page A - 1

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank - In a stunning success, the militant Hamas group gained enough seats in Wednesday's Palestinian parliamentary election to challenge the dominance of the ruling Fatah party of President Mahmoud Abbas.

Hamas was fighting its first national campaign against the well-oiled, well-financed election machine of Fatah, which has dominated Palestinian politics for half a century. Based on exit polls, Fatah seemed certain to remain the largest party in the 132-seat Palestinian Legislative Council but, for the first time in its 10-year existence, to lose its absolute majority.

"Fatah won the vote, but Hamas won the election," said Khaled Abu Toameh, Palestinian affairs analyst for the Jerusalem Post.

Its strong showing opens the possibility of Hamas -- which has been responsible for spearheading a wave of suicide bomb attacks against Israel -- entering the Palestinian government. Observers and voters alike interpret the vote as a protest against Fatah after a decade of inept, corrupt rule that many Palestinians feel has brought them no nearer to peace and independence.

"I am voting for Hamas because they are honest and clean and good for the Palestinian people," said Bilal Jamil, 32, who was doing a brisk trade selling pastries in Ramallah's main Manara Square.

Seventy-five-year-old Issa Hassan Ibrahim cast his vote at the Friends School nearby. "I am voting for Hamas because they are the best people for the Palestinians. The others have failed us," he said.

Abbas now faces the tricky question of appointing a new government. He is not obliged to select ministers on the basis of their parliamentary strength, and Fatah leaders are divided on the question of whether to invite Hamas into the government. Hamas leaders are equally divided over whether they would accept.

"Even if Hamas does not become part of the new coalition, its strong presence in the Legislative Council will enable it to play a major role in future decision-making," Abu Toameh said. "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah will no longer be able to ignore the power of Hamas, which has now become a legitimate force." Final results are expected today after votes are tallied from the huge turnout, measured by the Palestinian Central Elections Commission at 77.69 percent of voters.

An exit poll by leading Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki projected 58 seats for Fatah in the council and 53 for the Change and Reform Party, as the Hamas party is called. A Bir Zeit University exit poll projected 63 seats for Fatah and 58 for Hamas. The remaining seats will be held by a variety of minor parties. Analysts warned that the exit polls would be unreliable because Palestinians were using a new electoral system, split between national party lists and local representatives.

On Wednesday, there was a carnival atmosphere in the West Bank and Gaza. Despite growing tension in recent weeks and a number of shootings, the ballot went off without a hitch and without any serious incidents.

Streets were festooned with posters and flags. Cars drove by covered in banners, blaring songs in support of the different candidates. Youngsters milled around entrances to the heavily guarded polling stations, handing out election literature with good-natured rivalry.

Fatah and Hamas both hired fleets of minibuses to ferry voters to the polling booths in an effort to boost their numbers.

In Ramallah, the OneVoice, a Palestinian-Jewish peace organization, deployed three brightly dressed camels through the streets to encourage voters to exercise their democratic rights.

The ascendance of Hamas is worrying many secular and Christian Palestinians. Christine Shaheen, a Christian teenager from Ramallah, was canvassing energetically for Fatah outside a local polling station.

"Their policy is built on the religion, and there are a lot of things they are going to use against us. They will make the country all based on religion. We won't be able to wear clothes like this in the streets, we won't be able to walk with men. I am so worried," she said.

Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan Khatib said the peaceful balloting was an impressive celebration of the power of democracy, even while some Palestinian areas remain under continued Israeli occupation.

"We are very proud of our democracy and we are very proud of the high level of awareness and democracy among our people. This is not new. The Palestinian people have always been eager for democracy and elections whenever we have been allowed to do that," said Khatib.

But he said he shares concerns about Hamas becoming dominant in Palestinian society. "As an individual who believes in the two-state solution and as a secular Palestinian, I have concerns in this regard and I hope the secular groups will maintain a majority -- but this is democracy," he said.

The radical Islamist group has come a long way since it entered politics for the first time last year, sweeping to victory in a series of municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza. It had already won the gratitude of many Palestinians for its welfare programs, preschools and health clinics in areas neglected by the Palestinian Authority.

"Hamas is now closer than ever to fulfilling its goal of duplicating the Hezbollah model in Lebanon, where it would maintain its armed wing while having elected representatives in parliament," said Abu Toameh, the Palestinian journalist.

Hamas' success, the culmination of a sophisticated political campaign, could have repercussions throughout the Middle East for decades to come. Israel, the United States and Europe all consider Hamas a terrorist organization and refuse to deal with it. Israeli relations with the Palestinians are on hold until Israeli voters go to the polls on March 28 to choose a successor to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains in a coma after a devastating stroke three weeks ago.

"The Europeans and the Americans are telling Hamas to choose between arms and parliament. We say we will go for arms and parliament, and there is no contradiction between the two of them," said Ismail Haniya, a senior Hamas leader in Gaza. Casting their votes on Wednesday, Hamas leaders showed no signs of heeding Abbas' call to lay down their arms and transform themselves into a regular loyal opposition party.

After voting in the Gaza Strip, Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar said the group "will not change a single word in its covenant" calling for the destruction of Israel. He said Hamas would continue its path of "resistance" against Israeli occupation in the West Bank even as it serves in the Palestinian parliament.

"Hamas will not turn into a political party. Hamas plays in all fields. It plays in the field of resistance," said al-Zahar.

Sheikh Mahmoud Abu Ter, head of the Hamas party list in Jerusalem, said voters were attracted by the movement's strong ideological program and its reputation for honesty.

"As a movement, we have an ideological program and a solid soul, and this is supporting us. Our views and our vision of the future (are) so clear to us and we are planning very effectively," said Abu Ter. "In the eyes of public opinion, we are considered clean and untouched by corruption. The people know us and know our transparency and trust us. Our transparency and beliefs -- this is what serves us in the Palestinian streets."

MAKEOVER OF HAMAS: SHIFT OR SMOKE SCREEN?

SYMBOLS OF HOPE REPLACE ICONS OF CONFLICT
Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Ramallah, West Bank -- Can a sunflower replace a Kalashnikov assault rifle? Can the stern face of a holy martyr brandishing a gun be replaced by the yearning gaze of a young girl with flowers in her hair?

Wednesday's election for a Palestinian parliament could mark a dramatic new direction for the Palestinian people, and nowhere is that possibility more evident than on the walls of the West Bank and Gaza.

Gone, for the most part, are the faces of the dead, a virtual graveyard of photographic tombstones, featured in the ubiquitous posters dedicated to the shahid -- Palestinian "martyrs" killed in the 5-year intifada against Israel.

Equally absent are the images of masked, gun- and bomb-toting fighters promising resistance and victory. Even, the word "intifada," the word for the Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, has virtually disappeared. All of these have been replaced by flowers, cartoons, bright colors and slogans promising to build the future and bring hope to the children.

Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, labeled by Israel, the United States and Western Europe as a terrorist organization, has jettisoned its own name for election purposes, campaigning instead under the banner of the Change and Reformation Party.

The group's makeover, including the name change, has taken place largely under the tutelage of Nashat Aqtash, a media studies lecturer at Bir Zeit University, who also has advised Hamas candidates to tone down their anti-Israel rhetoric.

The party's campaign manifesto left out the call for the destruction of the state of Israel -- a central component of the organization's charter -- and Hamas candidates said they would continue with the 9-month old hudna, a military truce with the Jewish state.

Coincidentally, perhaps, the Islamic group's senior leader in the Gaza Strip said Monday that Hamas might even be willing to negotiate indirectly with the Jewish state once Wednesday's elections are out of the way.

"Negotiation is not a taboo," Mahmoud Zahar told reporters in Gaza City. "Negotiations are a means. If Israel has anything to offer on the issues of halting attacks, withdrawal, releasing prisoners ... then 1,000 means can be found."

Israeli officials have dismissed such changes as cosmetic campaign ploys and point to earlier statements by Hamas leaders that the party's extremist goals have not changed.

Indeed, later on Monday night, before crowds of thousands of core supporters, Zahar and other Hamas candidates said they would never give up their insistence on the destruction of Israel and the right to armed struggle.

"We are entering the legislative council to make it a project of resistance," he told a cheering crowd Monday night in the Zeitoun neighborhood, according to press accounts.

Referring to the ruling Fatah party, which controls the Palestinian Authority, Zahar added, "Do you want to abandon the program of sacrifice and jihad for the program of fancy cars and big salaries?"

Still, according to opinion polls, Hamas is expected to do very well in Wednesday's vote, not so much because of its record of suicide bombings and other violent activities against Israel but due to its emphasis on social programs, which have struck a chord with Palestinians fed up with what they regard as the ruling Fatah party's incompetence and graft.

Polls say Palestinian voters have expressed more interest in cleaning up corruption and improving education than in security issues.

About 1.3 million registered Palestinian voters in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are eligible to cast ballots in the second parliamentary election in 10 years. More than 700 candidates are vying for 132 seats in parliament.

While it is not clear how genuine or deep are the changes in attitudes and policies, it is clear from both Hamas and the Fatah party campaigns that they know what image they need to project to win voter support.

"They are using images of children instead of weapons," said Steve Sabella, an award-winning Palestinian photographer and artist from East Jerusalem, who was commissioned by one party, which he would not name, to photograph a series of images of ordinary people for use in its campaign.

Mahmoud Abuhashhash, director of the culture and science program at the A.M. Qattan Foundation for the arts in Ramallah, believes the campaign, at least as reflected in the wall posters, marks a sea change in Palestinian politics.

"This is really phenomenal," he said. "The images of weapons are totally absent ... . The word muqawme -- resistance -- is mentioned here and there, but in a general way."

Abuhashhash traces the change to the election of Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority to succeed Yasser Arafat in 2005 and to the depiction of a Palestinian leader, for the first time on wall posters, without a gun, military uniform or resistance slogan.

Baha Boukhari, the veteran Fatah political cartoonist who designed that poster, said it was designed, in part, to express Palestinians aspirations that he says Abbas represents.

"We do not believe that God created us just to struggle, just to fight. We want to lead a normal life," Boukhari said.

While all the parties have replaced the familiar images of guns and resistance with portraits of the candidates running for parliament, Fatah has gone one step further with a series of posters conveying broader political messages.

In addition to photos of the late Yasser Arafat in his familiar Arab headdress, and of Marwan Barghouti, a highly popular Palestinian militant currently serving five life terms in an Israeli prison, its posters feature a new Fatah logo -- a yellow sunflower -- and a series of iconic symbols set against a fresh blue sky. One of them, a picture of a young girl, is meant to symbolize the new Palestinian generation.

Mounir Salameh, director of the Fatah campaign in the West Bank, said the sunflower logo was developed from the party's original color scheme, which was yellow.

"Like the sunflower, which always faces the light of the sun, the Palestinian people are looking for a place full of light under the sun on this Earth," Salameh said.

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