Capitalism on the kibbutz

Many Israeli collectives shunning system of financial equality

BOSTON GLOBE | February 26, 2007
By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

KIBBUTZ DEGANYA ALEPH, Israel -- Yoya Shapiro sat on the veranda of her house, gazing across the manicured lawn of Israel's first kibbutz, or collective farm, founded by her parents and 10 other pioneers in 1910.

It was a unique experiment in communal living, rigorous socialism, and strict egalitarianism, and it thrived for decades on a spectacular site looking out at the Sea of Galilee and the imposing Golan Heights rising from the far shore.

But last week, Shapiro joined 320 fellow kibbutzniks in a vote that finally ended the financial equality among members that was a cornerstone of the ideology hewn during those early years of agricultural labor.

With that decision, Deganya joined a growing number of the nation's 270 kibbutzim in adopting many of the trappings of free-market capitalism, including differential wages and the ability to own private property. The vote ended nearly a century in which members worked according to their ability and received food, goods, clothes, and services according to their needs. Under the new system, kibbutz members keep their salaries, but pay taxes into a fund for common services such as health, education, and cultural events, as well as a support fund for poorer members.

As of December 2006, 61 percent of kibbutzim were paying differential salaries to their members and more than 20 percent had decided to transfer ownership of kibbutz houses from the collective to the members who live in them. At Gan Shmuel, north of Tel Aviv, the kibbutz leased large tracts of agricultural land to developers for a shopping mall and McDonald's. At Ein Gedi on the Dead Sea, the kibbutz guest house is now managed by an outside company that employs kibbutz members.

The privatization process began several years ago, but the symbolic importance of the change at Deganya rekindled a debate over whether the kibbutz movement could survive the inexorable march of capitalism.

"This is the end of a phase in the ideology of the kibbutz as we have known it until now," said Shlomo Getz, director of the Institute for Research on the Kibbutz and the Co-Operative Idea at Haifa University. "It's a very big difference. The kibbutz has changed over the years, just as people mature over time, but the change we are seeing now is very dramatic.

"The kibbutzim still have some characteristics that do not exist in any other place," said Getz. "They are no longer purely socialist or communes, but there remain some unique traits, including systems of mutual help and the practical responsibility of the community to its members. I expect the next step will be to divide the ownership of the communal assets, turning members into shareholders. It has already happened in two or three places."

At Deganya , the supporters of the reforms see the changes as inevitable, but not fatal.

"I voted in favor, but reluctantly," said Shapiro, who was born a few yards from her present one-story home in 1921, in what was then British-ruled Palestine. "I've lived here all my life and I know what my parents wanted. I felt like I was doing something against them, but I also felt it was necessary. I could see that the young people like these changes, and since they are going to live here in the future longer than me, I felt I had to go along with them."

The reforms were first introduced a year ago for a yearlong trial, which was approved by more than 65 percent of the members. Last week, 85 percent voted in favor of making the change permanent.

In the early days, members worked, studied, and did their laundry together as a collective. There was no food in their homes, since they all ate in a communal dining hall. Shapiro said she used to return from cleaning the laundry with a different blouse each week, and clearly recalled the day she was first presented with clothing tagged with her own name.

Until last year, members received their income from the central kibbutz coffers, strictly budgeted according to marital status, the number of children, and special needs like health or education. The basic income was equal for the kibbutz general secretary, a farm laborer, a hotshot lawyer -- or those who didn't work at all. Most members were assigned jobs in rotation, sharing menial tasks and being voted into positions of responsibility. Some worked outside the farm, but handed their salary to the kibbutz.

Now members can earn differential incomes and manage their own bank accounts. Those who work outside keep their earnings. The kibbutz has calculated a minimum wage and anyone earning more than that is taxed at a rate of 20 percent for services including health care and education, which are still provided on a collective basis. The wealthier members also pay into a crisis fund and a health fund to support the weaker members.

"I think it will save Deganya in the short term," said Allan Shapiro, 79, Yoya's husband, who immigrated to Israel from New York in 1955. "When we voted for the trial last year I was worried that the lack of equality would threaten social solidarity among the members, but that didn't happen. Now I see the reforms have come to institutionalize changes which had already taken place."

Realizing that the kibbutz could not be sustained by agriculture alone, Deganya built its first factory in 1967 . Today, its diamond-tipped machine-tool manufacturing plant, Toolgal, provides 70 percent of the kibbutz 's revenues, alongside 300 milk cows and 200 acres of fields producing bananas, dates, wheat, avocado, corn, and soy .

Among the reasons for the reforms at Deganya was the slow exodus of younger kibbutzniks. The Shapiros' son, who left Deganya to practice law and is now a judge, is among the 50 percent of young people who have left the kibbutz. The total population of the country's kibbutzim peaked at 124,000 in 1994 and has since fallen to 115,000; as a proportion of the growing Israeli population, kibbutz residents have fallen from 4.2 percent in 1952 to 1.7 percent in 2004.

Kibbutzniks express mixed feelings about the reforms.

At Kibbutz Gvat in the Jezreel Valley, similar changes were introduced in 2004. Paz Israeli, 31, who was born at Gvat and is now kibbutz secretary, said he would have preferred things to stay the same.

"Most of the people on the kibbutz wanted the change in order to be like people in the city," said Israeli. "They wanted to get more money in the bank at the end of the month if they worked harder. People just wanted more for themselves.

"I'm an old-fashioned guy; I would have liked better to stay in the old system. There is a value to living and working in a place where there is a larger ideal than just providing for yourself. I don't think it's the death of the kibbutz," he said, "but it is transforming into something very different."

The HBO 'Treatment'

A popular Israeli TV series about therapy is getting a translation

BOSTON GLOBE | February 25, 2007
By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

TEL AVIV -- Hagai Levi, creator of the first Israeli drama series adapted for US television, has proved that less is more.

Israeli life is hardly lacking in daily drama. There is the horror of suicide bombings, the pain of war, the challenge of ending a 40-year occupation and finding peace with the Palestinians -- not to mention a raft of domestic corruption and sex scandals that in the past month alone have triggered the resignation of the country's justice minister and the start of impeachment proceedings against the president.

But "In Treatment," Levi's multi-award-winning daily half-hour drama series that has been snapped up for adaptation by HBO, has not a single gun, bomb, corrupt politician , or suicide bomber anywhere on the screen. Instead, it boasts a single indoor set in which the only action is two people sitting and talking to each other .

HBO will air 45 English-language episodes five nights a week in the fall, starring Gabriel Byrne as a taciturn but effective psychotherapist and Dianne Wiest as his therapist guide and confessor.

"In Treatment" became a television and social phenomenon in Israel, sweeping the Israeli television awards for best drama series, best director, best screenplay, best actor , and best actress, and attracting huge audiences in this tiny country.

Critics at Israel's three largest newspapers competed for superlatives to describe the show. Haaretz called it "the most important achievement in a drama series ever accomplished in Israel," and said it "proved that minimalism in television can generate maximum quality." Maariv said it was "the closest thing to literature to be found nowadays on television." Yedioth Ahronoth said it contained "the most sublime, refined dialogues ever to be seen on an Israeli screen."

Boston audiences can get a taste themselves on Tuesday, when the Boston Jewish Film Festival screens four episodes at the Museum of Fine Arts.

The format is deceptively simple and potentially boring. Each day in the week is dedicated to one patient's therapy session with Ruben, a 50-something psychotherapy counselor who, it soon transpires, is having some mid-life issues of his own.

On Monday, he treats an attractive single woman wondering whether to marry her boyfriend, whose highly charged erotic tales threaten to play havoc with Ruben's own fragile libido. On Tuesday, it's the turn of an air force pilot plagued by collateral damage -- the only scenario where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict intrudes but which will be adapted for a US story line. Wednesday is devoted to a teenage gymnast and Olympic hopeful whose recent brush with death may have been self-inflicted, and Thursday brings a bickering couple toying with the idea of aborting a pregnancy after five years of fertility treatment.

Little wonder that Friday evening finds Ruben seeking the guidance of 60-something Gila, his own mentor and therapist, where it soon becomes clear he's not quite the level-headed fo nt of wisdom his patients might expect.

"You always said our biggest problem is that we don't have an audience. It's true. There's no one to put in a good word for us. No one to tell us how great we were this session," Ruben tells Gila after one particularly heavy week.

Now this psycho-confession looks set to have the biggest US audience since Woody Allen (and Tony Soprano) made therapy fashionable.

After an initial five-part pilot, HBO was hooked. "We felt 'In Treatment' was unique on several levels, its format, its content, and its execution. For all of those reasons and more we felt it was a excellent fit for our original programming schedule," said Carolyn Strauss, president of HBO Entertainment.

Writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (HBO's "Carnivale," "Big Love") and Mark Wahlberg are the executive producers. Cast members include Josh Charles, Embeth Davidtz, Mia Wasikowska, Melissa George, and Blair Underwood.

The show came to Wahlberg through Israeli actress Noa Tishby, who saw the series on a visit home, contacted the producers and returned to California with a disk of the first five episodes. Tishby was signed to Leverage Management, which also represents Wahlberg, and so the connection was made.

Levi, the show's creator, believes the format is unique. He said he did not know another television drama in which two actors are sitting almost static for minutes on end, with hardly any action, relying almost entirely on the dialogue.

"The actors had nothing to hide behind," he said. "They were almost paralyzed. They could only use themselves and rely on the power of the words. Sometimes we just kept filming, using 20-minute shots instead of the usual few minutes at a time. It was very close to live theater."

The minimalism extended to the production costs, which Levi estimated at about one-quarter of a regular half-hour drama.

"Every episode was shot in a single day, which contributed to the tension," said Levi. "It was like simulating real treatment. Each actor had their day of the week and we filmed it chronologically, just like the characters in the story."

Levi and his chief scriptwriter, Ori Sivan, had just ended an intense creative conference on the upcoming second season, which took the form of a long walk in the cool evening air through the hip Shenkin neighborhood of Tel Aviv, where smart sidewalk cafes attract the cream of the city's bubbling creative class.

The HBO deal has catapulted Levi and Sivan to the pinnacle of Israel's media fraternity, although they say the money involved is modest -- "not millions" -- and neither will be retiring or ordering his yacht just yet. Levi is an executive producer on the HBO series and Sivan said the English scripts and characters are as close to the Hebrew originals as the trans-Atlantic transfer would allow.

Levi said the idea for the show was based on his own experience of psychoanalysis, while Sivan said he had never been through it himself, but both his parents were therapists.

The writers tried to ensure the authenticity of the script by bringing on board psychotherapist Roni Baht as an adviser. They soon found themselves at odds with their chosen expert.

"He did a brave job fighting with us," laughed Sivan. "We found that therapy and scriptwriting are very similar. The role of the therapist is to be in conflict with their patients. Roni was always encouraging us to go to a deeper involvement. He said the original scripts were too light, not brave enough. He said the therapist had to ask much more direct questions than we originally wrote."

The quality of the script was sustained by recruiting such screenwriters as Yael Hedaya, an Israeli novelist who helped shape the character of the young single woman whose Monday sessions set the tone for the week. Hedaya will be at Tuesday's "In Treatment" screening.

Levi and Sivan, both 43, studied together at Tel Aviv University film school and graduated in 1990. Levi is now head of the drama department at Israel's largest commercial television channel. His previous credits include several award-winning documentaries and series, among them the longest-running drama ever aired on Israeli television. Sivan has written several successful series while Nir Bergman, another co-director and co-writer, wrote and directed the acclaimed feature film "Broken Wings."

In the last 15 years, Israeli television has mushroomed with the birth of two commercial channels and cable channels commissioning original drama. "In Treatment" was originally produced for the HOT cable channel and then aired on Channel 2, the country's largest commercial broadcaster.

"Now there is an industry and money, which is attracting good people," said Levi.

And in a country of just seven million where everyone seems to know each other, movie and television benefit from complete cross-fertilization between the two genres.

"There is a total mixture," said Sivan. "Israeli academy award winners, writers, directors and actors move freely back and forth between film and television."

The cable broadcast attracted a staggering one million video-on-demand downloads and the commercial broadcast won impressive ratings. The series entered everyday conversation and was instantly included in university curricula on psychology.

Indeed, one of the attractions of the original production was the quality of the Hebrew-speaking cast headed by Israel's favorite bad-boy film star Assi Dayan -- think Jack Nicholson -- and local movie matriarch Gila Almagor -- the Israeli Judi Dench.

The show's creators are confident that "In Treatment" will hit the same nerves it tingled in Israel.

"America is the homeland of therapy, it is so deep in American culture. People are going all the time and the jargon of therapy is part of the language," said Levi. "They had to do very little to make it American."

Israel tense over 'the Iranian threat'

As U.N. Security Council ponders new sanctions against Tehran, Jerusalem is watching warily

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, February 18, 2007 - Page A1

Jerusalem -- When the U.N. Security Council considers this week whether to impose new sanctions on Iran unless it abandons its nuclear weapons program, the debate will be watched closely in Jerusalem, where Israeli leaders fear that their country's very existence would be in danger if Tehran succeeds in acquiring the bomb.

Iran has never launched a direct conventional military attack on Israel, which is nearly 1,000 miles away on the far side of the Middle East. But it equips, trains and finances Hamas and Islamic Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza, and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon. And Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier who advocates wiping Israel off the map -- views that have made him popular with extremists in the Arab world.

Ephraim Sneh, Israel's deputy defense minister, told a recent briefing of journalists and diplomats that Iran's revolutionary ideology, as expounded by Ahmadinejad, posed a concrete threat not just to Israel, but to the entire free world. He said Iran sees itself as a growing global power "attempting to build a territorial belt from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean Sea."

Officially, Israeli leaders support diplomatic efforts to halt Iran's nuclear program. Sneh stopped short of advocating a military attack, but when pressed by reporters, he pointedly said that "everything should be done in order to stop it."

Israel's own nuclear arsenal is a subject of intense speculation. Officially, Israeli leaders do not admit it exists, but a 2004 survey by Jane's Intelligence Digest estimated that Israel had at least 200 nuclear weapons, including thermonuclear weapons, and a heavily guarded weapons laboratory at Dimona in the Negev Desert.

Iran insists that its nuclear-enrichment program is intended only for energy production, an assertion that the United States and Europe reject. Last year, the U.N. Security Council adopted sanctions against Iran that freeze some of its assets and bar companies from selling to Iran materials and technology that could contribute to its nuclear program. The United States advocates tougher sanctions if Iran does not halt enrichment activities, which Tehran has refused to do.

The policy of the Israeli government has always been that it will never be the first to launch nuclear weapons. Its deterrent capability is based on the widely held belief that it has a significant second-strike arsenal capable of retaliating against any strategic attack on its major cities. The United States has consistently stood by Israel in resisting efforts to declare the entire Middle East a nuclear-free zone.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned a conference on international security in stark terms about "the Iranian threat."

"For many long years, we have followed Iran's efforts to acquire nuclear weapons, in the guise of a civilian nuclear program," said Olmert. "In all the contacts I have had, there has been clear agreement that Iran cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons or the material to produce them. ... Those who believe, as we do, that a diplomatic solution is preferable, must now muster their strength to exert pressure on Iran and thus stay the course until change is achieved."

But should the diplomacy fail, Olmert warned, Israel would be left with little choice.

"Anyone who threatens us, who threatens our existence, must know that we have the determination and capability of defending ourselves, responding with force, discretion and with all the means at our disposal as necessary. We will not place the lives of our people, the life of our country, at risk.

"We have the right to full freedom of action to act in defense of our vital interests. We will not hesitate to use it," he warned.

The level of tension is so high between the two states that Israel's Mossad espionage agency has been accused of causing the death of a leading Iranian nuclear scientist in January from gas poisoning.

Ardeshire Hassanpour, 44, a prize-winning nuclear physicist, worked at a plant in Esfahan that produces uranium hexafluoride gas, a key component in the enrichment of uranium. U.S. security consulting company Stratfor and the London Sunday Times suggested his death was a Mossad "assassination."

Mossad has a documented history of killing scientists from countries deemed to pose a grave danger to Israel, including several involved in Iraq's weapons program under Saddam Hussein. But the accusation this time is almost certainly baseless, according to Mossad sources, and goes against all known modus operandi of the agency.

Meir Amit, former head of Mossad, told The Chronicle he thought it was unlikely Israel killed the Iranian scientist, but he called for the assassination of the Iranian president.

"Personally, I am against assassinating leaders, and all my life I was against it when I was head of Mossad. But Ahmadinejad has crossed the line. With all he is doing on the nuclear front, saying Israel should be wiped off the map and arranging a conference on the Holocaust, where he said it never happened -- from my point of view, he is somebody who shouldn't be with us," said Amit.

True or not, the story of Hassanpour's killing reflects a widespread belief that Israel will stop at nothing to prevent Iran from acquiring the ability to deploy nuclear weapons. Last weekend, Israel successfully tested its Arrow anti-ballistic missile defense system, intended to intercept and neutralize Iranian warheads.

In October, Olmert appointed hard-liner Avigdor Lieberman as his minister of strategic threats -- a newly created position that appears to have Iran as its main focus. "Israel does not have the luxury of waiting with its arms folded until Iran acquires unconventional capabilities," Lieberman warned in a recent interview.

The military option could leap up the agenda if Olmert's government collapses and former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wins the next election, as currently predicted by opinion polls. Netanyahu has long advocated a military strike against Iran.

"Israel has to assist in the progress of an aggressive international coalition, but it also has to make sure to acquire the means necessary for our defense," Netanyahu said in an interview.

Israeli fears about Iranian intentions were buttressed by former CIA Director James Woolsey, who told the January security conference that "Iran is not remotely interested in nuclear power for purposes of electricity."

He described the Islamic republic as "a theocratic totalitarian movement for which destruction of Israel and the United States is not a policy but its very essence. It defines itself in that way. Saying that it should change its policy with respect to destroying Israel and the United States is like trying to persuade Hitler away from anti-Semitism."

But Iranian analyst Meir Javedanfar, director of MEEPAS, a Middle East political and economic analysis company, and co-author of a new book, "The Nuclear Sphinx of Tehran," said the Iranian ideological threat was balanced by the pragmatism of its leaders.

"I believe the ultimate goal of Iran's nuclear program is for military purposes, but I do not think Iran will ever risk a first nuclear strike against Israel," Javedanfar said in an interview.

"The Iranian leaders are fundamentalist on the surface, but when it comes to survival they are very pragmatic. They know Israel's second-strike capability and know it is very likely their country will be destroyed. They did not survive eight years of war against Saddam Hussein and 20 years of U.S. sanctions just to see their country wiped out for the sake of attacking Israel," he said.

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

Webcams fuel furor over Jerusalem site

Muslims vow more protests near mosque

BOSTON GLOBE | February 16, 2007

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent

JERUSALEM -- Israel activated webcams yesterday at the site of a controversial building project in Jerusalem's Old City as part of an effort to refute accusations by Muslims that the work is threatening the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel, who was visiting Istanbul yesterday, also agreed to allow a Turkish technical team to inspect the site.

Islamic leaders denounced the streaming video as "cosmetic," and said they would organize massive demonstrations in Jerusalem after prayers today.

Riots erupted at the site last week after archeologists began excavating a centuries-old ramp leading from the Jewish prayer plaza at the Western Wall up to the Temple Mount compound, known to Muslims as the Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and the site of two landmark shrines -- the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam's third-holiest site, and the golden-capped Dome of the Rock.

The holy site is in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War and then annexed. Most countries do not recognize Israeli sovereignty in the area.

Muslim leaders accuse Israel of trying to destroy the mosque by undermining its foundations. In a fiery sermon in Al-Aqsa last Friday, Sheik Ekrema Sabri accused Israel of desecration and said the Israelis were planning "attacks against the mosques."

But the ramp is outside the exterior wall of the Temple Mount compound and ends several yards from the Mughrabi Gate, which leads into the area holy to Jews and Muslims alike.

Part of the ramp collapsed after a snowstorm three years ago, and last week the Israeli government ordered that a bridge be built in its place.

The archeological dig that triggered the demonstrations is the first stage before construction of the bridge allowing access to the Mughrabi Gate, which is about 30 yards above the ground outside the wall.

Earlier this week, Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski suspended building work until all parties, including Muslim leaders, had been consulted. But he said the archeological dig would continue.

Yechiel Zeligman, the Israel Antiquities Authority archeologist overseeing the excavation, said the three webcams would broadcast 24 hours a day, seven days a week on the authority's website, antiquities.org.

The live feed from three cameras shows workers from the Antiquities Authority digging to uncover ancient buildings and artifacts hidden beneath the surface.

"Really, we don't have anything to hide," Zeligman said as he supervised 40 workers at the site yesterday. "We hope the presence of the cameras will show people that nothing here is threatening the mosques and things will quieten down so we can continue our work.

"The ramp ends more than 5 meters from the wall and the gate into the mosque compound, so we are nowhere near the Al-Aqsa Mosque and nothing we are doing here poses any threat to it," he said.

But Sheik Raed Salah, a leader of the radical Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, remained defiant yesterday as he appeared in a Jerusalem court on charges of stirring public unrest and spitting at a police officer during disturbances at the site last week.

"An Israeli court has no authority to rule on issues connected to Al-Aqsa Mosque," Salah said. "Thus any decision made by this court over keeping me away from Al-Aqsa is null and void."

Israeli archeologist Meir Ben-Dov, an expert on the site and a strident critic of the Israel Antiquities Authority, said the protests could have been foreseen and prevented.

In 1996, the opening of a centuries-old underground complex of tunnels running 50 yards alongside the Western Wall triggered similar accusations, sparking riots in which more than 90 Palestinians were killed.

Ben-Dov said the Israelis should have consulted with Muslim authorities and agreed on the work, just as he did when the other side of the ramp faced collapse 15 years ago.

"I have been warning the government for nearly two years, but no one would listen," Ben-Dov said.

"The bridge is nowhere near the Al-Aqsa Mosque and does not threaten it physically, but the whole matter has been handled with complete lack of sensitivity for the feelings of the Muslims," he said.

Ben-Dov has been working at the site since 1968 and wrote the standard work on the excavations. He said the new bridge was unnecessary because the ramp could have been repaired easily.

The ramp was created when Ben-Dov and his colleagues excavated on either side of the path leading to the Mughrabi Gate, digging down until they came to the Roman-era road that once skirted the huge Herodian walls of the Temple Mount compound. In 1992, Ben-Dov's group reinforced the southern side of the ramp with a modern wall built from the same Jerusalem stone as the ancient buildings.

"We had a problem, but through discussion and cooperation with the Muslim authorities we managed to overcome it," Ben-Dov said.

Yousef Natshe, chief archeologist at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, said the new webcams did nothing to allay Muslim fears.

"It's a cosmetic act designed to draw away the attention of the people who are concerned about this," Natshe said. "Putting this online doesn't give Israel any legal rights -- the act itself is illegal."

"For two years we have been writing to the Israeli police, to the mayor of Jerusalem, expressing our concern about this planned bridge, but they didn't even acknowledge our letters," he said.

Natshe conceded that the Israelis were probably not excavating underneath the mosque, but he accused them of continuous encroachments.

" This work is being carried out on the approach to one of the historic gates entering the Haram. . . . Maybe it is not physical damage, but it is cultural damage. It is distorting the site," he said.

To view the Israeli webcam, go to antiquities.org.il/home_eng.asp

West Bank gays more at home in Israel

West Bank gays find social life in Israel

They fear new wall will trap them where their lifestyle is taboo

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, February 05, 2007
By Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Ramallah, West Bank — In the center of town in a cafe named Stars & Bucks, a young Palestinian who likes to be known as the Diva Nawal sips a bright pink milkshake and checks out the early evening crowd.

"I'm not the only gay person here, but I'm the only one who's out," he says, exchanging silent greetings with two young Palestinian men at a nearby table. "They're also gay, but nobody knows, and you shouldn't approach them."

When the tall, slim, delicately featured Nawal dons the blonde wig, makeup and tight skirts that transform him into a drag queen, he's ready for his performance -- at gay clubs in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa.

A 21-year-old university student with serious professional ambitions, Nawal wouldn't dream of performing in his hometown, where homosexuality, as in the rest of the Palestinian territories, is strictly taboo, sometimes violently so. Last year, a group of gay Palestinians visiting East Jerusalem from the United States were threatened and one of them badly beaten after they announced plans to join an Israeli gay pride rally. The Web site of ASWAT, an organization of Palestinian gay women, says Palestinian society "has no mercy for sexual diversity and/or any expression of 'otherness' away from the societal norms and the assigned roles that were formed for women. ... The Palestinian woman has no right to choose an identity other than the one enforced on her by the male figures in her family and surroundings."

So for Nawal and his friends, the only place where they can pursue a full social life is across the border in Israel.

"I can't be honest about my sexuality with my family because they wouldn't know how to respond, and I respect them too much to want to hurt them," he says. "But the same traditional family values which oppress me in that way also protect me."

Although his mannerisms sometimes attract unwelcome comment in the streets of Ramallah, he adds, "no one will attack me physically, because in our society that means my whole extended family will join together to attack them in return. It preserves a kind of balance."

He does not expect it to continue forever, and knows that after he graduates, he will probably leave the West Bank.

"This is not a free life," he says. "Apart from private parties inside people's homes, the only place where I can really behave as I wish is in Israel. Once they complete the security wall and I cannot reach Jerusalem, there will be nowhere to go. I will have to leave."

He is not alone. Saturday night is Arab night at Shushan, a gay bar in central Jerusalem, featuring a drag show that is part karaoke, part cross-cultural celebration. At the top of the bill is the Iman, also known as the Queen of Sheba, a 6-foot-plus black Palestinian with African roots -- who keeps his sexuality and nighttime drag queen theatrics carefully hidden from his wife and children. The crowd of about 50 this evening is a mix of Israelis and Palestinians, with a spattering of Western expatriates. The deafening music ranges from Tina Turner and Cyndi Lauper to Arab divas Diana Haddad and Boshra.

Freddy A., a 27-year-old bisexual Arab from East Jerusalem, a regular at Shushan, is a veteran of the Palestinian gay scene.

"It's very tough being gay or bisexual because Arab behavior is still dominated by Islamic tradition, where it is forbidden," says Freddy, a hotel worker and the youngest male in a traditional Muslim family of eight children. "It's difficult to be with another Palestinian, and because of Israeli-Palestinian politics it's tough to see someone who isn't part of your community.

"I have one friend in his early 20s who was beaten by his family when they discovered he was gay, and forced to marry," he says. "Now he's not in a good situation. He has turned to drugs and drink."

Of his own family, Freddy says, "One of my brothers and one of my sisters know about me. My father suspects, but I have to hide it from him. It would be too hard for my family. I respect my father. I wouldn't want to hurt him."

He, too, finds a certain degree of freedom in Israel.

"I'm in Tel Aviv every weekend. On that side, they don't care. I have two Palestinian lesbian friends whose husbands don't know about them. To get together, they go to a hotel in West Jerusalem," he says.

In Israel, the status of gays and lesbians is more comparable with Western Europe.

As the British gay magazine Attitude approvingly reported in December: "Workplace discrimination against gay people is outlawed; the Knesset (Israel's parliament) has many openly gay members; in schools, teenagers learn about the difficulties of being gay and the importance of treating all sexualities equally. The country's army, the Israel Defense Force, has many dozens of openly gay high-ranking officers who, like all gay soldiers in its ranks, are treated equally by order of the government. The Supreme Court has ruled that gay couples are eligible for spousal and widower benefits.

"Nearly all mainstream television dramas in Israel regularly feature gay storylines. When transsexual Dana International won the 1998 Eurovision Song Contest as Israel's representative, 80 percent of polled Israelis called her 'an appropriate representative of Israel.' "

At Shushan, gay Israelis and Palestinians mix freely and go home together, although Freddy observes that the broader state of Israeli-Palestinian relations has created tensions that didn't exist before.

"Times have changed," he said. "These days I feel the hatred between both sides even in the gay community."

But compared to gay Palestinians who don't make it to Israel, Freddy and Nawal are among the lucky ones, said Haneen Maikey, coordinator of the Palestinian Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual Project at a Jerusalem gay center.

"It's actually becoming more difficult for gay Palestinians," said Maikey, 28, whose center organizes a Pride rally every year. "It's a collective and closed community in which some parts are very religious with a small village atmosphere. Every step toward coming out will get you another step back to the closet."

But she questions the sense of belonging that gay Palestinians like Nawal and Freddy feel in the Israeli gay scene.

"At some level, they face racism and discrimination because they are Palestinians," Maikey said.

"There is a hidden discrimination with Israeli partners -- a feeling that I can make sex with you, but I can't be seen out with you," she said.

Holiday warning after Eilat blast

Daily Mail, 30 January 2007

By Matthew Kalman

Holidaymakers were warned to be vigilant after a Palestinian suicide bomber killed three people in the Israeli resort of Eilat yesterday.

It was the first such attack in the Red Sea port in the far south of the country which is popular with hundreds of Britons seeking winter sun.

The blast at a cafe-bakery in a residential area was the first suicide bomb in Israel since last April.

Police said it was likely that the bomber, identified as a 21-year-old Palestinian from Gaza, had intended to target a more crowded, tourist area.

He had probably blown himself up earlier than planned after his behaviour aroused the suspicions of passers-by.

Britons on holiday in the resort included Lorna Fitzsimons, Labour MP for Rochdale until 2005. Security at tourist hotels had been stepped up as police went on full alert, she said, adding: 'Nothing justifies terror on this scale,'

Benny Mazgini, 45, who was in an apartment across the street, said: 'I saw a man with a black coat and a bag. It is hot and it is strange to see someone with a coat.

'Seconds later, I heard a huge blast. It was awful - there was smoke, pieces of flesh all over the place.'

Rafi Caplin, of British-based Longwood Holidays, said the blast occurred in a part of town rarely visited by tourists.

'The general advice would be just to be vigilant, the same as when these types of incidents have happened elsewhere,' he said. Two Palestinian militant groups, Islamic Jihad and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, claimed joint responsibility for the attack which they said had been planned for seven months.

They said the attack aimed to help end weeks of Palestinian infighting which has killed more than 60 people in the Gaza Strip. But four people were killed as fighting continued to rage there yesterday.

Palestinian news reports identified the bomber as Faisal al-Siksik.

At the family home, his brother Naeem said: 'We knew he was going to carry out a martyrdom operation. His mother and father prayed for him to succeed.'

Since April, Israeli security forces have caught about a dozen Palestinians planning to carry out suicide attacks.

Journalist uses heroes, villains, place -- a la Dashiell Hammett -- to bring Palestinian life alive in novel

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Bethlehem, West Bank -- A frail, balding man in late middle age shuffles through the shadows of Bethlehem, collecting evidence of murder and trying to protect his loved ones from violence and corruption as the Palestinian uprising rages all around and Israeli hit squads lurk in the background.

Meet Omar Yussef, fictional hero of "The Collaborator of Bethlehem," the first novel in a mystery series by British author Matt Beynon Rees. Yussef is a cross between Yasser Arafat and Miss Marple, a reluctant sleuth plunged into a murky West Bank world of swaggering gunmen, cowering priests and defiant refugees.

In the novel, crafted in the tradition of classic noir detective thrillers, the streets that Yussef treads are littered with the debris of suicide bombers and Israeli snipers. Each turn in the ancient souk, or marketplace, leads to another hooded gunman with a Kalashnikov.

Yussef is an aging history teacher at the U.N. girls school in the squalid Dheisheh refugee camp, but when a close friend and former pupil is accused of collaborating in the assassination of a militant chief, he feels compelled to confront the dark forces of Muslim-Christian conflict that threaten to tear Palestinian society apart.

Rees, 39, the Jerusalem bureau chief of Time magazine throughout the intifada, tells his story with the compelling authenticity of an award-winning reporter and a lean discipline gained from a lifelong immersion in classic detective fiction.

Rees was born in Wales and studied English literature at Oxford University. He arrived in Jerusalem in 1996 after postgraduate journalism studies at the University of Maryland and reporting stints at Forbes and the Bloomberg wire service in New York.

"The Collaborator of Bethlehem," which will be published in the United States in February by Soho Press, is more than a simple mystery story. It's an exploration of Palestinian life from the inside, wrapped in the conflicting layers of religious fanaticism that power the Middle East conflict. The result is an evocative, compassionate tale that transports the reader into the biblical landscape of the birthplace of Jesus. The sights, smells and tastes of Palestinian life are arrayed, from the rice and chicken ma'alouba that Yussef eats to break his Ramadan fast to the bitter qahweh sa'ada coffee he awaits in the mourning tent of the murder victims. Like the San Francisco of his literary hero Dashiell Hammett, Rees' Bethlehem is a major figure in the story, its ancient alleys and turbulent traditions adding an extra dimension to the modern tale of murder and intrigue.

"The first mystery I ever read was 'The Maltese Falcon,' " Rees says as he walks the streets of Bethlehem. "Hammett inspired me to take not just the character but the whole social context of the story. Having been a journalist here for the past 10 years, I don't have to wonder what Palestinians are like."

Rees' decadelong immersion in the mysteries of the Middle East has produced some memorable journalism, including a groundbreaking Newsweek cover story exposing Arafat's "Mafia state" and Rees' acclaimed first book, "Cain's Field: Faith, Fratricide and Fear in the Middle East," which explored the inner conflicts that haunt Israelis and Palestinians. But he says his novel explores the Palestinian experience more accurately than his news reporting.

"The Omar Yussef stories are all drawn from real things in Palestinian life, especially during the intifada, but writing them as fiction has been completely liberating," says Rees. "I can really get inside the head of a Palestinian. I'm not constricted by journalistic formulas."

He says the idea for the books came as he stood in a cabbage patch in a village on the outskirts of Bethlehem with the widow and parents of a militant who had been gunned down at that spot by an Israeli hit squad the night before.

"They were telling me what had happened, and I knew that this was going to end up as no more than one colorful paragraph at the top of my story. I wanted to try and find a vehicle to convey the emotional intensity, the reality for people living in this extreme situation," he says. "Working as a journalist, it was always extremely interesting to report, but I didn't always feel that the stories that emerged reflected how compelling the original material was. The structures and limitations of journalism were forcing me to leave out the facts which told me how Palestinians really lived and what they really thought. I was covering the peace process as though I was a sportswriter: Good or bad for the peace process today? I was missing out on a lot of things."

Rees decided to counter this by almost entirely excluding Israel from his novel. "Journalism takes Palestinian society and puts it in opposition to Israeli society, which makes everything look too simple," he says. "When you take Israel out of the equation, then you have a society that is very complex. The San Francisco of Dashiell Hammett is compelling decades later because it's not a perfect society infected by one bad guy who can be eliminated by the detective. Even when the mystery is solved, the ugliness is still out there and the hero must continue to face this complex reality.

"In Palestinian society there are people who really do kill, and they kill for very real reasons, whether we agree with them or not. Those villains, the people who are facing my hero, are grounded in reality. They are people who I've met. So as well as having a hero who can tell us more about Palestinian life than journalism can, I also have villains who can tell us more about the dark side of Palestinian society than the newspapers."

Omar Yussef is already scheduled to appear in at least two more mysteries. The next one, set in Gaza, is already written. Rees has a three-book deal, with translations into French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Hebrew and the possibility of a movie version.

Rees said he prefers to think about Yussef's adventures as a labor of love and is sanguine about becoming a successful novelist. "When I was 7 years old, I wrote a poem at school about a tree and the teacher gave me a gold star," he says. "Now I've had three starred reviews for Omar Yussef. I'm right back where I started."

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

Holy Land's woes sink Bethlehem's Christmas spirit

Strife ruins celebrations, local economy

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Page A - 21

Bethlehem , West Bank -- This is the first Christmas season that Hamas has hosted in Bethlehem, and things are not looking good in the town where Jesus was born 2,000 years ago.

"This is the saddest Christmas. As you see, Manger Square is empty," said Mayor Victor Batarseh, a Roman Catholic mayor who was elected last year with support from Hamas. Only a statute requiring that the mayor and half the municipal council of Bethlehem must be Christians prevented Hamas and other Islamist groups from making a clean sweep of local government posts.

In the days leading up to Christmas, only a trickle of tourists visited the holy sites, half the shops were closed, and decorations were sparse. The foreign aid that once poured into Bethlehem has dried up, a victim of the international aid boycott imposed on the Palestinian Authority in March when the Hamas-led government took control of Gaza and the West Bank.

Like almost all public employees across the Palestinian territories, Batarseh and his workers have not been paid since the spring.

The Hamas government had promised to give Bethlehem $50,000 for the celebrations. Sheikh Raed Habib, a prominent Hamas supporter and the preacher at the Omar Ibn Khattab Mosque opposite the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square, approved of the allocation for Christmas despite the government's financial crisis.

"I am pleased that Hamas is helping to make Christmas," he said. "It is our duty to help with the decorations and congratulate our Christian brothers on their holiday. Muslims consider Jesus as one of the prophets, and we also celebrate his birth, but not as a major holiday."

Yet by Saturday, the promised money from the government had still not arrived. A municipal official said that even if it came, it would likely not be spent on Christmas lights. "We will pay the salaries -- that's more important," he said, on condition of anonymity.

Instead, the festive street decorations on the main road to Manger Square were donated by an Israeli-Arab Christian from the Galilee region of Northern Israel, who took shelter in Bethlehem with his family during the summer war to avoid the Katyusha rockets of Hezbollah.

Other Christmas lights were provided by local business owners, some of whom saw an opportunity to advertise their products. The Peace Center in Manger Square balked at displaying a banner wishing the people "Happy Christmas and Happy Eid from the Palestine Electric Corporation."

Before the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, burst out three months before Christmas 2000, about 50 buses a day made the 5-minute drive from nearby Jerusalem, bringing thousands of tourists who thronged the church, souvenir shops and local restaurants. These pilgrim dollars fueled a thriving trade in souvenirs fashioned from olivewood, mother-of-pearl and cheap silver. The town prospered.

But after six years of the intifada and Israeli military incursions, the tourists have disappeared, and Bethlehem's economy is in ruins. The town of 30,000 is now almost encircled by Israel's separation barrier, which has strangled Bethlehem's livelihood, cutting off the town from Jerusalem and deterring all but the most determined visitors.

Israel says it built the barrier to deter cross-border attacks, but Batarseh said it has transformed Bethlehem into "a big prison whose keys are in the hands of the occupier."

Only about 100,000 tourists have visited Bethlehem in 2006, compared to nearly 2 million annually before the intifada.

A fragile cease-fire in 2005 had encouraged some tourists to return, but this summer's war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon discouraged most visitors. The eruption of deadly clashes between Fatah, the former ruling party, and Hamas two weeks ago was the final nail in the coffin.

"The political situation in Lebanon and the instability of politics in Palestine has affected tourism and pilgrimage," said Batarseh. "We have 65 percent unemployment and about 2,000 bedrooms in hotels that are empty."

Local leaders insisted that Bethlehem is safe. They said the kind of gunbattles that erupted in Gaza would not be repeated in the West Bank, where skirmishes between Hamas and Fatah have been fewer and less ferocious.

"What is happening in Gaza is alien to our culture, alien to our history, alien to our heritage as Palestinians," said Salah Tamari, the Fatah governor of the Bethlehem district. "We want Bethlehem to be a model. People in Bethlehem are aware of their mission. Bethlehem has a message of peace, for Palestinians first and then to humankind. Here we co-exist and live in harmony."

But for many Christians in Bethlehem, the new political domination of Hamas is only the latest phase in a process that has left them feeling isolated and vulnerable. Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of a local Christian TV station, has documented more than 90 incidents of anti-Christian violence carried out in the Bethlehem area in recent years and 140 cases in which Christian land has been taken over by what he describes as "Islamic mafia gangs."

George Rabie, a 22-year-old taxi driver and rapper from the neighboring town of Beit Jala, said he was beaten up two months ago by a group of Muslims from Hebron who reacted to the crucifix hanging from his rearview mirror. "It is a type of racism," he said. "We are a minority, so we are an easier target."

Farid Azizeh, an elderly restaurateur and former city councilman, was shot in the face and blinded after he got involved in a dispute with the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the armed wing of Fatah. Last year, his 16-year-old granddaughter was abducted by her Muslim boyfriend and was rescued only after the intervention of the Latin Patriarch.

Among the few pilgrims in town just before Christmas was Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who led a delegation of British church leaders to Bethlehem as a sign of solidarity. The clerics prayed in the Church of the Nativity along with Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Syrian bishops.

"We are here to say in this so troubled, complex land, that justice and security is never something which one person claims at the expense of another, or one community at the expense of another," Williams said. "We are here to say that security for one is security for all, and for one to live under threat of occupation or of terror is a problem for all and a pain for all," he said.

The visit to Bethlehem by the British church leaders was "the most important visit this Christmas," said Mayor Batarseh. "This event makes us feel that we are not left alone, and there is somebody who cares about our plight."

Mysterious Santa helps Bethlehem's neediest

The identity of the wealthy man who distributes toys and candy to poor Christian and Muslim families is known only to a few. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Page A - 17

Bethlehem, West Bank -- In a darkened room at a secret location in downtown Bethlehem, a small group of anonymous Palestinians is preparing for a secret mission.

Packages are being checked and placed in special bags. In one corner, a man in paramilitary fatigues nurses a semiautomatic machine gun.

Another man is being dressed in heavy disguise before being sent on his mission.

Everyone in this tight-lipped group is sworn to silence. The identity of the man behind the operation is a well-guarded secret.

Soon after night falls, in the twisting alleys of Hosh Nassar, a poor part of the old town near Manger Square, a man in heavy disguise carrying a large bag climbs the steps to the home of the Mickel family and knocks at the door.

Seven-year-old Daniel Mickel opens the door and stares into the face of Santa Claus. "Ahlan W'sahlan! -- Welcome!" he yells, and runs to fetch his brother Amir, 8, and his mother, Terry.

Baba Noel, as Santa is called here, has brought toys for Daniel, Amir and their older brother and sister, as well as chocolates for the family. It is a welcome moment of holiday cheer for the family, which has been living in poverty since 45-year-old Issa Mickel was confined to bed with a brain tumor seven years ago.

"We need help; we are in real trouble," says Terry Mickel as the boys tear open their presents. "This visit from Santa Claus has made the children very happy."

Around the corner, 13-year-old Myrna Siryani is excitedly waiting for the knock on her door after receiving a call from Santa last week asking what she would like as a gift.

"He spoke to me in Arabic!" says the delighted teenager. "He asked me what present I would like, and I said I wanted clothes, because I am too old now for toys."

This weekend, dozens of Bethlehem's poorest children, both Christian and Muslim, received the gifts they requested from the man in the white beard and red suit as he crisscrossed the town in a bright yellow taxi.

But few people know the real identity of the Secret Santa of Bethlehem. It's the closely guarded secret of a local businessman who in the past six years of acute economic distress has given away tens of thousands of dollars to the most impoverished families in the town.

"I try to go to the poorest families, those in real need, where the father is unable to work or perhaps isn't there anymore," he said, hiding his anonymity behind the nickname Abu Christmas -- his personalized version of Baba Noel.

"I ask people I trust to provide lists of the children who need help, on condition they do not tell anyone where the gifts have come from," he said. "They are only allowed to say that we are a secret Christian group that works undercover to make these families happy."

The young children choose toys and dolls. Teenagers usually want clothes, so Abu Christmas gives them vouchers to spend at a local clothing store. He said his only regret was that his own business has fared so badly, because of the drop in tourists to Bethlehem, that this year he will be able to deliver presents to only about 70 children instead of the 150 he has helped in previous years.

In addition to his Christmas operations, the same benefactor has stepped in numerous times in recent years to assist neighbors who have fallen on hard times.

"I believe that if a man needs food, you don't give him fish -- you give him a fishing rod and teach him how to use it," he said.

One grateful recipient of his help said the secret Santa could have bought "one or two houses" with the money he had given away in the past five years.

"I don't know how much the total is," said Abu Christmas. "I don't keep a notebook.

"I do this every day. If I started to calculate the amount, it could be a problem, so I'd rather forget. I'm sure that God will give me back much more than I have given away.

"There are so many people in need, I wish I could help everyone," he said. "I just want to see the children happy."

Daniel Mickel, 7, and his sister, Jessica, 13, receive presents from Abu Christmas, a nickname for the man who appears each year. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Christians see little future in little town of Bethlehem

Jennifer Satara sits in front of housing built by the Catholic Church, where she lives with her family. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Page A - 13

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Bethlehem -- Bethlehem native Bashir Satara dreamed of living in the United States.

For three years he worked at a string of casual jobs from New York City to the Bay Area, but he could not get a green card, and finally had to go back. So he did the next best thing -- he tried to create a little of the Bay Area in the West Bank.

Inspired by one of the eateries where he had worked in Martinez, he opened the first fast-food joint in Bethlehem, which he called First Subway Express. Now it's the only place in town open after midnight and is successfully supporting three families.

But his story is atypical.

Thousands of Christians like Satara have left Bethlehem in the past six years, but few return. Cash-strapped residents, struggling to survive in a town where the Palestinian uprising known as the intifada and Israeli security measures have reduced tourism to a trickle, have been quitting Bethlehem in droves.

"Why do people leave? Because they need housing, education, they need money," said Father Shawki Baterian, general administrator of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

Victor Batarseh, the Christian mayor of Bethlehem, said last week that unemployment in the town has risen to 60 percent and urged people to visit over Christmas to help the economy.

Satara entered the United States in the summer of 2000 on a tourist visa and stayed on as an illegal resident. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he was stopped by police who discovered he had no valid visa. He was questioned by the FBI and immigration officials, but was allowed to walk away after he requested political asylum.

He traveled to Martinez to join his parents, Maurice and Mary Satara, who had arrived a few days before Sept. 11 and managed to stay another two years. Mary Satara had two sisters living in Sacramento, and the elder Sataras became legally registered residents of California.

In May 2003, Bashir Satara was in an automobile accident. The car he was driving was impounded and he was fined $70 for not having a license. He decided it was time to leave.

He and his parents returned to the family's ancient stone house in the twisting alleys of Bethlehem's old marketplace, but all of them wondered whether their decision wasn't a terrible mistake.

Bashir Satara, a 23-year-old Palestinian Christian, found it almost impossible to make a living.

"Everything was closed," he said. "Everything inside the house was wrecked. It had been broken into by the Israeli army and by the Palestinian militants. Most people I knew had left, and all my friends were thinking of leaving because they had no work."

Then he had his brainstorm. He opened the first fast-food joint in Bethlehem, First Subway Express, with a loan from a sympathetic Christian businessman.

A generation ago, Christians comprised 80 percent of the population of Bethlehem, but today they are just 15 percent. Since the beginning of the intifada -- which broke out less than three months before the much-advertised Christmas 2000 celebration -- nearly 10 percent of the 50,000 Christians in the West Bank and Gaza have emigrated, according to the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

In response to this drain, Christian institutions are trying to keep their community from disappearing altogether from the place Jesus was born. One way is to give them a roof over their heads.

Bashir's brother Carlos Satara, 32, is among dozens of Christian families living in modern subsidized housing built by the Catholic Church. He now lives with his wife and two small children in the Child Jesus, an apartment complex built by the Custos of the Holy Land and the Franciscan Fathers, in order to provide Christian families with affordable housing.

"Before I took this home, I was thinking of leaving Palestine. I even got a visa for Canada. Now it's still difficult, but it's better than before," Carlos Satara said.

The Custos -- the head of the Franciscan Order, directly appointed by the pope -- has built several similar complexes in Bethlehem since the intifada began.

"The problem of houses for the Christians of the Holy Land is very serious," said the Custos, Brother Pierbattista Pizzaballa, in an interview posted on his Web site. "Emigration is a truly dramatic problem. ... You must remember that the poor never leave, they will always remain with us since they do not have the money necessary to emigrate."

Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem and Catholic bishop of the Holy Land, Jordan and Cyprus, has also sponsored a series of housing projects in Bethlehem and other Christian areas with a total value of $10 million, providing accommodation for more than 200 families.

"We are living in a situation of struggle, occupation and chaos," said Father Baterian. "We have no proper government. Sometimes the church takes the role of the government itself.

"Our main aim is to give Christians a chance to stay in the Holy Land. ... We try as a church to provide all the basic things so the people can choose. We tell them: You have a mission to stay here, but sometimes they cannot bear it, so they choose to leave."

Baterian said the Patriarchate projects were generally built on church-owned land, then offered for sale or rent at subsidized rates. He said the Nativity housing project in Bethlehem, with 52 units, provided work for 600 people while it was being built.

The Patriarchate has just finished construction at the Annunciation, an apartment block in Beit Jala, the town neighboring Bethlehem, where Issa Fawadleh, 43, his wife Elise and three teenage daughters, were preparing to spend their first Christmas in their new home.

"We were all living in one room in a tiny house in the old city, so we couldn't wait to move into this apartment with three bedrooms and a large living room," said Fawadleh. "The church helped us by spreading the payments over a long period. If not for the Patriarchate, we would have had to stay in our old home until we die."

Fawadleh has a job at the local sock factory. He said the lack of work in the West Bank means that many people would be unable to find decent housing without such projects, but he had never thought of leaving.

"Many people from here have left the country because they weren't able to study, find jobs or get married," he said.

"They had to leave. It wasn't their fault. If they had all those things, they would have been able to stay," Fawadleh said.

Hanna Siniora, a prominent Palestinian Christian from East Jerusalem and co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, said the church had finally done what was necessary to help the dwindling Christian community.

"I hope it's not too late," said Siniora. "It's very much needed. It will help Palestinian Christians to stay in the Holy Land. We don't want to see our churches end as museums."

But Father Baterian said that housing wasn't the only condition for keeping Christians in Bethlehem.

"Most of all they need stability. You can provide people with everything, but if they don't have peace they will leave," he said.



Bashir Satara sits in the First Subway Sandwich shop, which he opened after his return from the U.S. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

Abbas threatens election showdown

As violence between Fatah and Hamas escalates, the president insists he will order a new vote


SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Page A - 1
Sunday, December 17, 2006

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, reacting to street battles and gunfights between supporters of his Fatah movement and the opposition Hamas that led to at least six deaths and scores of injuries in the last week, threatened Saturday to call early parliamentary and presidential elections.

Abbas was trying to seize the political initiative after Hamas leaders told a vast crowd in Gaza on Friday that the Palestinian president had launched "a war" against Hamas and against God.

"Since the people are the source of authority, we will return to them and let them say their word," Abbas told the sympathetic crowd, most of them Fatah supporters, during a 90-minute televised address Saturday in the West Bank city of Ramallah. "I decreed the formation of the government, and I can sack it whenever I want to."

Hamas leaders took the call for new elections seriously, denouncing it as "an attempted coup."

To his audience, Abbas appeared genuinely angry -- but his forceful tone belied the fact that he had little to offer Palestinian voters except to renew his threat to call elections, something he has done repeatedly in recent months.

Khaled Abu Toameh, Palestinian affairs analyst for the Jerusalem Post, said a new ballot could well prove a disastrous gamble for Abbas, because Hamas was expected to win new parliamentary elections and might also challenge the Fatah leader for the presidency.

"Hamas is not afraid of these threats," Abu Toameh said in an interview. "Fatah is the same party which lost the last election because of the corruption of its officials and its refusal to allow the younger generation to enter the leadership. If there is an election anytime soon, Fatah is almost certain to lose again."

Abbas stopped short of setting a date for the election and left open the possibility of a unity government involving both Fatah and Hamas. Still, his vague formula was enough to spark renewed clashes in Gaza -- where pro-Hamas marchers took to the streets and at least 21 people were injured in gunfights, including one this morning involving the presidential guard -- and to win promises of support from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is scheduled to arrive in Ramallah on Monday.

Abbas was elected Palestinian president in January 2005, but the rival Hamas party won parliamentary elections -- and thus control of the government -- last January. The Palestinian Authority has been in political and economic crisis ever since. Most of the international community, led by the United States, Europe and Israel, imposed an economic boycott on the Hamas government when it refused to recognize Israel, honor past agreements or give up violence.

The ensuing economic squeeze has left the one-third of Palestinians who are employed by the government without salaries for months, pushing the private sector into severe recession. More than $600 million in tax revenues, equal to more than half the annual budget of the Palestinian Authority, has been frozen by Israel.

A recent online poll published by the daily Al-Quds newspaper suggested that support for Fatah has slumped badly since the last election. It predicted Hamas would win an early parliamentary election with 45.98 percent of the vote compared with 33.66 percent for Fatah. In the national vote in January, Hamas scored 44.45 percent and Fatah 41.43 percent.

Abbas has been engaged for months in fruitless talks with Hamas leaders over the formation of a nonpolitical or unity government whose appointment would end the international blockade. But Hamas leaders have refused to compromise, particularly on issues that require dealing with Israel. In June, Hamas militants captured an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, in a cross-border raid that triggered five months of Israeli army incursions in which hundreds of Palestinians were killed.

Three weeks ago, Abbas persuaded Hamas to stop firing rockets across the border at Israel, initiating a shaky cease-fire and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip. But since then, there have been increasing clashes between the Palestinian factions. They culminated last week in the shooting deaths of three young sons of a Fatah intelligence officer and the killing of one of the bodyguards of Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader. The latter attack was an apparent assassination attempt as Haniyeh returned to Gaza after the Israelis kept him from bringing $35 million in cash to help pay the government's bills.

"We are living through difficult and miserable times," Abbas said on Saturday. "To break the vicious circle and prevent our lives from deteriorating further and our cause from eroding, I have decided to call early presidential and legislative elections."

Hamas leaders said Abbas' proposal was "unconstitutional." Palestinian law allows the president to fire the prime minister, but is ambiguous on whether he can call early parliamentary elections. Parliament is elected every four years.

"If Abbas is tired of the situation, he should resign instead," Hamas Foreign Minister Mahmoud al-Zahar told reporters in Gaza. "There will be no early elections, God willing."

Israelis are fearful that increased support for Hamas could mean a return to Palestinian attacks across the border. Miri Eisin, spokeswoman for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, said the Israeli leader "respects" Abbas "and hopes that he will have the capability to assert his leadership over the Palestinian people, and to bring about a government that will comply with the international community's principles."

In Gaza, legislator Mohammed Dahlan, one of Abbas' closest confidants, hit back at accusations that he was behind the attempted shooting of Haniyeh late Thursday, and noted that "since Hamas' election victory in January, more than 300 Palestinians have been killed as a result of lawlessness and 15 Fatah members have been assassinated."

"Hamas' allegations are simply a means of masking its failures towards the Palestinian people," Dahlan said in a statement circulated to the media.

"This Hamas government has failed to demonstrate that it has a plan to build, but has aptly demonstrated that it has a plan to destroy. It is time for Hamas to stop acting as though it is in the opposition and start taking on the responsibilities of being the head of the government," his statement said.

Even though Abbas berated Hamas in unusually harsh language, accusing the group of practicing "unacceptable terror" against its opponents, he did not actually dismiss the government, dissolve parliament or set a date for new elections. That leaves open the option of a national unity government with both Hamas and Fatah -- which would still not recognize Israel and satisfy the international community.

Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi, a former Fatah loyalist turned independent, told reporters in Ramallah that "an opportunity must be given to resume the dialogue and form a national unity government. ...

"President Abbas didn't set a date for holding early elections and kept the doors for dialogue opened," she said. "We should do our best to save the country from more bloodshed."

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Latest developments in the internal Palestinian crisis

What happened: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said Saturday he will call early elections for both president and parliament, but did not set a date. Abbas, of the Fatah party, has failed to reach agreement on a unity government with Hamas, the majority party in parliament. Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas, refuses to modify his party's anti-Israel stance.

What's next: Aides say Abbas will meet with the Central Election Commission within a week to discuss preparations for elections, which would take place three months after he issues a presidential decree ordering elections. Under Palestinian law, the president has the power to dismiss the prime minister or call a state of emergency, which in effect would dissolve parliament.

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Possible presidential candidates

Mahmoud Abbas, 71: Incumbent president from Fatah, elected overwhelmingly in 2005 to succeed the late Yasser Arafat. A pragmatist who opposes violence, Abbas has called for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. After Hamas unseated Fatah in January parliamentary elections, he failed to win back disaffected voters. He has said he would not run for re-election, but that was before he cut his own term short. September polls gave him 31 percent of the vote in a presidential race.

Marwan Barghouti, 47: Charismatic leader of Fatah's young guard, serving multiple life sentences in Israel on murder convictions related to Palestinian uprising. Supports the so-called two-state solution -- a Palestinian state alongside Israel -- but advocates using force to end Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Widely seen as the only Palestinian leader capable of unifying squabbling Palestinian factions.

Mustafa Barghouti, 52: Independent lawmaker who heads the Palestinian National Initiative, a small left-leaning grouping that favors a two-state solution. Ran for president against Abbas in 2005, receiving about 20 percent of the vote.

Mohammed Dahlan, 45: Fatah lawmaker widely considered to be the most powerful figure in the Gaza Strip, with little support in the West Bank. Former Palestinian security chief, has been involved in peace negotiations with Israel and speaks fluent Hebrew from time jailed in Israel. Has good contacts with Israel and the United States and is at odds with Hamas, having acted against the militant group harshly when security chief. Hamas accuses him of masterminding assassination attempt on Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh.

Ismail Haniyeh, 46: Current prime minister and senior Hamas leader, considered the most popular Palestinian politician after Abbas. In keeping with Hamas' line, he does not recognize Israel, says he will not renounce violence, and calls for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza in return for a 10-year truce.

Ahmed Qureia, 67: Former Palestinian prime minister from Fatah, commonly known as Abu Alaa. Key architect of 1993 Oslo peace accords with Israel and led Palestinians in negotiations with Israel for years.

Associated Press

U.S. training Fatah in anti-terror tactics: Underlying motive is to counter strength of Hamas, analysts say

This is a copy of a training manual distributed to officers of the Presidential Guard during a two-week course held in Jericho earlier this year. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Page A - 17

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jericho, West Bank -- U.S. officials training Palestinian security forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas are emphasizing urban anti-terrorist techniques as part of a systematic effort to bolster Abbas and his Fatah loyalists to counter the political success of Hamas, according to Palestinian analysts and officers receiving the training.

But one officer who has received the training says the purpose of the newly beefed-up force is to protect the Palestinian president from assassination.

The Presidential Guard, made up entirely of Fatah activists loyal to Abbas, has been increased to 1,000, up from about 90 officers under his predecessor, Yasser Arafat. A new black-uniformed rapid deployment force -- Al-Tadakhwal -- has recently been formed to respond to emergencies. The Presidential Guard is commanded by Gen. Munir Zobi in the West Bank and Gen. Haj Musbar in Gaza.

Officers have also received training from U.S. officials inside the Mukata, the presidential compound in Ramallah that contains Abbas' office and Arafat's grave.

The Chronicle has obtained a training manual distributed to officers of the Al-Haras Al-Rayassi, Abbas' Presidential Guard, during a two-week course held in Jericho earlier this year at which the chief instructor introduced himself as a U.S. Secret Service officer who served during the Reagan administration. The manual, titled "Advanced Protective Operations Seminar," is emblazoned with the logo of the Counterterrorism Training Group, which includes the U.S. government seal.

Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator to Israel and the Palestinian Authority, told the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth after news of the training sessions leaked out that since Iran is helping arm and fund Hamas political and military activities, the United States wants to prevent "moderate forces" in the Palestinian territories from being eliminated.

"We are involved in building up the Presidential Guard, instructing it, assisting it to build itself up and giving them ideas. We are not training the forces to confront Hamas," Dayton told Yedioth. "Hamas is receiving money and arms from Iran and possibly Syria, and we must make sure that the moderate forces will not be erased," Dayton said.

But one of the officers trained by Dayton's team said the American general is being naive and does not understand internal Palestinian politics.

"Ever since the Hamas election victory, security has been tightened around (Abbas)," said the officer, speaking on condition of anonymity. "The fear is that someone from Hamas will try to assassinate him, and we must be ready to deal with this threat. The main threat to the security of the president is from the militia of Hamas."

When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994 with a mandate to handle its own policing, Arafat set up a string of 14 overlapping and often competing security forces -- each one controlled by a rival political or former guerrilla chieftain, but all of them ultimately loyal to him and his Fatah party. Arafat used these forces to control political opponents like Hamas and also maintain loyalty through patronage and the payment of salaries.

The United States had helped train the initial security forces, but ended its aid when the Palestinian uprising called the intifada began in September 2000. During the intifada, many trained security officers engaged in attacks on Israeli targets or joined the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah militant wing.

Earlier this year, after it assumed control of the Palestinian government following its success in January's parliamentary elections, Hamas announced the formation of its own security service, the Executive Force, and placed Jamal abu Samhadana, a prominent militant, at its head. Samhadana was killed in an Israeli raid in June.

Abbas had denounced formation of the new police force as unconstitutional, saying that only the Palestinian president could command armed forces. On Dayton's advice, the U.S. training program began again over the summer, but so far it has been limited to the officers directly responsible for the personal security of Abbas and his VIP guests, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during her visit to Jericho last month.

Training seminars for the Presidential Guard are being held in various locations around the West Bank. A two-week course called the Advanced Protective Operations Seminar was recently held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Jericho, where participants were instructed in counterterrorism techniques. The manual from that course gave detailed advice on a range of security issues from airport and event security planning to securing motorcades, residences and offices. Suggested tactics included the use of "protective intelligence," "counter-snipers" and a "counter-assault team."

An official from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv traveled to Ramallah earlier this year to instruct about 60 Presidential Guard officers in securing vehicles and sites against bomb threats and suspect devices. The session, according to one of the participants, lasted about two hours and took place in a large meeting room close to Abbas' office in the Mukata compound.

"We are helping the Palestinian Authority security services to enhance their abilities, concentrating on the Presidential Guard," said a U.S. diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity. "We are also helping the Presidential Guard take on expanded responsibilities, like security at the border crossings in Gaza."

The American effort is part of a broader international package of support to bolster Abbas loyalists as Hamas threatens to increase its parallel Executive Force to 6,000 men. Training for Fatah forces also is provided by Egypt, Jordan and Turkey. Britain, Spain and the European Union have provided communications equipment, vehicles and logistical support.

But there are fears the American assistance program could backfire.

"The U.S.' involvement in attempts to bring down the Hamas government has only made things worse for Abbas and Fatah," wrote Khaled Abu Toameh, Palestinian affairs correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, in a commentary titled "Guns and Poses."

"The U.S. believes that by giving Abbas more rifles and cash, it would be able to bring about regime change. But in the West Bank and Gaza, there is no shortage of weapons. Tons of explosives, rifles and missiles are smuggled across the Egyptian border nearly every day. What the Palestinians need is not more rifles -- which they never use to stop Hamas, Islamic Jihad or other militias anyway -- but good governance and credible leaders," he wrote.

"American meddling in Palestinian affairs is backfiring, because many Palestinians are beginning to look at Abbas and Fatah as pawns in the hands of the U.S. and Israel. This does not help Abbas and moderate secular Palestinians, who are facing the dangers of the growing power of Islamic fundamentalism."

Abbas' guard members wear distinctive green uniforms with a shoulder patch bearing the name of the force and the Palestinian flag. Each officer carries a semiautomatic Kalashnikov assault rifle and Motorola communications equipment. Plans to replace the outdated Kalashnikovs of the Presidential Guard with lightweight Heckler and Koch MP5 submachine guns were scrapped because of Israeli opposition.

"It's a great shame the Israelis wouldn't allow us to have the new equipment. In a hostage situation inside a building, the MP5 is much more effective than the Kalashnikov, which is too large to handle indoors and has a very strong recoil," said the Presidential Guard officer who had been through the training.

The Israelis, this officer said, have refused to permit the supply of new weapons, tear gas and flak jackets to the Presidential Guard, based on their experience in the past when the CIA trained dozens of Palestinian security officers only to watch in dismay as many of them joined the ranks of Fatah's Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades during the intifada.

"I'm not thrilled at the idea of the Americans training Fatah militias or the Palestinian police," said Yuval Steinitz, a former chairman of the Israeli parliament's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. "Until now, both Fatah and the Palestinian police have been a great disappointment to those who believed they could overcome terror as they promised they would. The opposite has happened. In the best case, they were simply passive. In the worst cases, they actually encouraged terrorism."

Next battleground will be a familiar one, Israelis say

In Golan Heights, tensions with Syria are on the increase

Jamie Ben-David, a San Diego native living in Israel, polices along a minefield in the Golan Heights, near the Syrian border. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Sunday 10 December, 2006

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Oz 77, Golan Heights -- From afar, the only thing that Jamie Ben-David could see moving in the picturesque valley of Kuneitra was a white U.N. jeep racing between the manicured fruit groves.

But as he drew nearer, the pastoral view was soon shattered. In the foreground lay rusted barbed-wire fences with yellow and red warning signs describing the fields of hidden land mines. And through his high-power binoculars, the bullet-riddled houses in the ghost city of Kuneitra and the remains of Syrian and Israeli battle tanks suddenly came into focus.

Ben-David, a 34-year-old San Diego native who moved to Israel two years ago, adjusted the black machine-pistol on his hip and clambered up the side of Oz 77, a disused Israeli military bunker with a commanding view of the Valley of Tears below, where the Syrian advance was halted in the Yom Kippur war of 1973.

Thirty-three years later, Ben-David, an officer in a volunteer Israeli Border Police unit, has come to the Golan Heights to help prepare for the next war. According to Israeli military intelligence, the battle will erupt here within the next two years. And the status of the Golan broke into the news Wednesday, when the Iraq Study Group advised President Bush to pressure Israel to return the disputed land to Syria if it cooperates on other matters of importance in the Middle East.

"If you look at all the pieces of the puzzle, you can see the writing's on the wall as far as the intentions of our enemies are concerned," Ben-David said. "When they say they want to kill us and wipe us off the map, I tend to believe them. We are taking it seriously to try and prepare and be ready if they carry out what they say they want to carry out."

The Golan is a largely flat plateau that soars 500 yards above the Sea of Galilee, punctuated by towering volcanic mountains and rising in the north to the peak of Mount Hermon and the mountain ranges of southern Lebanon. Today it has a population of about 36,000, half of them native Druze whose villages were overrun by Israel, the other half Israeli settlers who farm the rich volcanic soil that produces some of the country's best Chardonnay wine grapes.

Until 1967, the Golan Heights belonged to Syria, which used it as a launchpad for the 1967 Six-Day War. The Israelis beat the Syrians back up the narrow passes onto the plain as far as Kuneitra, and the area eventually was annexed in 1981 by Israel. In the 1973 war, the Syrians swept back across the plateau, where Israeli and Syrian armored divisions staged the second-largest tank battle since World War II before the advancing army was beaten back. The Syrians surrendered only after Israeli troops came within striking range of the capital Damascus, about 25 miles away.

The 1973 cease-fire left the two sides more or less where they ended in 1967, facing each other across a half-mile wide no-man's-land patrolled by the United Nations. To the west, on the Israeli side, stand hollow volcanic mountains now bristling with antennas and state-of-the-art eavesdropping equipment. On the east are the man-made Syrian bunkers dubbed "pitas" by the Israeli army because of their resemblance to the flat Arab bread.

After 30 years of quiet, the volcanoes of the Golan are rumbling again. Israel's war with Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer, combined with the diplomatic fallout from the U.S. war in Iraq, has upset the delicate balance that has kept the peace since 1973.

Now, the Iraq Study Group report on the Iraq war, made public with great fanfare last week, has placed the Golan Heights back on the U.S. diplomatic agenda. The report's authors, headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and ex-Rep. Lee Hamilton, recommended that Washington enter into face-to-face talks with Damascus and encourage Israel to enter direct negotiations to return the Golan to Syria, accompanied by U.S. security guarantees.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected that call Thursday, saying, "In my view, Syria's subversive operations, its support for Hamas -- which may be what's preventing real negotiations with the Palestinians -- do not give much hope for negotiations with Syria any time soon."

The Israeli military has closed the north-south border road to civilian traffic for fear of a cross-border abduction such as the one that sparked the war in Lebanon on July 12.

A security official at one of the Israeli border settlements, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the army was at its highest alert since 1973, and there was a feeling that war could be imminent.

He said a Syrian tank advance was not possible in the southern area of the Golan, which is scarred by deep ravines, but further north toward Kuneitra, the flat plain is easily traversed, inviting the advancing forces to sweep southward down the border road, which is edged by tank traps. The road itself is marked by chicane-type back-and-forth twists running through 20-foot-high mounds of large boulders, built by Israeli army engineers and packed with explosives. In case of war, he said, they will be detonated, blocking the road with large rocks and rendering it impassable to Syrian tanks.

But Israeli intelligence officials are not so sure the war will resemble 1973, according to a report published in the Israeli daily Haaretz. They think the Syrians have learned the lessons of the summer's war in Lebanon. If war comes, it may resemble a Hezbollah campaign -- cross-border raids, hails of rocket fire and guerrilla-type combat using shoulder-held anti-tank rockets instead of traditional battles.

Amos Yadlin, head of Israeli military intelligence, said in July that Syria was creating a military force modeled after Lebanon's Hezbollah. He said it could well be the Front for the Liberation of the Golan Heights, which was formed in June and includes Palestinians refugees living in camps near Damascus.

In an Aug. 25 interview with the Kuwaiti daily Al Ra'i Al-Aam, an official of the new Front said, "The sons of the occupied Golan, and the sons of proud Arab Syria, are continuing on their path, since the international community has abandoned them and turned its back on them. There is no other option left for us other than to adopt the Lebanese resistance as our patience has come to an end."

According to the latest monthly Peace Index poll, conducted by the Tami Steinmetz Center for Peace Research at Tel Aviv University, only 18 percent of Israelis believe there will be long-term peace with Syria. Two-thirds -- 67 percent -- of Israelis reject the idea of returning the Golan Heights to Syria in return for a full peace treaty, and half -- 51 percent -- believe that sooner or later, there will be another war with Syria in the Golan Heights.

"The Jewish public firmly opposes the formula of full peace with Syria for full withdrawal from the Golan, even at the risk of imminent war," said Peace Index authors Ephraim Yaar and Tamar Hermann.

Sami Bar-Lev, head of the local council at Katzrin, the largest Israeli town on the Golan Heights, disagreed with the Iraq Study Group recommendations on negotiating a return of the region. "The pre-1967 borders are not holy borders. They are frontiers drawn by the British and the French, and we don't need to go back to them -- we will never return to them," he said.

Israeli opposition to returning the Golan Heights is based in part on the conflicting signals coming from Damascus.

Syrian President Bashar Assad continues to permit the leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other radical Palestinian groups to operate in Damascus, and Syria is the main conduit for arms transfers to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Assad is also moving closer to Iran.

During the summer, Assad began calling for peace talks with Israel and the return of the Golan. Yet at the same time, he and his ministers threatened to take military action.

"If in the next coming months there will not be a political solution, military resistance will be the only solution for Syrians," Syria's Information Minister Mohsen Bilal declared during a high-profile tour of the Golan Heights in August.

Israel responded to the saber-rattling by dispatching Army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz to the Golan, where he spent an entire week on a well-publicized inspection of the Israeli brigade guarding the border.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters recently, "There's no indication that Syria wishes to be a stabilizing force. They are causing problems in Lebanon of extraordinary proportions. They have been totally unhelpful to (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas). ... They have stood side by side with militant Palestinian factions ... and they have insulted the moderate Arab states that are devoted to the road map," said Rice, alluding to the U.S.-backed peace plan for Israel and the Palestinians.

"That's not a very good record on which to suggest that just going and talking to Syria is going to get a change in their behavior," she said.

The flat area near Kuneitra, Syria, seen from the Israeli side, has been the site of ferocious fighting. Photo by David Blumenfeld, special to the Chronicle