Israel to Syria: Use chem weapons & we'll wipe you off map

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, September 20th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem and BILL HUTCHINSON in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Israeli officials vowed to wipe Syria off the map if it is attacked
with chemical weapons like one that reportedly exploded in July at a
secret Syrian base staffed with Iranian engineers.

Politicians in Israel said yesterday they were not picking a fight
with their neighbor, but pledged to forcefully retaliate if chemical
warheads come screaming across its shared border.

"We will not attack them first. But if they ever use these weapons
against Israel, then we must be clear — it will be the end of this
evil and brutal dictatorship," Yuval Steinitz, a right-wing member of
the Israeli parliament, told the Daily News yesterday.

Sparking shock waves across the Middle East was a report in Jane's
Defence Weekly about an accidental explosion at a top secret Syrian
base in July.

Citing Syrian intelligence sources, the report claimed a team of
Iranian and Syrian engineers were killed July 26 while trying to arm a
Scud-C missile with a mustard gas warhead.

Syrian official news agency, SANA, reported that least 15 Syrian
military personnel had been "martyred" and 50 others injured in the
blast near the northern city of Aleppo on the Turkish border. It
claimed the early morning explosion was caused by the high
temperatures.

The SANA report mentioned nothing of Iranian personnel killed in the mishap.

Jane's said dozens of Iranian workers were among those who died when a
fire in the missile's engine triggered the explosion and release of a
toxic cloud of lethal chemical agents banned under international law.

U.S. intelligence sources played down the report saying they've seen
no credible evidence chemical weapons were involved in the Syrian
accident.

Israeli air strike 'took out Syria's secret nuclear site'

DAILY MAIL : Tuesday 18 September

From Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

ISRAEL destroyed a fledgling Syrian nuclear weapons system in an air
raid 12 days ago, it was claimed last night.

The suggestion fuelled speculation that the air strike on a remote
area of northern Syria wiped out a secret nuclear programme
established with North Korean equipment.

John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told
Israeli television: 'I think it would be unusual for Israel to conduct
a military operation inside Syria other than for a very high value
target, and certainly a Syrian effort in the nuclear weapons area
would qualify.'

He added: 'I think this is a clear message not only to Syria. I think
it's a clear message to Iran as well that its continued efforts to
acquire nuclear weapons are not going to go unanswered.'

Israel imposed a rare news blackout after the raid.

But Syria claimed Israeli warplanes were forced to drop their
munitions and fuel harmlessly in the desert after coming under
anti-aircraft fire.

Syria has also protested to Israel about the breach of its airspace
and threatened to retaliate.

In a marked escalation of the crisis last night, Iran reportedly
threatened to rally to Syria's defence if its Arab ally is attacked by
either by Israel or the U.S.

Israeli radio claimed a Persian-language website had suggested Iran
has 600 Shihab-3 missiles that it will launch at Israel on the first
day Iran or Syria is attacked.

With a possible range of up to 1,260 miles, the Shihab-3 could reach
all of Israel, including its nuclear reactor in the south. The website
also said that Iran would launch up to 15 missiles at U.S. targets
inside Iraq if either Iran or Syria is attacked.

The air raid came amid heightened tensions over Iran's nuclear
ambitions and fears that another country in the Middle East may be
aligning itself with North Korea over an atomic programme.

Syria continues to host Hamas, Islamic Jihad and other deadly terror
groups in its capital Damascus.

It has also been accused of allowing Iran to ship huge amounts of
military hardware across its territory to the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Israel has always made clear it will respond if attacked, perhaps with
its own, far superior nuclear capability.

The news blackout means Israeli newspapers have been forced to recycle
speculation from around the world.

One of the most common claims is that the target of the attack was a
shipment of nuclear weapons from North Korea bound for use by Syria or
possibly to be passed on to Hezbollah.

The Israeli daily newspaper Maariv quoted 'foreign reports' of a raid
by combined air and ground forces more than 200 miles inside Syrian
territory.

It suggested 'the operation carried out was one of the most dangerous
and brilliant in the history of the Israeli defence forces'.

Andrew Semmel, the US deputy assistant secretary of state for nuclear
non-proliferation, said Syria was on the country's nuclear 'watch
list'.

'There are indicators that they do have something going on there,' he added.

'We do know there are a number of foreign technicians that have been
in Syria. We do know that there may have been contact between Syria
and some secret suppliers for nuclear equipment.'

The few tight-lipped comments coming from Israeli leaders seemed,
however, to suggest that any danger was past – at least for now.

The raid is said to have involved a group of up to eight Israeli F-15
warplanes, which penetrated Syrian airspace before dawn on September
6.

Two jettisoned fuel tanks were later discovered in Turkish territory.

It was the first Israeli raid into Syria since October 2003, when
Israeli jets attacked a terrorist training camp on the outskirts of
Damascus.

If it is confirmed that the air strike was to destroy a nuclear site
in Syria, it will evoke memories of Israel's 1981 raid on an Iraqi
nuclear reactor at Osiraq.

The facility was crippled in a surprise attack aimed at preventing
Saddam Hussein from acquiring the means to make nuclear weapons.

Emigre at center of murder investigation remains missing

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, September 17th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Herzliya, Israel
and BILL HUTCHINSON in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

The whereabouts of a Russian emigre at the center of a murder
investigation into the deaths of two New York women grew more
mysterious yesterday when his wife insisted she hasn't seen him in
years.

Detectives probing the deaths of Larysa Vasserman, 48, and Tatiana
Korkhova, 54, would like to talk with Eugene Perchikov, who is the
beneficiary in both women's life insurance policies.

But finding Perchikov might take a global dragnet as he jets around
the world from Russia to Israel and the United States.

"We have been separated for two years. He hasn't lived here since
then," Perchikov's wife, Natalia, told the Daily News from her
suburban Tel Aviv home. "We don't live together anymore."

The wife refused to answer questions about her estranged husband,
saying, "I can't tell you anything about him and I don't want to talk
about him."

While Perchikov has not been charged with any crime, he has been
accused in two lawsuits ofmurdering Vasserman and Korkhova.

In both cases, the medical examiner failed to determine the cause of death.

Meanwhile, the Manhattan district attorney's office is pursuing a
fraud investigation.

Perchikov collected more than $1 million on Vasserman's insurance
policy after she was found dead in her Manhattan home in 2004.

He was also named beneficiary on Korkhova's $1 million policy when she
was found dead in her Brooklyn apartment in 2002. Perchikov's Israeli
friend Larisa Yurkov-Shkolnik was listed as a beneficiary on a second
Korkhova insurance policy. Both insurance companies refused to pay.

Contacted yesterday by The News at her home in Raanana, Israel,
Yurkov-Shkolnik declined to discuss her involvement with Perchikov.

"I can't talk about anything to do with the court case in America,"
she said. "I don't want to talk about it."

Judge Orders Iran to Pay $13-Million for Terrorist Bombing That Killed Student

Judge Orders Iran to Pay $13-Million for Terrorist Bombing That Killed Student

Chronicle of Higher Education
Daily News Blog
September 11, 2007

Jerusalem - Officials at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have
welcomed a ruling by an American court that ordered the government of
Iran to pay compensation for an American student who was killed on the
campus in a Hamas bomb attack in 2002.

The student, Marla Bennett, a 24-year-old from San Diego who was a
graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, was studying for
an M.A. in Jewish education. She was one of nine students and
cafeteria workers killed in the lunchtime explosion in the crowded
Frank Sinatra Cafeteria at the university's Mount Scopus Campus.

In a ruling issued on August 30, Judge Royce C. Lamberth, of the U.S.
District Court in Washington, determined that because the bombing had
been carried out by members of the Hamas terrorist movement, which is
supported by the Iranian government, Iran bore responsibility for the
attack. Judge Lamberth ordered Iran to pay $12,904,548 to Ms.
Bennett's estate and family. The Iranian government did not respond to
the lawsuit, and as with other such terrorism-related litigation
against Iran, the plaintiffs are likely to find it difficult to
collect the judgment.

In a statement issued today, the Hebrew University administration said
it "pays tribute to the memory of Marla Bennett and all of the other
victims of the terrorist attack and expressed satisfaction at the
decision of the court, which perhaps will ease, if only slightly, the
sorrow of the family." ­Matthew Kalman

Police crack first neo Nazi cell ever discovered in Israel

DAILY MAIL 10 September 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

It seems almost unthinkable in the homeland created by the Jews after the terrors of fascism.

But Israel has a cell of neo-Nazis, accused of a string of attacks on foreign workers, orthodox Jews, drug addicts and gays.

The immigrants from the former Soviet Union are all Israeli citizens and have been arrested in connection with 15 assaults.

VIDEO: The disturbing footage of the Neo-Nazi suspects assaulting a victim

The anti-semitic group attacked at least 15 jews

News of the arrests has shocked Israel, which was founded nearly 60 years ago in the wake of the Holocaust.

The discovery of anti-Semitism within its own borders has dominated Israeli newspapers and TV and radio news shows.

All of the suspects are in their late teens or early 20s, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

Eight have been arrested and yesterday a court ruled that they should remain in custody.

Another has fled the country.

The gang documented its activities on film and in photographs, and Israeli TV stations showed grainy footage of victims lying helpless on the floor while several men kicked them.

Police found knives, spiked balls, explosives and other weapons in the suspects' possession, Mr Rosenfeld said.

White Power: a Nazi salute reveals his tattoo

One photo showed a suspect holding an M16 rifle in one hand and in the other, a sign reading "Heil Hitler".

Detectives discovered the skinhead ring after investigating the desecration of two synagogues in the central Israeli city of Petah Tikva more than a year ago.

Police found the cell was in contact with fascist groups abroad, and materials seized include a German-language video about neo-Nazis in the U.S..

Group members wore tattoos of Celtic crosses - a symbol adopted by white supremacists.

They also bore tattoos of barbed-wire fences, and the number 88, code for Heil Hitler because H is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Another tattoo proclaimed "White Power."

Targets of their carefully planned attacks included workers from Asia, drug addicts, homosexuals, punks and Jews who wore skullcaps.

In one case the group discussed planning a murder, Mr Rosenfeld said, without providing details.

The group leader was named as Eli Boanitov, 19, of Petah Tikva.

In the past, there have been only isolated cases of neo-Nazi activity in Israel.

"This is the first time that we've arrested such a large number of individuals who are part of an organised neo-Nazi group," Mr Rosenfeld said.

At the hearing, suspects cover their faces with t-shirts

Skrewdriver: a Neo Nazi rock band formed in the late 70's

The eight arrested youths immigrated to Israel under the Law of Return, which grants automatic Israeli citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent.

Police said none of them were Jewish as defined by religious law.

All profess Christianity.

More than a million Jews immigrated from the former Soviet Union to Israel in the 1990s, and more than half a million in the 20 years before that.

Because of the high assimilation rate in the Soviet Union, many Jews there married non- Jews.

When they later moved to Israel, they took their spouses, children and grandchildren with them.

This means many from the former Soviet Union with questionable ties to Judaism have been allowed to immigrate.

Mr Rosenfeld said all of the suspects had "parents or grandparents who were Jewish in one way or another".

Israel doesn't have a hate crimes law, and suspects in past cases have been tried as Holocaust deniers, he added.

The suspects came to Israel as Russian immigrants

From Boston to the West Bank Art school director has a vital vision

By Matthew Kalman, Globe Correspondent | August 15, 2007

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- At first, the road sign at a busy intersection
in this town looks like any other: A raised silhouette of a hand on a
red background in a circular white border.

But the index and middle fingers of the hand are missing, and the
warning written in Arabic in the border has only a tangential
connection to traffic control: Awkefu al-ketel "Stop the killing."

It's a powerful message directed at both sides in the civil war
between Hamas and Fatah, which has claimed dozens of lives in the Gaza
Strip and could spread to the West Bank.

The artwork, displayed at 50 major junctions across Ramallah and its
neighboring town El Bireh, is the creation of Majd Abdel Hamid, a
19-year-old local artist and one of 12 students selected for the
opening semester of the newly inaugurated International Academy of Art
Palestine.

"It's missing the two victory fingers which usually indicate the
Palestinian revolution and victory. It was a sign that Arafat often
used," explains Hamid. "It says that no one is going to win. It's a
lose-lose situation. The situation with killing is like losing parts
of your body, it's something really bloody."

Hamid's road sign is the first art project to be sponsored by the
Academy and a perfect example of what its founders, a group of local
Palestinian artists, hope to achieve.

"Politicians for more than 60 years haven't really solved our
problems," says Maria C. Khoury, the Academy's Boston-educated project
director.

"For a long time, artists have wanted to say that through art there
can be a new language, there can be communication among ourselves, as
artists, and with the international community," she says.

Khoury, 47, who was born in Greece and raised in Denver, is a graduate
of Hellenic College in Brookline and Harvard University Extension
School, with a doctorate in childhood education from Boston
University. She met her Palestinian husband David at Hellenic College
and in 1996 emigrated to Taybeh, the tiny West Bank village where he
was born.

The Khoury family owns Foley's Liquors in Brookline and on their
return to the West Bank they poured their savings into creating Taybeh
Brewing Co., the first Palestinian brewery. It flourishes despite the
Israeli occupation, the Palestinian intifada, and the rise of Hamas,
which disapproves of alcohol even when brewed by Greek Orthodox
Christians. Today, David Khoury is the mayor of Taybeh.

Maria Khoury says the brewery slogan -- "Taste the Revolution" -- was
built on the same principle as the International Academy of Art
Palestine.

"We're trying to establish an institute that speaks out and says we
love our country, we love our culture," she says. "If we have freedom,
we too can produce excellent products, not just in business. My
husband tries to do that in business and commerce. But we also do it
in the arts, to have the freedom to express who we are."

The Academy aims to be the first independent degree-awarding art
institute in Palestine. Art courses are available at three Palestinian
universities, but their aim is to train high school teachers and they
focus on traditional Arabic art.

The 12 students selected to begin Academy studies this fall will focus
on contemporary visual art across a range of disciplines from video
installations to sculpture to painting.

The Academy's launch came thanks to the initiative of Henrik Placht, a
Norwegian artist who visited the West Bank in 2002 at the height of
the intifada. Placht secured a three-year grant of $1 million per year
from the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the
sponsorship of the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

Placht has already initiated a series of student visits and teaching
exchanges, which began this summer with a Palestinian student building
an Israeli military checkpoint as an art installation at an Oslo train
station.

Khoury is justly proud of the Academy's premises in El Bireh, the
former home of Palestinian historian Aref Al Aref. It housed a
fledgling art gallery more than 20 years ago. The house is a
century-old stone mansion that has been refurbished with studio space
in the basement and the loft, a computer design room, and, at its
center, a white cube with parquet wood flooring, the only exhibition
space of its kind in the Ramallah area.

For Nabil Anani, one of the four local artists who established the
Academy, it is a dream come true.

Anani, 64, was one of four Palestinian artists who founded the "New
Vision" movement during the first intifada. Together they produced
Palestinian art using local materials, placing their work at the
center of the struggle against the occupation.

"The Israelis know that art is important for the Palestinians and so
they were against us from the beginning," Anani says. "They
confiscated many artworks. They arrested many artists. They closed
many exhibitions."

Since the Oslo peace accords in 1993, the Israelis have largely
withdrawn from towns like Ramallah and El Bireh, but freedom is still
elusive. Israeli settlements, and the constant presence of military
jeeps and checkpoints are daily obstacles to free movement around the
West Bank.

Meanwhile, internal political tensions between Hamas and Fatah have
recently erupted into the kind of violence which prompted Hamid's
"Stop the Killing" project.

Anani says a Palestinian art academy is not a luxury -- it's a necessity.

"Palestine needs culture, needs writers, needs artists, needs dance,"
he says. "They need food, hospitals, security, work -- they need
everything. But if you want food, you also want to see art and to
dance and to be happy."

Adds Khoury: "We are starving as Palestinian people to be normal, so
we don't only just need food and medicine. We need to feed our souls."

We'll never surrender! Israeli settlers protest during clash with cops

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, August 8th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - Wielding sledgehammers and power saws, Israeli police in riot gear smashed through doors and walls in a predawn raid on an illegal Jewish settlement in the West Bank town of Hebron yesterday, destroying three homes.

Police - more than 3,000 officers backed by soldiers - battled with more than 200 demonstrators who pelted them with stones, light bulbs, oil, flour and water.

"We will never surrender!" settler leaders chanted through bullhorns.

Settlers were dragged shouting and screaming from the houses, located in a former Arab market. Three young activists who barricaded themselves inside one of the homes were evicted by an elite army unit usually tasked with rescuing victims of earthquakes and collapsed buildings.

Four soldiers, 14 police officers and 12 settlers were injured during the operation, a police spokesman said. Eleven settlers were detained briefly and two were arrested.

The illegal settlement was built at the site of the ancient Jewish Quarter of the city, close to the Tombs of the Patriarchs. Two families were evicted, along with protesters who had occupied a third house in the area.

Tensions remain high in Hebron, the only town in the West Bank where Jewish settlers live in the middle of the Palestinian population under heavy military protection.

Settler leaders vowed not to allow more West Bank outposts to be demolished. They said the Hebron houses, populated in protest at the murder of baby Shalhevet Pass by a Palestinian sniper in 2001, would be rebuilt.

"We will return to the Shalhevet neighborhood and the families will be back in their homes," said Noam Arnon, spokesman for the Israeli settlers in Hebron.

The raid triggered a political debate inside Israel after several soldiers refused to follow orders to oust the settlers.

The destruction of the settler homes in the heart of Hebron came as Israeli leaders floated a new peace plan seeking to establish a Palestinian state in the West Bank, with land inside Israel swapped for the larger settlement blocs.

No vacancy in Blair's bid for housing in Jerusalem

Hilltop compound sought, though his work is in West Bank

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Monday, July 23, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will find no space at the inn when he turns up today at Government House, the U.N. headquarters in Jerusalem where he has asked to live and work in his new job as Middle East special envoy.

His new diplomatic colleagues are already incensed at the way Blair's appointment was sprung by the United States last month on the Quartet -- representing the United Nations, European Union, Russia and United States -- and their dismay increased this week when Blair requested accommodations and offices for himself at Government House, a picturesque hilltop compound in southern Jerusalem built in 1930 to house the British High Commissioner under the Palestine Mandate.

It sits on the summit of the Hill of Evil Counsel, where Judas Iscariot is said to have betrayed Jesus for 30 shekels of silver, and has spectacular views to the north over the Dome of the Rock, the Old City of Jerusalem and southwards over Bethlehem, Herodion and the Judean Desert.

Francesco Manca, spokesman for the U.N. Truce Supervision Organization -- which controls Government House -- said there is no empty office space for Blair and the only available living quarters is a two-room apartment that is already occupied by the head of the truce organization, Australian Maj. Gen. Ian Campbell Gordon.

"At present we have nothing," Manca said. "The current situation in Government House is that we are looking for office space for our existing purposes without the addition of anyone new. We are already at the stage where we are using freight containers for extra office space. This is a usual U.N. solution in Sudan but not in Jerusalem. There is no empty house here."

Manca pointed out that Blair's predecessor, former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, also considered Government House but set up his office at the American Colony Hotel across town.

"The idea of having Blair here cannot be implemented immediately. Even if this is chosen as the place, significant changes would have to take place to make it feasible," he said.

The prospect of Blair and perhaps a dozen support staff taking up residence in the already overcrowded compound at Government House has set diplomatic tongues wagging in Jerusalem.

Blair probably chose Government House because of its relative isolation and well-established security systems, but U.N. officials do not relish the prospect of hosting such a high-profile tenant who is considered a high-risk target because of his controversial involvement in the Middle East as prime minister.

Blair is considered so unpopular with ordinary Palestinians, who regarded Saddam Hussein as a hero and are firmly opposed to the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq, that it will be impossible for him to stay in Ramallah, even though his new job working with the Palestinians seems to demand it.

"For security reasons, he has to be in Jerusalem," said a U.N. official. "Security is a major problem. Because of his former role as prime minister he would be in danger in the West Bank."

An elegant sandstone chateau built in a 16-acre compound strategically located on a hilltop overlooking the Old City, Government House opened in 1930 to serve as the headquarters for the British high commissioner to Palestine. Since 1948, it has been the headquarters of UNTSO, set up to monitor the Israeli-Jordanian and Israeli-Egyptian cease-fires.

In 1994, the newly appointed special coordinator for the Middle East peace process and his staff (UNSCO) asked to set up their offices there, and were housed in freight containers and hastily constructed modern buildings set up in the grounds. Built in an octagon from locally quarried stone in a blend of traditional Arabic and Mediterranean styles, the main building is surrounded by shaded terraces set among the landscaped formal gardens with a huge ornamental fountain at their center.

The compound is hidden from view by pines and cypress trees, high walls, a severe gateway and modern security systems supplemented with razor wire, anti-car-bomb barricades and cameras.

Diplomats in Jerusalem already are smarting from Blair's comments at his first press conference as special envoy in Lisbon on Thursday, where he appeared to demand a wider political mandate than the narrow task of building Palestinian institutions, the role assigned him by the Quartet.

"If there is going to be a Palestinian state, it is very important to build the capacity of the institutions for this state to be a viable one," said Marc Otte, the EU special representative to the Middle East peace process. "That is the topic on which he will concentrate at the outset, for the time being. The rest, we'll see."

"He expects a political mandate. So far he does not have one," said another UN official. "Blair's focus is only now on building Palestinian institutions and fundraising to build those institutions. His political role is limited. He may be expecting a wider political role. But at the moment, he's not been granted that role. It's not part of his mandate," said the official.

"This might upset a lot of people, including other envoys of other countries. This is your role. You go outside that and it means you are overlapping other people's work. It's a big problem."

This article appeared on page A - 14 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Cinnamon cure for diseases

SUNDAY EXPRESS
22 July 2007

From Matthew Kalman

A PASSAGE from the Bible may hold the key to fighting the most dreaded diseases of the 21st century, using a cinnamon-based remedy developed by high priests of Old Testament times.
Zoology professor Michael Ovadia, of Tel Aviv University - a world-renowned expert on antidotes for snake venom - made the discovery after hearing a passage from the Bible which described temple priests anointing themselves with oil.
"The High Priests, the Cohens, would prepare a holy oil used on their bodies before they made a ritual animal sacrifice, " Ovadia said. "I had a hunch that this oil, prepared with cinnamon and other spices, played a role in preventing the spread of infectious agents to people."
The special properties of cinnamon have been known since ancient times, when it was used as a cure for many ailments including diabetes, coughing and sore throats. Today, cinnamon extracts boasting healing properties are widely available.
But simply munching a cinnamon stick will not cure HIV or flu.
"You cannot just take the cinnamon by itself, " Professor Ovadia said, "because the essential oils can be damaging to humans in high doses." But the sweet smell of cinnamon could be wafting through airports, railway stations and other crowded public places as a protection against HIV, herpes, bird flu and other dangerous viruses.
Patented cinnamon extract could be installed in air-conditioning systems, face masks and even aerosol sprays.
The Tel Aviv team's patented formula, codenamed VNF, can attack a broad range of viruses.
In animal tests, it stopped viruses in less than a minute.
Human testing is still some way off. But Dr Nissim Chen, of the university's business arm, said: "We think it could be used in vaccinations against avian influenza."

Proposed Huge Jump in Israeli Tuition Prompts Renewed Threat of Student Strike

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
Tuesday, July 17, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

Jerusalem

Student leaders in Israel are threatening a nationwide undergraduate strike if the government imposes a 70-percent jump in tuition and carries out other recommendations of a committee that on Monday published a wide-ranging report on reforms in higher education.

The Shochat Committee's proposals include doubling the higher-education budget, to $2.5-billion; providing $225-million in new research funds; doubling the budget of Israel's National Science Foundation, to $120-million; providing special undergraduate scholarships in the humanities; and rewarding outstanding researchers and academics in an effort to stop an Israeli "brain drain" to the United States.

"The implementation of these reforms will be like injecting oxygen into a system that has suffered severe deterioration," said a former finance minister, Avraham Shochat, who led the committee. "This is the most comprehensive and thorough reform proposal to strengthen the higher-education system in Israel that has ever been presented."

Mr. Shochat said the reforms, if enacted, would increase access to higher education for all Israelis wishing to attend university, add 450 new lecturers to the academic staff, reduce class sizes, and improve centers of excellence in research and teaching.

The committee, composed of Education and Finance Ministry officials, academics, and a former university president, recommended "unprecedented aid systems for increasing accessibility." That goal would be attained through increased scholarships for students from poorer families and from sections of society where university attendance is not strongly encouraged.

But the most controversial aspect of the proposals was the recommendation to raise undergraduate tuition from about $2,000 to $3,500 a year.

Mr. Shochat said that most of the fee for each student should be absorbed by a long-term loan, which would only become repayable a year after graduation, and then only if the student was earning a wage comparable to a high-school teacher. He said students would actually pay less while studying, enabling everyone in Israeli society to attend college "irrespective of their socioeconomic status or the financial situation of their parents."

Students declined an invitation to sit on the committee, and ended a crippling 41-day strike in May with a promise from the government that they would be consulted before any of the proposals were adopted. On Monday they appeared to be poised to reject the reform program.

"We will not accept loans. We will not allow this farcical reform to go ahead," said Itai Shonshein, chairman of the National Union of Israeli Students.

He said the apparent doubling of the higher-education budget was "an illusion" because the budget had been halved in recent years.

"They are replacing the money taken by the government with the money of the students," he said.

Mr. Shonshein threatened that if the government did not allow the students to exercise a veto over the proposals, "the next school year will not open."

Palestinian Art Institute to Open in September

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
July 7, 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN

The first higher-education institution in the Palestinian territories dedicated solely to art has selected its first 12 students.

The International Academy of Art Palestine, which plans to open in September, will offer a four-year program and be based in Ramallah.

The academy, backed by the Palestinian Association for Contemporary Art, has applied for accreditation from the Palestinian Ministry of Education to grant undergraduate degrees in contemporary visual arts.

The academy's project director, Maria C. Khoury, an education specialist who graduated from Harvard University and Boston University, said she hoped the academy would become "the international portal in the Arab world for contemporary art."

The academy has leased the historic Aref Al-Aref house in Ramallah, which housed the town's first Palestinian art gallery when it opened in 1979. The project is the brainchild of four Palestinian artists who wanted to establish a dedicated institute to teach a new generation of local artists and develop a curriculum appropriate to local conditions.

The money for the academy's first three years of operation was donated by the Royal Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in partnership with the Oslo National Academy of the Arts.

http://chronicle.com
Section: International
Volume 53, Issue 45, Page A31

Freed BBC journalist: Captivity like being buried alive

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Thursday, July 5th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - BBC reporter Alan Johnston stepped into the bright sunshine yesterday after being held captive in a darkened room for 114 days and proclaimed: "It is unimaginably good to be free."

Johnston, 45, was snatched from his car in broad daylight on a side street in Gaza City on March 12 and held by a radical Islamic group calling itself the Army of Islam.

He was released early yesterday after Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, threatened to storm the militant stronghold where he was being held and kill his captors.

The freed journalist told reporters he was kept in isolation, unable to see sunlight.

"It was the most appalling experience, on and on, like being buried alive, removed from life," said Johnston, looking pale and gaunt but otherwise in good health despite his nearly four-month ordeal.

He said it was "always frightening" and "occasionally quite terrifying."

"I just didn't know when it would end or how it would end," he said.

Johnston called his captors "dangerous and unpredictable," but said he developed a "surreal, 'Odd Couple'" relationship with one "extraordinarily moody guard."

"I dreamt many times of being free again and always woke up in that room.... The last 16 weeks have been the very worst of my life."

Johnston said the one silver lining during his captivity was that he had a radio and was able to listen to his BBC colleagues.

"How many kidnap victims are able to sit and listen to their friends giving them messages of support from around the world? I felt at one point as though all the journalists in the world were coming to the rescue," Johnston said.

The reporter said he owed his release to Hamas. "I'm pretty sure that if Hamas hadn't come in and turned the heat on, I'd still be in that room."

Immediately after his release, Johnston was hustled off to a meeting with former Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, who briefly draped a Palestinian flag around the reporter's shoulders.

Israel and the rival Palestinian party Fatah called Johnston's release a stage-managed Hamas publicity stunt.

"They released Johnston without getting anything in return because they want to make a good impression on the world," said Israeli cabinet minister Gideon Ezra.

Fatah officials said Hamas had given the kidnappers cash and weapons for Johnston's release.

Johnston was expected to spend some time resting at the British Consulate in east Jerusalem before flying home to see his family.

In Scotland, his parents said they were "overjoyed" to get a phone call from their son.

"It's been 114 days of a living nightmare and just to hear his voice," said his father, Graham Johnston.

"All he said was: 'Hello, Dad' and I [said]: 'Hello, son, I hear you're all right.' He said: 'I'm a 100%.'"

HOW CAN BLAIR BE OUR PEACE ENVOY?

SUNDAY EXPRESS
Sunday July 1,2007

By Matthew Kalman in Jerusalem

TONY Blair’s appointment as a Middle East peace envoy has been met with anger and derision across the region where he hopes to bring an end to decades of conflict.

Political commentators and ordinary ­citizens were united last night in condemning the former Prime Minister as little more than a puppet of American President George W Bush.

Officially, Palestinian moderates close to President Mahmoud Abbas welcomed Mr Blair’s appointment. So did Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, who hailed him as a “true friend of the State of Israel”.

But behind the scenes, few expect Mr Blair to solve the intractable problems of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – some predicted he would not last long in his new job.

In Gaza, radical groups shrugged off Mr Blair’s appointment as an irrelevance.

“Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project,” said Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum. “He makes no independent decisions and is practising terrorism against Arabs. Such a person cannot be a representative for peace.”

Blair is led by the Zionist-American plan and project.
Hamas

Islamic Jihad leader Khaled Al-Batch said: “I don’t think Tony Blair will do anything good, he is only obeying the United States and its crimes.

“He appears to be an on-off button controlled from the White House. How can such a person be a peacemaker after being a warmonger? He is not welcome at all here.”

Abu Mujahed, spokesman for the Popular Resistance Committees, described Mr Blair as a “loser”.

“He lost control of the leadership of his country,” Mujahed said. “He was a loser in Iraq. So the international community is trying to hide his total failure by exporting him and sending him to the Palestinian territories. We don’t expect any success or help at all from this man.”

Political commentators were equally hostile towards Mr Blair. Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz warned that though he may have brought peace to Northern Ireland, he faces a far tougher task in the Middle East.

“Here, among our foes, the appetite for death has long since turned in upon itself,” Horovitz said, “and breaking the addiction may be beyond the powers of even the most energetic and persuasive of spurned British Prime Ministers.”

Mr Blair is the latest in a series of high-powered political emissaries to be sent to the Middle East since the start of the Palestinian intifada uprising in September 2000, by a quartet comprised of the US, United Nations, European Union and Russia.

The list includes American Senator George Mitchell, former CIA director George Tennet, former World Bank chief James Wolfensohn and US General Keith Dayton. All have failed – particularly Dayton, whose plan to buttress Fatah fighters in the Gaza Strip against a Hamas takeover collapsed two weeks ago.

Even moderate voices cast doubt on the wisdom of handing the job to Mr Blair.

An editorial in Al Bayan, the government paper of the United Arab Emirates, said: “Certainly the man is endowed with great experience and competence, but is he capable of assuming such a mission at this precise moment, he who goes all the way as a Bush man?”

Ordinary Palestinians dismissed Mr Blair as just another western interloper, out of touch with the reality of Middle East life.

“He came here so many times and we are still in the same situation, actually things are worse,” said shopkeeper Mohammed Abu Amin, in the West Bank town of Ramallah. “He does not understand the Palestinians and he does not seem able to get Israel to change its policies.”

Despite the onslaught of criticism, there was one voice prepared to speak up for Mr Blair. US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice hailed his record “at the forefront of international efforts to promote peace and reconciliation around the world, from Northern Ireland to the Balkans and beyond”.

But Mr Blair’s highly restricted mandate is limited to building Palestinian institutions and critics claim it will allow little scope for his skill at peacemaking. Leaving him only to become a high-powered fund-raiser for the Palestinians who have received more international aid per head, in the past 15 years, than any other nation on earth.

Blair tactics in Mideast

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Wednesday, June 27th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem and
ELLEN TUMPOSKY in London
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Tony Blair, who is leaving 10 Downing St. today after 10 years as Britain's prime minister, is expected to take on a new role as a special Mideast peace envoy.

Members of the international Quartet - the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia - will announce the appointment simultaneously today, as long as some last-minute objections on Moscow's part can be resolved, officials said.

Quartet officials met in Jerusalem yesterday to discuss the post, said Marc Otte, the EU delegate to the Mideast peace process. He said he did not know what Russia's reservations were, but hoped they could be resolved.

"Prime Minister Blair ... has shown an interest and a readiness to be useful," Otte told the Daily News. "He offered to be of help in a particular juncture of the peace process."

In London, Blair's answer to reporters' questions suggested he was at least considering the job.

"I think that anybody who cares about greater peace and stability in the world knows that a lasting and enduring resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian issue is essential," said Blair, who hands over power today to Gordon Brown.

Blair is expected to concentrate on political and economic reform to bolster the government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.Israeli leaders welcomed the news of Blair's expected appointment.

A statement from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office called him "a true friend." An official from Abbas' Fatah Party, which now rules only the West Bank, said, "We need all the help we can get."

Israel faces Hamas rule in Gaza

Territories tense as disruptions plague power, food, borders

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Tuesday, June 19, 2007 - Page A3

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- While Israel, along with the United States and the European Union, moved Monday to lift sanctions against the Palestinian Authority -- partly in the hopes of reopening peace negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas -- Israeli leaders now have to grapple with the practical implications of the Hamas conquest of the Gaza Strip.

Most immediately, Israel faces a potential humanitarian crisis confronting the territories' 1.4 million inhabitants.

This was apparent Monday at the Erez crossing, the main crossing between Gaza and Israel, where at least 150 men, women and children have been stranded for two days without food and water in blazing heat.

"We have no milk, water or food. My child's milk is running out. We have no money. We are under siege," said one 22-year-old woman who had been waiting with her 3-month-old baby since Saturday for permission to cross Israel and reach her family in the West Bank. "We can't return to Gaza. My husband is threatened, that is why we are trying to run," said the woman, who would not give her name.

Stranded residents gathered in the concrete tunnel that links the Israeli and Palestinian sides of the border crossing until Monday evening, when Palestinian gunmen from the radical Popular Resistance Committees attacked them and the Israeli positions beyond with machine guns and hand grenades. At least two people were reportedly killed, including a senior Fatah security officer.

Israeli Justice Minister Daniel Friedman said the residents should be allowed through to the West Bank. "Israel should ease their passage, as long as they are not Hamas people or endanger Israeli security," he said.

But Guy Bechor, head of Middle Eastern studies at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, disagreed. "As soon as we let one of them through, millions will want to follow," he said.

And the trouble at the border is just one of many problems.

Thousands of Gazans used to work inside Israel, but since the second Palestinian uprising erupted in September 2000, the border has been closed to all but a few. Since then, unemployment inside the Gaza Strip has reached as high as 50 percent. In addition, Israeli reprisals for Palestinian terror attacks have destroyed roads, power lines and factories suspected of producing bombs and rockets.

Israeli security measures against arms smuggling include the closure of the local airport and a frequent ban on fishing. Under the economic clauses of the 1994 Oslo Peace Accords, all goods imported to Gaza must first pass through Israel, which also supplies the coastal strip of territory with fresh water, electricity, fresh fruit and vegetables, medical supplies and gasoline.

The immediate consequence of last week's Hamas coup was the cessation of these essential supplies. Thousands of tons of fresh fruit and vegetables were destroyed, causing shortages inside the Strip. Dor Alon, the private gasoline company that supplies fuel for vehicles and operates Gaza's only power plant generating electricity, halted supplies Sunday when officials found they were unable to contact their Palestinian colleagues on the other side. The flow resumed Monday.

But while there were calls for Israel to move food and medical supplies into Gaza, Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, the minister of infrastructure, said Israel should restrict the movement to just one crossing, via the town of Rafah, on the Egyptian border.

"I am stopping everything until I understand what is going on there," said Ben-Eliezer.

But Egypt may not be willing to pick up the slack, following the failure of a power-sharing agreement it had tried to broker between Hamas and Fatah.

"Israeli illusions aside, neither Egypt nor Jordan is about to take over responsibility for, respectively, Gaza and the West Bank, thereby letting Israel off the hook," wrote Yossi Alpher, co-editor of the respected bitterlemons.org, a joint Israeli-Palestinian Web site.

Meanwhile, there were reports that Israel is contemplating a major military assault on Gaza should the newly empowered Hamas escalate attacks from the territory. While there appeared to be no immediate plans for such an invasion -- despite the resumption of rocket attacks on Israeli territory Monday night -- some observers think a military operation is probably unavoidable over the long term.

"Eventually, I'm afraid, Israel will be forced to initiate a comprehensive operation against this Iranian military base which is being established on our southern border," said Tzachi Hanegbi, chairman of Israel's parliamentary committee for defense and foreign affairs. "We must dictate the circumstances of that operation and not be dragged into it by developing events."

Bechor, however, called for Israel to "disengage" completely from Gaza.

"There are processes in the Middle East which little Israel is unable to change," he said. "Alongside political Islam is a process sweeping the entire Middle East. Israel cannot stop it. The rise of Shia Islam and the fall of Sunni Islam. The collapse of Arab nationalism -- in this case of Palestinian nationalism.

"These are unstoppable processes, and all Israel can do is defend herself. We are doomed if we try to become involved in these huge processes."

This article appeared on page A - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Abbas swears in government

But Hamas says it won't talk to 'illegitimate & illegal' body

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Monday, June 18th 2007

BY MATTHEW KALMAN
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS

JERUSALEM - Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas swore in a new emergency government yesterday, a move that was met with derision by the Islamic militants who now rule the violence-ravaged Gaza Strip.

The developments came a day after Hamas completed its conquest of Gaza
by ransacking Yasser Arafat's beachfront villa, stealing even the late
leader's Nobel Peace medal.

In the West Bank, where Abbas' Fatah Party remained in control, Finance
Minister Salam Fayyad was named the new prime minister, in place of
Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh.

"The first priority of our government is security and the security
situation," Fayyad, who lived and studied in the U.S. for 20 years, told
reporters after the brief ceremony in Ramallah.

"The mission will be difficult and hard, but not impossible," he said.
But Hamas denounced the new government as "illegitimate and illegal."

"We will not recognize it. We will not work with it," said Hamas
spokesman Ismail Radwan.

The United States, Israel and European states indicated they would
release tax revenues and donor funds to Fayyad's new government, after a
15-month embargo of the Hamas-led administration pushed the Palestinian
Authority to the brink of bankruptcy.

At least 160 Palestinians were killed and 796 were wounded in last
week's fighting, the Al-Mizan Center for Human Rights reported.

The dead included 45 civilians as well as Fatah fighters who were
executed in the streets.

Al-Mizan said the death toll could still rise because many people were
missing and there were dozens of people with serious wounds. Hundreds of
senior Fatah officials have fled Gaza for the West Bank with Israel's
permission, but many civilians weren't so lucky.

At least 150 men, women and children were stranded yesterday without
food and water in blazing heat at the Erez border crossing. Israeli
soldiers fired tear gas and shot in the air as the crowd neared the
heavily fortified checkpoint.

One 22-year-old woman said she had been waiting with her 3-month-old
baby since Saturday for permission to cross Israel and reach her family
in the West Bank.

"We have no milk, water or food. My child's milk is running out. We have
no money. We are under siege. They don't agree to let us cross through
Erez, but we can't return to Gaza. My husband is threatened, that is why
we are trying to run," she said.

As Israel wondered how to react to the new militant Islamic state on its
southern border, the northern city of Kiryat Shmona came under rocket
fire yesterday for the first time since last year's Lebanon war.

At least three rockets were fired from Lebanon, apparently by a small
Palestinian group. They caused damage but no casualties.

The day terror won

Hamas overruns the Gaza Strip

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Friday, June 15th 2007

By MATTHEW KALMAN in Jerusalem
and CORKY SIEMASZKO in New York
DAILY NEWS WRITERS

Israel has a radical Islamic state sitting on its doorstep.

Hamas militants seized control of the Gaza Strip yesterday and deposed
the Palestinian political party that recognizes the Jewish state - and
then proceeded to shoot vanquished Fatah Party fighters in the street
like dogs.

"The era of justice and Islamic rule have arrived," Islam Shahawan, a
spokesman for Hamas' militia, told Hamas radio.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas declared a state of emergency and
dissolved his coalition government, firing the Hamas Prime Minister
Ismail Haniyeh. But Hamas just laughed.

"Hamas rejects the Abbas decision," senior Hamas official Sami Abu
Zuhri said. "In practical terms these decisions are worthless."

Nizar Rayan, another prominent Hamas official, called on "Abbas' army
of prostitutes to surrender or else they will be executed in public."

By nightfall, green Hamas flags were flying from the rooftops of the
presidential compound and other Palestinian Authority bastions while
Hamas fighters boasted they had "executed" Samih al-Madhoun, a close
ally of Abbas' top security aide.

Other Fatah fighters loyal to Abbas were marched half-naked from the
hated Preventive Security Service complex in Gaza City. Witnesses
reported that some were later executed gangland-style by masked Hamas
militiamen. "This is a real coup against the Palestinian Authority,"
said Nabil Amr, a top Abbas aide.

Unable and unwilling to intervene, the Israelis watched with growing
despair as Hamas - bankrolled by Iran and bent on destroying the
Jewish state - took over a territory they had just turned over to the
Palestinian Authority in 2005.

"Hamas has to stop terrorizing the Palestinian people," White House
spokesman Tony Snow said.

Secretary of State Rice telephoned Abbas in the West Bank but could do
little more than voice her support for the beleaguered Palestinian
leader.

Meanwhile, there was mayhem in Gaza City as Hamas murdered Fatah men -
sometimes while the victims' wives and children looked on, witnesses
said.

"They are executing them one by one," a witness who gave his name as
Amjad told The Associated Press. "They are carrying one of them on
their shoulders, putting him on a sand dune, turning him around and
shooting."

Abbas, who had been banking on his far more numerous Fatah fighters to
hold off Hamas, ordered his elite presidential guard to strike back.
But the order came too late.

His forces were already routed by the better-armed and
better-disciplined Hamas fighters. The death toll was at least 80 and
expected to climb.

Fatah and Hamas have battled sporadically since Hamas shocked the
world last year by winning the parliamentary elections. The latest
round of violence started on Sunday and exploded into a full-fledged
war yesterday.

Hamas' takeover of Gaza ratchets up tension

TWO STATES: End of an era for Fatah as ruling force

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
Friday, June 15, 2007

Matthew Kalman, Chronicle Foreign Service

Jerusalem -- The green flag of Hamas, emblazoned with verses from the
Quran, fluttered over the Palestinian Authority security headquarters
in Gaza Thursday, signaling the end of an era and plunging the region
into an even more uncertain and volatile future.

The conquest of Gaza, in less than a week of fighting that killed at
least 90 people in the past five days, marks the beginning of an
Islamic ministate, home to 1.4 million people along a coastal strip of
the Mediterranean. It also ratchets up tension with Israel, a
sovereign country Hamas has vowed to eliminate and continues to
bombard with rockets.

"This is a real coup against the Palestinian Authority," said Nabil
Amr, a top aide to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who
declared a state of emergency and dissolved the Hamas-led unity
government. Abbas also ordered his forces to round up Hamas operatives
in the West Bank, where Fatah remains largely in control of 2 million
Palestinians. In Ramallah, angry supporters torched the office of
three Hamas lawmakers.

Abbas' decrees appeared to have little impact on Hamas, or on facts on
the ground, except perhaps for the emergence of two rival Palestinian
governments -- one in Gaza, the other in the West Bank.

"Hamas rejects the Abbas decisions. In practical terms these decisions
are worthless," Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. (Hamas)
"Prime Minister (Ismail) Haniyeh remains the head of the government
even if it was dissolved by the president."

"How can you declare a state of emergency if you don't have a
government to enforce it?" added Hamas legislator Salah Bardaweel.

Hamas also dominates the Palestinian Legislative Council, which would
need to approve any new government, noted Bardaweel, who said Gaza
would now become a safer area. "Now we can start implementing our
security plan for imposing law and order," he said.

On Thursday, Hamas fighters captured Gaza City's three main security
compounds and marched half-naked Fatah fighters with arms raised from
the main security building. Eyewitnesses reported that some Fatah
officers were dragged out of the Preventive Security headquarters in
the Tal al-Hawa neighborhood and later killed gangland-style by masked
Hamas militiamen.

But Hamas' military moves, clearly planned long in advance, and the
total collapse of U.S.-trained and -equipped Fatah security forces,
left many observers, both here and abroad, in shock. Fatah, which has
suffered from corruption and a lack of leadership, is estimated to
have twice as many gunmen as Hamas.

In past years, the United States, the European Union and other
European states have poured millions of dollars into Abbas'
presidential guard and lavished Fatah with training, weapons and other
equipment, believing the secular group would stem the rise of Hamas,
by force if necessary. That illusion was shattered Thursday as dozens
of U.S.-trained fighters were marched out of Fatah-dominated security
installations in their underwear.

"The Palestinian Authority has failed because for 15 years it failed
to achieve any of its goals, above all Palestinian statehood," said
Ali Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University.
"Israel has also contributed to its downfall by building the
(security) wall, turning the West Bank into cantons and weakening the
Palestinian security forces. This explosion was going to happen
because there is no political vision for people to look forward to."

Bernard Sabella of the Department of Service to Palestinian Refugees
of the Middle East Council of Churches said the situation was
deteriorating into "madness."

"This developing situation will further impoverish and disempower our
people," Sabella wrote in an e-mail message to his supporters. "The
infighting in Gaza definitely gives a break to Israel as it diverts
attention from the root cause of overall instability in the Holy Land,
which is Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and control over our
people."

For now, Israeli leaders are working on a response to the Hamas
victory. Most observers say Israel does not want to be dragged back
into Gaza, which it abandoned two years ago after nearly four decades
of occupation. But the Jewish state still controls the supply of food,
medicine, water and electricity into Gaza, as well as its access. The
government must now decide how to isolate a Hamas-governed Gaza Strip
without triggering a major humanitarian crisis.

Guy Bechor, head of Middle Eastern studies at the Interdisciplinary
Center in Herzliya, said the latest developments marked a de facto
completion of Israel's disengagement from Gaza.

"This has ended the illusions of arrangements and understandings with
respect to Gaza," said Bechor. "Electricity, water -- all the things
which should have been cut off with the disengagement. In effect, the
real disengagement has finally occurred this evening."

Meanwhile, Calev Ben Dor, an analyst at the Reut Institute think tank
in Tel Aviv, said separating the Hamas-led Gaza from the
Fatah-governed West Bank might be advantageous for Israel.

"It may offer the best opportunity in years to break the current
political stalemate by facilitating the creation of an effective
address in the West Bank with which Israel can promote a political
process," he wrote in the Jerusalem Post.

This article appeared on page A - 17 of the San Francisco Chronicle

First A victor -- then 40 years of stalemate

Effects of the war continue to haunt life in the Mideast

SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE - Page E1
Sunday, June 3, 2007

Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem -- Four decades after Israel's staggering military victory in the Six Day War, the peoples of the Middle East are still reeling from its aftershocks.

A new generation of leaders now governs the countries that fought in 1967, but not a single day has passed since that has not been dominated by its legacy, and the battle for peace remains unresolved 40 years later.

The Israeli conquest and subsequent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip with their large Arab populations brought the young state of Israel state face to face with the paradox that had haunted the Zionist movement since its inception at the end of the 19th century: How could the desire to establish a Jewish state in the ancestral Jewish homeland mapped out in the Bible be reconciled with the future of the Palestinian Arabs who had been living in that same land for centuries?

Before June 5, 1967, Israel appeared to be a David facing a Goliath-like coalition of 22 Arab states sworn to its destruction. Six days later, Israel had emerged as a regional superpower, finally ending centuries of Jewish victimhood but forcing its leaders to confront the responsibilities of victory and military might.

For the Palestinians, still reeling from the "Naqba" -- the "catastrophe" of Israel's founding in 1948, which turned 600,000 Palestinians into refugees -- the Israeli victory galvanized Palestinian nationalism. The war's outcome convinced Palestinians that Arab leaders' promises were worthless, and they resolved to take charge of the struggle against Israel.

The Arab states whose forces had been shattered were shocked at their defeat, but it had a strangely calming effect on them. The previous decades had been riven with inter-Arab rivalry, coups and wars. The Egyptians had tried to assassinate King Hussein of Jordan 11 times. But after 1967, the vanquished governments stopped fighting each other and united in their opposition to Israel.

"Forty years later, we are still grappling with the outcome of this war," says historian Michael Oren, author of "Six Days of War" and a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center think tank in Jerusalem. "For statesmen and military leaders throughout the Middle East, the Six Day War has never really ended.

"All other developments since then, from the two Palestinian intifada uprisings, the Israeli settlements to the rise of Hamas, can all be traced back to these six very short, intense and fateful days," he says.

On June 5, 1967, Mohammed Abdel Al-Latif was a 33-year-old stone mason. That morning, he remembers standing near his house on the edge of Anata, northeast of Jerusalem, when he heard the drone of an engine and saw an Israeli warplane float into the summer sky. A Jordanian tank was stationed on the next hill. Seconds later, a bomb dropped from the plane and ripped the tank open, sending out blast waves and shrapnel that blew Al-Latif off his feet.

"We were one of only a few families left in the village," says Al-Latif. "The others had run off to hide in the caves in the desert or fled across the Jordan River."

Soon after, Jordanian jeeps carrying posters of King Hussein appeared on the hill, driving toward the village. Al-Latif went out to greet them, but suddenly realized they were full of Israeli soldiers and bristling with guns.

"I thought they were going to kill me, so I ran toward the jeep and jumped in," Al-Latif recalls. "I thought that if they shot me like that, they would probably kill one of their own as well."

But they didn't. They sent him back with a message for villagers to stay in their houses for three days and nothing would happen.

But something did happen -- the Israeli occupation.

Since 1967, the population of Anata has grown from around 8,000 to more than 50,000, and the houses have expanded past Al-Latif's home into the surrounding countryside. But the hill where that Jordanian tank blew up is now covered with the whitewashed, red-roofed houses of Pisgat Zeev, an Israeli suburb of Jerusalem built, says Al-Latif, on land confiscated from Anata. To the north, the view is broken by the towering gray concrete slabs of the Israeli security barrier, built to keep out Palestinian suicide bombers. And to the east, on the road to Jericho, a sprawling Israeli military base sits on yet more of the hills where Al-Latif used to graze his father's cattle.

In 1967, says Al-Latif, the village counted 36,000 dunams -- 9,000 acres -- of land. Today it has just 800 dunams -- 200 acres.

"For me, the occupation means no stability, never knowing what will happen next," he says. "I am ashamed to invite friends from Jerusalem, because they will be stopped or humiliated at the checkpoints."

"The Israelis don't want peace," says Al-Latif's younger brother, Abdel Rahman. "Look at the settlements, look at how they have taken all the land. They are like a frog blowing themselves up. Soon the frog will be as big as an elephant, and it will explode."

By June 12, 1967, Israel had conquered the Gaza Strip and Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, the West Bank and East Jerusalem from Jordan, and the Golan Heights from Syria. But grabbing land was not Israel's initial intention, Oren says.

"The Israeli plan was extremely simple," he says. "It was to neutralize the first of three defense lines the Egyptians constructed across the Sinai Desert, and the Israeli Air Force was going to neutralize the Egyptian Air Force, preferably on the ground. That was it. Take out the Egyptians, give them a bloody nose."

David Rubinger, the celebrated Time photographer who snapped the iconic portrait of three young Israeli paratroopers at the Western Wall on the day Israel conquered the Old City of Jerusalem, likened the mood in Israel before June 5 to preparing for the gallows.

"In the weeks before the war, there was a sense of doom. The national stadium was prepared for 40,000 graves -- and even if we thought we might win, it would be a costly victory," says Rubinger. "We went from being doomed to having an empire. It was like a condemned man with the noose around his neck suddenly being told that not only was he going to live, he was going to be the king. The nation went a little nuts."

Days after the end of the war, future President Chaim Herzog, then Israel's first military governor of the West Bank, met with a group of Palestinian notables at the East Jerusalem home of Anwar Nuseibeh, a former Jordanian Cabinet minister and scion of a family that traced its roots in Jerusalem back 1400 years. Nuseibeh's younger brother Mohammed, then a 30-year-old engineer and now proprietor of the family's hotel, was among those present.

"Herzog came and discussed the options with us, and it was clear that the Israelis had not decided what to do," Nuseibeh says. "They had not planned what would come after such a victory. But some of their intentions became clear when one day soon after the war, a convoy of buses appeared at the Damascus Gate, and it was announced that anyone wanting to leave the city and go to Jordan would be taken for free. But not many did."

"Nobody expected Israel to occupy Jerusalem, let alone the whole of the West Bank, Sinai and the Golan Heights," says Hanna Siniora, former editor of the PLO-backed East Jerusalem newspaper Al Fajr and now co-CEO of the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information. He was a 29-year-old student assisting at his father's pharmacy near the Damascus Gate in the Old City on the morning the war began.

"Everybody was thinking that maybe this will lead to a kind of opening the way for a political solution," he says.

Stunned Arab leaders met in Khartoum, Sudan, in September 1967, and decided on three negatives that would haunt peace efforts for decades after: no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.

"The Arabs were humiliated. First you have to regain your credibility, and then you have the possibility of coming to terms," says Siniora.

Across the Jordan River, a young radical named Yasser Arafat was busy in the two years after the war taking over the Palestine Liberation Organization with his armed Fatah movement, transforming it from a diplomatic lobby to a military force that launched a bloody series of attacks on Israeli civilian targets, airliners and Olympic athletes, as well as attempting a coup in Jordan.

An Israeli religious nationalist movement sprang up, determined to hang on to the biblical territories. Gush Emunim (the Bloc of the Faithful) began creating settlements on sites that combined historical or religious significance with military strategy. Caravan homes sprang up on commanding hilltops near the sites of Abraham's tomb in Hebron and Jacob's dream in Bethel. In 1972 there were 1,500 Israeli settlers in the West Bank and Gaza. By 1983 there were 23,700. Today there are a quarter-million.

But the settlement enterprise convinced most Palestinians the Israelis were not serious about peace. If there was to be an agreement, Israel would have to exchange the land conquered in 1967 in return for recognition by the Arabs. This formula of land for peace was written into U.N. Resolution 242 in November 1967, and remains the central motif of Israeli-Arab peacemaking.

Yossi Klein Halevi, Oren's colleague at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies, says the continuation of the occupation not only has denied the Palestinians their independence, but clearly has damaged Israeli society.

"Generally speaking, the impact has been disastrous, both in terms of demographics and the moral erosion of parts of Israeli society," he says. "The occupation has had an almost unequivocal negative effect on Israeli society."

The Palestinians have always felt subservient. They see the occupation, with its ID checks and military patrols, as a daily humiliation in which fragile freedoms are withdrawn the instant the Israelis feel their security is threatened.

Israel's policies have produced some disastrous errors, among them the decision to nurture a religious Islamic group called Hamas in the mid-1980s as a counterweight to Fatah and the PLO.

In 1993, when Israel and the PLO ended a seven-year uprising with the breakthrough Oslo Accords, it was hoped they were finally on the road to creating two neighborly states. Arafat agreed to suppress Hamas in return for control of the territory. But Israel was unwilling to remove the settlers or give up its larger settlements, and the Palestinians refused to forgo the right of the refugees from the pre-1948 borders -- now some 4 million -- to return to their original homes, a move that would up-end Israel's Jewish majority.

When talks broke down at Camp David in the summer of 2000, the process collapsed. A bloody new intifada erupted, one that included the grim new practice of suicide bombings. Israeli military leaders lashed out, in the mistaken belief they could crush the Palestinians by force as they had crushed the Egyptians, Syrians and Jordanians in 1967.

If the occupation had debased Israelis, the Palestinians, too, began to realize that their methods of resistance were undermining the fabric of their own society.

"The resistance began as something clean and upright, but then it became corrupted by money, it became the richest resistance movement in the history of mankind, and its leaders began buying cars and villas and sending their children to expensive schools," says Munther Dajani, dean of the Faculty of Arts at Al Quds University and former chairman of its political science department.

"The Palestinians never had this culture of death. We are not Shiites. The Palestinian people have always been moderate -- but if you destroy my house, kill my children and arrest my brother, that is bound to breed desperate people who take desperate actions," he says.

With Hamas in power and the cement blocks of Israel's security barrier snaking their way through the West Bank, the two sides seem as far as apart as ever. Their inability to overcome the past and find a solution is rooted in their diametrically opposed understanding of the Six Day War.

Israelis remain traumatized by the period before the war, when annihilation seemed likely. Many are unwilling to take risks for peace because they fear one mistake could destroy the state of Israel.

Palestinians remain spellbound by the war and its aftermath. They regard Israel as a superpower that should make the first move toward peace .

Yet Dajani is hopeful the time has finally arrived.

"The second intifada was successful in that it taught the Israelis their big dream has ended -- that they cannot swallow the Palestinians whole without getting indigestion," he says. "And the Palestinians seem finally to understand that Israel is here to stay. Perhaps both sides have finally paid the price necessary to make peace."

The trouble begins when Jews stop being invisible

THE INDEPENDENT
May 31, 1997

Matthew Kalman

Later this month, BBC's Omnibus will broadcast a documentary on the Hampstead Garden Suburb in north London. This bold experiment in 1920s suburban living has become an exclusive, largely white, middle-class enclave whose tree-lined streets and smart, red-brick houses have become a magnet for comfort-seeking residents as diverse as Lulu, King Constantine, Lord Soper, Martin Bell, the Sultan of Brunei and Richard & Judy.

A large part of the programme is devoted to the controversy surrounding the eruv, a plan to erect a symbolic boundary around several square miles of north London, including parts of the Garden Suburb.

According to orthodox law, Jews are not permitted to push …