Did first humans come out of Middle East and not Africa? Israeli discovery forces scientists to re-examine evolution of modern man

DAILY MAIL 27th December 2010

By Matthew Kalman

Scientists could be forced to re-write the history of the evolution of modern man after the discovery of 400,000-year-old human remains.

Until now, researchers believed that homo sapiens, the direct descendants of modern man, evolved in Africa about 200,000 years ago and gradually migrated north, through the Middle East, to Europe and Asia.

Recently, discoveries of early human remains in China and Spain have cast doubt on the 'Out of Africa' theory, but no-one was certain.

Professor Avi Gopher, a researcher from Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, holds a pre-historic tooth at Qesem cave, an excavation site near the town of Rosh Ha'ayin

The new discovery of pre-historic human remains by Israeli university explorers in a cave near Ben-Gurion airport could force scientists to re-think earlier theories.

Early humans: Middle Awash Aramis, Ethiopia, where the first 'modern' human beings were thought to have been discovered

Archeologists from Tel Aviv University say eight human-like teeth found in the Qesem cave near Rosh Ha’Ayin – 10 miles from Israel’s international airport - are 400,000 years' old, from the Middle Pleistocene Age, making them the earliest remains of homo sapiens yet discovered anywhere in the world.

The size and shape of the teeth are very similar to those of modern man. Until now, the earliest examples found were in Africa, dating back only 200,000 years.

Other scientists have argued that human beings originated in Africa before moving to other regions 150,000 to 200,000 years ago.

Homo sapiens discovered in Middle Awash, Ethiopia, from 160,000 years ago were believed to be the oldest 'modern' human beings.

Other remains previously found in Israeli caves are thought to have been more recent and 80,000 to 100,000 years old.

The findings of Professor Avi Gopher and Dr Ran Barkai of the Institute of Archeology at Tel Aviv University, published last week in the American Journal of Physical Anthroplogy, suggest that modern man did not originate in Africa as previously believed, but in the Middle East.

The Qesem cave was discovered in 2000 and has been the focus of intense study ever since.

A group of international and Israeli researchers have discovered pre-historic artefacts and human remains at the site that may prove the earliest existence of modern man was about 400,000 years ago.

Along with the teeth – the parts of the human skeleton that survive the longest – the researchers found evidence of a sophisticated early human society that used sharpened flakes of stone to cut meat and other impressive prehistoric tools.

The Israeli scientists said the remains found in the cave suggested the systematic production of flint blades, the habitual use of fire, evidence of hunting, cutting and sharing of animal meat, and mining raw materials to produce flint tools from rocks below ground.

'A diversified assemblage of flint blades was manufactured and used,' the Tel Aviv scientists wrote, describing the tools they found in the cave.

'Thick-edged blades, shaped through retouch, were used for scraping semi-hard materials such as wood or hide, whereas blades with straight, sharp working edges were used to cut soft tissues.'

The explorers said they were continuing to investigate the cave and its contents, expecting to make more discoveries that would shed further light on human evolution in pre-historic times.

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Armageddon Fortress May Hold Keys to History

AOL NEWS, Dec 26, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

MEGIDDO, Israel -- The Book of Revelation says the biblical fortress of Armageddon will be the site of an apocalyptic battle between good and evil at the end of time. Scientists believe it could also be the place where time begins -- at least for archaeology.

In a groundbreaking new project, scholars are using the rich archaeological remains that soar more than 50 feet above the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel to synchronize the clocks of the ancient world and create the first definitive calendar of human history.

Wikimedia Commons

The ruins atop Megiddo in Israel may look like just another hill, but the mound is man-made, containing the remains of 29 cities built one on top of the other from 3,000 to 300 B.C.

The word "Armageddon" comes from the Hebrew Har Megiddo, which means mountain of Megiddo, where Revelation says the final battle will take place. To the untrained observer, the modern-day site of Megiddo looks like one more hill in the Carmel mountain range near Haifa. But the vast mound is entirely man-made, containing the remains of 29 separate cities built one on top of the other by a succession of civilizations from 3,000 to 300 B.C.

More than a century of excavations has revealed a complex network of houses, stables, temples and palaces protected by massive fortifications and watered by two natural springs.

The treasures discovered at the site have posed as many questions as they have answered about the history of the ancient world. A vast, centuries-old temple deep within the mound is the largest yet discovered from that period in the Levant but its purpose and rituals -- including several large, perfectly round black stone altars just a few inches high -- are unknown.

It was around this time that stone inscriptions and records on clay tablets and papyrus began to record human history in the area. The Bible, the most monumental work of all, emerged during this period. Early archaeologists used the Bible as a guide, relating their finds to events described there and allocating them to biblical figures.

The Megiddo Expedition

Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University looks over the archaeological dig which is located in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. Finkelstein is the current director of the excavation.

The legendary Israeli archaeologist Yigael Yadin identified one impressive Iron Age gateway as the remains of a city built by Solomon in the 10th century B.C., but the current director of the excavation, Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, rocked the scholarly world when he declared the remains to be at least 100 years later. Finkelstein's theory threw the traditional view of the Davidic and Solomonic kingdoms into disarray and cast doubt on whether the biblical giants had ever truly been "kings" at all.

Now Finkelstein, together with Tel Aviv University physicist Eli Piazetsky, is spearheading an international effort to settle the chronology once and for all. A scientific conference at Megiddo, "Synchronizing Clocks at Armageddon," launched a project to analyze 10 separate Iron Age destruction layers using four state-of-the-art scientific techniques: radiocarbon dating, optical luminescence, archaeo-magnetism and rehydroxilation -- a new method pioneered in Britain within the last two years.

Megiddo is the only place in the world with so many destruction layers -- archaeological strata resulting from a calamity such as a fire, earthquake or conquest -- that resulted from a specific event in history.

Finkelstein told AOL News that the site provides "a very dense, accurate and reliable ladder for the dating of the different monuments and the layers."

"These destruction layers can serve as anchors for the entire system of dating," Finkelstein said. "Megiddo is the only site which has 10 layers with radiocarbon results for the period 1300 to 800 B.C.E."

Scientists hope that by analyzing the archaeological strata they can nail each layer to a specific year or decade, using the physical data from Megiddo to set the clocks of history and create a definitive timeline that can be used as a basis for accurately dating all archaeological sites.

The Megiddo Expedition

Part of the Tel Aviv University team work on some of their discoveries at the archaeological dig which is located in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel.

It's an ambitious undertaking and one with profound implications for historical scholarship. A definitive timeline for the Levant could also unlock the secrets of ancient Greece, where specific historical dates before about 600 B.C. are basically guesswork. One conundrum that has perplexed scholars for years is a major discrepancy between the dating of sites in the Levant and those with similar pottery and other artifacts in the Aegean Basin.

"For many years the traditional dating of strata in the Levant were about 100 years earlier than that of the Aegean. There was similar pottery that we date to the 10th century and they date to the ninth. The question was, who's right?" said Aren Maeir of Bar-Ilan University, director of the excavation at Tell es-Safi, believed to be the ancient city of Gath, home of Goliath.

"The problem is that the Aegean does not have an independent chronology for the Iron Age," Finkelstein said. In the absence of a historical record, dating of pottery from ancient Greece has relied on Greek pottery found in Middle East excavations. New doubts cast by Finkelstein about the dating of sites in Israel have thrown the ancient Greece timeline into further disarray.

The new project will take samples from Megiddo and other sites where dates are fairly certain and subject them to a battery of four different scientific tests:

Radiocarbon, or carbon-14 dating, measures the decline of a naturally occurring radioisotope to fix the date it was deposited at the site. It can be used for animal remains, plants and even olive pits. But it cannot determine the age of inorganic material like pottery; some materials, including wood, can give false results; and it requires a complex statistical calibration that on 3,000-year-old items produces inaccuracies of up to 300 years.

Archaeo-magnetism measures changes in the Earth's magnetic intensity and magnetic north over centuries to date pottery and cooking ovens. Optical luminescence is in its infancy. It measures the effect of the sun's rays on quartz particles to determine when certain minerals were last exposed to sunlight.

Rehydroxilation is a method recently developed in Britain that measures the amount of moisture absorbed from the atmosphere by oven-fired clay. Experiments suggest that it can accurately date bricks and pottery from 50 to 2,000 years old. The team has taken some 5,000-year-old pottery samples back to the lab at Manchester University to see if they get similar results.

They believe the method has the potential to become as important for ceramics as radiocarbon dating is for organic materials.

"Making the various tools for dating archaeological finds more accurate is very important," said Maeir, whose own excavation is part of the project. But he warned that rehydroxilation may not provide magic answers. Like carbon-14 dating, it involves a statistical manipulation that is likely to result in similar disputes between scholars.

"If they did reach a clear-cut model which would be agreed upon by the overall majority, it could have a whole slew of historical implications," he said. "It changes your understanding of what was going on from a political, from an economic point of view at these various sites. This could in theory have very broad implications for our ability to interpret the historical scenarios."

Slum-Touring Millionaires Put Off the Ritz in Israel

AOL NEWS Dec 19, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

JERUSALEM -- Ronald L. Gallatin is a retired attorney, a CPA and a former managing director at Lehman Brothers credited with creating some of Wall Street's most ingenious investment instruments. His wife, Meryl, is a prominent philanthropist in Florida charity circles. But when they visit Israel, they prefer hanging around soup kitchens and drug addict drop-in centers rather than fancy restaurants.

Over the past seven years, the Gallatins have given more than $2 million of their own money and raised more than $4 million from friends for a charity they set up "to fill in the cracks" left by social services in the U.S., Israel and Latin America. They also promise donors that 100 percent of funds will be donated to the causes listed on their website for Hands On Tzedakah, so the Gallatins also absorb all the administrative costs of their charity, including one or more trips each year to Israel.

They use their own money to seed all the projects and then encourage their donors to identify one where their donation should be applied.

The Gallatins are just two clients of Arnie Draiman, a travel guide with a difference. Draiman takes tourists off the beaten track to show millionaires and other would-be donors the darkest underbelly of Israeli society, helping them target their charity where it will have the most effect.

Arnie Draiman shows would-be donors the darker side of Israeli society, helping them target their charity where it will have the most effect.

"I want to teach them how to give their money away efficiently and effectively," Draiman said.

He said there was an increasing interest among tourists to Israel in welfare and assistance projects -- the flip-side of the sun-drenched beaches, nonstop nightlife and centuries-old religious culture projected by official government advertising.

"Our trips aren't about museum hopping," Meryl Gallatin told AOL News during a recent visit to Crossroads, a cash-strapped drop-in center for at-risk youth in downtown Jerusalem. "We're here to do due diligence on behalf of our donors. This is a different kind of tourism."

Not all of Draiman's tourists are millionaire philanthropists. Parents bring their bar mitzvah boys and bat mitzvah girls to tour projects as part of the preparation for their coming of age as a lesson in social responsibility. Newly married couples, flush with their own good fortune, want to engage with people less fortunate than themselves. American religious and community leaders also come to Draiman to see the reality of Israeli society so they can better understand the country.

At first, some projects didn't understand why they should host visitors who weren't about to make a donation. Over time, they have adopted Draiman's long-term view.

"I have countless examples of people who have visited a place and later gone back and included it in their wedding registry or a bar mitzvah boy has included it in his bar mitzvah project," Draiman said.

He said the key to the attraction of his tours is the term "tzedakah" -- an ancient Hebrew phrase that combines "righteousness," "charity" and "justice."

"I use the word in the broadest terms possible to include not only money but your time and your effort and anything that goes into making the world a better place to be," Draiman said. "A lot of it revolves around the money, the financial end, but it's more than that. Tzedakah is translated best as 'righteous giving' or 'giving rightly.'"

Draiman's work has brought him into contact with people he labels "heroes" -- ordinary individuals who help the people around them in an extraordinary way.

"If someone calls me up on the phone and says, 'I've got this really great place I want you to hear about,' I'll listen. But if you call me up and say, 'I want you to meet this incredible person,' my ears really prick up," he said.

Some of Draiman's favorite heroes include Bracha Kapach, the wife of a Jerusalem rabbi who feeds more than 1,100 poor people every week and more than 20,000 at Passover; the "chicken lady" who provided a fresh chicken every week for several hundred poor families even when she was well into her 90s; and Avshalom Beni, who uses dogs and cats to provide therapy for Holocaust survivors and children with behavioral problems.

When Draiman introduces philanthropists like the Gallatins to these unsung heroes, lives can be changed on all sides.

One recent afternoon, the Gallatins arrived at Crossroads, a cause they have supported for several years, for their first meeting with its new director, Robbie Sassoon. A skeptical Ron Gallatin grilled Sassoon about the center's projects and finances with a ferocity that would not have been out of place in a Manhattan boardroom.

"We treat making the decision of how our donors' money is spent as the highest level of fiduciary responsibility," Ron Gallatin said. "Our donors give to HOT [Hands On Tzedakah] because they trust us to have meetings like this one and know that we are making sure that every one of their dollars goes directly to help someone in profound need. Our donors know that HOT has no expenses and that we do not permit our partners to charge any administrative charges on any project we support. The donor is truly seeing his whole dollar helping the people he wants helped."

After a half hour, the former Wall Street guru sat back, pronounced himself satisfied and proceeded to write out a check that was much larger than the one he had planned. Then they were off to their fourth meeting of the day, in a five-day trip that contained no tourist visits at all.

"This is not depressing," Meryl Gallatin said. "It's the feelgood of making a difference. It's being able to go back after seeing a success story."

None of it, the Gallatins said, could be achieved with confidence without having someone like Draiman to advise them.

"Arnie comes with us on many of our site visits and interprets far more than the language. He helps us understand cultural nuances that can only be understood by someone living in Israel," Meryl Gallatin said. "You cannot have absentee management. We hold all of our Israeli partners to a very high standard of accountability and use Arnie to monitor them when we aren't here. What we are trying to do doesn't work without someone like him on the ground."

"I'm in their face, much more than if they filled out a form once a year," Draiman agreed.

New Stars Light Up Bethlehem Nightlife

AOL NEWS, Dec 19, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

BETHLEHEM, West Bank -- For as long as anyone can remember, young people have had nothing much to do in Bethlehem after nightfall. When the Israeli army and Palestinian gunmen finally quit the streets in 2005, restaurants and cafes continued to observe an unofficial 10 p.m. curfew, and anyone seeking some action had to head north to Ramallah, a tortuous, hourlong journey through military checkpoints and death-defying mountain roads.

"I spend my evenings at home on the Internet because there is nothing to do here for people our age," said Sally Zaghmout, 19, a student at Bethlehem University. "There are no bowling alleys, no cinemas, no big fields where you can go and play sports. It's really hard. If people of my age go to discos some gossip will start because it's a really conservative country and everybody knows everybody."

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Twin brothers Firas and Ruslan Mukarker opened Taboo, the first venue in Bethlehem to stay open every night until dawn.

But this season, something is happening in Bethlehem. In recent months, a growing number of hip nightspots have opened around town, drawing packed crowds until well past midnight -- a signal, perhaps, of a new confidence on the part of young entrepreneurs and a shift toward some kind of normality after a decade of violence and economic privation.

Bethlehem's economy fell to pieces after the outbreak of the intifada uprising in September 2000. Tourists, who provide the city's main source of income, stopped coming. On Star Street, the traditional gateway to the old city, 88 of the 102 shops are still shuttered. Thousands of residents emigrated.

When the intifada ended in 2005, Bethlehem, recognized by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus, was surrounded by an Israeli security barrier and military checkpoints that cut off its residents from nearby Jerusalem and deterred all but the most determined pilgrims.

The first signs of life after dark appeared in 2006 when a local entrepreneur opened a late-night disco, discreetly situated on the upper floor of a failed holiday complex in Beit Jala, a suburb of Bethlehem. A hefty entrance charge and a couples-only policy kept out troublemakers. Now renamed the Layal Lounge, the club attracts crowds from all over the West Bank from Thursday to Saturday nights.

The same year, twin brothers Firas and Ruslan Mukarker opened Taboo, the first venue to stay open every night until dawn. Taboo's chill-out music, tiger-skin wall-hangings, soft red lighting, display of African masks and nude paintings announced a new generation of Christian Bethlehem nightlife.

"In 2006 it was the first place called a bar in Bethlehem, it was something really new," Firas Mukarker told AOL News. "We called it Taboo because there was pork and alcohol. No one had the guts to put pork on the menu. We were the first in Palestine."

But the successes in Beit Jala didn't catch on inside the city itself. The Palestinian economy remained depressed and unemployment in Bethlehem stayed close to 40 percent. In 2008, Mike Canawati, a prominent local businessman, opened the Square on Manger Square, opposite the Church of the Nativity. Spread over three floors and with an international menu, the Square brought the new nightlife into the middle of town for the first time.

"We started this new trend of staying open until 1 a.m.," Canawati said. "Two years ago there was nowhere else in this area open until that late. Now there are a few. We serve European food -- Italian, French. Our menu was the first of its kind in Bethlehem. We wanted to make something new. Not everybody wants to eat kebab and lamb chops and hummus."

Now the tourists have returned. Khouloud Daibes-Abu Dayyeh, the Palestinian minister of tourism, said that nearly 1.5 million people will have visited Bethlehem by the end of 2010, up 60 percent over last year and an all-time record.

Unemployment in Bethlehem has fallen to 22 percent. A dozen new souvenir shops have opened in recent months, and property owners are scrambling to turn every available building into accommodation for tourists.

Samir Hazboun, chairman of the Bethlehem Chamber of Commerce and Industry, told AOL News the number of hotels has grown from six in 1995 to 31 today, with three more under construction and four others in the planning stages.

The new investors have benefited from a series of economic reforms that have made bank loans widely available to Palestinians for the first time in living memory. The result has been a massive 9 percent growth in gross domestic product over the last year and rising employment across the West Bank.

Jihad al-Wazir, head of the Palestinian Monetary Authority, said the new regulations had freed up some $750 million in loans for individuals and the 94 percent of local businesses that have four employees or fewer.

"There was a tremendous increase in lending," said Wazir. "The Palestinian economy is dependent on these very small-scale enterprises that are the drivers of the economy. It's great that the entrepreneurial spirit is catching up. People see other young kids doing the new projects and so they emulate it and so it starts a chain reaction where the overall impact is very positive."

Sami Matar and his business partner, David Salti, secured a loan to transform a shop wrecked in intifada gun battles, in the shadow of an Israeli military watchtower in the security wall, into the Divano Cafe and Restaurant, a classy new nightspot with a European menu that boasts the largest aquarium in the West Bank and the most extensive cocktail menu in Bethlehem.

"I wanted a mixture of something elegant and cool," said Matar, 27. "We wanted it to be friendly. The classic restaurants here aren't cool. I lived in the U.S. for two years. I wanted to create something like you would find there."

The result is a youthful mix of soft couches, subtle red lighting, dark wood paneling and European-style wall paintings where the elegant presentation of the food matches the ambiance. It appears to be a winning formula. Divano is packed every night, mainly with locals, and it's impossible to get a table after 6 p.m. without a prior booking. Divano serves about 200 every day and has to turn away another 50.

Outside the restaurant, the grim concrete wall and watchtower across the street surrounding the shrine at Rachel's Tomb is a reminder that the venture could be destroyed at any moment by a new outbreak of violence.

"It's a risk," Matar acknowledged. "I know that and my partner knows that, but we couldn't find a better place than this. We will trust in God."

Harry Potter and the Deeply Appreciative Professor

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION REVIEW December 5, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

More than a decade has passed since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, by an unknown author through a minor London publisher. It is hard to recall that before the blockbuster movies, before the chocolate frogs, before the Wizarding World of Harry Potter Theme Park, in Orlando, Harry Potter was neither a Warner Bros. franchise nor a commercial cliché but a series of fantasy stories that transported an entire generation of kids away from their TV sets and video games and into the delights of the old-fashioned printed word.

The sensation in Britain was so great that by the time J.K. Rowling's third book, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, was published, in July 1999—two years before the release of the first movie—booksellers were asked to keep it off their shelves until late afternoon for fear that thousands of children would skip school to buy it. The British edition had an initial printing of a quarter of a million copies. In 2000, The New York Times created a new list of children's best sellers so the Potter series wouldn't crowd adult authors out of the coveted top 10 spots.

Not everyone was impressed by this youthful literary revival. Harold Bloom famously described the books as "rubbish." "The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible," he said.

Shira Wolosky disputes that assessment in The Riddles of Harry Potter: Secret Passages and Interpretive Quests (Palgrave Macmillan). Wolosky, an English professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sees in the works genuine literary depth, invention, construction, and imagination...

(Full article here)

In Biblical Valley, 'David vs. Goliath' Battle Rages Over Oil Shale

AOL NEWS Saturday, Dec 4

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

ELAH VALLEY, Israel (Dec. 4) -- A baron from the prominent Rothschild family is teaming up with media mogul Rupert Murdoch in an attempt to break Israel's foreign oil dependency by mining vast amounts of oil shale in the unspoiled Elah Valley, where the Bible says David fought Goliath.

But their business plan has morphed into a family battle all its own because of some unexpected opposition from Lord Jacob Rothschild's second cousin, a celebrated eco-campaigner.

David de Rothschild gave up the chance to enter his family's multibillion-dollar banking business and instead has emerged as a "green" leader lauded by the United Nations and the World Economic Forum. He describes his cousin's plans to heat up rocks beneath the Judean Hills as "very serious" and has promised to investigate.

Andreas Rentz, Hubert Burda Media / Getty Images

David de Rothschild disagrees with his cousin's plan to mine oil shale in Israel's Elah Valley.

Oil shale mining involves heating the ground to transform buried, tar-like organic compounds into oil, and then extracting it. But the process is criticized for being an inefficient way of getting energy, because it takes so much energy to heat up the ground and create the oil, and then drill for it. Al Gore has described the practice as "utter insanity."

Such technology is economical only when the price of oil is very high, as is the case right now. And Lord Rothschild has said he believes oil shale mining "could transform the future prospects of Israel, the Middle East and our allies around the world."

His cousin David disagrees. "I as an individual actively discourage environmentally harmful activities," he wrote in a letter to Green Prophet, an environmental website focusing on the Middle East. But he acknowledged that he's "part of a large family with many diverse opinions."

"I cannot be held responsible for other people's actions despite my best efforts, even family members," David de Rothschild wrote.

Aside from concerns about the Rothschild project's energy efficiency, it would also involve bulldozing dozens of deep trenches, each more than two miles long, through some of Israel's most picturesque and archaeologically significant landscape.

The Elah Valley is where tradition holds that the young shepherd boy who would become King David faced off against the Philistine giant Goliath, and vanquished him with a slingshot and a pebble. In addition to disfiguring the biblical site, the oil mining project's trenches would cut through farms, vineyards and a network of 1,000 historic underground caves where the rebels of Bar Kochba hid from the Romans in the first century.

In August, the Israel Union for Environmental Defense filed a petition with the Israeli High Court demanding that the drilling license be revoked, charging that it was issued "without any plan and without any indication of the resulting effect on the environment."

The valley is zoned in the Israeli National Master Plan as green space. But under Israel's 1952 Oil Act, oil companies can bypass planning and other regulations in the hunt for energy resources. Israel's minister for environmental protection, Gilad Erdan, has promised to change the antiquated law.

Hagit Teshler, 44, a college lecturer who lives in the tiny community of Srigim-Li-On at the foot of the valley, was among more than 1,000 residents and campaigners who gathered Friday on a hill overlooking a test-drilling site late last month, to protest the venture.

"The industry that they want to build is an experimental industry that doesn't exist in any other place in the world," Teshler told AOL News. "In the U.S., it's very hard for them to get past the laws, so they come here. We don't know anything about the ramifications of this experiment, what damage it will do. They are heating the ground to very high temperatures. We don't know what gases will come out of this, or what damage will be caused to the air and the water.

"Most of the ministers, except for Gilad Erdan, are very much in favor of the oil industry because they believe that it will free Israel energy-wise from all our neighbors. But the oil that is produced is very low quality that will need a whole other industry to make it available as fuel for cars. Israel doesn't know what it's getting into," she said.

Mining the reserves of shale oil embedded in the rock would require a huge amount of electrical power -- equivalent to half of Israel's entire national supply, plus millions of cubic feet of water in a country entering its worst drought in modern history.

Lord Rothschild, based in London, is one of Israel's largest benefactors. He donates millions of dollars a year to social, educational and cultural projects in Israel through Yad Hanadiv, a family foundation founded by his ancestors. Major gifts include university fellowships, the Supreme Court building and a new National Library currently under construction.

Last month, Lord Rothschild and Murdoch, the American-Australian media tycoon, jointly acquired 11 percent of the Genie Energy Corp. unit Genie Oil and Gas Inc. for $11 million. Genie Energy, a subsidiary of the huge IDT Corp., owns 89 percent of Israel Energy Initiatives, which has an exclusive shale oil exploration and production license from the Israeli government for 238 square miles of the Judean hills southwest of Jerusalem, on the border with the West Bank.

This area, known as the Adullam district, was a major population center in biblical times and boasts a rich variety of significant archaeological sites from the cave network and Roman amphitheater of Bet Guvrin in the south, to the Elah Valley where David fought Goliath in the north. Today, it is an area of pastoral stillness, home to several small rural communities known as moshavim, with vineyards, olive groves, forests and farmland.

Israel Energy Initiatives believes that its shale oil cracking technology can free the world from dependence on Arab oil and turn Israel into an energy powerhouse able to produce 300 billion barrels of non-conventional oil at a cost of up to $40 per barrel.

Effie Eitam, a former minister of national infrastructure who is now president of Israel Energy Initiatives, told Haaretz that Lord Rothschild had "a strong history of supporting the environment. He asked a great many questions on this point, and was persuaded that when the pilot is completed in two years, very few question marks will remain."

But after a series of protests organized by local residents, Tafline Laylin, a Cairo-based analyst with Green Prophet, contacted David de Rothschild, urging him to persuade his cousin to withdraw from a deal that she believes could "unleash a miserable chain of ecological and social reactions."

"The in-situ technology requires that 5-kilometer-long trenches are dug in order to reach the underlying rock. This is then heated to 350 degrees Celsius and in part releases a gas that is converted to sulfur-rich fuel. Three hundred such trenches will be necessary to produce 300,000 barrels of oil (per day). Also, the safety of heating up the rock has yet to be established and could release at least 15 million tons of CO2 into the atmosphere," Laylin warned.

"We urge the Rothschild family, and you as its eco-diplomat, to rescind its shares in what could be one of the most devastating projects to hit Israel's soil," she wrote.

The response from the young Rothschild was swift, setting the stage for a family showdown.

He wrote that he would "continue to write to not only family members but also other individuals and business about how their actions influence the world environmentally in the hope that they will place a greater significance on this area and seek clean alternatives that can help us tread more lightly."

"I do consider the 'Oil Shale Exploration' to be a very serious and pressing matter and something that I will look into further as a priority," de Rothschild wrote. "[I] promise to explore this matter further."

Pioneering Medical Researcher Is First Woman to Lead Israel's University Presidents

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION
November 28, 2010




Dani Machlis for Ben-Gurion U. of the Negev
Rivka Carmi

By Matthew Kalman
Beersheba, Israel

Rivka Carmi's new role, as the first woman to chair the Committee of University Presidents in Israel, has brought her tough challenges along with acclaim. Israeli faculty members are, on average, among the oldest in the developed world. The ratio of faculty to students is dismal. And now pro-Palestinian activists are calling for an academic boycott of Israel that she says threatens to destroy the last remnants of co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Add to that a problem she has encountered throughout her own life: that universities are not sufficiently accommodating to the needs of women.

In her new job representing the country's higher-education institutions to the public and the government, Dr. Carmi, 62, who is also president of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, must recommend resolutions to those issues and more.

(Full article here)

Israel Unleashes Gold Rush for Solar Power

AOL NEWS 27 November, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Nov. 27) -- The race is on to tap into a potential $20 billion solar energy bonanza in Israel's southern wilderness that could transform the nation into the first in the world to power its electric grids through renewable energy.

The starting gun sounded Sunday with the signing of a historic agreement between the Israel Electric Corp. and a solar energy producer based on Kibbutz Ketura, a tiny collective farm in the barren Arava desert on the Israel-Jordan border. For years, Israel has been exporting its cutting-edge solar technology for use abroad, but it has never been applied at home -- until now.

The so-called power purchase agreement, signed under a special permit from Uzi Landau, Israel's minister of national infrastructure, marks the first time that any electric company in the Middle East has agreed to purchase electricity generated by renewable energy. Israel has pledged to generate 10 percent of its annual electricity needs from renewable sources by 2020.

Uriel Sinai, Bloomberg / Getty Images
Yosef Abramowitz, president of the Arava power company, visits the company's experimental solar site at Kibbutz Ketura, in the Arava Desert in Israel, on June 17.

"This agreement is very important," Landau told AOL News during the signing ceremony Sunday at his ministry in Jerusalem. "This is the first time we have signed such an agreement with electricity producers in the renewable energy field, in the solar field. This is an important first step forward, and I hope it will be a breakthrough to many more similar agreements."

A disused 20-acre field in the kibbutz will be covered with 18,000 photovoltaic panels that convert light to electricity, generating 4.9 megawatts of power -- little more than one-thousandth of the four gigawatts that Israel aims to produce from such sources by the end of the decade.

The agreement signed Sunday is modest: a commitment by the Israel Electric Corp. to purchase approximately $65 million worth of power from Ketura Sun over the next 20 years at a government-regulated price of about 40 cents per kilowatt hour. It is just the start. There are plans for a large-scale 40-megawatt field on Ketura by the end of 2012.

Some 100 corporations and investors led by Siemens and other major international players are expected to fuel the country's solar energy industry in the next five years, a development that could put Israel at the forefront of clean energy production.

For Boston native Yosef Abramowitz, Sunday's signing marked the end of a tough four-year mission to bring solar power to Israel and turn the country into "a renewable light unto the nations."

Abramowitz is the president and co-founder of Arava Power Co., a partnership with Ed Hofland of Kibbutz Ketura and David Rosenblatt, a former partner at BlackRock venture capitalists.

Abramowitz and his partners can be credited with developing Israel's solar power industry from the ground floor. In 2006, after decades of Jewish community, multimedia and environmental activism that saw him nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize three times and a Pulitzer twice, Abramowitz arrived with his wife and five children for a two-year sabbatical at Kibbutz Ketura in Israel's southern desert, where he had first served as a volunteer 25 years earlier.

Emerging from their air-conditioned van into the baking desert sun, Abramowitz said his first thought was that the kibbutz must be powered by solar energy. He soon discovered that not a single watt of electricity was being generated from renewable energy sources -- neither on the kibbutz nor anywhere else in Israel.

"It was a no-brainer. The great Israeli solar companies were producing technology for export, but not for the home market," Abramowitz told AOL News. "I thought, you've got to be kidding. So together with a couple of guys from the kibbutz, we put together a plan to set up solar panels in a field opposite and power Ketura with sunlight. We quickly ran into a whole bureaucratic battle with Israel's energy regulator. After six months, I realized that if we could win this fight for the kibbutz, we would win it for the whole country."

Abramowitz spent the next four years locked in battle with a dizzying array of government departments, electricity professionals and regulators.

One major headache was that although the Israeli government decided in 2002 to introduce renewable energy into the electricity sector, it created no legislative or regulatory framework to implement the decision.

"It was a question of extreme incompetence," Abramowitz said. "We had to overcome more than 25 separate battles with various government departments, including the introduction of new legislation through parliament and a government decision. There are17 government ministries involved in the issue that have no communication, no coordination whatever."

The next problem was finding land. Although 60 percent of Israel is vacant desert, four-fifths of that space is designated for military use, and the remainder is a protected nature reserve.

Using the model originally inspired by the sun-drenched fields at Kibbutz Ketura, Arava Power contacted other kibbutz and moshav collectives in the area that had available land and signed up half of them. Along the way, they persuaded the Israel Land Administration to change the zoning regulations, allowing them to use 10 times more land in each kibbutz than before.

At that point, competitors who had dismissed solar power as a cottage industry suddenly realized there was big money to be made. At least 100 other companies appeared on the scene, trying to cut their own deals with the kibbutzim, including some of Israel's largest development companies. Two years ago, Arava Power walked away from a bid worth more than $130 million. In August 2009, Siemens bought a 40 percent stake in the company for $15 million.

Abramowitz said Arava Power now has about half the available kibbutz land locked up and expects to emerge with a 40 to 50 percent market share. The landowners include five Bedouin tribes who have leased land they own to Arava Power for 20 years. That investment alone will help create wealth and jobs in the poverty-stricken Bedouin community for the first time since Israel was founded.

Abramowitz's ambitions are not modest. He sees solar energy as the catalyst for transforming Israel into a clean-tech economy and promoting cooperation that will contribute to Middle East peace. He is already in discussions with the Jordanian government, just over the border next to Ketura.

"This should be the first industrial-based economy in the world to go from a carbon-based economy and switch it to a solar-based economy. We can do that, and [Sunday] was the beginning," Abramowitz said. "It could be a powerful impetus to regional peace-making. To realize that the same sun shines equally on all of us, is owned by none of us, and can supply our energy needs in abundance, inherently promotes peace. The sun doesn't recognize borders."

Despite Controversy, Israeli University in West Bank Attracts Arab Students

Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) - ‎Nov 17, 2010‎

Matthew Kalman

The Ariel University Center of Samaria aspires to become a fully accredited university. Dozens of graduate students conduct research in ...

Israel Withdrawal Plan Stirs Lebanese Village

AOL NEWS, Wednesday, November 17th

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Nov. 17) -- Residents of Ghajar, a tiny village straddling the Lebanon's border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, were once renowned throughout the Ottoman Empire for their talents as soothsayers.

But they failed to predict today's decision by Israel's Security Cabinet to withdraw from the northern part of the village, home to some 1,500 of its 2,100 residents, and hand control over to United Nations forces.

The decision to withdraw to the "blue line" delineated by U.N. mapmakers after Israel's pullout from southern Lebanon in 2000 has been telegraphed by Israeli leaders for weeks, but it still caught skeptics by surprise.

Dror Artzi, JINIPIX / AFP / Getty Images

Israeli forces stand guard in the disputed village of Ghajar, which sits on Lebanon's border with the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Israel's Security Cabinet has backed plans to withdraw troops from the northern part of Ghajar and hand over control to a U.N. peacekeeping force.

Only last Sunday, the Lebanese daily Ad-Diyar cited "well-informed diplomatic sources" who said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu "resorts to maneuvering on the issue of withdrawing from Ghajar every time he wants to attract more U.S. military and financial aid." They "did not expect such a move to take place in the near future."

U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah, called for a full return of all forces to the international border, but Israel held out. Under nominal U.N. security control, the village, with access to both Lebanon and Israel, had become a gateway for all manner of shady dealings, from espionage and drug running to terrorism. The Israeli government finally buckled today to U.N., Lebanese and American pressure and decided to return to the U.N.-mandated international border.

The timing of the move and the final deployment of forces in and around Ghajar will be negotiated between Israel and the U.N.

Israel Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told AOL News the village would not be divided.

"There will be no checkpoints inside the village, no barrier, no fence, no checkpoints, no roadblock," Palmor said. "That's the problem from the security point of view. That's something we need to solve with UNIFIL [U.N. Forces in Lebanon]. It is deployed on the northern border of the village, and it will need to adopt very tight security measures not to make this a very porous border the way it was between 2000 and 2006."

Villagers told AOL News they were dismayed by the decision, despite Israeli assurances that "both the security of Israel's citizens and the normal life of the residents of Ghajar, which remains undivided, will continue to be maintained while the new arrangements are being put in place."

Ghajar is perched on a rocky promontory that plunges into a ravine where the fresh waters of the El Wizani spring bubble into the Jordan River to the south. Its residents say the Hasbani River, 50 yards to the north, is the natural border and also the source of their water.

Israel has occupied the Golan Heights since the Six Day War in 1967. Residents of Ghajar insist they are proud Syrians from the tiny Alawite sect of President Bashar Assad's ruling circle. Some even fought for the Syrians and still have army papers issued in nearby Kuneitra. But when Israel seized the area, villagers took Israeli citizenship and have been living quietly ever since. They tend their cows and sheep in land now controlled by Israel, study in Israeli universities and work in nearby Israeli towns and kibbutzim.

"In 1967, when our people tried to cross the Hasbani River, they were beaten back by the Lebanese army,'' Hassan Fatali, a 39-year-old English teacher, told AOL News. "Israel thought Ghajar was Lebanese, but Lebanon wouldn't accept us. They said we were Syrians, which we are."

The village used to be on the south side, but it expanded in the 1950s when residents began building new homes on agricultural land to the north, Fatali said.

"It was before 1967, when this was Syria. We have documents for the buildings from 1957. The border was further north. The documents are signed by officials from Kuneitra, the Syrian region that we belong to," he said.

"We are a small village, and we live as a family. We marry each other within the village. We are all related. There are many people who live on this side and have sons on the other side. In Berlin, the wall was destroyed. Now they are going to build a wall in this small village that will divide families. It's a shame," he said.

Hilal Khashan, a political science professor at the American University in Beirut, Lebanon, told AOL News he discerned two reasons for the Israeli decision: to boost the Lebanese government, which faces a major threat from Hezbollah, and to assuage Washington.

"The village in itself is unimportant," Khashan said. "The Israelis have been adamant when it comes to settlement construction in the West Bank, and they embarrassed President Obama. This is designed to show the Obama administration that the Israelis are not recalcitrant, that they may be tough on one issue yet they can be accommodating of American interests on other issues."

Khashan added, "This will not have a tangible effect on the balance of power domestically. Hezbollah was quick to respond, saying that Israel's decision to pull out from Ghajar village is important but the Israelis need to follow it up by other withdrawals, and also they are demanding that Israel discontinues its flights over Lebanese airspace. These are demands that the Israelis are unlikely to act upon. So in this regard it will have no impact on internal Lebanese politics."

Khashan said he had some sympathy for the villagers. "To tell you the truth, I think under Israeli control they receive better benefits than they would be getting under Lebanese control. I heard protests from the people of the northern Ghajar village. They don't want to be returned to Lebanon," he said.

DiCaprio Brings Mom to Meet Refaeli's Parents

AOL News, Monday, November 15th

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Nov. 15) -- Leonardo DiCaprio and his longtime girlfriend, model Bar Refaeli, arrived in Israel for their second holiday in Refaeli's birthplace -- and this time he brought his mother to meet Refaeli's parents, stoking rumors of an impending marriage.

DiCaprio swooped into Tel Aviv last week, scooped up Refaeli in a private jet and swept her off for a weeklong holiday on the Nile in Egypt and then Jordan to celebrate the actor's 36th birthday.

They were joined by his mother, Irmelin, and close friends supermodel Naomi Campbell and "Entourage" star Kevin Connolly.

Noah Graham, NBAE/Getty Images
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio and model Bar Refaeli, seen here in April during the 2010 NBA Playoffs, are on holiday in Israel. The couple landed at Ben-Gurion Airport on Sunday in a private jet and sped off to the presidential suite at the Dan Hotel in Tel Aviv -- occupied last week by Pamela Anderson.

Israeli commentators said the security surrounding the couple -- including fast-track VIP treatment at Ben-Gurion Airport, a convoy of armored cars with darkened windows and walkie-talkie-whispering security goons armed with umbrellas to shield the stars from waiting photographers -- would not have embarrassed a visiting head of state.

Suites were booked at four different hotels in Tel Aviv to try to throw the paparazzi off the scent. DiCaprio's last trip to Israel with Refaeli three years ago was marred by violent encounters between the notoriously pushy local snap-pack and Refaeli's father, a former Mossad agent, who punched out a photographer.

They are due to stay in Israel until Thursday, with plans to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem, the world's lowest spot at the Dead Sea, and generally hang out with Refaeli's family at their ranch-style home, complete with horses, in Hod HaSharon north of Tel Aviv.

Refaeli, 25, and DiCaprio have remained famously tight-lipped about their four-year relationship.

"I see myself being a mum, going to university and definitely doing some kind of work to help people, whether it's hospitals or sick kids or peace projects," she told this reporter soon after her first trip home with DiCaprio. "I want to have at least three children. I hope I will be able to bring them up in Israel. I had a very beautiful childhood, and I hope that my kids will be able to experience the same thing. But I don't know. It depends on the circumstances. It depends who you decide to have your children with. Maybe it will be in Japan, because I'll choose a Japanese guy. You never know."

The couple went through a six-month break in 2009, but Refaeli said she found it difficult dating other men. They reconciled in December. Afterward, she said the split was what they both needed, as it made their relationship even stronger.

Engagement rumors began swirling after the couple were spotted at a romantic dinner in Berlin on Valentine's Day, when Refaeli wore an impressive diamond ring.

"I am not thinking about getting married," she said soon after. "I'm still young. And when I do get engaged, I might even hide the ring. I want it to remain private."

Her mother, Tzipi Levine, a former model and glamour girl who once dated Warren Beatty, told this reporter she had no objection to DiCaprio as a son-in-law.

"This is her choice. I'm happy for her when she's happy. Any man is lucky to be dating my daughter," she said.

There is one skeleton in Refaeli's designer closet: her first husband, 23 years her senior, whom she married to avoid serving in the Israeli army. Her mother said she was ill, but she walked away from an army inquiry held to clarify her medical condition.

Refaeli married Ari Weinstein, a wealthy friend of her father, in October 2003. The tiny ceremony, attended by just a dozen people, took place in secret in Petach Tikvah, northeast of Tel Aviv. They divorced in March 2004 and apparently never lived together, but her ex-husband remains ambiguous about the nature of their relationship to this day.

Haim Etgar, an Israeli show business reporter who has produced a documentary about the country's entertainment and glamour industry featuring Refaeli, managed to secure a rare interview with Weinstein, who now lives in New York.

"What was the purpose of the marriage? How did it occur? Some people, including high-ranking army officers at the time, say it was a fictitious marriage. There was a lot of dismay about using the marriage to get out of the army. It's still a hot issue," Etgar told AOL News.

Etgar says Refaeli is a "test case" of how a determined mother can help her daughter to become famous, even lining up her teenage dates with the sons of the rich and famous.

"Her mother is a brilliant person, her promoter and her agent. She's done all the right moves, she hasn't left anything to chance. But there are some people who are outraged by their behavior," he said.

twitter.com/MatthewKalman

Wedding bells for Bar and Leo?

Marriage rumours sweep Israel as Leonardo DiCaprio's mother prepares to meet the future in-laws

By MATTHEW KALMAN

JERUSALEM (Nov 10) - Leonardo DiCaprio is on his way back to Israel with Bar Refaeli, and this time he's bringing his mum Irmelin. Last Saturday, Leo swooped into Tel Aviv on a private jet, scooped up supermodel Bar and swept her off to Egypt. The three of them are currently holidaying in Cairo with Naomi Campbell and Leonardo's buddy Kevin Connolly of Entourage fame, celebrating Leo's 36th birthday.
Leo, Bar and Irmelin are due back in Israel this weekend.
The family get-together has re-ignited rumors of a possible engagement - and even a snap wedding.
Leo was spotted last week eating dinner at the Lion restaurant in New York City with Gossip Girl star Blake Lively, prompting a slew of reports that the two were an item. But they were accompanied by five other people and did not leave the restaurant together.
Bar has been stuck in Israel for the past few weeks after what were described as bureaucratic problems renewing her US visa paperwork.

Israeli Settlers Threaten to Topple Netanyahu

AOL NEWS November 8, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Nov. 8) -- Israeli settler leaders said today they would topple the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he agrees to renew a building freeze demanded by the Palestinians as a precondition to restarting peace talks.

Netanyahu, who is in the United States for talks with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, appears to have abandoned an unofficial moratorium on new construction in east Jerusalem, which Palestinians want as the capital of their future state. Israelis consider all of Jerusalem their capital.

Tara Todras-Whitehill, AP

The Israeli government is moving ahead with plans to build nearly 1,300 apartments in disputed east Jerusalem, an official said Monday, a move sure to escalate frictions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American officials during his visit to the United States.

On Friday, with little fanfare, the Israeli government published advertisements in a Jerusalem newspaper announcing plans for 1,352 new housing units in Ramot and Har Homa, two Israeli suburbs of Jerusalem built beyond the pre-1967 Green Line border.

The news will seem like deja vu for Biden, whose trip to Israel in March was wrecked by a similar announcement of new housing units, also in Ramot. The vice president met Netanyahu over the weekend at a Jewish community conference in New Orleans and then delivered a speech seen as strongly supportive of the Jewish state.

The plan for Har Homa "C" is particularly significant since it extends the built-up area of that neighborhood to the southeast, creating a further barrier between the Arab neighborhoods of Umm Tuba and Sur Baher inside Jerusalem, and the town of Bethlehem about half a mile to the south. The construction of Har Homa, which began in 1998 during Netanyahu's first tenure as prime minister, created the first permanent Israeli presence on the empty land between Bethlehem and east Jerusalem.

Settler leaders said the new plans for east Jerusalem are the start of a burst of construction after a 10-month freeze that did little to advance Middle East peace.

The Palestinians refused to start direct peace talks until nine months into the freeze and broke them off when the moratorium ended. Since then, the Obama administration has been trying to find a formula that will bring both sides back to the table but still save face -- an apparently impossible task.

The Yesha Council of Israeli settlers in the West Bank -- which the settlers call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria -- has demanded the immediate approval of tenders for 4,321 new units in nine West Bank settlements.

Danny Dayan, chairman of the Yesha Council, told AOL News today that if Netanyahu buckled to U.S. pressure and renewed the freeze, the prime minister would be ousted.

"I think it will be the beginning of the collapse of Mr. Netanyahu's government, and we will make an effort to make that happen," Dayan said, referring to the settlers' supporters in several of the parties in the government coalition, including Netanyahu's own Likud.

"Regardless of our efforts, I think that if Netanyahu makes such a decision, ultimately his government will collapse," he said. Netanyahu's first term as prime minister ended when right-wingers brought down his government over a similar dispute about concessions to the Palestinians.

Two key allies in Netanyahu's coalition -- Eli Yishai of Shas and Daniel Hershkowitz of the Jewish Home Party -- have already publicly said they will not support a renewal of the moratorium.

"The issue of extending the settlement freeze is nonnegotiable. For 10 months Israel made gestures above and beyond what was required, and now it's the Palestinians' turn," Hershkowitz said.

Peace Now, the Israeli group that monitors settlement activity and campaigns for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, said the new plans for Jerusalem had to have received Netanyahu's personal approval.

"This is a huge provocation by Netanyahu, at a very sensitive time in the negotiation process. The timing of this depositing is not accidental," Peace Now spokeswoman Hagit Ofran said. "It seems to be a calculated attempt by Netanyahu to torpedo peace talks and also avoid blame, by forcing the Palestinians to be the ones to walk away from the negotiation table."

Last March, Netanyahu said he was surprised by the announcement that tripped up Biden's visit. Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney specializing in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem and the founder of the co-existence group Ir Amim, said this time Netanyahu himself had chosen "the timing and the context of these moves."

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"The scope of these events goes beyond simple tactical maneuvering. It appears that Netanyahu has opened up the east Jerusalem settlement floodgates. It appears that the prime minister has a special weakness for Vice President Biden -- or at least for embarrassing the man," Seidemann said. "He has rewarded Vice President Biden for his staunch support of Israel by publicly humiliating the vice president once again and sticking a finger in the eye of the Obama administration."

But Dayan, the settler leader, suggested that by its "obsession with the marginal issue of a freeze" the Palestinians and the U.S. administration had backed themselves into a corner.

"Renewal of the freeze will bring ultimately elections in Israel in 2011, which means the whole peace process will be paralyzed," Dayan told AOL News. "Then we have elections in the United States in 2012. So the ironic thing is that if Mr. Netanyahu abides by the American demands and renews the moratorium, that will be a big blow to the peace process, not only to construction in Judea and Samaria."

As Netanyahu Heads to US, Israel Keeps Building

AOL NEWS, November 5th, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

JERUSALEM (Nov. 5) -- A page of gray, text-heavy official announcements published in an Israeli newspaper could torpedo President Barack Obama's strategy for the renewal of Middle East peace talks.

The announcements came on the eve of a crucial visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the U.S., where he will meet with Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton while Obama is traveling in Asia.

In the Hebrew daily Maariv, the Israel Lands Administration detailed tenders inviting contractors to bid for the construction of 238 new homes in two Israeli neighborhoods in East Jerusalem -- on the same day Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas denounced Israel's "ferocious" building in the occupied territories.

Tara Todras-Whitehill, AP

The East Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Zeev is seen behind a section of Israel's separation barrier. The Israel Lands Administration has asked for contractor bids for construction of new homes in the neighborhood.

The tenders are for 80 housing units in Pisgat Zeev with development costs of nearly $4.5 million, and for another 158 units in Ramot on land valued at nearly $14 million.

The publication, prefigured but not detailed in a Housing Ministry announcement in October, finally ends an unofficial freeze on Israeli construction in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians have demanded that freeze, along with a halt to settlement construction in the West Bank, as a condition for direct peace talks with Israel.

While it agreed to the 10-month freeze in the West Bank that expired in September, Israel has officially refused to halt construction in East Jerusalem, which it regards as Israeli sovereign territory. The Palestinians consider the area, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six Day War, to be the capital of their future independent state.

These are the first Israeli housing tenders published for East Jerusalem since a similar announcement last March dropped a diplomatic bombshell in the middle of a visit to Israel by Biden. Netanyahu blamed the poor timing of that announcement on bureaucratic bungling at the Housing Ministry and said he would improve coordination to ensure that similar embarrassments did not occur in future.

So the timing of Thursday's advertisements, just days before Netanyahu arrives for talks with Biden and Clinton, is likely to be perceived as a test of the administration's diplomatic strength after the Democrats' poor showing in the midterm congressional elections.

An official in Netanyahu's office, speaking to AOL News on condition of anonymity, said there was no message in the timing of the tenders, which, unlike the announcement during Biden's visit, did not come as a surprise to the Israeli prime minister. "Israel is transparent on these issues," said the official.

"In every peace plan that's been put on the table since the peace process started, the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem remain part of Israel in a final-status peace agreement. Building inside those neighborhoods in no way contradicts the goal of moving forward in the peace process," the official said.

Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney specializing in Israeli-Palestinian relations in Jerusalem and the founder of the co-existence group Ir Amim, told AOL News, "This is not random, but what it indicates about Netanyahu's intentions is very much in question.

"There are three possibilities. Netanyahu is either testing how far he can go, he's signifying the end of the moratorium or he's letting off steam protecting his right-wing flank in anticipation of a continued moratorium," Seidemann said. "I see these tenders as extremely detrimental, extremely problematic, but I don't think this is the final word. There is skirmishing going on, and this is part of it. It's a probe."

Seidemann said that if all Israeli construction plans currently in the pipeline were implemented, they would scupper the chances of both Israelis and Palestinians sharing Jerusalem and establishing their capitals in the city.

Meanwhile, Clinton said there was still hope for reviving the direct talks, which began nine months into the 10-month freeze and then were halted by the Palestinians as the freeze ended.

"We are working on a nonstop basis with our Israeli and Palestinian friends to design a way forward in the negotiations," Clinton said Thursday during a trip to New Zealand. "I am very involved in finding the way forward, and think we will do so."

But in an interview with CNN, Abbas said that unless Israel stopped all building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, the talks would stop and the Palestinians will unilaterally seek recognition from the United Nations.

"To ask us to continue with negotiations while settlement activities are under way is unacceptable, because the time will come and we will have nothing to negotiate for," said Abbas, describing all settlements as "illegal."

"I know that they have built so many settlements, but this is enough, we cannot take that anymore. We cannot continue with the negotiations because the way they are building those settlements now is very ferocious," he said.

Abbas also blamed Hamas and its Iranian sponsors for trying to derail peace talks.

"Hamas and whoever is standing behind Hamas, meaning Iran, is slowing the process," Abbas told CNN. "Iran is pressuring Hamas not to be part of any agreement, so that they can use Hamas as a negotiations card in their talks with the international community and especially with the United States."

Adding to the mix ahead of Netanyahu's flight to Washington, the Haaretz newspaper said it would publish an expose on Sunday showing that the Israel Lands Administration, which supervises government-controlled land, has transferred sensitive properties in Arab-populated areas in and around the Old City of Jerusalem to nationalist Israeli groups "for low prices, without issuing a tender as required by law."

"The state and the groups involved concealed the transactions and refused to give any information about them," Haaretz reported today.

News of Government Guidelines on 'Pluralism' Alarms Israeli Academics

CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION

Nov 4, 2010

By Matthew Kalman

Jerusalem

Israel's education minister, Gideon Sa'ar, has reignited a debate about academic freedom in Israel by announcing the imminent publication of a "document of guiding principles" for faculty at Israeli institutions of higher education...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can Housing Preserve Mideast's Christians?

AOL News Monday, November 1st, 2010

Matthew Kalman Contributor

AOL News

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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