The stranger within the gates.

At least once a week I perform a mental sweeping under the carpet. I simply hide all the things I'm ashamed of. Once I've put them out of sight I try to keep them out of mind. However after last week's huge sweep-away I can no longer tread on that proverbial carpet. So this week I've decided to carry out a mental spring cleaning, albeit in the middle of winter.

I realised It's time I aired some of the worrying things that have happened here recently.

I'm referring to:

1. The edict signed by 200 or more rabbis instructing the public not to rent or sell property to Arabs.
2. An amended version of that edict.
3. A letter published by a group of 27 rabbis' wives affiliated with the “Lehava” organisation, which works to prevent intermarriage in Israel. They called on Jewish women "not to date Arabs and not to work in places that employ Arabs or serve in the National Service with them."
4. Demonstrations against African workers and asylum seekers.

The biblical injunctions regarding attitudes to the "stranger within thy gates" seem to have been ignored. Admittedly our indigenous minorities could be considered to be closer to the category intended by the authors of the original canon than the word "stranger” chosen by the translators of the King James version of the Bible.

Almost by coincidence (I was searching for a parallel example) I stumbled across an article published by Kenan Malik in the Sunday Times. Under the title "Myths of the stranger at the gate," Malik reassures his British readers that immigrants aren’t overwhelming them, they don’t steal jobs and they don’t exploit the British welfare system. Understandably Malik an Indian-born British writer, lecturer, broadcaster and documentary film maker has to work harder to convince the British public that he is right. Arguing against policies intended to keep strangers out he postulates that, " open borders allow people to move in and out according to need. Closed borders compel people to settle, even if they have no desire to do so."

Quoting from an independent report commissioned by the UK Home Office he claims that immigrant workers don't take away jobs and depress wages. "Immigrant workers" says Malik "do the jobs that locals won’t do or can’t do." He also debunks the accusation that they exploit social services. Malik claims the government is powerless to control immigration. Keeping them out will make employers more reliant on illegal workers who are forced to work in appalling conditions, for derisory wages without social benefits and union representation.

Kenan Malik's conclusions are uncomfortably familiar; we see some of them here in Israel.

Witnessing expressions of xenophobia and more markedly Islamophobia in many places in the more developed world, I doubt if Malik's well argued conclusions will find receptive audiences.

Here in Israel some Israelis express antipathy towards three types of strangers:

1. Foreign workers brought here under contract. Sometimes they stay on illegally after their work visas expire.
2. Africans that have fled wars and persecution and now seek asylum in Israel. There are also many Africans that are not genuine asylum seekers. They simply come here looking for work.
3. Mostly our own indigenous minorities. They have been "within the gates" for a long time. Now they too are regarded by some people as strangers undermining our wellbeing and security.

Our prejudiced attitude to strangers is aggravated by additional factors.

In an op-ed article that appeared in Haaretz entitled “Jim Crow in Bat Yam”

Jessica Montell describes how, “A racist protest in Bat Yam advanced male supremacy alongside Jewish supremacy.”

Ms. Montell is the Executive Director of B'Tselem: the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories.

I know some people will dismiss her as a self-righteous leftist and skip her comments. Just the same she does highlight some of our darker actions.

In relating to the demonstration that took place at Bat Yam, just south of Tel Aviv, Montell says it was reminiscent of the Jim Crow era. Demonstrations took place in other towns, but Bat Yam’s demonstration was more pointedly against Arabs.

“The apartments issue was also part of the demonstration in Bat Yam, but most of the signs and speeches focused on the "danger" inherent in relations between Arab men and Jewish women. Some speakers railed against sexual harassment of Jewish women, others lectured against inter-ethnic dating. From a women's rights perspective, of course there is no connection between the two. But for the demonstrators, they are in fact the same thing. It seems a woman's free will is irrelevant.”

“Women are analogous to the apartments that the Arabs are trying to get; women are also a possession that the Arabs covet.” Says Montell and concludes, “Jewish extremists exploit the sex card in a backlash against Arab demands to be equal citizens in this country.”

British historian Geoffrey Alderman stresses an additional facet of the same topic. “On the face of it, the Israeli rabbis who signed an edict forbidding Jews from selling or renting homes or land to non-Jews have scored a spectacular own-goal. On the face of it this edict, which appears to have originated with the Chief Rabbi of Tzfat,(Safed) contravenes Israeli law, which naturally prohibits discrimination on racial grounds.”

Opposition to the edict was voiced in Israel and around the world. Some 900 rabbis mainly from the USA but including some from the United Kingdom have issued their own declaration condemning the decree.

Tzfat’s Arabs left before and during the battle for the town in the War of Independence. Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas was born in Tzfat.

Tzfat, considered one of Israel’s four holy cities has a mainly Orthodox population. This picturesque town is yet another not-to-be missed place to visit when touring the north of Israel. Geoffrey Alderman, recounts how Tzfat’s municipality issued a well-intentioned invitation to local Muslims to take part in the renovation of the holy places of all faiths. The offer was exploited by the northern branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement to open a centre in the town. The Islamic Movement has strong ties with Hamas. It’s leader Sheikh Ra'ed Salah , recently released from prison is an incorrigible agitator and participates in activities inciting against Israel including the notorious Gaza flotilla.

There is a clear seam-line between the legitimate rights of Israel’s Arab minority and a campaign to further the possession and repossession of land in this country, a campaign marked in some instances by open incitement against the state.

After the War of Independence deserted Arab villages, properties and lands were taken over by a body later known as the Israel Lands Administration.

They became state property. The policy of government appropriation of abandoned property is not anomalous. There are many precedents in other countries. Furthermore most of the property owned by Jews that left or were forced to leave Arab countries was appropriated.

After the War of Independence Israelis, mainly new immigrants were settled in abandoned Arab neighbourhoods of Haifa, Jaffa, Jerusalem, Beit Shean, Tzfat and other places. A number of structures – mosques, bathhouses, caravanserais etc., were either converted for another purpose or remained unoccupied.

With the passage of time, almost imperceptibly, mainly from 1965 onwards and more systematically after 1967, many of the abandoned Arab villages were demolished.

The demolition was conducted out of concern for public safety, archeological surveys, development projects and other reasons. However, it’s reasonable to assume that the levelling of more than three hundred perhaps four hundred abandoned villages was done mainly to obviate the possibility of repossession.

In the face of the determined and unrelenting efforts of groups like the Islamic Movement to acquire and repossess lands and undermine Jewish settlement in Israel, the obliteration policy was appropriate and well timed.

In the face of persistent Bedouin encroachment displacing Jewish settlement in Israel (use this hyperlink to access an enlightening clip [thank you Roberta]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGfc2oRYyxA&feature=player_embedded

the struggle for the land ( in Israel) is of uttermost urgency and importance.

In a survey she conducted for Yediot Ahronot’s weekend magazine investigative reporter Nehama Duek provided an eye-opening account of the land struggle. Under the heading “We are on the map, and so are they,” Duek says, “All over the country a war is taking place. The Islamic Movement seeks to repossess thousands of holy sites held by the Israel Lands Administration.

All means are fair in this war: fictitious headstones marking graves that don’t exist, unauthorised renovations and repairs carried out by night and the moving of sheiks’ tombs to suit the needs of the Islamic Movement.”

“They are trying to take over state lands,” claims the ILA spokesperson.

“We won’t yield an inch,” responds Knesset member Ibrahim Tzartzur, one of the leaders of the Islamic Movement. “We are determined to defend our holy places, they belong to us.”

On the pretext of cleaning and repairing ancient tombs the Islamic movement establishes a foothold, a place for further expansion.

The Israel Lands Administration is not the only obstacle in the path of the Islamic Movement in its struggle to reclaim its holy sites.

I’ve already cast doubt regarding some of the tombs attributed to renowned sages and prophets. Many a forgotten Sheikh has been awarded a posthumous conversion. I refer to a growing popular trend of venerating ancient tombs. Formerly unknown tombs of long dead rabbis and prophets have been discovered all over the country. As is the case of Honi the circle drawer’s tomb situated geographically distant from his sphere of influence.

Even the identification of some of the more authentic tombs based on the evidence of various Jewish visitors to the Holy Land during middle Ages is open to question.

Medieval travellers gleaned their information from the local population recounted hundreds of years after the demise of the rabbi. The location of the graves of the prophets is even more a matter of guesswork and open to doubt.

For example the tomb of Benyamin the son of the patriarch Jacob according to one tradition is located on the road from Kfar Sava to Kochav Yair.. The tomb and ruins close by date from the Mameluke period and an inscription on a nearby caravanserai (khan) bears the date 1312. The Arabs call the tomb Nebi Yamin and there’s a village close to the site called Neve Yamin. It’s easy to see how Nebi Yamin became the prophet Benyamin

The tomb of Benyamin’s brother Shimon (Simon) is to be found not far from here. It was adopted by the Breslov Hassidic movement. The same people who support the grave of Rabbi Nahman of Breslov in Uman, in the Ukraine.

The Breslov Hassidim painted its dome (built during the Ottoman period) pale blue. The Israel Lands Administration rushed to avert a clash and painted the dome a neutral white colour. It wasn’t long before the Islamic Movement’s vigilantes painted it a nice shade of Islamic green. Fortunately the Breslov blue has come to the surface and now the dome is an inoffensive, ugly turquoise tint.

The vogue of tomb adoration received an initial impetus from Jews that hailed from the Maghreb. It has been argued that they copied the custom from their Muslim neighbours. The grave of the Kabbalist Baba Sali at Netivot is just one example of this imported custom. I hesitate to link the Breslov Hassisim with the Baba Sali’s followers, so I will conclude with a tale about two local graves.

Near the summit of Givat Moreh, an imposing hill a little north of Afula, is an ancient Sheikh’s tomb called Nebi Dehi. Nearby is an Arab village by the same name.

The villagers settled there some time in the eighteenth century and are not related to the venerable sheikh. According to legend Sheikh Dehi Ibn Halifa was one of one of Mohamed’s generals killed in battle with the Byzantine army at Ein Jelud. Ein Jelud is the Arabic name for Maayan Harod or Gideon’s Spring the original site of Kibbutz Ein Harod. The sheikh’s faithful dog dragged his body all the way to the summit of Givat Hamoreh and dropped dead when he reached the top of the hill..

According to tradition the dog is buried close to the grave of his master.

So far the Islamic movement hasn’t staked its claim on the tomb and the hill.

Across the valley opposite Givat Hamoreh is another imposing high place, Mount Gilboa. At the foot of the mountain close to Maayan Harod, where Sheikh Dehi Ibn Halifa fell in battle, is the Hankin family crypt.

Yehoshua Hankin the man responsible for most of the major land purchases of the World Zionist Organisation in Ottoman Palestine is buried here together with his wife Olga.

Olga Belkind Hankin died in 1943 at the age of 91. Her grave has become an authentic shrine visited by an endless flock of believers. Although not as popular as the graves of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai or Rabbi Meir the Miracle Worker, its unique attributes have nevertheless made it a major attraction . Infertile women, many of them from strictly Orthodox communities come here from all over Israel to pray by her grave in the hope of becoming pregnant.

In Bnei Berak, you can see posters offering bus tours and directions to Maayan Harod, the shrine of Olga Hankin.
This phenomenon is most surprising, especially because Olga Belkind Hankin was totally secular, and because she herself was barren.

Perhaps it is because Olga worked as a midwife among the Jewish pioneers and Arab families alike

This is the last letter of the year 2010 so I want to wish everyone good health and contentment in the coming year.

Beni 30^th of December, 2010..

Fayyadism

Palestinian Entity Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is enjoying unprecedented popularity. Truly he is the "darling of the western world."

In a piece he wrote for Tablet Magazine last December Michael Weiss called him “the Palestinian Ben-Gurion."

President Shimon Peres added his own nuance when he addressed the Herzliya Conference in February this year. On that occasion he said "Fayyad is the Palestinians first Ben-Gurionist."

A few weeks ago, Yossi Sarid joined the chorus of Fayyad fans. In an article he wrote for Haaretz he explained why Fayyad is Israel's public enemy number one.

I hasten to add that Sarid wrote in a facetious vein -

"The Palestinian prime minister is gradually undermining and invalidating Israel's traditional arguments: He has brought security, but there is still no peace. He will kill us with moderation."

Salam Fayyad is certainly not the stereotype Palestinian leader we are used to dealing with.

He graduated from the American University of Beirut in 1975 and continued his academic studies in Austin Texas. After his post graduate studies he taught at the Yarmouk University in Jordan. In 1987 he began an eight year tenure with the World Bank. Later he was appointed International Monetry Fund representative to the Palestinian Authority. In 2001 he became the regional manager of the Arab Bank in the West Bank and Gaza before Yasser Arafat appointed him to be the PA's minister of finance.

Fayyad is a technocrat with no affinity to Fatah or any other Palestinian political faction.

What is he doing that has earned him the support and encouragement of a broad swath of Israeli political and economic leaders, the U.S administration, the Quartet and many leaders in the Arab world? Journalist Roger Cohen provided part of the answer in an article entitled – "Fayyad's road to Palestine" published earlier this year in the New York Times . Relating to Salam Fayyad's two year programme launched in August 2009 Cohen said his plan is, "to ready Palestine for statehood by the second half of 2011. It represents a break with past Palestinian failure in that it espouses nonviolence —an ironclad commitment, not a seasonal thing and is focused on prosaic stuff like building institutions (police, schools, a justice system, roads and an economy) rather than exalted proclamations."

A few weeks before Cohen's article appeared in the NYT another op-ed journalist, Thomas L. Friedman described Fayyad's plan in a broad Middle East context. "Underlying the latest U.S.-Israel spat over settlements is the deeper — real — problem: There are five key actors in the Israeli-Palestinian equation today. Two of them — the Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and the alliance of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah — have clear strategies. These two are actually opposed, but one of them will shape Israeli-Palestinian relations in the coming years; indeed, their showdown is nearing. I hope Fayyad wins. It would be good for Israel, America and the moderate Arabs. But those three need their own strategy to make it happen.

Fayyad is the most interesting new force on the Arab political stage. A former World Bank economist, he is pursuing the exact opposite strategy from Yasir Arafat. Arafat espoused a blend of violence and politics; his plan was to first gain international recognition for a Palestinian state and then build its institutions. Fayyad calls for the opposite — for a nonviolent struggle, for building non-corrupt transparent institutions and effective police and paramilitary units, which even the Israeli Army says are doing a good job; and then, once they are all up and running, declare a Palestinian state in the West Bank by 2011."….

"Therefore, today, Fayyadism, which aims to replace the Israeli occupation of the West Bank with an independent Palestinian state, is the biggest threat to Iran’s strategy. So the smart thing right now would be for the other three parties to have a clear strategy to back Fayyadism."

Marc Tracy who edits a daily blog in Tablet Magazine called "The Scroll" managed to distill the essence of Fayyadism to a single phrase. He says Fayyad wants to change facts and minds on the ground: Then he quotes him directly “A solid majority of Palestinians support a two-state solution, but only a minority believe it will actually happen. Our plan is to create the sense that a Palestinian state is inevitable.”

If I'm not mistaken the term "facts on the ground" was coined during the Clinton era when it referred to the main Jewish settlement blocs that would be included in an exchange of territories preceding the establishment of a Palestinian state.

However Fayyad's detractors, some of them persistent nitpickers, warn that we shouldn't be fooled by his thin veneer of western education and manners and shouldn’t be won over by his eloquence. Eventually he will lull us into a state of false security.

A totally different form of criticism has been levelled at Fayyadism from another direction. Nathan J. Brown, director of the Institute for Middle East Studies at George Washington University questions the means Fayyad uses to reach his goal.

In a recent issue of Commentary published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Brown says the international community’s understandable admiration for Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and his efforts to rebuild the West Bank obscures a dangerous regression in democracy and human rights.

Professor Brown took a closer look at Fayyad's achievements during a recent visit to the West Bank. He contends that the United States is once again confusing support for an admirable individual with that of a sound policy.

Brown concludes that Fayyad's government is circumventing democracy. "The unaccountable governing process that Fayyad has had to invent is not just postponing a democratic system—it is actively denying it."
"Isolated successes do not create rule of law. The increasing number of cases seen and submitted to the courts indicates growing efficiency and confidence, but security services continue to act outside the law under the guise of cracking down on Hamas." Regarding the latter point few people in Israel would agree with Brown.

"Irregularities" in the elections that took place recently in Egypt, Jordan and Iraq seem to indicate that the democratic system is a hard to sell commodity in this part of the world.
Surprisingly Brown contends that there is a lack of institution building. "While Fayyad’s cabinet has managed to make a few existing institutions more effective and less corrupt, there has been regression in other governing bodies. Palestinian civil society is showing signs of decay as well. "

Brown claims there was more institution building and civil society development under Yasser Arafat than there has been since the West Bank-Gaza split in 2007. Maybe he is right, but the sense of wellbeing, security and of course the facts on the ground distinguish the Fayyad era from the troubled times of Yasser Arafat.

Fadi Elsalameen, a research fellow with the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program, came to Fayyad's defence. Fayyadism is not authoritarianism he claims

"Faced with underlying problems from Fatah party politics, the split with Hamas, and the ubiquitous Israeli occupation, I would argue that it has been Fayyad's leadership that has kept the Palestinian Authority functioning. Palestine is still in process, and Fayyad is working tirelessly to curtail corruption in the ministries to maintain the rule of law. Misuses and abuses are expected while the state is being built, but on the ground one can already see the fruits of Fayyad's labors."

As December draws to a close various government ministries are attempting to sum up their achievements. Armed with only approximate figures, the ministry of tourism claims that 2010 has been a record breaking year for tourism. More than 3 million tourists visited Israel this year, 700,000 more than in 2009 Some 2.4 million of them are Christian pilgrims. After many lean years Bethlehem is benefiting from the increase in tourism, some of it an overflow from the Israeli tourist boom.

Have a good weekend and if you are celebrating Christmas please accept my felicitations.

Beni 23^rd of December, 2010.

.

The way forward

Some people can't start the day without a caffeine booster. No matter whether it's percolated, machine extracted or simply "instant," that habitual morning kick-start is part of the daily routine. Facing that first waking hour without a coffee lift-off is inconceivable,

At times of strife when coffee was unavailable or too expensive people turned to roasted chicory as a substitute. In fact it's still used in some coffee blends. I'm told that roasted acorns, yams and a variety of grains have been used as coffee substitutes. It seems that even the deception was better than the perceived coffee deprivation.

For the purpose of this week's letter I've chosen to liken coffee to peace.

If it's unattainable now we could make do with a substitute.

A concerned almost despairing lead article published last week in The Economist summed up the Israeli-Palestinian impasse as follows:

"Never say never, when it comes to the prospect of peace in the Middle East. Yet even the most straw-clutching of optimists must wonder whether the Israelis and Palestinians will ever agree to live side by side in two secure and sovereign states." Furthermore when the U.S. administration announced that the latest direct talks, stalled since September, would not resume, Israelis and Palestinians almost sighed with relief.

The paper's damage assessment reads like an insurance report-

"It is a blow all around. For Barack Obama it is a bitter failure. When he came into office, he was hopeful that he could orchestrate a peace treaty before the end of his first term. For the Palestinians the prospect of a real state now looks bleaker than ever. Among the Israelis the feeling is more mixed. Hawks, perhaps a majority, think fortress Israel is pretty strong just now and that concessions are therefore unnecessary. Doves think the Jewish state will never be safe unless the Palestinians have the satisfaction of a state of their own. For outsiders, who have been striving for decades to put those twin states in place, there is no obvious plan B, no easy way out of the impasse.

Already voices in Israeli and American circles, especially Republican ones, are holding Mr Obama primarily responsible for what has gone wrong. It is widely argued that he was foolish, even reckless, to make the talks contingent on a freeze of building or expanding Jewish settlements on the West Bank, the heartland of any future Palestinian state. That is unfair. Mr Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, were right to put down a marker. Any peace deal will require the removal of settlements from a future Palestinian state. Each new building therefore makes it harder for that deal to be done. Besides, the settlements are plainly illegal under international law. The Palestinians and Americans were right to insist that, as a minimal token of intent, Israel must stop expanding or building them if talks are to progress. By refusing to do so, the main blame for the impasse rests with Binyamin Netanyahu."

The German conservative paper - Die Welt disagrees:

"It was a tactical mistake to present the settlement issue as the main problem in the conflict. From the beginning it was unrealistic to believe that the right-wing coalition in Israel would agree to a moratorium in the long term. … It became clear to the Americans that a 90-day construction freeze would not do much to change the basic problems.... Neither Netanyahu nor Abbas have given the impression that they are serious about peace."…..

Quoting Ron Pundak, an Israeli political scientist who helped hatch the Oslo peace accords of 1993 The Christian Science Monitor also criticises President Obama "The choice of engaging on settlements was a mistake. The focus should not be the process [of peace talks] but the substance,''

Ron Pundak says the focus on procedure over the final issues was an effort by US Peace Envoy George Mitchell to reapply his playbook from the peace process in Northern Ireland to the Middle East.

"He put the [Northern Ireland] process on a slow pressure cooker to bring the sides together. He tried to repeat the experience, which didn't work,'' says Pundak, who believes the US needs to publish its own peace principles and convene new negotiations.

Die Welt emphasises another aspect of our ongoing conflict:

"In recent years it has become fashionable to declare (the Middle East conflict) as the mother of all crises in the Muslim world. However the WikiLeaks dispatches have revealed this to be a huge exaggeration. The Arab states are not worried about Palestine but about the Iranian threat …

It would be better if the Palestinian conflict could be ended. However, if the peace partners are not prepared to do this, then there are more important problems that the US should be devoting its energies to."

In a piece he wrote for the New York Times a very disgruntled Tom Friedman came to a similar conclusion:

" At a time of nearly 10 percent unemployment in America, we have the Israelis and the Palestinians sitting over there with their arms folded, waiting for more U.S. assurances or money to persuade them to do what is manifestly in their own interest: negotiate a two-state deal. Shame on them, and shame on us. You can’t want peace more than the parties themselves, and that is exactly where America is today. The people running Israel and Palestine have other priorities. It is time we left them alone to pursue them — and to live with the consequences. "

BBC Middle East bureau editor Paul Danahar observing the same scene wondered if we can afford to be complacent. "Is time running out for peace?" he asked

It seems the BBC has an inexhaustible stock of observers, analysts, officials and local politicians who prefer to remain nameless when they are interviewed.

I'm sure they exist and their anonymity should be respected. Danahar quotes "a senior Israeli politician.": "At the end of the day, the choice is between this coalition[government] and peace. Not the 'peace process'. They can live with the peace process, they like the peace process."

"The Palestinians too want Netanyahu to dump the right-wingers and offer the centrist party, Kadima, a role in the government."

However Netanyahu prefers the present intractable coalition government. It's easier to govern with a bevy of dissimilar junior partners than having to share power with a much larger Kadima party.

In summing up the peace process Danahar makes it easy to understand why we are so apathetic. "The peace process has been going on now since October 1991, nearly 20 years.

The issues are not new, the likely look of a final deal is not new, not even the people that are discussing the issues are new.

The peace process has been going a long time

They all know each other, greet like old friends, crack jokes. Then sit down and argue. "

Another German newspaper quoted by Der Spiegel the center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"Obama had his chance in the Middle East and it is hardly likely he will be given another one during the remaining two years of his term.... The Israelis know now that they have nothing to fear from him…. The Palestinians on the other hand have learnt that they cannot trust him.... Now, an escalation can be expected. This conflict cannot simply be frozen, it requires constant new movement."

It's tempting to argue that the new movement will be another "Intifada."

At the present time it doesn't seem likely that there will be an Intifada-like outbreak of violence. The Palestinian economy is doing well. Another flare-up will achieve little and be mainly counterproductive. Furthermore, the much maligned security fence containing a large part of Judea and Samaria/ West Bank provides effective protection against would be suicide bombers.

The Palestinians are now left with grave doubts that the US will ever be able to broker a final peace settlement if it cannot even persuade Israel to temporarily freeze settlements. There are indications that they could now push ahead with their Plan B, a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state.

In fact Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas approached a number of countries hoping to garner support for such a unilateral declaration.

Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay responded positively and it's likely that other countries will follow suit.

Not all Palestinian leaders agree that it's wise to appeal for recognition at this stage.

In an interview given to Israel TV Channel 2, Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said, "The Palestinian people are not interested in another unilateral declaration of statehood. We want a state of Palestine, not a unilateral declaration of statehood," Fayyad explained that he did not see how a unilateral declaration of statehood would assist the Palestinian cause.
A 1988 declaration of statehood has now garnered the recognition of more than 100 countries worldwide, many of which maintain embassies and representative offices in PA territory, though the UN itself stopped short of upgrading the observer status first granted to the PLO in 1975.
The Palestinian situation is compounded by its territorial division. The Gaza Strip functions as a separate entity. At present there's no sign of a rapprochement between the two Palestinian territories. As a result, there is no unified Palestinian Authority that can claim to constitute a viable, independent government capable of ruling the entire Palestinian people. As for a West Bank entity without Gaza, its borders have not been defined – there were no “1967 borders,” just the armistice lines of 1949 – and the status of east Jerusalem and of the settlement blocs have not been resolved.

Referring to this matter a lead article in the Jerusalem Post pointed out that, "Palestinian entitlement to the West Bank, as detailed in UN Security Council resolution 242, is contingent upon a negotiated agreement with Israel."
At this juncture it's pertinent to mention that many, if not most of the settlers in Judea ,Samaria and their supporters consider the Palestinian Entity irrelevant, a title without a territory. They believe that Judea, Samaria and maybe Gaza too are part of the God-given birthright of the Jewish people.

They claim this irrevocable deed is not negotiable in any future trade-off with the Palestinians. I can't estimate the numerical strength of this sector. It has been suggested that some of them are more inclined to agree to a compromise

If and when the Palestinian leaders manage to dispense with preconditions for negotiations with Israel and an Israeli government makes a concerted effort to reach a mutually agreed compromise, both sides will have to confront their intractable sectors. The Palestinian Authority will have to find a way of accommodating Hamas- Gaza and the Israeli government will need to persuade the settlers and their supporters to agree to a territorial compromise.
US negotiator George Mitchell will probable restart the shuttle between Jerusalem and Ramallah without achieving much.

"The international community would do well to encourage Israel and Palestine to establish a secret ongoing back channel between them," advises Michael Herzog in an article he published in the Daily Telegraph. Herzog is not exactly a neutral observer. A retired IDF Brigadier General he is presently a Senior Visiting Fellow at BICOM (a pro-Israel British lobby group)

and an International Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has participated in all of Israel's negotiations with the Palestinians and Arabs since 1993.

"Back channel diplomacy," says Herzog, "is a well established tool in international relations, regularly employed by governments and leaders. By its very nature, it is conducted under the radar screen, away from the public eye. This allows for open, informal and deniable communications on sensitive issues. It can bypass or supplement existing official front channels and generate an open dialogue between parties, in which they explore ideas and express views at variance with their declared policies.

Israeli leaders have always used back channels to communicate with counterparts, most importantly in unfriendly or rival political entities, or in states with whom Israel did not have diplomatic relations. These back channels have facilitated dialogue at various times with the Palestinian Authority, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco and others.

Credible back channels proved especially effective in the case of Israeli – Arab peace negotiations. In fact, they helped conclude all of Israel's peace agreements, with Egypt, Jordan and the PLO. In the case of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, the core issues separating the parties are so sensitive ideologically and domestically, that sometimes the very discussion of any of them could become a problem. For example, during the Annapolis process in 2007-8, Israeli Prime Minister Olmert was faced with an ultimatum by the biggest Orthodox party, Shas, to avoid negotiations on the issue of Jerusalem or risk the toppling of his coalition. A back channel could help overcome such obstacles and off-set preconditions designed to satisfy domestic public opinion.

Secret unofficial negotiations paved the way to the Oslo Accords, and all subsequent Israeli-Palestinian agreements. In 1998, for example, approximately 90 percent of the Wye River Agreement was concluded in many months of secret negotiations, before convening the Wye Summit and finalisng the deal. In contrast, the unsuccessful Camp David Summit in 2000 was convened before then existing back channels could significantly narrow the gaps between the parties. The results are well known to all of us.

In the current Israeli-Palestinian peace process some secret meetings have taken place, but no ongoing channel was established to discuss the core issues. This is due to a total lack of trust between the leaderships; the ensuing Palestinian desire to turn from direct, bilateral talks to indirect ones, where the U.S. will play an active role; and the fact that some of the back channel negotiators designated by one party are not trusted by the other.

The Israeli-Palestinian peace process is at a critical moment of "make or break." For a "make", the parties will have to engage directly on all core issues. Notwithstanding American-led proximity talks, the best way for them to do so - perhaps the only way - is through a back channel.

While suggestions are being flown like test balloons I might as well mention Martin Indyk's proposal to find a way out of the Middle Eastern morass.

Indyk a former US ambassador to Israel who is currently the director of foreign policy at the Brookings Institution, and convener of the Saban Forum, outlined his proposal in The Financial Times - "To jump-start new negotiations, why not have Israel declare that it recognises the Arab state of Palestine, with equal rights for all its citizens, and have the PLO declare that it recognises the Jewish state of Israel, with equal rights for all its citizens? Both could then announce they are entering into state-to-state negotiations to define the border between them. The Arab states could welcome Israel’s recognition of the Arab state of Palestine and take their own steps of recognition of the Jewish state of Israel. These dramatic steps could turbo-charge the negotiations by giving each side something fundamental that they both demand – mutual recognition of their national aspirations.

Finally, the parties should commit to reaching an agreement on borders by September 2011 so that the state of Palestine can be seated when the UN General Assembly next meets.

Have a good weekend

Beni 16^th of December, 2010.

The sound of water

It seemed as if the long dry summer would never end. While places in Europe, North America and Asia were in the throes of winter our sun-parched land craved rain.

Prayers for rain were said all over Israel and even in secular Ein Harod a small group gathered in our synagogue to pray for rain.

At this juncture I hasten to correct a possible misconception. By and large our founding fathers were secular Jews. Admittedly a few clung to certain “traditions” but the majority favoured a secular lifestyle, albeit firmly entrenched in Jewish tradition and custom.

Soon after their arrival in the Jezreel Valley some of the pioneers invited their parents to join them. The parents, observant Jews required a kosher kitchen and a synagogue. So a special kitchen for the parents was set up and one of the huts served as a makeshift synagogue. After the parent generation died a few traditionally minded members maintained the synagogue and somehow managed to muster a minyan (prayer quorum).

In the mid nineteen sixties the British philanthropist Sir Isaac Wolfson provided Kibbutz Ein Harod Ihud with a synagogue. A small inconspicuous structure, compact and ideal for our modest needs. A short distance away, across an expanse of lawn the spacious Mishkan L’Omanut, museum of art stands in sharp juxtaposition dwarfing the tiny synagogue.

The museum, the third largest art museum in the country is jointly owned by the two Ein Harod communities.

Well the rain didn’t come, or at least it came late, too late to douse the flames of the largest forest fire recorded in this country. More than 10,000 acres of parkland and forest were consumed in the flames. In addition considerable damage was caused to a number of communities on the mountain and forty two people lost their lives.

While waiting for the rain a few lines from T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” came to mind:

“If there were the sound of water only

Not the cicada

And dry grass singing

But sound of water over a rock

Where the hermit-thrush sings in the pine trees

Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop

But there is no water.”

Of course Mount Carmel has an ancient association with fire. I refer to Elijah and his confrontation with the prophets of Baal - “Then fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood and the stones...” 1 Kings 18:38. Elijah knew a thing or two about rainmaking too. Then as now there was a drought and the showdown on the mountain with the prophets of Baal was part of the drought breaking process.

After showing the false prophets how it’s done Elijah had them slaughtered by the Brook of Kidron (a stream nearby), all three hundred of them. Then he turned to the fickle King Ahab of Samaria and prophesied the coming rain “Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain.”

1 Kings 18:41.

It seems rainmakers are to be found only in arid places. You won’t find any in rainforests or plying their trade in the Norwegian fjords.

The Australian aborigines tell of a powerful rainmaker called Wirreenun. The rainmaking abilities of the Mà'dí tribe in Sudan and parts of Uganda are legendary and they are highly revered by neighbouring tribes in the Congo.
However, it’s difficult, if not impossible to link the invocation to the rain when it arrives.

Early Monday morning I was awakened by the sound of water, the sound of water over rock and concrete paths. It rained!

Does it count if the rain came more than a week after the supplications in our synagogue? However, perhaps the people who never stopped praying deserve the credit.

I confess that the night before when the weather girl on TV channel 10 predicted rain I was prepared to place my trust in her meteorology.

In our search for rainmakers let’s page down a few hundred years after Elijah to the best remembered rainmaker of them all. A man who made his mark in more than one way.

During the first century BC, towards the end of the Hasmonean dynasty, a number of people claiming to possess special attributes began making a name for themselves.. Some of these miracle workers practised much as Elijah and Elisha did. Some of them are mentioned by Josephus Flavius in his "Antiquities of the Jews" and in the Talmud as well. One of them in particular, Honi the “Circle Drawer” received more than usual attention. .

He was called the "Circle-Drawer" because when he prayed for rain, he would do so by drawing a circle around himself in the dry dusty ground and swear not to leave the circle until his prayer was answered

Apparently his threat had the desired effect. It rained, at first too little, then too much and finally enough to satisfy everyone. However, his too familiar attitude with the deity, haggling over the amount of rain required, almost got him excommunicated.

According to Josephus Flavius Honi lived and died during tumultuous times. He had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Forced into a no-win situation during the civil war fought between Hyrcanus II and his brother Aristobulus II. Honi tried to take a neutral stand and was stoned to death by followers of Hyrcanus.

The Talmud describes his death differently. He simple sinks into a deep sleep and wakes up seventy years later. Unable to adapt to the changed world he begs God to let him die and his request is answered.

All this happened nineteen hundred years before Washington Irving and Rip Van Winkle.

Some time at the beginning of the thirteenth century Jewish visitors to the Holy Land identified a burial cave in Upper Galilee as the place where Honi the Circle Drawer and members of his family were buried. The site near the town of Hatzor is a not-to-be-missed stop if you happen to be touring Galilee. Ignore the awkward fact that Honi was active in Judea and somehow is buried in Galilee.

At the time of writing it seems the Mount Carmel fire started near Osfiya a Druze town. A local 14 year old youth inadvertently started the fire when he threw away coals from a nargila he had smoked. The dry undergrowth soon caught fire and strong winds changing direction from time to time turned a minor brush fire into a full scale forest fire

Israel’s fire-fighting services are hopelessly inadequate. It’s antiquated fleet of fire trucks is too small to douse the flames in situations like the Mount Carmel fire and more frightening is the unthinkable possibility of multiple conflagrations during wartime. There is no national fire-fighting force. Local authorities are responsible for their own fire-fighting services. Only part of their budget comes from government sources. Whenever a large scale fire breaks out firemen at the site have to depend on voluntary help from neighbouring authorities in order to extinguish the flames. Most of the local fire departments are under staffed. There are 1,500 firemen in Israel – one per 6,000 citizens, compared to a ratio of 1 to 1,000 in most Western countries.

Journalists outdid one another blasting the government and the minister responsible for firefighting services, Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai. One of them Ben Caspit wrote in the daily Ma’ariv ,"A country that has its spy satellites orbiting the globe, to which foreign sources attribute chilling military operations around the world, a country that plans to attack the nuclear infrastructure of a distant regional power, is also the country that has its firefighting material run out after seven hours, a country whose fire trucks date back to the previous century".

The fire triggered a wave of arson attacks throughout Israel and the West Bank. These fires, which initially created confusion regarding the source of the Carmel blaze, were all extinguished quickly. The motivation for the attacks was not immediately clear, but The Jerusalem Post stated in an editorial that they were carried out for political reasons by Arab Israeli terrorists , who were intensifying a campaign which had involved an average of two arson attempts per day over the past twelve months. It remains to be seen if the paper’s sweeping accusation is born out by the results of the pending police investigation.

It was Prime Minister Netanyahu’s finest hour. The fire was out of control, the inadequate and antiquated firefighting equipment couldn’t stop the blaze from spreading further and engulfing whole neighbourhoods of Haifa. With no specialised firefighting aircraft to supplement the ground firefighting crews, we needed help immediately. Netanyahu appealed for help. Eleven countries sent 24 firefighting planes to help extinguish the fire. Finally the prime minister hired a private US company – “Evergreen” and its Boeing 747 Supertanker. The addition of this flying monster carrying a payload of 77,600 litres of water and fire-retardants tipped the scales in favour of the combined efforts to smother the flames.

Long before the supertanker arrived here the news media and some politicians started a much publicised head-hunt.

They drew on earlier disclosures claiming our firefighting capabilities ranked us in the third world league. Already in 1998 the Ginosar Committee recommended beefing up the firefighters’ ranks to 2,400, replenishing outdated equipment, linking firefighters’ salaries to those of police and enforcing an early retirement age of 55 .The committee also called for reorganising the forces, presently split up into regional commands funded by a combination of state and municipal budgets, and placing them under a single command rubric funded entirely by the state, similar to the police.
But 12 years later, when this unprecedented blaze erupted, nothing had been done.

In 2007, State Comptroller Micha Lindenstrauss issued a critical assessment of Israel’s firefighting capabilities in the wake of the Second Lebanon War. A barrage of Katyusha missiles fired by Hezbollah from south Lebanon could spark enormous fires in the North’s many dense forests, warned the comptroller, and the firefighting infrastructure was “the weak link” in the chain of rescue and first aid entities tasked with dealing with this potential danger.
Nevertheless, while other home front forces were revamped in line with lessons learned from the war, firefighters continued to be neglected. At the beginning of this year, the comptroller issued a follow-up report, distributed among the relevant ministries, warning that firefighting services were deteriorating as the population continued to grow and old equipment became even more outdated.
In response, on July 4, at the initiative of Minister of Interior Eli Yishai, the government transferred $25 million of a requested $125 million. Too little too late! The new fire trucks will arrive some time next year. If Eli Yishai had fought for the fire department with only a fraction of the fervour he demonstrated for his religious sector needs the situation would have been different. In the past he was prepared to bring down the government for the sake of special religious education needs.

Yishai was the first minister to call for the setting up of a state commission of inquiry. He knows from experience that the best way to bury a scandal, ministerial shortcoming or other failure is to have a Knesset committee investigate the matter. Better still push for a state commission of inquiry to

look into what went wrong. Both are guaranteed to drag on for years.

It’s fair to assume that by the time they are ready to write their reports the government has changed, the ministers have exchanged portfolios and nobody cares any more.

I’ve turned again to my TV channel 10 weather prophetess. Her meteorological magic predicts a very wet weekend. I hope so.

Beni 9^th of December, 2010.

The miraculous olive oil.

I have never had a problem finding a topic for the weekly newsletter.

We seem to generate more news, bad and good, than nations many times our size.

Well this week I decided to disregard the Wikileaks; ignore our promising gas and oil drillings and steer clear of the sordid sex-scandal involving high ranking police officers, including the leading candidate for the position of Chief of Police. Instead I’ve chosen to write about Hanukkah. Tonight is the second night of the festival loved by children and adults alike.

You don’t have to be Jewish to like Hanukkah. Sometimes it coincides with Christmas; however this year we will light our Hanukkah candles three weeks before our Christian friends decorate their Christmas trees.

Like all our festivals Hanukkah commemorates an event that occurred in our part of the world, the Middle East. A later festival, not included in the Hebrew canon it is, nevertheless one of the most widely celebrated festivals in our calendar.

Hanukkah commemorates the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire that occurred in

165 BC.

The root causes of the revolt are still disputed by historians. Suffice to say that a power vacuum created in the context of the rising Parthian Empire and the Seleucid Empire’s conflict with Ptolemaic Egypt, opened a window of opportunity for the Jews. Some people see the success of the revolt as an act of Divine intervention. The result was a brief 103 years of Jewish Independence. This was but one of the Hanukkah miracles. The miracle of the flask of oil that lasted for eight days instead of one is perhaps referred to more than the military actions and battles.

Let’s fast-forward to the Middle Ages and the appearance of the Dreidel the Yiddish name for the unique a four-sided spinning top, played with during Hanukkah. In Israel the top is more often called by its modern Hebrew name sevivon.

As we know, each side of the dreidel bears a letter of the Hebrew alphabet which together form the acronym for “a great miracle happened there.” In Israel one letter is changed to transpose “here” for “there.” The letters also form a mnemonic for the rules of a game played with a dreidel.

At that time, and certainly earlier the miracle of the flask of oil was in fact the great miracle. However, the authors of the Books of Maccabees omitted to mention the flask of oil and its miraculous attribute. The Jewish historian Josephus Flavius mentions a “festival of lights” but overlooks the flask of oil.

Hundreds of years later we find the first reference to the flask of oil in the Talmud. It appears that the miracle of the flask of oil was imbedded in the Hanukkah narrative at a later date..

Just the same, in my humble opinion we should accept the flask of oil as a welcome latecomer. The oil of course was none other than olive oil.

There’s no better description of the olive than Lawrence Durrell’s wonderful account -

"The entire Mediterranean seems to rise out of the sour, pungent taste of black olives between the teeth. A taste older than meat or wine, a taste as old as cold water. Only the sea itself seems as ancient a part of the region as the olive and its oil, that like no other products of nature, have shaped civilizations from remotest antiquity to the present"

When Herod the Great lay dying his physicians tried immersing him in a bath of hot olive oil. The hoped for cure only aggravated his malady and he died a few days later. Notwithstanding this failed treatment, today olive oil is highly regarded by dieticians. It seems the olive tree is reclaiming lost ground in more than one way.

A few years ago I mentioned archaeological surveys conducted in western Galilee and the Golan Heights that uncovered the sites of scores of thriving Jewish settlements dating from the Roman-Byzantine period. The large number of olive presses found in both these regions supplemented by additional evidence has reinforced the claim that Jewish communities continued to exist here and even prospered long after the destruction of the Second Temple.

By using a rule of thumb method archaeologists estimate that these communities on the Golan Heights and in western Galilee managed to export considerable quantities of olive oil.

Extensive use of larger improved pressing mills made the oil extraction process more efficient and required less manpower. This export trade itself was facilitated by the network of Roman roads which enabled the growers on the Golan Heights to send their product to the provinces in the east. Sea routes across the Mediterranean brought the large amphorae of olive oil from western Galilee to markets throughout the Roman Empire.

The decline of the Roman-Byzantine Empire, more markedly in the fifth and sixth centuries, dealt a death blow to the communities reliant on exporting their surplus olive oil production. The collapse of the empire's eastern defence line made the Golan prone to incursions by nomadic tribes who at first were content to pillage and later encroached on the farm land grazing their camels and flocks of sheep and goats. One by one the Golan settlements were deserted. The same happened in western Galilee after the Muslim invasion when the sea routes across the Mediterranean were disrupted.

Anyone touring Israel and the West Bank today will no doubt notice the ever increasing number of olive groves. In some places olive groves have become part of the violent conflict between Israelis and Palestinians.

Most markedly the friction points are Palestinian villages that border with Jewish settlements. Not everywhere, but in far too many places there have been despicable incidents involving wilful damage caused to Palestinian crops, in particular olive groves. Trees have been damaged, torched and cut down. In some places Jewish settlers picked their neighbour’s olives before the owners could gain access to their groves.

A few weeks ago I mentioned a village called Jelabun and promised to write about its connection to Hanukkah

Six years ago journalist Akiva Eldar published an article in Haaretz under a double heading

“ A One-time Hanukkah Miracle.”

“The Story of a Very Large Cache of Oil, an Orthodox Kibbutz and a Palestinian Village.”

The story is best told in his own words.

“In better days, other days, before the second year of the intifada and before a high barbed-wire fence separated Kibbutz Merav from the northern West Bank, Hanukkah was a holiday for the residents of the nearby village of Jelabun; Merav's candle factory was the source of livelihood for a number of Jelabun families. It was a win-win situation.

But two fatal attacks in the area put an end to neighbourly relations between the 70 young kibbutz families and the people of Jelabun. A high fence now slices across a 200-metre wide swath between Merav and Jelabun, leaving major parts of the village's olive grove in the wadi on the Merav side, shut up tight as a drum. Shuri Sholev, a member of Merav's secretariat, notes that during the last olive harvest, none of the villagers were seen in the grove. They may have been afraid to come across at the chinks in the fence the border police open from time to time.

A few weeks ago, a group of high school students came down from the kibbutz to the olive grove. They harvested the fruit, took it to a local olive press, and returned with their loot - a big barrel of fresh oil. When their parents found out, a members meeting was speedily called. According to Sholev, somebody mentioned the halakhic (Jewish law) ruling by a number of West Bank and Gaza rabbis that settlers may harvest the Palestinian olives. According to those rabbis, the land of Israel belongs only to Israel, and therefore so does its fruit.

Most of the members, however, supported the kibbutz rabbi, Eitan Tzuker, who ruled that the act constituted theft and it was prohibited to enjoy its fruit. The olive press reported the appearance of Jelabun's olives on its premises to the border police, and the surprised lawmen were asked to return the unusual cargo to its rightful owners.

Rabbi Tzuker prefers to keep the incident within the kibbutz, and is not interested in transforming his ruling into a halakhic dispute. Sholev cannot hide his longing for the days, not so long ago, when no one in this Orthodox-Zionist kibbutz would have dreamed that his son would steal the fruit of his neighbour. "Ninety-five percent of the people of Jelabun are good people who are only trying to earn an honest living," says Sholev. "It's a shame that a small group of their young people went to the mosques in Jenin and came back riled up and hostile. It was probably one of them who led the terrorists who killed a young girl here three years ago. Later, two people from Jelabun took part in the murderous attack in Beit She'an on the morning of the Likud primaries."

The kibbutz members take comfort in the fact that at least one positive thing came out of the incident - a morality tale with a happy end. Who knows - it may even spark debate among Orthodox-Zionists on the question of the attitude to the Palestinians, and encourage rabbis to follow Rabbi Tzuker's lead. From the point of view of the residents of Jelabun, the story of the very large cruse of oil is a one-time Hanukkah miracle.”

Chag Hanukkah Sameach

Beni 2^nd of |December, 2010.