The scent of Lebanon

Our relations with Lebanon weren’t always bad. By and large our ancestors regarded our northern neighbour favourably. In the Bible alone there are 71 references to Lebanon.

Solomon's relations with Hiram were better than those of the present leaders of Israel and Lebanon, but that was a long time ago and Hiram of Tyre was a Phoenician.

Reciprocal relations between the two countries were generally good. The best known exception was the bad deal Ahab got with his Phoenician bride, the infamous Jezebel.

Nowadays some enterprising Israelis import brides from the Ukraine. In biblical times Lebanese girls were in vogue:

"Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon: look from the top of Amana, from the top of Shenir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards." Song of Solomon 4:8.

The author, according to tradition Solomon himself, provides an erotic description of the new girl in the harem:

"Your lips distil nectar, my bride; honey and milk are under your tongue; the scent of your garments is like the scent of Lebanon." Song of Solomon 4:11

Some biblical scholars claim the texts should be interpreted allegorically.

However, most of us accept them literally.

Last Saturday at the time of a visit to Kibbutz Menara we heard the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer in Majdal Silim across the border in Lebanon.

Our friends, longstanding members of Menara, took us to see the view from a vantage point near the border. With the aid of powerful binoculars provided by our hosts we were able to survey a broad expanse of southern Lebanon stretching from the lower slopes of Mount Hermon westwards as far as Maroun ar-ras.

The sprawl of villages and small towns appeared deceptively tranquil.

The current crisis, predicted by many observers, has placed Lebanon in the limelight again.

Foreign media correspondents invariably add a bit of local colour in their dispatches from Lebanon. The BBC man in Beirut chose to include a remark made by the owner of sidewalk café in the report he sent the day Hezbollah resigned from the Lebanese government. “Every day there’s a crisis and after so many crises we no longer respond emotionally to these events.” remarked the real or conjured up coffee grinder.

Any attempt to describe the situation in Lebanon is a hazardous undertaking.

Lebanon's four million plus citizens are affiliated to one of eighteen officially recognised separate sects. Unless you have written a doctoral dissertation on Lebanese factions you have little chance of really understanding what is happening in that country.

Recently Elliot Abrahams mentioned the convoluted reality of power sharing in Lebanon. In an article he wrote for the Council for Foreign Relations, he said, "Under Lebanon’s constitution, the prime minister must be a Sunni. But Najib Mikati, the Hezbollah designee, is a Sunni who will owe his office not to support in the Sunni community but to Hezbollah's decision to make him prime minister. Hezbollah now has the votes in parliament to put him in, and of course to throw him out should he cross them."

Mikati went to pains to stress that he had no allegiance to Hezbollah, but everyone in Lebanon knows he is Nasrallah’s puppet prime minister.

Soon he will have to deal with the findings of the UN tribunal investigating the 2005 assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri father of deposed prime minister Saad Hariri..

The Christians, mostly Maronites but also Armenian Catholic, Armenian Orthodox, Assyrian Church of the East, Chaldean Catholic, Copts, Protestant, Roman Catholic, Greek Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Syriac Orthodox and Syriac Catholic have decided to support Hezbollah.

The relatively small Druze faction decided to throw in its lot with the winning side. The Sunni Muslims remain outnumbered, outmaneuvered and outgunned. Hezbollah is holding all the cards. The initial response of the Sunni community was to hold a “day of rage”, namely violent street demonstrations that were quelled mainly by Saad Hariri’s appeal for calm.

Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah appeared smug and satisfied when he appeared before an audience of his supporters.

So far the take over in Lebanon has been a bloodless coup d’état

Legal expert Owen Alterman reviewed the implications of Hassan Nasrallah’s refusal to cooperate with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) in a recent issue of “Insight” published by The Institute for National Security Studies.

“Lebanon's government can impede the Tribunal's work (by refusing to hand over the accused or by denying funding), the Lebanese government may well not be able on its own actually to stop the Tribunal. If Lebanon refuses to hand over an accused, a trial can take place in absentia. If the Lebanese government withholds its contribution to the Tribunal's funding, then other money can be found. Resignation of Lebanese judges from the Tribunal (or their refusal to take office) could wreak havoc, but at least under the founding documents of the STL, those judges themselves would need to initiate their own resignations or refusals. (Assassinations, though, pose a real risk.)

The UN Security Council passed a resolution setting up the Tribunal, and reversing course might well require a Security Council vote. Hassan Nasrallah, Bashar Asad, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei face the risk that ultimately they may not control this legal process. That fact provides leverage for supporters of the Tribunal's work. It may be exactly what Nasrallah and his allies so fear about the STL.”

Whatever form the new Lebanese government takes Hassan Nasrallah will obviously prefer to control the country by proxy.

Deborah Jerome, Deputy Editor of the Council on Foreign Relations quotes the English language paper Asharq Alawsat “There are some reports that the United States might withdraw military aid to Lebanon if a Hezbollah-led government emerges from the present crisis.” So far according to Jerome there has been no official comment from Washington on the possible power shift in Lebanon. Ms. Jerome quotes another source, the Israeli daily Haaretz which noted that "U.S. aid is meant to help Lebanon implement UN Resolution 1701, which calls on the Lebanese Army to deploy throughout the country . . . and prevent Hezbollah from acquiring more weapons." Her concluding quote is a report from the Christian Science Monitor. “Israel is concerned both about the ascendance of Hezbollah as well as the possibility of violence spilling over the Israel-Lebanon border."

It has been difficult to assimilate the profusion of events that have occurred in our region recently. Tunisia is still seething and its interim government probably won’t last long.

The riots in Egypt have been controlled by Mubarek’s security forces but his reelection or the succession of his son to the Egyptian presidency is uncertain. It’s too early to predict what will happen there. The prospect of a Muslim Brotherhood takeover is worrying and certainly not fanciful speculation.

Our local news media has been more concerned about the “Al Jazeera leaks.” Internal Palestinian documents relating to the negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians that were leaked to Al Jazeera and are now being published much like the Wikileaks, a page or two at a time.

The fact that the negotiations were conducted at two levels, one public, the other behind closed doors worried some foreign observers. However commentators in Israel showed sympathy and understanding for the need to talk behind closed doors. New York Times correspondent Ethan Bronner reporting on the leaks said, “To the world and their own people, each side spoke of sacred, nonnegotiable demands, while in the Jerusalem hotel suites where the officials met those very demands were under negotiation.”

The disclosures have been more embarrassing for the Palestinian leaders.

Once again it’s too early to draw conclusions but some of our politicians were quick to claim that the leaks prove that their assumptions were right. Spokespeople for some of the right wing parties are adamant that the leaked documents prove that we have no Palestinian partner for peace. At the opposite end of the political spectrum other spokespeople claimed that the disclosures showed that the Palestinian leadership was prepared to compromise on some of their most sacrosanct principles.

I’m sure we will hear a lot more about this.

Have a good weekend

Beni 27^th of January, 2011.

The carob tree

There’s a carob tree at the top of the path that provides shade in the hot summer months and shelter on rainy winter days. The path of course is the path I take on my way to work in the morning. The carob tree is one of many in a grove planted on the hill above my home in the early 1950's.

I'm told the carob trees were planted to provide a fodder supplement for our sheep.

Fifteen years later when the trees were yielding appreciable quantities of fruit animal husbandry nutritionists decided not to include carob pods in our sheep flock's ration. So the carob pods remain unwanted, but the trees still provide shade and shelter.

Earlier this week I stopped under the carob tree at the top of path to shelter from the rain. The carob tree is associated with Tu Bishvat the minor festival we are celebrating this week. Tu Bishvat is also known as the new year of the trees.

On Tu Bishvat in 1890, Rabbi Zeev Yavetz, one of the founders of the Mizrachi movement, took his students to plant trees near Zichron Yaakov. In1908 the custom started by Rabbi Yavetz was adopted by the Jewish Teachers Union in this country and later by the Jewish National Fund.

Since the founding of the JNF in 1901 it has been involved in extensive land reclamation and afforestation. Every year on Tu Bishvat more than a million Israelis participate in the tree-planting activities organised by the JNF. Rightly so the festival has become our arbor day

At this juncture it's appropriate to include an anecdote concerning Honi the Circle Drawer, the much - mentioned rainmaker. Once, Honi met an old man planting a carob tree. He asked the man why he was planting a tree that wouldn't bear fruit for another seventy years (an exaggeration of course) "You won’t live to eat its fruit," said Honi. The old man explained that when he entered this world he found trees planted by his forefathers and now he was planting trees so that when he left it his descendents would also find trees.

Unlike the old man's private tree-renewal project the JNF's afforestation programme was started in the bare denuded landscape of Ottoman Palestine. It created its own legacy.

Likewise, in keeping with the renewal concept embodied in Tu Bishvat some of Israel's major institutions have chosen this day for their inauguration. The Hebrew University's cornerstone-laying took place on Tu Bishvat in 1918; the Haifa Technion's founding ceremony was held on Tu Bishvat in 1925; and the Knesset was inaugurated on Tu Bishvat in 1949.

The festival is a relatively late addition to the Jewish calendar. Although it was probably observed earlier, the final date of its celebration was fixed in the Talmudic period.

It seems that like the start of our fiscal year the festival originated for tax collecting purposes. Fruit tithes sent by farmers to the Temple were fixed on this day. Today two thousand years after the destruction of the Temple the tithe system has no significance. Nevertheless, like most people in Israel farmers pay income tax.

In mediaeval times Tu Bishvat served as a tangible link to the Land of Israel. Jews in many communities in the Diaspora celebrated the festival with a feast of fruits in keeping with the description in the Mishna defining the holiday as a "New Year." Nuts and dried fruits, especially figs, dates, raisins and carob pods were brought from the Holy Land or somewhere in the Middle East to be eaten during the Tu Bishvat celebration.

In the 17th century, the cabbalist Rabbi Yitzchak Luria of Safed (Tsfat) and his disciples instituted a Tu Bishvat Seder similar to the format of the Passover Seder. According to one source at least ten types of nuts and fruits were eaten at the Seder. Other authorities claim that as many as fifteen and even thirty different varieties of nuts and fruits were served on the Tu Bishvat table. In addition four cups of wine were drunk. Both white and red wine were on the table. White wine was drunk first, and then the second glass was filled mostly with white wine together with some red wine. The third glass contained mostly red wine with a little red wine. Finally the last glass was filled with red wine only.

The cabbalists of Tsfat were in harmony with nature. The four cups of wine symbolised the changing colours of the seasons, especially the wild flowers. Over the winter months the light coloured crocuses blossom, then the pink cyclamens and the brightly coloured anemones, buttercups and poppies appear in the spring.

This week Christians affiliated to the eastern churches celebrated the Feast of Epiphany marking the baptism of Jesus. Pilgrims and religious leaders flocked to Qasr al-Yahud by the Jordan River, claimed by some authorities as the site where the Israelites crossed into the promised land ( others claim the crossing was further north). Qasr al-Yahud is also thought to be the place where John the Baptist baptised Jesus.

John the Baptist , famed as a recluse is said to have lived on a diet of wild honey and carob fruit. So it's not surprising that in some places the carob pods are called St.John's fruit. Other recluses and fugitives included carob pods in their diet.

When Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai and his son fled from the Romans they hid in a cave and lived on carob pods for thirteen years. During the Second World War the besieged people of Malta supplemented their meagre rations with carob pods.

I wish I could just write about carob trees and recount old anecdotes, but the Middle East has a dynamism of its own. Two momentous events occurred in the region this week , the outcome of both of them is unpredictable.

The explosive situation in Tunisia, albeit worrying, presents no foreseeable threat to Israel's security. Nevertheless the flare-up there could have a domino effect throughout the Maghreb and elsewhere in the Middle East.

On the other hand we are watching what is happening in Lebanon very closely. Hezbollah's toppling of the Lebanese government bodes no good.

The outcome of this desperate attempt to prevent the United Nations-backed tribunal indicting Hezbollah members involved in the assassination of former prime minister, Rafik Hariri is difficult to predict. The Economist’s correspondent summed up the situation as follows:

“This chronically troubled little country looks set to plunge into yet another swirl of turbulence. These often end in violence, drawing in outside powers and shaking the wider region.”

Israel, is another chronically troubled little country. It certainly has no interest in exploiting the current situation to even the score with Hezbollah. Likewise Hezbollah knows that its arsenal of 50,000 rockets threatens Israel’s home front but is not an effective deterrent against its army. I don’t believe Hezbollah really wants to take on the IDF.

Nasrallah knows that Israel’s army is better prepared and is ready for any contingency. A confrontation would be disastrous for Hezbollah and Lebanon.

An editorial in the New York Times this week didn’t mince words in criticising Hezbollah pointing to Syria as the responsible reining-in party in the Lebanese equation. “The Syrian government needs to press Hezbollah to end its political extortion and rejoin a national unity government. Hezbollah’s huge Lebanese-Shiite electoral constituency makes it hard to ignore. But impunity for assassination is too high a price to pay for its support.

Hezbollah depends on Syrian money and arms and responds to pressure from Damascus. Enlisting Syrian cooperation will be the first challenge facing Robert Ford, the new United States ambassador, who arrives in Damascus next week.” I doubt if the US administration concurs with the editor’s opinion.

Accepting this advice is tantamount to recognizing Hezbollah as a legitimate political player. Up to the moment Hezbollah resigned from the government it maintained its political power sharing while operating as a terrorist organisation engaged in an uncompromising armed struggle against Israel.

However it’s reasonable to expect that ambassador Ford will try to persuade President Assad to stop Syrian financial support for Hezbollah. It will take time and there is no guarantee that the wily Assad will really sever the tie with Hezbollah.

Today our kindergarten children took part in the traditional tree planting that takes place every year on Tu Bishvat. Maybe it’s a minor festival but it has a great message.

Chag Sameach

Beni 20^th of January, 2011.

Two hotels

Mark Twain's Holy Land visit of 1867, so well recorded in "Innocents Abroad," is still a valuable source of information on mid-nineteenth century Palestine. Even a casual page-through reveals that Twain complained about everything, especially the hotel accommodation. At that time low budget pilgrims were happy to rough it in church hostels; however the people that Twain travelled with expected more comfortable lodgings. The few hotels that existed then were a lot better than the hostels, but were hardly on par with their European and American counterparts. Nevertheless, Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) enjoyed his two day stay at the Mediterranean Hotel in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City.. At that time the hotel was Jerusalem's cultural, social and tourist hub, a well known landmark.

A few years after Twain's visit, the Mediterranean's Christian owners sold the building to Moshe Wittenberg, a well known Jerusalem philanthropist. From then on it became Wittenberg House. More than hundred years later Ariel Sharon bought an apartment in the building and sold it a few years later.

Only recently research workers managed to identify Wittenberg House as the original Mediterranean Hotel. Therefore it's doubtful if Sharon knew about Mark Twain's stay in the same building.

By comparison the Shepherd Hotel has a shorter but more convoluted history.

In the mid-1930s the infamous Hajj Amin al-Husseini, Grand mufti of Jerusalem, began building a residence for himself in the Sheikh Jerrah neighbourhood.

The mufti's ties with Nazi Germany and his role in the Arab revolt gave the British sufficient cause to deport him. In 1937 before he left the country al-Husseini rented the unfinished building to an Arab tenant

In 1948, the house became a Jordanian army outpost and after the Six Day War it was transferred under the Absentee Property Law to the Israeli custodian of deserted properties

From 1967 to 1982 two Arab Christian families ran the property as a pilgrim’s hotel.
When one of the families went bankrupt the property was sold by the state custodian to Irving Moscowitz, a California businessman who provides the financial backing for other Jewish buildings in Jerusalem's Arab neighbourhoods.
For the next five years the building remained empty .Between 1987 and 2002 it was occupied by the Israeli Border Police who used it as a temporary district headquarters. The building has been empty since the Border Police left.

In November 2008. Moscowitz submitted a plan to replace the hotel with over 100 apartment units for Jewish families. The plans were later scaled down to 20 units to avoid a lengthy approval process, since the area was previously zoned for 20 residential units.

The demolition carried out at the site earlier this week, an act that evoked local and international condemnation, involved only a part of the hotel , an extension built on during the Jordanian occupancy.

At this juncture I want to add a little historical perspective.

When Mark Twain stayed in Jerusalem there was no known Sheikh Jerrah neighbourhood. There were just a few small houses and two tombs on the slopes of the hill by the Mount of Olives, really nothing to write home about.

In the latter part of the nineteenth century a small Muslim community sprang up near the tomb of Sheih Jerrah.

Husam al-Din al-Jarrahi, physician to Saladin is buried here hence the neighbourhood was named Sheikh Jerrah in his memory.

A small Jewish community was also established about the same time near another burial site, the tomb of Simon the Just , a high priest who lived in the Second Temple period.

The Jewish enclave was gradually abandoned after the Arab disturbances in the 1920s and ’30s and finally during the War of Independence.

According to an Ottoman census of 1905 Sheikh Jarrah's population numbered 167 Muslim families, 97 Jewish families, and 6 Christian families.

During the War of Independence 78 Jewish doctors and nurses were murdered when the medical convoy they were travelling in on the way to the Hadassah Hospital on Mt Scopus was ambushed when it passed through Sheikh Jarrah.

In 1956, the Jordanian government and the United Nations settled 28 Palestinian refugee families in deserted dwellings in Sheikh Jarrah.

In 1972, when Sheikh Jarrah was occupied by Israel two Israeli claimant groups commenced litigation to reclaim Jewish property there.

They demanded rent for their properties and the Israeli Supreme Court ruled in their favour.

The Palestinian tenants were allowed to remain as long as they paid rent.

In the western part of Sheikh Jarrah, close to the 1949 Armistice Line (Green Line,) lies the Shimon the Just enclave.

This area is another focal point of settler development plans in Sheikh Jarrah. 28 residential structures, currently housing descendants of 27 of the Palestinian families who arrived in 1956 (about 500 people) and 5-6 settler groups (about 30 people)

The ongoing legal battles have focused on three interrelated issues:

Legal recognition of land and building ownership

Tenancy rights of the Palestinian residents

Differential enforcement of the law regarding settlers and Palestinians living in the structures without legal recognition.

The Palestinian tenants have either reluctantly accepted the court rulings or stopped paying rent and continue to appeal to the courts.

On August 28, 2008, Nahalat Shimon International, a settler-related real estate company, filed a town plan proposal in the Jerusalem Local Planning Commission. If the plan is approved, the existing Palestinian houses in this key area will be demolished, about 500 Palestinians will be evicted, and 200 housing units will be built for a new settlement called Shimon HaTzadik. (Simon the Just). Some people have questioned the justice in evicting Palestinians from their homes and then demolishing them so that new dwellings can be constructed to house Jewish settlers. Others have questioned the wisdom of the steps involved in building the new settlement. They claim it will establish a dangerous legal precedent. Theoretically any Palestinian resident of east Jerusalem who once (before 1948) owned property in west Jerusalem will be able to reclaim it.

It’s possible that I have omitted some details and maybe in describing the sequence of events in Sheikh Jerrah my description is incomplete; however the unrelenting efforts on the part of groups determined to establish “facts on the ground” are clearly evident.

The Shimon HaTzadik plan would advance the creation of Jewish strongholds in the “historic basin” surrounding the Old City. In Sheikh Jarrah to the north, the Mount of Olives to the east and Silwan to the south, development plans aim to ring the Old City with Jewish settlements and public projects, cutting off Palestinian territorial contiguity with the Old City. These developments unilaterally create an integral population link between the Old city and west Jerusalem, strengthen Israeli control of this sensitive area, and thwart the feasibility of future agreed-upon borders for Jerusalem in the context of a two-state solution.

In recent years, settlement organisations have made great strides in the Sheikh Jarrah area, supported in part by public funding. Recently completed projects in the area include the Beit Orot Yeshiva with a number of student and teacher housing units and the adjacent Ein Tzurim National Park. Elad, the settler organisation known for its archeological and settlement activity in the City of David/Silwan is involved in running the park.

If there is an Israeli grand plan to further Jewish territorial contiguity between west Jerusalem extending through the northern and eastern suburbs on through the Jewish satellite towns and the rest of Judah and Samaria (West Bank) it is understood but not published. The plan obviously doesn’t take into consideration Palestinian efforts to maintain their own territorial contiguity affording them a foothold in Jerusalem. If the Jewish settlement projects continue unhindered by “freezes” and other means employed to slowdown further settlement expansion a quarter of a million Arabs living in east Jerusalem will be cut off from the West Bank.

Today Yediot Ahronot reported that a public opinion poll carried out by American Pechter Middle East Polls for the Council on Foreign Relations together with the head of the Palestinian Centre for Public Opinion, Dr. Nabil Kukali, showed that if Jerusalem were divided as part of a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, east Jerusalem Arabs would prefer to live under Israeli sovereignty. Some 35% of them said that Israeli citizenship is their preferred citizenship and only 30% chose to be citizens of the future Palestinian state. An additional 30% said that they didn't know, or preferred not to answer the question. I don’t know what happened to the missing 5%. Admittedly not an overwhelming clear-cut majority favoured being Israeli citizens as opposed to being Palestinian nationals.

The material benefits they enjoy had a great deal to do with their choice.

Just the same the Palestinian Authority leadership in Ramallah may not like the results and I doubt if our government does either.

Have a good weekend

Beni 13^th of January, 2011.

Icons

The Canadian daily Globe and Mail's readers were no doubt pleased to read that, "A massive offshore natural gas reserve is poised to give Israel energy security, freeing the desert nation from the threat of boycotts and reshaping the political dynamics of the Middle East." Why a gas field is poised to do anything I don't know, however once we start exploiting the field I'm sure this valuable commodity will change a lot of things in this "desert nation". I will be able to trade-in my camel for something with four wheels and maybe move out of the goat hair tent I live in. In addition I suggest that the Globe and Mail reporter Adrian Morrow visit Israel some time

Simon Henderson, director of the Gulf and Energy Policy Program at The Washington Institute, preferred to use more modest superlatives. He said it is, "a 'significant natural gas field' …making it the world's largest deepwater gas discovery in ten years… Although the discovery adds less than 0.4 percent to the world's proven gas reserves, it is a significant boost for Israel's economy -- indeed, exploiting the field and other possible finds in the Eastern Mediterranean could dramatically change the economic fortunes of Israel and its neighbours."
Adrian Morrow does however provide an important yardstick. He said the gas field is estimated to contain 16 trillion cubic feet of gas equivalent to more than a quarter of Canada's proven reserves sufficient to satisfy Israel's energy requirements for the next hundred years.

Well at long last there is a supplement to the old joke about the Promised Land. When Moses was asked by God to choose a land for the chosen people the stammering leader of the fledgling Jewish nation wanted Canada with its enormous natural wealth. Unfortunately Moses got tongue-tied on the first syllable and we got Canaan instead. Now with the discovery of the offshore gas fields the deity's real intention is apparent. We got gas too, a nicer climate and nice neighbours as part of the bargain.

Unfortunately our new found wealth comes with several problems. The three companies engaged in the quest face the challenge of drilling far beneath the sea bed in deep water. They will need to be innovative in designing and building the infrastructure to transport the gas. Already at this early stage almost six years before we start extracting gas from below the sea bed the energy companies and Israel's ministry of finance are haggling over the rate of tax payable on gas revenues.

Our nice neighbours are less than glad about the new situation. Tiny Cyprus is the exception; it signed a maritime agreement with Israel. However Lebanon, Syria and Turkey have voiced their opposition to Israel's gas exploration efforts and the expected exploitation of the gas fields.

The news of the Leviathan (the name given to the gas field) findings' size has also prompted protests from Cairo, which warned that it would closely follow the drawing of the field's boundaries to ensure they do not infringe on Egypt's EEZ (exclusive economic zone) or its own previously signed maritime agreement with Cyprus.

Debka Files a news source that has a tendency to embellish its reports claims that the collaboration between Jerusalem and Nicosia in the exploration of Mediterranean energy resources, backed strongly from Athens, is growing stronger. It is spreading into additional strategic spheres, complementing increasing ties between Israel and Greece.

Last month Turkey criticised the maritime mapping accord between Cyprus and Israel, saying it was "null and void" because it disregards the rights and jurisdiction of Turkish Cypriots.

When I mentioned the gas fields a few weeks ago I emphasised the positive aspects of the story.

Just before I went to press last week another news item made the headlines.
Judge George Kara, heading a panel of three judges, convicted former President of Israel Moshe Katsav of rape and multiple charges of sexual misconduct.

The Christian Science Monitor gave a telegraphic summary of the case's significance, "Women's rights activists hailed Moshe Katsav's rape conviction as a significant victory for women's rights in Israel, which has a tradition of military machismo."

BBC Online described it at greater length, "The unexpectedly definitive verdict marked the conclusion of a four-year nationwide drama which pitted the word of the former president – who held a mostly ceremonial but highly symbolic position – against that of three anonymous former female employees.
Former Israel President Moshe Katsav was convicted Thursday of raping an employee when he was a cabinet minister, the most serious criminal charges ever brought against a high-ranking official and a case that stunned the nation."

Women's rights activist Anat Saragusti also found cause to stress the military machismo. She said that Israel's workplace culture is influenced by office norms in the military.

Miriam Schler, director of the Tel Aviv rape crisis centre said, "It’s an historic and significant ruling… It will restore faith in the legal system that women can come forward. It's an important statement to women in the work place, and to men in places of power, that they can't abuse their office."

Calling his testimony "littered with lies,'' the judges rejected Katsav's claims that the charges were part of a conspiracy contrived by the plaintiffs. They ruled that the plaintiffs' testimonies proved to be honest and credible.

Unfortunately the Katsav case is but one of many instances of abuse of public office in Israel. Some of the offenders have been tried and sentenced, others are being investigated. Most of the cases involve bribery and corruption. Invariably they are reported in the foreign news media causing further embarrassment and tarnishing our national image. Fortunately there is a positive facet to this particular trial and the others as well.

The Washington Post and other papers in mentioning the case stressed that all Israelis are answerable to the law. "The verdict handed down in a case that had riveted the Israeli public was hailed as an affirmation of the rule of law and the rights of women, as well as a sign of changing norms in a society that for decades tended to condone sexual advances by powerful men in government and the military."

One small detail overlooked or not mentioned by the news media was the identity of the presiding judge in the case. Judge George Kara is an Israeli Christian Arab.

Were it not for its location Beil'in could be described as an unremarkable Palestinian village. However its close proximity to the Green Line and the security fence have caused it to become a focal point in the Palestinian struggle against the security fence. This is particularly acute in Beil'in because the fence cuts through the village's lands depriving the villagers access to some of their fields and olive groves. With support from various human rights groups the villagers appealed to the International Court of Justice and the Israeli Supreme Court. Six years ago the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel's security fence is a violation of international law. Just a week before the International Court's ruling the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that the Israeli government had the right to construct the security fence, but that sections of it imposed undue hardships on Palestinians and should be re-routed. In 2005, the local council leader of Beil'in, Ahmed Issa Abdullah Yassin, hired Israeli human rights lawyer Michael Sfard to represent the village in a petition to theIsraeli Supreme Court. On September 4, 2007, the Court ordered the government to change the route of the fence near Beil'in. Chief Justice Dorit Beinish wrote in her ruling: "We were not convinced that it is necessary for security-military reasons to retain the current route that passes on Beil'in’s lands." The Israeli Defence Ministry said it would respect the ruling.

On September 5, 2007, the Israeli Supreme Court legalised the Israeli settlement of Mattityahu East, a new neighbourhood of Modi'in Illit, built on what the Palestinians claim is Beil'in's land to the west of the security fence. Israel claims the disputed area is state land. There is no contradiction in the two rulings. The earlier ruling recognised the villagers' rights to some of the land they claim.

Since January 2005, the village has been organising weekly protests against the construction of the fence. The protests have attracted media attention and the participation of left-wing groups such as Gush Shalom, Anarchists Against the Wall and the International Solidarity Movement. The protests take the form of marches from the village to the security fence with the aim of halting construction and dismantling lengths of the fence already constructed.

In many instances the IDF intervenes to prevent protesters from approaching the fence. Sometimes there are violent clashes in which both protesters and soldiers have been very seriously injured. The weekly protests, which last a few minutes, regularly attract international activists who come to support the protesters.

The latest incident at Beil'in might well develop into another Mohamed al- Dura incident.

On 31 December 2010 Jawaher Abu Rahmah aged 36, a resident of Beil'in, died. According to the Palestinian account of the incident she was seriously injured in a tear gas attack during a demonstration against the security fence. She was admitted to hospital in Ramallah but didn't respond to treatment and died the following day. Her brother Bassem Abu Rahmah was killed two years ago when he was hit in the chest by a gas canister fired during one of the weekly demonstrations.

Avi Issacharoff and Anshel Pfeffer are two journalists who specialise in matters related to the West Bank and Gaza. They were a little too hasty in accepting the Palestinian narrative regarding Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s death. Blaming the type of tear gas used to disperse the demonstration at Beili’n they wrote, “The medical report filed in the Ramallah hospital where Abu Rahmah was taken shows that her death was caused by respiratory failure resulting from the inhalation of tear gas.”

Tovah Lazaroff and Yaakov Katz responded in the Jerusalem Post in an article claiming, “So-called Beil'in martyr may not have been at the protest. “

They quoted an anonymous senior IDF officer who claimed “The whole story is full of inconsistencies.” Furthermore, Lazaroff and Katz claim there are a number of contradicting entries in the medical report.
The following day Issacharoff and Pfeffer weren’t quite so sure what caused Jawaher Abu Rahmah’s death. In an article entitled “Has Israel lost the battle to convince the world it did not kill Beil'in activist?” they stated it’s reasonable to assume tear gas wasn’t the sole cause of death.

New York Times correspondent Isabel Kershner also quoted Israeli military sources that stated they had never heard of tear gas killing anyone in the open, and raised the possibility that she had some pre-existing ailment that, alone or compounded by the tear gas, caused her death.

No post mortem examination was performed so the exact cause of death has not been determined.

Yaakov Katz was struck by the martyr potential of Abu Rahma's death. In an op-ed piece published in the Jerusalem Post he pointed out that, "Some people have drawn comparisons between Abu Rahma and the Muhammad al-Dura affair. The main difference is that in 2000 the IDF did not overly challenge the Palestinian and international claims that its soldiers had killed the 12-year-old boy in Gaza. This likely contributed to al-Dura being turned into an icon still used today against Israel."

Seven years ago Atlantic Magazine correspondent James Fallow wrote,

"The image of a boy shot dead in his helpless father's arms during an Israeli confrontation with Palestinians has become the Pietà of the Arab world. Now a number of Israeli researchers are presenting persuasive evidence that the fatal shots could not have come from the Israeli soldiers known to have been involved in the confrontation. The evidence will not change Arab minds—but the episode offers an object lesson in the incendiary power of an icon"

That’s the bottom line!

Have a good weekend

Beni 6^th of January, 2011.