Well wishers

Only days before peace talks were due to begin in Washington, the man you can always count on dropped another bombshell. , Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, renowned sage and spiritual leader of the ultra-orthodox Shas party said, “Let Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority] and all these evil people perish from this world. May God smite them with a plague, them and these Palestinians.” The remarks reported by Israeli army radio and quoted by the news media from Calcutta to Cranfills Gap, Texas were made as part of the rabbi’s blessing for Rosh Hashanah. If that's how he blesses I'd be wary of his curses. As usual the rabbi's political marionettes, the four Shas party ministers in the government, were quick to explain that Rabbi Yosef speaks allegorically using parables understood only by his close followers.

It’s useless trying to explain the incident as a one time gaffe, after all, the rabbi is a frequent offender damning political opponents, high court judges and almost anyone he doesn’t like. In a few weeks Rabbi Yosef will turn ninety, so playing the devil’s advocate I could plead senility, a feeble mind or some other vaguely defined ailment in his defence. However, notwithstanding his advanced years Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has a razor sharp mind and a prodigious memory.

Prime Minister Netanyahu hurried to distance himself from the sage’s withering New Year’s wish.

Not far behind him the U.S. State Department also excoriated the sermon’s offending content, “We regret and condemn the inflammatory statements by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef," said spokesman Philip J. Crowley. "These remarks are not only deeply offensive, but incitement such as this hurts the cause of peace."

The venerable rabbi, a respected religious scholar, is also known for vitriolic comments about Arabs, secular Jews, liberals, women and gays, among others.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai makes no political move without the approval of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. A case in point is the matter of the illegal workers/migrants' children living in Israel. An estimated 1,200 children born in Israel to foreign workers living illegally in the country were due to be deported by order of the Ministry of the Interior. Public outrage at this heartless draconian measure forced Yishai to accept a cabinet compromise whereby most of the children would be allowed to stay in Israel and about 400 would be deported.

A dedicated, voluntary organisation assists helps and advises the foreign workers and their families. This body acts on their behalf protecting their rights and trying to prevent draconian rulings such as Minister Eli Yishai’s deportation policy.

The compromise ruling states that only children of parents who entered Israel legally may be eligible for permanent residency. They must be enrolled in school, speak Hebrew and have been either born in Israel or entered the country before they were 13 years old. Also, they must have lived in Israel for five consecutive years, which means that children younger than five are likely to be expelled, as well as those who had returned for a period to their country of origin. As the deportation date draws near, pressure on the government to reverse its decision is mounting. Recently President Peres made an impassioned appeal to allow the children to stay in Israel.

Former Shas party leader Aryeh Derri, ever a political realist, doubts if the campaign against the children is sustainable.

According to the Israeli central bureau for statistics last year there were 220,000 migrant workers in the country. Most of them came here from the Philippines, Thailand, a number of African states and some from China .About half of the foreign workers have overstayed the time authorised in their visas.

The interior minister is trying to reduce the number of foreign workers, but the increasing demand for both skilled and unskilled labour has often caused the ministry to relax its own restrictive policy. The result is a revolving door phenomenon. While illegal workers are rounded up and deported hundreds of new foreign workers are brought to Israel every year to replace them. They work mainly in cleaning, construction and agricultural work and also care for invalids and handicapped senior citizens.
The problem is compounded by an increasing number of Africans entering the country illegally, mainly from Eritrea, Darfur, Sudan and other places. They travel north to Egypt, are guided by Bedouins through Sinai and slip across our southern border.

The Bedouins in the Sinai peninsular have developed a lucrative smuggling business. Some specialise in smuggling goods and arms into Gaza while others smuggle Africans to a remote less frequently guarded section of the Israel-Egyptian border. If they are not detected by the Egyptian border patrol and arrested or shot they often manage to reach the Promised Land where the Israeli border patrol arrests them. If they are sent back across the border there's a good chance that the Egyptians will either arrest or shoot them, so for humanitarian reasons they are usually allowed to remain in Israel. Some find work in Eilat others venture further north where they find work and a place to live near other foreign workers.

In January this year the government decided to build a barrier along the section of our border with Egypt that is most susceptible to smuggling.

It’s estimated that approximately 1200 Africans cross that border every year.

Work on the barrier hasn’t started yet. As is often the case it is being held up by bureaucracy.

Now, why would these people want to risk their lives and pay the little money they have to reach an unknown and threatened country?

Perhaps any place is better than Darfur or Eritrea. Especially now when an alternative way out through Libya to Europe is cut off, Israel looks good. The pathfinders that went before them, the first Africans to reach Israel via Sinai wrote favourable accounts of the country in their letters home.

On closer inspection it seems that this sliver of land hugging the Mediterranean coast, a chewed-off remnant of an Ottoman backwater, isn't doing too badly. I came to this startling conclusion after reading Newsweek’s

survey of the best places to live. According to a quality of life index devised by the magazine's surveyors Israel ranked 22nd in the world. You are probably wondering why we should be proud of such a low placing. It's not top, but nevertheless it does place us in the top 25% of the nations surveyed, one place above Italy. Israel's annual per capita income is close to $30,000, just like Finland’s and New Zealand’s.

Our economic wellbeing will improve once the offshore natural gas fields prove to be workable. Prime Minister Netanyahu can’t wait till then. While he was visiting Greece last week he proposed to lay a pipeline to supply Greece from the yet-to-produce gas fields. The prime minister’s premature marketing efforts surprised everyone including the ministry of national infrastructure. While the prospects for the offshore gas fields look promising the oilfield near Rosh HaAyin and a huge oilfield situated below the off shore gas reserves have yet to be proven and workable.

Another speculative venture is the current attempt to restart the Israel-Palestinian peace talks. In theory the Israeli prime minister and the president of the Palestinian Authority could easily meet without all the pomp and circumstance provided in Washington by their host President Barack Obama.

Venues in Ramallah, Jerusalem or on the road between both cities can be reached within half an hour. However the sides have reached a level of mutual mistrust that requires a major jumpstart mechanism to get started.

Observers, political analysts and the rest of us are experiencing a sense of déjà vu, indeed we’ve heard it all before. Moreover this time we are more pessimistic than ever. Neither side appears to really want the talks. The Palestinian Entity divided between the West Bank and Gaza will find it hard to agree to any peace agreement that requires a compromise. Netanyahu’s fragmented government will have great difficulty in implementing even the most moderate and undemanding agreement with the Palestinians. Relating to the scepticism expressed by observers on the sidelines The Economist added a note of optimism, “Israel’s prime minister sounds upbeat, even if no one else does.”

Even the drive-by shootings were rightly attributed to attempts to spoil the talks, “Nothing new, either, in two ghastly shootings on the West Bank in the days before the talks. The first left four Israeli civilians dead, two of them the parents of six children and another pregnant woman. Hamas proudly took the ‘credit’ as a means of exposing, it said, the collusion between the Palestinian Authority and the occupying forces of Israel. The following day two more Israelis were wounded.”

Nicolas Pelham The Economist’s Palestinian affairs correspondent based in Jerusalem questions the political wisdom of the attacks. He points out that now Hamas faces an intensified two-pronged coordinated campaign against it in the West Bank conducted by the IDF and the Palestinian Authority’s security force..

If the talks are bound to fail as most observers believe, says Pelham, Hamas would have done well to let its cells in the West Bank remain dormant.

Despite Rabbi Yosef’s pointless, damning remarks and Hamas’ murderous attacks Netanyahu and Abbas have cleared the first hurdle. It remains to be seen if they have the stamina and the will to go the full course.

Have a good weekend

Beni 3^rd of September, 2010.