Doubts and doughnuts

It seems that Christmas cheer is hard to come by in Bethlehem.

The tourist industry, which was hard hit during the Intifada years, suffered a further setback following the recent recession.

However according to a Bethlehem tourist industry spokesman the real reason for the decline is (you guessed right) Israel's security barrier.

Christian tourists who do manage to visit the Church of the Nativity are probably unaware of another blight that afflicts the site.

Earlier this year journalist Abigail Tucker reporting for the Smithsonian magazine, told of an age-old dispute. "Feuding monks at the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem don't just cast the first stone—they stockpile rocks in anticipation of future altercations. Several holy men landed in the hospital two Christmases ago after a fight broke out over the dusting of church chandeliers."

The problem has been worsening for decades, but the resident clerics—from the Greek Orthodox and Armenian Orthodox churches and the Franciscan order of the Roman Catholic Church—are jealous of each other's claims of custody and have been unable to reach an amicable solution.

There's some sort of verbal status quo which stems back to Ottoman times, which mandates that things be done as they were always done. Anyone who has previously walked in a procession down a certain aisle, used a particular cupboard or hung a given tapestry has exclusive rights to that task or item.

However, if priests of another denomination manage by guile, subterfuge or other foul means to do the job first, then that particular chore, use or care for an object or ownership, passes to them.

Tucker elaborates "The highly publicized fight at Christmas two years ago was essentially a territorial dispute. The Greeks were cleaning an Armenian-controlled part of the church, and custom dictated that they could dust the chandeliers by standing on a ladder set up in an appointed place. But the Greeks tried to move their ladder, encroaching on Armenian turf."

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, another shared holy site is also the scene of petty disputes over brooms and who sweeps what and where.

I don't delight in these holy woes, but mention them to add some local colour to the Christmas narrative. After all we have plenty of our own internecine feuding.

Sadly the Church of the Nativity is badly in need of urgent repairs which are held up by Christian interfaith bickering.

Reading this you probably think I'm doing my Christmas shopping a bit early this year. Well I've started with Christmas in order to arrive at Hanukah which we celebrate on Friday night.

Before lighting our first Hanukah candle I want to deal with a matter at hand which also has a bearing on the festive season.

While the German intermediary tries one more time to bridge the gap between the demands made by Israel and Hamas in the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit, the “not at any price” opinion is gaining ground.

Nevertheless, the possibility/likelihood of releasing a large number of unrepentant terrorists requires an imaginative approach in order to bring Shalit home and at the same time safeguard the lives of all Israelis.

The option of exiling terrorists has been considered again. Obviously Gaza is a close and convenient possibility. The security fence surrounding the “Strip” is effective in preventing infiltrators reaching Israel. Other more distant places have been suggested. In the past Italy, Spain and Ireland have accepted a few released terrorists, now this option is being considered again.

Our T.V. channel 2 sent one of its Arabic speaking investigative reporters to Ireland to interview two Palestinians that have been languishing there for the past seven years.

Jihad Jaara, a former Bethlehem commander of the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades and one of his lieutenants Rami Kamel are lonely, bored, and more recently, they have become two very frightened men .

The two have been interviewed on a number of occasions by Joshua Hammer the author of “A Season in Bethlehem: Unholy War in a Sacred Place.”

A few months ago Hammer wrote a particularly revealing article in the New York Times recounting his encounters with the two exiles since the siege at the Church of the Nativity,

In April 2002 Israel embarked on Operation Defensive Shield , the Israel Defence Forces occupied Bethlehem and tried to capture wanted Palestinian terrorists. Dozens of them fled into the Church of the Nativity and sought refuge there. After 39 days, an agreement was reached, whereby the terrorists surrendered and were exiled to Europe and the Gaza Strip .

A few weeks before the siege, Hammer who was Newsweek's Jerusalem bureau chief at the time, met both Jaara and Kamel in Bethlehem. He was gathering material on the murder of Avi Boaz.

In mid-January 2002 Avi Boaz, a 71-year-old New York-born émigré to Israel who had never given up his American citizenship, was stopped at a checkpoint inside Palestinian-controlled territory near Bethlehem. Palestinian gunmen climbed into Boaz’s car, drove him around the city, then took him to a deserted soccer field. There, as he sat behind the wheel of his car, they shot him.

Later on when Joshua Hammer interviewed Jihad Jaara in Dublin he implicated himself in the murder of Avi Boaz. Palestinians murdering Israelis don't really concern the F.B.I, however when the Bureau realised that one of the victims was an American citizen its agents started to take an active interest in Jihad Jaara.

Jaara and Kamel have been plagued by bad luck. Early in 2002 Rami Kamel miscalculated while throwing a hand grenade and blew his arm off. Later during the fighting that preceded the church siege. Jihad Jaara was accidentally shot in the leg by one of his own men. The wounded Jaara was carried by his men into the Church of the Nativity. Jaara, Kamel and about 200 others took refuge inside the 1,700-year-old basilica’s walls, living off macaroni and cans of meat and tuna stockpiled by priests.

Following their surrender Jaara and Kamel were sent to Dublin. Throughout most of their exile in Ireland they have tried to maintain a low profile.

However, in August of last year, Jaara gave a plaintive interview to a Dublin journalist, lashing out at the Irish government for refusing to provide him with a job and for not trying hard enough to send him back to the West Bank.

Jaara, who is 37, said he was lonely, living in limbo, unable to see his family (including his youngest son, born the day he was dispatched to Ireland) and bored. Along with the boredom there are moments of terror: In 2005 The Irish Evening Herald reported that the Irish police intercepted a Mossad team that was trying to kill Jaara. Last summer, reports surfaced on Middle Eastern Web sites that shots were fired at him in a Dublin street and that Jaara’s car was forced off the road into a ditch, leaving him slightly injured. The Israeli government, the Irish police and the Palestinian Authority all called these reports baseless. Hammer quoted a senior IDF officer who said it was unlikely that Israel was hunting Jaara, “but if he’s worried, let him be worried,” he said.

Following the publication of his book and his articles about the exiles in Ireland, Hammer was asked to appear before a Grand Jury in Washington and give evidence concerning Jaara’s involvement in Avi Boaz’s murder.

Since then the investigation has dragged on but is still active.

A few months ago Hammer managed to track down Jaara and Kamel in a hideout near Dublin. Jaara knew about the ongoing investigation and had heard the rumours about the Mossad

“They want to kill me.” Jaara told Hammer.

“I looked at him,” Hammer recalls ”sweating, sucking on a Marlboro, eyes wide with fear. I supposed he spent most of his exile holed up like this, watching bad movies and smoking Marlboros, waiting for the day when the Mossad or the C.I.A. will burst through the door.”

What can I say; it couldn't happen to a nicer person.

Back to Manger Square, Bethlehem not to watch the preparations for Christmas but to consider whether the Nativity mentioned in some of the Gospels refers to this Bethlehem.

Many archaeologists and theological scholars believe Jesus was actually born in either Nazareth or Bethlehem in Galilee, a town just outside Nazareth, Aviram Oshri, a senior archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquities Authority, says, “There is surprisingly no archaeological evidence that ties Bethlehem in Judea to the period when Jesus was born.

“If the historical Jesus was born in Bethlehem,” claims Oshri, “it was most likely the Bethlehem in Galilee." The archaeological evidence certainly seems to support this claim." Bethlehem in Galilee was a busy centre just a few miles from the home of Joseph and Mary, as opposed to an unpopulated spot almost a hundred miles from their home in Nazareth. In the Galilee Bethlehem, Oshri and his team have uncovered the remains of a later monastery and a large Byzantine church, which raises the question of why such a huge house of Christian worship was built in the heart of a Jewish area. Oshri believes it’s because early Christians revered Bethlehem of Galilee as the birthplace of Jesus. “There is impressive and important evidence that a strong Christian community existed in the northern Bethlehem a short time after Jesus’ death,” he says. Oshri, however, doubts that Bethlehem of Galilee will be recognised as the birthplace of Jesus any time soon. “Business interests are too important,” he says. “After all this time, the churches do not have a strong interest in changing the Nativity story.”

Episcopal priest and professor of theology Bruce Chilton also has doubts.

"The question isn't whether Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but rather which Bethlehem."

While I'm in an iconoclastic mood I might as well tackle Hanukah.

I mention this every year, so this year too I won't let the oil mongers off the hook. The Hanukah theme "A great miracle happened there/here," as we know refers to that miraculous cruse of oil which was normally enough to light a temple lamp for one day and managed to last for eight days.

The story is a later Interpolation first mentioned in the Talmud. It seems the authors of the Books of Maccabees forget to mention it. Contemporary and later writers found no reason to praise the miraculous cruse of oil. Hundreds of years after the rededication of the Temple a brief mention in the Babylonian Talmud added a whole new dimension to Hanukah. Now it's too late to correct the narrative even if we were to consider this "mission impossible," we would have to forfeit all those fattening gastronomic delights and the "Feast of Lights" would be a dimmer, poorer festival.

The heroes of Hanukah- the Maccabees, founders of the Hasmonean dynasty were short lived heroic figures. The second generation were a pack of cutthroat intriguers, who murdered their brothers and mothers in their relentless quest for power. Nevertheless, we continue to sing their praises and join sports and social clubs called Maccabeans.

This year, the much toned down US presidential Hanukah celebrations are compensated for by Senator Orrin Hatch's addition to our rich repertoire of Hanukah songs. Although Hatch's lyrics leave a lot to be desired the tune is catchy. If you are brave enough, try accessing it at http://vimeo.com/7971216

Happy Hanukah –

Chag Sameach.

Beni 10^th of December, 2009.

The best we can get

I refer to them collectively, lumping them together indiscriminately in a quasi-xenophobic way. Furthermore, I tend to place them beyond the pale, over the divide which was once demarcated by an imaginary green line and is now, for much of its length, a very tangible barrier, part fence, part wall.

However, these extraterritorial beings are everywhere! Not only there, but here too. Look and you will find them in Israel proper, in towns and cities throughout the country, in my kibbutz, even in my family. They come in several varieties, religious and secular, some are intransigent unwilling to compromise on principles, whereas others have mellowed with the passage of time and have become more pragmatic and flexible.

I suppose every Jew living "beyond the divide" could be called a settler;

However, not all the Jews living in the West Bank settled there for ideological reasons.

Therefore, I'm wrong when I refer to them as one homogeneous group.

Measured by every ideological yardstick Elayakim Haetzni is a settler!

He is the firebrand variety, identified with the settlement project from its very inception.

I've tried hard to be objective, but my efforts to regard him dispassionately have failed, I simply don't like the man. The mere mention of his name or the sound of his voice brings me out in a rash. Whenever I see his name in print, I turn the page and dismiss him out of hand.

However, last week when I saw his article entitled "Peace is not a must," published in Yediot Ahronot curiosity got the better of me, so I read on and found myself agreeing with some of the things he wrote. Haetzni quotes from Thomas Friedman's op-ed piece in The New York Times entitled, “Call White House, Ask for Barack” in which he surveys the sorry state of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. "Friedman" states Haetzni "came up with the insight that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians are interested in a peace process, and that American pressure on both sides merely hinders them from getting along on their own for lack of any other choice.

Well, welcome to the club. After all, this is what the rightist camp has been warning of all along."

While Friedman despairs of the peace process Haetzni has rejected it.

Tom Friedman maintains, "The only thing driving the peace process today is inertia and diplomatic habit. Yes, the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has left the realm of diplomacy. It is now more of a calisthenic, like weight-lifting or sit-ups, something diplomats do to stay in shape, but not because they believe anything is going to happen." I quoted similar remarks from the same article three weeks ago.

Why should I bother quoting the conclusions of one despairing American journalist?

Professor Zaki Shalom a research worker at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an independent Israeli think tank, believes Friedman's conclusions are significant, mainly because of his close ties with leading figures in the American administration, especially with Secretary of State Clinton. It's reasonable to suppose that Friedman's column reflects the current administration's prevailing mood.

"As a veteran columnist well versed in the intricacies of Middle Eastern and American arenas, Friedman knows full well that an American withdrawal from the Israeli-Palestinian peace process is not realistic. American internal considerations, pressures from the Arab world, the European states, international organizations, and various peace movements obligate American involvement. The administration does not have a real option to withdraw, even if it wanted to. Friedman’s call to the administration to withdraw from the process, therefore, indicates rage and frustration among administration members in light of the present situation rather than a genuine proposal."

Zaki Shalom believes the public's lack of in interest in the peace process stems from the fact that since the security fence was erected Palestinian suicide bombings and other forms of terrorism, are a rare occurrence. In the past they motivated public interest in the peace process. Many people believe it's possible to suppress terrorist organisations without a political settlement.

In addition Israel has succeeded in creating a balance of deterrence vis-à-vis Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Over the past year the West Bank economy has improved, and it seems unlikely that the Palestinians will risk jeopardising this prosperity by embarking on another Intifada whose outcome, from their point of view, is liable to be disastrous.

Tony Blair often cites the Irish conflict as a case in point when he claims a Palestinian-Israeli peace settlement is attainable. Over the past nine years negotiating teams have come tantalisingly close to reaching an agreement only to withdraw at the last moment. The Israeli parallel negotiating teams led by Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni were said to have been “only a hair's breadth" away from initialling an agreement. Well a miss is as good as a mile.

Elyakim Haetzni explains this near miss as an intrinsic Arab failing, namely the repeated inability to compromise on territory and the refugee question “Any Arab leader who attempts to do this will forfeit his life."

“I’ve grown so pessimistic about Israel-Palestine that I find myself agreeing with Israel’s hard-line foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman:” complains Roger Cohen in his article ‘A Mideast Truce’ published two weeks ago in The New York Times. Cohen quotes Lieberman “Anyone who says that within the next few years an agreement can be reached ending the conflict simply doesn’t understand the situation and spreads delusions.”

Cohen adds “Israelis have walled themselves off from Palestinians. They are less interested than ever in a deal with people they hardly see.” ……

“The United States condoned the construction of this settlement-reinforcing barrier. It cannot be unmade — not for the foreseeable future. Peace and walls do not go together. But a truce and walls just may. And that, I must reluctantly conclude, is the best that can be hoped for.”

Roger Cohen advises President Obama “ratchet expectations downward. Stop talking about peace. Banish the word. Start talking about détente. That’s what Lieberman wants; that’s what Hamas says it wants; that’s the end point of Netanyahu’s evasions. It’s not what Abbas wants but he’s powerless.” Cohen quotes political scientist Shlomo Avineri, “A nonviolent status quo is far from satisfactory but it’s not bad. Cyprus is not bad.”

Cohen adds wistfully “I recall my friend Shlomo dreaming of peace. That’s over. The last decade destroyed the last illusions: hence the fence. The courageous have departed the Middle East. A peace of the brave must yield to a truce of the mediocre — at best.”

This week Prime Minister Netanyahu has been trying to enforce his construction freeze in the West Bank settlements. The settlement leadership is determined to oppose the freeze even if it means clashing with the government building inspectors serving the infringement notices.

Knowing that the settlement leadership doesn’t subscribe to the “Two State Solution,” observers beg the question – What do they want? The answer is simple and concise – “A One State Solution!”

A few weeks Carlo Strenger a psychology professor at Tel Aviv University, and a member of the Permanent Monitoring Panel on Terrorism of the World Federation of Scientists noted that. “The continued failure of the Mideast peace process and the escalation of violence from the second intifada to the Gaza war have led many to think that the two-state solution is pedestrian, unimaginative and inhuman.
Many Palestinians and a small but vocal group of Jews back Edward Said's claim that a one-state solution with full right of return for all Palestinians must be endorsed. This, they say, would finally lead to absolute and full justice.”

Strenger quoted veteran Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat who recently recycled Said’s one state solution.

”The Palestinians should give up seeking an independent state and pursue a single country in which they would enjoy equal rights with Israelis.”

Even the late Edward Said couldn’t claim patent rights for the idea of one state for two peoples.

The one state bogey doesn’t scare the settlers or anyone else who subscribes to the Greater Israel concept. They too support a one state solution citing the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs in Israel, and propose something similar in the West Bank. Of course they don’t want the Palestinian refugees, but who does?

In the meantime the argument is no more than an intellectual exercise. And until something better comes along we will continue to maintain a “ nonviolent status quo.”

Have a good weekend

Beni

J Street

The more I read about J. Street the less certain I am I understand it

In fact I'm beginning to regret I chose to write about it this week.

Yesterday I checked with my breakfast table parliamentarians to see what they knew about pro-Israel lobbies. Most of them knew something about AIPAC and had heard the name J.Street mentioned. The sum total opinion was that it's comforting to know that there are concerned Jews actively supporting Israel but we decide what's good for us.

The Economist's Washington correspondent provided a penetrating survey of the pro-Israel lobby scene, summing it up much the same as my breakfast table pundits did - "J Street's executive director Ben-Ami says American Jews take 'very sophisticated and nuanced positions' on the Middle East. But many will continue to prefer AIPAC’s simpler view that the government of Israel is the best judge of where Israel’s interests lie."
The axiom "American aid is good, American pressure is bad," crops up every time the peace process gets stuck at a no-go stage.

In their dealings with Israel U.S presidents shy from using coercive terms preferring softer synonyms, carrying more carrots than big sticks.

Likewise, there's a rule of thumb regarding our right-wing politicians which states that their determination to resist and oppose US pressure is directly related to their distance from the halls of government.

Yair Shamir a successful businessman with a good military background believes that "Fending off American pressure requires us to alter our tactics but not our goal."

In an article he wrote for the Jerusalem Post Shamir recalls his father's obstinacy in the face of US pressure. He quotes from a dedication written by Ehud Barak for a recent biography of his father -"Yitzchak Shamir: Firm as A Rock."

When Barak was IDF chief of staff he was once summoned to the Prime Minister's Office to meet with then US Secretary of State James Baker who had been demanding that Israel make far-reaching concessions.

"At one point I noticed Shamir's face became very tense and agitated," recalled Barak, "it looked like a volcano about to explode. He thumped on the table and told the secretary of state in a very blunt and undiplomatic manner, in a very sharp but self-controlled tone: 'Mr. Secretary, you can demand what you choose to demand but this is our country and we will not agree to do anything that will harm its interests and future even if our best friend demands it from us."

Just the same a rock-firm, immovable and reluctant Shamir went to the Madrid peace conference.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu doesn't thump on tables. He prefers guile and evasiveness. Just the same his declarations about the construction freeze are puzzling. Initially he zigzagged, first freezing then thawing. Lately there has been a lot of talk about building new housing units in places where the US administration wants to freeze construction. These declarations are detached from reality. Visitors to West Bank settlements report little or no construction activity. Ironically Netanyahu received a lot of flak from Obama and Clinton about settlement construction; the Palestinians complained and refused to renew negotiations till the building stops. Last but not least the settlers complain because there is a de facto freeze.

Obviously there was a need to dispel the haze of disinformation and also do something to defrost US-Israel relations. On Wednesday evening Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would impose a 10-month freeze on construction in West Bank settlements, saying the move was a bid to restart stalled peace talks with the Palestinians. This self imposed freeze doesn't include greater Jerusalem; nevertheless, President Obama expressed satisfaction and the Palestinians said it was too little and too temporary to bring them to the conference table.

Undoubtedly AIPAC fulfils an important function. The New York Times calls it "the most important organization affecting America's relationship with Israel." It has been described as one of the most powerful lobbying groups in Washington, DC and its critics have argued that it holds undue influence over the U.S. Congress with regard to American foreign policy towards Israel.

If the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is indeed so powerful, and there is every reason to believe it is, who needs J.Street?

According to the J Street website, the organization seeks "to change the direction of American policy in the Middle East" and to become "the political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement."

According to its executive director, Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street is neither pro- nor anti- any individual organization or other pro-Israel umbrella groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). He says J Street is proud of AIPAC's many accomplishments and emphasised that the two groups have different priorities rather than different views.

Explaining the need for a new advocacy and lobbying group, Ben-Ami stated: "J Street has been started, however, because there has not been sufficient vocal and political advocacy on behalf of the view that Israel's interests will be best served when the United States makes it a major foreign policy priority to help Israel achieve a real and lasting peace not only with the Palestinians but with all its neighbors."

Alan Solomont, one of the founders of J Street and a former national finance chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and currently a Democratic Party fundraiser, described the need for J Street in the following way: "We have heard the voices of neocons , and right-of-center Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals, and the mainstream views of the American Jewish community have not been heard."

Does J Street really represent mainstream opinion?

Journalist David Suissa was sparing in compliments about the new lobby
"Well, yes, but J Street has put a fresh coat of paint on this fixer-upper. They’ve mastered the art of preaching mind-numbing clichés and making it look like they’ve found the Holy Grail.
Let’s look, for example, at the cliché that “consistent and concerted diplomatic engagement” — a euphemism for pressuring Israel — has a positive impact on the peace process. A good example of this engagement has been the demand on Israel to freeze all its settlement construction, a policy that J Street actively promotes." Suissa claims the Palestinians didn't ask for a settlement freeze till J Street started pushing the idea.

The article in The Economist entitled "J Street puts a foot in the door," asks
"Can a handful of peaceniks challenge the power of AIPAC?"

"Unlike AIPAC, J Street intends to push aggressively for a two-state solution based on Israel’s pre-1967 borders." Further on the author relates to the negative response to J Street. "In print and in the blogosphere, in America and Israel, foes have excoriated J Street for having called for an immediate ceasefire during last year’s Gaza war, paying excessive heed to Richard Goldstone’s report accusing Israel of war crimes, making room at its conference for people who do not support the Zionist idea of a Jewish state, and other alleged heresies against the orthodox line of Israel’s traditional supporters in America.

If this flood of denigration was intended to drown J Street at birth, it seems to have failed. Israel’s Likud-led government may have stayed away from its conference, but its president, Shimon Peres, and Tzipi Livni, the leader of its opposition Kadima party, expressed their support"

Well J Street has definitely planted a foot in the door. Yet it remains puny compared to AIPAC. The new organisation has an annual budget of around $3m and a handful of staff. AIPAC has an annual budget of around $60m, more than 275 employees, an endowment of over $130m and a new $80m headquarters building on Capitol Hill.

Looking ahead The Economist claims, "Beyond the disparity in resources, Jeremy Ben-Ami now faces the nightmarish job of retaining the loyalty of the doves who flocked to this week’s conference without alienating mainstream Jewish opinion in America. This requires some contortions."

The pro – Israel lobbies didn’t really concern Israelis this week. Fox News was first with the scoop about a breakthrough in the negotiations for the release of Gilad Shalit. According Fox and a number of Arab news sources the unnamed German negotiator had managed to convince Israel and Hamas to rearrange the prisoner exchange list thereby raising hopes for an exchange deal that would end Shalit’s long incarceration in Gaza. Following negotiations conducted separately with Israel and Hamas representatives in Cairo a Hamas delegation flew to Damascus to report to the more extremist Hamas in exile branch for final approval. According to the reports the exchange would coincide with the Muslim holiday Id al-Adha which begins on Friday.

Today the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Sharq al-Awsat stated that the exchange had been deferred till after the holiday which ends on Monday.

The Israeli cabinet maintained a very low profile regarding the Shalit exchange claiming that excessive chatter was counterproductive. Our news media people and analysts have been quoting Arab sources as their only channel of information. Of course everyone in Israel is anxious to free Gilad Shalit but some people aren’t prepared to pay the price.

According to Al-Sharq al-Awsat Israel will release a total of 1,150 Palestinian prisoners in the deal, in three stages: First, Israel will free 450 hard-line terrorists, after which Shalit will be transferred to Egypt; Israel will then release the rest of the prisoners in two stages, after which Shalit will be brought to Israel.

Israelis who oppose the exchange deal claim the release of so many hard – line unrepentant terrorists will spark off a wave of Palestinian terror attacks.

In the past many released hard-line terrorists became active again after their release.

After negotiating for more than three years it’s clear that holding out for a better deal won’t help Gilad Shalit.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat claims that the Tanzim leader Marwan Barghouti, Ahmad Sadat, a leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Ibrahim Hamed, the former commander of Hamas' military wing and the mastermind behind the 2002 terror bombing at the Moment cafe in Jerusalem will be released as part of the deal.

In an interview with Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Wednesday, Barghouti said he hopes to be freed as part of the Shalit deal, and intends to run for president in Palestinian elections next January.
If Barghouti is released in the prisoner exchange, reasons Ha’aretz, it could have far-reaching strategic implications on internal Palestinian balance of power, and attempts to strike a peace deal with Israel.

Have a good weekend.

Beni 26^th of November, 2009

Death by remote control

At one time Eli of “Eli’s Lookout” fame had at least two serious hobbies. He installed an impressive and much admired model train set in the basement of his home and was also a radio controlled model airplane enthusiast.

His children have grown up and are busy playing with their own children. The model planes are either packed away or given away, however rumour has it that the train set is still running in Eli’s basement.

We are becoming increasingly reliant on remote control operation for almost every electronic gadget and appliance we have in our homes and at work. Remote controlled devices have become an essential part of our way of life.

Eli's radio-controlled model airplanes came to mind the other day when I read Roger Cohen's article - “Of fruit flies and drones”, which appeared in The New York Times.

I suppose remote-controlled warfare can be traced to early human combat when projectiles (stones, spears and arrows) were used instead of or as an adjunct to hand to hand fighting. Although the various sling-throwers, lancers and archers were protectively distanced from the thrusts and jabs of close-combat weapons, they were, nevertheless, not safe from counterattacks by projectiles of the same kind. We have come a long way from the time when arrows and javelins were projected by and large indiscriminately at a visible enemy, to the present time when targeted assassinations are carried out by remote control from unmanned aircraft.

Roger Cohen has a number of ethical qualms about this detached remotely controlled killing. In his NYT article he quotes from Jane Mayer's article "The Predator War" printed in The New Yorker, and mentions a recent study by the New America Foundation, which notes that "Obama has authorized as many drone strikes in Pakistan in nine and a half months as George W. Bush did in his last three years in office — at least 41 C.I.A. missile strikes, or about one a week, that may have killed more than 500 people." Both Mayer and Cohen are appalled by the lack of accountability regarding these "hits."

“The intelligence agency declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed.”

Endorsing Mayer further Cohen quotes "The dead have included high-value targets like Osama bin Laden’s oldest son and Baitullah Mehsud, the Taliban leader in Pakistan — as well as bystanders. Circling drones have struck panic. The embrace of the Predator program (the Predator is a U.S armed unmanned aerial vehicle) has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.”

Roger Cohen quotes P.W. Singer author of “Wired for War,” “We are at a breakpoint in history. The U.S. Air Force this year will train more unmanned system pilots than fighter and bomber pilots combined.

Cohen is perturbed because "these targeted international killings are no less real and indeed more insidious, for their video-game aspect. The thing about robotic warfare is you can watch people get vaporized on a screen in Langley, Virginia, and then drive home for dinner with the kids. The very phrase “go to war” becomes hard to distinguish from going to work. That’s a conflation fraught with ethical danger. The barriers to war get lowered."

A brief aside, a middle of the page footnote concerning accountability, informing the public, the need to consider other methods etc., Jane Mayer quotes Daniel Byman, the director of Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Security Studies, who argues that, when possible, "it's almost always better to arrest terrorists than to kill them. You get intelligence then. Dead men tell no tales." However, we are dealing with villains of the worst possible kind and trying to apprehend them in their own familiar territory is hazardous. Maybe the US and NATO forces could take a page from Israel. They don't have to take the credit for every slaying even when the evidence is incriminating. Furthermore, "When you have to shoot, shoot don't talk."

In an early September issue of The Economist the author of an article entitled "Spies in the sky," distilled to an essence this new revolution in military technology: “Smaller and smarter unmanned aircraft are transforming spying and redefining the idea of air power.”

He described how early in the present Afghan war NATO commanders mounted a show of force for the governor of a northern province, to emphasise their commitment to the region. They called in a group of F-16 fighter jets, which swooped over the city of Baghlan, their thunderous afterburners engaged. This display of air power was an effective way to garner the respect of the local people. But fighter jets are a limited and expensive resource. And in conflicts like that in Afghanistan, they are no longer the most widespread form of air power. The nature of air power, and the notion of air superiority, have been transformed in the past few years by the rise of remote-controlled drone aircraft, known in military jargon as “unmanned aerial vehicles” (UAVs).

At this juncture it’s opportune to wedge in a comment on Israel’s UAVs and their growing importance in both our defence array and sales of military equipment.

Drones are much less expensive to operate than manned warplanes. The cost per flight-hour of Israel’s drone fleet, for example, is less than 5% the cost of its fighter jets. In the past two years the Israeli Defence Forces’ fleet of UAVs has tripled in size. Almost all IDF ground operations now have drone support.

Associated Press reported that Israel Aerospace Industries has sold its indigenous “Heron” drones to the German air force. The drones will be used in reconnaissance missions in northern Afghanistan.

Today, these drones complement the US Air Force's dominant role in Afghanistan air space, thanks to two useful features and the CIA's shortage of Predators for its own and NATO use:

The Israeli drones are cheaper and one of them the "Heron,” possesses a long-distance range, the ability to stay aloft for 52 hours non-stop and tracking and targeting capabilities. It can carry out complex functions such as in-flight refueling and slotting into strategic missile defense systems.

The Heron carries 250 kilos of ordnance, mainly air-ground missiles. With this load, it can reach an altitude of 11,000 metres. Flying empty, it can reach a height of13,700 metres. This means that it can fly above regular commercial air traffic without becoming icebound thanks to another special feature, which is important in the freezing Afghan winters.

Israel ranks second in the world after the United States, for development and possession of drones.

Some analysts say Georgian armed forces, equipped with Israeli drones, outperformed Russia in aerial intelligence during their brief war in August 2008. (Russia also buys Israeli drones.)

In military parlance, drones do work that would be “dull, dirty and dangerous” for soldiers. Some of them can loiter in the air for long periods. The Eagle-1, for example, developed by Israel Aerospace Industries and EADS, Europe’s aviation giant, can stay aloft for more than 50 hours at a time. (France deployed several of these aircraft this year in Afghanistan.) Such long flights help operators, assisted with object-recognition software, to determine normal (and suspicious) patterns of movement for people and vehicles by tracking suspects for two wake-and-sleep cycles.

Seven years ago the CIA tracked and destroyed a car carrying Al Qaeda's "top man in Yemen," Qaed Salim Sinan Al-Harethi. This was the first concrete instance of the Bush preemptive strike policy, it signaled a radical escalation in the war on terrorism, and was criticised both at home and abroad.

Harethi was suspected of planning the October 2000 USS Cole attack that killed 17 U.S. sailors.

Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh condemned the attack as a "summary execution that violates human rights." Her comments struck a nerve in the Bush administration, which had criticised and sought to distance itself from the Israeli policy of "targeted killings" of Palestinian terrorists. State Department spokesman at the time Richard Boucher tried to explain that even though the CIA carried out a targeted killing, "our policy on targeted killings in the Israeli Palestinian context has not changed," but that the reasons for that policy "do not necessarily apply to other circumstances." Despite this qualified double standard, some Israeli scholars interpreted the CIA's attack as an endorsement of their policy and recognition that in light of the September 11th attacks, "the U.S. situation has become more like the Israeli situation."

It seems there is a certain ambivalence regarding targeted killings

Vicki Divoll, a former C.I.A. lawyer, who now teaches at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, observed, "People are a lot more comfortable with a Predator strike that kills many people than with a throat-slitting that kills one." But, she added, "mechanized killing is still killing."

A few months before the CIA assassination of Al-Harethi, Israel ratcheted up its targeted assassinations policy when it used a one-ton bomb dropped from an F-16 fighter jet to kill Salah Shihada, the leader and founder of Hamas' military wing of ‘Izz ad-Din al-Qassam in Gaza. Shihada was one of the most senior activists to be targeted since the outbreak of the intifada. The organisation under him was responsible for fifty-two attacks on Israeli targets, killing a total of 220 Israeli non-combatants and sixteen soldiers. Despite that, the assassination drew heavy criticism from the international community and a few overly concerned Israelis.

In addition to Shihada the bomb killed fifteen civilians. This method was never repeated.

A year later Gal Luft wrote in the Middle East Quarterly

“Israelis dislike the term ‘assassination policy.’ They would rather use another term—‘extrajudicial punishment,’ ‘selective targeting,’ or ‘long-range hot pursuit’—to describe the pillar of their counterterrorism doctrine. But semantics do not change the fact that since the 1970s, dozens of terrorists have been assassinated by Israel's security forces, and in the two years of the al-Aqsa intifada, there have been at least eighty additional cases of Israel gunning down or blowing up Palestinian militants involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks.”

Roger Cohen rightly identifies an Achilles heel common to many nations, “The loss of more than 5,000 U.S. military personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 has concentrated minds on putting robots rather than flesh and blood in harm’s way.

There are also broader questions. When robots are tomorrow’s veterans, does war become more likely and more endless? Do drones cow enemies with America’s technological prowess or embolden them to think America is not man enough to fight? What is the psychological toll on video-screen warriors?”

Jane Mayer notes that, “In Israel, which conducts unmanned air strikes in the Palestinian territories, the process of identifying targets, in theory at least, is even more exacting. Military lawyers have to be convinced that the target can't reasonably be captured, and that he poses a threat to national security. Military specialists in Arab culture also have to be convinced that the hit will do more good than harm. “Mayer quotes Amos Guiora, a law professor at the University of Utah who once advised the IDF regarding targeted killings in Gaza "You have to be incredibly cautious, not everyone is at the level appropriate for targeted killing. You want a leader, the hub with many spokes." Guiora concludes

"Once you start targeted killing, you better make damn sure there's a policy guiding it. It can't be just catch-as-catch-can."

The article in The Economist sums up the debate on targeted killing,”There is a troubling side to all this. Operators can now safely manipulate battlefield weapons from control rooms half a world away, as if they are playing a video game.”

Finally another quote from P.W. Singer’s “Wired for War”, “Drones also enable a government to avoid the political risk of putting combat boots on foreign soil. This makes it easier to start a war. But like them or not, drones are here to stay. Armed forces that master them are not just securing their hold on air superiority—they are also dramatically increasing its value.”

Have a good weekend.

Beni 19^th of November, 2009.

Rolling the stone shut

Yesterday I participated in a day trip to Jerusalem organised by our local Judaism study circle. Under the expert guidance of eminent archeologist Gaby Barkai, we visited a number of ancient burial caves.
The tour focussed on trends, customs and changing Jewish burial practices.
Spending the whole day in and around cave-crypts examining sarcophagi and ossuaries was almost as cheerless as Israel’s present predicament.
The similarity doesn’t end here. A Hebrew expression which translates as "rolling the stone shut" means to close finally and permanently with no room for optimism, aptly describes the current situation regarding the peace process. . It stems from the use of a large round stone to seal and open the entrance to ancient burial caves.
When Prime Minister Netanyahu and his entourage flew to Washington this week his hundred minute meeting with President Obama yielded little more than empty rhetoric. As expected, Netanyahu's address to the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, which preceded his meeting in the White House, went well. The meeting with the President was less impressive, and despite efforts by the Prime Minister’s bureau to describe the meeting in positive terms the brief tête-à-tête was low-profile without the customary press conference or even a photo-opportunity.
On the way home Netanyahu received a warmer reception when he met President Sarkozy in Paris.
Gauging public opinion in Israel is speculative, more guesswork than anything else. Public opinion polls indicate trends at a particular time. Furthermore the public is fickle by nature, so the results of yesterday’s poll are often old news. By and large the news media are more interested in shaping the nation’s views than evaluating what the public thinks.
“Taxi drivers” asserts a knowledgeable friend,” are the most reliable public mood-meters.” Since I rarely commute by cab I’m left with the opinion makers who insist they know what the public is thinking.
I’ll hazard a guess and say that the public is weary of all the incessant wheeling and dealing over a peace process which more than ever before appears to be more unattainable “ more distant than a fading star.”
“Let’s face it” said Z at our breakfast table parliament “some problems have no solution.” I’ve mentioned the “parliament” on a number of occasions. It is probably the most opinionated, unqualified forum of know-alls in the Middle East. Since I’m one of them I feel free to malign this august body. We meet every morning at breakfast in the factory and manage to mete out judgment on everything from football teams to heads of state.
“You’re wrong,” responded Z2 (I refer to the parliamentarians by initial letters to protect their identities) “it takes longer to find a solution, maybe centuries.”
“Both Israeli and the Palestinian leaders appear to be satisfied with an impasse.” Claims Israeli economist Sever Plocker. To support this statement he quotes from Thomas L. Friedman’s article published this week in the New York Times
“Regional and global leaders are uninterested in peace and are not pursuing peace. They are chasing ‘peace kites’ and are interested in the mirage of a ‘peace process.’ An empty process that is maintained through inertia..”
Further on Friedman maintains,“The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has become a bad play. It is obvious that all the parties are just acting out the same old scenes, with the same old tired clichés – and that no one believes any of it anymore.”
His conclusion is quite devastating .
“If the status quo is this tolerable for the parties, then I say, let them enjoy it. I just don’t want to subsidize it or anesthetize it anymore. We need to fix America. If and when they get serious, they’ll find us. And when they do, we should put a detailed U.S. plan for a two-state solution, with borders, on the table. Let’s fight about something big.”
It’s reasonable to suppose that Tom Friedman is echoing what President Obama thinks but won’t say in public
Plocker follows on from Friedman and claims there’s no point in holding negotiations for the sake of negotiations. We are heading nowhere. “The leaders are scared to lead and the people who voted for them have become used to living their lives in limbo, waiting for a miracle, for someone to apply pressure, for next year, for the next prime minister, for the next president, or for the next elections. The ‘process,’ which marked its sixteenth anniversary in September, was created to that end. “
“Let’s take our time, say foot-dragging fans on both sides. We shouldn’t rush, they explain earnestly; we must not force an end to this. There’s a time and a place for everything. We can’t finish off the conflict in a hurry (that is, within 16 years.) “
“The Israelis are hoping that with the passage of time, the force of habit will win out. The Palestinians are hoping that with the passage of time, the force of demography will win out. And this requires time, much more time, until the solution will present itself.”
Veteran Israeli politician Moshe Arens blames the Palestinians for the impasse and predicts that nothing will happen “till they get their act together.”
Last week Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas announced he may not stand for re-election next January. The announcement barely aroused a ripple of comment from both politicians and political observers.
A few months ago the Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad presented the international community with a detailed plan for building up Palestinian Authority institutions and set a timetable of up to two years for its implementation. Senior Israeli officials said Fayyad's plan initially met with positive reaction in Jerusalem for its emphasis on institution-building and making security services more efficient.
However, some Israeli officials claim that alongside the clauses reported in the media - which are similar to elements of Netanyahu's call for "economic peace" between Israel and the Palestinians - Fayyad's plan also contains a classified, unreleased portion stipulating a unilateral declaration of independence.
The plan specifies that at the end of a designated period for bolstering national institutions the PA, in conjunction with the Arab League, would file a "claim of sovereignty" to the UN Security Council and General Assembly over the borders of June 4, 1967.
Of course this unilateral declaration of independence wont be endorsed by the present Israeli government.
In a recent interview he gave to the Christian Science Monitor Salam Fayyad said "If we don't do anything, people will criticize us, and if we come up with something that's proactive, we'll also have critics. Is this realistic? We'll never know unless we try."
It seems Fayyad is faced with the Sisyphean task of getting his plan rolling. Unless he wins the support of the Arab states he will find the rolling all uphill.
In the meantime the “peace process” appears to be safely buried behind a huge rolling stone.


Have a good weekend


Beni 13th of |November, 2009.
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"From a high roof to a bottomless pit"

From a distance they looked like storks, big white birds circling in flight above a freshly ploughed field in the valley. Later the same day an ardent birdwatcher told me they were Great Egrets (Egretta Alba). As they soared higher before flying south I considered how our hopes for a peaceful settlement of the Arab-Israeli Conflict had soared only to plunge to an abysmal depth.

In retrospect the millennium year held promise of a new age; some people believed it would herald the second coming of the Messiah, or the dawn of a messianic era. Perhaps it would be a turning point, a harbinger of a better world.

This was the year when Pope John Paul II slipped a note in a cranny in the Wailing Wall and conducted a Mass in a field at Korazim overlooking the Mount of the Beatitudes and the Sea of Galilee. There was every reason to believe that the Oslo process would continue and culminate in a two state solution ending over a hundred years of Arab-Jewish conflict in the region called Palestine.

This was a year when Israel finally left Lebanon and came ever closer to the goal of true peace with all its neighbours

In July Palestinian and Israeli delegations met at Camp David. The Israeli premier Ehud Barak was sure this was an historic moment. In his address to the Knesset shortly before his departure he quoted from Ecclesiastes: "To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven... A time for war, and a time for peace…”. He was wrong.

Late in September an outbreak of violence in areas of the West Bank and Gaza escalated to a full-blown uprising which became known as the Intifada al Aqsa. It is doubtful if as claimed the visit made by Ariel Sharon and other Knesset members to the Temple mount sparked off the violence, however it did provide a very convenient rallying point for Yasser Arafat.

Some time in October 2000 I received a number of anxious letters and e-mails from friends and relatives asking me to explain what was happening in Israel.

In many countries biased news media coverage presented distorted and inaccurate reports of what was happening here. My concerned friends and relatives requested more information, I responded and nine years later I am still responding. Throughout this period I have tried to describe the events that occurred as I observed them. My accounts are drawn from a broad-based personal data bank, a composite of newspaper articles, radio and television interviews and talk-shows. I’m a good listener and an avid reader, always ready to garner ideas and opinions. This gathering process extends to lectures I have attended and conversations with friends. This is a layman’s opinion written by an ordinary man who lives in the Jezreel Valley, Israel.

In December 2000, talks were held with Israeli and Palestinian teams in Washington hosted by President Clinton who presented a bridging proposal to the parties aimed at ending the Intifada al Aqsa. That proposal was taken up at marathon talks between Israeli and Palestinian delegations which were held late in January 2001 at Taba in Sinai . The Clinton administration had already left office and the Bush team was not yet engaged. This was also the end of the peace process during the Barak government, and effectively the end of the entire Oslo Peace Process that started in Madrid in 1991. The Barak government continued to offer concessions to the Palestinians, but neither the Israeli public nor the Knesset supported these positions. Ten days later Ariel Sharon won a landslide victory in the Knesset elections.

The heady state of exhilarating expectancy sensed by many people in the peace camp before the meeting at Camp David was replaced by a feeling of utter despair after the collapse of the talks at Taba. One observer used an Aramaic expression adopted in Hebrew to describe this change of mood. It was like “falling from a high roof to a bottomless pit.”

However it wasn’t a total anticlimax. There were a few occasions when optimists clung to every new peace initiative.

In 2002 Alexis Keller a professor of political science at the University of Geneva proposed a framework for a new peace accord. Hoping to break the stalemate, prominent Israeli and Palestinian figures took up Keller’s suggestion and launched a non-official peace negotiation with the support of the Swiss government. They went beyond the step-by-step negotiations brokered by the United States in the “Road Map” plan. The Geneva initiative sought a comprehensive agreement that would resolve the most divisive issues, such as the status of Jerusalem, the status of the settlements, and an arrangement for the refugees. This project resulted in the Draft Permanent Status Agreement, also known as the Geneva Accord, published in October 2003. The “Accord” was officially launched on December 1,2003 at a ceremony in Geneva . The new initiative was led by Israeli politician Yossi Beilin, one of the architects of the Oslo Process and Yasser Abed Rabbo a former Palestinian Authority minister. Both emphasised that the Geneva Accord does not obligate either of their respective governments, even though Abed Rabbo was a minister at the time of the signing.

The Geneva Accord failed to make any real headway among Israelis and Palestinians and the Road Map failed to make progress beyond the first initial stages.

The divisive issues remain as insoluble as ever. The Geneva Accord and the Road Map are mentioned occasionally but for all intents and purposes they have been thrown to “the dustbin of history.”

Rabbi Nahum Ish Gamzu famed as Rabbi Akiva’s mentor is best known for his stoical acceptance of personal and national tragedy. “Gam zu l’Tova” (It’s all for best) was his succinct response. Reviewing the past nine years of fluctuating rooftop optimism and bottomless pit pessimism it’s hard to dismiss this period with a philosophical “It’s all for the best.”

Nevertheless have a good weekend.

Beni 5^th of November, 2009.