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December 6, 2004, Vol. 6 Issue 19

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: The Israeli Foreign Ministry doesn't remember such an atmosphere in a long time. The Foreign Ministry believes that after elections for the Palestinian Authority are held and prior to the implementation of disengagement, there will be a breakthrough in Israel's relations with Arab countries. Jerusalem officials mention Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, and Jordan as candidates for reinstating their ambassadors. There may also be agreements ...

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: The Israeli Foreign Ministry doesn't remember such an atmosphere in a long time. The Foreign Ministry believes that after elections for the Palestinian Authority are held and prior to the implementation of disengagement, there will be a breakthrough in Israel's relations with Arab countries. Jerusalem officials mention Morocco, Tunisia, Oman, and Jordan as candidates for reinstating their ambassadors. There may also be agreements to establish diplomatic relations with the Gulf states with which secret contacts have been held in recent months, including Dubai and Abu Dhabi. And perhaps there is the start of another breakthrough: Libya has invited the deputy speaker of the Knesset, Moshe Kahlon of Likud, to meet in Tripoli with representatives of Gadaffi to discuss Jewish property left in Libya. Back to Egypt-Foreign Minister Director General Ron Prosor said last night that after the elections in the Palestinian Authority, Egypt will announce that it is reinstating its ambassador. Prosor stressed that Egypt cannot serve as a mediator between Israel and the Palestinians without an ambassador in Israel. The warming relationship between Israel and Egypt in the last few years has led to close cooperation. In the next few days Israel and Egypt will sign an historic agreement to create four special industrial zones along the model that Israel and Jordan have. Israeli and Egyptian factories will cooperate in these zones and the goods will be exported to the U.S. and Europe with reduced taxes. Egypt knows that Israeli-Jordanian cooperation caused Jordan's exports to the U.S. to leap from $15 million to a billion dollars. Industry and Trade Minister Ehud Olmert will soon sign a new economic agreement with Egypt. Next week he will head a delegation of dozens of Israeli businessmen to Cairo to try and renew trade relations. The goal is to expand bilateral trade so that it will surpass $100 million this year. Cairo has also agreed to Israel's request to be allowed to renew searches for IDF MIAs in Egypt. Also, a large deal for natural gas is in the works, and Egypt is planning to deploy 750 police on the Egyptian side of the Philadelphi Road to deal with arms smuggling. (Yedioth Ahronoth, 12/6/04)

STATUS QUO CONTENTMENT:
Israeli National Security Advisor Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland warned Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that Israel has no real interest in Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon. Such a move could undermine stability in Lebanon, unleash the restraints on Hezbollah, and heat up the Golan sector. These recommendations contradict Jerusalem's official position, which demands an immediate Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon as a condition for resuming negotiations with Damascus. Prime Minister's Bureau officials said that Eiland's recommendations are not acceptable to Sharon. (Israel Army Radio News, 12/1/04) MISSING IN ACTION: Syrian President Bashar Assad was prepared to go to Jerusalem and speak before the Knesset, in an opening move to resume negotiations between Israel and Syria, senior political and security sources revealed. "Israel missed a huge, one-time golden opportunity to resume negotiations with Syria under ideal conditions from its perspective," said the sources, "when Assad did not rule out the possibility of coming to Israel and meeting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem." Assad's proposal came up during secret talks held between Israel and Syria last year. These talks were the first in a long series of messages sent by the Syrians to Jerusalem. The negotiations that took place early in 2003 were much more serious than previously known. Everyone treated them seriously: the Syrians, who stressed all the time that the president himself was in the picture of the talks; the military sources, who realized the seriousness of the Syrian messages; and international figures, who were involved in what was happening. Even Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom thought that Israel should try the channel of talks. Only the Prime Minister's Bureau officials ruled out the possibility entirely. The talks on the Israeli side were coordinated by Eitan Bentzur, who was the director general of the Foreign Ministry, and on the Syrian side by the Syrian president's brother, Maher Assad. The talks were held in Jordan, and reports were conveyed to Jerusalem and Damascus. The Syrian president was prepared to return to the negotiating table without preliminary conditions, and he also voiced his readiness to visit Jerusalem. A question about this was relayed by the Israeli side via the president's brother, and the response that came back from Damascus was: "The president does not rule out coming to Jerusalem." Officials involved in the talks said that Bashar Assad was prepared for a "Sadat-like" act with one difference: he did not demand a secret preliminary promise of the kind given in Morocco at the time by Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan to Hassan Tohami (in which Israel promised to evacuate all of Sinai). Assad was prepared to consider coming to Jerusalem without preliminary conditions, as an opening shot at resuming negotiations. He had demands, but he was prepared to bring them up in the framework of talks. (Ma'ariv, 12/1/04)

SHINUI SLIDES:
According to the latest Dahaf/Yedioth Ahronoth survey, if Knesset elections were held today, the 120 seats in the legislature would be divided as follows (with the current number of seats for each party in parentheses): Likud 42 (40); Labor 23 (22); Shinui 10 (15); National Union 9 (7); Arab Parties 8 (8); Yahad 5 (6); United Torah Judaism 5 (5); National Religious Party 6 (4); and undecided 5. Among Likud voters, 60% think that Ariel Sharon should head their party, 20% prefer Benjamin Netanyahu, and 10% want Shaul Mofaz. Among Labor voters, 40% believe Shimon Peres should head their party, 35% want Matan Vilani, and 19% prefer Ehud Barak. (Yedioth Ahronoth, 12/1/04)

BANKING ON COMPROMISE:
Israel has decided to permit 35,000 Palestinian workers to continue working in Israel for another four years, according to a new World Bank report on steps that Israel and the Palestinian Authority have to take in order to reconstruct the Palestinian economy. Israel has agreed to improve its railroad network to facilitate transportation of merchandise from the occupied territories to its seaports. It was also agreed that arrangements for checking the goods being sent from the West Bank, Gaza, and Israel would be improved, and new crossing points for cargo would be opened. Israel has not yet accepted the World Bank's recommendation that it activate the "safe passage" between Gaza and the West Bank, allow Palestinians to open the sea and air ports in Gaza, and cancel the "back-to-back" method of transferring cargo. There is no agreement either on the number and location of the crossing points because Israel wants to open them inside the territories. The World Bank demands that the Palestinians carry out reforms, improve the security situation, establish an appropriate legal system, fight corruption, and decide what should be done with the property that Israel evacuates. (Israel Radio News, 12/2/04)

A LINE IN THE SAND:
The new route of the security barrier proposed by the Israeli defense establishment will annex 100,000 acres of West Bank land as opposed to 225,000 acres that were to have been annexed according to the previous plan. The new route was created after the Israeli High Court of Justice mandated changes that make the route more in keeping with the principle of proportionality. In the main, the new route follows the alternative proposal suggested by the Council for Peace and Security. It was presented to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, who approved it. The new route will extend from the southern Hebron mountains to the Dead Sea along the Green Line, except for three small salients around the settlements of Eshkolot, Shani, and Metzudat Yehuda. The new route will return 25,000 acres of Palestinian land in the area of the Jerusalem Corridor. Palestinian residents of Beit Suriq, Bidu, Beit Anan, and Qatana will now not be separated as originally planned from their farm lands, which cover an estimated 5,000 acres. The new route also abolishes the double security fences parallel to highway No. 443 and running east of Ben Gurion International Airport. The new route also shows no trace of the earlier planned fence route to Taysir and Carmel. In addition, the Defense Ministry recently approved NIS 1 billion for building or enhancing infrastructure of Palestinian villages near the barrier. The plan will include paving 130 km. of roads, building underground passages between villages, and setting up agricultural advancements. This new sum is 100 times higher than the funds invested so far in paving roads for the use of Palestinians. (Ha'aretz & Ma'ariv, 11/29/04)

ROAD WARRIORS:
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has asked donor countries to turn down an Israeli request for them to finance the paving and upgrading of alternative roads in the West Bank that would take the place of the main roads that the IDF prevents Palestinians from accessing, allowing only Israeli cars on them. The representatives of the donor countries, including the U.S. consul general in Jerusalem, have officially said they do not intend to finance any project against the will of the PA. The donor mandate is to operate opposite the PA and therefore they are only committed to development projects the PA submits and is interested in. A diplomatic source said that most of the donor countries are also committed to the opinion of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concerning the separation fence, so they are carefully examining the projects they finance to ensure that they do not inadvertently sustain the fence or the settlements. The separate transportation system proposed by Israel, said that source, raised concern among some donor states that the system contravenes the ICJ's opinion. Palestinian Planning Minister Ghassan Khatib said that the Palestinians in principle reject the Israeli proposal for a separate road network because it would perpetuate the settlements and consolidate an apartheid regime. The separate road system contradicts the Palestinian and international demand, he said, for removal of all the checkpoints and lifting the internal closure in the West Bank and it should be regarded as part of Israel's unilateral disengagement plan. As part of the discussions with the World Bank about the disengagement plan, Israel proposed that donor countries finance the construction of 16 passages (tunnels or bridges), upgrade existing secondary roads, and pave new roads, for a total of about 500 kilometers of roads. Israel presented its plan as a solution to the internal closure imposed on the Palestinians in the West Bank, a closure that World Bank officials say is the main reason for economic deterioration in the territory. According to Israeli assessments, each new road would cost between $3-4.5 million, for a total of around $60 million. The total cost of the entire network would be around $200 million, to be paid by the taxpayers of Europe, the U.S., and Japan. Khatib said that Israel is trading territorial contiguity for a future Palestinian state with "transportation contiguity" for Palestinians and territorial contiguity between the settlements and Israel proper. The alternative, secondary roads, which run parallel to the main highways, are long, winding, more difficult for traffic, and not economically viable. Moreover, their existence as a separate traffic network, said Khatib, will strengthen the settlements. Further, the PA asserts that the road proposal would link even the smallest settlements to Israel, making all of them sustainable at the expense of the chances of a viable Palestinian state. (Ha'aretz, 11/30/04 & 12/1/04)

THE STING:
In an exclusive scoop for the Jerusalem Post, Janine Zacharia reported how the FBI set up AIPAC on allegations of spying for Israel. Reliable government and other sources intimately familiar with the investigation told the Post that FBI agents used a courier, Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, to draw two senior AIPAC officials who already knew him into accepting what he described to them as "classified" information. One of the AIPAC pair then told diplomats at the Israeli Embassy in Washington about the information, which claimed Iranians were monitoring and planning to kidnap and kill Israelis operating in the Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. It is unclear if the "classified" information was real or bogus. AIPAC denies any wrongdoing. Knowingly transferring classified information to a foreign power can be a breach of U.S. espionage statutes. Legal experts told the Post that passing on bogus classified information may be used to demonstrate intent to violate the law, but does not itself constitute a crime. Franklin was already under investigation by the FBI for allegedly passing classified information to AIPAC when, the Post's sources say, FBI counterintelligence agents approached him to play a leading role in the sting operation this past summer. Franklin, hoping for leniency, agreed to cooperate with the FBI agents, who hoped, plainly, that AIPAC officials would be so troubled by the apparent life-and-death content of the information from Franklin that they would risk U.S. espionage statutes and transfer what they believed to be classified material to a foreign power, Israel. That, the Post has been told, is precisely what happened. An AIPAC statement on the situation said, "AIPAC has done nothing wrong. Neither AIPAC nor any member of our staff has broken any law, nor has AIPAC or its employees ever received information they believed was secret or classified. We continue to cooperate fully with the governmental authorities and believe any court of law or grand jury will conclude that AIPAC employees have always acted legally, properly, and appropriately." (Jerusalem Post, 12/5/04)

THE MONSTER WITHIN, PART I:
Lt. Ziv Maavar, an outstanding Armored Corps officer, finds it difficult to look himself in the mirror. He thinks he should be sitting on the defendant's bench along with R., the Druze company commander charged with confirming a kill. A year and a half has passed since Maavar was discharged from the IDF, but the memories have not faded. These were ostensibly the best of the youth, he says. Only something went wrong on the way. "I turned into a monster," Ziv says. "In the four and half years of military service as a combat officer, you feel as if you're using up everything you were raised on. 'The salt of the earth.' You believe in what you are doing, but then you get out and look back, and you realize you were a monster, a cold hearted warrior. What R did? I understand him. I can imagine myself and my fellow officers in the same situation as R. Could I kill a 12-year-old from a distance because I thought she was a terrorist? Yes. He was told that by definition anyone going into the zone had to be killed. So I'm not shocked.What happened with R is the norm and is routine. It makes no difference that the person killed was a 13-year-old girl. How many people were killed and a kill confirmation made on them? So what, were those cases okay? Why, only because they were 40 years old?" Lt. Ziv Maavar is one of the central activists in the "Breaking the Silence" movement-breaking the cycle of apathy and of Israeli public silence in everything to do with what is happening to the IDF soldiers in the Intifada. Abuse, they say, destroying property, disobeying orders for opening fire, looting-that is the norm. These are not exceptions. And it doesn't just happen anymore on the periphery, it is not a sickness of the Shimshon unit soldiers and the Border Police. It exists in all the corps, in the reconnaissance units, in the elite units. Once we were a moral army. Now-they say of themselves-they are not. "We are an entire generation of discharged soldiers. We are here to say 'look what happened to us,'" says Ziv, "You've ruined an entire generation of fighters, the best of Israeli society, the most ideological, those who were to be the spearhead of society. We all underwent moral corruption. When we went to the induction center to be discharged, we couldn't unload what we went through along with our uniforms. We took it all with us, and this is what we've now become; violent on the roads, apathetic, insensitive to our surroundings, the value of human life for us has reached rock bottom. This is Israeli society, this is who we are. We are not against the army, we are not saying the army is bad. We are talking about a situation. We were bad. An entire generation was sent on a mission, and this is its moral price." (Ma'ariv, 11/26/04)

THE MONSTER WITHIN, PART II:
Here are some of the testimonies from Israeli soldiers gathered by Breaking the Silence. First Sergeant, Armored Corps: "One of the officers wanted to maintain order.he fired once into the air.the second time he just beat the [Palestinian] to a pulp. He stuck the butt of his rifle in his face, kicked him in the balls, spat at him, cursed him.He did all this in front of his little boy." First Sergeant, Nahal: "To scare the Arabs we would walk through the streets in Abu Sneina and just shoot. My job was to shoot at the street lights.I shot at car windows and one of the soldiers with me fired bombs into a store, to blow it up. And this all for no reason. I remember that night we were all happy.there's nothing cooler than hearing a street light explode that you aimed at, and we did this with great determination and a big smile." First Sergeant, Nahal 931: "We were sitting, resting in an Arab house on the couch and there was an old lady sitting opposite us. She was very old, probably close to 80 or 90.and two guys who were sitting with me were playing a game.they would roll up balls of paper and throw them at her." First Sergeant, Nahal: "I remember we had the bodies of three terrorists in one of the company tents before they were taken to Abu Kabir. And people stood on the bodies, kicked them and spat [on] them." Unidentified: "At that time there was a procedure.If a group of kids throws stones, you catch one of the kids and cuff his hands and cover his eyes and leave him for a few hours in the guard post. I went on guard duty at 8:00 at night and found one of the kids sitting there.following procedure.with his eyes covered and his hands bound.Because I was on guard duty I spent the next two hours talking to him.Then, by mistake I told him he could get up and go.I thought he didn't understand what I was saying, but he got up.I was scared of the platoon commander and told him I can't let him and he has to sit down, and he burst into tears." A Soldier With Nahal: "There was a sniper.The orders for opening fire were if someone has a firebomb in their hand, you're allowed to shoot to kill, because this is a case of your life being in danger. They would hold firebombs and never throw them. Once, to get them to throw them, one of the platoon commanders had an idea. He told the sniper to be ready and we deliberately made a distraction.and then he threw the bottle and the sniper hit him. It was a kid, ten years old.he didn't kill him. He injured him badly I think.a ten-year-old kid.it was just to fire at something.just to do something." (Ma'ariv, 11/26/04)

A NATION ON EDGE:
According to a new survey from the Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, "the entire population of Israel can be said to suffer from direct or indirect trauma from terrorism and war." The study found that 11% of Israelis claim to have been directly exposed to terrorist attacks since the outbreak of the Intifada and 20.2% claim to have been indirectly exposed through family or friends who have been hurt. 83% of respondents tend to frequently check up on the safety of their loved ones, 80% use social support, 75% accept the situation and have adjusted to it, and 64% tend to seek information in the media. Half the respondents admitted feeling that their sense of personal security was diminished, and felt that their safety and the safety of loved ones was threatened on a daily basis. While 82% of Israelis are optimistic about their future, only 56% are optimistic about the future of the country. Another new study, from the Tel Aviv University School of Social Work, found that 15-19% of Israeli adolescents-both Jews and Arabs-and 37% of Palestinian adolescents residing in the occupied territories suffer from post traumatic disorders from exposure to terrorist attacks, requiring professional intervention. (Globes, 12/2/04)

AT THE ROADBLOCK, PART I:
In something of a stream-of-consciousness essay, Yonatan Gefen described his feelings about accompanying his daughter on her rounds with Machsom Watch, an Israeli group that monitors what takes place at roadblocks in the West Bank. A few excerpts from his essay follow. "The day I was discharged from combat reserve duty I took an oath never to enter the occupied territories," he wrote. "I was an operations officer in the Jordan Valley Brigade in the period when you could eat hummus in Jericho, drink coffee out of a steaming finjan in Nablus, and then kick up dirt with your IDF jeep and tear Judea and Samaria to pieces (indeed, we are still doing an excellent job of that to this very day). Since then, more than 20 years have passed in which I repressed the settlements, I refused to appear there even as a joke, and I didn't want to see from up close the people whom we managed to humiliate and then almost to make disappear. This week [of November 26th] I returned there with nightmares, shame, and frustration. The only reason I entered that land that is not mine is my daughter, Shira, who is active in Machsom Watch. I don't know where we went wrong in her education, but once a week she drives out to those dangerous roadblocks, along with her colleagues. She says that their presence there makes it easier for Palestinians and softens the soldiers' hearts a bit.I decided to go visit her and her fellow shift mates-Aya, Naomi, and Alex-and to see what they do there for four hours around Nablus. And, even though I've already returned, a piece of me remained stayed blocked at the roadblocks.Now I am more concerned, not only for Aya and Shira, for the soldiers and the Palestinians at the roadblocks-but for the future of at least two peoples, which also has been stopped at the roadblock, and who knows how we're going to get it out of there or when.You need to see how things are on the ground to understand the linguistic virus: security is the cliché that is used to help sell the occupation. 'Nothing justifies what is happening here,' says Aya Kanjuk. 'It's not that they're stopping bombers on their way to Tel Aviv, they're stopping them when they go from one place to another in their own territory. The people who go to the roadblocks do so because they haven't any choice.' We get back onto 'our' excellent road. Naomi gets off at the Beit Iba roadblock, which is buried in an unused quarry. As soon as the soldiers see the volunteers with their ID card clipped to their clothes, suddenly the long lines begin to move, the revolving door begins to move, three young men and a woman with a baby leave the courtyard of detainees and return to the line." (Ma'ariv, 11/26/04)

AT THE ROADBLOCK, PART II:
Yonatan Gefen continued, "In my opinion, what Aya and her friends are doing is far more important than what they think. They are trying to restore the Palestinians' existence to them, after we made them disappear. All of the State of Israel's military and economic resources are enlisted to eliding the Palestinian entity. That is why their small villages have no names, that is why we don't see them driving on the roads. If in 1948 we forced them to flee and we replaced the Arabic names with proud Hebrew names, that is what is happening here and now as well.At 4:00 in the afternoon, a line of more than 100 people has formed outside Hawara roadblock. Some are old, others are babies, some are dressed like Europeans, some of the women wear traditional gowns and veils. They push one another in the line that isn't moving, but which has rules of its own. The worst in the process is that it occurs in exemplary order. Those who don't have the right documents, and they are the majority, are sent out to an open concrete cube that is named the detainees' courtyard. No one tells them how long or why exactly they are being detained.It looks like collective punishment. People are huddled together like sheep to the slaughter. The first in line enter a revolving steel door that shuts behind them by remote control. Now they are trapped in a small cage, like in a chicken pen. When the soldier is in the right mood, he opens the gate and lets one person out, at which point the process of document inspection begins. I look at these people and feel ashamed. Here, that man with the mustache could be my grandfather, that one over there with the long red coat and the sharp-toed high heels could be my wife, the kid with a runny nose who is sitting in the middle of the line could be my son or grandson. It hits me suddenly, just like it probably hits every single one of the volunteers who come between one and three times a week to the roadblocks: Something inhuman, bereft of any ethics and bereft of any moral code is being done here. And the worst of all, as I said, is the exemplary order in which this bestial selection is performed. Suddenly I stop being angry with the roadblock, and start to mourn the future. The Israeli standing army troops cannot humiliate an entire population that was declared inferior without developing a certain obtuseness and indifference to human life. The Palestinians, who are locked in the cages of the gates or in the detainees' courtyard, cannot but nurture a hatred for the ones humiliating them and delusions of revenge that will manufacture another generation of shahids and terror attacks.I return with Shira on the Jews-only road, and even when we pass Ariel and return to Israel and to the free and traffic-logged Tel Aviv, the images from the roadblocks won't leave us. I feel dirty, and even after a long and hot shower, I know that I will never feel clean this evening, maybe even forever."(Ma'ariv, 11/26/04)