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ISRAEL
- ARAFAT AIDES DEPLORE PERMISSIVE U.S. POLICY ON SETTLEMENT
GROWTH
- New York Times - JERUSALEM, August 23, 2004 - The Palestinian
leadership expressed dismay on Sunday at a report that the Bush
administration is turning a blind eye to an expansion of Israeli
settlements.
- The Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qurei, speaking to
reporters in Ramallah, said: "I don't believe that America
says now that settlements can be expanded. This thwarts and destroys
the peace process."..
- In Cairo, the secretary general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa,
said the new American position "can only damage the peace
process, if it exists, and damage the whole situation and make
it more difficult."
- The minor furor was occasioned by an article from Washington
in The New York Times on Saturday, reporting that the Bush
administration, trying to help the Israeli prime minister,
Ariel Sharon, out of a difficult political spot, had agreed
to accept new settlement growth quietly, within the physical
boundaries of existing settlements.
- For the past three years, American policy has called for
a freeze of "all settlement activity," including the
"natural growth" brought about by an increase in the
birthrate and other factors. The Israeli government agreed to
that policy in negotiations with a commission led by former United
States Senator George J. Mitchell, and later as part of a "road
map" toward peace negotiated by the so-called quartet -
the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United
Nations.
- American pressure is now focused on Mr. Sharon's parallel
commitment to dismantle illegal settlement outposts. Washington
has told Mr. Sharon that he is moving too slowly on this issue.
His advisers say Israeli court injunctions in favor of settlers
are blocking more rapid movement.
- Mr. Sharon, in a letter published Sunday in the Israeli newspaper
Yediot Aharonot and addressed to the Labor Party leader, Shimon
Peres, said he was determined "to enlarge the government
to include the Labor Party" and move ahead with plans for
a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, including the dismantling
of Gaza settlements and four small settlements in the West Bank.
- Mr. Sharon's own Likud Party voted by a large margin last
week to exclude Labor from any new coalition. The vote was
nonbinding, but Mr. Sharon risks a split in Likud if he goes
ahead. Even the announcement of the 1,001 new housing units
was understood here as a way to appeal to his Likud opponents
before the vote - in vain. ..
- On Sunday, the Israeli government opened an office to arrange
compensation for the 8,000 or so Gaza settlers who would have
to leave. Mr. Sharon has said he hopes that many will agree to
compensation voluntarily. Mr. Arafat is resisting calls among
his legislators to sign decrees that would put his imprimatur
behind political, administrative and security changes. But he
is reaching out again to his former prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas,
who quit the job after only a few months last September because
he was frustrated with Mr. Arafat's maneuverings.
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- NEO-NAZIS IN PARIS VANDALIZE AND BURN A JEWISH COMMUNITY
CENTER
New York Times by Craig S. Smith - PARIS, August 23, 2004 - Fire
swept through a Jewish community center in eastern Paris in the
early morning hours on Sunday after arsonists broke into the
building and scrawled swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans inside.
It was the latest in a wave of neo-Nazi acts across the country.The
community center, which prepares kosher food for needy Jews,
occupies the ground floor of a five-story residential building.
There were no casualties.
- President Jacques Chirac and other politicians were quick
to issue statements condemning the attack and vowing to find
and punish those who carried it out. The Paris mayor, Bertrand
Delanoë, visited the scene on Sunday and said he felt "shock
and horror."
- The attack comes at a particularly sensitive time for the
city, falling between two emotional anniversaries. On Aug. 18,
1944, the Red Cross entered a Nazi detention camp outside Paris,
freeing about 1,500 Jews who were awaiting deportation to death
camps in Germany. A week later, Paris itself was liberated from
the Nazis...
- Neo-Nazism in France appears to have no clear ideology beyond
anti-Semitic slogans and the lyrics of white supremacist, heavy-metal
music by such groups as Ninth Panzer Symphony, Kontingent 88
and Elsass Korps. Adherents are mostly men in their teens or
early 20's, say people who monitor the movement, and their targets
are as often Arabs as Jews. France is home to Europe's biggest
Muslim and Jewish communities. But the rise in neo-Nazi acts
is particularly disturbing to Jews in France, who are already
concerned about increasing anti-Semitism among the country's
Arab youth. They fear that both anti-Semitic strains are growing...
In July, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel set off
a minor diplomatic crisis between France and Israel after
he urged French Jews to move to Israel to escape the growing
anti-Semitism. He later revised his remark to say that Jews
should move to Israel because it is their homeland.
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- ISRAELIS PROTEST SHARON'S PLAN TO OUST JEWS FROM GAZA
New York Times, by Greg Myre - JERUSALEM, September 13, 2004
- Tens of thousands of right-wing Israelis packed the streets
of central Jerusalem on Sunday night in the latest mass protest
against Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw Jewish
settlers from the Gaza Strip. The rally occurred just hours after
Mr. Sharon said at a cabinet meeting that growing incitement
by right-wing activists could lead to violence, or even civil
war, in Israel.
- "We have witnessed in the past few days a very grave
campaign of incitement, I would say, with calls that in essence
are aimed at inciting a civil war," Mr. Sharon told his
ministers in the first few minutes of the meeting, which was
filmed by television crews. "I see this as very grave."
- The demonstrators, meanwhile, filled Zion Square in a rally
organized by settlers and their backers as part of their effort
to derail the plan to pull out of Gaza, tentatively set for next
year.
- "Sharon, what happened to you?" read one banner,
referring to his decades of strong support for settlements. "The
government of Sharon is a government of destruction," said
another held by the protesters, many of them young settlers.
- The prime minister has said he sees no future for Israelis
in Gaza, and is willing to leave the territory while trying to
strengthen Israel's hold on the much larger West Bank settlements.
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- NETANYAHU JOINS CALL FOR REFERENDUM ON PULLOUT OF GAZA
SETTLERS
- New York Times, By Greg Myre - JERUSALEM, Sept. 13 - Benjamin
Netanyahu, Israel's influential finance minister, called Monday
for a national referendum on the proposed withdrawal of Jewish
settlers from the Gaza Strip. The referendum could complicate
the plan set out by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
- Opinion polls consistently show that around 70 percent or
more of Israelis favor the Gaza pullout. But opponents of the
plan have been calling for a referendum, which could take months
to organize and could also serve as a rallying point for right-wing
Israelis who want the Gaza settlers to remain.
- Mr. Netanyahu has been a lukewarm supporter of the withdrawal,
and his remarks on Monday made him the most prominent government
figure to endorse a referendum. However, Mr. Sharon has given
no indication he would support such a vote.
- "We need to go to a general referendum to avoid tearing
the people apart," said Mr. Netanyahu, who said the vote
could help promote national unity. He said the ballot should
feature a single question: "Are you in favor or against
the government's decision on a phased disengagement?" Mr.
Sharon, who describes his plan as a unilateral disengagement
from the Palestinians that will be carried out in stages, did
not comment on Mr. Netanyahu's remarks.
- However, Ehud Olmert, the deputy prime minister and a strong
proponent of the withdrawal, said such a referendum would take
months to organize and undermine the current timetable, Israeli
radio reported. Mr. Netanyahu, meanwhile, said a referendum could
be organized in six weeks or less. Mr. Sharon's withdrawal plan
calls for removing all 8,000 settlers in Gaza and evacuating
four small settlements in the West Bank before the end of next
year. He has already lost two votes in his own right-wing Likud
Party on the Gaza withdrawal plan. But those ballots were nonbinding
and have not deterred the prime minister.
- His cabinet has voted by a narrow margin to support the pullout
in principle. But several ministers, including Mr. Netanyahu,
were reluctant backers who have continued to express reservations
about the plan. Mr. Netanyahu, a longtime political rival of
Mr. Sharon, is considered the top candidate to succeed him as
leader of Likud, and therefore would be a leading contender to
become prime minister if Mr. Sharon falters. Mr. Netanyahu was
prime minister from 1996 to 1999.
- Meanwhile, Mr. Sharon's security cabinet planned to discuss
details of a compensation plan for the Gaza settlers on Tuesday.
Israeli media reports said the proposal calls for a government
payment to each family ranging from $200,000 to $500,000, based
on the value of the home and the number of years the family had
lived in a settlement...
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ISRAELI PANEL APPROVES PAYOUT FOR SETTLERS WHO LEAVE GAZA
STRIP
- New York Times, by Greg Myre - JERUSALEM, Sept. 14 - Israel's
security cabinet approved a compensation package on Tuesday that
would pay roughly $200,000 to $300,000 to each Jewish family
that agrees to leave the Gaza Strip under Prime Minister Ariel
Sharon's withdrawal plan.
- The move could bolster Mr. Sharon if a significant number
of settlers accept the offer and begin to leave Gaza voluntarily.
Some settlers have expressed a willingness to take the payout,
but many are staunchly opposed to the withdrawal and have joined
a campaign seeking to derail the plan. "We think that the
vast majority will remain in their homes," said Josh Hasten,
spokesman for the Yesha Council, which represents settlers in
Gaza and the West Bank. He said the government had yet to formally
approve the evacuation, and described the compensation plan as
an attempt to pressure the settlers.
- The security cabinet, which is made up of senior ministers,
backed the compensation plan on Tuesday by a vote of 9 to 1.
The plan authorizes the government to begin making advance payments,
which could be up to one-third of the overall compensation that
a family receives. Mr. Sharon wants to evacuate all 8,000 settlers
in Gaza and a few hundred settlers in the West Bank by the end
of next year as part of his "unilateral separation plan."
The Palestinian leadership supports the withdrawal, but objects
to its one-sided nature, saying it should be coordinated between
the sides...
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- AL AQSA MOSQUE UNDER THREAT
Correspondents Report - Sunday, 5 September , 2004 Reporter:
Jane Hutcheon HAMISH ROBERTSON: But we begin in Jerusalem, where
security has been tightened over the past month in the face of
a possible attack, not by Palestinians, but by Jewish extremists.
Thirty five years ago, an Australian tried to burn down the Al
Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount, and the authorities feared that
extremists might used the anniversary as a reason to try again.
The mount is sacred to three faiths – Islam, Judaism as
well as Christianity, however, many Jewish zealots believe it's
time to destroy the Muslim shrines and build the third Jewish
temple on the site.
Our Middle East correspondent Jane Hutcheon has just been granted
rare access to the Temple Mount, to assess how real the threats
really are.
JANE HUTCHEON: In the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem's old city,
blindfolded Jewish youngsters are brought to a terrace. They're
visiting Israel for the first time and when their blindfolds
are removed – they find themselves looking at the dome of
the rock. Some of them are moved to tears.
To Jews, this is the site of the first and second temple. In
front of us, beneath the dome, the Wailing Wall, said to be the
western wall of the second temple, destroyed nearly 2 thousand
years ago.
It's also the site where Mohammed ascended to heaven and known
to Muslims as the Haram al Shariff, it's one of Islam's holiest
places.
Yoel Lerner is a Jewish extremist who's spent 6 years in prison
for plotting to blow up the Temple Mount. He says he no longer
believes that's necessary.
YOEL LERNER: Today I have my doubts for a number of reasons.
Israel is not on the verge of conceding parts of its historic
homeland in the framework of an agreement to which to Arabs are
partner. Such an act would have no beneficial effect whatsoever.
At the time, for example, when I thought about things like that,
the idea was to sabotage a protracted agreement. But that doesn't
exist today.
JANE HUTCHEON: Yoel Lerner may not want to blow up the temple
mount any more, but he hasn't changed his overall ideology or
attitude to Muslims.
YOEL LERNER: They took what they took by force and if necessary
they should be dislodged by force.
JANE HUTCHEON: Another far-right activist is Baruch Marzel. He's
currently the head of the extremist party, the National Jewish
Front, and is trying to get a seat in the Knesset.
He's outraged about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement
plan to evacuate 8,000 Jewish settlers from Gaza.
BARUCH MARZEL: I knew that he was a traitor and he would betray
everything that he promised, everything that he fought for. This
is pure racism, pure transfer of Jews for no reason. Instead
of taking the enemy and expelling him out, he's going and expelling
out the Jews.
JANE HUTCHEON: It was here on the temple mount four years ago
this month,
Ariel Sharon's visit ignited the Palestinian uprising or Intifada.
Today, there is no peace and no solution. The Islamic trustees
of the site, the WAQF, are ever vigilant against potential attacks.
Spokesman, Adnan Husseini.
ADNAN HUSSEINI: We started to have good experience about the
behaviour of these extremists and how they think and this information
give us the ability to give more capacity to take care about
the place and to stop any danger.
JANE HUTCHEON: Limited numbers of Jews and tourists may visit
the site, but not for prayer. There's always talk that this holy
site should be turned over to an international board. Until then,
it continues to be a place of much contention. This is Jane Hutcheon
in Jerusalem, for Correspondents Report.
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- 'DONT TOUCH JERUSALEM,' EVANGELICAL LEADER WARNS BUSH
- [Ednote: Pat Robertson is apparently beginning to see the
light. Expectations have not materialized from the Bush administration.
Pat has been in the news stating that President Bush told him
that there would be no blood shed in Iraq. Are the evangelicals
beginning to realize that they, as well as their followers, now
have blood on their hands? Have they forgotten what Jesus teaches:
- "But I say unto you which hear,
Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them
that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.
And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the
other; and him that taketh away thy cloke forbid not to take
thy coat also." (Luke 6:27-29)
[End of note]
Ha'aretz (Israel), Oct. 5, 2004 - By Daphna Berman - Influential
American evangelist Pat Robertson said yesterday that Evangelical
Christians feel so deeply about Jerusalem that if President George
W. Bush were to "touch" the city, Evangelicals would
abandon their traditional Republican leanings and form a third
party.
- Evangelical Christians - estimated an tens of millions in
the U.S. - overwhelmingly support Bush for his pro-Israel policies,
Robertson told a Jerusalem news conference yesterday. But if
Bush shifted his position toward support for Jerusalem as a capital
for both Israel and a Palestinian state, his Evangelical backing
would disappear, Robertson warned.
- "The president has backed away from [the road map],
but if he were to touch Jerusalem, he'd lose all Evangelical
support," Robertson said. "We would form a third party"
because although people "don't know about" Gaza, Jerusalem
is an entirely different matter.
- Robertson, an outspoken supporter of Israel who is in the
country to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, also added that
visitors to Israel should not be overly critical of the government's
political decisions... Together with an estimated 5,000 Christians
from around the world, Robertson has been touring Israel this
week, in an effort to support and pray for the people of Israel.
He led a prayer service on Sunday outside the Knesset, where
he blasted Hezbollah, Hamas, and the idea of jihad.
- "Arab nations want a conflict and want to keep the suffering
of people in Gaza," he said. "They don't want peace;
they want the destruction of Israel." Robertson urged that
the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) be abolished,
given what he called the organization's active role in the "perpetuation"
of the Palestinian refugee problem. He warned that a Palestinian
state would become "a constant source of irritation"
that would "endanger the territorial integrity" of
Israel. http://www.haaretz.com
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- PROSPECT OF EARLY ISRAELI ELECTIONS WEIGHS ON GAZA OPERATION
- DEBKAfile Special Analysis - October 6, 2004 - Israel’s
chief of staff Lt.-Gen Moshe Yaalon made it clear this week that
the seven-day IDF offensive to eliminate the Qassam cross-border
missile blitz against Israel may well last weeks. He added that
even after it was over, Israeli incursions into northern Gaza
to destroy missile launchers and their crews would be repeated
as often as necessary.
- Taken together, the two statements betray how little faith
Israel’s top soldier has in the operation crushing the missile
threat, whether because it is a mission impossible or because
it stands a good chance of being foreshortened by reason of political
constraints. He will not have forgotten the non-completion of
last May’s Rafah-Khan Younis operation. Its declared missions
then were to destroy the tunnel system feeding Palestinian terrorists
with a steady flow of smuggled weapons from Egyptian Sinai and
to set up a security zone on the Israel-Egyptian border under
joint Israeli and Egyptian patrols to cut Palestinian Rafah off
from Sinai.
- Today, the tunnels work at full blast. Mortar shells rain
down from Khan Younis on Israeli settlements and army positions.
Egyptian border units show little inclination to collaborate
with Israel in blocking the border to illicit traffic unless
an explicit order comes down from Cairo.
- Furthermore, DEBKAfile’s Palestinian and counter-terror
sources perceive not the slightest intention on the part of the
Palestinians to halt their missile offensive against Sderot and
other Israeli locations across the Gaza border. In fact, Hamas
threatens to expand their radius to the Israeli Mediterranean
town of Ashkelon as soon as their range is improved.
- All this week’s diplomatic efforts to influence Palestinian
terrorist and security chiefs to cut down on the missiles and
the violence, including a vigorous bid for indirect truce talks
by the European Union’s intelligence commission on Monday,
October 4, bounced back with a referral to Yasser Arafat.
- According to our Palestinian sources, a telephone conversation
Monday, October 4, between Arafat in Ramallah and Hamas leader
Khaled Mashel, who is visiting Algiers, ended in complete agreement:
there would be no backing down. The missile offensive would press
on despite the massive incursion of 150 Israeli tanks and armored
vehicles deployed on the fringes of the teeming Jebalya camp
and the two other launching sites of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya.
Israeli units only dart in when missile crews are detected preparing
to launch Qassam missiles. By Tuesday, seven launchers and teams
had been eliminated.
- Both the Palestinian terror strategists and Israeli army
chiefs accept that Israeli military action will not be pursued
all the way to its acclaimed goals because of the Sharon government’s
shrinking power base and options.
- The Sharon and Barak governments, though formed by opposing
parties, show striking similarities in the way they handle Arafat’s
terror tactics. Labor’s Ehud Barak was pushed to the wall
by an unending Palestinian barrage against the Jerusalem suburb
of Gilo aimed day after day from Beit Jala and Bethlehem on the
West Bank from late 2000 to early 2001. His ineffectiveness led
to his downfall and a snap election that raised Ariel Sharon
to office on a security-for-every-citizen ticket.
- But now, Sharon and his defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, are
showing comparable ineffectiveness in scotching the Qassam offensive
harassing Sderot, which claimed the lives of two Israeli infants
last week. And already, Israeli parties are beginning to gear
up for a spring 2005 election.
- Sharon is flapping about in the same terror trap as his predecessor.
- Even though Barak, with President Bill Clinton’s backing,
negotiated with Arafat under fire, and Sharon, with encouragement
from George W. Bush, ostracizes him, yet both made the same error
of counting on outside parties and diplomacy for a rescue formula.
- After the August 2000 Clinton-led Barak-Arafat talks at Camp
David failed, the Sharm al-Sheikh summit convened on October
16, 2000, amid the flames of Palestinian violence sweeping the
Gaza Strip and West Bank and the buses exploding in Israel’s
main cities. The circle was expanded to include Egyptian president
Hosni Mubarak, Jordan’s King Abdullah, UN secretary Kofi
Annan and senior European Union foreign policy executive Javier
Solana. The participants were chosen for their presumed ability
to exercise influence over Arafat.
- The Palestinian leader jauntily signed the accords put before
him without reading a word. In Cairo later, he said his signature
was worthless and he had his own interpretation of the agreements.
Gilo remained under fire and Barak was swept out of office by
jittery voters desperately in need of a leader capable of restoring
security to the country.
- But Bush and Sharon fell into the same error as Clinton and
Barak. They counted on Egypt and the Europeans lending their
weight to the Israeli prime minister’s disengagement project
- Egypt by taking charge of post-disengagement security in the
Gaza Strip and its Rafah border with Israel, the Europeans by
wielding their funding and diplomatic clout to bring Arafat into
line.
- But Arafat has never varied his responses.
- Four years ago, his answer to Barak’s diplomatic overtures
was to pound Gilo harder. His response to Sharon’s disengagement
plan is to step up the missile storm against Sderot.
- Sharon made a last effort to enlist Egypt by sending Shin
Beit director Avi Dichter to Cairo for a final opinion. Dichter
confirmed that Cairo was in the process of bowing out of the
venture in order to fully engage in Sudan and prepare for military
intervention in the Darfur crisis.
- The Sharon-Mofaz duo’s predicament has therefore been
reduced to two options. Either give up on disengagement, or seize
large stretches of the Gaza Strip – if not all of the territory
– for the sake of forcing through the evacuation of settlements
at the end of next year in a comparatively sterile environment.
- Sderot’s distress is unlikely to deter the prime minister
from forging ahead.
- General Yaalon, though confident of his forces’ combat
skills even under the constraints of directives to keep their
own and Palestinian civilian casualties down to a bare minimum,
knows that ultimately the key to removing the Qassam shadow over
Sderot is clutched tight in Ramallah where Arafat holds sway
through the “Popular Resistance Committees.” This is
a semi-fictional body federating a terrorist rainbow arcing from
Hamas, Fatah and its suicide arm, al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, to
the Palestinian Fronts and the Jihad Islami – plus, most
significantly, officers of the Palestinian security and police
services who serve in dual capacities. These services remain
firmly under Arafat’s grip.
- Furthermore, as every Israeli field officer knows, the estimated
200 Qassam missiles stockpiled in the northern Gaza Strip, once
depleted, will be replenished through the smuggling tunnels from
Sinai. The stockpiles and those tunnels are both controlled not
by Hamas but by General Mussa Arafat who takes orders from his
uncle.
- While Israeli troops will no doubt succeed militarily, they
will be forced to leave their grinding job half finished, producing
a result as transitory as their campaign against the tunnels.
- The Sharon administration’s brittle condition has been
picked up on all sides of Israel’s political spectrum. With
an early election in mind, a powerful faction of the central
committee of Sharon’s Likud party is working on internal
reform that would split the jobs of prime minister and party
chairman. This is a warning to a leader who defied the will of
the party over the unilateral removal of settlements. Their plan
is to hold separate primaries for the party’s prime ministerial
candidate and party leader so that even if Sharon wins the first,
he will be denied the second. His close associates, Mofaz and
deputy prime minister Ehud Olmert, will also pay for their loyalty
to Sharon at the primaries.
- Ehud Barak also scents a fresh opening for a comeback. The
former Labor prime minister sees his successor’s falling
star and the failure of his government’s economic performance
under the finance minister, another former prime minister, Likud’s
Binyamin Netanyahu. State revenues from taxes in September plunged
5,5% compared with August, reflecting a slowdown in consumption
and growth, while the unemployment figure leapt in the same month
by 3.5%. At the same time, the banks’ profits doubled or
even trebled, mainly at the expense of the household sector.
After viewing the terrain, Barak decided to take the leap and
on October 2 announced his intention of returning to politics.
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