In interviews conducted by the 'Post' across the West Bank over the last few months, settlers revealed a range of reactions and strategies to the security barrier and Ehud Olmert's 'convergence' plan'
By Rafael D. Frankel
From her second-story Tekoa balcony, Shani Simkovitz can see not only the past 30 years of development which has yielded hundreds of homes and a community of more than 1,500 people on these pine-tree- lined and shrub-covered hills. Gazing eastward, to the moonscaped mountains of the Judean desert, she sees a thriving future where her children should be building the next generation of Jewish settlements.
But these days, it is not the idyllic years ahead the 25-year resident is contemplating, but an uncertain present.
"The issue of the fence comes up every day in my family," Simkovitz said, referring to the security fence Israel is building in and around the West Bank. "It's strangling us."
While international criticism and local protestations have rained down on Israel for the negative impact the barrier is having on Palestinian livelihood, it is also upending the lives of thousands of Israeli settlers who see in the fence the beginning of the end of their time in Judea and Samaria.
"I'm not dreaming. Israel will succeed in building the fence," said Yair Wolf, the deputy mayor of Gush Etzion, the settlement bloc just a few miles west of Tekoa which will remain inside the fence's perimeter. Like most people in his jurisdiction, Wolf opposes the barrier because of what it will do to Tekoa and a few other satellite communities.
"From one side, you can say this is for security, but everyone knows this is going to be a border and those people will have to leave."
Within those borders, which include east Jerusalem and major settlement blocs such as Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim, in addition to Gush Etzion, most of the 240,000 Israeli Jews living on land captured in the Six Day War will remain. But in the wake of the March 28 election, and the Ehud Olmert- led coalition it will likely yield, that leaves up to 80,000 settlers like Simkovitz in around 65 settlements facing the prospect of eviction from their homes, possibly in the not-too-distant future.
In interviews conducted by The Jerusalem Post across the West Bank over the last few months, settlers revealed a prism of reactions and strategies to the fence, and to Olmert's "convergence" plan, from those who vow never to leave this biblical ground to groups who are proactively seeking a way out.
Around Tekoa, six miles south of Jerusalem, the security fence has yet to be built. Nevertheless, it has cast a larger-than-life shadow, causing some residents, like Simkovitz, to plot political and tactical strategies to defend their homes from evacuation.
But most people, said 15-year resident Meir Ben-Hayoun "are in denial. It seems obvious that they will evacuate us, but no one here talks about what we will do when that day comes."
Instead, the father of two young daughters said, home construction in Tekoa continues and "the people go on acting like we will be here forever."
NINETY MINUTES north of here, near the city of Nablus, where olive groves cover the rolling hills, Beni Raz is taking the exact opposite approach. A 13-year resident of Karnei Shomron, a town of 7,000 close to the largest settlement, Ariel, Raz has started an organization which is trying to get the government to fund a voluntary Jewish evacuation of the West Bank.
Though Karnei Shomron lies within a broad swath of the West Bank the security fence will supposedly encompass when it is complete, Raz said he does not want to live with the uncertainty of one day perhaps being forced to leave.
"Reality is stronger than we are and we know the world is changing," said Raz, who sees no final peace until Israel withdraws to the 1967 borders. "We want to build our future and we want to build it in a permanent place."
According to him, the fence has made Jews living on the other side of it "secondary citizens" whose protection is no longer a priority of the army. That, and a desire to avoid the fate of the Gaza evacuees - many of whom are unemployed and some still without even temporary housing more than six months after disengagement - has convinced many non-religious people that it is time to leave.
"We're saying, 'We don't want to wait; let's go now,' We're just looking for help to do it," Raz said. "Most of us are not ideologues. We just came here for a good life, and we're very happy to have it somewhere else."
But as more secular settlers look for ways to return to 1967 Israel, harder-line elements are digging their heals in to entrench themselves in the land as deeply as they can.
In the biblical city of Hebron, an hour south of Jerusalem and home to the Cave of the Patriarchs, around 500 Jews live among 150,000 Palestinians. In January, when police tried to serve eviction notices to eight Jewish families there who took over the Shalhevet market place claimed by Palestinians, days of riots broke out in which settlers donned masks and hurled rocks at police and army forces.
According to David Wilder, a spokesman for Hebron's Jewish community, those riots would be "children in a nursery school compared to what might happen" if they were forced out of Hebron. "I don't like to be crass, but if someone came in and said, 'I'm going to rape your wife,' would you say, 'Come in, here's the bedroom?'"
To a person, the Jews of Hebron refuse any scenario which would see them leaving the city. Like many religious settlers in the West Bank, the connection to the land, and in this case, the holy site, is too strong to allow for voluntarily severing. Any effort to remove them, said Hebron Deputy Police Chief Avi Herush, "is likely to be violent."
THOUGH IT was "the spirit of the land" that led Tamar Asaraf to Hayovel eight years ago, violent resistance is not something she and her community advocate.
Her brand new home, and 11 others like it, constitute this outpost an hour north of Tekoa along the main West Bank highway perched atop a mostly baron hill studded with shrubs, where cold winds penetrate even winter clothing.
Due to its illegal status, Hayovel may be evacuated months or years before established settlements built with government support. When parts of a similar outpost, Amona, were dismantled in February, violent confrontations between protesters and the police and IDF forces that did the job left more than 200 people injured.
That incident, and its contrast to the relatively peaceful disengagement from Gaza last summer, convinced Asaraf that if the order came from the government to leave, she would do so before the soldiers and police came, in order to spare her children the trauma of eviction and the likely media circus surrounding it.
Nevertheless, in the evacuation of settlers and demolition of their homes, Asaraf sees a determination from politicians and unsympathetic citizens to destroy the "precious way of living" in these settlements.
"It is not common to find neighbors with honesty, simplicity and dignity" in this country anymore, said Asaraf, who was born in a suburb of Tel Aviv before becoming religious and moving to Hayovel in her mid-20s. "In Tel Aviv, you see a culture that is not an honest way of living. All of it is for show. Every time I come back here, I thank God for the kind people I live with."
Though Palestinian towns surround Hayovel and the perimeter of the settlement is patrolled night and day by residents with M-16s slung around their shoulders, Asaraf said that living there allows her four children to grow up in relative safety.
"Here, my kids are really kids. They are kept in such an innocent place," she said. "The danger here is from terrorists, but how many kids were murdered here compared to how many were raped or abused in other places?"
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
For hardened trekkers, even rain on the way to Cairo is no surprise
Part of an exclusive series on an expedition from Jerusalem to Tripoli
By Rafael D. Frankel
THE GREAT SAND SEA, Egypt- It rained here Monday. Not just a few drops, but a steady rain for hours.
So what's the big deal?
Asked when the last time it rained here was, local guide Yahia Kandil said: "Maybe three or four or five years ago."
Despite the odds, no one from this expedition was surprised as this peace mission has taken on a "what next?" attitude as it hits the home stretch in its push to plant an olive tree from Jerusalem on Mount Sinai.
The comedy of errors isn't weighing on everyone, though. "It's an adventure," said Ukrainian Yezgen Petrovich Kozhushko, who fought in the Iraq war. "The rain and everything else doesn't bother me."
The rain came on the second leg of a two-day, 700- kilometer push from the desert oasis Siwa to Cairo via the remote Baharia road - "road" being a generous description of the mostly rocky, often jarring, military checkpoint- laden path which links the Baharia oasis with Siwa.
Before setting out, special travel permits were required. The price, according to Yussuf, the Beduin guide who arranged the permits: $10 per Western passport, $500 for Palestinian Mohammad Azzam Alarjah.
Baksheesh?
"It was a mistake," said Sammy, the soldier that accompanied the group on the military road. "This is the price Arab princes on hunting trips have to pay." Can we get a refund? "Ha ha ha," he laughed. So $700 lighter the group set out, with a half dozen people taking advantage of the slow going to sit on the roofs of the trucks and take in the view of the Great Sand Sea upon whose northern edge the Baharia road runs.
At the first military checkpoint, the group climbed to the summit of a three-story-high sand dune from whose vantage point the sea stretched southward as far as the eye could see. Like waves of water, dune after dune crested in this ocean of sand, their peaks and troughs dictated by harsh desert winds and tracked by months rather than seconds.
And then the fun began, with the Israeli leader of the group, Heskel Nathaniel, kicking off the dune tumbling event in the Breaking the Ice Summer Olympics. Down he rolled in a tight spiral with Director of Operations Adam Rice and Kozhushko hot on his tail. At the bottom, the three embarked on a real challenge: standing up without losing balance as cochlear fluid swirled around the inner ear and caused the horizon to do the same in the field of vision.
As the day unfolded, the northern landscape continually changed. Lunch was taken a few hundred meters off the road in an ancient seabed, where shells and stones moved out by eons of water flow lined the earth which comfortably sank a few centimeters with each barefoot step. Under a baking desert sun, mushroom-shaped cliffs of fossilized coral reefs spontaneously broke the flat and rolling terrain.
Though the occasional marsh or lake lent a little greenery through the scenes, the roof-top view of the parched earth gave way only when the sun went down and the stars of a moonless desert night appeared in a display of the constellations.
Despite protestations and a warning from Sammy that an investigation was forthcoming about why the group was stopping in a closed military zone, camp was made around 9 p.m. and a few people took advantage of the first windless night in a week to sleep sans tents.
That proved somewhat costly at daybreak when the first raindrops started to fall.
While the locals said the rain was good luck, the constant precipitation meant braking the plans to camp in the desert 100 km. out of Cairo and driving through the mosquito-ridden confines of a hot camp next to the pyramids of Giza. That, and one of the trucks running out of fuel for the second time on the trip, made for a night where many in the group saw the sun before the pillow.
Though the rain and unseasonably cold weather continued through Tuesday afternoon as the expedition drove towards the Suez Canal, one bit of good news lightened the spirits of the peace mission: Iraqi Latif Yahia, good to his word, rejoined the group in the Egyptian capital after a two-day hiatus.
"Back to family again," the former Uday Hussein body double said after receiving hugs and kisses from the group during their Cairo rendezvous.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
THE GREAT SAND SEA, Egypt- It rained here Monday. Not just a few drops, but a steady rain for hours.
So what's the big deal?
Asked when the last time it rained here was, local guide Yahia Kandil said: "Maybe three or four or five years ago."
Despite the odds, no one from this expedition was surprised as this peace mission has taken on a "what next?" attitude as it hits the home stretch in its push to plant an olive tree from Jerusalem on Mount Sinai.
The comedy of errors isn't weighing on everyone, though. "It's an adventure," said Ukrainian Yezgen Petrovich Kozhushko, who fought in the Iraq war. "The rain and everything else doesn't bother me."
The rain came on the second leg of a two-day, 700- kilometer push from the desert oasis Siwa to Cairo via the remote Baharia road - "road" being a generous description of the mostly rocky, often jarring, military checkpoint- laden path which links the Baharia oasis with Siwa.
Before setting out, special travel permits were required. The price, according to Yussuf, the Beduin guide who arranged the permits: $10 per Western passport, $500 for Palestinian Mohammad Azzam Alarjah.
Baksheesh?
"It was a mistake," said Sammy, the soldier that accompanied the group on the military road. "This is the price Arab princes on hunting trips have to pay." Can we get a refund? "Ha ha ha," he laughed. So $700 lighter the group set out, with a half dozen people taking advantage of the slow going to sit on the roofs of the trucks and take in the view of the Great Sand Sea upon whose northern edge the Baharia road runs.
At the first military checkpoint, the group climbed to the summit of a three-story-high sand dune from whose vantage point the sea stretched southward as far as the eye could see. Like waves of water, dune after dune crested in this ocean of sand, their peaks and troughs dictated by harsh desert winds and tracked by months rather than seconds.
And then the fun began, with the Israeli leader of the group, Heskel Nathaniel, kicking off the dune tumbling event in the Breaking the Ice Summer Olympics. Down he rolled in a tight spiral with Director of Operations Adam Rice and Kozhushko hot on his tail. At the bottom, the three embarked on a real challenge: standing up without losing balance as cochlear fluid swirled around the inner ear and caused the horizon to do the same in the field of vision.
As the day unfolded, the northern landscape continually changed. Lunch was taken a few hundred meters off the road in an ancient seabed, where shells and stones moved out by eons of water flow lined the earth which comfortably sank a few centimeters with each barefoot step. Under a baking desert sun, mushroom-shaped cliffs of fossilized coral reefs spontaneously broke the flat and rolling terrain.
Though the occasional marsh or lake lent a little greenery through the scenes, the roof-top view of the parched earth gave way only when the sun went down and the stars of a moonless desert night appeared in a display of the constellations.
Despite protestations and a warning from Sammy that an investigation was forthcoming about why the group was stopping in a closed military zone, camp was made around 9 p.m. and a few people took advantage of the first windless night in a week to sleep sans tents.
That proved somewhat costly at daybreak when the first raindrops started to fall.
While the locals said the rain was good luck, the constant precipitation meant braking the plans to camp in the desert 100 km. out of Cairo and driving through the mosquito-ridden confines of a hot camp next to the pyramids of Giza. That, and one of the trucks running out of fuel for the second time on the trip, made for a night where many in the group saw the sun before the pillow.
Though the rain and unseasonably cold weather continued through Tuesday afternoon as the expedition drove towards the Suez Canal, one bit of good news lightened the spirits of the peace mission: Iraqi Latif Yahia, good to his word, rejoined the group in the Egyptian capital after a two-day hiatus.
"Back to family again," the former Uday Hussein body double said after receiving hugs and kisses from the group during their Cairo rendezvous.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Losing another member, Breaking the Ice presses on
Part of an exclusive series on an expedition from Jerusalem to Tripoli
By Rafael D. Frankel
SIWA, Egypt - In 526 BCE, the Persian emperor Cambyses received a prophecy from the Oracle of Amun located here that his expedition to conquer Egypt would fail. Legend has it that, in his anger, the emperor sent an army of 50,000 men to destroy the oracle. En route, they were swallowed by a sandstorm, never to be seen again.
The Sahara Desert did not engulf the entire Breaking the Ice expedition, but a stop in Siwa has cost the peace mission another member.
Iraqi Latif Yahia, the former body double for Uday Hussein, left Saturday for Cairo. He is the third Muslim participant to leave the expedition since they met three weeks ago in Jerusalem, leaving only Palestinian Muhammad Azzam Alarjah and Iranian Neda Sarmast with two Israelis, two Americans, and a Ukrainian.
Before leaving, Yahia said he intended to rejoin the group in Cairo and travel with them for the journey: planting the olive tree from Jerusalem that was meant for Tripoli on Mount Sinai instead. But he has spoken daily of leaving for the last week, and already the group is placing bets on whether he will return.
After being turned away from Libya due to the presence of three Israelis in the group, the new plan was hatched at a meeting late Friday night under a moonless Siwan sky.
"What better place [to plant the tree] than somewhere where all three faiths have claims?" said New York Fire Department Cpt. Daniel Patrick Sheridan. "It's symbolic of bringing the three religions together."
Held amongst torches and sound recording equipment, the meeting was the second tense encounter in as many days for the peace mission which, with its dwindling numbers, is feeling more and more like a Survivor series.
However, in this Sahara Desert version, the tribal council meetings are used to urge members to stick out the journey rather than kick them off the island.
"The expedition is about people from different backgrounds and cultures achieving peace between us," said Israeli Galit Oren. "So many people leaving the group means that we failed to do it."
So then there were seven, and they spent two days traipsing around Siwa by day and camping at a hot spring on the edge of the Great Sand Desert at night.
In the 2,500 years since the emperor's army vanished, few places in the world have changed as little as this mystical desert oasis, which only opened to tourists in the 1980s. With thousands of palm trees and vast lakes suddenly appearing out of the parched Saharan earth, Siwa still beckons the wary desert traveler.
Donkey carts are used to haul goods from the market as well as ferry tourists from the central square across from Abdu's Restaurant through the shade of the drooping date trees. Nearly every woman in Siwa - the locals are ethnic Berbers - wears a blue burka and a stark black veil that completely covers her face, with no eye slits.
The 800-year-old Shali, the old city of Siwa, though mostly uninhabited, still stands in a maze of mud brick that was never rebuilt after the "Great Flood" of 1926, when it rained here for three straight days. The average rainfall here is three millimeters per year.
At sunset, the last rays of the day strike the limestone Mountain of the Dead which peaks above the sea of palms. In dozens of caves dug into its second-tier plateau, some 100 meters below the summit, lay the bones of thousands of Siwans from ages past, open to the air and the dozens of tourists who walk among their graves every day.
Like Alexander the Great, who came in 332 BCE, the Breaking the Ice mission also made a pilgrimage to the Oracle of Amun. Though they did not receive confirmation of their divine bloodlines, as the man who conquered half the known world had, they saw it as a chance to improve their karma before heading back into the desert after the recent trying days.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
SIWA, Egypt - In 526 BCE, the Persian emperor Cambyses received a prophecy from the Oracle of Amun located here that his expedition to conquer Egypt would fail. Legend has it that, in his anger, the emperor sent an army of 50,000 men to destroy the oracle. En route, they were swallowed by a sandstorm, never to be seen again.
The Sahara Desert did not engulf the entire Breaking the Ice expedition, but a stop in Siwa has cost the peace mission another member.
Iraqi Latif Yahia, the former body double for Uday Hussein, left Saturday for Cairo. He is the third Muslim participant to leave the expedition since they met three weeks ago in Jerusalem, leaving only Palestinian Muhammad Azzam Alarjah and Iranian Neda Sarmast with two Israelis, two Americans, and a Ukrainian.
Before leaving, Yahia said he intended to rejoin the group in Cairo and travel with them for the journey: planting the olive tree from Jerusalem that was meant for Tripoli on Mount Sinai instead. But he has spoken daily of leaving for the last week, and already the group is placing bets on whether he will return.
After being turned away from Libya due to the presence of three Israelis in the group, the new plan was hatched at a meeting late Friday night under a moonless Siwan sky.
"What better place [to plant the tree] than somewhere where all three faiths have claims?" said New York Fire Department Cpt. Daniel Patrick Sheridan. "It's symbolic of bringing the three religions together."
Held amongst torches and sound recording equipment, the meeting was the second tense encounter in as many days for the peace mission which, with its dwindling numbers, is feeling more and more like a Survivor series.
However, in this Sahara Desert version, the tribal council meetings are used to urge members to stick out the journey rather than kick them off the island.
"The expedition is about people from different backgrounds and cultures achieving peace between us," said Israeli Galit Oren. "So many people leaving the group means that we failed to do it."
So then there were seven, and they spent two days traipsing around Siwa by day and camping at a hot spring on the edge of the Great Sand Desert at night.
In the 2,500 years since the emperor's army vanished, few places in the world have changed as little as this mystical desert oasis, which only opened to tourists in the 1980s. With thousands of palm trees and vast lakes suddenly appearing out of the parched Saharan earth, Siwa still beckons the wary desert traveler.
Donkey carts are used to haul goods from the market as well as ferry tourists from the central square across from Abdu's Restaurant through the shade of the drooping date trees. Nearly every woman in Siwa - the locals are ethnic Berbers - wears a blue burka and a stark black veil that completely covers her face, with no eye slits.
The 800-year-old Shali, the old city of Siwa, though mostly uninhabited, still stands in a maze of mud brick that was never rebuilt after the "Great Flood" of 1926, when it rained here for three straight days. The average rainfall here is three millimeters per year.
At sunset, the last rays of the day strike the limestone Mountain of the Dead which peaks above the sea of palms. In dozens of caves dug into its second-tier plateau, some 100 meters below the summit, lay the bones of thousands of Siwans from ages past, open to the air and the dozens of tourists who walk among their graves every day.
Like Alexander the Great, who came in 332 BCE, the Breaking the Ice mission also made a pilgrimage to the Oracle of Amun. Though they did not receive confirmation of their divine bloodlines, as the man who conquered half the known world had, they saw it as a chance to improve their karma before heading back into the desert after the recent trying days.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Sunday, March 26, 2006
West Bank settlers looking to relocate
Many pressing for compensation
By Rafael D. Frankel, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
KARNEI SHOMRON, West Bank — Like many of the 7,000 residents here, Beni Raz did not come to live in the West Bank for ideological reasons. Having grown up in an Israeli farming community and then having four children of his own, he wanted to live in a small town, with space so that his family could ‘‘live a good life.’’
So in 1993, Raz moved his family to Karnei Shomron, about 6 miles west of Nablus, thinking a coming peace would allow him to stay for the remainder of his days. Thirteen years later, he is desperate to leave.
‘‘I’m looking 100 meters ahead, and I see this won’t be a part of the country,’’ Raz said. ‘‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t want to wait, let’s go now.’ ’’
Raz is a founding member of Bayit Ehad, Hebrew for ‘‘One Home.’’ Founded a few months before Israel removed all its settlers from the Gaza Strip last summer, the movement is lobbying the government to pay compensation to West Bank settlers who want to return now to within the pre-1967 borders of Israel rather than wait until, presumably, they are forced to do so.
Following recent comments from Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that further rounds of disengagement are inevitable, Bayit Ehad is stepping up its efforts.
If the Kadima Party that Olmert inherited from ailing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wins the Israeli elections on Tuesday as expected, Olmert has said he intends to evacuate settlers within the next few years whose communities do not fall within the security barrier that Israel is building around and through the West Bank. If the barrier is completed along the currently planned route, about 80,000 of the 250,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank will remain on the Palestinian side.
Under current plans outlined by top Kadima politicians, Karnei Shomron would remain on the Israeli side of the barrier, and thus under Israeli control for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, Raz said residents doubt that Israel could permanently retain settlements like this one deep inside the West Bank, and the settlers would rather get on with their lives than wait for an inevitable day when they were evicted.
‘‘Reality is stronger than we are and we know the world is changing,’’ said Raz, who sees no final peace here unless Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders. ‘‘We want to build our future and we want to build it in a permanent place.’’
Though the image of the Israeli settler is usually one of uncompromising belief in the right to live on land promised to Jews by God, statistics provided by the main settler council indicate that 40 percent of the Jews living in the West Bank are secular. Like Raz, they were enticed to come by government subsidized housing and the strong sense of community that permeates settlements like this one.
‘‘We don’t want to be a card for the government to play in negotiations,’’ Raz said. ‘‘Most of us are not ideologues. We just came here for a good life, and we’re very happy to have it somewhere else.’’
The compensation is necessary, Raz said, because the prospect of further disengagement has heavily devalued his home and land. Settlers across West Bank towns, especially those that fall outside the security fence, describe similar circumstances.
Colette Avital, a Labor party member of the Knesset and Bayit Ehad cofounder, had people like Raz in mind when drawing up legislation providing such compensation.
‘‘To make it possible to return [to pre-1967 Israel] doesn’t only mean to meet people and have a coffee with them,’’ Avital said. ‘‘This [legislation] promotes their interests and gives them the tools and means to come back.’’
After the elections, Avital plans to introduce the legislation, which includes the stipulation that settlers move to pre-1967 Israel in order to receive the compensation.
The law would also make the vacated home the property of the government, preventing new families from moving into the structure, as occurred in Gaza before the disengagement there.
She gives no estimates for its cost, but insists providing compensation for people to leave of their own accord is much less expensive than forcing them out. Israel spent around $2.2 billion compensating arranging new housing for 9,000 people last summer.
Avital expects a tough political fight to get the bill passed, as it has not won endorsement from the centrist Kadima, much less from the right-wing parties. Its prospects, she said, depend heavily on the makeup of the next Knesset.
While settler leaders acknowledge that individual threats may have occurred, they say there is no widespread plan to undermine Bayit Ehad or to prevent anyone from leaving the West Bank.
Emily Amrusi, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which uses the biblical names for the two main sections of the West Bank, disputed Raz’s assertion that settlers had intimidated those seeking to withdraw.
‘‘If they want to go, we will be very sad but they can go,’’ she said.
When the council looked into the Bayit Ehad movement, Amrusi said, it found its support to be very low and was ‘‘not a threat’’ to their cause of retaining the West Bank for Israel.
Despite last summer’s disengagement and the forecast for further withdrawals, she said, the number of Jews in areas that the council represents remained steady in 2005 and will increase this year.
‘‘The settlements are growingall the time and there are every day more families coming to them,’’ Amrusi said.
©2006 The Boston Globe
By Rafael D. Frankel, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
KARNEI SHOMRON, West Bank — Like many of the 7,000 residents here, Beni Raz did not come to live in the West Bank for ideological reasons. Having grown up in an Israeli farming community and then having four children of his own, he wanted to live in a small town, with space so that his family could ‘‘live a good life.’’
So in 1993, Raz moved his family to Karnei Shomron, about 6 miles west of Nablus, thinking a coming peace would allow him to stay for the remainder of his days. Thirteen years later, he is desperate to leave.
‘‘I’m looking 100 meters ahead, and I see this won’t be a part of the country,’’ Raz said. ‘‘We’re saying, ‘We don’t want to wait, let’s go now.’ ’’
Raz is a founding member of Bayit Ehad, Hebrew for ‘‘One Home.’’ Founded a few months before Israel removed all its settlers from the Gaza Strip last summer, the movement is lobbying the government to pay compensation to West Bank settlers who want to return now to within the pre-1967 borders of Israel rather than wait until, presumably, they are forced to do so.
Following recent comments from Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that further rounds of disengagement are inevitable, Bayit Ehad is stepping up its efforts.
If the Kadima Party that Olmert inherited from ailing Prime Minister Ariel Sharon wins the Israeli elections on Tuesday as expected, Olmert has said he intends to evacuate settlers within the next few years whose communities do not fall within the security barrier that Israel is building around and through the West Bank. If the barrier is completed along the currently planned route, about 80,000 of the 250,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank will remain on the Palestinian side.
Under current plans outlined by top Kadima politicians, Karnei Shomron would remain on the Israeli side of the barrier, and thus under Israeli control for the foreseeable future.
Nevertheless, Raz said residents doubt that Israel could permanently retain settlements like this one deep inside the West Bank, and the settlers would rather get on with their lives than wait for an inevitable day when they were evicted.
‘‘Reality is stronger than we are and we know the world is changing,’’ said Raz, who sees no final peace here unless Israel withdraws to the pre-1967 borders. ‘‘We want to build our future and we want to build it in a permanent place.’’
Though the image of the Israeli settler is usually one of uncompromising belief in the right to live on land promised to Jews by God, statistics provided by the main settler council indicate that 40 percent of the Jews living in the West Bank are secular. Like Raz, they were enticed to come by government subsidized housing and the strong sense of community that permeates settlements like this one.
‘‘We don’t want to be a card for the government to play in negotiations,’’ Raz said. ‘‘Most of us are not ideologues. We just came here for a good life, and we’re very happy to have it somewhere else.’’
The compensation is necessary, Raz said, because the prospect of further disengagement has heavily devalued his home and land. Settlers across West Bank towns, especially those that fall outside the security fence, describe similar circumstances.
Colette Avital, a Labor party member of the Knesset and Bayit Ehad cofounder, had people like Raz in mind when drawing up legislation providing such compensation.
‘‘To make it possible to return [to pre-1967 Israel] doesn’t only mean to meet people and have a coffee with them,’’ Avital said. ‘‘This [legislation] promotes their interests and gives them the tools and means to come back.’’
After the elections, Avital plans to introduce the legislation, which includes the stipulation that settlers move to pre-1967 Israel in order to receive the compensation.
The law would also make the vacated home the property of the government, preventing new families from moving into the structure, as occurred in Gaza before the disengagement there.
She gives no estimates for its cost, but insists providing compensation for people to leave of their own accord is much less expensive than forcing them out. Israel spent around $2.2 billion compensating arranging new housing for 9,000 people last summer.
Avital expects a tough political fight to get the bill passed, as it has not won endorsement from the centrist Kadima, much less from the right-wing parties. Its prospects, she said, depend heavily on the makeup of the next Knesset.
While settler leaders acknowledge that individual threats may have occurred, they say there is no widespread plan to undermine Bayit Ehad or to prevent anyone from leaving the West Bank.
Emily Amrusi, a spokeswoman for the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, which uses the biblical names for the two main sections of the West Bank, disputed Raz’s assertion that settlers had intimidated those seeking to withdraw.
‘‘If they want to go, we will be very sad but they can go,’’ she said.
When the council looked into the Bayit Ehad movement, Amrusi said, it found its support to be very low and was ‘‘not a threat’’ to their cause of retaining the West Bank for Israel.
Despite last summer’s disengagement and the forecast for further withdrawals, she said, the number of Jews in areas that the council represents remained steady in 2005 and will increase this year.
‘‘The settlements are growingall the time and there are every day more families coming to them,’’ Amrusi said.
©2006 The Boston Globe
Friday, March 24, 2006
On a desert trek, former enemies form new bonds
By Rafael D. Frankel | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor
MUSAID, LIBYA – History was but 10 feet away.
Having crossed deserts by camel and truck, a mission of nine peace seekers from Israel and the Palestinian territories, Iraq and America, was that close to making it through passport control in Libya, a country that has always barred entrance to citizens of the Jewish state.
But when word was delivered to the group at 2 a.m. Wednesday that all were welcome except the Israelis, they didn't hesitate.
"Muslim, Christian, Jewish, we're all one team, one body, one spirit," says Palestinian Mohammad Azzam Alarjah, explaining why the mission turned back. "You can't cut your hand from off your body."
That allegiance, so contrary to the geopolitical realities of the Middle East, cost Mr. Alarjah and the rest of the group the chance to complete the physical dimension of their planned 3,417-mile, month-long desert journey from Jerusalem to Tripoli, Libya.
But it was emblematic of the bonds forged between the two Israelis, Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian, Afghan, two Americans, and Ukrainian during their desert odyssey. The expedition is sponsored by the Berlin-based conflict resolution group Breaking the Ice, which seeks to promote greater peace through individual cooperation and understanding.
"We're a lot of different people and we're learning from each other and sharing experiences and building common bridges of understanding between us," says US Army Col. Ray Benson. "People are basically the same all over the world and if we can get separated from our governments and religions there's a better chance to work things out."
Throughout the trip, conflicts do erupt but friendships and understandings also form between those in this small group that might seem to be most at odds.
At a campfire one night, Latif Yahia, the former body double for Saddam Hussein's son Uday, sat across from Israeli Gil Fogiel. Mr. Fogiel began to cry as he spoke for the first time about the torture he endured in a Damascus prison for two years after being shot down over Lebanon while flying a mission in 1982.
Although ironic, Fogiel says he feels particularly comfortable around the other Middle Easterners. "We have more in common with the Arabs than with the Americans and the others," says Fogiel, who learned Arabic in prison. "There's more of a bond between us."
For his part, Mr. Yahia says that he relates to the Israelis - whom he was trained to hate growing up as an Iraqi Baathist - as a brother and sister. "We look after each other as family," says Yahia, who says he was also tortured and forced to undergo plastic surgery on his face for his assignment as Uday's body double.
Indeed, strong disagreements emerge on the trip. And those are often between the Americans and Ukrainian on one side and the Middle Easterners on the other. Thursday when talk turned political, Yahia became angry at New York City Fire Department Cpt. Daniel Patrick Sheridan who brought up the 343 firefighters, many of whom were friends, who died in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York.
"OK, so 3,000 Americans died on 9/11," Yahia, whose sister-in-law was killed in an American bombing raid on Baghdad in 2003, said in a raised voice. "Does that give America the right to destroy my country? One hundred thousand Iraqis have died, and who is next?"
Captain Sheridan responded: "I'm just one guy, I'm not an ambassador of my country. [President] George Bush doesn't call me when he wakes up in the morning."
During the trip, Sheridan says he has encountered much less hostility toward himself and the US than he expected after seeing reports on television for the past four years about how dangerous the Arab world was.
"I was expecting to get a lot of dirty looks and snickering, and I've gotten nothing but smiles and hospitality," he says. "You can tell in their eyes they were just really happy to meet someone that was different."
Many unexpected challenges of the journey have also brought out cultural differences that proved frustrating, as well as educational.
After turning around from Libya, Afghan Yahya Wardak decided to leave the expedition, leading to accusations from Sheridan that he was "quitting when the going got tough."
Iranian Neda Sarmast, who spends half her time in New York and half in Tehran, told Mr. Wardak in front of the group that by quitting he was making a bad name for Muslims. "This is the problem with the Middle East, whenever anything gets difficult we always break up and never maintain our unity," she said as Yahia sat next to her, nodding in agreement.
Though the final goal of the journey was to plant an olive tree brought from Jerusalem in Tripoli, the participants say the unity of the remaining members and their determination to continue spreading their message of transcultural kinship will prove far more lasting and influential than that act.
"We're just a spark, we're showing more and greater numbers of people how to take steps," Ms. Sarmast says. "The message is to show how there is solidarity among people of all nations and one thing we've all agreed is that governments do not represent the majority of people who feel we have much more in common than in conflict."
©2006 The Christian Science Monitor
MUSAID, LIBYA – History was but 10 feet away.
Having crossed deserts by camel and truck, a mission of nine peace seekers from Israel and the Palestinian territories, Iraq and America, was that close to making it through passport control in Libya, a country that has always barred entrance to citizens of the Jewish state.
But when word was delivered to the group at 2 a.m. Wednesday that all were welcome except the Israelis, they didn't hesitate.
"Muslim, Christian, Jewish, we're all one team, one body, one spirit," says Palestinian Mohammad Azzam Alarjah, explaining why the mission turned back. "You can't cut your hand from off your body."
That allegiance, so contrary to the geopolitical realities of the Middle East, cost Mr. Alarjah and the rest of the group the chance to complete the physical dimension of their planned 3,417-mile, month-long desert journey from Jerusalem to Tripoli, Libya.
But it was emblematic of the bonds forged between the two Israelis, Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian, Afghan, two Americans, and Ukrainian during their desert odyssey. The expedition is sponsored by the Berlin-based conflict resolution group Breaking the Ice, which seeks to promote greater peace through individual cooperation and understanding.
"We're a lot of different people and we're learning from each other and sharing experiences and building common bridges of understanding between us," says US Army Col. Ray Benson. "People are basically the same all over the world and if we can get separated from our governments and religions there's a better chance to work things out."
Throughout the trip, conflicts do erupt but friendships and understandings also form between those in this small group that might seem to be most at odds.
At a campfire one night, Latif Yahia, the former body double for Saddam Hussein's son Uday, sat across from Israeli Gil Fogiel. Mr. Fogiel began to cry as he spoke for the first time about the torture he endured in a Damascus prison for two years after being shot down over Lebanon while flying a mission in 1982.
Although ironic, Fogiel says he feels particularly comfortable around the other Middle Easterners. "We have more in common with the Arabs than with the Americans and the others," says Fogiel, who learned Arabic in prison. "There's more of a bond between us."
For his part, Mr. Yahia says that he relates to the Israelis - whom he was trained to hate growing up as an Iraqi Baathist - as a brother and sister. "We look after each other as family," says Yahia, who says he was also tortured and forced to undergo plastic surgery on his face for his assignment as Uday's body double.
Indeed, strong disagreements emerge on the trip. And those are often between the Americans and Ukrainian on one side and the Middle Easterners on the other. Thursday when talk turned political, Yahia became angry at New York City Fire Department Cpt. Daniel Patrick Sheridan who brought up the 343 firefighters, many of whom were friends, who died in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York.
"OK, so 3,000 Americans died on 9/11," Yahia, whose sister-in-law was killed in an American bombing raid on Baghdad in 2003, said in a raised voice. "Does that give America the right to destroy my country? One hundred thousand Iraqis have died, and who is next?"
Captain Sheridan responded: "I'm just one guy, I'm not an ambassador of my country. [President] George Bush doesn't call me when he wakes up in the morning."
During the trip, Sheridan says he has encountered much less hostility toward himself and the US than he expected after seeing reports on television for the past four years about how dangerous the Arab world was.
"I was expecting to get a lot of dirty looks and snickering, and I've gotten nothing but smiles and hospitality," he says. "You can tell in their eyes they were just really happy to meet someone that was different."
Many unexpected challenges of the journey have also brought out cultural differences that proved frustrating, as well as educational.
After turning around from Libya, Afghan Yahya Wardak decided to leave the expedition, leading to accusations from Sheridan that he was "quitting when the going got tough."
Iranian Neda Sarmast, who spends half her time in New York and half in Tehran, told Mr. Wardak in front of the group that by quitting he was making a bad name for Muslims. "This is the problem with the Middle East, whenever anything gets difficult we always break up and never maintain our unity," she said as Yahia sat next to her, nodding in agreement.
Though the final goal of the journey was to plant an olive tree brought from Jerusalem in Tripoli, the participants say the unity of the remaining members and their determination to continue spreading their message of transcultural kinship will prove far more lasting and influential than that act.
"We're just a spark, we're showing more and greater numbers of people how to take steps," Ms. Sarmast says. "The message is to show how there is solidarity among people of all nations and one thing we've all agreed is that governments do not represent the majority of people who feel we have much more in common than in conflict."
©2006 The Christian Science Monitor
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Libya: 'We don't allow occupiers in'
JPost reporter Rafael D. Frankel is traveling with the Breaking the Ice expedition from Jerusalem to Tripoli.
By Rafael D. Frankel
EGYPT-LIBYA BORDER - History was thwarted early Wednesday morning when a peace mission making its way across the Sahara Desert was refused entry into Libya due to the participation of three Israelis who were flatly denied entrance at the border.
Most of the group of people from around the world, including four Americans, were welcome in Libya, a special representative of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told the mission as it stood on Libyan soil, just five meters from the formal border crossing. But not the Israelis.
"Israel does not exist as a country, it is Palestine. We don't allow occupiers into our country," the official said. "Now I order you all to leave Libya."
Earlier, the group had decided it would not cross into Libya unless everyone was allowed in.
After being denied, the nine participants voted to stay through the night at the border and see if diplomacy and their message of goodwill to all peoples would gain them admission. As of Wednesday afternoon it appeared those efforts had failed and the group was considering its options.
After renouncing his intentions to develop weapons of mass destruction in December 2003, Gaddafi was seen to be realigning his country with the international community after years of isolation, following direct ties to terrorist activities.
Until the last minute, the group had not received word from Libyan officials as to whether it would be permitted inside the country and the participants and 16-member support staff and media contingent actually waited on Libyan soil for about four hours Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning for a decision from Libyan border control.
After initially being refused, an appeal was made to high- ranking officials in Tripoli. It was that appeal which led to the words from the government official.
During the overnight hours on the Libyan side of the border, the group, including the Israelis, was received warmly by the border guards themselves who provided complimentary coffee and hot sandwiches. The shopkeeper, a man from Tunis, even wished the group a "good morning" in Hebrew.
The three Israelis, Gil Fogiel, Galit Oren and group organizer Heskel Nathaniel shook hands and chatted with the border guards in English and Arabic and the guards, including two military colonels, said they hoped the three would gain entrance.
"It's another huge example of the difference between the people and the government," Nathaniel said. "I got the feeling that the people would have taken us home with them."
At the last moment, before pulling up to Libyan border, the group turned on the radio and was greeted by the 8 p.m. news on Israel's Reshet Gimmel, which came through loud and clear despite the distance across the sea. Following the news, the song With a Little Bit of Luck from the musical My Fair Lady came on. "It's a sign," Oren said at the time. "Even the songs are helping us along."
During the final walk up to the Libyan border, the group's members linked arms as the two Magirus-Deutz fire trucks and support jeep which brought them 3,500 kilometers to this point followed behind them. They sang Give Peace a Chance and We Are the World on the border approach, while curious Egyptian soldiers stood at the side of the road with puzzled smiles.
The ride to the border from the Egyptian town of Sullum was raucous as group members downed whiskey shots to celebrate what they hoped would be the closing chapter of their trek. As Palestinian Muhammad Azzam Alarjah played his drum, they sang and placed bets on whether they would gain entrance to Libya - the Arab participants betting "no" and the Israelis wagering "yes."
Pressed into service when the regular driver's knees gave out, New York Fire Department Cpt. Daniel Patrick Sheridan, one of the two Americans in the group, danced as he drove the 1962 double- clutch truck the final meters in Egypt.
On the roof of his truck, former Israel Air Force Phantom fighter-pilot and POW Gil Fogiel struck a statuesque pose with his chest out and head high as cameramen and the support staff joined him in singing The Ride of the Valkyries. Camel herders waved at the truck and Fogiel returned the gesture as the convoy, nicknamed after Columbus's ships by Sheridan "the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria," drove by.
Earlier in the day, Fogiel said the prospect of Israelis entering Libya was "a chance to change the course of thinking and from now on produce a new way." Due to their history, Israelis are a skeptical people, he said. "But if you stay skeptical all the time nothing will ever change, so with this step we're trying to break conventional thought."
Oren said she felt a responsibility to represent the "best side" of Israelis. "I want to come with open hands and an open heart... to open the path for others to follow," she said. "I feel very honored, I still don't see myself as so powerful that we are making a difference, but if we do it we can be the pioneers of change," she said.
Though he was traveling with the group in a support role, Nathaniel said he felt a responsibility in representing Israel which made him nervous.
"I wouldn't do it on my own without others with me," he said. "But I feel confident and I feel confident that Latif [Yahia] is taking care of us." Yahia, a former body double for Saddam Hussein's son Uday, took on the job of shepherding the group through numerous hoops at the border, including paying baksheesh to the guards on the Egyptian side to process the group quickly.
On the Libyan side he and Alarjah worked tirelessly with Libyan officials in attempting to move the group through. But even his efforts and the spirit of the peace mission could not overcome the intransigence of the Libyan government.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
EGYPT-LIBYA BORDER - History was thwarted early Wednesday morning when a peace mission making its way across the Sahara Desert was refused entry into Libya due to the participation of three Israelis who were flatly denied entrance at the border.
Most of the group of people from around the world, including four Americans, were welcome in Libya, a special representative of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi told the mission as it stood on Libyan soil, just five meters from the formal border crossing. But not the Israelis.
"Israel does not exist as a country, it is Palestine. We don't allow occupiers into our country," the official said. "Now I order you all to leave Libya."
Earlier, the group had decided it would not cross into Libya unless everyone was allowed in.
After being denied, the nine participants voted to stay through the night at the border and see if diplomacy and their message of goodwill to all peoples would gain them admission. As of Wednesday afternoon it appeared those efforts had failed and the group was considering its options.
After renouncing his intentions to develop weapons of mass destruction in December 2003, Gaddafi was seen to be realigning his country with the international community after years of isolation, following direct ties to terrorist activities.
Until the last minute, the group had not received word from Libyan officials as to whether it would be permitted inside the country and the participants and 16-member support staff and media contingent actually waited on Libyan soil for about four hours Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning for a decision from Libyan border control.
After initially being refused, an appeal was made to high- ranking officials in Tripoli. It was that appeal which led to the words from the government official.
During the overnight hours on the Libyan side of the border, the group, including the Israelis, was received warmly by the border guards themselves who provided complimentary coffee and hot sandwiches. The shopkeeper, a man from Tunis, even wished the group a "good morning" in Hebrew.
The three Israelis, Gil Fogiel, Galit Oren and group organizer Heskel Nathaniel shook hands and chatted with the border guards in English and Arabic and the guards, including two military colonels, said they hoped the three would gain entrance.
"It's another huge example of the difference between the people and the government," Nathaniel said. "I got the feeling that the people would have taken us home with them."
At the last moment, before pulling up to Libyan border, the group turned on the radio and was greeted by the 8 p.m. news on Israel's Reshet Gimmel, which came through loud and clear despite the distance across the sea. Following the news, the song With a Little Bit of Luck from the musical My Fair Lady came on. "It's a sign," Oren said at the time. "Even the songs are helping us along."
During the final walk up to the Libyan border, the group's members linked arms as the two Magirus-Deutz fire trucks and support jeep which brought them 3,500 kilometers to this point followed behind them. They sang Give Peace a Chance and We Are the World on the border approach, while curious Egyptian soldiers stood at the side of the road with puzzled smiles.
The ride to the border from the Egyptian town of Sullum was raucous as group members downed whiskey shots to celebrate what they hoped would be the closing chapter of their trek. As Palestinian Muhammad Azzam Alarjah played his drum, they sang and placed bets on whether they would gain entrance to Libya - the Arab participants betting "no" and the Israelis wagering "yes."
Pressed into service when the regular driver's knees gave out, New York Fire Department Cpt. Daniel Patrick Sheridan, one of the two Americans in the group, danced as he drove the 1962 double- clutch truck the final meters in Egypt.
On the roof of his truck, former Israel Air Force Phantom fighter-pilot and POW Gil Fogiel struck a statuesque pose with his chest out and head high as cameramen and the support staff joined him in singing The Ride of the Valkyries. Camel herders waved at the truck and Fogiel returned the gesture as the convoy, nicknamed after Columbus's ships by Sheridan "the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria," drove by.
Earlier in the day, Fogiel said the prospect of Israelis entering Libya was "a chance to change the course of thinking and from now on produce a new way." Due to their history, Israelis are a skeptical people, he said. "But if you stay skeptical all the time nothing will ever change, so with this step we're trying to break conventional thought."
Oren said she felt a responsibility to represent the "best side" of Israelis. "I want to come with open hands and an open heart... to open the path for others to follow," she said. "I feel very honored, I still don't see myself as so powerful that we are making a difference, but if we do it we can be the pioneers of change," she said.
Though he was traveling with the group in a support role, Nathaniel said he felt a responsibility in representing Israel which made him nervous.
"I wouldn't do it on my own without others with me," he said. "But I feel confident and I feel confident that Latif [Yahia] is taking care of us." Yahia, a former body double for Saddam Hussein's son Uday, took on the job of shepherding the group through numerous hoops at the border, including paying baksheesh to the guards on the Egyptian side to process the group quickly.
On the Libyan side he and Alarjah worked tirelessly with Libyan officials in attempting to move the group through. But even his efforts and the spirit of the peace mission could not overcome the intransigence of the Libyan government.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Tuesday, March 21, 2006
Bonds in the desert form through shared cultures
Camel convoy of peace treks across Egypt
Part of an exclusive series on an expedition from Jerusalem to Tripoli
By Rafael D. Frankel
MARSA MATRUH, Egypt - The sun was quickly dropping below the horizon, and the hard sand desert studded with 200-million-year- old petrified wood chunks wasn't getting any warmer. With the wind picking up and some question as to whether camp was struck in a mine field, instructions were given to stay close to the vehicles last night.
So, in a 21st-century version of circling the wagons, Gil Fogiel, Galit Oren, Muhammad Azzam Alarjah, Latif Yahia, and Neda Sarmast pitched their tents in a tight circle, laying a carpet in the middle as a makeshift courtyard.
The act was a natural one for them, as it would be for any group of travelers stuck in a similar situation. But the fact that the clique of two Israelis, a Palestinian, an Iraqi and an Iranian respectively felt most comfortable with each other amidst more natural geopolitical allies speaks volumes of the bonds the Middle Easterners have formed on this desert trek.
"We have more in common with the Arabs than with the Americans and the others," said Fogiel, who learned Arabic as a prisoner of war in Syria. "There's more of a bond between us."
That bond manifested itself in the seamless rapport between the five and the natural way they rested their arms and heads on each other's shoulders during the long, cramped hours of driving along these barren Saharan byways.
The Middle Easterners have no major quarrels with the two Americans, the Ukrainian and the Tibetan (the Afghani is more a solitary man) on the trip, and also count them among the unlikely friends this journey has brought them. But away from the violence and heightening political rhetoric in their home nations, the bonds of common culture have trumped ingrained political differences.
"We are hot-blooded and our cultural system is the same," said Yahia, the former Uday Hussein body double. "When I was in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, I felt at home. In the West, it's totally different."
"Ours is an emotional language," added Oren, whose mother was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 1995. She felt equally comfortable in the Arab world. "Americans put a barrier between speech and feelings and you can't tell what their face says. We are always direct."
Their unabashed banter is most evident in the joking that flies between them in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Though translation is sometimes required, their shared background always allows them to "get" the jokes, while their Western counterparts are often left shrugging their shoulders.
Excluding Sarmast's mother tongue, Farsi, the five know at least the basics - and sometimes more - of each other's languages, and have been improving their comprehension as the trip moves forward.
But it is the protection of one another that best defines this group.
In Israel, Fogiel and Oren took care of Yahia, Alarjah, and Sarmast. Here, the Palestinian and Iraqi returned the favor, following them in the streets and calming the occasional nervous Egyptian whose reaction to Israeli visitors was less than welcoming.
"We look after each other and our families. It's not like in the West, where they split the family," Yahia said. "They know that if something happens here I'll be the one to take the bullet, and in Israel it would have been them."
Of course, there is the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a different setting, it may have driven the group apart. Here, said Alarjah, it meant a camaraderie that was impossible to achieve with the Westerners, who knew it only through the filtered lens of the media. "Everyone knows each other and how they are feeling and what they face every day," he said.
"With Mohammad," said Fogiel, who took Alarjah as a surrogate son in their travels together, "we definitely share something unique. We share the same piece of land and the same experiences even if we've seen them from different angles."
The Arabs and Israelis also shared another attribute whose importance knew no bounds in the Sahara - a sense of time being a fluid, malleable measurement which relates only to the most general of estimates. It is a concept which the Westerners, particularly US Army Colonel Raymond Benson, found frustrating in the unhurried Arab culture.
"We're so much less serious," Sarmast said, "but we're also much more passionate about what we believe."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Part of an exclusive series on an expedition from Jerusalem to Tripoli
By Rafael D. Frankel
MARSA MATRUH, Egypt - The sun was quickly dropping below the horizon, and the hard sand desert studded with 200-million-year- old petrified wood chunks wasn't getting any warmer. With the wind picking up and some question as to whether camp was struck in a mine field, instructions were given to stay close to the vehicles last night.
So, in a 21st-century version of circling the wagons, Gil Fogiel, Galit Oren, Muhammad Azzam Alarjah, Latif Yahia, and Neda Sarmast pitched their tents in a tight circle, laying a carpet in the middle as a makeshift courtyard.
The act was a natural one for them, as it would be for any group of travelers stuck in a similar situation. But the fact that the clique of two Israelis, a Palestinian, an Iraqi and an Iranian respectively felt most comfortable with each other amidst more natural geopolitical allies speaks volumes of the bonds the Middle Easterners have formed on this desert trek.
"We have more in common with the Arabs than with the Americans and the others," said Fogiel, who learned Arabic as a prisoner of war in Syria. "There's more of a bond between us."
That bond manifested itself in the seamless rapport between the five and the natural way they rested their arms and heads on each other's shoulders during the long, cramped hours of driving along these barren Saharan byways.
The Middle Easterners have no major quarrels with the two Americans, the Ukrainian and the Tibetan (the Afghani is more a solitary man) on the trip, and also count them among the unlikely friends this journey has brought them. But away from the violence and heightening political rhetoric in their home nations, the bonds of common culture have trumped ingrained political differences.
"We are hot-blooded and our cultural system is the same," said Yahia, the former Uday Hussein body double. "When I was in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, I felt at home. In the West, it's totally different."
"Ours is an emotional language," added Oren, whose mother was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber in 1995. She felt equally comfortable in the Arab world. "Americans put a barrier between speech and feelings and you can't tell what their face says. We are always direct."
Their unabashed banter is most evident in the joking that flies between them in Hebrew, Arabic and English. Though translation is sometimes required, their shared background always allows them to "get" the jokes, while their Western counterparts are often left shrugging their shoulders.
Excluding Sarmast's mother tongue, Farsi, the five know at least the basics - and sometimes more - of each other's languages, and have been improving their comprehension as the trip moves forward.
But it is the protection of one another that best defines this group.
In Israel, Fogiel and Oren took care of Yahia, Alarjah, and Sarmast. Here, the Palestinian and Iraqi returned the favor, following them in the streets and calming the occasional nervous Egyptian whose reaction to Israeli visitors was less than welcoming.
"We look after each other and our families. It's not like in the West, where they split the family," Yahia said. "They know that if something happens here I'll be the one to take the bullet, and in Israel it would have been them."
Of course, there is the Arab-Israeli conflict. In a different setting, it may have driven the group apart. Here, said Alarjah, it meant a camaraderie that was impossible to achieve with the Westerners, who knew it only through the filtered lens of the media. "Everyone knows each other and how they are feeling and what they face every day," he said.
"With Mohammad," said Fogiel, who took Alarjah as a surrogate son in their travels together, "we definitely share something unique. We share the same piece of land and the same experiences even if we've seen them from different angles."
The Arabs and Israelis also shared another attribute whose importance knew no bounds in the Sahara - a sense of time being a fluid, malleable measurement which relates only to the most general of estimates. It is a concept which the Westerners, particularly US Army Colonel Raymond Benson, found frustrating in the unhurried Arab culture.
"We're so much less serious," Sarmast said, "but we're also much more passionate about what we believe."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Friday, March 17, 2006
The face of Israel's strategic predicament
Without negotiating with the Palestinians, analysts say, Israel's unilaterally determined borders will never be final. Will the government forged after March 28, then, be forced to deal with Hamas?
Analysis
By Rafael D. Frankel
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made his dramatic break from Likud, he framed the mission of his new Kadima party very clearly.
"[We will] lay the foundation for a peaceful arrangement in which we will determine the final borders of the state, while insisting that terror organizations are dismantled," he said on that November evening.
Four months later, Sharon is laying incapacitated in a hospital bed, and Hamas is poised to form the first democratically elected Palestinian government. Yet more than ever, the coming Israeli election has become a referendum on the future borders of the state and how best to achieve them.
By now, everyone is familiar with the three preconditions the government, led by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has set on Hamas before it will enter talks with the terrorist organization which now leads the Palestinian Legislative Council: recognition of Israel's right to exist, disarming its military wing, and accepting all previous agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority.
In the absence of Hamas's meeting these demands, which no one really expects it to meet, each of the main three parties has put forward its plans for how next to proceed. While Likud has adopted a "don't give an inch" approach, Kadima and Labor (if all else fails) are both saying they will move to set Israel's permanent borders unilaterally - the difference between the two being where the borders will lie.
There's only one problem: Israel can call the borders "permanent" all it wants, but without agreement on that point from the people living on the other side, it will have little to no meaning, say analysts.
"One-sided steps cannot stabilize the situation," said Hebrew University political science professor emeritus Ze'ev Sternhell. "It can work for a few months, maybe for a year or two. But in a long-term, historical perspective, we cannot hope that deciding on our own can be a reasonable solution."
In other words, when the dust of the election settles, if the government that takes shape may be forced to act diplomatically. As unpalatable as it is to talk to Hamas - barring a radical makeover by the group - there are permutations on negotiating with the Palestinians that the government is liable to have to swallow.
It is important to remember, said Tel Aviv think-tank Re'ut founder and president Gidi Grinstein, that "Hamas is merely a political movement within the PA that happens to have a racist and anti-Semitic covenant. But they are just a party. The governments of Israel and the United States don't deal with parties, they deal with political entities with legitimacy."
As such, Grinstein said, Israel must clarify of whom it is making demands, and therefore with whom it is prepared to deal.
So far - and on this point the Olmert-led government is ambiguous, perhaps purposefully so - it appears that the conditions for negotiating with the Palestinians were put to the PA, which is led simultaneously by its directly elected president, Mahmoud Abbas, and a Hamas-controlled PLC. On the surface, such conditions fly in the face of the Oslo Accords, which bestow upon the PLO the title of "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people in negotiations.
The government is therefore jettisoning the formality of directing its relations through the PLO in favor of the reality of conducting matters of state from here on out with the PA, which is now run by a democratically elected president and legislature, both of which can lay claim to legitimate leadership.
This new strategy, Grinstein said, has the advantage of finally putting Hamas under the international spotlight. "Hamas has always been back-seat driving the political process, impacting the political process without assuming political responsibility," he said. In placing Hamas in the front seat, Israel can challenge the group "to a series of decisions that highlight the tension between its ideology and its population."
However, the pitfall in that course of action is the less-than- final outcome.
Whereas many analysts agree that tight enough screws can persuade Hamas to maintain the ceasefire it has more or less observed for a year now, the prospect of the organization coming around to recognizing Israel and engaging in full-fledged peace talks is deemed a near impossibility.
In that sense, Israel could continue along the path Olmert has laid out for the Kadima party, whereby it consults with the settlers and by itself determines the lines to which it will withdraw for the foreseeable future, while leaving the army in place. Through dialog with the relevant international players, Olmert could achieve long- term, interim borders that the world would accept for the time being.
"Hamas is saying to the world: 'No permanent borders under my watch,' and the world is listening," Grinstein said. "The world might actually say: 'We heard you clearly, and therefore certain borders Israel deploys itself are legitimate until the Palestinian side comes around.'"
Israel, then, would have borders, but permanent they would not be.
It is for this reason that the strategy has opponents lining up on both sides of the political spectrum, saying "I told you so" about the ramifications of the first unilateral withdrawal - which the Right says rewarded terrorism and the Left says undermined Palestinian moderates.
"A ceasefire for 10 or 20 years without [the Palestinians] recognizing our borders, without recognizing Jerusalem as our capital or dealing with refugees - this is the not right thing to do without getting anything in return," said Meretz party chairman Yossi Beilin.
Among those who still strive for a negotiated settlement, perhaps the most popular idea floating around is, after the elections, preceding directly into final- status talks with Abbas who, as PLO chairman and PA president, is still the singlemost powerful Palestinian in terms of relations with the outside world.
Though that plan bypasses Hamas where negotiations are concerned, Beilin said Israel should only enter such discussions if Hamas agreed beforehand to abide by a referendum put to the Palestinian people on a final-status accord that those talks produced.
"This is the best way for Israel," said MK Ron Cohen (Meretz). "Otherwise, if we do not open negotiations with Abu Mazen and a Hamas government, we will halt all hope for a political solution."
Israel's only other choice would then be to leave the West Bank unilaterally, Cohen said, "and that vacuum is a very dangerous one, because only terrorists can enter into it."
Cohen acknowledged that after so many bloody years, such a plan would be a tough sell to the Israeli side, since the public would be highly skeptical of a Hamas-led PA being willing and able to prevent terrorism. Accordingly, any final-status agreement would necessarily include steps that are irreversible, such as Hamas giving up its weapons, he said.
"We are not so naive as you imagine. We have to be very sure during the agreement that both sides" are living up to their end of the bargain, Cohen said.
WITH THE Hamas political ascendancy, though, another camp is arguing that the premise of settling the Israeli- Palestinian conflict bilaterally is now antiquated.
In winning a democratic election for the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which enjoys broad support within Israel's neighboring countries, Hamas has put the fire to the kettle of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan and the autocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Given the long- term threat the Islamist movement poses to those countries' rulers, who are nominally friendly to Israel, the only way now to achieve permanent borders is to multi-lateralize any peace talks, said Tel Aviv University political science professor Shaul Mishal, author of The Palestinian Hamas.
If Israel engaged Hamas on the multi-lateral level, he contended, it would be able to bring much more pressure to bear on the group, since the relevant international players - even the Arab ones - fall closer in line with the Israeli position than with Hamas's stated goal of establishing a Palestinian state on all of historic Palestine. With Europe growing more anxious by the day about rising Islamist attitudes within its borders, he added, the potential for extracting concessions from Hamas in such a setting is great.
"Many Israelis don't believe Hamas is ready to deliver the goods. On other hand, many Israelis are not ready to wait for Hamas to reach a point of being mature enough to conduct direct negotiations with Israel. And the world is not going to wait for Hamas to mature," Mishal said. "If that is what happens, Hamas and Israel will be able to meet each other through proxy."
The formula, Mishal said, already exists in the Arab Summit plan of 2002, which calls for a Pan-Arab-Israeli peace in exchange for Israel's withdrawal to the 1967 borders. Getting Hamas to enter into talks based on that plan, would amount to implicit recognition of Israel, a bar Mishal said is high enough for the time being.
"Both sides, realistically speaking, are in an intensive learning process," he said. "Therefore what we see now, [in] statements by Olmert and [Hamas prime minister-designate Ismail] Haniyeh, are only the first steps toward bargaining."
ONE OTHER option remains: talking to Hamas without precondition, so long as it maintains the ceasefire.
Such a strategy will never be voiced before the election by any party with a realistic chance of leading the next government, for fear of the ensuing political backlash. Nevertheless, its proponents say engagement is the best way to step back from the brinksmanship Israel and Hamas are currently engaged in that could quickly deteriorate into a third intifada.
Under this permutation, achieving permanent borders would be put on the back-burner as Israel judges progress not by the rhetoric coming from the PA leadership (a mistake that was made with Fatah), but by its actions.
"The main issue is whether they conduct a peaceful policy, and if they do we can reward that," said Gadi Taub, author of The Results Are In, and Peace Lost. "It's not about an agreement, it's about a modus vivendi we can reach, and whether or not it's on paper is not important."
What is important, according to adherents of this position, is not being drawn into a black-and-white view of the world by Hamas. Though doing so provides moral clarity, they argue, its lack of nuance seldom produces positive results.
"We shouldn't play the American game of not talking to terrorists. Of course they are terrorists, but as long as they don't do it, they just talk about it, as long as there are no acts of terror" Israel should try talk to Hamas, Ze'ev Sternhell said. It is in "our interest that borders be recognized by the Palestinians and not only by ourselves. We can't continue an endless war. By 2050, 30 million people will be living between the Jordan River and the [Mediterranean] sea, and if we don't reach an agreement it will be hell."
In a paper published by the United States Institute of Peace, Brig.-Gen. (Ret.) Shlomo Brom, the deputy national security advisor to former prime minister Ehud Barak, argued that at the current stage, Israel should only be demanding that Hamas continue the ceasefire, abide by all PA-signed agreements, and not undermine Palestinian democracy and human rights.
At later stages, he wrote, Israel should demand a change in its charter, but for now this approach has the advantage of providing "a framework to test the new Palestinian leadership, while at the same time denying it excuses for failure to change its ways."
While engaging Hamas brings with it serious risks," should engagement fail, it will be easier to build a coalition that supports confrontation," Brom wrote.
For some, however, talking to Hamas, even in order to achieve permanent borders, is simply a leap too far.
"Hamas in its essence is a genocidal movement that needs to be fought and not negotiated with, period," said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center. "Those who suggest that Hamas might moderate don't understand the difference between politics and theology. Hamas is a theological movement whose central core belief is that it is God's will that the State of Israel be destroyed."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Analysis
By Rafael D. Frankel
When Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made his dramatic break from Likud, he framed the mission of his new Kadima party very clearly.
"[We will] lay the foundation for a peaceful arrangement in which we will determine the final borders of the state, while insisting that terror organizations are dismantled," he said on that November evening.
Four months later, Sharon is laying incapacitated in a hospital bed, and Hamas is poised to form the first democratically elected Palestinian government. Yet more than ever, the coming Israeli election has become a referendum on the future borders of the state and how best to achieve them.
By now, everyone is familiar with the three preconditions the government, led by Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, has set on Hamas before it will enter talks with the terrorist organization which now leads the Palestinian Legislative Council: recognition of Israel's right to exist, disarming its military wing, and accepting all previous agreements signed by the Palestinian Authority.
In the absence of Hamas's meeting these demands, which no one really expects it to meet, each of the main three parties has put forward its plans for how next to proceed. While Likud has adopted a "don't give an inch" approach, Kadima and Labor (if all else fails) are both saying they will move to set Israel's permanent borders unilaterally - the difference between the two being where the borders will lie.
There's only one problem: Israel can call the borders "permanent" all it wants, but without agreement on that point from the people living on the other side, it will have little to no meaning, say analysts.
"One-sided steps cannot stabilize the situation," said Hebrew University political science professor emeritus Ze'ev Sternhell. "It can work for a few months, maybe for a year or two. But in a long-term, historical perspective, we cannot hope that deciding on our own can be a reasonable solution."
In other words, when the dust of the election settles, if the government that takes shape may be forced to act diplomatically. As unpalatable as it is to talk to Hamas - barring a radical makeover by the group - there are permutations on negotiating with the Palestinians that the government is liable to have to swallow.
It is important to remember, said Tel Aviv think-tank Re'ut founder and president Gidi Grinstein, that "Hamas is merely a political movement within the PA that happens to have a racist and anti-Semitic covenant. But they are just a party. The governments of Israel and the United States don't deal with parties, they deal with political entities with legitimacy."
As such, Grinstein said, Israel must clarify of whom it is making demands, and therefore with whom it is prepared to deal.
So far - and on this point the Olmert-led government is ambiguous, perhaps purposefully so - it appears that the conditions for negotiating with the Palestinians were put to the PA, which is led simultaneously by its directly elected president, Mahmoud Abbas, and a Hamas-controlled PLC. On the surface, such conditions fly in the face of the Oslo Accords, which bestow upon the PLO the title of "sole legitimate representative" of the Palestinian people in negotiations.
The government is therefore jettisoning the formality of directing its relations through the PLO in favor of the reality of conducting matters of state from here on out with the PA, which is now run by a democratically elected president and legislature, both of which can lay claim to legitimate leadership.
This new strategy, Grinstein said, has the advantage of finally putting Hamas under the international spotlight. "Hamas has always been back-seat driving the political process, impacting the political process without assuming political responsibility," he said. In placing Hamas in the front seat, Israel can challenge the group "to a series of decisions that highlight the tension between its ideology and its population."
However, the pitfall in that course of action is the less-than- final outcome.
Whereas many analysts agree that tight enough screws can persuade Hamas to maintain the ceasefire it has more or less observed for a year now, the prospect of the organization coming around to recognizing Israel and engaging in full-fledged peace talks is deemed a near impossibility.
In that sense, Israel could continue along the path Olmert has laid out for the Kadima party, whereby it consults with the settlers and by itself determines the lines to which it will withdraw for the foreseeable future, while leaving the army in place. Through dialog with the relevant international players, Olmert could achieve long- term, interim borders that the world would accept for the time being.
"Hamas is saying to the world: 'No permanent borders under my watch,' and the world is listening," Grinstein said. "The world might actually say: 'We heard you clearly, and therefore certain borders Israel deploys itself are legitimate until the Palestinian side comes around.'"
Israel, then, would have borders, but permanent they would not be.
It is for this reason that the strategy has opponents lining up on both sides of the political spectrum, saying "I told you so" about the ramifications of the first unilateral withdrawal - which the Right says rewarded terrorism and the Left says undermined Palestinian moderates.
"A ceasefire for 10 or 20 years without [the Palestinians] recognizing our borders, without recognizing Jerusalem as our capital or dealing with refugees - this is the not right thing to do without getting anything in return," said Meretz party chairman Yossi Beilin.
Among those who still strive for a negotiated settlement, perhaps the most popular idea floating around is, after the elections, preceding directly into final- status talks with Abbas who, as PLO chairman and PA president, is still the singlemost powerful Palestinian in terms of relations with the outside world.
Though that plan bypasses Hamas where negotiations are concerned, Beilin said Israel should only enter such discussions if Hamas agreed beforehand to abide by a referendum put to the Palestinian people on a final-status accord that those talks produced.
"This is the best way for Israel," said MK Ron Cohen (Meretz). "Otherwise, if we do not open negotiations with Abu Mazen and a Hamas government, we will halt all hope for a political solution."
Israel's only other choice would then be to leave the West Bank unilaterally, Cohen said, "and that vacuum is a very dangerous one, because only terrorists can enter into it."
Cohen acknowledged that after so many bloody years, such a plan would be a tough sell to the Israeli side, since the public would be highly skeptical of a Hamas-led PA being willing and able to prevent terrorism. Accordingly, any final-status agreement would necessarily include steps that are irreversible, such as Hamas giving up its weapons, he said.
"We are not so naive as you imagine. We have to be very sure during the agreement that both sides" are living up to their end of the bargain, Cohen said.
WITH THE Hamas political ascendancy, though, another camp is arguing that the premise of settling the Israeli- Palestinian conflict bilaterally is now antiquated.
In winning a democratic election for the Muslim Brotherhood movement, which enjoys broad support within Israel's neighboring countries, Hamas has put the fire to the kettle of the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan and the autocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Given the long- term threat the Islamist movement poses to those countries' rulers, who are nominally friendly to Israel, the only way now to achieve permanent borders is to multi-lateralize any peace talks, said Tel Aviv University political science professor Shaul Mishal, author of The Palestinian Hamas.
If Israel engaged Hamas on the multi-lateral level, he contended, it would be able to bring much more pressure to bear on the group, since the relevant international players - even the Arab ones - fall closer in line with the Israeli position than with Hamas's stated goal of establishing a Palestinian state on all of historic Palestine. With Europe growing more anxious by the day about rising Islamist attitudes within its borders, he added, the potential for extracting concessions from Hamas in such a setting is great.
"Many Israelis don't believe Hamas is ready to deliver the goods. On other hand, many Israelis are not ready to wait for Hamas to reach a point of being mature enough to conduct direct negotiations with Israel. And the world is not going to wait for Hamas to mature," Mishal said. "If that is what happens, Hamas and Israel will be able to meet each other through proxy."
The formula, Mishal said, already exists in the Arab Summit plan of 2002, which calls for a Pan-Arab-Israeli peace in exchange for Israel's withdrawal to the 1967 borders. Getting Hamas to enter into talks based on that plan, would amount to implicit recognition of Israel, a bar Mishal said is high enough for the time being.
"Both sides, realistically speaking, are in an intensive learning process," he said. "Therefore what we see now, [in] statements by Olmert and [Hamas prime minister-designate Ismail] Haniyeh, are only the first steps toward bargaining."
ONE OTHER option remains: talking to Hamas without precondition, so long as it maintains the ceasefire.
Such a strategy will never be voiced before the election by any party with a realistic chance of leading the next government, for fear of the ensuing political backlash. Nevertheless, its proponents say engagement is the best way to step back from the brinksmanship Israel and Hamas are currently engaged in that could quickly deteriorate into a third intifada.
Under this permutation, achieving permanent borders would be put on the back-burner as Israel judges progress not by the rhetoric coming from the PA leadership (a mistake that was made with Fatah), but by its actions.
"The main issue is whether they conduct a peaceful policy, and if they do we can reward that," said Gadi Taub, author of The Results Are In, and Peace Lost. "It's not about an agreement, it's about a modus vivendi we can reach, and whether or not it's on paper is not important."
What is important, according to adherents of this position, is not being drawn into a black-and-white view of the world by Hamas. Though doing so provides moral clarity, they argue, its lack of nuance seldom produces positive results.
"We shouldn't play the American game of not talking to terrorists. Of course they are terrorists, but as long as they don't do it, they just talk about it, as long as there are no acts of terror" Israel should try talk to Hamas, Ze'ev Sternhell said. It is in "our interest that borders be recognized by the Palestinians and not only by ourselves. We can't continue an endless war. By 2050, 30 million people will be living between the Jordan River and the [Mediterranean] sea, and if we don't reach an agreement it will be hell."
In a paper published by the United States Institute of Peace, Brig.-Gen. (Ret.) Shlomo Brom, the deputy national security advisor to former prime minister Ehud Barak, argued that at the current stage, Israel should only be demanding that Hamas continue the ceasefire, abide by all PA-signed agreements, and not undermine Palestinian democracy and human rights.
At later stages, he wrote, Israel should demand a change in its charter, but for now this approach has the advantage of providing "a framework to test the new Palestinian leadership, while at the same time denying it excuses for failure to change its ways."
While engaging Hamas brings with it serious risks," should engagement fail, it will be easier to build a coalition that supports confrontation," Brom wrote.
For some, however, talking to Hamas, even in order to achieve permanent borders, is simply a leap too far.
"Hamas in its essence is a genocidal movement that needs to be fought and not negotiated with, period," said Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center. "Those who suggest that Hamas might moderate don't understand the difference between politics and theology. Hamas is a theological movement whose central core belief is that it is God's will that the State of Israel be destroyed."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Friday, March 10, 2006
Israel reopens Gaza border crossing
Concerns over security had been behind closings
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent
JERUSALEM -- Israel reopened the Karni crossing from the Gaza Strip yesterday, allowing humanitarian goods to flow into the coastal Palestinian territory again after closing the crossing for more than two weeks because of what Israel called security threats.
The move came just three days after a report by the World Bank said the November accord brokered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice governing the flow of people and goods from Gaza to Israel and the West Bank had unraveled. Farmers have complained of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales in recent months because of the border closings.
Trucks carrying basic foods and medicines were allowed into Gaza yesterday, but the army said the Defense Ministry had not yet decided whether Karni would open fully to allow imports and exports from Gaza.
Israel has twice shut down the Karni goods crossing and has also restricted the number of Palestinian workers who enter Israel each day through the Erez checkpoint since the agreement in November, citing security concerns. Both crossings have been the targets of deadly Palestinian attacks since the last intifadah broke out in 2000. Erez has been attacked 16 times, most recently last month.
The closures have caused millions of dollars worth of produce from Palestinian greenhouses to rot or whither on the vine, and have blocked thousands of day laborers from entering Israel over the last few months, the World Bank report said.
The Rafah border crossing from Gaza to Egypt is open, as stipulated in the deal, but Israel has not yet permitted the daily convoy that was to begin transporting goods and people between Gaza and the West Bank on Dec. 15.
Following the World Bank's assessment, Israeli and Palestinian officials traded recriminations over the breakdown of the agreement, which Rice brokered during a November visit here after shuttling between the two sides during an all-night bargaining session.
While Israeli officials cited threats on the crossings as the reason for the Karni closure and limits on Erez foot traffic, Palestinians said Israel was playing politics and engaging in collective punishment of Gaza's 1.3 million people.
''The whole theme behind supporting disengagement was to improve the economy of the Palestinians and the livelihood of the Palestinians, and it has gone backward ever since that time," Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat said. ''[Israel] wants to create new political realities."
According to the World Bank report, which was an interim evaluation of the accord's results, at no time did the number of workers who were allowed through Erez, nor the number of trucks allowed to ship goods through Karni, reach the levels stipulated in the agreement. Israel also refused to allow the convoys between Gaza and the West Bank to operate, saying it would only do so following the cessation of Qassam rocket attacks that strike southern Israel almost daily.
Israel closed Karni for three weeks in January after receiving intelligence that Palestinian militants were digging tunnels underneath the terminal there. After not finding anything, Israel reopened it on Feb. 3, only to shut it 18 days later after what the army called an underground explosion.
''We are not going to pay for Palestinian welfare with the blood of our people," Israeli government spokesman Ra'anan Gissin said. ''Agreements are based on bilateral security arrangements. If one side does not fulfill their part, then we have no agreement."
In addition to the attack at Erez, the amount of rifles being smuggled into Gaza from Egypt has increased by around 300 percent since Israel ceded control of that border to the Palestinian Authority as part of the November agreement, according to Israel's chief of internal security, Yuval Diskin. Moreover, a number of militants have crossed into Gaza through Rafah with the approval of the Palestinian Authority despite objections from Israel, both sides say.
Among those hardest hit by the closures are Palestinian farmers who are growing fruits and vegetables in greenhouses left in Gaza by Jewish settlers. Under a last-minute deal, a group of mostly American philanthropists purchased around 790 acres of greenhouses from the settlers before they evacuated Gaza for a total of $14 million and then donated them to the Palestinians.
The first crops produced in the greenhouses under Palestinian control were highly successful, with around 1,000 tons of strawberries, hot peppers, tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes being shipped to Israel and Europe before the Karni closure.
According to a report issued by USAID, by March 5 the closure of Karni resulted in around $4.4 million in agriculture losses for Gaza farmers. Every day Karni remains closed, the main group of greenhouses run by the Palestinian Economic Development Corporation, or PEDC, loses around $130,000, said its chief executive, Bassil Jabir.
''What we are seeing is a real catastrophe," Jabir said, refusing to assign blame to any one party for the Karni closure. ''I'm not a politician, I'm an investor. I'm suffering because I can't get my product out. If there are issues that need to be resolved on the two sides, they should sit down and solve it. But let me get my stuff out."
The PEDC had employed over 6,000 Palestinians to work in the greenhouses, though some who had worked for Jewish farmers before the disengagement reported in December that their hours were reduced. Due to the closures, Jabir said he has slashed the workforce to 3,500 and is planning further cuts of as many as 2,000 more jobs.
Israeli textile and export businesses with ties to Gaza have also taken economic hits from the closure. The Israeli firm that signed a deal with the PEDC to export Gaza produce to Europe said it has lost around $120,000 already this season.
''It's one big disaster," said Avi Kadan, the managing director of Adafresh. Both Kadan and Jabir were at a December meeting at Karni attended by representatives from the Israeli Army, Palestinian Authority, and USAID, in which the relevant parties all agreed to do their best to keep the crossing open.
''I had promises. Everybody said they plan to cooperate and keep the border open and suddenly in January they closed the border for security reasons. What can you do against security reasons? Nothing," Kadan said.
©2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
By Rafael D. Frankel, Globe Correspondent
JERUSALEM -- Israel reopened the Karni crossing from the Gaza Strip yesterday, allowing humanitarian goods to flow into the coastal Palestinian territory again after closing the crossing for more than two weeks because of what Israel called security threats.
The move came just three days after a report by the World Bank said the November accord brokered by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice governing the flow of people and goods from Gaza to Israel and the West Bank had unraveled. Farmers have complained of hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost sales in recent months because of the border closings.
Trucks carrying basic foods and medicines were allowed into Gaza yesterday, but the army said the Defense Ministry had not yet decided whether Karni would open fully to allow imports and exports from Gaza.
Israel has twice shut down the Karni goods crossing and has also restricted the number of Palestinian workers who enter Israel each day through the Erez checkpoint since the agreement in November, citing security concerns. Both crossings have been the targets of deadly Palestinian attacks since the last intifadah broke out in 2000. Erez has been attacked 16 times, most recently last month.
The closures have caused millions of dollars worth of produce from Palestinian greenhouses to rot or whither on the vine, and have blocked thousands of day laborers from entering Israel over the last few months, the World Bank report said.
The Rafah border crossing from Gaza to Egypt is open, as stipulated in the deal, but Israel has not yet permitted the daily convoy that was to begin transporting goods and people between Gaza and the West Bank on Dec. 15.
Following the World Bank's assessment, Israeli and Palestinian officials traded recriminations over the breakdown of the agreement, which Rice brokered during a November visit here after shuttling between the two sides during an all-night bargaining session.
While Israeli officials cited threats on the crossings as the reason for the Karni closure and limits on Erez foot traffic, Palestinians said Israel was playing politics and engaging in collective punishment of Gaza's 1.3 million people.
''The whole theme behind supporting disengagement was to improve the economy of the Palestinians and the livelihood of the Palestinians, and it has gone backward ever since that time," Palestinian Chief Negotiator Saeb Erekat said. ''[Israel] wants to create new political realities."
According to the World Bank report, which was an interim evaluation of the accord's results, at no time did the number of workers who were allowed through Erez, nor the number of trucks allowed to ship goods through Karni, reach the levels stipulated in the agreement. Israel also refused to allow the convoys between Gaza and the West Bank to operate, saying it would only do so following the cessation of Qassam rocket attacks that strike southern Israel almost daily.
Israel closed Karni for three weeks in January after receiving intelligence that Palestinian militants were digging tunnels underneath the terminal there. After not finding anything, Israel reopened it on Feb. 3, only to shut it 18 days later after what the army called an underground explosion.
''We are not going to pay for Palestinian welfare with the blood of our people," Israeli government spokesman Ra'anan Gissin said. ''Agreements are based on bilateral security arrangements. If one side does not fulfill their part, then we have no agreement."
In addition to the attack at Erez, the amount of rifles being smuggled into Gaza from Egypt has increased by around 300 percent since Israel ceded control of that border to the Palestinian Authority as part of the November agreement, according to Israel's chief of internal security, Yuval Diskin. Moreover, a number of militants have crossed into Gaza through Rafah with the approval of the Palestinian Authority despite objections from Israel, both sides say.
Among those hardest hit by the closures are Palestinian farmers who are growing fruits and vegetables in greenhouses left in Gaza by Jewish settlers. Under a last-minute deal, a group of mostly American philanthropists purchased around 790 acres of greenhouses from the settlers before they evacuated Gaza for a total of $14 million and then donated them to the Palestinians.
The first crops produced in the greenhouses under Palestinian control were highly successful, with around 1,000 tons of strawberries, hot peppers, tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes being shipped to Israel and Europe before the Karni closure.
According to a report issued by USAID, by March 5 the closure of Karni resulted in around $4.4 million in agriculture losses for Gaza farmers. Every day Karni remains closed, the main group of greenhouses run by the Palestinian Economic Development Corporation, or PEDC, loses around $130,000, said its chief executive, Bassil Jabir.
''What we are seeing is a real catastrophe," Jabir said, refusing to assign blame to any one party for the Karni closure. ''I'm not a politician, I'm an investor. I'm suffering because I can't get my product out. If there are issues that need to be resolved on the two sides, they should sit down and solve it. But let me get my stuff out."
The PEDC had employed over 6,000 Palestinians to work in the greenhouses, though some who had worked for Jewish farmers before the disengagement reported in December that their hours were reduced. Due to the closures, Jabir said he has slashed the workforce to 3,500 and is planning further cuts of as many as 2,000 more jobs.
Israeli textile and export businesses with ties to Gaza have also taken economic hits from the closure. The Israeli firm that signed a deal with the PEDC to export Gaza produce to Europe said it has lost around $120,000 already this season.
''It's one big disaster," said Avi Kadan, the managing director of Adafresh. Both Kadan and Jabir were at a December meeting at Karni attended by representatives from the Israeli Army, Palestinian Authority, and USAID, in which the relevant parties all agreed to do their best to keep the crossing open.
''I had promises. Everybody said they plan to cooperate and keep the border open and suddenly in January they closed the border for security reasons. What can you do against security reasons? Nothing," Kadan said.
©2006 Globe Newspaper Company.
Friday, March 03, 2006
Gush Katif youth suffer range of psychological problems
Government admits it was too slow to act
By Rafael D. Frankel
For two weeks after disengagement, Sabir Atias, 17, couldn't get out of bed in the morning. She broke out in skin rashes, cried for days, and fell into a depression no one could help her escape.
"I'm not a person like that," she said recently, recalling her first days in the caravan park in Nitzan. "But there was no solution to my problem. I couldn't see a light."
Six months later, Atias's smile, so conspicuous during her days in Gush Katif, has returned and her speech is as fast and scattered as a normal teenager. She told The Jerusalem Post that while she had learned to deal with the bitterness and sadness she felt in the wake of her family's eviction from Neveh Dekalim, she still harbored feelings very different than those she felt before disengagement.
"I'm tougher now than I was before. Things that would have broken me before don't touch me now," she said. "But I'm not hopeful for the future, because I think it's all over, and there's nothing to look forward to here."
As disheartening as her comments sound, Atias is among the better adjusted of the youth from Gush Katif, who, six months after disengagement, suffer a wide range of psychological problems, according to social workers and youth group leaders who work with them on a daily basis.
A majority of the teens have been receiving poor grades and fighting with their parents, and experiencing feelings of betrayal, disillusionment and alienation. Others, social workers said, have contemplated suicide, been victims or perpetrators of rape and incest, exhibited signs of eating disorders, or forsworn school altogether.
"The teens are going through a huge identity crisis," said Haiya Rabinovitch, a social worker from Achiya, in the Binyamin region, who heads 10 social workers hired by the Committee of Gush Katif Settlers to work with the evacuees. "Many of them are dealing with the effects of terror from the last five years, from friends who died, and they have put up a lot of barriers. Now they are in a vacuum where there is no terror, no struggle [against disengagement], and also they don't feel like they have a home," she said.
These feelings have led to a huge number of teens being unable to concentrate in school, she said, while those already in the army or performing national service are constantly moving around and unable to settle down. "It is very tough for the kids to stick to the tasks they are given," Rabinovitch said.
Given the delicate psychological condition of the 1,200 Gush Katif evacuees aged between 12 and 18, a strong, long-term government effort would be required to adequately care for the youth, Rabinovitch said. She, along with other social workers and youth group leaders, said the government had not come close to fulfilling its obligation to care for the teens.
"The government isn't dealing with the big picture," said Avi Cohen, who works for the Gush Katif committee as an activities counselor. "They have just acted in small ways, so they can put a check mark on a piece of paper saying they dealt with the problem."
Asked if the government was making the necessary efforts, Social Affairs Ministry spokesman Nachum Ido acknowledged that his agency had not been fast enough in responding to the needs of the youth, nor to the psychological problems of the evacuees in general.
"We are only starting the major efforts now," Ido said. "It took a lot of time." According to Ido, the government's poor showing stemmed in part from a lack of understanding of how bad the situation was and also from initial denial on the part of the teens and their parents that they suffered psychological problems.
"Nobody knew exactly what would happen. At the beginning, the [evacuees] themselves didn't know what they needed, didn't know they had a crisis. They didn't want to deal with the social workers," Ido said. "Nobody thought that these youngsters, who are very strong and very idealistic, wouldn't go to school, that they would have antagonism toward their parents."
The ministry is only now getting around to spending most of the NIS 10 million budgeted for psychological treatment. The ministry will not finish doling it out until the end of April, Ido said.
Now that the full magnitude of the problem is understood, he said, the ministry was gearing up for a stronger effort. Thirty social workers are being hired, and funding has been approved for the construction of three clubs for teens in Nitzan and to pay counselors to run them. Two social workers are being sent to Yad Binyamin, east of Ashdod, where another trailer park is located, to evaluate the problems of the youth there and develop a plan of action, Ido said.
The government has authorized an additional NIS 10m. to be spent on social services for the evacuees in the coming year, the spokesman said.
Rabinovitch said the additional social workers, though welcome, would not be enough. She also said the inexperience of many of the social workers hampered the teen's psychological recovery.
"[A lack of] experience is a very big problem," Ido admitted. However, he said, since social workers are employed by local districts, the ministry could not bring in more veteran staff. "But the social workers who are in charge at the Disengagement Authority are experienced, and they can help the younger ones," he said.
That response did not sit well with Cohen. "People are talking about ending their lives, and you're telling me it's too difficult to get the good people. That's crazy," he said. "These teens are our future and they are wonderful kids.
"It doesn't matter if you were for the expulsion or not. We [hurt] them and now we have to build them up again," he said.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
For two weeks after disengagement, Sabir Atias, 17, couldn't get out of bed in the morning. She broke out in skin rashes, cried for days, and fell into a depression no one could help her escape.
"I'm not a person like that," she said recently, recalling her first days in the caravan park in Nitzan. "But there was no solution to my problem. I couldn't see a light."
Six months later, Atias's smile, so conspicuous during her days in Gush Katif, has returned and her speech is as fast and scattered as a normal teenager. She told The Jerusalem Post that while she had learned to deal with the bitterness and sadness she felt in the wake of her family's eviction from Neveh Dekalim, she still harbored feelings very different than those she felt before disengagement.
"I'm tougher now than I was before. Things that would have broken me before don't touch me now," she said. "But I'm not hopeful for the future, because I think it's all over, and there's nothing to look forward to here."
As disheartening as her comments sound, Atias is among the better adjusted of the youth from Gush Katif, who, six months after disengagement, suffer a wide range of psychological problems, according to social workers and youth group leaders who work with them on a daily basis.
A majority of the teens have been receiving poor grades and fighting with their parents, and experiencing feelings of betrayal, disillusionment and alienation. Others, social workers said, have contemplated suicide, been victims or perpetrators of rape and incest, exhibited signs of eating disorders, or forsworn school altogether.
"The teens are going through a huge identity crisis," said Haiya Rabinovitch, a social worker from Achiya, in the Binyamin region, who heads 10 social workers hired by the Committee of Gush Katif Settlers to work with the evacuees. "Many of them are dealing with the effects of terror from the last five years, from friends who died, and they have put up a lot of barriers. Now they are in a vacuum where there is no terror, no struggle [against disengagement], and also they don't feel like they have a home," she said.
These feelings have led to a huge number of teens being unable to concentrate in school, she said, while those already in the army or performing national service are constantly moving around and unable to settle down. "It is very tough for the kids to stick to the tasks they are given," Rabinovitch said.
Given the delicate psychological condition of the 1,200 Gush Katif evacuees aged between 12 and 18, a strong, long-term government effort would be required to adequately care for the youth, Rabinovitch said. She, along with other social workers and youth group leaders, said the government had not come close to fulfilling its obligation to care for the teens.
"The government isn't dealing with the big picture," said Avi Cohen, who works for the Gush Katif committee as an activities counselor. "They have just acted in small ways, so they can put a check mark on a piece of paper saying they dealt with the problem."
Asked if the government was making the necessary efforts, Social Affairs Ministry spokesman Nachum Ido acknowledged that his agency had not been fast enough in responding to the needs of the youth, nor to the psychological problems of the evacuees in general.
"We are only starting the major efforts now," Ido said. "It took a lot of time." According to Ido, the government's poor showing stemmed in part from a lack of understanding of how bad the situation was and also from initial denial on the part of the teens and their parents that they suffered psychological problems.
"Nobody knew exactly what would happen. At the beginning, the [evacuees] themselves didn't know what they needed, didn't know they had a crisis. They didn't want to deal with the social workers," Ido said. "Nobody thought that these youngsters, who are very strong and very idealistic, wouldn't go to school, that they would have antagonism toward their parents."
The ministry is only now getting around to spending most of the NIS 10 million budgeted for psychological treatment. The ministry will not finish doling it out until the end of April, Ido said.
Now that the full magnitude of the problem is understood, he said, the ministry was gearing up for a stronger effort. Thirty social workers are being hired, and funding has been approved for the construction of three clubs for teens in Nitzan and to pay counselors to run them. Two social workers are being sent to Yad Binyamin, east of Ashdod, where another trailer park is located, to evaluate the problems of the youth there and develop a plan of action, Ido said.
The government has authorized an additional NIS 10m. to be spent on social services for the evacuees in the coming year, the spokesman said.
Rabinovitch said the additional social workers, though welcome, would not be enough. She also said the inexperience of many of the social workers hampered the teen's psychological recovery.
"[A lack of] experience is a very big problem," Ido admitted. However, he said, since social workers are employed by local districts, the ministry could not bring in more veteran staff. "But the social workers who are in charge at the Disengagement Authority are experienced, and they can help the younger ones," he said.
That response did not sit well with Cohen. "People are talking about ending their lives, and you're telling me it's too difficult to get the good people. That's crazy," he said. "These teens are our future and they are wonderful kids.
"It doesn't matter if you were for the expulsion or not. We [hurt] them and now we have to build them up again," he said.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post