Whether Israel embarks on unilateral moves or a negotiated settlement, the one road it cannot bypass is economic.
Analysis
By Rafael D. Frankel
GAZA CITY--The refrain is old already, but it bears repeating for those in Jerusalem, Washington, and anywhere else who would rather bury their heads in the sand and pretend otherwise: There are 1.3 million Palestinians holed up in the 360 sq. kilometer strip of coastal land called Gaza who are angry and destitute and becoming more so by the day.
Providing Gazans with the basics of health care and food will stave off a humanitarian catastrophe that the Israeli government says is in no one's interest. But preventing a further radicalization of these people - and probably their 2.4 million brothers and sisters in the West Bank - against Israel is another matter. That is the danger when you are perceived as the one responsible for making proud Arab men sell their wives' jewelry to pay electric bills, take their children to United Nations-run soup kitchens so that they do not go hungry, and block the funding for their jobs leaving them nothing to do all day but simmer in a rage and listen to Hamas-affiliated imams suggest how they channel that aggression.
The economic and political siege Israel and the international community have laid on the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority may also help to usher in a Palestinian civil war, though that remains less certain, since there are other root causes of the now daily and escalating interfactional violence in these streets.
What is certain, polls show, is that the siege on the PA has increased support for Hamas as the terrorists-cum- national leaders capitalize on Palestinian indignation (right or wrong, it is what they feel) that their elections alone are not approved of by the democratic world at large. It has also led to the very real prospect that the PA itself, not just the Hamas party that leads it, will fall by virtue of an inability to carry out the basic functions of government.
Israelis and Palestinians, not to mention Europe, the United States, and everyone else who is involved in the deadly Middle East chess game, can debate who is actually responsible for this situation - Hamas, by virtue of its repugnant stance toward Israel and its clear willingness, like Fatah before it, to use its own people as pawns in political brinkmanship, or Israel as the occupier and oppressor of legitimate Palestinian rights.
But from an Israeli standpoint, convincing itself and the international community that the former is the case is far less important than acting on the next question - "What are we going to do about it?" - for two reasons.
First, all those parties previously mentioned will never be able to agree on who is responsible.
The closing by the Palestinians of the former Gush Katif greenhouses illustrates this well. Is it Israel's fault they failed because Israel closed Karni for political purposes and the Palestinians could not ship out the produce?
Or is it the Palestinians' fault they failed because militants forced Israel to close Karni to protect its own people?
Every side in the political equation will have a different answer, and reconciling them all is moot because the greenhouse project did fail and now Israel must deal with the ramifications of that - 6,000 more Palestinians who will not have work come the end of this month and blame Israel for it.
Second, despite the desperate wishes of many Israelis of all political persuasions, the nearly 4 million Palestinians living within scant kilometers of the 7 million Israelis are not going anywhere.
Israel built a fence around Gaza and it is constructing one around the West Bank. Though an excellent deterrent for would-be suicide bombers, those fences will not absolve Israel of the responsibility for the Palestinian people under international law. Israelis may not have to see the tattered clothes of Palestinian children and hear the vitriolic words of hate directed at its citizens from many of their parents, but absent a final settlement, their growing numbers will continue to drag on the collective resources and consciousness of the Jewish state in perpetuity.
When Israel conquered the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, it inherited not a friendly, but a mostly docile population. Ever tightening restrictions placed upon the Palestinians throughout the nearly four decades since may, especially recently, limit the terror they have been and will be able to inflict upon Israel. But it is clear that punitive measures, far from making the Palestinians submit to Israeli will, may instead have served to push their society in more extreme directions.
The only possible exception to this would be a knock- out blow that Israel refuses to deliver, citing its own ethics even more than negative judgment from the international community which would surely follow.
ASSUMING THAT Israel refuses to resort to suppressive tactics akin to those employed by some of its neighboring regimes, there are two main directions Israeli leaders have tabled for pushing the state into its next phase of maturity.
The first path is that of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The name of this path has evolved from "disengagement" to "convergence" to "realignment" as the politics of the region have shifted and details of the plans have followed suit. However, those changes are at the tactical level.
From a strategic point of view, this overall philosophy has been called "unilateralism" because it sought to define a mode of operating free of the Palestinians. But "unilateralism" it is not, since even now there is coordination between Israel and the PA on providing services like electricity, water and telephone communication, and the operation of the Erez and Karni crossings here in Gaza. There is also extensive political coordination with the US and EU and it goes without saying that Israel would not have withdrawn from Gaza, nor will it evacuate settlements in the West Bank, without the nod from those powers.
A more accurate and honest name for this strategy is "conflict management."
This mode of operation is based on one overriding principle: that real peace and a final settlement of the issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians is not possible in the near future.
Supporters of the conflict management philosophy have various reasons for drawing this conclusion, but in essence they agree that Israel should hunker down for probably the next 20 years, steel itself for the attacks that will come, and wait for the day when the Palestinians are truly ready to embrace living side-by-side.
The tactics needed to implement this strategy include what Israel is engaged in today: the building of fences and walls; the economic and political siege of Hamas and perhaps the regime that follows; continued operations against the terrorist infrastructure in the Palestinian territories; and the (assumed) further separation of Israeli and Palestinian populations.
This strategy, concocted by former prime minister Ariel Sharon, has proven successful in reducing the horrific yet non- existentially threatening attacks Israelis became all to accustomed to during the second intifada.
But it has failed, and seems doomed toward further failure with the more important task of convincing the Palestinian population that violent resistance will get them nowhere. The rising support for Hamas and the dozens of potentially fatal attacks the IDF thwarts each week indicate as much.
Additionally, if the further radicalization and Islamization of the Palestinian people pushes them in the direction of al-Qaeda, which may already be operating in Gaza, Israel faces the specter of Palestinian terrorism transforming from the political to the purely nihilistic nature (it may be there to a degree already, but it can get worse) along the lines of what is now taking place in Iraq. In essence, the IDF may be able to stop 95 percent of suicide bombers, but the chances of large, possibly existentially threatening attacks on Israel from groups associated with Iran and the global jihad network could rise.
The second strategy, being forwarded by Defense Minister Amir Peretz, is simple. Talk to PA President Mahmoud Abbas now and try, try, try to reach a final status agreement.
The benefits of that strategy are as potentially enormous as are its risks.
On the one hand, if Olmert (or whoever was leading the talks) and Abbas could reach and implement an agreement where Barak and Arafat failed, the situation as it stands could vastly improve, even to the point of achieving peace.
On the other hand, even if an agreement were reached and approved by a Palestinian referendum, trusting Hamas to disarm and live up to its obligations is a big roll of the dice and could leave Israel much more exposed to attacks than it is today.
There is also the very real possibility that were negotiations to fail again, the region could be thrown into the depths of a third intifada, the scope of which remains cloudy but nevertheless highly uninviting.
WHICHEVER PATH Israel chooses, it is on the streets of Gaza more than anywhere else that its success will be determined. For despite the damage they do and the headlines they grab, the terrorists, militants and firebrands are still outnumbered there and in the West Bank by the fathers and mothers whose first order of business - no matter whom they voted for - is putting bread on the table for their families.
When asked what they were doing with the loans the Bank of Palestine was giving to PA civil servants last week, the policemen and preventative security officers gave a unanimous first answer: buying food. The same simple goal was in the minds of the 13 Palestinian Border Police found hiding in a construction site in Har Homa Monday night. "I just need the work to help my family," Ali Salam, 23, said during his brief, road-side detention.
"The key to the success of anything that Israel wants to push forward in terms of its own interests with the Palestinians and the region is the issue of long-term economic viability of the Palestinian entity," said Deborah Housen-Couriel, a senior analyst with the Re'ut think tank in Tel Aviv.
That was the long-term premise Israel accepted when it signed on to the Agreement on Movement and Access brokered by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in November. But as kassams continued to reign down on the southern cities from Gaza, the government reneged on its promise to provide safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank and keep the Karni crossing open.
While the April attack and other threats on Karni showed, said Housen-Couriel, that one should never underestimate the Palestinians' penchant for shooting themselves in the foot, Israel's response to them showed glaring deficiencies in its own strategic thinking.
"Never underestimate either the Israeli ability not to see the win-win [scenarios with the Palestinians] and the end game," she said.
"You can start off from the point of saying 'It's their fault and the closures were justified,' but why not leverage the opportunity and say 'There is another way to do this'?"
That road less traveled, Housen-Couriel said, begins with Israel and the international community investing in the Palestinian economy - not by continuing to fund the PA and projects that, though well-intentioned, encourage Palestinian dependency on foreign actors, but betting on private Palestinians with solid business ideas.
Under this strategy, which a growing number of experts are saying is a necessity if either political track is to succeed, forms of microcredit would be extended from Israel to Palestinian entrepreneurs. Private partnerships would be sought out which tie the two economies together, and ideally, Jordan and Egypt as well. There is particular promise, Housen-Couriel said, in the IT area given the Palestinians' status as one of the most internet-savvy Arab populations, and the fact that it does not necessarily depend on freedom of movement.
Such enterprising has the added benefit of cutting down on Palestinian corruption no matter what party is in power by passing less money through the government.
During his time in the region, former Quartet special envoy James Wolfensohn focused many efforts on this subject, coordinating with the World Bank on the means to achieve exactly this kind of mutually beneficial relationship between Israelis and Palestinians. Fed up with the lack of movement on these issues, and increasingly feeling his time was being wasted, Wolfensohn quit the Middle East, but the work is ready to be implemented.
The alternative - Israel's continued insistence that political progress be followed only far down the road by economic benefits - means the ideas of both Olmert and Peretz may meet the same fate as the fruit produced in the doomed Gaza greenhouses. They will whither on the vine.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Friday, May 26, 2006
Gaza after Israel
Former Jewish settlements in Gush Katif are being used by Palestinians for very different purposes
By Rafael D. Frankel
NEVEH DEKALIM, GAZA STRIP--Between two hollowed-out concrete structures in the back courtyard lies a concrete beam propped up from the ground on one side by a sidewalk curb. The Hebrew words "Bruchim Haba'im" (welcome) painted across its narrow width and flanked by drawings of butterflies pay testament to days only eight months past.
But aside from this lone artifact, much different images make the years of Jewish life here feel like faint echoes which resound with but a whisper off the unforgiving sand dunes Israelis once called home.
Inside the hallways, posters of the Abu Rish Brigades "martyr" Muhammad Abdel Hadi holding an AK-47 with bullet straps slung around his neck cling to the walls. Next to his likeness and Koranic verses bearing tribute to him is a Naqba ("the disaster," as Palestinians call the creation of the State of Israel) photo exhibit of destitute Palestinians made refugees by the War of Independence.
And above every doorway, on the monitor covers in the computer room and on the solution labels in the chemistry lab the curves of Arabic letters testify to the new school and its new occupants who before last September could have been shot if they showed up to the gate for just a peek inside.
Welcome to Al-Aksa University's Neveh Dekalim campus, where 600 male students have been taking classes since February in the very same, albeit renovated building once used for the largest boys' school for Gush Katif settlers.
Of course it is special to study here, said Sallam Muhammad Abu Abakar, 21, a psychology student. "We consider it an achievement of the Palestinian liberation and it [gives us] a lot of satisfaction."
While militant groups have vied over the vacated Jewish land in Gaza since Israel's withdrawal, sometimes turning the former settlements into terrorist training camps, Al-Aksa has staked out perhaps the most valuable real estate Gush Katif had to offer.
With special permission from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Al-Aksa laid claim to the entire central square of Neveh Dekalim and more in the first few days after Israel withdrew from here last September. Despite attempts by the militants to take it over, the university held its ground by first relying on certain militias to protect its holdings and later by hiring private security.
Though the history of Gush Katif is now ingrained in the mind of nearly every Israeli, the vast majority of Palestinian students questioned on the subject did not know what these buildings were before they started studying here, beyond their general Jewish origins.
When representatives of the university first went through the main school building, they found some Hebrew books, though what kind they had no clue. What became of the books? Looters burned them, said University Vice President for Public Relations Nasser Abu Il Ata.
Despite the funding crisis currently besetting the PA, the old Neveh Dekalim municipal building, supermarket, shop stalls and the gymnasium are all under renovation in anticipation of the more than 7,000 male and female students who are slated to begin studying here come September.
"Great amounts of money" are being spent on the project, Il Ata said, refusing to quote hard numbers.
Al-Aksa's investments are easy to see. Brand new computer and science labs, complete with new desktop CPUs and Bunsen burners respectively, await next semester's students on the second floor of the main building.
It is all part of what was to be a major PA strategy of using the former settlement lands for development projects. Large apartment buildings, civic centers and schools were all to be built on the land evacuated by the Gush Katif settlers. But due to in- fighting, the often closed crossings to Israel and financial problems brought about by Fatah's corruption and abysmal management of the PA budget - and now the economic siege of Hamas - this is the only project to get off the ground.
"After Israel withdrew, we heard Gaza would be nice like Dubai, but none of those promises have been achieved," said Adhem Abu Hattab, the supervisor of the English and multimedia lab. "We believe that we should build up the place and take advantage of using what was left to the Palestinian people. This is the first major PA project since the [Israeli] withdrawal and we don't have many resources."
THERE ARE grand plans for Al-Aksa beyond the current construction.
In his third floor office, Neveh Dekalim Campus Director Sayez Abu Samal has a map on his wall which delineates the three different stages of planned construction for the campus which will eventually extend over 165 dunams in the former settlement.
How far and how fast the expansion progresses depends on many factors - available budget, political climate, co- learning programs with other universities - all of which are dependent on the cycles of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one way or another.
"There is a lot of ambiguity about the future," Samal said. "It will be difficult, but we have no intention of closing the university."
The pressing question for Al-Aksa now is where it will get its funding for the fall semester. Al-Aksa is a public university, and the economic siege laid on the Hamas government is taking its toll.
Like all PA civil servants, the faculty and staff of Al-Aksa has not been paid for the last three months. Other projects, such as a $600,000 central library which was to be funded by USAID, are on hold.
A donation of $1.5 million from the United Arab Emirates and grants of $200 each for 2,000 students from Saudi Arabia are being blocked because international financial institutions are afraid of being prosecuted by the United States under American laws which forbid funding terrorist groups.
So far, the university has made do with the fees it collects from its 10,600 students enrolled at three campuses, here, in Khan Yunis and Gaza City. Al-Aksa's cost of $12 per credit hour is the cheapest in the Palestinian territories, but it has paid the minimal fees necessary to keep things running through the end of July.
Such may not be the case come September, however, when many students will not be able to pay their tuition fees unless Israel and/or the international community choose to reinstate the funding which made its way to the PA Ministry of Education until Hamas took control of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
"There were many faults in the past government and now the new government doesn't take the practical steps in dealing with the [economic] crisis," Samal said, moving his fingers methodically through his band of Muslim prayer beads. "We must deal with the real situation the Palestinians live in. [Hamas] must be realistic."
Though disagreements exist among the student body about the political situation vis--vis Israel, it is the interfactional Palestinian tensions that have occasionally caused problems here.
Al-Aksa has a diverse student body, "diverse" meaning it contains members of all the Palestinian factions.
Unlike their leaders who ran for seats in the PLC, Fatah supporters won the student body elections here, thus granting them the right to affix their yellow flags at regular intervals around school grounds.
While that has mildly annoyed Hamas supporters like Walid Shawah, 20, a sociology major, it is the violent clashes which have broken out on the streets of Khan Yunis and Gaza City involving the heavily armed militias of Fatah and Hamas which have stoked tensions here.
"There have been some fistfights," said the psychology student, Abu Abakar, who supports Fatah. "Yes, I've been in one or two of them."
Mostly though, the students say they get along just fine, and aside from a collective sense of triumph that takes many questions to get to, they say what their school once was is much less important than what it is and could become.
"It was very nice when the Jews were here," said Abakar, one of the only students who ever saw Neveh Dekalim in its previous incarnation.
He used to sell clothes with his father here before the outbreak of the second intifada. "We hope it can be even better."
ONE KILOMETER to the west is the beach of Shirat Ha- Yam, known to any Israeli who ever ventured down here as the nicest beach in the whole country. Today it is as pristine and soothing as it ever was; or, more importantly now, as it was in the days before the second intifada, when residents of Khan Yunis would flock to its shores with regularity.
In the absence of IDF restrictions in place for years which limited their movement within Gaza, Palestinians are now coming back.
"Two hours after the withdrawal, we were here," said Salim Salim, 39, on a recent, cloudless day a few hours before sunset. Before disengagement, he hadn't seen the beach he grew up on as a child for five years, nor been to any beach in Gaza for two years.
But rather than just basking in the sun's glow on the reclaimed Gaza sands, entrepreneurs from Khan Yunis have opened beachfront restaurants and cafes, using partially renovated settler homes - here they were mysteriously left standing, albeit gutted - as kitchens. There is one catch: you have to have the right connections to secure the property.
When Israel left here, the Khan Yunis municipality, then under Fatah control, granted the concession for this beach real estate to one man, the cafe owners said. That man, whom they would not mention by name, is apparently a high-ranking Fatah official, since everyone who got their hands on the Shirat Ha-Yam property since disengagement was involved in the Palestinian security forces which are still under PA President Mahmoud Abbas's control.
One of them is Sabrij Al-Kedra, 48, the leader of the al-Aksa military brigades for Khan Yunis, who has opened up the Ibrahim Coffee Shop, into which he poured $15,000 to build tents, covered outdoor seating and even a mini Ferris wheel for children.
"In the last five years there was not any kind of amusement in this area," Al-Kedra said, explaining why he made the expensive (by Gaza standards) investment.
The deal Al-Kedra has worked out with the nameless Fatah official has him forking over 40 percent of his profits. He is content with that, he says.
Business was slow in his first week. The combination of dozens of other coffee shops and the financial crisis in Gaza have not made for a fast start out of the gate. But Al-Kedra, who says the IDF killed his son in a missile attack and twice tried to kill him, remains hopeful that the end of the school semester and the beginning of summer will turn things around, even if the Hamas government cannot.
"I am so optimistic in God, not the people," he said. "There are a lot of plans to make this a tourist area since this is the most beautiful beach in Gaza. And I can take care of foreign tourists' security if they can come here."
Al-Kedra is quick to point out that while foreigners are welcome, Israelis are most certainly not.
While a flock of foreign tourists does not appear to be around the bend, there was Salim, who came with one of his two wives and five of nine children to Ibrahim's for some coffee and a puff on the nargileh, despite being out of work.
"I come once, twice a week with my family and friends," said Salim, who is living off of savings he made as a contractor. "Even now, with the situation being bad, there are a lot of people here on Fridays."
Salim is not all happy with the cafe takeover of the beach, though. The pay-for-access arrangement now in place does not sit entirely well with the man who once called this his backyard and would like to do so again.
"This is the problem now, anyone who wants to go to the beach can't because all the beach is rented by coffee shops." More accurately, they can go. But if they want to come to this beach, they have to pay.
Just a bit farther north, still well within the boundaries of what was Gush Katif, capitalism hasn't yet become king.
With the sun now just an hour above the horizon, dozens of children play in the gentle surf under the watchful gaze of Ahmad Dana, 37, one of the five lifeguards assigned duty in the one- kilometer stretch of the Khan Yunis municipality beaches.
A life guard since 1992, he also had not seen this beach since late 2000.
"The people were coming here even in the winter," Dana said. "But many more now, thousands on the weekends even though there are no salaries and it is examination time for students."
Dana, wearing a fluorescent green Barcelona football jersey, blows his whistle, signaling to a couple of teenagers to stay out of the big waves about 15 meters off- shore.
"There's something special about this beach," Dana said. "There is not another place that is so clean, so pure."
At least some things never change.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
NEVEH DEKALIM, GAZA STRIP--Between two hollowed-out concrete structures in the back courtyard lies a concrete beam propped up from the ground on one side by a sidewalk curb. The Hebrew words "Bruchim Haba'im" (welcome) painted across its narrow width and flanked by drawings of butterflies pay testament to days only eight months past.
But aside from this lone artifact, much different images make the years of Jewish life here feel like faint echoes which resound with but a whisper off the unforgiving sand dunes Israelis once called home.
Inside the hallways, posters of the Abu Rish Brigades "martyr" Muhammad Abdel Hadi holding an AK-47 with bullet straps slung around his neck cling to the walls. Next to his likeness and Koranic verses bearing tribute to him is a Naqba ("the disaster," as Palestinians call the creation of the State of Israel) photo exhibit of destitute Palestinians made refugees by the War of Independence.
And above every doorway, on the monitor covers in the computer room and on the solution labels in the chemistry lab the curves of Arabic letters testify to the new school and its new occupants who before last September could have been shot if they showed up to the gate for just a peek inside.
Welcome to Al-Aksa University's Neveh Dekalim campus, where 600 male students have been taking classes since February in the very same, albeit renovated building once used for the largest boys' school for Gush Katif settlers.
Of course it is special to study here, said Sallam Muhammad Abu Abakar, 21, a psychology student. "We consider it an achievement of the Palestinian liberation and it [gives us] a lot of satisfaction."
While militant groups have vied over the vacated Jewish land in Gaza since Israel's withdrawal, sometimes turning the former settlements into terrorist training camps, Al-Aksa has staked out perhaps the most valuable real estate Gush Katif had to offer.
With special permission from Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Al-Aksa laid claim to the entire central square of Neveh Dekalim and more in the first few days after Israel withdrew from here last September. Despite attempts by the militants to take it over, the university held its ground by first relying on certain militias to protect its holdings and later by hiring private security.
Though the history of Gush Katif is now ingrained in the mind of nearly every Israeli, the vast majority of Palestinian students questioned on the subject did not know what these buildings were before they started studying here, beyond their general Jewish origins.
When representatives of the university first went through the main school building, they found some Hebrew books, though what kind they had no clue. What became of the books? Looters burned them, said University Vice President for Public Relations Nasser Abu Il Ata.
Despite the funding crisis currently besetting the PA, the old Neveh Dekalim municipal building, supermarket, shop stalls and the gymnasium are all under renovation in anticipation of the more than 7,000 male and female students who are slated to begin studying here come September.
"Great amounts of money" are being spent on the project, Il Ata said, refusing to quote hard numbers.
Al-Aksa's investments are easy to see. Brand new computer and science labs, complete with new desktop CPUs and Bunsen burners respectively, await next semester's students on the second floor of the main building.
It is all part of what was to be a major PA strategy of using the former settlement lands for development projects. Large apartment buildings, civic centers and schools were all to be built on the land evacuated by the Gush Katif settlers. But due to in- fighting, the often closed crossings to Israel and financial problems brought about by Fatah's corruption and abysmal management of the PA budget - and now the economic siege of Hamas - this is the only project to get off the ground.
"After Israel withdrew, we heard Gaza would be nice like Dubai, but none of those promises have been achieved," said Adhem Abu Hattab, the supervisor of the English and multimedia lab. "We believe that we should build up the place and take advantage of using what was left to the Palestinian people. This is the first major PA project since the [Israeli] withdrawal and we don't have many resources."
THERE ARE grand plans for Al-Aksa beyond the current construction.
In his third floor office, Neveh Dekalim Campus Director Sayez Abu Samal has a map on his wall which delineates the three different stages of planned construction for the campus which will eventually extend over 165 dunams in the former settlement.
How far and how fast the expansion progresses depends on many factors - available budget, political climate, co- learning programs with other universities - all of which are dependent on the cycles of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one way or another.
"There is a lot of ambiguity about the future," Samal said. "It will be difficult, but we have no intention of closing the university."
The pressing question for Al-Aksa now is where it will get its funding for the fall semester. Al-Aksa is a public university, and the economic siege laid on the Hamas government is taking its toll.
Like all PA civil servants, the faculty and staff of Al-Aksa has not been paid for the last three months. Other projects, such as a $600,000 central library which was to be funded by USAID, are on hold.
A donation of $1.5 million from the United Arab Emirates and grants of $200 each for 2,000 students from Saudi Arabia are being blocked because international financial institutions are afraid of being prosecuted by the United States under American laws which forbid funding terrorist groups.
So far, the university has made do with the fees it collects from its 10,600 students enrolled at three campuses, here, in Khan Yunis and Gaza City. Al-Aksa's cost of $12 per credit hour is the cheapest in the Palestinian territories, but it has paid the minimal fees necessary to keep things running through the end of July.
Such may not be the case come September, however, when many students will not be able to pay their tuition fees unless Israel and/or the international community choose to reinstate the funding which made its way to the PA Ministry of Education until Hamas took control of the Palestinian Legislative Council.
"There were many faults in the past government and now the new government doesn't take the practical steps in dealing with the [economic] crisis," Samal said, moving his fingers methodically through his band of Muslim prayer beads. "We must deal with the real situation the Palestinians live in. [Hamas] must be realistic."
Though disagreements exist among the student body about the political situation vis--vis Israel, it is the interfactional Palestinian tensions that have occasionally caused problems here.
Al-Aksa has a diverse student body, "diverse" meaning it contains members of all the Palestinian factions.
Unlike their leaders who ran for seats in the PLC, Fatah supporters won the student body elections here, thus granting them the right to affix their yellow flags at regular intervals around school grounds.
While that has mildly annoyed Hamas supporters like Walid Shawah, 20, a sociology major, it is the violent clashes which have broken out on the streets of Khan Yunis and Gaza City involving the heavily armed militias of Fatah and Hamas which have stoked tensions here.
"There have been some fistfights," said the psychology student, Abu Abakar, who supports Fatah. "Yes, I've been in one or two of them."
Mostly though, the students say they get along just fine, and aside from a collective sense of triumph that takes many questions to get to, they say what their school once was is much less important than what it is and could become.
"It was very nice when the Jews were here," said Abakar, one of the only students who ever saw Neveh Dekalim in its previous incarnation.
He used to sell clothes with his father here before the outbreak of the second intifada. "We hope it can be even better."
ONE KILOMETER to the west is the beach of Shirat Ha- Yam, known to any Israeli who ever ventured down here as the nicest beach in the whole country. Today it is as pristine and soothing as it ever was; or, more importantly now, as it was in the days before the second intifada, when residents of Khan Yunis would flock to its shores with regularity.
In the absence of IDF restrictions in place for years which limited their movement within Gaza, Palestinians are now coming back.
"Two hours after the withdrawal, we were here," said Salim Salim, 39, on a recent, cloudless day a few hours before sunset. Before disengagement, he hadn't seen the beach he grew up on as a child for five years, nor been to any beach in Gaza for two years.
But rather than just basking in the sun's glow on the reclaimed Gaza sands, entrepreneurs from Khan Yunis have opened beachfront restaurants and cafes, using partially renovated settler homes - here they were mysteriously left standing, albeit gutted - as kitchens. There is one catch: you have to have the right connections to secure the property.
When Israel left here, the Khan Yunis municipality, then under Fatah control, granted the concession for this beach real estate to one man, the cafe owners said. That man, whom they would not mention by name, is apparently a high-ranking Fatah official, since everyone who got their hands on the Shirat Ha-Yam property since disengagement was involved in the Palestinian security forces which are still under PA President Mahmoud Abbas's control.
One of them is Sabrij Al-Kedra, 48, the leader of the al-Aksa military brigades for Khan Yunis, who has opened up the Ibrahim Coffee Shop, into which he poured $15,000 to build tents, covered outdoor seating and even a mini Ferris wheel for children.
"In the last five years there was not any kind of amusement in this area," Al-Kedra said, explaining why he made the expensive (by Gaza standards) investment.
The deal Al-Kedra has worked out with the nameless Fatah official has him forking over 40 percent of his profits. He is content with that, he says.
Business was slow in his first week. The combination of dozens of other coffee shops and the financial crisis in Gaza have not made for a fast start out of the gate. But Al-Kedra, who says the IDF killed his son in a missile attack and twice tried to kill him, remains hopeful that the end of the school semester and the beginning of summer will turn things around, even if the Hamas government cannot.
"I am so optimistic in God, not the people," he said. "There are a lot of plans to make this a tourist area since this is the most beautiful beach in Gaza. And I can take care of foreign tourists' security if they can come here."
Al-Kedra is quick to point out that while foreigners are welcome, Israelis are most certainly not.
While a flock of foreign tourists does not appear to be around the bend, there was Salim, who came with one of his two wives and five of nine children to Ibrahim's for some coffee and a puff on the nargileh, despite being out of work.
"I come once, twice a week with my family and friends," said Salim, who is living off of savings he made as a contractor. "Even now, with the situation being bad, there are a lot of people here on Fridays."
Salim is not all happy with the cafe takeover of the beach, though. The pay-for-access arrangement now in place does not sit entirely well with the man who once called this his backyard and would like to do so again.
"This is the problem now, anyone who wants to go to the beach can't because all the beach is rented by coffee shops." More accurately, they can go. But if they want to come to this beach, they have to pay.
Just a bit farther north, still well within the boundaries of what was Gush Katif, capitalism hasn't yet become king.
With the sun now just an hour above the horizon, dozens of children play in the gentle surf under the watchful gaze of Ahmad Dana, 37, one of the five lifeguards assigned duty in the one- kilometer stretch of the Khan Yunis municipality beaches.
A life guard since 1992, he also had not seen this beach since late 2000.
"The people were coming here even in the winter," Dana said. "But many more now, thousands on the weekends even though there are no salaries and it is examination time for students."
Dana, wearing a fluorescent green Barcelona football jersey, blows his whistle, signaling to a couple of teenagers to stay out of the big waves about 15 meters off- shore.
"There's something special about this beach," Dana said. "There is not another place that is so clean, so pure."
At least some things never change.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
In Gaza, Palestinians see fruits of labor die
Greenhouses promised a key source of income
By Rafael D. Frankel, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
NETZER HAZANI, Gaza Strip — In the stifling heat of a former Israeli greenhouse where he had worked for the past six months, Hattem Samar uprooted a robust pepper plant in preparation for shutting down this once-promising enterprise—possibly for good.
‘‘Everyone here feels awful,’’ said Samar, 27, shaking sand from the peppers’
roots. ‘‘If it ends like this, it will be really terrible.’’
For Palestinians, the greenhouses were to be the shining light of a new Gaza free of Israel’s hand. Instead, they are another example of how even the best intentions can be derailed by a seemingly relentless conflict.
In the final days of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last August, a group of American philanthropists — mostly Jews — bought the greenhouses scattered throughout the former Jewish towns from the departing settlers for $14 million. They donated the greenhouses and the 790 acres of sand dunes the settlers had turned into fertile farm land to the 1.3 million Palestinians of Gaza.
In what was billed as a national rehabilitation project, the publicly owned Palestinian Economic Development Corp., or PEDC, poured $20 million into renovating the greenhouses. They hired 6,000 workers from around Gaza, more than twice the number the Jewish farmers employed during their tenure here.
In addition to providing needed jobs for Gaza’s moribund economy, the greenhouses brought potential for high revenue streams. Bassil Jabir, the director of the PEDC, estimated that exports from the greenhouse produce should have brought in around $16 million this growing season, which runs from November to May, and eventually as much as $50 million per year.
Their success in growing the produce was unmitigated. Despite widespread looting after the Israeli Army’s withdrawal in September, occasional attacks from Palestinian militant groups seeking to claim territory, and the challenge of managing their own crops for the first time, the Palestinians produced more than 12,000 tons this season of what one Israeli exporter who tested the fruit and vegetables called ‘‘very high-quality’’ produce.
But during the height of the harvest, from January until now, Israel frequently closed the main cargo crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip because of what it said were continuous security threats from Palestinian terrorists. In April, for example, two cars of gunmen attacked the Karni-crossing terminal before they were thwarted by Palestinian security forces.
The result of Karni’s closure, Jabir said, is that only 1,500 tons of produce made it out of Gaza during this season.
‘‘We understand the importance of Karni, but unfortunately terrorists are trying to use the crossing to attack the Israeli people and in the end they are hurting their own people,’’ said a spokesman for Israel’s Civil Administration, which oversees Israeli activities in the Palestinian Territories. ‘‘We are trying our best to keep Karni open, but we cannot do that at the expense of our people there.’’
Rather than exporting the produce to Europe, as was the plan, the Palestinians were forced to give away some of the cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, and strawberries to charity groups.
Most, however, was dumped in the surrounding sand dunes. (The PEDC made good on a pledge not to sell their produce in the Gaza markets, undercutting other growers here.)
‘‘All we needed was a crossing or a port we controlled by ourselves, and we could have sold all this to the world and brought in so much money,’’ said Tesir Farraj, 47, a father of 10 from Gaza City who worked in the greenhouses here.
‘‘I blame everyone and condemn everyone who prevented me from making this business,’’ Jabir said.
The fate of the greenhouses is unclear. With a first season revenue of less than $1 million, when at least $16 million was anticipated, the PEDC has no money to pay its workers for April and May and recently sent a letter to all the remaining farmers and engineers that the project will be terminated at the end of May.
Palestinians, though, were not the only losers in the greenhouse endeavor.
After meeting Jabir in November, Avi Kadan, the managing director of the Israeli export firm Adafresh, agreed to send the first season of fruits and vegetables produced by the PEDC to Europe. Although Adafresh’s financial deficit amounted to a relatively small amount of $118,000 spent on unused packaging, Kadan bemoaned the loss of millions of dollars for his company not to mention the hundreds of lost hours on the project.
‘‘I blame myself that I’m living here [in Israel],’’ Kadan said, when asked who he thought was at fault for the failure of the project. ‘‘It’s very difficult to make regular, normal business between two countries that are at war with each other.’’
According to Jabir, the project is finished unless circumstances change drastically.
Kadan is willing to try again next season despite the ‘‘disaster’’ of this one. ‘‘Why not? I plan to help the people there, I want to work with them,’’ Kadan said. ‘‘At the end of the day, I think I’ll succeed.’’
Meanwhile, Palestinian workers who have not already left their work at the greenhouses are closing up shop for the season, if not for good.
‘‘We spent all day and night here building this,’’ said Eid Siam, 28, the chief engineer for the 150 acres of greenhouses in this former Jewish settlement. He added that in the first week after the Israelis left Gaza, he and many of the workers slept here. ‘‘We were so tired, but we kept on going because we wanted the project to succeed.’’
But more disheartening, said Hattem Samar, taking a break from pulling out the pepper plants, is the stark reality the workers now face of finding employment in Gaza’s swiftly contracting economy.
‘‘No one knows what will happen, or what we’ll do,’’ Samar said, adding that he was the only one of eight people in his home who had work. ‘‘The situation is bad for everyone.’’
With those words, he turned and continued destroying the fruits of his labor.
©2006 The Boston Globe
By Rafael D. Frankel, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
NETZER HAZANI, Gaza Strip — In the stifling heat of a former Israeli greenhouse where he had worked for the past six months, Hattem Samar uprooted a robust pepper plant in preparation for shutting down this once-promising enterprise—possibly for good.
‘‘Everyone here feels awful,’’ said Samar, 27, shaking sand from the peppers’
roots. ‘‘If it ends like this, it will be really terrible.’’
For Palestinians, the greenhouses were to be the shining light of a new Gaza free of Israel’s hand. Instead, they are another example of how even the best intentions can be derailed by a seemingly relentless conflict.
In the final days of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip last August, a group of American philanthropists — mostly Jews — bought the greenhouses scattered throughout the former Jewish towns from the departing settlers for $14 million. They donated the greenhouses and the 790 acres of sand dunes the settlers had turned into fertile farm land to the 1.3 million Palestinians of Gaza.
In what was billed as a national rehabilitation project, the publicly owned Palestinian Economic Development Corp., or PEDC, poured $20 million into renovating the greenhouses. They hired 6,000 workers from around Gaza, more than twice the number the Jewish farmers employed during their tenure here.
In addition to providing needed jobs for Gaza’s moribund economy, the greenhouses brought potential for high revenue streams. Bassil Jabir, the director of the PEDC, estimated that exports from the greenhouse produce should have brought in around $16 million this growing season, which runs from November to May, and eventually as much as $50 million per year.
Their success in growing the produce was unmitigated. Despite widespread looting after the Israeli Army’s withdrawal in September, occasional attacks from Palestinian militant groups seeking to claim territory, and the challenge of managing their own crops for the first time, the Palestinians produced more than 12,000 tons this season of what one Israeli exporter who tested the fruit and vegetables called ‘‘very high-quality’’ produce.
But during the height of the harvest, from January until now, Israel frequently closed the main cargo crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip because of what it said were continuous security threats from Palestinian terrorists. In April, for example, two cars of gunmen attacked the Karni-crossing terminal before they were thwarted by Palestinian security forces.
The result of Karni’s closure, Jabir said, is that only 1,500 tons of produce made it out of Gaza during this season.
‘‘We understand the importance of Karni, but unfortunately terrorists are trying to use the crossing to attack the Israeli people and in the end they are hurting their own people,’’ said a spokesman for Israel’s Civil Administration, which oversees Israeli activities in the Palestinian Territories. ‘‘We are trying our best to keep Karni open, but we cannot do that at the expense of our people there.’’
Rather than exporting the produce to Europe, as was the plan, the Palestinians were forced to give away some of the cherry tomatoes, sweet peppers, hot peppers, and strawberries to charity groups.
Most, however, was dumped in the surrounding sand dunes. (The PEDC made good on a pledge not to sell their produce in the Gaza markets, undercutting other growers here.)
‘‘All we needed was a crossing or a port we controlled by ourselves, and we could have sold all this to the world and brought in so much money,’’ said Tesir Farraj, 47, a father of 10 from Gaza City who worked in the greenhouses here.
‘‘I blame everyone and condemn everyone who prevented me from making this business,’’ Jabir said.
The fate of the greenhouses is unclear. With a first season revenue of less than $1 million, when at least $16 million was anticipated, the PEDC has no money to pay its workers for April and May and recently sent a letter to all the remaining farmers and engineers that the project will be terminated at the end of May.
Palestinians, though, were not the only losers in the greenhouse endeavor.
After meeting Jabir in November, Avi Kadan, the managing director of the Israeli export firm Adafresh, agreed to send the first season of fruits and vegetables produced by the PEDC to Europe. Although Adafresh’s financial deficit amounted to a relatively small amount of $118,000 spent on unused packaging, Kadan bemoaned the loss of millions of dollars for his company not to mention the hundreds of lost hours on the project.
‘‘I blame myself that I’m living here [in Israel],’’ Kadan said, when asked who he thought was at fault for the failure of the project. ‘‘It’s very difficult to make regular, normal business between two countries that are at war with each other.’’
According to Jabir, the project is finished unless circumstances change drastically.
Kadan is willing to try again next season despite the ‘‘disaster’’ of this one. ‘‘Why not? I plan to help the people there, I want to work with them,’’ Kadan said. ‘‘At the end of the day, I think I’ll succeed.’’
Meanwhile, Palestinian workers who have not already left their work at the greenhouses are closing up shop for the season, if not for good.
‘‘We spent all day and night here building this,’’ said Eid Siam, 28, the chief engineer for the 150 acres of greenhouses in this former Jewish settlement. He added that in the first week after the Israelis left Gaza, he and many of the workers slept here. ‘‘We were so tired, but we kept on going because we wanted the project to succeed.’’
But more disheartening, said Hattem Samar, taking a break from pulling out the pepper plants, is the stark reality the workers now face of finding employment in Gaza’s swiftly contracting economy.
‘‘No one knows what will happen, or what we’ll do,’’ Samar said, adding that he was the only one of eight people in his home who had work. ‘‘The situation is bad for everyone.’’
With those words, he turned and continued destroying the fruits of his labor.
©2006 The Boston Globe
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Hamas expects aid money to be restored soon
Major bank begins granting loans to PA civil servants
By Rafael D. Frankel
GAZA CITY - As Palestinians queued up at the doors of Palestine National Bank branches across the Gaza Strip late last week to take advantage of loan offers, high-ranking Hamas officials expressed confidence that international aid money would soon begin flowing again to the cash-starved Palestinian Authority.
PA Cabinet Secretary Gazi Hammed of Hamas told The Jerusalem Post in an interview in the prime minister's office here over the weekend that the resumption of assistance would come without any capitulation by Hamas with regard to the three conditions set by the international community: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by previously signed international agreements.
"Sooner or later, we will pay their salaries," Hammed said, referring to the PA's employees. "But we will not sell our policies for money."
That confidence comes from poll numbers, which show a strengthening in Palestinians' support for Hamas as the cutoff by Western donors continues, as well as the belief that Europe's demand to fund certain sectors of the PA signals a turning point in the continent's stance toward the ruling Palestinian party.
"People in Europe can feel that this government is strong and won't surrender," Hammed said. "People feel that this government is not guilty, and we will soon find a solution."
When asked how Hamas would pay the salaries of the 162,000 PA civil servants if the aid did not resume in full, Hammed said the problem was not finding money, but finding ways to get it to PA bank accounts.
The US has effectively blocked attempts by Arab countries to fund Hamas by threatening to prosecute any financial institution that transfers money to the PA under US anti-terror laws.
"The US believes they are the God of the world and they must punish our people," Hammed said.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was detained by forces loyal to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at the Rafah crossing after he attempted to smuggle 639,000 in cash into Gaza from Egypt.
Abu Zuhri was released after he surrendered the funds to Abbas's forces, which control all of Gaza's entry and exit points.
During the interview, the cabinet secretary, who taught himself English while in Israeli jails, reiterated that Hamas was prepared to talk with the European Union and the US without preconditions. But he criticized the international community for taking Israel's side.
"We can deal positively with the international community, but if they want to deal on the basis of preconditions, no. We will not recognize Israel and succumb to blackmail," Hammed said.
"If the [international community] wants to sit with us and talk then we can explain things together," he said. "At the moment, they impose pressure on Hamas all the time, but they let Israel free."
Meanwhile, PA employees crowded tellers at the Palestine National Bank on Thursday from the minute it opened, to take out loans the bank had said it would issue clients.
The bank was giving out as much as NIS 1,000 in cash, to be deducted from the next salary check of its more than 30,000 account holders who work for the PA, said Hadel al- Haleli, the bank's public relations manger.
On Wednesday alone, the bank loaned more than NIS 2 million.
Dressed in olive green fatigues, Na'el Bakir, 39, a member of the PA National Security Force for seven years, walked out of the bank with NIS 500 in one hand and his six-year-old son Muhammad clinging to the other.
Since he stopped receiving his NIS 1,750 monthly wages in February, Bakir has supported his family by selling his wife's jewelry and accepting gifts from friends. The NIS 500 loan would pay for food and the electric and gas bills. He said the money would only last around one week.
"The situation was never this bad when the brothers from Fatah were in charge," Bakir said. "The government must negotiate with Israel and recognize Israel. It is [the government's] responsibility we are in this situation."
Bakir said that if it continued to fail to pay salaries, Abbas should dismiss the Hamas-led government.
"Please tell the international community to be on the side of the Palestinians," he said. "We're asking them to give us a chance and give us salaries. We believe in peace. Maybe Hamas will change, and anyway they did not get the support from all of Palestinian society."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
GAZA CITY - As Palestinians queued up at the doors of Palestine National Bank branches across the Gaza Strip late last week to take advantage of loan offers, high-ranking Hamas officials expressed confidence that international aid money would soon begin flowing again to the cash-starved Palestinian Authority.
PA Cabinet Secretary Gazi Hammed of Hamas told The Jerusalem Post in an interview in the prime minister's office here over the weekend that the resumption of assistance would come without any capitulation by Hamas with regard to the three conditions set by the international community: recognizing Israel, renouncing violence, and abiding by previously signed international agreements.
"Sooner or later, we will pay their salaries," Hammed said, referring to the PA's employees. "But we will not sell our policies for money."
That confidence comes from poll numbers, which show a strengthening in Palestinians' support for Hamas as the cutoff by Western donors continues, as well as the belief that Europe's demand to fund certain sectors of the PA signals a turning point in the continent's stance toward the ruling Palestinian party.
"People in Europe can feel that this government is strong and won't surrender," Hammed said. "People feel that this government is not guilty, and we will soon find a solution."
When asked how Hamas would pay the salaries of the 162,000 PA civil servants if the aid did not resume in full, Hammed said the problem was not finding money, but finding ways to get it to PA bank accounts.
The US has effectively blocked attempts by Arab countries to fund Hamas by threatening to prosecute any financial institution that transfers money to the PA under US anti-terror laws.
"The US believes they are the God of the world and they must punish our people," Hammed said.
Meanwhile, on Friday, Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri was detained by forces loyal to PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas at the Rafah crossing after he attempted to smuggle 639,000 in cash into Gaza from Egypt.
Abu Zuhri was released after he surrendered the funds to Abbas's forces, which control all of Gaza's entry and exit points.
During the interview, the cabinet secretary, who taught himself English while in Israeli jails, reiterated that Hamas was prepared to talk with the European Union and the US without preconditions. But he criticized the international community for taking Israel's side.
"We can deal positively with the international community, but if they want to deal on the basis of preconditions, no. We will not recognize Israel and succumb to blackmail," Hammed said.
"If the [international community] wants to sit with us and talk then we can explain things together," he said. "At the moment, they impose pressure on Hamas all the time, but they let Israel free."
Meanwhile, PA employees crowded tellers at the Palestine National Bank on Thursday from the minute it opened, to take out loans the bank had said it would issue clients.
The bank was giving out as much as NIS 1,000 in cash, to be deducted from the next salary check of its more than 30,000 account holders who work for the PA, said Hadel al- Haleli, the bank's public relations manger.
On Wednesday alone, the bank loaned more than NIS 2 million.
Dressed in olive green fatigues, Na'el Bakir, 39, a member of the PA National Security Force for seven years, walked out of the bank with NIS 500 in one hand and his six-year-old son Muhammad clinging to the other.
Since he stopped receiving his NIS 1,750 monthly wages in February, Bakir has supported his family by selling his wife's jewelry and accepting gifts from friends. The NIS 500 loan would pay for food and the electric and gas bills. He said the money would only last around one week.
"The situation was never this bad when the brothers from Fatah were in charge," Bakir said. "The government must negotiate with Israel and recognize Israel. It is [the government's] responsibility we are in this situation."
Bakir said that if it continued to fail to pay salaries, Abbas should dismiss the Hamas-led government.
"Please tell the international community to be on the side of the Palestinians," he said. "We're asking them to give us a chance and give us salaries. We believe in peace. Maybe Hamas will change, and anyway they did not get the support from all of Palestinian society."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Friday, May 19, 2006
Hamas, Fatah gunmen stage Gaza showdown
By Rafael D. Frankel
GAZA CITY - The power struggle playing out between Hamas and Fatah picked up steam Thursday, with dueling shows of force on the streets of the Gaza Strip despite two secret meetings between their leaders late Wednesday and early Thursday.
In those meetings, The Jerusalem Post learned, the highest leadership of both parties in Gaza discussed possible power- sharing arrangements in the PA and the PLO.
As a 3,000-strong internal security force established by Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Said Siam made itself visible for the second day throughout Gaza, members of the preventive and national security forces started their own patrols on special orders from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas, Fatah officials said, was forced to deploy his forces after the Hamas government openly defied the veto he slapped on Siam's new security force and his appointment of Popular Resistance Committees leader Jamal Abu Samahadanah to take charge of the combined forces controlled by the Interior Ministry.
On the corners of Gaza's main intersections, Hamas and Fatah militias, distinguishable only by the color of their shirts (black for Hamas, green for Fatah) and the amount of facial hair, sometimes stood mere meters from each other. Their fingertips were never more than an inch away from the triggers of their AK-47s.
Despite a 5 p.m. demonstration through downtown Gaza City against the new force by citizens, in which gunmen fired shots into the air as they marched by the militiamen, the separate, heavily armed forces avoided confrontation.
Still, fears that a civil conflict is looming intensified as the two main factions traded recriminations for yet another escalation in tensions.
"This new force is made up of just one political body [Hamas] which means it will lead the Palestinian climate to be very hot with clashes, and a culture of hatred will develop," said Fatah spokesman Abdel Hakim Awad. He added that the new force was an illegal body.
The exact opposite message was delivered by Hamas, which said the militia was comprised of volunteer members of all the militant faction wings. Hamas government leaders spread out across Gaza on Thursday taking that message directly to the people - and putting on a show for television crews at the same time.
"We're here to let the whole world know that we have one job - to secure the Palestinian people," Salah el- Badarweil, the spokesman for the Hamas faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council, said as he shook hands with members of the new security force in downtown Gaza City. "[Hamas and Fatah] must work together in a union, without tension, and with respect for each other to make sure no there is no hatred between them."
"We are so proud of the people [in the new force] who were fighting the Israeli forces and are now fighting for the security of the Palestinian people. The resistance and making Palestinian people secure are the same job," he added.
But while they spoke of Palestinian unity, Hamas officials also took swipes at the Fatah leadership.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, PA cabinet secretary Gazi Hammad said that it was Fatah who originally politicized the security forces and brought Gaza to a state of street warfare and near anarchy.
"Abu Mazen [Abbas] said he would solve the security problem and he didn't and people started accusing us as the government of failing to stop violence," Hammad said. Installing law and order in the PA territories was one of Hamas's main campaign pledges in the recent elections.
After a spate of attacks last week, "we sent out the force," he said. "Ten minutes later, the president sent his forces out too, but we were waiting for their move for the [last] five years."
The competing forces were deployed despite secret meetings between the highest levels of each faction's leadership in Gaza. According to both sides, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Siam met with Fatah leaders Samir Mashhawari and Ahmed Hales on Wednesday to bridge the widening differences between them. Later, the Fatah leaders also met with Hamas officials who do not currently serve in the government.
It was the second such round of meetings between the two factions in the last month and according to Fatah officials, the leaders discussed the possibilities of forming a Hamas-Fatah coalition government in the Palestinian Legislative Council and also the possible entrance of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO.
The two sides also established three joint committees to lay the groundwork for the May 24 summit between all the factions which will take place simultaneously in Gaza and Ramallah.
With the ubiquitous gunmen deployed in both the wide boulevards of Gaza City and the narrow alleys of the refugee camps, opinions from Gazans varied widely as to whether the heightened military state was a positive development.
"The new force is good at the moment because it will protect us from thieves and all their crimes," said Nemar, an owner of a downtown mini-market. "All I want is to live in safety and bring home food for my kids. So far, [the new security force] is quite cool, nice and peaceful."
Just a block down the street, clothing shop owner Hazzem Hani had drawn the shutters on his display case windows after he saw a member of the new security force walk by armed with a rocket- propelled grenade.
"For sure I don't feel safer," he said. "These guys are from Hamas. We need the police to come back to power like it was before the [second] intifada."
Meanwhile, the Karni crossing endured another schizophrenic day Thursday when it was closed just an hour after its noon opening due to what a Civil Administration spokesman said was a "specific security threat" Israeli intelligence received about an attack in the works.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz had ordered the crossing open with greater regularity on Tuesday.
But the closure dashed the hopes of truck drivers there. "There are problems all the time ," said Darwish Um- Hassem, who lined up his truck to collect a shipment of cement. "I'm here every day and it's never open for long."
Karni is the sole goods crossing into and out of the Gaza Strip, and it has endured frequent closures since an agreement between Israel and the PA which calls for it to be shut only in cases of exceedingly specific security threats was brokered in November by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"We understand the importance of Karni, but unfortunately terrorist are trying to use the crossing to attack the Israeli people and in the end they are hurting their own people," the Civil Administration spokesman said. "We are trying our best."
Earlier in the day, PA Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal told the Post that all the Palestinian factions had agreed not to attack Karni or Erez, the pedestrian crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip. He blamed last month's attack on Karni, which was thwarted by PA security personnel, on Israeli collaborators.
Members of Force 17, the PA presidential guard, recently took control of all Gaza's crossings so that Israel and the international community could coordinate with PA border control without dealing with Hamas.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
GAZA CITY - The power struggle playing out between Hamas and Fatah picked up steam Thursday, with dueling shows of force on the streets of the Gaza Strip despite two secret meetings between their leaders late Wednesday and early Thursday.
In those meetings, The Jerusalem Post learned, the highest leadership of both parties in Gaza discussed possible power- sharing arrangements in the PA and the PLO.
As a 3,000-strong internal security force established by Palestinian Authority Interior Minister Said Siam made itself visible for the second day throughout Gaza, members of the preventive and national security forces started their own patrols on special orders from PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Abbas, Fatah officials said, was forced to deploy his forces after the Hamas government openly defied the veto he slapped on Siam's new security force and his appointment of Popular Resistance Committees leader Jamal Abu Samahadanah to take charge of the combined forces controlled by the Interior Ministry.
On the corners of Gaza's main intersections, Hamas and Fatah militias, distinguishable only by the color of their shirts (black for Hamas, green for Fatah) and the amount of facial hair, sometimes stood mere meters from each other. Their fingertips were never more than an inch away from the triggers of their AK-47s.
Despite a 5 p.m. demonstration through downtown Gaza City against the new force by citizens, in which gunmen fired shots into the air as they marched by the militiamen, the separate, heavily armed forces avoided confrontation.
Still, fears that a civil conflict is looming intensified as the two main factions traded recriminations for yet another escalation in tensions.
"This new force is made up of just one political body [Hamas] which means it will lead the Palestinian climate to be very hot with clashes, and a culture of hatred will develop," said Fatah spokesman Abdel Hakim Awad. He added that the new force was an illegal body.
The exact opposite message was delivered by Hamas, which said the militia was comprised of volunteer members of all the militant faction wings. Hamas government leaders spread out across Gaza on Thursday taking that message directly to the people - and putting on a show for television crews at the same time.
"We're here to let the whole world know that we have one job - to secure the Palestinian people," Salah el- Badarweil, the spokesman for the Hamas faction in the Palestinian Legislative Council, said as he shook hands with members of the new security force in downtown Gaza City. "[Hamas and Fatah] must work together in a union, without tension, and with respect for each other to make sure no there is no hatred between them."
"We are so proud of the people [in the new force] who were fighting the Israeli forces and are now fighting for the security of the Palestinian people. The resistance and making Palestinian people secure are the same job," he added.
But while they spoke of Palestinian unity, Hamas officials also took swipes at the Fatah leadership.
In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, PA cabinet secretary Gazi Hammad said that it was Fatah who originally politicized the security forces and brought Gaza to a state of street warfare and near anarchy.
"Abu Mazen [Abbas] said he would solve the security problem and he didn't and people started accusing us as the government of failing to stop violence," Hammad said. Installing law and order in the PA territories was one of Hamas's main campaign pledges in the recent elections.
After a spate of attacks last week, "we sent out the force," he said. "Ten minutes later, the president sent his forces out too, but we were waiting for their move for the [last] five years."
The competing forces were deployed despite secret meetings between the highest levels of each faction's leadership in Gaza. According to both sides, Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh and Siam met with Fatah leaders Samir Mashhawari and Ahmed Hales on Wednesday to bridge the widening differences between them. Later, the Fatah leaders also met with Hamas officials who do not currently serve in the government.
It was the second such round of meetings between the two factions in the last month and according to Fatah officials, the leaders discussed the possibilities of forming a Hamas-Fatah coalition government in the Palestinian Legislative Council and also the possible entrance of Hamas and Islamic Jihad into the PLO.
The two sides also established three joint committees to lay the groundwork for the May 24 summit between all the factions which will take place simultaneously in Gaza and Ramallah.
With the ubiquitous gunmen deployed in both the wide boulevards of Gaza City and the narrow alleys of the refugee camps, opinions from Gazans varied widely as to whether the heightened military state was a positive development.
"The new force is good at the moment because it will protect us from thieves and all their crimes," said Nemar, an owner of a downtown mini-market. "All I want is to live in safety and bring home food for my kids. So far, [the new security force] is quite cool, nice and peaceful."
Just a block down the street, clothing shop owner Hazzem Hani had drawn the shutters on his display case windows after he saw a member of the new security force walk by armed with a rocket- propelled grenade.
"For sure I don't feel safer," he said. "These guys are from Hamas. We need the police to come back to power like it was before the [second] intifada."
Meanwhile, the Karni crossing endured another schizophrenic day Thursday when it was closed just an hour after its noon opening due to what a Civil Administration spokesman said was a "specific security threat" Israeli intelligence received about an attack in the works.
Defense Minister Amir Peretz had ordered the crossing open with greater regularity on Tuesday.
But the closure dashed the hopes of truck drivers there. "There are problems all the time ," said Darwish Um- Hassem, who lined up his truck to collect a shipment of cement. "I'm here every day and it's never open for long."
Karni is the sole goods crossing into and out of the Gaza Strip, and it has endured frequent closures since an agreement between Israel and the PA which calls for it to be shut only in cases of exceedingly specific security threats was brokered in November by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
"We understand the importance of Karni, but unfortunately terrorist are trying to use the crossing to attack the Israeli people and in the end they are hurting their own people," the Civil Administration spokesman said. "We are trying our best."
Earlier in the day, PA Interior Ministry spokesman Khaled Abu Hilal told the Post that all the Palestinian factions had agreed not to attack Karni or Erez, the pedestrian crossing in the north of the Gaza Strip. He blamed last month's attack on Karni, which was thwarted by PA security personnel, on Israeli collaborators.
Members of Force 17, the PA presidential guard, recently took control of all Gaza's crossings so that Israel and the international community could coordinate with PA border control without dealing with Hamas.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Interview with EC ambassador to Israel
'To speak about whether Gaza is unoccupied is premature'
In an interview with the 'Post,' the European Commission's ambassador here, Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal, says he sees few gaps between Europe and Israel on grappling with Hamas, and that he expects Olmert to make good on his pledge to negotiate with Abbas
By Rafael D. Frankel and Amir Mizroch
European Commission Ambassador Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal conducted a nearly two hour-long interview with The Jerusalem Post at our offices on Monday, in which he explained why Europe's position on the Middle East hasn't changed much, in spite of Hamas's having taken control of the Palestinian Authority.
Though categorical in his displeasure with the politics and actions of PA government, the ambassador insisted Israel talk peace with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The Spanish national who assumed his duties in January also said the mechanism Europe is developing to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians while bypassing Hamas would likely pay the salaries of PA health workers and teachers, albeit without passing through the relevant PA ministries.
The Jerusalem Post: We're facing a real dilemma right now. On the one hand, we don't want a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian Authority. On the other, we don't want to make it easy for Hamas to govern. Where does the European Union stand on this?
Ambassador Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal: The EU is very disappointed in the Hamas government for not agreeing to the three conditions [of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting international agreements]. These are a minimum of what we are asking of Hamas preconditions for maintaining normal relations and entering into a dialogue.
I don't see divergence of policies with Israel [regarding Hamas]. I think both the EU and Israel are trying to promote change in the PA. This is our objective, and we realize that it may take time. It is not going to be easy in the short term, and in the meantime we are trying to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the PA which I don't think is in anyone's interest.
Post: Why should the Palestinian public be bailed out? They voted freely for a terrorist organization. Why shouldn't they be made to pay a price for that?
Ambassador: The Palestinian people are in a very difficult situation. We all know that they do not yet have a full- fledged state. That is the core of the problem. An occupation of their territories is still going on - territories which, according to many people, will make up a future Palestinian state.
This, of course, limits many things. It limits the degree of economic development and the degree of autonomy in the territory. Both Israel and the international community have a responsibility for what is going on there. The reality is that the international community, the United States, the European Union and Israel accepted the participation of Hamas in the electionsThe fact that Hamas is now in the government does not excuse the responsibilities that Israel has as an occupying power and that the international community feels it has with respect to what is going on in the territories.
My understanding is that Israeli control in the territories, even in Gaza, is extremely important. Supplies of water and electricity, delivery of fuel and even telecommunications and financial services are still controlled by Israel. So the first [country to bail out] the Palestinian people is Israel. Then the EU, then the US What has changed is that the three of them are refusing to transfer funds and supplies through the PA.
Post: You said Hamas has failed to live up to expectations. Did the EU really think it would act differently than it has?
Ambassador: Hamas has not met the conditions of the Quartet, and that is a cause of concern and disappointment in the EU. We now have to combine a policy of not providing any kind of financial flow to an organization that continues to be a designated terrorist organization with the responsibility we feel toward the Palestinian people.
Post: Will the mechanism the EC is developing to fund humanitarian projects for the Palestinians include paying salaries to some PA civil servants?
Ambassador: It is very clear that the two most immediate challenges in the territories are health and education The point is how to guarantee the continued operation of these sectors, and how to ensure that hospital and school employees receive the salaries they have not been paid for the last two months and in the future [without funding Hamas].
Post: What about the curriculum in PA schools that teaches hatred of Jews and incitement against Israel?
Ambassador: The curriculum, too, is cause for concern - something that's not going to be endorsed or accepted by the EU.
Post: Is changing that curriculum an issue the Europeans would use as a condition for funding?
Ambassador: Certainly. Aside from the three basic conditions, others may be added for the temporary international mechanism.
Post: Is the mechanism something that will have to be agreed upon unanimously by the whole Quartet, or could members go their own way on it?
Ambassador: The modus operandi was that no member of the Quartet explicitly veto it. [A main objective] of the temporary international mechanism is to identify a channel through which Israel could restore the transfer of the withheld funds.
The aid of the EU for the year 2006 has already been largely committed Our annual payment has never represented more than 10 percent of the PA salaries. My impression is that at least a third of the PA revenues are from financial transfers from Israel - those Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
Post: What is the official EU position on the peace process? Do you advocate Israel talking to PA President Mahmoud Abbas?
Ambassador: Absolutely. This is a difference between the EU and Israel. The EU considers the president of the PA to be a legitimate partner for conducting peace negotiations For the EU he continues to be completely valued as a partner; he continues to be received in European capitals; he continues to have political dialogue We expect and recommend that the new Israeli government make an effort to return to negotiations with him.
Post: But Abbas was elected a year and a half ago. Much more recently a PA government was elected that not only rejects negotiations with Israel, but rejects its right to exist. Is it reasonable to go over the head of the choice of the people?
Ambassador: Things are not so categorical [with Hamas]. I think there is some discussion going on in Hamas and the PA government to accept the results of a referendum on the negotiations [conducted by Abbas]. So it is not so black and white.
Post: Can you envision a situation in which Europe would support Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's "convergence" plan - a unilateral delineation of Israel's borders?
Ambassador: Our official position today continues to be in favor of a negotiated settlement. We believe that a stable agreement and lasting peace can only be the result of negotiations between the parties. Having said that, on the basis of the experience of disengagement, my impression is that the EU could support what I call "non-regret measures" In other words, measures that will not make final negotiations and a final agreement more difficult.
Post: But is there a possibility that Europe would recognize unilaterally set borders that differ from 1967?
Ambassador: The EU would only recognize something other than the '67 borders as a result of agreements between the parties. I don't think there has been a change in that position.
Europe will encourage Ehud Olmert to try to negotiate - which by the way, is what he promised to do in his campaign. He promised his Israeli constituency that he would make an honest attempt at negotiations, and only if in the end negotiations are not workable, that he would consider other policy alternatives We expect he will be faithful to his electoral commitments.
I have the greatest respect for Olmert. From the EU's point of view, he has always been extremely open and friendly. He has come with the message that he values Europe as a partner. Therefore he has a very great level of respect in the EU and, frankly speaking, we expect him to be consistent with his commitment I don't think I can elaborate on what position Europe will be taking on [convergence] - based on what has not yet been offered and what has not yet been verified as fact.
Post: Given Abbas's history of not fighting terror and his role in the failed Camp David summit, why does Europe think there's any chance of negotiations bearing fruit?
Ambassador: First of all, since World War II, the basic European philosophy has been to place more value and faith in conflict resolution through negotiations [than in its alternative]. This attitude has worked in plenty of conflicts.
Second, the evaluation of what has been going on in the last 15- 16 months is not that bad. My impression is that both Abbas and Ariel Sharon were able to deliver a more livable situation The level of terrorism was brought down significantly not only as a result [of the ceasefire], of course, but also through the actions of the IDF.
But it is true that Abbas has tried through persuasion to decrease the levels of violence and to bring the conflict toward more peaceful times.
Post: If Hamas is not directly carrying out terror attacks, but Islamic Jihad and other groups in the PA are, should it be held responsible?
Ambassador: There is no question that the PA is responsible for providing law and order in its territories. This is nothing new. As we said when Fatah was in charge, we expect the PA to impose the rule of law and do its best to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel.
Post: Some people are saying that the recent decision by the Quartet already represents a weakening of Europe's position vis--vis Hamas. Does Europe have the patience to hold Hamas to the three conditions set out by the Quartet?
Ambassador: The EU's policy of refusing any kind of political contact with Hamas and the PA government still stands. What we are doing in Brussels right now is trying to identify a temporary international mechanism to transfer funds directly to the Palestinian people, without the need to have any kind of political contact with the Hamas leadership.
Post: Isn't this a slippery slope, however? If you fund the programs and activities the government is supposed to be funding, aren't you basically giving it a free pass to continue its anti-Israel stance, with no incentive to change politically? Does Europe have the stomach to hold firm against Hamas, even as conditions deteriorate in the territories, especially Gaza?
Ambassador: My impression is that Hamas is under significant pressure and doesn't like it. The EU is not going to change its policy regarding the three basic conditions. We and other members of the international community are trying to avert a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories, including Gaza. This is a challenge that will require a great deal of sensibility, diplomacy and determination.
So far, we have been pretty successful. There is no question that Hamas is feeling the heat from many sides to change, and sees very clearly both the cost of not changing and the benefit of changing.
Post: Couldn't it be argued that this is a complete capitulation to Hamas - which obviously isn't feeling the pressure enough to take decent, humane positions? It's not caring about its people, and could probably argue, "Great, the Europeans are going to bail us out."
Ambassador: Politics is the art of reconciling two contradictory positions.
We are trying to do our best not to legitimize Hamas - not to recognize it politically until it recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts the agreements. At the same time, we feel obliged to continue to support the Palestinian people where their basic human needs are concerned.
Post: Why do you feel this obligation? There are people in dire straits all over the world, many of whom are even worse off than the Palestinians.
Ambassador: Because the Palestinians' plight is the result of a political and military conflict. So we consider it more of a concern We also have to say, within the concept of international law - and I know there are different legal perspectives of many people, including within Israel - that Israel is an occupying power, and as such has a responsibility to the occupied population. For a number of historical reasons, Europe and the US have always felt a special responsibility for what is going on in this part of the world.
We felt it with the Balfour Declaration. We felt it in 1947 when the UN voted for the partition. And we have felt it during all interaction with the Israeli and Palestinian people throughout the 58 years of Israel's statehood.
Post: But, if you are talking about humanitarian issues, there are worse ones in the world, for example in Darfur. And if you are talking about occupation, one could argue that what China is doing to Tibet is worse. So what is it that makes the Palestinian plight more important to Europe?
Ambassador: The EU elaborated this at the end of 2003, when its 25 member states approved the equivalent of a national strategic policy defining their strategic priorities. There it is clearly highlighted that a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict is one of the the EU's strategic priorities, for historical, geographical, and cultural reasons. So it is clear that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is not on the same level as Darfur, which we care about, but which is not one of our strategic priorities.
Post: What is Europe's impression of the Beirut Initiative put forth by Saudi Arabia, calling for Israel to withdraw from all the land it took control of in 1967, and a just, agreed resolution of the refugee issue, in return for total peace and normalization with the Arab world?
Ambassador: If Hamas were to endorse and accept the Beirut Initiative, this would be a step in the right direction, but not sufficient to restore business-as-usual operations with the EU.
Post: Why should we help to keep the Hamas regime alive? Why not let the it fail?
Ambassador: It is not US or EU policy to topple every government that does not meet our expectations in terms of quality of democracy. What we do is to have relations with governments that are prepared to work in the right direction. As I said, [our policy toward] Hamas is to provoke and stimulate change - a policy that has been applied to many countries around the world.
Post: But the European benevolent view, that if you expose people to humane policies you will get change, leaves out the extremist religious imperative at the heart of Hamas thinking. That's why the European attitude seems so unpromising to many people.
Ambassasor: The Palestinian people are a special case because they are occupied.
Post: But why are they occupied, from an Israeli perspective? Because their last government rejected the last offer of statehood. Many in Israel argue: How many times must we save them from themselves, because we are not prepared to let them suffer and therefore wise up?
Ambassador: I don't want to enter into a historical debate about the negotiations at Camp David My only comment today is that we are not in any political contact with Hamas. That's what we are like with the [leader of Belarus, the only remaining authoritarian regime in Europe] Do we have any business with [Hamas] today? No.
Post: In either a peace settlement or a unilateral move, Israel will likely have to conduct massive evacuations from the West Bank. Is it physically possible to move 80,000 people?
Ambassador: Yes. Of that I can be categorical. Sharon's legacy is his demonstration that these kind of measures are possible If there is the kind of policy and determination and resources [that were used in Gaza], I am sure the same thing can happen [in the West Bank] - perhaps in a longer time frame. The Gaza disengagement demonstrated that such things are possible when there is political will and democratic legitimacy.
Post: Will Europe contribute money toward pulling people out of the West Bank if doing so were part of a negotiated settlement? Estimates say it will cost at least $25 billion.
Ambassador: You can be sure of one thing: The EU will be at Israel's and the Palestinians' side when they decide to move in the right direction. We already are. And our commitment, I'm sure, will be proportional to the length of the trip the Israelis and the Palestinians are prepared to go to [themselves].
Post: Would Europe be prepared to contribute money to a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank?
Ambassador: If "convergence" follows the Gaza pattern, one can reasonably assume the EU will support it.
Post: But Europe did not help fund the Gaza disengagement.
Ambassador: My impression is that, right now, there is a distribution of tax and labor in the Middle East. My understanding is that the US is supporting Israel at the level of $2.5 billion a year [most of which is spent on defense]. Under these conditions, everybody has been happy with the EU's taking the largest share of support for the other side. And that is the picture under which the Gaza disengagement took place.
Post: From Europe's perspective, is the Gaza Strip "occupied territory" today?
Ambassador: From the strict point of international law, it is not an "unoccupied" territory. For a territory to be defined as free of occupation, it is not only the question of military presence on the ground. It is also control of airspace and maritime space and we are not yet there But it is clear that the military presence on the ground - and the presence of settlers - was ended last summer. And that was welcomed by the EU as a step in the right direction.
Post: So if Israel allowed Gaza an airport and a seaport, it would be "unoccupied?"
Ambassador: We are far from there. As long as Kassam rockets continue to be fired at Israel, and Israeli artillery continues to respond massively, to speak about whether Gaza is unoccupied is premature. The conflict, unfortunately, is still there.
Post: Turning to Iran, do you think that because you are living in Israel, you have a greater appreciation for the threats coming from President Ahmedinajad than perhaps your colleagues in Brussels do?
Ambassador: I think everybody is aware of the risks that the development of nuclear weapons represents. The EU has always been supportive of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has signed the treaty as a non-nuclear state. It must respect its commitments under the treaty.
Of course, nuclear proliferation is a very bad thing. But when it is accompanied by the kind of anti-Semitic statements that the president of Iran has issued, it makes things even worse and more worrisome In that respect there is only one European policy, both in Tel Aviv and in Brussels The nuclear proliferation of Iran is still far from the point of being realized, but that is not the point. The point is that a nuclear Iran with long-range missiles will be a threat for both Israel and Europe Of course, I do realize that the Israeli people feel immediately and directly threatened because of the anti- Semitic speeches directed at them. And I can understand that the degree of concern is particularly high in Israel because the threats have been more specifically directed at Israel. But from a strategic point of view, an Iran with nuclear weapons is a strategic threat for both Israel and Europe.
Post: Some of your aid programs to the Palestinians have recently been attacked because the organizations were accused of political activity against Israel. What is your response to that?
Ambassador: We have two basic programs. One is to support NGOs that work in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories to promote peace. The other is the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights, which focuses on supporting the rights of minorities. Here in Israel, that means the Arab minority. We have implemented these programs for a number of years now. We are very proud of them. And I'm pleased to report that we have never had the slightest criticism from the Israeli government.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
In an interview with the 'Post,' the European Commission's ambassador here, Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal, says he sees few gaps between Europe and Israel on grappling with Hamas, and that he expects Olmert to make good on his pledge to negotiate with Abbas
By Rafael D. Frankel and Amir Mizroch
European Commission Ambassador Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal conducted a nearly two hour-long interview with The Jerusalem Post at our offices on Monday, in which he explained why Europe's position on the Middle East hasn't changed much, in spite of Hamas's having taken control of the Palestinian Authority.
Though categorical in his displeasure with the politics and actions of PA government, the ambassador insisted Israel talk peace with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The Spanish national who assumed his duties in January also said the mechanism Europe is developing to provide humanitarian aid to the Palestinians while bypassing Hamas would likely pay the salaries of PA health workers and teachers, albeit without passing through the relevant PA ministries.
The Jerusalem Post: We're facing a real dilemma right now. On the one hand, we don't want a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian Authority. On the other, we don't want to make it easy for Hamas to govern. Where does the European Union stand on this?
Ambassador Ramiro Cibrian-Uzal: The EU is very disappointed in the Hamas government for not agreeing to the three conditions [of recognizing Israel, renouncing violence and accepting international agreements]. These are a minimum of what we are asking of Hamas preconditions for maintaining normal relations and entering into a dialogue.
I don't see divergence of policies with Israel [regarding Hamas]. I think both the EU and Israel are trying to promote change in the PA. This is our objective, and we realize that it may take time. It is not going to be easy in the short term, and in the meantime we are trying to avoid a humanitarian crisis in the PA which I don't think is in anyone's interest.
Post: Why should the Palestinian public be bailed out? They voted freely for a terrorist organization. Why shouldn't they be made to pay a price for that?
Ambassador: The Palestinian people are in a very difficult situation. We all know that they do not yet have a full- fledged state. That is the core of the problem. An occupation of their territories is still going on - territories which, according to many people, will make up a future Palestinian state.
This, of course, limits many things. It limits the degree of economic development and the degree of autonomy in the territory. Both Israel and the international community have a responsibility for what is going on there. The reality is that the international community, the United States, the European Union and Israel accepted the participation of Hamas in the electionsThe fact that Hamas is now in the government does not excuse the responsibilities that Israel has as an occupying power and that the international community feels it has with respect to what is going on in the territories.
My understanding is that Israeli control in the territories, even in Gaza, is extremely important. Supplies of water and electricity, delivery of fuel and even telecommunications and financial services are still controlled by Israel. So the first [country to bail out] the Palestinian people is Israel. Then the EU, then the US What has changed is that the three of them are refusing to transfer funds and supplies through the PA.
Post: You said Hamas has failed to live up to expectations. Did the EU really think it would act differently than it has?
Ambassador: Hamas has not met the conditions of the Quartet, and that is a cause of concern and disappointment in the EU. We now have to combine a policy of not providing any kind of financial flow to an organization that continues to be a designated terrorist organization with the responsibility we feel toward the Palestinian people.
Post: Will the mechanism the EC is developing to fund humanitarian projects for the Palestinians include paying salaries to some PA civil servants?
Ambassador: It is very clear that the two most immediate challenges in the territories are health and education The point is how to guarantee the continued operation of these sectors, and how to ensure that hospital and school employees receive the salaries they have not been paid for the last two months and in the future [without funding Hamas].
Post: What about the curriculum in PA schools that teaches hatred of Jews and incitement against Israel?
Ambassador: The curriculum, too, is cause for concern - something that's not going to be endorsed or accepted by the EU.
Post: Is changing that curriculum an issue the Europeans would use as a condition for funding?
Ambassador: Certainly. Aside from the three basic conditions, others may be added for the temporary international mechanism.
Post: Is the mechanism something that will have to be agreed upon unanimously by the whole Quartet, or could members go their own way on it?
Ambassador: The modus operandi was that no member of the Quartet explicitly veto it. [A main objective] of the temporary international mechanism is to identify a channel through which Israel could restore the transfer of the withheld funds.
The aid of the EU for the year 2006 has already been largely committed Our annual payment has never represented more than 10 percent of the PA salaries. My impression is that at least a third of the PA revenues are from financial transfers from Israel - those Israel collects on behalf of the Palestinians.
Post: What is the official EU position on the peace process? Do you advocate Israel talking to PA President Mahmoud Abbas?
Ambassador: Absolutely. This is a difference between the EU and Israel. The EU considers the president of the PA to be a legitimate partner for conducting peace negotiations For the EU he continues to be completely valued as a partner; he continues to be received in European capitals; he continues to have political dialogue We expect and recommend that the new Israeli government make an effort to return to negotiations with him.
Post: But Abbas was elected a year and a half ago. Much more recently a PA government was elected that not only rejects negotiations with Israel, but rejects its right to exist. Is it reasonable to go over the head of the choice of the people?
Ambassador: Things are not so categorical [with Hamas]. I think there is some discussion going on in Hamas and the PA government to accept the results of a referendum on the negotiations [conducted by Abbas]. So it is not so black and white.
Post: Can you envision a situation in which Europe would support Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's "convergence" plan - a unilateral delineation of Israel's borders?
Ambassador: Our official position today continues to be in favor of a negotiated settlement. We believe that a stable agreement and lasting peace can only be the result of negotiations between the parties. Having said that, on the basis of the experience of disengagement, my impression is that the EU could support what I call "non-regret measures" In other words, measures that will not make final negotiations and a final agreement more difficult.
Post: But is there a possibility that Europe would recognize unilaterally set borders that differ from 1967?
Ambassador: The EU would only recognize something other than the '67 borders as a result of agreements between the parties. I don't think there has been a change in that position.
Europe will encourage Ehud Olmert to try to negotiate - which by the way, is what he promised to do in his campaign. He promised his Israeli constituency that he would make an honest attempt at negotiations, and only if in the end negotiations are not workable, that he would consider other policy alternatives We expect he will be faithful to his electoral commitments.
I have the greatest respect for Olmert. From the EU's point of view, he has always been extremely open and friendly. He has come with the message that he values Europe as a partner. Therefore he has a very great level of respect in the EU and, frankly speaking, we expect him to be consistent with his commitment I don't think I can elaborate on what position Europe will be taking on [convergence] - based on what has not yet been offered and what has not yet been verified as fact.
Post: Given Abbas's history of not fighting terror and his role in the failed Camp David summit, why does Europe think there's any chance of negotiations bearing fruit?
Ambassador: First of all, since World War II, the basic European philosophy has been to place more value and faith in conflict resolution through negotiations [than in its alternative]. This attitude has worked in plenty of conflicts.
Second, the evaluation of what has been going on in the last 15- 16 months is not that bad. My impression is that both Abbas and Ariel Sharon were able to deliver a more livable situation The level of terrorism was brought down significantly not only as a result [of the ceasefire], of course, but also through the actions of the IDF.
But it is true that Abbas has tried through persuasion to decrease the levels of violence and to bring the conflict toward more peaceful times.
Post: If Hamas is not directly carrying out terror attacks, but Islamic Jihad and other groups in the PA are, should it be held responsible?
Ambassador: There is no question that the PA is responsible for providing law and order in its territories. This is nothing new. As we said when Fatah was in charge, we expect the PA to impose the rule of law and do its best to prevent terrorist attacks against Israel.
Post: Some people are saying that the recent decision by the Quartet already represents a weakening of Europe's position vis--vis Hamas. Does Europe have the patience to hold Hamas to the three conditions set out by the Quartet?
Ambassador: The EU's policy of refusing any kind of political contact with Hamas and the PA government still stands. What we are doing in Brussels right now is trying to identify a temporary international mechanism to transfer funds directly to the Palestinian people, without the need to have any kind of political contact with the Hamas leadership.
Post: Isn't this a slippery slope, however? If you fund the programs and activities the government is supposed to be funding, aren't you basically giving it a free pass to continue its anti-Israel stance, with no incentive to change politically? Does Europe have the stomach to hold firm against Hamas, even as conditions deteriorate in the territories, especially Gaza?
Ambassador: My impression is that Hamas is under significant pressure and doesn't like it. The EU is not going to change its policy regarding the three basic conditions. We and other members of the international community are trying to avert a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories, including Gaza. This is a challenge that will require a great deal of sensibility, diplomacy and determination.
So far, we have been pretty successful. There is no question that Hamas is feeling the heat from many sides to change, and sees very clearly both the cost of not changing and the benefit of changing.
Post: Couldn't it be argued that this is a complete capitulation to Hamas - which obviously isn't feeling the pressure enough to take decent, humane positions? It's not caring about its people, and could probably argue, "Great, the Europeans are going to bail us out."
Ambassador: Politics is the art of reconciling two contradictory positions.
We are trying to do our best not to legitimize Hamas - not to recognize it politically until it recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts the agreements. At the same time, we feel obliged to continue to support the Palestinian people where their basic human needs are concerned.
Post: Why do you feel this obligation? There are people in dire straits all over the world, many of whom are even worse off than the Palestinians.
Ambassador: Because the Palestinians' plight is the result of a political and military conflict. So we consider it more of a concern We also have to say, within the concept of international law - and I know there are different legal perspectives of many people, including within Israel - that Israel is an occupying power, and as such has a responsibility to the occupied population. For a number of historical reasons, Europe and the US have always felt a special responsibility for what is going on in this part of the world.
We felt it with the Balfour Declaration. We felt it in 1947 when the UN voted for the partition. And we have felt it during all interaction with the Israeli and Palestinian people throughout the 58 years of Israel's statehood.
Post: But, if you are talking about humanitarian issues, there are worse ones in the world, for example in Darfur. And if you are talking about occupation, one could argue that what China is doing to Tibet is worse. So what is it that makes the Palestinian plight more important to Europe?
Ambassador: The EU elaborated this at the end of 2003, when its 25 member states approved the equivalent of a national strategic policy defining their strategic priorities. There it is clearly highlighted that a peaceful resolution of the Middle East conflict is one of the the EU's strategic priorities, for historical, geographical, and cultural reasons. So it is clear that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is not on the same level as Darfur, which we care about, but which is not one of our strategic priorities.
Post: What is Europe's impression of the Beirut Initiative put forth by Saudi Arabia, calling for Israel to withdraw from all the land it took control of in 1967, and a just, agreed resolution of the refugee issue, in return for total peace and normalization with the Arab world?
Ambassador: If Hamas were to endorse and accept the Beirut Initiative, this would be a step in the right direction, but not sufficient to restore business-as-usual operations with the EU.
Post: Why should we help to keep the Hamas regime alive? Why not let the it fail?
Ambassador: It is not US or EU policy to topple every government that does not meet our expectations in terms of quality of democracy. What we do is to have relations with governments that are prepared to work in the right direction. As I said, [our policy toward] Hamas is to provoke and stimulate change - a policy that has been applied to many countries around the world.
Post: But the European benevolent view, that if you expose people to humane policies you will get change, leaves out the extremist religious imperative at the heart of Hamas thinking. That's why the European attitude seems so unpromising to many people.
Ambassasor: The Palestinian people are a special case because they are occupied.
Post: But why are they occupied, from an Israeli perspective? Because their last government rejected the last offer of statehood. Many in Israel argue: How many times must we save them from themselves, because we are not prepared to let them suffer and therefore wise up?
Ambassador: I don't want to enter into a historical debate about the negotiations at Camp David My only comment today is that we are not in any political contact with Hamas. That's what we are like with the [leader of Belarus, the only remaining authoritarian regime in Europe] Do we have any business with [Hamas] today? No.
Post: In either a peace settlement or a unilateral move, Israel will likely have to conduct massive evacuations from the West Bank. Is it physically possible to move 80,000 people?
Ambassador: Yes. Of that I can be categorical. Sharon's legacy is his demonstration that these kind of measures are possible If there is the kind of policy and determination and resources [that were used in Gaza], I am sure the same thing can happen [in the West Bank] - perhaps in a longer time frame. The Gaza disengagement demonstrated that such things are possible when there is political will and democratic legitimacy.
Post: Will Europe contribute money toward pulling people out of the West Bank if doing so were part of a negotiated settlement? Estimates say it will cost at least $25 billion.
Ambassador: You can be sure of one thing: The EU will be at Israel's and the Palestinians' side when they decide to move in the right direction. We already are. And our commitment, I'm sure, will be proportional to the length of the trip the Israelis and the Palestinians are prepared to go to [themselves].
Post: Would Europe be prepared to contribute money to a unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank?
Ambassador: If "convergence" follows the Gaza pattern, one can reasonably assume the EU will support it.
Post: But Europe did not help fund the Gaza disengagement.
Ambassador: My impression is that, right now, there is a distribution of tax and labor in the Middle East. My understanding is that the US is supporting Israel at the level of $2.5 billion a year [most of which is spent on defense]. Under these conditions, everybody has been happy with the EU's taking the largest share of support for the other side. And that is the picture under which the Gaza disengagement took place.
Post: From Europe's perspective, is the Gaza Strip "occupied territory" today?
Ambassador: From the strict point of international law, it is not an "unoccupied" territory. For a territory to be defined as free of occupation, it is not only the question of military presence on the ground. It is also control of airspace and maritime space and we are not yet there But it is clear that the military presence on the ground - and the presence of settlers - was ended last summer. And that was welcomed by the EU as a step in the right direction.
Post: So if Israel allowed Gaza an airport and a seaport, it would be "unoccupied?"
Ambassador: We are far from there. As long as Kassam rockets continue to be fired at Israel, and Israeli artillery continues to respond massively, to speak about whether Gaza is unoccupied is premature. The conflict, unfortunately, is still there.
Post: Turning to Iran, do you think that because you are living in Israel, you have a greater appreciation for the threats coming from President Ahmedinajad than perhaps your colleagues in Brussels do?
Ambassador: I think everybody is aware of the risks that the development of nuclear weapons represents. The EU has always been supportive of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty. Iran has signed the treaty as a non-nuclear state. It must respect its commitments under the treaty.
Of course, nuclear proliferation is a very bad thing. But when it is accompanied by the kind of anti-Semitic statements that the president of Iran has issued, it makes things even worse and more worrisome In that respect there is only one European policy, both in Tel Aviv and in Brussels The nuclear proliferation of Iran is still far from the point of being realized, but that is not the point. The point is that a nuclear Iran with long-range missiles will be a threat for both Israel and Europe Of course, I do realize that the Israeli people feel immediately and directly threatened because of the anti- Semitic speeches directed at them. And I can understand that the degree of concern is particularly high in Israel because the threats have been more specifically directed at Israel. But from a strategic point of view, an Iran with nuclear weapons is a strategic threat for both Israel and Europe.
Post: Some of your aid programs to the Palestinians have recently been attacked because the organizations were accused of political activity against Israel. What is your response to that?
Ambassador: We have two basic programs. One is to support NGOs that work in Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian territories to promote peace. The other is the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights, which focuses on supporting the rights of minorities. Here in Israel, that means the Arab minority. We have implemented these programs for a number of years now. We are very proud of them. And I'm pleased to report that we have never had the slightest criticism from the Israeli government.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Friday, May 12, 2006
Funnel vision
Does the Quartet's announcement this week that it is moving to support the funding of humanitarian aid to the Palestinians constitute a chink in the isolation armor? In the international arena, it has been proven time and again that the moral high ground cannot compete with Palestinian suffering.
Analysis
By Rafael D. Frankel
It was clear from the outset of the isolating of Hamas policy that it was only a matter of time before the images of increasingly sick and poor Palestinians beamed out to the world from inside the Gaza Strip would melt the nerves of the international community - and a good many people in Israel as well - causing an abrupt shift in the siege of the Palestinian Authority.
With the announcement from the Quartet in New York on Tuesday that it is moving to support direct funding of at least health care and probably education as well in the Palestinian territories, the die has now been cast. While Quartet officials say for the time being that the resumed foreign aid will not find its way into the coffers of Hamas, Israel is now in a race to make sure the announcement is not a catalyst for a domino effect that will eventually remove all taboos on funding the terror group-led PA.
Already Israel, as announced by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, has said it will use some of the tax revenue it has withheld from Hamas to pay for medical "goods and services."
Livni went so far as to call the decision by the Quartet "completely acceptable" - no doubt to buy Israel time to figure out a way to stem the bleeding which was an entirely predictable outcome of the "go for broke" policy it instituted vis--vis the Hamas government upon its ascension to power.
In the international arena, it has been proven time and again that the moral high ground cannot compete with Palestinian suffering.
Israel now must scramble to form a coherent, long-term and visionary policy on three fronts: the Quartet's position on the Hamas-led PA; its own position on the same regime; and the fast- dwindling prospects of gaining international support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's "convergence" plan.
As of now, there are many more "unknowns" than discernable facts regarding the funding that the Quartet intends to provide for the PA.
Taking itself further out of the game than it already is, the United States bowed to the rest of its peace mediation partners and signed on to an agreement to allow the Europeans to develop a "a temporary international mechanism limited in duration and scope, and fully accountable, that ensures direct delivery of any assistance to the Palestinian people," as the Quartet statement put it.
Both European and American officials contacted by The Jerusalem Post stressed the "temporary" and "limited" aspects of the new mechanism.
But it would be bordering on delusional to expect that once a life-line is thrown to the Palestinians it will be summarily retracted because of one more suicide bombing or barrage of Kassam rockets.
Assuming, then, that the resumed funding is here to stay, Israel must work hard to ensure that it not fall into objectionable hands, nor the black hole of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's own accounts where "transparency" and "accountability" are concepts which echo on the bank vault walls few will ever see.
On this there does appear to be more than a glimmer of hope.
Contacted by telephone in Brussels, European Commission officials told the Post that, contrary to reports in most other media outlets, the EC is not interested in setting up "parallel structures" within the PA.
"We are not interested in something that mirrors what happened within the PA Finance Ministry," EC External Affairs Spokeswoman Emma Udwin said.
While the EC does want to use Abbas as an "interlocutor" for humanitarian projects, and needs him as an address to contact since it refuses to do business with Hamas, there is, at least as of now, no intention of funneling money through him, she said.
How long it stays that way remains to be seen. When this reporter tried to pin down Udwin, she refused to say that it was "impossible" that money would eventually go through Abbas's office. But the message is clear: If Israel moves quickly, the EU can still be persuaded to use more reputable and transparent means to deliver the funds, such as the World Bank, which has an excellent vetting and accountability system it is capable of putting in place.
The other main issue where the new funding is concerned - paying the salaries of PA civil servants - is a more complex matter over which the government can probably exert only indirect influence on the Europeans.
By now, everyone has concluded that there is a direct link between non-payment of the 165,000 PA civil servant salaries and the economic ruin and humanitarian deterioration in the territories. More than one report from reputable organizations including the World Bank has concluded that no matter how much food and medicine is sent into Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians will be living in the dumps until their salaries are reinstated.
The difference among the concerned prominent parties - Israel, the US and the EU - is how much each is willing to let Hamas's intransigence devastate the Palestinian people by virtue of the economic siege, and whether, from a strategic point of view, such devastation will bring about the desired results.
While the Olmert administration remains steadfastly opposed to paying salaries to any PA civil servants, the Europeans have concluded that such a stranglehold is counterproductive, and peace is better served by paying at least some workers. "Clearly something must be done with basic services like health and education," Udwin said.
THE AMERICANS, however, remain unconvinced. In conversations with the Post, US officials say privately that if the Europeans begin paying the salaries of PA civil servants, there remains no other form of pressure on Hamas to reform and accept the three principle demands of Israel and the Quartet: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of international agreements.
The Americans have also said that while the Europeans can develop the mechanism to transfer aid money to the Palestinians, they reserve the right to cancel it. Given the many questions that remain about the operation of the mechanism, not least of which is where the money will go and how it will get there, Israel can perhaps still extract from Europe, via the US, some minimal measure of acceptability on the salary issue before the mechanism's implementation.
That minimum level, according to two Israeli officials who spoke to the Post on the matter, seems to be paying health care workers - as long as the money is not funneled through the PA - but not teachers. "Schools are a problem because Hamas schools will teach kids to hate; they will teach Palestinian kids to become suicide bombers," one of the officials said.
Fortunately for Israel, development of the funding mechanism will take weeks, not days. And with the statement from Livni that Israel is willing to use the PA tax revenue it is holding to buy medical care for Palestinians, the government has bought itself a window with which it can now formulate a long-term policy in regard to the terrorists- cum-government leaders next door.
The problem with the incoming funding from the international community, depending on its scope, is that to a lesser or greater extent, Hamas will now be able to have its cake and eat it too.
"It could still maintain its ideology and control the PA, meaning it will still have a veto over the political process," said Eran Shayson, a senior analyst at the Re'ut think-tank in Tel Aviv. "The experts in Brussels are very likely to reach the conclusion that transfer of money should reach other sectors [past health and education] in the PA so it doesn't collapse."
But such conditions, though on the surface frustrating, may be exactly what the Olmert administration is looking for.
"Israel might find it convenient to stay in its 'crisis position,'" Shayshon said. "Meaning, Israel opposes Hamas, doesn't transfer money, rejects [rhetorically] the transfer of money to the PA, but still doesn't risk a humanitarian crisis. At the same time, it enjoys an address in the PA that is considered to be a stable, non-partner and thus an address for the convergence plan."
However, here again, the Olmert administration must move quickly if it is to get the international backing and funding for "convergence" that is a necessity before such a monumental and civilly destructive undertaking is set into motion.
IT WAS telling that the Americans, in essence, threw their hands in the air in New York on Tuesday and allowed Europe to usher in the next phase of the Quartet's mission. It was a sudden retreat with broad ramifications - ones that do not end with Europe taking the lead on funding the PA.
With Amir Peretz using his newly won pulpit as defense minister in loud support of talking to Abbas, and the Europeans increasingly speaking out against further unilateralism on Israel's part, the politics of "convergence" are growing more problematic by the day. Add to that the price tag it is likely to cost the US and Europe - Israel could not hope to cover the minimum $25 billion by itself - and its shelf life as the main, viable option for Israel going forward appears increasingly in danger of expiration.
Olmert's upcoming trip to Washington, therefore, once sold as a mere "getting to know you" jaunt by the newly elected Israeli prime minister, is taking on added weight. If Olmert does not come back from the American capital with a strong wind in his sails for "convergence," the plan may whither on the vines back home before a second round of talks with President George W. Bush - previously assumed to be the time when a grand deal would be struck - can materialize.
In this aspect, the two leaders' need for one another could be the biggest advantage they both have.
"There is that emotional background and pressure for both of them. They both feel that something must be done urgently," said Hebrew University political science professor Abraham Diskin. "Bush [has it] because of his lack of popularity and the end of his term. And on Olmert's side, there is that belief that whatever you don't achieve very early in your term you might miss."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Analysis
By Rafael D. Frankel
It was clear from the outset of the isolating of Hamas policy that it was only a matter of time before the images of increasingly sick and poor Palestinians beamed out to the world from inside the Gaza Strip would melt the nerves of the international community - and a good many people in Israel as well - causing an abrupt shift in the siege of the Palestinian Authority.
With the announcement from the Quartet in New York on Tuesday that it is moving to support direct funding of at least health care and probably education as well in the Palestinian territories, the die has now been cast. While Quartet officials say for the time being that the resumed foreign aid will not find its way into the coffers of Hamas, Israel is now in a race to make sure the announcement is not a catalyst for a domino effect that will eventually remove all taboos on funding the terror group-led PA.
Already Israel, as announced by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, has said it will use some of the tax revenue it has withheld from Hamas to pay for medical "goods and services."
Livni went so far as to call the decision by the Quartet "completely acceptable" - no doubt to buy Israel time to figure out a way to stem the bleeding which was an entirely predictable outcome of the "go for broke" policy it instituted vis--vis the Hamas government upon its ascension to power.
In the international arena, it has been proven time and again that the moral high ground cannot compete with Palestinian suffering.
Israel now must scramble to form a coherent, long-term and visionary policy on three fronts: the Quartet's position on the Hamas-led PA; its own position on the same regime; and the fast- dwindling prospects of gaining international support for Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's "convergence" plan.
As of now, there are many more "unknowns" than discernable facts regarding the funding that the Quartet intends to provide for the PA.
Taking itself further out of the game than it already is, the United States bowed to the rest of its peace mediation partners and signed on to an agreement to allow the Europeans to develop a "a temporary international mechanism limited in duration and scope, and fully accountable, that ensures direct delivery of any assistance to the Palestinian people," as the Quartet statement put it.
Both European and American officials contacted by The Jerusalem Post stressed the "temporary" and "limited" aspects of the new mechanism.
But it would be bordering on delusional to expect that once a life-line is thrown to the Palestinians it will be summarily retracted because of one more suicide bombing or barrage of Kassam rockets.
Assuming, then, that the resumed funding is here to stay, Israel must work hard to ensure that it not fall into objectionable hands, nor the black hole of PA President Mahmoud Abbas's own accounts where "transparency" and "accountability" are concepts which echo on the bank vault walls few will ever see.
On this there does appear to be more than a glimmer of hope.
Contacted by telephone in Brussels, European Commission officials told the Post that, contrary to reports in most other media outlets, the EC is not interested in setting up "parallel structures" within the PA.
"We are not interested in something that mirrors what happened within the PA Finance Ministry," EC External Affairs Spokeswoman Emma Udwin said.
While the EC does want to use Abbas as an "interlocutor" for humanitarian projects, and needs him as an address to contact since it refuses to do business with Hamas, there is, at least as of now, no intention of funneling money through him, she said.
How long it stays that way remains to be seen. When this reporter tried to pin down Udwin, she refused to say that it was "impossible" that money would eventually go through Abbas's office. But the message is clear: If Israel moves quickly, the EU can still be persuaded to use more reputable and transparent means to deliver the funds, such as the World Bank, which has an excellent vetting and accountability system it is capable of putting in place.
The other main issue where the new funding is concerned - paying the salaries of PA civil servants - is a more complex matter over which the government can probably exert only indirect influence on the Europeans.
By now, everyone has concluded that there is a direct link between non-payment of the 165,000 PA civil servant salaries and the economic ruin and humanitarian deterioration in the territories. More than one report from reputable organizations including the World Bank has concluded that no matter how much food and medicine is sent into Gaza and the West Bank, Palestinians will be living in the dumps until their salaries are reinstated.
The difference among the concerned prominent parties - Israel, the US and the EU - is how much each is willing to let Hamas's intransigence devastate the Palestinian people by virtue of the economic siege, and whether, from a strategic point of view, such devastation will bring about the desired results.
While the Olmert administration remains steadfastly opposed to paying salaries to any PA civil servants, the Europeans have concluded that such a stranglehold is counterproductive, and peace is better served by paying at least some workers. "Clearly something must be done with basic services like health and education," Udwin said.
THE AMERICANS, however, remain unconvinced. In conversations with the Post, US officials say privately that if the Europeans begin paying the salaries of PA civil servants, there remains no other form of pressure on Hamas to reform and accept the three principle demands of Israel and the Quartet: recognition of Israel, renunciation of violence and acceptance of international agreements.
The Americans have also said that while the Europeans can develop the mechanism to transfer aid money to the Palestinians, they reserve the right to cancel it. Given the many questions that remain about the operation of the mechanism, not least of which is where the money will go and how it will get there, Israel can perhaps still extract from Europe, via the US, some minimal measure of acceptability on the salary issue before the mechanism's implementation.
That minimum level, according to two Israeli officials who spoke to the Post on the matter, seems to be paying health care workers - as long as the money is not funneled through the PA - but not teachers. "Schools are a problem because Hamas schools will teach kids to hate; they will teach Palestinian kids to become suicide bombers," one of the officials said.
Fortunately for Israel, development of the funding mechanism will take weeks, not days. And with the statement from Livni that Israel is willing to use the PA tax revenue it is holding to buy medical care for Palestinians, the government has bought itself a window with which it can now formulate a long-term policy in regard to the terrorists- cum-government leaders next door.
The problem with the incoming funding from the international community, depending on its scope, is that to a lesser or greater extent, Hamas will now be able to have its cake and eat it too.
"It could still maintain its ideology and control the PA, meaning it will still have a veto over the political process," said Eran Shayson, a senior analyst at the Re'ut think-tank in Tel Aviv. "The experts in Brussels are very likely to reach the conclusion that transfer of money should reach other sectors [past health and education] in the PA so it doesn't collapse."
But such conditions, though on the surface frustrating, may be exactly what the Olmert administration is looking for.
"Israel might find it convenient to stay in its 'crisis position,'" Shayshon said. "Meaning, Israel opposes Hamas, doesn't transfer money, rejects [rhetorically] the transfer of money to the PA, but still doesn't risk a humanitarian crisis. At the same time, it enjoys an address in the PA that is considered to be a stable, non-partner and thus an address for the convergence plan."
However, here again, the Olmert administration must move quickly if it is to get the international backing and funding for "convergence" that is a necessity before such a monumental and civilly destructive undertaking is set into motion.
IT WAS telling that the Americans, in essence, threw their hands in the air in New York on Tuesday and allowed Europe to usher in the next phase of the Quartet's mission. It was a sudden retreat with broad ramifications - ones that do not end with Europe taking the lead on funding the PA.
With Amir Peretz using his newly won pulpit as defense minister in loud support of talking to Abbas, and the Europeans increasingly speaking out against further unilateralism on Israel's part, the politics of "convergence" are growing more problematic by the day. Add to that the price tag it is likely to cost the US and Europe - Israel could not hope to cover the minimum $25 billion by itself - and its shelf life as the main, viable option for Israel going forward appears increasingly in danger of expiration.
Olmert's upcoming trip to Washington, therefore, once sold as a mere "getting to know you" jaunt by the newly elected Israeli prime minister, is taking on added weight. If Olmert does not come back from the American capital with a strong wind in his sails for "convergence," the plan may whither on the vines back home before a second round of talks with President George W. Bush - previously assumed to be the time when a grand deal would be struck - can materialize.
In this aspect, the two leaders' need for one another could be the biggest advantage they both have.
"There is that emotional background and pressure for both of them. They both feel that something must be done urgently," said Hebrew University political science professor Abraham Diskin. "Bush [has it] because of his lack of popularity and the end of his term. And on Olmert's side, there is that belief that whatever you don't achieve very early in your term you might miss."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Livni: Israel ready to release PA tax funds for humanitarian aid.
Quartet money will likely bypass Abbas
By Rafael D. Frankel
Israel is willing to release tax revenue it has withheld from the Palestinian Authority since February to pay for humanitarian aid, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Wednesday.
The offer, made to the Quartet following its Tuesday decision to create a fund to pay for humanitarian aid to Palestinians, is an extension of the policy of using the withheld money to pay for electricity and sewage services.
Livni said that Israel would consider releasing the tax funds "for direct humanitarian needs, such as medicines, such as health needs." However, she told Channel 10, the money could not go to the Palestinian Authority to pay salaries.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said later the money would only be used to buy "goods and services for medical care that can help the Palestinians."
Since February, Israel has placed in escrow approximately $50 million a month in taxes and tariffs it collects on behalf of the PA and said it would not transfer the funds until its Hamas- controlled government recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts all signed agreements .
MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) criticized both Israel's and the Quartet's decisions to provide the aid.
"If we want to make clear to the Palestinian people and everybody else that nobody can support a terrorist government, then we cannot support the Palestinian Authority by other means," he said. "The Quartet decision was wrong and very damaging, and if we proceed in this direction, the next result will be that we will in fact be supporting a terrorist regime."
The mechanism under development by the European Commission to ameliorate the humanitarian situation in the PA territories will likely not funnel money through the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as initial reports had suggested, EC officials in Brussels said Wednesday.
But against the wishes of Israel and the US, the mechanism may be used to pay salaries of some PA officials, EC external affairs spokeswoman Emma Udwin told The Jerusalem Post.
Rather than send money to Abbas as has been proposed, the EC would work on "a mechanism outside of the PA," she said. "We are not in the business of creating parallel structures. Something that mirrored what happens within the Ministry of Finance of the PA, we are not interested in."
With a bow from the US to the positions of the EU, UN and Russia, the Quartet on Tuesday expressed support for a new mechanism that would funnel funds directly to the Palestinians, to stabilize the deteriorating conditions in the PA territories.
The EC was charged by the Quartet with developing a funding mechanism that would bypass Hamas.
Under the format under consideration, Abbas would act as an interlocutor, facilitating the implementation of aid projects while not being responsible for dispersing any money.
Udwin allowed for the possibility that the new mechanism would be used to pay the salaries of some PA civil servants. "Clearly something must be done with basic services like health and education," she said. "But we haven't said whether that means salaries or not."
The mechanism will be used for three months, after which the Quartet will review its effectiveness, Udwin said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh did not comment on the Quartet's decision, instead attacking it for persisting with its demand that Hamas accommodate Israel.
"The Quartet brings from time to time conditions to force the government to concede the rights and recognize the legality of the occupation," Haniyeh said early Wednesday.
Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh pronounced the decision satisfactory, and called on the Quartet to "find a mechanism to rapidly provide our people with aid." Hamas's political chief in exile, Khaled Mashaal, while on a visit to Qatar on Wednesday, asked "Hamas supporters throughout the world, as well as Arab states, to send weapons, fighters and money to the Palestinian Authority."
Israel reacted with cautious optimism to the proposal, saying it would support any humanitarian funding that cuts out the Hamas-led PA.
"We have no interest whatsoever in hardship, and we will do everything that we can to facilitate this direct sort of funding that bypasses the regime," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
However paying salaries is a different story, with both Israeli and American officials saying Wednesday that they could only support such a move under extremely limited circumstances, to a select few PA civil servants and with the money being transferred directly from the international community to the employees.
Direct funding of a health clinic and its doctors, an Israeli official said, might be acceptable. But "schools are a problem because Hamas schools will teach kids to hate; they will teach Palestinian kids to become suicide bombers," the official said.
If the new mechanism helps pay the salaries of some civil servants, the decision could represent the first backtracking by the international community from its declared policy of not funding a Hamas-led PA.
The move by the Quartet comes after numerous reports over the last week highlighting the severe state of the health care system throughout the PA territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip.
The World Bank and a host of non-governmental organizations operating in the territories have warned that as long as funding is withheld, poverty, unemployment and food insecurity will rise dramatically as the PA economy experiences a sharp contraction.
It was those dire prospects that the Quartet is seeking to address by developing "a temporary international mechanism, limited in duration and scope and fully accountable, that ensures direct delivery of any assistance to the Palestinian people," according to the statement released following its New York meeting.
The US has effectively blocked any funding of the PA - even from Arab countries - since the Hamas takeover by threatening to prosecute any bank that transfers funds to the authority under US anti-terror laws.
Ahead of the Quartet meeting, the US had expressed opposition to any resumption of funding for the PA, and afterward Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "The Hamas-run Palestinian Authority government bears sole responsibility for the hardships facing the Palestinian people."
But in the end, the US agreed to allow the EU to develop the mechanism, with the stipulation that the money not wind up in the hands of Hamas and that it reserves the right to cancel the funding at any time.
"We want to emphasize that it must be limited in duration and limited in scope, because we don't want the assumption that responsibility for meeting the needs of the Palestinian people has been transferred from the Palestinian government to the international community," US Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said.
It is apparent, though, that the extent to which the US and Europe are willing to hold Hamas to the fire to gain its acquiescence to the three conditions are diverging as the direct consequences for the Palestinian people begin to amplify. Whether those differences will eventually scuttle the agreement on funding by the Quartet will not be known until the details of the mechanism emerge.
Besides the tension between the two parties over paying PA salaries, other issues concern who will control the fund, where the contributions will come from and whether additional approval will be needed from Quartet members before the mechanism becomes functional.
The EC spokesman in Tel Aviv denied any softening of Europe's position vis--vis Hamas. "The position was that we would not transfer any money to or through Hamas- controlled ministries," David Kriss said. "That does not appear to have changed."
In the meantime, the Quartet is encouraging international donors to begin amassing enough funding to stabilize the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The Quartet statement also called upon Israel to better implement the agreement on movement and access brokered by Rice in November that, among other provisions, calls for a better flow of goods into and out of Gaza.
That agreement has been stalled almost since the day it was signed, with Israel claiming security concerns and an attack on the Karni crossing have prevented the smooth operation of the goods terminal. Palestinians say the closures were he result of a political decision taken by Israel and amount to collective punishment.
On Wednesday, the Peres Center for Peace released a position paper calling for the immediate and continued opening of Karni, citing severe economic damage suffered in Gaza and lost revenue to Israel businesses caused by the closures.
Although the paper acknowledged legitimate security concerns at Karni, it said the long-term benefits of its steady operation outweighed short-term risks.
"Movement at the crossing is key to defining the economic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians," the paper said. "Indeed, the solution, or non-solution, of the problem will play a major role in determining the future economic relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, shedding light on the possibility for future cooperation."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
By Rafael D. Frankel
Israel is willing to release tax revenue it has withheld from the Palestinian Authority since February to pay for humanitarian aid, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said Wednesday.
The offer, made to the Quartet following its Tuesday decision to create a fund to pay for humanitarian aid to Palestinians, is an extension of the policy of using the withheld money to pay for electricity and sewage services.
Livni said that Israel would consider releasing the tax funds "for direct humanitarian needs, such as medicines, such as health needs." However, she told Channel 10, the money could not go to the Palestinian Authority to pay salaries.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Gideon Meir said later the money would only be used to buy "goods and services for medical care that can help the Palestinians."
Since February, Israel has placed in escrow approximately $50 million a month in taxes and tariffs it collects on behalf of the PA and said it would not transfer the funds until its Hamas- controlled government recognizes Israel, renounces violence and accepts all signed agreements .
MK Yuval Steinitz (Likud) criticized both Israel's and the Quartet's decisions to provide the aid.
"If we want to make clear to the Palestinian people and everybody else that nobody can support a terrorist government, then we cannot support the Palestinian Authority by other means," he said. "The Quartet decision was wrong and very damaging, and if we proceed in this direction, the next result will be that we will in fact be supporting a terrorist regime."
The mechanism under development by the European Commission to ameliorate the humanitarian situation in the PA territories will likely not funnel money through the office of PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas as initial reports had suggested, EC officials in Brussels said Wednesday.
But against the wishes of Israel and the US, the mechanism may be used to pay salaries of some PA officials, EC external affairs spokeswoman Emma Udwin told The Jerusalem Post.
Rather than send money to Abbas as has been proposed, the EC would work on "a mechanism outside of the PA," she said. "We are not in the business of creating parallel structures. Something that mirrored what happens within the Ministry of Finance of the PA, we are not interested in."
With a bow from the US to the positions of the EU, UN and Russia, the Quartet on Tuesday expressed support for a new mechanism that would funnel funds directly to the Palestinians, to stabilize the deteriorating conditions in the PA territories.
The EC was charged by the Quartet with developing a funding mechanism that would bypass Hamas.
Under the format under consideration, Abbas would act as an interlocutor, facilitating the implementation of aid projects while not being responsible for dispersing any money.
Udwin allowed for the possibility that the new mechanism would be used to pay the salaries of some PA civil servants. "Clearly something must be done with basic services like health and education," she said. "But we haven't said whether that means salaries or not."
The mechanism will be used for three months, after which the Quartet will review its effectiveness, Udwin said.
Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh did not comment on the Quartet's decision, instead attacking it for persisting with its demand that Hamas accommodate Israel.
"The Quartet brings from time to time conditions to force the government to concede the rights and recognize the legality of the occupation," Haniyeh said early Wednesday.
Abbas aide Nabil Abu Rdeneh pronounced the decision satisfactory, and called on the Quartet to "find a mechanism to rapidly provide our people with aid." Hamas's political chief in exile, Khaled Mashaal, while on a visit to Qatar on Wednesday, asked "Hamas supporters throughout the world, as well as Arab states, to send weapons, fighters and money to the Palestinian Authority."
Israel reacted with cautious optimism to the proposal, saying it would support any humanitarian funding that cuts out the Hamas-led PA.
"We have no interest whatsoever in hardship, and we will do everything that we can to facilitate this direct sort of funding that bypasses the regime," Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev said.
However paying salaries is a different story, with both Israeli and American officials saying Wednesday that they could only support such a move under extremely limited circumstances, to a select few PA civil servants and with the money being transferred directly from the international community to the employees.
Direct funding of a health clinic and its doctors, an Israeli official said, might be acceptable. But "schools are a problem because Hamas schools will teach kids to hate; they will teach Palestinian kids to become suicide bombers," the official said.
If the new mechanism helps pay the salaries of some civil servants, the decision could represent the first backtracking by the international community from its declared policy of not funding a Hamas-led PA.
The move by the Quartet comes after numerous reports over the last week highlighting the severe state of the health care system throughout the PA territories, particularly in the Gaza Strip.
The World Bank and a host of non-governmental organizations operating in the territories have warned that as long as funding is withheld, poverty, unemployment and food insecurity will rise dramatically as the PA economy experiences a sharp contraction.
It was those dire prospects that the Quartet is seeking to address by developing "a temporary international mechanism, limited in duration and scope and fully accountable, that ensures direct delivery of any assistance to the Palestinian people," according to the statement released following its New York meeting.
The US has effectively blocked any funding of the PA - even from Arab countries - since the Hamas takeover by threatening to prosecute any bank that transfers funds to the authority under US anti-terror laws.
Ahead of the Quartet meeting, the US had expressed opposition to any resumption of funding for the PA, and afterward Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, "The Hamas-run Palestinian Authority government bears sole responsibility for the hardships facing the Palestinian people."
But in the end, the US agreed to allow the EU to develop the mechanism, with the stipulation that the money not wind up in the hands of Hamas and that it reserves the right to cancel the funding at any time.
"We want to emphasize that it must be limited in duration and limited in scope, because we don't want the assumption that responsibility for meeting the needs of the Palestinian people has been transferred from the Palestinian government to the international community," US Embassy spokesman Stewart Tuttle said.
It is apparent, though, that the extent to which the US and Europe are willing to hold Hamas to the fire to gain its acquiescence to the three conditions are diverging as the direct consequences for the Palestinian people begin to amplify. Whether those differences will eventually scuttle the agreement on funding by the Quartet will not be known until the details of the mechanism emerge.
Besides the tension between the two parties over paying PA salaries, other issues concern who will control the fund, where the contributions will come from and whether additional approval will be needed from Quartet members before the mechanism becomes functional.
The EC spokesman in Tel Aviv denied any softening of Europe's position vis--vis Hamas. "The position was that we would not transfer any money to or through Hamas- controlled ministries," David Kriss said. "That does not appear to have changed."
In the meantime, the Quartet is encouraging international donors to begin amassing enough funding to stabilize the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
The Quartet statement also called upon Israel to better implement the agreement on movement and access brokered by Rice in November that, among other provisions, calls for a better flow of goods into and out of Gaza.
That agreement has been stalled almost since the day it was signed, with Israel claiming security concerns and an attack on the Karni crossing have prevented the smooth operation of the goods terminal. Palestinians say the closures were he result of a political decision taken by Israel and amount to collective punishment.
On Wednesday, the Peres Center for Peace released a position paper calling for the immediate and continued opening of Karni, citing severe economic damage suffered in Gaza and lost revenue to Israel businesses caused by the closures.
Although the paper acknowledged legitimate security concerns at Karni, it said the long-term benefits of its steady operation outweighed short-term risks.
"Movement at the crossing is key to defining the economic relationship between Israelis and Palestinians," the paper said. "Indeed, the solution, or non-solution, of the problem will play a major role in determining the future economic relationship between Israel and the Palestinians, shedding light on the possibility for future cooperation."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
State ordered to change policy on Sudanese refugees
By Rafael D. Frankel
The High Court of Justice gave the state 30 days at a hearing on Monday to propose a new policy to deal with the Sudanese refugees who are currently imprisoned in jails across Israel after escaping the civil war in their home country only to be arrested here.
The new policy vis-a-vis the refugees who have fled a civil war classified as a "genocide" by the United Nations must allow for a form of judicial review on a case-by-case basis that 51 Sudanese have been denied based on their detention under the Infiltration Prevention Law of 1954, the court said.
That act allows for the indefinite detention without judicial review of citizens from "enemy states" who infiltrate Israel.
Once the state comes up with an alternative scheme, the High Court will most likely schedule a second hearing on the matter. Until then, at least, the refugees will remain in prison.
"Justice [Dorit] Deinish said there must be some sort of special mechanism for refugees, that we can't treat them all as enemy citizens when we know a great part of them are people who escaped genocide in Darfur," said Yonatan Berman, a lawyer from the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who argued Monday on behalf of four Sudanese detained under the Infiltration Act.
"We have a very strong case. It's unthinkable that a person can be thrown into jail and that the High Court would approve of them being held with no judicial review for months and months." Though the Hotline was petitioning on behalf of its four clients, Berman asked that the remedy be applied to all 51 people who fit the same profile.
In its argument to the court, the state said the Infiltration Law specifically listed Egypt, from where the refugees crossed into Israel, as one of the countries from which people smuggle themselves across the border.
Secondly, Sudan is listed as one of six terrorism- supporting states. Thirdly, the trails used to smuggle the refugees are the same trails used to smuggle drugs, weapons and foreigners without status in Israel. However, the Court rejected those arguments, saying that citizens from Sudan did not necessarily pose a security threat to Israel based on their nationality.
The court also rejected a proposal from the state that a military advocate be the one to review the cases during the time in which the state amended the Infiltration Law - as it is planning to do - to allow for judicial review.
According to Berman, the state only began arresting Sudanese refugees under the Infiltration Law after the Hotline had succeeded in gaining the release from jail of around 20 who were arrested under the Entry Law, which allows for open hearings.
There are currently 190 Sudanese refugees in prison around the country, according to the Hotline. The petition heard by the High Court on Monday was only on behalf of those who were arrested under the Infiltration Law. Some have been held for as long as 11 months with no official hearing.
The case of the Sudanese refugees has sparked outcry from a variety of human rights organizations across Israel which oppose the imprisonment of refugees that claim to have fled a genocide.
The hearing comes just a week after Jewish groups led a host of demonstrations in the United States demanding that the international community put an end to the bloodshed in Darfur, the western Sudanese state where a government backed-militia has conducted a campaign of mass murder, rape and destruction over the last few years. Over 400,000 have died there with more than million made refugees.
"The cause is very clear, it's a human rights issue," said Eliezer Ya'ari, the director of the New Israel Fund, which is helping press the case of the refugees in the High Court. "We understand the complexity of the situation when you have people who are penetrating into Israel through the border. But ... these are people who are on the run from a humanitarian disaster. And our position is as long as they are here and they cannot go back home there is no reason for them to stay in jail because their crime is not really a crime."
Ya'ari added that, given the recent history of the Jewish people, helping those fleeing a genocide is a national obligation. "It's something about the responsibility of Jews around the world," he said.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
The High Court of Justice gave the state 30 days at a hearing on Monday to propose a new policy to deal with the Sudanese refugees who are currently imprisoned in jails across Israel after escaping the civil war in their home country only to be arrested here.
The new policy vis-a-vis the refugees who have fled a civil war classified as a "genocide" by the United Nations must allow for a form of judicial review on a case-by-case basis that 51 Sudanese have been denied based on their detention under the Infiltration Prevention Law of 1954, the court said.
That act allows for the indefinite detention without judicial review of citizens from "enemy states" who infiltrate Israel.
Once the state comes up with an alternative scheme, the High Court will most likely schedule a second hearing on the matter. Until then, at least, the refugees will remain in prison.
"Justice [Dorit] Deinish said there must be some sort of special mechanism for refugees, that we can't treat them all as enemy citizens when we know a great part of them are people who escaped genocide in Darfur," said Yonatan Berman, a lawyer from the Hotline for Migrant Workers, who argued Monday on behalf of four Sudanese detained under the Infiltration Act.
"We have a very strong case. It's unthinkable that a person can be thrown into jail and that the High Court would approve of them being held with no judicial review for months and months." Though the Hotline was petitioning on behalf of its four clients, Berman asked that the remedy be applied to all 51 people who fit the same profile.
In its argument to the court, the state said the Infiltration Law specifically listed Egypt, from where the refugees crossed into Israel, as one of the countries from which people smuggle themselves across the border.
Secondly, Sudan is listed as one of six terrorism- supporting states. Thirdly, the trails used to smuggle the refugees are the same trails used to smuggle drugs, weapons and foreigners without status in Israel. However, the Court rejected those arguments, saying that citizens from Sudan did not necessarily pose a security threat to Israel based on their nationality.
The court also rejected a proposal from the state that a military advocate be the one to review the cases during the time in which the state amended the Infiltration Law - as it is planning to do - to allow for judicial review.
According to Berman, the state only began arresting Sudanese refugees under the Infiltration Law after the Hotline had succeeded in gaining the release from jail of around 20 who were arrested under the Entry Law, which allows for open hearings.
There are currently 190 Sudanese refugees in prison around the country, according to the Hotline. The petition heard by the High Court on Monday was only on behalf of those who were arrested under the Infiltration Law. Some have been held for as long as 11 months with no official hearing.
The case of the Sudanese refugees has sparked outcry from a variety of human rights organizations across Israel which oppose the imprisonment of refugees that claim to have fled a genocide.
The hearing comes just a week after Jewish groups led a host of demonstrations in the United States demanding that the international community put an end to the bloodshed in Darfur, the western Sudanese state where a government backed-militia has conducted a campaign of mass murder, rape and destruction over the last few years. Over 400,000 have died there with more than million made refugees.
"The cause is very clear, it's a human rights issue," said Eliezer Ya'ari, the director of the New Israel Fund, which is helping press the case of the refugees in the High Court. "We understand the complexity of the situation when you have people who are penetrating into Israel through the border. But ... these are people who are on the run from a humanitarian disaster. And our position is as long as they are here and they cannot go back home there is no reason for them to stay in jail because their crime is not really a crime."
Ya'ari added that, given the recent history of the Jewish people, helping those fleeing a genocide is a national obligation. "It's something about the responsibility of Jews around the world," he said.
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
Monday, May 08, 2006
Darfur refugees to get their day in High Court
By Rafael D. Frankel
The last memory Yantin Adam has of his village in the Bora Valley in northern Darfur, Sudan, is plumes of smoke rising from the burning homes he and hundreds of his tribe had just fled as the Janjaweed militia, mounted on horses, swept through in an orgy of rape, murder and destruction.
After escaping to the nearby mountains, the horror was magnified three days later when the notorious band of Sudanese government- backed thugs stormed his hideout, killing his father, uncle and cousin "in front of my eyes."
Three years later, the 30-year-old former engineer and architect is languishing in an Israeli jail after infiltrating across the Egyptian border.
"I had no place to go, and I expected that maybe [Israel] would help me because the problem [in Darfur] is well known to everybody," Adam said from Ma'asiyahu Prison in Ramle during a telephone interview on Sunday. "Unfortunately since my first day here I've been in prison."
For the last 11 months, the asylum seeker has been held under the 1954 Infiltration Law, which allows for the indefinite detention without judicial review of nationals from "enemy" countries who enter the state illegally. He is among 190 refugees from Sudan who escaped the conflict there - designated as a "genocide" by the UN - to Israel only to find themselves arrested and held in prison.
This morning, the High Court of Justice will hear a petition, filed on their behalf by the human rights group Hot Line for Immigrant Workers, seeking to bar the state from holding the refugees under that law.
The hearing comes just a week after massive rallies, organized by Jewish groups, were held in the US calling on the international community to intervene in in Sudanese civil war in which at least 400,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million made refugees.
"Israel has always denied them the right to ask for asylum on the pretext that they are enemy nationals," said Shevy Korzen, the executive director of Hot Line. "Israel should take them in. They are asylum seekers running away from genocide. Israel is a party to the Convention on Protection for Refugees, and it's the right thing to do."
According to an Interior Ministry spokeswoman, the decision to hold the refugees in prison was made at a series of meetings over the last months between officials in the IDF, police and ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Interior. In those meetings, she said, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz recommended their continued imprisonment until a political solution was found.
The Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment, but its representatives will be arguing the state's case in court this morning.
A ruling against the state would not mean a release from prison for the Sudanese, but it would force the government to allow for public hearings and judicial review of their individual cases as refugees. In about 20 hearings for other Sudanese refugees under those conditions, Hot Line has managed to gain their release from jail into the custody of kibbutzim.
"We don't think [the state] views them as a security threat," Korzen said, citing their detention in Ma'asiyahu as opposed to other, harsher facilities. "It's being done because Israel is afraid it will have to give asylum to all these people and in general it doesn't like giving asylum to non-Jews."
Ironically, Korzen said, not providing the Sudanese asylum because they are "enemy nationals" is a contravention of an international law pushed by Israel because German Jews were denied entry into England because of their German citizenship during the Holocaust.
However, there is historic precedent granting political asylum to non-Jews. Former prime minister Menachem Begin decided to take in refugees from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, and that move was repeated in the early 1990s when the government extended asylum to refugees from the Balkan wars.
Given the recent history of the Jewish people, Israel has a duty to open its arms again, said Prof. Yehuda Bauer, academic adviser at Yad Vashem, who wrote a "Friend of the Court" brief for Monday's hearing.
"It's clearly a genocide and we have a moral responsibility to take care of the few refugees that manage to get here by a miracle and we should not try to send them to a third country," Bauer said.
As Israel mulls over the legal status of the Sudanese, the UN High Commission for Refugees is busy trying to find them a new home. Two Sudan specialists from Geneva have been interviewing refugees in jails and kibbutzim, said UNHCR Representative to Israel Mickey Bavly.
According to Bavly, a host of countries have been contacted by his office about taking in the refugees, and talks are under way about "getting them out of prison."
"We're trying to solve the refugee problem, not change Israeli law," Bavly said. "A solution will be found for all of them. I can assure that none of them will be returned to Darfur."
Meanwhile, Adam sits with his cellmate Ali Abakar, also from Darfur, in Ma'asiyahu, with no clue about when his release from prison will come.
Adam does not regret the clandestine trip he took through the Sinai mountains, guided by Beduin, to enter Israel - he had no other choice. He spent two years in Egypt, where the authorities treated the refugees harshly. The Egyptian secret police, he said, were trying to deport him back to Sudan.
"If I go back there they will kill me at once, this is sure," he said. "I just need protection. I just want to live my life as a human being out of prison."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post
The last memory Yantin Adam has of his village in the Bora Valley in northern Darfur, Sudan, is plumes of smoke rising from the burning homes he and hundreds of his tribe had just fled as the Janjaweed militia, mounted on horses, swept through in an orgy of rape, murder and destruction.
After escaping to the nearby mountains, the horror was magnified three days later when the notorious band of Sudanese government- backed thugs stormed his hideout, killing his father, uncle and cousin "in front of my eyes."
Three years later, the 30-year-old former engineer and architect is languishing in an Israeli jail after infiltrating across the Egyptian border.
"I had no place to go, and I expected that maybe [Israel] would help me because the problem [in Darfur] is well known to everybody," Adam said from Ma'asiyahu Prison in Ramle during a telephone interview on Sunday. "Unfortunately since my first day here I've been in prison."
For the last 11 months, the asylum seeker has been held under the 1954 Infiltration Law, which allows for the indefinite detention without judicial review of nationals from "enemy" countries who enter the state illegally. He is among 190 refugees from Sudan who escaped the conflict there - designated as a "genocide" by the UN - to Israel only to find themselves arrested and held in prison.
This morning, the High Court of Justice will hear a petition, filed on their behalf by the human rights group Hot Line for Immigrant Workers, seeking to bar the state from holding the refugees under that law.
The hearing comes just a week after massive rallies, organized by Jewish groups, were held in the US calling on the international community to intervene in in Sudanese civil war in which at least 400,000 people have been killed and more than 2 million made refugees.
"Israel has always denied them the right to ask for asylum on the pretext that they are enemy nationals," said Shevy Korzen, the executive director of Hot Line. "Israel should take them in. They are asylum seekers running away from genocide. Israel is a party to the Convention on Protection for Refugees, and it's the right thing to do."
According to an Interior Ministry spokeswoman, the decision to hold the refugees in prison was made at a series of meetings over the last months between officials in the IDF, police and ministries of Justice, Foreign Affairs and Interior. In those meetings, she said, Attorney-General Menahem Mazuz recommended their continued imprisonment until a political solution was found.
The Justice Ministry could not be reached for comment, but its representatives will be arguing the state's case in court this morning.
A ruling against the state would not mean a release from prison for the Sudanese, but it would force the government to allow for public hearings and judicial review of their individual cases as refugees. In about 20 hearings for other Sudanese refugees under those conditions, Hot Line has managed to gain their release from jail into the custody of kibbutzim.
"We don't think [the state] views them as a security threat," Korzen said, citing their detention in Ma'asiyahu as opposed to other, harsher facilities. "It's being done because Israel is afraid it will have to give asylum to all these people and in general it doesn't like giving asylum to non-Jews."
Ironically, Korzen said, not providing the Sudanese asylum because they are "enemy nationals" is a contravention of an international law pushed by Israel because German Jews were denied entry into England because of their German citizenship during the Holocaust.
However, there is historic precedent granting political asylum to non-Jews. Former prime minister Menachem Begin decided to take in refugees from Vietnam in the mid-1970s, and that move was repeated in the early 1990s when the government extended asylum to refugees from the Balkan wars.
Given the recent history of the Jewish people, Israel has a duty to open its arms again, said Prof. Yehuda Bauer, academic adviser at Yad Vashem, who wrote a "Friend of the Court" brief for Monday's hearing.
"It's clearly a genocide and we have a moral responsibility to take care of the few refugees that manage to get here by a miracle and we should not try to send them to a third country," Bauer said.
As Israel mulls over the legal status of the Sudanese, the UN High Commission for Refugees is busy trying to find them a new home. Two Sudan specialists from Geneva have been interviewing refugees in jails and kibbutzim, said UNHCR Representative to Israel Mickey Bavly.
According to Bavly, a host of countries have been contacted by his office about taking in the refugees, and talks are under way about "getting them out of prison."
"We're trying to solve the refugee problem, not change Israeli law," Bavly said. "A solution will be found for all of them. I can assure that none of them will be returned to Darfur."
Meanwhile, Adam sits with his cellmate Ali Abakar, also from Darfur, in Ma'asiyahu, with no clue about when his release from prison will come.
Adam does not regret the clandestine trip he took through the Sinai mountains, guided by Beduin, to enter Israel - he had no other choice. He spent two years in Egypt, where the authorities treated the refugees harshly. The Egyptian secret police, he said, were trying to deport him back to Sudan.
"If I go back there they will kill me at once, this is sure," he said. "I just need protection. I just want to live my life as a human being out of prison."
©2006 The Jerusalem Post