Jews? Meet Them? Talk To Them? Me? I'm The British Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East

The British Foreign Office reported

Mr Rammell also visited Hebron in the Palestinian Territories and called for the removal of illegal Israeli settlements. At the end of a tour in the old city of Hebrony yesterday he reiterated the British Government and the international communities position calling for two states and for the withdrawal from settlements in order for peace to be achieved in the Middle East.

Mr Rammell who met the Governor and Mayor of Hebron was accompanied by the British Consul General Richard Makepeace, his deputy John Edwards and Political Consul Karen Mcluskie.

Also

The British delegation visited the Al-Shuhada Street, in the heart of the old city, which Israeli occupation forces closed to Palestinian traffic since 2000, where they could verify the line of shops forcefully closed down. The guests also visited the home of Nidal al-Oweiwi, which settlers had burnt down during their recent violent riots.

Well, I don't think he visited any Jewish building or institution, any terror victim nor any Jews at all. Neither did he confer with any Jewish representatives.

Hebron is a very special place. True, it is quite a problematic location. Arabs kill Jews there. They did so in 1834. The did so in 1929. They did so between 1948-1967 as fedayeen. They have been doing so ever since 1967.

Why, then, should Rammel even look their way.

Because...

Because it was Abraham's city, site of the Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs.
Because Hebron was David's first capital. King David, that is.
More history here and here and also here.

Bill Rammel, sir, you acted wrongly and spoke worse.

P.S.

Here he is speaking even worse in Parliament:

...our message has been consistent and robust: Israeli settlement activity anywhere in East Jerusalem and on the west bank is illegal under international law. The road map is clear that Israel should freeze all settlement activity, including the natural growth of existing settlements, and dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary reiterated the UK's position to Israeli Ministers during his visit to the region in November, and I have acted similarly. We certainly welcome recent attempts by the Israeli security forces to dismantle outposts in parts of Hebron and the west bank, including the successful evacuation of the disputed house in Hebron on 4 December, which, as we should acknowledge, is a step in the right direction. But we should also acknowledge that there is much more to do.

I want the House to be clear that we are not bashing Israel to play to the crowd. We are seeking, rather, to advance the peace process and we genuinely see settlement expansion as a critical factor holding that progress back. Unlike other obstacles in the way of peace, settlement expansion is not a grey area: its continuation is in direct contravention of the spirit and the letter of the roadmap and the Annapolis commitments.

Benjamin Netanyahu: A Sympathetic Treatment By Haaretz

Illustration: Ayala Tal, The Marker, Haaretz

British Middle East Attitude

Basil Eastwood interviewed:

MM: Had you decided at that stage that you wanted to specialise in the Middle East?

BE: Oh yes. I had made that decision rather by default when I decided that I was going to do Arabic at University. What actually happened was that, after I left school, I was one of the early VSOs and taught in a school in Lebanon outside Beirut, Brummana High School. It’s still there. It was a wonderful time in my life and I travelled around a bit; I got into Syria and down to Jerusalem - I spent Easter in Jerusalem in 1963 and was absolutely fascinated by the whole business of the Status Quo and the situation of the Holy Places and so on. And I went down to Petra and did all the things you could do in those days, but it was fairly rough and ready and very exciting. And so, when I went back up to University, my main instinct was to try and get back to that part of the world as quickly as I could.

I have to confess there was one other motive. There was a very old lady living up in the village who was a Quaker, an Arab called Faridi Akl. She had been a schoolteacher at the Friends’ School at Jbeil (Byblos) down on the coast, before the First World War, and had given Arabic lessons to a young Englishman who was going out in advance of a walking tour of the Crusader Castles in the Levant. His name was T E Lawrence. So I actually had the same Arabic teacher as T E Lawrence; she was a pretty awful teacher, I may say, dear old lady at that stage. Perhaps she was brilliant when she taught him, I don’t know! But it was a wonderful thing to capture the imagination of a young man.

MM: Did you feel that you were perhaps to some extent seduced by the Arabs, or by Arab culture?

BE: I think from a very early stage I had what I would call the traditional Foreign Office Arabist attitude towards the Arabs, which is a sort of despairing affection: they are always their own worst enemies and have a much better case than they ever get round to making. And, as it were, having been part of the background, particularly to the business with Israel, since the early 1960s when I first started learning about all this, because some of my friends in Brummana were Palestinian, clearly ...

MM: When you say Palestinian, do you mean Jewish or …

BE: No no - Arab. There were very few Jews still left in Beirut at that stage, but I didn’t know any of them. No, I mean I was certainly more aware than the average reader of a British newspaper would be of the Arab side of the story of the creation of the State of Israel and so on. But I would like to think that I was never blind to the multitudinous Arab failings, as the story progressed.

MM: You mentioned that your father had been in the Colonial Office. Do you mean ‘Office’ as opposed to Service?

BE: I do mean ‘Office’ as opposed to Service. He joined the Home Civil Service and chose, as bright people did in those days, to go into the Colonial Office, as a place where you could do good work. He did, however, have one overseas posting, and that, interestingly, from your point of view, was Private Secretary to the Governor - or was he High Commissioner? - in Palestine. So, when I went to Jerusalem, I met some people who knew my father from those days; old Palestinian families.

MM: A good introduction anyhow.

And there's more very interesting material:

Posting to Cairo in 1972 and the Egyptian Israeli war in 1973

MM: Anyhow, you went from there to Cairo. Direct transfer?

BE: Direct transfer, yes. Derek Day, who was Head of Personnel, came through Colombo on a pastoral visit and Alison backed him up against a wall at a cocktail party and told him very firmly that I was completely wasted in Sri Lanka and ought to be moved, and what about Cairo! And we got a direct posting. So I arrived there in 1972, shortly after Sadat had kicked the Russians out. In 1971 he had kicked the left wing Ali Sabri out of government; in 1972 he kicked the Russians out, just in time for the October war in 1973. Sadat liked to say that he believed in taking one decision a year and those were the decisions for those particular years!

MM: Important ones! And the 1973 war was not a particularly good decision was it?

BE: From his point of view? I don’t know. I think it is part of Egyptian mythology now that it was a thoroughly good decision. It was very interesting; I think we had slightly more inkling than the Israelis did about what was going to happen but, like everybody else, there was an element of strategic surprise that was very carefully maintained for the outbreak of war, largely because Sadat played a sort of - how shall I put it? - a ‘cry wolf’ game by having major exercises with his troops, moving them up, moving them back, moving them up, then back on exercises all the time. For the Israelis, it becametoo easy to say, “Oh it’s another exercise! We won’t bother to put our chaps on alert. And anyway, they can’t get across the Canal and, if they do get across the Canal, we’ll blow them away with our air superiority.” In fact, Egyptian strategy was much more nuanced, to begin with at any rate. They used high-pressure water hoses to blast holes through the great sand dunes that the Israelis had built on their side of the Canal, to cross the Canal, but did not advance into the depths of Sinai so that their troops were still under the cover of the protective umbrella of their surface-to-air missiles posted on the West Bank of the Canal. So the Israeli Air Force couldn’t do much about it. The element of surprise was totally maintained. It was an amazing achievement by the Egyptians, and it restored Egyptian pride, apart from anything else. There were various other aspects, but it was very interesting that he sent his troops across the Canal shouting, “Allahu Akbar!” Nasser had been relatively secular, you’ll remember. Sadat was calling Islam in aid. Sadat had also changed the name of United Arab Airlines to Egyptair. He was reasserting both Egyptian nationalism as opposed to Arab nationalism, and Egypt’s Islamic identity. But it was more sophisticated than that. My Ambassador, Philip Adams, got instructions from London twice during the war to ask Sadat personally whether he was ready to stop the fighting: the first time was, I can’t remember the dating now, but fairly soon after the start of hostilities. He found Sadat in military uniform in the Army headquarters in a bunker in Heliopolis in north-eastern Cairo, and Sadat said, “No! We’re doing very nicely thank you.” It would be quite interesting to look back and see the telegram that Philip must have sent but basically Sadat was giving the impression that all was under control and he knew what he was doing. Then Sadat had actually conned Hafiz al Asad into joining this two-pronged assault on Israel by telling him that it was to be an all-out assault. The Syrians very nearly succeeded in driving the Israelis offthe Golan and were stopped by the Israeli Air Force within a few yards of the edge of the escarpment. The Israelis realised that Sadat was not going to attack further into Sinai, and so they were able to turn the full weight of not only their Air Force but also their armour on the Syrians, who were then driven right back and were in imminent danger of being driven right back into Damascus, and God knows what was going to happen there. So there were anguished and extremely angry exchanges between Sadat and Hafiz al Asad. “Why aren’t you taking the pressure off me by attacking in Sinai? Why are you just sitting there waiting?” And the honest truth is that it had never been the Egyptian game plan to do more than, as it were, create a new situation. It was a very polished diplomatic operation. The first morning of the war, Philip Adams said to us, “Right! By lunchtime I’ve got to send a telegram to London saying what we think Egyptian war aims are. I want you to go out and talk to anybody you think can tell us anything.” And this was quite a challenge for diplomatic staff at an Embassy, as you can imagine. I knew one person who was, in theory, out of favour. Tahsin Bashir had been the official Government spokesman. He’d been parked, so it would seem to the outside world, as Chef de Cabinet to Mahmoud Riyadh who was the former Foreign Minister, again in parking orbit, as Secretary General of the Arab League. I happened to know that Tahsin Bashir was still a consultant to the Egyptian Intelligence Service but didn’t know that he knew that I knew! So I rang up Tahsin and said, “Look, there’s something going on this morning; I’m not absolutely clear what, but I think you know what’s going on. Could I come round and talk about it?” And he said, “Right! How soon can you get here?” So I said, “Give me twenty minutes.” I dashed round to the Arab League building, found Tahsin sitting in his office drinking coffee very peacefully with another man, who’s since become much more famous, called Usama al Baz. Usama was at that stage a Director of the Diplomatic Institute, the training institute for the Egyptian Diplomatic Service. I subsequently discovered that he too was a consultant to the Egyptian Intelligence Service. Anyway, they explained that no, actually the war aims were pretty limited. It was not to conquer the whole of Sinai militarily but to ‘move the situation’ - to create a situation which was inherently untenable in the long run for Israel and for the international community. . Anyway, we sat and had our cup of coffee and I went racing back to the Embassy - I remember I came back in, going in through the double doors and racing up the stairs. Libby Adams, the Ambassador’s wife, saw me and (she was the mildest of persons) said, “Basil! You’re behaving as if this whole war was laid on for your benefit!” Very exciting times! But it was brilliant little diplomatic operation by Tahsin and Usama because it was completely unusable intelligence, if you see what I mean. My report informed Philip Adams’s telegram but it was information that came from people who were, in theory at any rate, not in the inner circle.

Anyway, then what happened of course was Hafiz al Asad screaming blue murder, “You’ve got to take the pressure off me!” Sadat’s nerve broke - he knew that he’d basically conned Hafiz al Asad - and he ordered his troops to advance into Sinai towards the Mitla and Giddi passes. So they moved out fromunder the umbrella of their surface-to-air missiles and, of course, the Israeli Air Force turned on themwith enthusiasm. That created the opportunity for the Israelis to counter-attack and drive a hole through the Egyptian positions all along the east bank of the Canal, and actually to cross over at a place called Deversoir, the diversion place on the Canal. By the time Philip Adams got his second set of instructions to talk to Sadat, Ariel Sharon and the Israeli Forces were careering around on the West Bank of the Canal, as it were, on the Egyptian side, wreaking havoc in the Egyptian Army’s rear areas. We knew that; we weren’t absolutely sure, because the situation was clearly chaotic, that Sadat knew it. But, when Philip went in, he found Sadat in civilian clothes this time, sitting in the gardens of the Kubba Palace drinking a glass of limón under a mango tree, and he said, “No, I don’t think it’s gone on quite long enough yet!” The situation, in fact, got worse and worse as far as the Egyptians were concerned, with the whole of the Third Army, which was on the southern part of the Canal, being holed up trapped in the city of Suez. And so the Army was actually cut off; you had Israeli Forces on the Suez-Cairo road and Sadat under extreme pressure to save his Army by capitulating to Israeli demands. On the other hand, by that stage Henry Kissinger had got involved, and that was really what Sadat was after. He wanted to draw the Americans in to do something about all this. The Israeli situation was not, in fact, comfortable because they’d had to mobilise all their Forces. It was quite impossible for the Israelis to maintain full mobilisation which they would have to do in order to keep the Third Army trapped in Suez. So first Kissinger negotiated the first disengagement agreement, which basicallyfreed up the Third Army and gave the Egyptians a little bit of land on the other bank, so that they’d won a mighty victory and got the Israelis to back off, as it were, the Egyptian side of the Canal back into Sinai. It was very interesting because the Egyptian ploy was to ensure that any interim solution was not going to be durable, and could not be durable, so the first disengagement agreement was not going to be durable. The Egyptians knew that there had to be a second agreement, which then took the Israelis all the way back to the Mitla and Giddi passes in the middle of Sinai. It was quite difficult. I don’t think one really saw - at least I didn’t see - the logic of all that as it was happening quite so clearly. One was a bit too bogged down with the pressure of daily events to see it. So there was a fair amount of wisdom from hindsight about that.

But your first question was ‘Wasn’t it a bit of a disaster from the Egyptians’ point of view?’ The answer is not a bit of it; Sadat actually got out of it what he wanted. It was war as an extension ofdiplomacy when diplomacy had failed. It actually gave the diplomatic process such a jolt that it actually took him half way to where he wanted to be; it then needed another jolt, which was his trip to Jerusalem - which took place after I’d left - to take it the rest of the way, to get Sinai back. Part of the interest of all this was that it was based on an assertion of Egyptian, as opposed to Arab national interest, and we were watching all that with great interest at the time. MM: At that stage, who was financing Egypt?BE: The answer is nobody! There was, before 1973, a gap period after 1972, when the Russians were thrown out. The Russians had basically been giving Egypt and Syria weapons on tick, and I think to some extent that may have gone on; the Russians may have had a feeling that, if they stopped, their situation would be even worse. After they’d thrown the Russians out, the Egyptians knew that the state of the armed forces was going to deteriorate very rapidly. The October war, however, had the double benefit, as far as the Egyptians were concerned, of reasserting the Egyptian leadership of the Arab world; you know, “We are not hopeless when it comes to military matters! And you, O Arab brethren - O rich Arab brethren - have done incredibly well out of this as a result of the oil crisis and the boost in oil prices. Come on, pay up!” So that the 1973 war was not the start of Arab funding of the confrontation states, but it was a quantum leap in the amounts - I can’t remember the figures now.

MM: Oil prices quadrupled.

BE: Something like that, yes. And you know, there was also this business of the oil weapon. I don’t know to what extent that was built into the Egyptian planning but it certainly was a time of sudden wealth in the oil-producing States. When I’d been in Saudi in 1968, Saudi had been broke. Old King Saud had driven the country to near bankruptcy and King Faisal was desperately trying to restore the country’s finances. It was not a country flush with money. Mark you, there was money even then to do what needed to be done, in relation to the oil industry and so on, but it was not …

MM: Well that wouldn’t have been Saudi money necessarily.

BE: No.

MM: So, in this period - we’re talking about a period ending in 1976 when you moved away - Egypt was beginning to get money from Saudi Arabia.

BE: Yes. When I arrived in Egypt in 1972, there was only the American Interest Section of the US Embassy with one well-known CIA man, one administration officer who was the Head of the Interests Section, and one bright young Political Officer, and that was basically it. By the time I left, you had Herman Eilts who was Kissinger’s right hand man on the Middle East (who is still very alive incidentally. A great man in many ways), desperately trying to keep his Embassy small and manageable and eventually failing; it’s now one of the largest American Embassies anywhere. And the start of a major American aid programme to Egypt.

MM: Oh that started then, did it?

BE: Well it started then; of course it was the Camp David meeting that really made it take off.
MM: Which was when?

BE: Oh, when was Camp David? 1979 or something like that. I ought to know this off the top of my head and I don’t. I wasn’t involved in that at all; I wasn’t involved in the Middle East at that stage.

MM: I was wondering about the long-range outcome of the 1956 Suez invasion of Egypt (by the UK, France and Israel). Had that faded from the scene completely, or were there still echoes of it in your time?

BE: Oh, I think that had faded from memory. Of course there was resentment of the imperialists, but those went back to the old days of Empire rather than 1956. The 1956 aberration had I think more or less been forgotten. Sir Harold Beeley and co. had seen to that shortly afterwards; it really didn’t last very long.

MM: Interesting country, Egypt, I think.

BE: And still, for better or for worse, the intellectual hub of the whole Middle East.

MM: So, have we dealt with Egypt?

BE: Yes I think so. I mean, I could go on talking about it for hours but I think you’ve probably had most of the stuff that would be of interest to you. MM: Thank you very much...

...Appointment as ambassador in Damascus 1996-2000

So that was a good time. Then various jobs were mooted and I didn’t get them and so on, and then Damascus came up; absolutely delighted - very good fit. We had a super time; I think the best posting we had in our careers. The house was nothing to write home about - it was a perfectly decent house, better than many ambassadorial residencies in Damascus, but it was not particularly wonderful. It had a tiny little swimming pool and I could do about three strokes each way and it was a joke really, and a very small garden, but I had a garden. A lot of ambassadors had to make do with flats; it just wasn’t a town that had been geared up for dealing with diplomats. The time I was there was interesting because it was the time of the declining years of Hafez al-Assad, the wily old fox of Damascus who had been playing Middle Eastern power politics, usually with a weak hand but playing that weak hand ruthlessly and skillfully since the mid-sixties. The Ba’ath party took over in 1963 and he came out on top in 1964-66. But after the demise of what he used to call with a smile ‘as-Sovietunion al-marhum’ (the late-lamented Soviet Union), he had concluded that he needed the European Union as a counter-weight to the sole US super power in Middle Eastern affairs, and he also had concluded that he wanted better relations with the British because they had the best relations with Washington and, if he was ever to get back the Golan, which is the one thing he really wanted, it would have to be as a result of US pressure on Israel. I frankly can’t dispute his logic. From that point, therefore, in an incompetent but definite way, there was an attempt by the Syrian Government, which is a most disagreeable government, to make itself agreeable to the Brits and the Europeans more generally. At the same time, the regime felt a degree of confidence in its dominance of the country and felt able to relax the controls. When I arrived there, if you wanted to have a conversation with the Syrians about anything interesting - and by that you normally meant “What’s going to happen when the old man dies?” or policy to Israel - you first of all had to know your person very well and secondly you might want to walk down to the end of the garden to do it.

MM: So that it wasn’t taped or …

BE: So that it wasn’t taped or whatever. By the time I left, you could have conversations on both those subjects across my dinner table with differing views expressed by differing Syrians in front of each other, which was extraordinary.

MM: That’s a triumph!

BE: Yes, it was a triumph of diplomacy for us - it was frightfully nice for us to know that people could do that - but not only that; it was actually a reflection of the fact that the wind was blowing very strongly in that sort of direction. Hafez al-Assad was making a major effort in 1999 to clear the decks for his successor and so organising things that that successor could only be Bashar, his son. There was this business of persuading the Syrians and the Israelis to get into direct negotiations. It might be interesting to tell you it as I recollect the situation because I know a little bit about this. We, the British, played quite a significant part in all this. The basic point is that I had the great advantage, at a time when the Foreign Office was actually sceptical about Syrian willingness to do a deal, that Michael Levy, Lord Levy, the Prime Minister’s ‘special envoy’ to everywhere but, above all, a specialist fundraiser for the Labour Party who had strong connections with the Israeli Labour Party had also concluded, quite independently, that there was a deal to be done with the Syrians. The logic of this was that only the Syrians could give the Israelis a trouble-free exit from South Lebanon (and Barak certainly needed to get his troops out of there), and that a deal with the Syrians would lend such momentum to the peace process in relation to the West Bank and Gaza that a deal, which then seemed impossible, might be more easily obtained. So, throughout 1999, there was a series of visits by Michael Levy to Damascus. The first time he came with one of the Special Advisers and I told him afterwards that it might be better if he came with somebody from the Political Department to act as his note-taker and his interface with the normal formal bureaucratic procedure. I’m glad to say he tookmy advice and did that subsequently because, otherwise, it would have put me in a very difficult position. As it was, he wanted to see every word that was going into my reports. I made it clear that I represented the Government and not just the Foreign Office, but he was not always inclined to see it that way.

MM: But he was well within the centre of government himself.

BE: Absolutely! He played tennis with Tony, as he tended to drop into the conversation repeatedly. But, his ‘Tony and Me’ line did reflect the fact that he was extremely well connected. He’s a very interesting character, and Alison and I liked him and his wife Gilda who sometimes came with him. I think the old fox Hafez al-Assad had never seen anything quite like this. Michael made no secret of the fact, was proud of the fact, that he’d come from nowhere socially. He had no background in diplomacy; but he was well connected not only in government, not only within the Jewish community in London but also within the Israeli Labour hierarchy. His son Danny, in fact, was working at that stage for Yossi Beilin, who was still at that stage a key figure in the Labour Party hierarchy, and Michael and Gilda actually kept a house in Tel Aviv. What he was doing, in fact, when he came to talk to Hafez al-Assad was giving him briefings about how he, Michael, saw Israeli internal politics in relation to the peace process at the time. It’s extraordinary how useful that must have been because I don’t think Hafez trusted the intelligence he was getting from his own people - he didn’t trust anybody! It became clear that he, Assad, was prepared to do a deal so long as it could be presented as (and I choose my words carefully) an Israeli withdrawal to the lines of the beginning of June 1967, ie before the June War. There was a lot of haggling about whether Barak was prepared to give sufficient assurance for Assad that this was going to be the upshot for him to be prepared to go into direct negotiation. At the same time, Levy was explaining that, well no, he couldn’t do that because it would be held against him in domestic politics. He would have given everything away before he started, etc. We’re talking now about November 1999 or early December. Michael Levy came through for yet another visit - and there had been debriefing to the Americans of what was going on and yes, something might be possible. We had a long and in the event decisive meeting with Hafez al-Assad who had the Foreign Minister with him, and then Michael and I went on to see Bashar as well (more to get the measure of the man at that stage than to do business). That all went on so long that the official dinner that had been laid on for us had to be cancelled. So Michael and I just went out to have supper down town. Michael was due to leave early the following morning. We were actually in the middle of our meal when we got summoned. The Syrians, who knew where everybody was all the time, got in touch with us and said, “Look, the Foreign Minister would like to see you now please.” So we finished the rest of our meal and went back to the Foreign Ministry where Farouq Sharah asked Michael basically to repeat what he’d learned from his meeting that morning with the President, where Farouq Sharah had been present. Sharah wanted to be absolutely clear that there was no misunderstanding. Fortunately Michael who wrote copious notes on tiny bits of paper was able to give a remarkably good account, scrupulously accurate, of what had happened. And Sharah said, “Thank you very much; I think that’s right but these matters are so important we want to be sure. I hope you have a good trip home.” “Yes, I’m leaving on the first ‘plane tomorrow morning.” “Oh, I’m not sure you ought to leave quite that soon.” We were then summoned back to see Hafez al-Assad the next morning. What had happened? Hafez wanted to check himself that we had got it right; he too wanted to hear Michael’s verbatim account of what had happened the previous day in the meeting. Michael Levy repeated his account again and off we went, sent off telegrams all over the place. He had to travel back via Vienna and found himself on the same ‘plane as Bashar al-Assad travelling incognito, probably to meet his future wife. He married a girl he had met in England. So Levy and Bashar wandered round the Duty Free in Vienna chatting. By this time, Michael, who’s a very engaging personality, is a friend of the family! A man who was kissed warmly on both cheeks by Hafez al-Assad – a picture I will treasure in my memory! A few days later, Madeleine Albright arrived. According to Dennis Ross they found ‘the door unlocked’, and made arrangements for the Syrians and the Israelis to meet at a country house conference complex outside Washington, called Shepherdstown, immediately after Christmas I think. I can’t remember the precise date. We, of course, were not involved - sadly, I think, because we might have been able to avoid the Horlicks that then happened. Barak had given sufficient assurances for

Assad to believe, genuinely, that he understood that the outcome had to be presentable as withdrawal to the lines as they existed before June 1967. The negotiations divided into different working groups, which were intended, so one assumed, to operate in parallel. The one group which the Syrians were interested in was called 'withdrawal', the timing, extent and so on. One was called 'security' and was to deal with the arrangements, above all for the listening posts on the top of the Golan but also for the areas from which the Israelis were to withdraw, the extent to which they were going to be demilitarised, and what were going to be the arrangements for supervising the demilitarisation and so on. One group was on 'peaceful relations'. Were you going to have diplomatic relations? Were you going to have open borders? What was going to be the situation? And one was on 'water', which was a hot issue since the Golan was a major source of water supply for the Jordan basin and the greater Israel. All the groups met, but the Israelis didn’t turn up for the first group at all for the first two days. The Syrians, having been assured the Israelis understood that the end result had to be total withdrawal, or something that could be presented as total withdrawal, negotiated in, I believe, good faith, and gave a great deal away so that, on security issues for example, the only outstanding point was whether the people who were going to man the listening stations on top of Mount Herman, from which you can actually look down into Damascus, whether those people were actually going to be Americans or Israelis. But whoever manned the stations, the ‘take’ would have been piped straight back down to Israel. All this sort of thing could have been fixed. The Syrian gave away a great deal on 'water', which was apparently quite a good discussion by water experts about how they were going solve this problem. But the Israelis didn’t turn up to the first group. Obviously Assad was far too ill to go so, Farouq Sharah was sent; a very exposed position on his own but with a good team to represent the Syrians, but the boss wasn’t there, whereas the Israelis were represented by Barak. When the Israelis did turn up to the third group, I suppose it was the third day, they turned up without even a map. They were not serious. The Americans, by this stage, had got to the situation where they had actually drafted theoutline agreement which incorporated all the agreements reached in the other groups. Things were going well except for the absence of progress in the first group. Farouq Sharah said, “I can’t go on like this. We’re going home. Tell the Israelis and Americans that, as soon as they’re serious, we’ll comeback.” And off he went, I think expecting to come back.

Unfortunately the Israelis leaked the draft agreement to the Israeli press to show just how clever they’d been and just how much they’d got. Again, this was perhaps required by their domestic political situation. They’d felt themselves politically exposed, but of course this was extremely short-sighted. None of the concessions that had been made had been cleared in advance with the Syrian Ba’ath Party and so on, and it was an over-simplification at best to think that Hafaez al-Assad or, still less, Farouq Sharah could just say yes and it would all go through like a dose of salts. So, as soon as that was leaked, it became impossible for the negotiations to resume. There was a subsequent lurch in early 2000. A meeting was set up in Geneva between Clinton and Assad - Assad didn’t normally travel by that stage; he was a very old, very sick man - and the assumption amongst the Syrians present was that this was going to lead to resumption of negotiations. I was assured that the Syrian party went, with luggage so that they could, if necessary, go straight on to Washington to continue with negotiations. That was as close as Syria and Israel have ever been to negotiation. I was not involved in the negotiation direct but with Michael Levy - I was basically supporting him in the talks, briefing him beforehand and writing the telegrams afterwards and so on - I was very involved in getting the Syrians up to that point, and was acutely frustrated that we didn’t actually get anywhere. We left Syria in I suppose about May, something like that, and we were off with our charity in Zambia in June.

MM: Thank you very much indeed for that.

Transcribed by Joanna Buckley, October 2005

Eve Harow Explains Why

My friend*, Eve Harow,



who stopped blogging (see here although she maintains a web site, Am Hanetzach, where she updates he Arutz 7 interview programs) was interviewed herself for a periodical of the United Arab Emirates.

Settlers live better than average Israelis

...The 5,500 Jews who chose to move to the West Bank in 2007 bucked the overall trend of Jewish emigration from Israel. Though there are no official figures, it is believed that since the outbreak of the second intfada, at least 20,000 Israelis have been leaving for the United States or Europe each year.

Other figures from the survey have surprised observers, especially given the recent coverage of the clashes between settlers and the Israeli army and the condemnation of the settlement enterprise from within Israel and internationally.

The findings show that 92 per cent of settlers are satisfied with their lives, 10 percentage points higher than in Israel. Family income is also noticeably higher than the Jewish population in Israel, and settler children do better at school.

The figures also show that 91 per cent of settlers report their health as good to very good, compared with 73 per cent of Israelis.

...Regarding the Sasson report, Haaretz concluded that, despite large cuts in services and welfare payments to Israelis in Israel, “a glorious welfare state is flourishing” for the settlers.

Many settlers themselves, however, have a different explanation for the appeal of their communities.

Eve Harow, a 47-year-old mother of seven, moved from Los Angeles to the settlement of Efrat, between the Palestinian cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, 20 years ago. She denied that most settlers were drawn to the West Bank by the material advantages.

“People here have a strong sense of purpose and a very supportive network of families around us who share our ideology,” she said. “We know we are protecting the rest of Israel and that there would be a terror state here if we were not here. We’re stopping another Holocaust.”

She also believed most settlers were by nature optimistic. “Otherwise we would not be able to stick it out here.”

The satisfaction of the settlers contrasts starkly with a recent poll of Palestinians that found 40 per cent wanted to leave Gaza and 25 per cent wished to emigrate from the West Bank.

*

Just One Clock

Yep, just one. Here it is:

That is the only visible clock on the 3rd floor of Egged's Jerusalem Central Bus Station, the floor from where all the buses leave.

The floor where you need several clocks to make sure you're on time and if you are late, how much time you have before you need to break out into a mad dash for the bus.

Amazing.

That's why Israelis are (not) noted for their punctiliousness.

If We're "Returning" Property, Can We Start With the Temple Mount?

The Pals. are renewing a dormant idea, as MediaLine reports:

Palestinians: Hand Back our West Jerusalem Properties

A team of Palestinian experts is currently collecting data on Palestinian properties in weste! RN Jerusalem that will be presented at final status negotiations on the issue of Jerusalem, or to the International High Court of Justice if negotiations aren’t resumed, according to a senior Palestinian official. The governor of Jerusalem, Adnan Husseini, estimates that Palestinians owned 40 percent of the 17 kilometers square, which included the boundaries of western Jerusalem until the year 1948.

“We want to raise the issue of our properties in western Jerusalem; this is an official decision, there can be no debate over this decision. We are not talking about a small issue and since Israel is implementing this idea in east Jerusalem, then there is no reason why we can’t raise it in western Jerusalem,” Husseini said.

...“There is serious work [being done] on several files. We will follow up our rights in western Jerusalem. This is a battle that the Israelis decided to open and we will pursue it until the end both legally and politically... I have a house in western Jerusalem and I want it back,” said Husseini.

“After what the Israelis did in Sheikh Jarrah and elsewhere in east Jerusalem, there is nothing we have to be afraid of – we will enter this battle and let the result be whatever is. For us the file of the private properties in western Jerusalem should be open; this is a decision we have made,” he added.

Husseini was for a long time the head of the Islamic Waqf in east Jerusalem before assuming this new position.

...Husseini stressed that according to the Oslo Accords, the issue of Jerusalem was being left to the final stage of negotiations. “When we say Jerusalem we mean both parts of the city, west and east. It is true that Israel is trying to limit the negotiations to the eastern part of the city, but this is not acceptable to us. We want to discuss both parts, and when we will reach an agreement, then the eastern part will be the capital of the Palestinian state and the western part will be the capital of Israel,” he said.

...The Media Line has contacted various Israeli governmental institutions and will publish their responses over the next few days. Meanwhile, the office of Jerusalem’s new mayor, Nir Barkat, told TML “the ownership issue is a legal one and it should be determined using legal tools that are acceptable within the framework of the Israeli courts’ system. The municipality has not received any concrete material yet. In addition, the Jerusalem municipality will not allow any attempt by any organizations in the political arena of the Palestinian Authority to impinge upon Israel’s sovereignty over united Jerusalem.”

Well, if they give over the Temple Mount, purchased by David son of Jesse, developed by Solomon son of David, reconstructed by Ezra, redeveloped by Herod, etc., maybe there's something to talk about.

A Matter of History

One of the major issues that the pro-"Palestine" Arabs and their supporters mention is that "their country" was "taken away" from them.

In fact, all of the enlightened persons dealing with the issue of the future of the territory of the Holy Land during and immediately after the First World War, whether in government, international bodies, etc., all considered the area of "Palestine" to belong exclusively to the Jews, therin to reconstitute the Jewish National Home albeit minority rights needed to be protected.

These rights, however, were only what we would term these days as "personal rights", "civil liberties", "human rights", etc.

Proof?

Here, you will note that the sole matter bothering those who were involved in the deliberations during June 1922 of the League of Nations regarding the awarding the Mandate over Palestine to Great Britain was the question whether religious rights of non-Jews would be protected.

As Lord Balfour stated therein:

Some anxiety had been expressed in certain quarters lest the mandatory system as applied to Palestine should have some injurious effects upon the religious interests of any great Christian body. He could express nothing but surprise that any human being could suppose that Christian interests should suffer by the transfer of power in Palestine from a Mohammedan Power to a Christian Power, especially when that Christian Power was Great Britain. He did not think that he would be contradicted when he said that no Power had shown itself more equitable in its treatment of different religious creeds. It would be universally admitted by those who knew Great Britain's practice that the various forms of Christian religion within her own territories had been dealt with with the utmost fairness and generosity. Great Britain was a Protestant country, but he did not believe that there was any country, Protestant or Catholic, in which the Catholic religion had received fairer or more generous treatment than it had within the British Isles. It was not credible, therefore, that places possessing sacred associations with large bodies of Christian believers should in any way suffer by being taken away from Mohammedan authority and put under a Christian mandatory. This was all the more difficult to believe when it was remembered that whatever was done in Palestine at that moment, or in the future, was done in the full light of day. The machinery of the Mandates Commission, of the Council and of the Assembly of the League was so contrived as to make it quite impossible for any transaction of general interest to take place except in the full glare of public opinion. Under these circumstances, there was no chance of deliberate injustice or careless administration being permitted to exist in Palestine. Lord Balfour concluded by saying that he had explained why the delay had occurred in the definition of the Palestine mandate, and why the final juridical settlement of the whole question would still have to be delayed.

He proposed that the question of the Palestine mandate should come up before the Council anew, and that the meeting at which it was to be discussed should take place within six weeks.

Nothing mentioned about Arab "rights", not national, territorial or political. Only concern for religious rights.

And funnily enough, it is the Jews today that suffer infringement of their religious rights on the Temple Mount and at Joseph's Tomb and the Shalom Al Yisrael Synagogue in Jericho, for example.

If Only This Were True

From Destruction and Violation To Rennovation

Hundreds of settlers enter Joseph's Tomb on Wednesday night, accompanied by Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The visit followed a renovation of the site, considered the burial place of biblical patriarch Joseph, which had been desecrated by Palestinians over the past few years.

Amazing, eh?

After all,

Under the 1993 Oslo Accords, which granted nearby strategic territory to the Palestinians, Joseph's Tomb was supposed to be accessible to Jews and Christians.

When the Palestinians signed the Oslo II agreement, they promised to "ensure free access to, respect the ways of worship in, and not make any changes to, the Jewish holy sites" on land given up by Israel. [They made the same promise in the Gaza-Jericho accord in 1994 and the Hebron accord in 1997.] Among the listed sites: the venerable "Peace Upon Israel" (shalom al yisrael) synagogue in Jericho and the yeshiva at Joseph's Tomb in Nablus. Today, neither exists. In October, Palestinians burned down the synagogue. They smashed Joseph's Tomb to rubble and trampled its holy books, and announced that a mosque would be built on the site.

Yes, really, it's ours

But following repeated attacks against Jewish worshippers at the holy site by gunmen associated with then-Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat's militias, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak in October 2000 ordered an Israeli unilateral retreat from the area.

Gershon Mesika, head of the Shomron Regional Council, is responsible for the rennovation work.

This year the Shomron Regional Council and the "Shchem Echad" association initiated visits to the gravesite, accompanied by IDF soldiers. The visitors were shocked by the condition of the gravestone, which had turned into a pile of stones. The entire site was burned and filled with heaps of trash. In light of the gravestone's severe condition, it was decided to try and renovate it. A group of Jewish professionals arrived at the site on Monday night, renovated the gravestone and cleaned the gravesite...

..."We feel pain over the situation at Joseph's Tomb in the past nine years," said Yehuda Liebman of the "Shchem Echad" association. "We view this act as the first step in repairing what is needed: Returning the situation to its previous condition and repairing it."

By the way, while the story claims only "settlers" were there, I know that on the bus I returned home on last night there were a half-dozen Yeshiva boys, Americans from Jerusalem, going there.

Media Quotation Awards

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE MRC’s 2008 AWARDS:

Chris Matthews “won” the dubious honor of Quote of the Year for gushing over a Barack Obama speech back in February: “I felt this thrill going up my leg. I mean, I don’t have that too often….And that is an objective assessment.”

Top runner-up for Quote of the Year went to Reuters for this ridiculous post-election headline: “Media bias largely unseen in U.S. presidential race.”

The Obamagasm Award
"Some princes are born in palaces. Some are born in mangers. But a few are born in the imagination, out of scraps of history and hope." — Time’s Nancy Gibbs in the November 17 cover story.

Half-Baked Alaska Award for Pummeling Palin
"The fact of the matter is, the comparison between her [Sarah Palin] and Hillary Clinton is the comparison between an igloo and the Empire State Building!" — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews on Hardball, October 14.

The Irrelevant Reverend Wright Award
"To see his [Jeremiah Wright’s] career completely destroyed by three 20-second soundbites, all of the work he has done, his entire legacy gone down the drain, has been absolutely devastating to me — to him, sorry....We are still a racist country." — Washington Post writer Sally Quinn on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 30.

From Camelot to Obamalot Award
"Today, the audacity of hope had its rendezvous with destiny....Obama is now an adopted son of Camelot. His candidacy blessed not just by the Lion of the Senate, patriarch of the clan, but by JFK’s daughter." — David Wright on ABC’s Nightline January 28.

The Crush Rush Award for Loathing Limbaugh
Author/humorist P.J. O’Rourke: "It’s the twilight of the radio loud-mouth, you know? I knew it from the moment the fat guy [Rush Limbaugh] refused to share his drugs...."
Host Bill Maher: "You mean the OxyContin that he was on?...Why couldn’t he have croaked from it instead of Heath Ledger?" — HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher, February 8.

Politics of Meaninglessness Award for the Silliest Analysis
"Not doing it [fighting global warming] will be catastrophic. We’ll be eight degrees hotter in ten, not ten but 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow. Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." — CNN founder Ted Turner on PBS’s Charlie Rose, April 1.

Madness of King George Award
"When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation; when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead; this advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up! Good night and good luck." — MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann in a "Special Comment" on Countdown, May 14.

Barbra Streisand Political IQ Award for Celebrity Vapidity
"If you have a few hundred followers, and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you ‘Pope.’ It’s like, if you can’t pay your mortgage, you’re a deadbeat. But if you can’t pay a million mortgages, you’re Bear Stearns and we bail you out. And that is who the Catholic Church is: the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia." — Bill Maher on HBO’s Real Time, April 11.

Admitting the Obvious Award
“When NBC News first assigned me to the Barack Obama campaign, I must confess my knees quaked a bit....I wondered if I was up to the job. I wondered if I could do the campaign justice.”
— NBC reporter Lee Cowan in an article for NBC’s “The Peacock” advertising supplement, March 23-29.

Other 2008 Award Categories:

• The "Pay Up You Patriots" Award
• Damn Those Conservatives Award
• Let Us Fluff Your Pillow Award for Soft & Cuddly Interviews
• Media Hero Award
• The Great Goracle Award
• Good Morning Morons Award
• The John Murtha Award for Painting America as Racist
• MSNBC = Maudlin Sycophantic Nutty Blathering Chris Award

Why The Pals. Have No "Right of Return of Refugees"

The position that denies the right of return was also the position of international law in the era after World War II. This was an era when forced population transfers were perceived as the appropriate way to reduce ethnic frictions and build national identities. During the course of the 1990s it seemed as though a change had occurred in the position of international law in light of the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia. The desire to prevent acts of slaughter and expulsion led to widespread recognition of the obligation to return the refugees to their homes. In the course of this, the distinction between the Bosnian refugees and the Palestinian refugees was blurred.This was the period during which the Palestinians adopted Resolution 194, and read into it the ostensible recognition of the right of return.

Since then, more than 10 years have gone by during which there has been a general sobering up from the solution of return. Former UN secretary general Kofi Annan's 2003 plan to settle the conflict in Cyprus recognizes that the Cypriot refugees do not have the right to return to their homes. Annan draws a distinction between the Bosnian and Cypriot refugees because of the circumstances of life that had changed during the 30 years that had elapsed since the conflict erupted there, and the legitimate needs of those who had settled into the refugees' homes.

It is hard to exaggerate the significance of the precedent in the UN position that recognizes the right of governments to negotiate on behalf of refugees. In the waning days of 2008 there are those who have doubts even as to the wisdom of the effort to return the Bosnian refugees to their homes, as their return has led to a crisis-prone situation that is liable to degenerate into renewed violence at any moment.

More here, by Eyal Benvenisti, professor at the Tel Aviv University Faculty of Law

Yes, There Is a Kosher Cooking Carnival

Here.

Coleman, Chanukah, Hora

A news clip and at the end, if you're patient, Coleman dances a few Hora steps. But don't blink or you'll miss it.

Here

So, This Irish Catholicism?

Dr John Kelly is a former registrar of University College Dublin and is chairman of the Friends of Bethlehem University in Ireland and he had an op-ed in the Irish Times today opining that "Behind the cruel edifice of a wall around the birthplace of Jesus, an enclave of university students triumph in the face of adversity".

Well, that's okay but then I read this

..."the Wall", the 70km-long, eight-metre-high monstrosity that attempts to divide Palestine from Israel...and we were there to say the rosary walking up and down past the Israeli armed guards at the main checkpoint leading to Jerusalem.

There were about 10 of us, a few De La Salle Brothers from Bethlehem University, some nuns from the Caritas Baby Hospital and a couple of locals, one of whom was an elderly lady whose lovely olive and lemon back garden had been cut in half and destroyed by the construction of the wall a few years before.

As we walked up and down saying the rosary, in full view of the Israeli guards, Jack hacked a bit off the wall with his crucifix and gave it to me. I have it framed in my study. The wall almost completely circumscribes the small town of Bethlehem and it has a number of checkpoints, each with Israeli armed guards. It is impossible, for me at any rate, not to compare this situation with the Nazi's Warsaw Ghetto and second World War checkpoints.

As with the Jews in that terrible city of the early 1940s, the Palestinians are being treated like scum by the Israeli guards. Bethlehem resembles a ghetto...

He had a previous piece "Segregation wall strangles the life out of Bethlehem" in The Irish Times on 24 June 2006 and so you can't claim the man is unfamilair with the facts.

Kelly, the 'Nazis', in your terminology - and I do not refer to Arabs, Arab terrorists or whatnot as 'Nazis' - in this case are being kept out.

Jerusalem Post Accepts "Jews for Jesus" Ad

Pro- and Anti-Rape

This story

The most talked about honoree of the 2008 Glamour Women of the Year awards was a small child of 10. Nujood Ali, who flew all the way from her native Yemen for the ritzy Carnegie Hall gala, was married off by impoverished parents to a 30-year-old man who raped and abused her.

reminded me of the demand of former Haaretz editor David Landau that the US should rape Israel.

The thing though is that the incoming Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said this at the above event:

"one of the greatest women I have ever seen is Nujood. She set an example with her courage I hope will continue to challenge all of us."

and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said

"I can't wait to meet [Ali]. What an incredible story. That's going to be a great inspiration to talk to her."

So, why is Israel still in trouble? Why do I think that some are trying to rape Israel and no one is very upset?

Bush Pardons One Israel Supporter; And Pollard?

Great move by Bush

In a gesture of forgiveness for a decades-old offense, President George W. Bush on Tuesday granted a pardon posthumously to a man who broke the law to supply aircraft to Jews fighting in Israel's 1948 war of independence.

Charles Winters, a Miami businessman considered a hero in Israel, was listed in a batch of 19 pardons and one commutation that Bush issued before leaving for Camp David to spend the holidays. No high-profile lawbreakers were on the list.

...In the summer of 1948, Winters, a Protestant from Boston who exported produce, worked with others to transfer two converted B-17 "Flying Fortresses" to Israel's defense forces. He personally flew one of the aircraft from Miami to Czechoslovakia, where that plane and a third B-17 were retrofitted for use as bombers.

...The three B-17s were the only heavy bombers in the Israeli Air Force. It is reported that counterattacks with the bombers helped turned the war in Israel's favor. In March 1961, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir issued a letter of commendation to Winters to recognize his contributions to Israel's survival as an independent state.

Winters, a Protestant from Boston, was convicted in 1949 for violating the Neutrality Act for conspiring to export aircraft to a foreign country. He was fined $5,000 and sentenced to 18 months in prison. Two others, Herman Greenspun and Al Schwimmer, also were convicted of violating the act, but they did not serve time. President Kennedy pardoned Greenspun in 1961. President Clinton pardoned Schwimmer in 2000.

"Rules are rules, but it's interesting that my dad was the low man on the totem pole in the operation, but he's the only one who had to serve time," said Jim Winters, 44.

...After Winters died Oct. 30, 1984, half of his ashes were buried in a Christian cemetery near the Jewish cemetery of the Knights Templar in Jerusalem. The other half was scattered from the top of Mount Tabor in Israel. Jim Winters said the last words his father spoke to him were "Keep the faith" — something the young Winters said he did during more than a year that he sought the pardon.

One More On That BBC Trek

Aleem's comment from yesterday:

This, the main entry point into Bethlehem on foot, felt a world away. It meant walking past Israeli soldiers, through a door-shaped gap in a long section of high, grey, concrete wall. This is part of the barrier Israel has been building in recent years, it says to keep out suicide bombers and attackers. Palestinians see it as a means by which Israel can grab more land.

People in Bethlehem often talk of feeling suffocated, by a barrier that encircles parts of the town, and encroaches well inside its territory, and by the Jewish settlements that are being built on occupied Palestinian lands close by.

but this on Ramallah:

Socially too, the city has tried to remain resilient.

An evening out in any number of fancy restaurants or bars hypnotises the wealthiest of Ramallah's residents into thinking that all is well in the world.

Many Palestinians here, outwardly at least, seem determined not to concern themselves even with the dire humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip, for example.

Free Pollard Rally - January 6, 2009

Opposite the American Consulate on Agron Road, Jerusalem

This Is Called "Defeatism"

Herb Keinon is reporting that

Israel won't fight UK gov't advisory

Israel will not wage a public battle with the British over a new advisory to be placed on the Foreign Office's Web site, warning against buying property over the Green Line, saying the move has little practical significance. "This is obviously unacceptable to us," a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on Monday. "We think it is unnecessary and not something positive, but we have to pick our battles and are not going to go on the offensive about everything."

At the same time, another government official said that this type of formal advisory issued by the British government can only add ammunition to those in Britain interested in delegitimizing Israel.

The official also said that Jerusalem was watching to see if this was the last of a series of "unfriendly" actions the British have taken against Israel lately, or the precursor of more to come.

It seems that British Embassy spokesman Karen Kaufman confirmed that the Foreign Office would soon be warning Britons against buying property over the Green Line, including east Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. The warning will is that there could be "consequences for that property" in any future peace deal with the Palestinians or Syrians.

Now, imagine if the World Zionist Organization had warned the Arabs of the surrounding Arab lands in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s that they shouldn't come to Mandate Palestine due to "consequences" (for that is exactly how the local Arab population grew so much and fast - immigration from outside - what, you didn't know? you thought all those "refugees" were centuries-old residents of the Holy Land?).