Is That 'Half Empty' or 'Half Full'?

Barak: Half of weapon smuggling tunnels destroyed along Gaza border

...Barak said that Israel had destroyed about half of the "active" weapons-smuggling tunnels along the Gaza-Egypt border during the recent 22-day military operation in Gaza....Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Monday that Egypt can "dramatically reduce" Palestinian weapons smuggling along the Gaza border, and is more inclined to act following Israel's recent military operation in Gaza.

Half of more than 5 tons of explosives, ammunition and more is a helluva lot of terror.

So maybe all Barak brought Israel was not half but nuthin'?

Bust Found, An Archeological Find, That Is

What a bust:

Israeli archaeologists say they have discovered a rare 1,800-year-old figurine in a Jerusalem excavation.

Dating from the time of the Roman Empire, the five-centimeter marble bust depicts the head of a man with a short curly beard and almond-shaped eyes.

A statement Monday from the Israel Antiquities Authority said nothing similar had been found before in the country.

The archaeologists said they believed it could depict an athlete, possibly a boxer. They added that they thought it was used as a weight and might have belonged to a merchant.

It was found in the ruins of a building destroyed by an earthquake in the fourth or fifth century.

Source

And more:

According to Dr. Doron Ben-Ami and Yana Tchekhanovets, directors of the excavation at the site on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The high level of finish on the figurine is extraordinary, while meticulously adhering to the tiniest of details. Its short curly beard, as well as the position of its head which is slightly inclined to the right, are indicative of an obviously Greek influence and show that it should be dated to the time of the emperor Hadrian or shortly thereafter (second-third centuries CE). This is one of the periods when the art of Roman sculpture reached its zenith. The pale yellow shade of the marble alludes to the eastern origin of the raw material from which the image was carved, probably from Asia Minor, although this matter still needs to be checked”.

Hurray For Mr. Roberts...in London

Andrew Roberts asserts in the London Times that

The charities are guilty, not the BBC, The Corporation is right not to run the Gaza appeal. Oxfam and others are clearly anti-Israel

and he continues

The reason that his decision is brave and right, however, is that many of the 13 charities that make up the DEC are even more mired in anti-Israeli assumptions than the BBC itself.

...Who adjudicates on which victims to support via such charitable aid - and according to whose political morality? Why did the BBC not launch an appeal for the victims of collateral damage during Nato's bombing of Serbia in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign?...what about the Palestinian victims of Hamas's hideous human rights abuses, still so shamefully under-reported by the British media as a whole?

...In the months prior to the decision by Hamas to end the six-month ceasefire and resume rocket attacks, these charities issued a flood of one- sided denunciations aimed at Israel. Their campaign repeated tendentious and often highly inaccurate terms such as “collective punishment” and “violation of international law”...The fact that Hamas chose to pursue war with Israel rather than the welfare of its people, was not covered in these reports. There was no sense that any of these claims might be disputed by the other side or by genuinely neutral observers.

...Violence against Israelis, including deaths, are virtually ignored by Oxfam officials, who have referred to “collective punishment illegal under international humanitarian law yet tolerated by the international community”...

...On February 7 last year, for example, the Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that “at least ten trucks with humanitarian aid sent to the Gaza Strip by the Jordanian Red Crescent Society were confiscated by Hamas police shortly after the lorries entered the territory”. Journalists also reported that the aid was “unloaded in Hamas ministry warehouses” and that a similar seizure took place in January 2008...Do the 13 charities and their political allies that are so vocally attacking the “cowardly” BBC really have the guts and wherewithal to do a proper audit on how those monies might be spent in today's Gaza Strip? I, for one, do not believe it.

That Bob Simon's 60 Minutes Piece on My Neighborhood

Watch CBS Videos Online

===========================

UPDATE

The transcript:

Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?

Jan. 25, 2009(CBS) Getting a peace deal in the Middle East is such a priority to President Obama that his first foreign calls on his first day in office were to Arab and Israeli leaders. And on day two, the president made former Senator George Mitchell his special envoy for Middle East peace. Mr. Obama wants to shore up the ceasefire in Gaza, but a lasting peace really depends on the West Bank where Palestinians had hoped to create their state. The problem is, even before Israel invaded Gaza, a growing number of Israelis and Palestinians had concluded that peace between them was no longer possible, that history had passed it by. For peace to have a chance, Israel would have to withdraw from the West Bank, which would then become the Palestinian state.

It’s known as the "two-state" solution. But, while negotiations have been going on for 15 years, hundreds of thousands of Jewish settlers have moved in to occupy the West Bank. Palestinians say they can't have a state with Israeli settlers all over it, which the settlers say is precisely the idea.


Daniella Weiss moved from Israel to the West Bank 33 years ago. She has been the mayor of a large settlement.

"I think that settlements prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state in the land of Israel. This is the goal. And this is the reality," Weiss told 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon.

Though settlers and Palestinians don't agree on anything, most do agree now that a peace deal has been overtaken by events.

"While my heart still wants to believe that the two-state solution is possible, my brain keeps telling me the opposite because of what I see in terms of the building of settlements. So, these settlers are destroying the potential peace for both people that would have been created if we had a two-state solution," Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, once a former candidate for Palestinian president, told Simon.

And he told 60 Minutes Israel's invasion of Gaza - all the death and destruction - convinces him that Israel does not want a two-state solution. "My heart is deeply broken, and I am very worried that what Israel has done has furthered us much further from the possibility of [a] two-state solution."

Palestinians had hoped to establish their state on the West Bank, an area the size of Delaware. But Israelis have split it up with scores of settlements, and hundreds of miles of new highways that only settlers can use. Palestinians have to drive - or ride - on the older roads.

When they want to travel from one town to another, they have to submit to humiliating delays at checkpoints and roadblocks. There are more than 600 of them on the West Bank.

Asked why there are so many checkpoints, Dr. Barghouti said, "I think the main goal is to fragment the West Bank. Maybe a little bit of them can be justified because they say it's for security. But I think the vast majority of them are basically to block the movement of people from one place to another."

Here's how they block Barghouti: he was born in Jerusalem, grew up in Jerusalem and worked in a hospital there for 14 years. Four years ago he moved to a town just 10 miles away, but now, because he no longer lives in Jerusalem, he can't get back in - ever.

He says he can't get a permit to go. "I asked for a permit to go to Jerusalem during the last year, the last years about 16 times. And 16 times they were rejected. Like most Palestinians, I don't have a permit to go to the city I was born in, to the city I used to work in, to the city where my sister lives."

What he's up against are scores of Israeli settlements dominating the lowlands like crusader fortresses. Many are little cities, and none of them existed 40 years ago. The Israelis always take the high ground, sometimes the hills, and sometimes the homes. And sometimes Arabs are occupied inside their own homes.

One house for example is the highest house on the highest hill overlooking the town of Nablus. 60 Minutes learned that Israeli soldiers often corral the four families who live there and take over the house to monitor movement down below.

Simon and the 60 Minutes team went to an apartment owned by a Mr. Nassif. That morning, Israeli soldiers had apparently entered the apartment, without notice, and remained there when Simon knocked on the door.

"We cannot speak with you, there are soldiers," Nassif told Simon. "We are in prison here."

Asked what was happening, Nassif says, "They are keeping us here and the soldiers are upstairs, we cannot move. We cannot speak with you."

Nassif said he couldn't leave the house and didn't know how long he'd have to stay in place. Asked if they were paying him any money, he told Simon, "You are kidding?"

Abdul Nassif, a bank manager said he had to get to his bank to open the safe, but one of the soldiers wouldn't let him go. He told 60 Minutes whenever the soldiers come they wake everybody up, and herd them into a kitchen for hours while soldiers sleep in their beds. They can't leave or use the phone, or let 60 Minutes in.

He sent 60 Minutes downstairs to see if his brother would open the door so we could ask the soldiers why they keep taking over this house. But the brother told Simon, "The soldiers close the door from the key. They take the key."

So Simon and the crew left, and that night, so did the soldiers. But when 60 Minutes returned two days later, the soldiers were back for more surveillance. This time they kept the women under house arrest, but let the men go to work and the children go to school. When the children returned, we caught a glimpse of two armed soldiers at the top of the stairs.

Then more children came home, but the soldiers wouldn't open the door again.

A commander told Simon that he and the crew would have to go back behind a wall in order for the children to be let in.

The commander declined to talk to 60 Minutes. "But we are talking to you now," Simon pointed out, standing outside. "Why don't you tell us what you are doing here? Have you lost your voice? Well they've closed the door now, they've closed the window so I guess if the children are going to get home now we have to leave, so that is what we will do."

An army spokesperson told us the army uses the Nassifs' house for important surveillance operations. The Nassifs told 60 Minutes that soldiers usually stay for a day or two, always coming and going in the middle of the night. When they do go, the Nassifs never know when they will be occupied again. It could be tomorrow, next week, or next month. The only certainty, they say, is that the soldiers will be back.

Another crippling reality on the West Bank is high unemployment, now about 20 percent. So some Palestinians can only find jobs building Israeli settlements. They're so ashamed to work on the construction sites that they asked 60 Minutes not to show their faces.

The settlers now number 280,000, and as they keep moving in, their population keeps growing about five percent every year. But the 2.5 million Arabs have their strategy too: they're growing bigger families.

Demographers predict that within ten years Arabs will outnumber Jews in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Without a separate Palestinian state the Israelis would have three options, none of them good. They could try ethnic cleansing, drive the Palestinians out of the West Bank, or they could give the Palestinians the vote. That would be the democratic option but it would mean the end of the Jewish state. Or they could try apartheid - have the minority Israelis rule the majority Palestinians, but apartheid regimes don't have a very long life.

"Unfortunately, and I have to say to you that apartheid is already in place," Dr. Barghouti argued.

Apartheid? Israel is building what it calls a security wall between the West Bank and Israel. The Palestinians are furious because it appropriates eight percent of the West Bank. Not only that. It weaves its way through Palestinian farms, separating farmers from their land. They have to wait at gates for soldiers to let them in. Settlers get a lot more water than Palestinians, which is why settlements are green and Arab areas are not.

Moderate Israelis who deplore the occupation used to believe passionately in a two-state solution. That is no longer the case.

Meron Benvenisti used to be deputy mayor of Jerusalem. He told Simon the prospects of the two-state solution becoming a reality are "nil."

"The geopolitical condition that’s been created in '67 is irreversible. Cannot be changed. You cannot unscramble that egg," he explained.

Asked if this means the settlers have won, Benvenisti told Simon, "Yes."

"And the settlers will remain forever and ever?" Simon asked.

"I don't know forever and ever, but they will remain and will flourish," Benvenisti said.

"The settlers, the attitude that I present here, this is the heart. This is the pulse. This is the past, present, and future of the Jewish state," Daniella Weiss told Simon.

She says the she and the settlers are immovable. "We will stay here forever."

But one very important Israeli says she intends to move them out. She's Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a candidate to become prime minister in elections next month. She's also Israel’s chief negotiator with the Palestinians, and she told 60 Minutes peace is unthinkable with the settlers where they are.

"Can you really imagine evacuating the tens of thousands of settlers who say they will not leave?" Simon asked.

"It's not going to be easy. But this is the only solution," she replied.

"But you know that there are settlers who say, 'We will fight. We will not leave. We will fight,'" Simon asked.

"So this is the responsibility of the government and police to stop them. As simple as that. Israel is a state of law and order," Livni said.

It's also a state of law and disorder. When the army evicted just nine families from a West Bank settlement called Amona three years ago, it was chaos. It was the first time since the creation of the state that Jews were in pitched battles against Jews. To Israelis of all stripes, it was not a pretty picture. And it made the government loath to try again.

Officials fear that more battles to empty settlements could rip Israel apart. They're afraid that religious officers in the army - and there are an increasing number of them - would disobey any order to evict settlers.

The army is evicting Arabs from their homes in East Jerusalem, which Palestinians hoped to make their capital. Outraged, Arabs tried to save their homes, but the Israelis have the guns. Israel demolished more than 100 Arab homes in the past year, ruling they had been illegally built. Arabs say this is just another tactic to drive them out. But officials say they also knock down unauthorized Jewish buildings on the West Bank. They're put up by youngsters, the next generation’s campaign to populate the land.

Daniella Weiss told 60 Minutes they will not be stopped.

Despite the army tearing down a structure, the settlers began rebuilding it on the same day. "We will have the upper hand," Weiss vowed.

"But the army will tear it down again," Simon pointed out.

"And we will rebuild it," Weiss said. "The experience shows that the world belongs to those who are stubborn, and we are very stubborn."

Stubborn, she says, because they were ordered to populate this land by no less an authority than God. "This is the mission of our generation and I want to emphasis the most important point is to this," Weiss said, picking up some soil, "to hold strong to the soil of the Holy Land."

Do You Read German?

Appeared in Austria's "Die Presse", 09.01.2009 (if you don't read German, skip down to the translation):

Immer Ärger mit den Juden

Warum lassen sich die Israelis nicht einfach ohne Gegenwehr ermorden? Früher ging das doch auch!

Österreich bringt im Großen und Ganzen den Juden gegenüber ja eh viel Sympathie auf; jedenfalls solange es sich um tote Juden handelt. Gegen die im KZ ermordeten Juden zum Beispiel hat heute fast niemand mehr etwas.

Etwas anders verhält es sich mit (noch) lebenden Juden. Zwar verurteilte der Bundeskanzler in einem Interview die Raketenangriffe der Hamas auf Israel; im gleichen Atemzug verurteilte er aber auch Israels Versuch, sich gegen diese Terrorangriffe militärisch robust zur Wehr zu setzen.

Vermutlich ist diese Haltung eines entschlossenen Einerseits-andererseits durchaus mehrheitsfähig. Solange Israel ohne jede Gegenwehr hinnimmt, dass ein erheblicher Teil seiner Bevölkerung regelmäßig im Bunker leben muss, um nicht Opfer einer Hamas-Rakete zu werden, tolerieren wir ihr Verhalten. Wehren sie sich dagegen, stellen wir sie auf eine Ebene mit den Hamas-Terroristen. Warum auch können sich die in Israel lebenden Juden nicht genauso geräuschlos und höflich umbringen lassen wie ihre Eltern und Großeltern damals in den europäischen Vernichtungslagern?

Mehr Bewusstsein für Tradition und Kontinuität als die störrischen Juden zeigte hingegen erwartungsgemäß Frankreich: Indem das Außenministerium ebenfalls Hamas und Israel gleichermaßen rügte und damit den Unterschied zwischen Aggressor und Opfer orwellianisch zum Verschwinden brachte, knüpfte die Grande Nation gekonnt an die glorreichen Vichy-Zeiten an, in denen das stolze Frankreich jüdische Frechheiten auch nicht ungestraft hinnehmen musste.

Als Camouflage ihrer Haltung dient all jenen, die von Israel erwarten, sich gefälligst mit Raketen beschießen zu lassen, ohne Ärger zu machen, neuerdings das Argument von der „Unverhältnismäßigkeit“ der israelischen Gegenwehr, also der Umstand, dass deutlich mehr Palästinenser der israelischen Gegenwehr zum Opfer fallen als Israelis dem Hamas-Terror.

Unbestritten ist, dass dies vor allem daran liegt, dass die Hamas ihre Raketenstellungen in Schulen, Kindergärten und Krankenhäusern errichtet, um genau diesen Effekt zu erzielen. Deshalb stellt sich die Frage: Warum hindern die 1,5 Millionen Palästinenser in Gaza die Hamas nicht daran, Raketen auf Israel vom Schulhof aus zu starten? Es ist ja nicht gut vorstellbar, dass die Hamas gegen den Widerstand der eigenen Bevölkerung auch nur einen Tag weiter so Terror gegen Israel betreiben könnte.

Davon, dass die (mit Mehrheit gewählte) Hamas mit Gewalt ihre Raketenstellungen mitten unter Zivilisten errichtet hat, ist bislang nichts bekannt. Damit stellt sich auch die Frage der „Verhältnismäßigkeit“ anders: Solange die Palästinenser dulden, dass die Hamas aus ihrer Mitte, aus ihren Häusern und Schulen Raketen auf israelische Kindergärten abfeuert, können sie nicht wirklich als „unschuldige zivile Opfer“ gelten.

Nicht Israels Gegenwehr ist unverhältnismäßig, sondern die Kritik an dieser Gegenwehr ist es.

Christian Ortner ist Journalist in Wien.
christian-ortner@chello.at

Oh, you don't?

Here then:-

Always Trouble with the Jews

Jan. 8, 2009 18:26
Christian Ortner (Die Presse, AUSTRIA)

Why don't the Jews just let themselves be killed without resistance? After all, that's how it used to be!

On the whole, Austria displays rather a lot of sympathy for the Jews, at least as long as we're talking about dead Jews. For example, today practically nobody has anything against the Jews murdered in the concentration camps.

It's a bit different when it comes to Jews who are (still) alive. True, in an
interview the Austrian Chancellor did condemn Hamas' rocket attacks on Israel, but in the same breath he also condemned Israel's efforts to robustly defend itself against these acts of terrorism.

Presumably this resolute on-the-one-hand/on-the other attitude is entirely capable of securing a majority. As long as Israel puts up, without showing any resistance, with a situation in which a considerable proportion of its population are forced to live in air-raid shelters in order to avoid becoming the victims of a Hamas rocket, we tolerate its behavior. If they defend themselves against these attacks, we put them on the same level as the Hamas terrorist. Why can't the Jews living in Israel let themselves be killed off just as noiselessly and politely as their parents and grandparents did at the time in the European extermination camps?

In contrast, as might have been expected, France showed more awareness of tradition and continuity than the stubborn Jews. While its Foreign Ministry similarly reprimanded Hamas and Israel equally, in the best Orwellian style thereby eliminating the difference between aggressor and victim, the Grande Nation made a masterly connection to the glorious days of Vichy, when proud France also had to put up with acts of Jewish insolence with impunity.

By way of camouflage for their behavior, all those who expect Israel to kindly allow itself to be bombarded with rockets, without making any trouble, have recently started using the argument of "disproportionality" of Israel's resistance, in other words the fact that clearly more Palestinians fell victim to Israel's resistance than Israelis to Hamas' terror.

It is an undisputed fact that the main reason for this is that Hamas sets up its
rocket positions at schools, nursery schools, and hospitals, precisely in order to achieve this effect. Which is why the following question must be asked: Why do the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza not prevent Hamas from firing rockets at Israel from their schoolyards? After all, it is hard to imagine that Hamas would be able to continue carrying out terror against Israel for even one day in the face of resistance by its own population.

So far, there is no information about Hamas (elected by a majority) using force to install its rocket positions right in the middle of the civilian population. Hence the question of "proportionality" must also be asked differently. As long as the Palestinians tolerate Hamas firing rockets at Israeli nursery schools, from within their midst, from their houses and schools, they cannot really be considered "innocent civilian victims."

It is not Israel's resistance which is disproportionate, but the criticism of
this resistance.

Notice How Kadima Get's Into the Ambassador's Statement

In early 1971, for almost half a year, I was Sallai Meridor's youth movement leader, in Hebrew: madrich. He was maybe 15 or so then.

Here's Sallai's statement, as Israel's Ambassador to the United States, on the Mitchell appointment:

As the United States and Israel continue to work jointly on achieving peace and stability in the Middle East, and of countering the common threat of terrorism and state sponsors of terror from acquiring nuclear weapons, we warmly welcome and congratulate Senator George Mitchell on his appointment as special envoy for Middle East peace.

“Israel holds Senator Mitchell in high regard and looks forward to working with him on taking the next steps towards realizing a future of peace and security for Israel and her neighbors.

Looking forward, in Hebrew is מסתכלים קדימה or mistaklim kadima.

Kadima?

And by the way, I wouldn't be so excited and anxious about his mission.

And neither is Daniel Pipes:

First, how can one hold in high regard someone who came out with the wretched Sharm El-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee Report also known as the "Mitchell Report" of April 2001? I did an analysis of it when it appeared at "Mitchell report missed it." I called it "a great disappointment." A couple of excerpts:

it reveals the would-be peacemaker´s typical unwillingness to judge right and wrong.… Not wanting to offend, in other words, creates an illusionary balance of blame ("Fear, hate, anger, and frustration have risen on both sides," says the report) that makes it impossible to distinguish between aggressor and victim, between right and wrong.

the Mitchell report suggests that Israel "should freeze all settlement activity" to mollify the Palestinians. This is a step the Israelis never agreed to, even when negotiations were under way. To do so now rewards the Palestinians for engaging in violence, something objectionable in principle and ineffectual in practice.

the report emphasizes getting the two parties back to the negotiating table, as though this were an end in itself. It seems oblivious to the important fact that negotiations over the past eight years did not bring the parties closer to a settlement but, to the contrary, exacerbated differences and had a role in the outbreak of violence.

I found that Mitchell and his committee were "myopically unaware of the real issue at hand, which is not violence, or Jewish settlements, or Jerusalem. It is, rather, the enduring Arab reluctance to accept the existence of a sovereign Jewish state." I suggested that, the real solution "lies not in getting the parties back as fast as possible to diplomacy, but in instilling in the Palestinians an awareness of the futility of their use of violence against the Jewish state."

Silwad Remembered

Silwad (*) lies between Ofra and Shiloh.

Until the first intifada, we used to travel through it, as well as Ma'zarat Al-Sharqiya, as a short cut from Ofra to Shiloh, what we would call the 'back way'. After an incident when Orit Rappaport and children were stopped while driving back from Ofra by Arabs who were looking for guns in 1988, that route became off-limits (a reverse apartheid development, one could say).

Why do I recall Silwad?

I read about it here:

I want to begin by asking about your personal background. You were born in the village of Silwad in the West Bank, but were raised in Kuwait. Kuwait was known as one of the main bastions of the Palestinian National Liberation Movement, Fatah, during the 1970s and 1980s, yet you became a member of the Islamic movement. How did this come about?

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate. As you said, I was born in Silwad, near Ramallah, in 1956. I lived there until 1967, when I was 11 years old, having completed the fifth grade in Silwad Elementary School. After 1967 and the defeat, I, like hundreds of thousands of our people, experienced a new exile.

You were in the West Bank during the 1967 War?

In the West Bank, of course. The war occurred while I was in Silwad. I lived through this experience as an 11-year-old, whose memory was fully awake. I can still remember the war and how it affected people and their morale, how suddenly things changed from expectations of victory and liberation (under the influence of the Arab media, which unfortunately gave false accounts of developments on the ground) to the shock of the entire [Arab] nation [umma] being defeated in just a few days and losing yet more land. In addition to what we had lost in 1948, we had now lost the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Golan Heights. So this of course left a deep impression on me, my mind, my heart, my being, my thought, and without question influenced the subsequent course of my life.

My father had been in Kuwait since 1957, where he worked both in agriculture (he was, of course, a fallah) and as an imam in a mosque, based on his religious background and culture, and memorization of a very large part of the Quran. My father, by the way, had participated in the 1936 Rebellion with `Abd al-Qadir al-Husayni and that generation. So because my father was in Kuwait, our family followed. We went to Jordan immediately after the war, and after a month or two, during the summer of 1967, we continued on to Kuwait.

Given your father’s background, could one say that you were raised in a more religious environment than your peers and schoolmates?

Yes. First of all, my village, Silwad, is well-known for its religiosity. It is a small place, but it had a number of ulema who were graduates of al-Azhar University in Cairo—we had about six al-Azhar graduates. In addition to the village’s generally religious climate, religiosity and conservatism tend to reign in rural Palestine as a whole. So this was my environment and the environment of those around me. I was, thank God, raised in an atmosphere of religion, morality, conservatism, and commitment. I did not experience lost or wayward years in my youth, but was committed to prayer and religiosity from a young age.

By the way, occasionally, traffic on the new bypass road got shot at just north of Ofra, from locations in or near Silwad.


And who is being interviewed?

Khalid Mishal (Abu Walid), a founder of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and the head of its politbureau since 1996, has been the recognized head of the movement since the assassination of Shaykh Ahmad Yasin in spring 2004.

============

(*)


Silwad is located 12 Km to the North-East of the City of Ramallah, the town is 5 Km away from the Nablus-Jerusalem highway. Silwad altitude is 860 Meter above sea level. The overall area of Silwad is estimated at 75 000 Donom.

The three tribes in Silwad are Hamed, Hammad and Ayyad. It is believed that Hamed and Hammad were brothers, Ayyad is thought to have been accompanying the two brothers. According to the estimates of Silwad Association in Jordan the population of the people of Silwad in Diaspora exceeds 25 000 (1996 estimates). Among these, 8000 resides in Silwad while the remainder are spread throughout the world.

More.

Partition? Incredible? Why?

In an article, Recollections of the Nakba through a Teenager's Eyes, Muhammad Hallaj has written for the Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), he starts off thus:

PERHAPS BECAUSE I was sixteen at the time, and perhaps because I was in school in Jaffa, the epicenter of the political and military earthquake that ended in the destruction of Palestine and the dismantling of Palestinian society, the events of the catastrophe of 1948 retain a searing clarity in my memory sixty years later.

From my youthful vantage point, it began on a morning in late fall 1947. I arrived at my school, al-Amiriyya, in Jaffa. On the wall facing the entrance of the school was a small blackboard where every morning something clever or interesting (referred to as hikmat al-yawm, or “wisdom of the day”) would be written in chalk. That particular day, 30 November to be exact, I glanced at the board, and what I saw there I will never forget: “Yesterday, on 29 November 1947, the United Nations decided to partition Palestine and establish a Jewish state in it.” I was stunned. What did it mean to “partition” a country? How could you establish a country inside a country? Why would the United Nations do this? Why didn’t they come and see for themselves that Palestine is our country? The whole idea was absurd and incredible...

Absurd?

Incredible?

Why?

In 1923, Gt. Britain finished the first partition, handing over to a Saudi Arabian refugee, Abdallah ibn 'Ali, all of the eastern portion of the country, originally intended to be included in the territory of the reconstituted Jewish national home.

In 1937, the Peel Commission suggest another partition.

In 1939, the Woodhead Commission made a further partion suggestion.

Partition was on the table for decades as a solution. That it didn't work was the Arabs fault. That Hallaj's teachers did not inform him of the political reality and possibilities is a problem but not one to be blamed on the Jews.

We didn't like the idea but basically, the official Zionist bodies accepted the idea.

The Arabs have only themselves to blame for getting themselves into a perspective that was constantly rejected, to their detriment.

Missing?

Postscript to Oslo: The Mystery of Norway's Missing Files

Hilde Henriksen Waage

Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 38, no. 1 (Autumn 2008), p. 54

Report


In Norway, the secret negotiations culminating in the 1993 Oslo agreement are still seen as a shining moment in the nation’s history, so when the files of the entire process were discovered to be missing from government archives, a minor public scandal erupted. After laying out the Oslo “myth” and its cast of characters, the author recounts the story of the disappearance of the files, new revelations concerning their scope, and the (thus far unsuccessful) quest to recover them. The author concludes by exploring the implications of the backchannel negotiations for the entire Oslo process and its lessons for conflict resolution, particularly third-party mediation in highly asymmetrical conflicts.

Amazing.

Another Interesting New Book

"Unprotected: Palestinians in Egypt Since 1948", Oroub El-Abed, Institute for Palestine Studies, Washington, DC and the International Development Research Centre, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

The Abstract:-

The small and scattered Palestinian community in Egypt was formed mainly from the refugee waves coming into the country following the 1948 and 1967 Arab-Israeli wars. Unlike Palestinian refugees in the other areas bordering Palestine, they do not live in refugee camps and are not served by any international agency. Since the late 1970s when there was a change in Egyptian government policy, they have extremely limited rights and a precarious legal status. The great majority of the Palestinians in Egypt is therefore “unprotected.”

Based on face-to-face interviews with scores of Palestinian families in both rural and urban areas of Egypt, this book focuses on the life situations and coping or survival strategies mobilized by a vulnerable population trying to get by in an often adverse legal and political environment. The field research material is set in a solid historical and legal framework, with the interviews used to illustrate chapters on the Palestinians’ arrival in Egypt, settlement patterns, evolving Egyptian policies towards the Palestinians, the PLO’s history with Egypt and its ramifications, changing regulations governing residency rights and travel documents, employment, property ownership, and access to education and health services. A final chapter addresses Palestinian protection under international law, while identity issues are discussed in the context of the post-Oslo return to Gaza and the pull of assimilation. Overall, the book presents a broad portrait of the Palestinian communit(ies) in Egypt and should be of interest to anyone concerned with Palestinians in general, refugee and human rights issues, and Egypt’s long history with the Palestinian movement.

Why interesting?

a) the abstract, at least, skips over the fact that the refugees (and I won't get into an argument over that entire issue here) who lived in Gaza, which was ruled by Egypt, were denied Egyptain citizenship, unlike those in Judea and Samaria who were granted Jordanian citizenship.

b) and it funnily enough uses the term "settlement patterns" and here I presumed that only Jews are "settlers".

Eastern Bazaar

Hamas: Israel proposes 18-month Gaza truce, but we insist on just one year

A Hamas official said Sunday that Israel has proposed to Egyptian mediators an 18-month cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, but the Islamist group - which controls the coastal territory - is insisting on a truce of just one year.

"Hamas listened to the Israeli proposal presented by [Defense Ministry official] Amos Gilad, and with it a proposal for a ceasefire for a year and a half, but Hamas presented a counterproposal of one year only," Ayman Taha told reporters in Cairo after talks with Egyptian intelligence officials.

'Peaceful' Gaza

Not Quite Fauxtography But Staged?

Staged?





Surrounded by mountains of rubble that were once their homes, Palestinian children play in Jebaliya, northern Gaza Strip, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009. Psychologists say the fighting traumatized Gaza's children like none of the previous conflicts with Israel because it taught them that no place is safe.
(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)



Saja Abed Rabbo, 5, stands amid the rubble of her devastated neighborhood in Jebaliya, northern gaza Strip, Jan. 25, 2009, talking to Gaza trauma counselor Mustafa Haj-Ahmed. The little girl, along with her family, fled under fire during the first days of Israel's ground offensive. Psychologists say Israel's war on Hamas inflicted unprecedented trauma on Gaza's children because it taught them that no place is safe.
(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

And notice what she has in her hand:



A Palestinian woman films destroyed houses with a small video camera in east Jebaliya, northern Gaza strip, Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009 as a Palestinian flag flies atop debris.
(AP Photo/Anja Niedringhaus)

Friedman (Tom of the NYT) Is Displaying Frustration & Fanaticism

Thomas Friedman is stomping on "settlements", again.

Some excerpts from his op-ed in today's NYTimes:-

We’re getting perilously close to closing the window on a two-state solution, because the two chief window-closers — Hamas in Gaza and the fanatical Jewish settlers [are we all fanatical? none are reasonable, none logical, none politically savvy?] in the West Bank — have been in the driver’s seats. Hamas is busy making a two-state solution inconceivable, while the settlers have steadily worked to make it impossible.

If Hamas continues [you doubt that?] to obtain and use longer- and longer-range rockets, there is no way any Israeli government can or will tolerate independent Palestinian control of the West Bank, because a rocket from there can easily close the Tel Aviv airport and shut down Israel’s economy.

And if the Jewish settlers continue with their “natural growth” to devour the West Bank, it will also be effectively off the table. No Israeli government has mustered the will to take down even the “illegal,” unauthorized settlements, despite promises to the U.S. to do so, so it’s getting hard to see how the “legal” settlements will ever be removed. What is needed from Israel’s Feb. 10 elections is a centrist, national unity government that can resist the blackmail of the settlers, and the rightist parties that protect them, to still implement a two-state solution.

Because without a stable two-state solution, what you will have is an Israel hiding behind a high wall, defending itself from a Hamas-run failed state in Gaza, a Hezbollah-run failed state in south Lebanon and a Fatah-run failed state in Ramallah. Have a nice day.

...it's five to midnight and before the clock strikes 12 all we need to do is rebuild Fatah, merge it with Hamas, elect an Israeli government that can freeze settlements, court Syria and engage Iran — while preventing it from going nuclear — just so we can get the parties to start talking. Whoever lines up all the pieces of this diplomatic Rubik’s Cube deserves two Nobel Prizes.

HH #201 (or is it 202?)

Here

A Comment on Antisemitism

his life spanned the final years of one kind of anti-Semitism and the first years of a much more dangerous kind. The first kind sought to preserve the Jews in their pre-­emancipation condition, as far as was possible. It resisted liberal efforts to bring Jews into civil society on equal terms; in politics it maintained Christian suspicions of Judaism. It was not violent so much as exclusionary. When it failed at the legal level, it persisted at the social level — keeping Jews out of clubs, societies, universities and so on. It expressed itself in snobbery and ill-tempered condescension.

The second kind of anti-Semitism was quite different. It was predicated on beliefs in the immense power of the Jews, their malignity, their responsibility for everything that was wrong about the modern world. It was based, as Kirsch writes, “no longer on contempt but on fear and hatred.” It was lethal in its ultimate object. Jews here constituted not a vexation, but a menace.

from here, on Disraeli, by Anthony Julius

The Medical/Physical Status of Moshe Avitan

If you recall, there was a terrorist drive-by shooting last week...in Samaria and my neighbor was wounded, seriously.

Here's an update from his mother-in-law, an American citizen, by the way.

Dear Relatives and Friends,

I wish you all a shavua tov (a good week). I have been asked to send Moshe Avitan's Hebrew name with all my updates - Moshe Rafael ben Aliza A'isha - so that people new to the list will know what name to use in their prayers. Hence, you will see this name on the subject line from now on.

I'm happy to tell you that there is continued improvement in Moshe's physical condition. He is now walking, eating and talking normally. His nervousness (understandably) still prevails and I think it's going to take a while for him to revert to the happy, outgoing and smiling Moshe that we knew before this attack. Slowly, slowly...

It seems that they are thinking of operating on Wednesday. As I understand it, the operation will be two-fold: (a) to take out the bullet, and (b) to do reconstruction work under the eyes where muscle has been damaged. I will perhaps know more of this tomorrow.

We are in a sort of hiatus period now with information. I don't think that anything is going to change very much, apart from, hopefully, continued improvement, until after the operation. This doesn't mean that we can forget Moshe in our prayers, Psalms and learning. He has still a long, long way to go before he has a complete recovery. So please continue to keep up the good work!!

Thanks,

Ruth

Remember The Punchline: "And That's The Synagogue I Don't Worship In"?

the proximate cause of Disraeli’s baptism was a quarrel his father had with his synagogue

Source: BENJAMIN DISRAELI By Adam Kirsch

Oh, the joke:

A Jewish fellow, stranded on a desert island, is finally about to be rescuded but requests of the captain to allow him to show the rescue crew around to see what he has accomplished these past five years.

After a long walk through various enterpreses and such, they are on a hill and see, in the yonder meadow, two small buildings - exactly alike.

"What are those?" inquires the Captain.

"Two synagogues," is the reply.

"Two?"

"Yes, two," is the response. "In that one I pray. As for the other, I wouldn't dare be caught dead in."

Some Honest Reporting

FOREIGN MEDIA REPORTING REALITY?

As more foreign journalists gain access to Gaza, different viewpoints from the default attacks on Israel are starting to emerge.

Newsweek talked to gunmen who admitted using a hospital for firing at Israel:

One of the most notorious incidents during the war was the Jan. 15 shelling of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society buildings in the downtown Tal-al Hawa part of Gaza City, followed by a shell hitting their Al Quds Hospital next door; the subsequent fire forced all 500 patients to be evacuated . . . In the Tal-al Hawa neighborhood nearby, however, Talal Safadi, an official in the leftist
Palestinian People's Party, said that resistance fighters were firing from positions all around the hospital. He shrugged that off, having a bigger beef with Hamas.

"They failed to win the battle."

Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher returned to Gaza for the first time since the war:

I knew Gaza well before the attacks, so when Israel ended its ban on foreign journalists reaching Gaza on the day the ceasefire was announced, I was able to see for myself.One thing was clear. Gaza City 2009 is not Stalingrad 1944. There had been no carpet bombing of large areas, no firebombing of complete suburbs.

Targets had been selected and then hit, often several times, but almost always with precision munitions. Buildings nearby had been damaged and there had been some clear mistakes, like the firebombing of the UN aid headquarters. But, in most the cases, I saw the primary target had borne the brunt. ...But, for the most part, I was struck by how cosmetically unchanged Gaza appeared to be. It has been a tatty, poorly-maintained mess for decades and the presence of fresh bombsites on streets already lined with broken kerbstones and jerry-built buildings did not make any great difference.

Source 1
Source 2

A Dawn At Shiloh