News on the Murder of Egyptian POWs, On Checkpoints, Illegal Settlement Building, Bedouins in Negev, and Lebanon War

March 19, 2007 Check out the new blogs from Jewish Voice for Peace: The Third Way --In-depth analysis on all aspects of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Check out the latest, an in-depth look at the Palestinian unity government agreement. Muzzlewatch --Tracking efforts to stifle open debate about US-Israeli foreign policy. Including new material on the New York Sun's hideous attacks on Nicholas Kristof and George Soros. Click here to let your friends know about JPN. The views expressed here are those of the editors and do not necessarily reflect the views of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Film Aired on Murder of Egyptian POWs (Ha'aretz) On the murder of Egyptian POWs in 1956 and 1967: new film and Rela Mazali's correspondence

Planning Council Approves Illegal West Bank Building Plan, Protest in Bil'in (Ha'aretz) Two articles on encroaching occupation and protest

Apartheid Looks Like This (Al Ahram) On the experience, nuances and lies of IDF checkpoints in the West Bank

Israel to Request More Military Aid (Ha'aretz) Israel requests increase in military aid from Washington

Update from Bustan (Devorah Brous) New Israeli policies assaults on Bedouin agriculture in the Negev, and non-violent, popular response to it

Olmert's Truth (Uri Avnery) new understandings of the 2006 Lebanon war, including its long-planning


[JPN Commentary: In the Hebrew version of Haaretz, the last item below is merely the accompanying "box" of a much larger item, titled "Egypt demands probe into 'the murder of its soldiers' in '67". The March 7 article, by Yoav Stern, describes Egyptian responses to the alleged mention, in a film recently aired on Israeli Channel 1, of the murder of Egyptian prisoners of war during the last stages of the '67 war. On Tuesday, March 6, the Egyptian Foreign Minister addressed a press conference in Brussels on the matter, saying that his country was determined to receive explanations from Israel. Israel's Foreign Minister retorted with accusations that (unspecified) "parties" in Egypt were using the issue to provoke a major crisis, intentionally misusing the film to disrupt Israeli-Egyptian relations.

The film in question, "The Shaked Report", was alleged by Egyptian press to have quoted witnesses who claimed that 250 Egyptian soldiers were executed by the Shaked commando unit, whose commander in the summer of 1967 was Benjamin Ben Eliezer, currently Israel's Minister of National Infrastructure. As a result of the publications, Ben Eliezer has reportedly cancelled an official trip to Egypt planned for the end of this week.

The issue, however, is not what the film does or doesn't state.

The real issue, resurfacing here yet again, are the uninvestigated, but repeatedly publicized Israeli murders of Egyptian POWs both in 1956 and in 1967. I have personally heard testimony to the second case. In the summer of 2002, following one of the press publications, I received an email from my dear and longtime friend Amichai Kronfeld (1947-2005), a contributing editor to the Jewish Peace News listserve. Amichai wrote me,

"Two days ago (July 24) there was a small story in Ha'aretz about cases where Egyptian prisoners of wars were murdered in 1956 and 1967 … The article mentions Israeli historians who exposed it and it also indicates that the issue was published in the Israeli press (the story itself is about the Egyptian demand for reparations).
…
I was a witness to some of these killings (on the beach of Al-Arish, in 1967). I have been talking about it for years and years but gave up eventually since no one believed me. The whole thing was a traumatic experience that surely shaped the rest of my life, for better or worse." [Emphasis mine, RM]

In answer, I wrote him a long mail; the following are excerpts:

the first of the articles in question, if i remember right, was published several years ago, at least 3-4, in our local … [weekly] -- it was an interview with an ex-officer whose name used to be pretty well known in the 'wild-west' days of unit 101, etc. (but escapes me now), who talked about being involved in the killings, and said (i think) he would have done the same today and he didn't regret it.
…
as a result i think there was some followup in other articles and the story was kicked around in the press for a short while and then subsided.

i'll do a short search. …

----------------------------------------------------------------

post quick search:

ronen bergman, musaf haaretz, 17 nov 1995:
[all translations mine]

Headline:
IF YOU KNEW WHY WERE YOU SILENT? [im yadaatem, lama shataktem?]

Lead:
The Egyptian opposition tried to exploit the murder of the Egyptian prisoners of war in 1956 in order to prevent President Mubarak from attending the funeral of Itzhak Rabin in Jerusalem. Its failure doesn't indicate that the affair has died down. Alongside suspicions of hidden Israeli motives, Egypt levels criticism at the late President Nasser and the current President: How is it that we first hear of the massacre from the Israeli press?

Some key sentences from the article:

"... it's no wonder that Egyptians see hidden motives behind the publications in Israel concerning murders of Egyptian Prisoners of War, among them not only soldiers but civilians too, in 1956 and 1967. "It simply can't be that Ariyeh Biru [that's the guy's name, r.] suddenly appeared out of nowhere," says Mohammad Al-Muneem, formerly media consultant to President Mubarak and now head of the military desk at Al-Ahram. "And I don't believe some journalist went to interview some ex-officer and that's how the story came out."
...
About 2 years ago, journalist Ronal Fisher ('Maariv') got a lead, according to him from a high ranking reserve officer whom he spoke to about the missing soldiers and prisoners of the IDF. Historian Dr. Uri Milstein says that he was the source who Fisher came to, seeking material about Raphael Eitan. Milstein according to Milstein directed Fisher to the murder of Prisoners of War in 1956 and gave him a list of people to interview.

[it then goes on about preparation of the article, for publication in Maariv and the fact that it was barred by censorship]

Fisher didn't know that at the same time, Motti Golani was researching the Sinai Campaign, at the initiative and with the funding of the IDF history department. ... somehow, the study, which was distributed in the IDF in a limited edition, reached Amir Oren, then the military correspondent for "Davar." Oren realized what a bombshell it was. On July 21 [1994] he published an article about the study, the main points of which -- and particularly the details about the murder of POWs -- were featured on the first page of the paper.
...
Meanwhile, Giora Eilon, of the "Yediot" network of local weeklies, interviewed Ariyeh Bidu, andhis article was published ... [Aug. 4, 1994]. Eilon says, "... the article was based on a single 20 minute conversaton with Bidu. I actually came to interview Bidu for an article focused around another interview with the commander of the paratroopers. ... when the interview was over, I asked Bidu what he did in Mivtza Kadesh and he answered, 'I jumped at the Mitleh.' As I had read Oren's article, I asked him, 'Who killed the POW's?' and Bidu answered, 'Me.' And then we started talking about that."
...
The publication caused many people in Egypt to recall massacres. Abd Al-Salm Mussa, an ex-officer of the Egyptian airforce, who says he was taken prisoner by Israel in 1967, recounted how he saw Isareli soldiers standing Egyptian prisoners in line and killing them in cold blood. Mussa was located by "Al-Ahram" and took a team from the paper accompanied by foreign TV cameras, to a sandy location near Al Arish, which was dug up in keeping with his instructions. A grave with 90 bodies was found at the site. 27 kilometers away, a local Bedouin, Sleiman Salama, recalls that he too witnessed the murder of POW's. A mass grave was located there too.
...
the Israeli Embassy in Egypt [said that] till you send them [the bodies] to laboratory tests, they won't tell you a thing about the circumstances of death. "We don't understand what the Israeli Embassy is yelling about," an American TV journalist responded, "we know very well how to tell a human skull from a camel's head."
The Egyptian Lawyers' Guild held a press conference with both these witnesses and a few more people who witnessed massacres. It went on for hours ... A CNN team stayed through to the end and witnessed a strange incident. An Egyptian citizen suddenly came in and started shouting that the witnesses were making it all up ... A request of mine to the Egyptian Government Press Bureau to interview the family of a POW who was murdered, or a witness to the incident, received no answer.
...
The Egyptian public may have been surprised by the facts that were published in Israel, but the fact that Egyptian POW's were murdered was known to many." RM]

(Ha'aretz) On the development of an illegal new settlement in the West Bank & popular protest against it

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/834058.html

March 7, 2007

Broadcasting Authority Director-General Mordechai Shklar and journalist Ran Adelist denied yesterday that the Channel 1 documentary about the Shaked commando unit alleges that Egyptian prisoners of war were murdered.

Shklar said in a statement that reports about the documentary in the Israeli press - including in Haaretz, Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv - had relied on the Egyptian media.

He said that such publications had not bothered to watch the documentary before reporting about it. "The film depicts the events of the end of the Six-Day War, when the commando unit was ordered to hunt down the Egyptian commando unit in the Gaza Strip en route to Sinai," Shklar writes.

He notes that the narrator says that "throughout the pursuit, which lasted several days, 250 Egyptian casualties were counted," and that veterans of the commando unit were still "undecided" about the necessity of the operation. "Nowhere does the documentary claim the Egyptians were prisoners of war, the only question is whether they posed a threat," he writes.

Adelist accused the Israeli media of acting with "typical indolence" in quoting the Egyptian media without verifying the validity of the claims.

[JPN Commentary: The following items deal with recent developments in the Palestinian-Israeli-international popular resistance centered on the ongoing scandal of Matityahu East, a blatantly illegal settlement not only under international law but also under Israeli planning law. Much of the land illegally taken over by this settlement and by the separation barrier surrounding it, which clearly emerges at this site as a means of appropriating land rather than a security measure, belongs to the West Bank village of Bilin. The second item reports on Friday's demonstration in Bilin, whose two years of resilient, creative and stubborn Palestinian-Israeli-international demonstrations have turned it into a central symbol of the "new popular protest movement", to quote prospective Palestinian Authority minister Mustafa Barghouti.

Last week's demonstration in Bilin, at which Israeli forces wounded 16 demonstrators, followed a recent decision on retroactive laundering of the illegal building of Matityahu East. As stated by Michael Sfard, attorney for the people of Bilin and for Peace Now in their new appeal to the High Court of Justice against this decision, "The takeover of the lands was carried out by a conspiracy involving private developers and Israeli authorities. Thus, criminal companies that stole private Palestinian lands won the protection of the fence - which was intended as a means of security and became a tool for annexation - as well as backing from the planning authorities, whose approval laundered the offenses".

Journalist Akiva Eldar elaborates further, "The laundering of the buildings' construction allows members of the planning council, who were aware of the illegalities and did nothing to stop them, to avoid criminal charges and suits for damages".

The "Green Park" and "Green Mount" companies which are set to make enormous profits off their sales of illegally built apartments on cheaply acquired land are registered in Canada. This particular exploitation of the lawlessness enabled by Israel's occupation is clearly driven by the interests of foreign capitalists along with those of the local functionaries pushing the expansion of illegal Jewish settlement. Here, in other words, Palestinian-led resistance is up against Canadian capital set to profit from the land-grabbing allowed by military occupation. RM]

By Akiva Eldar, Haaretz Correspondent

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829740.html

February 25, 2007

The Supreme Planning Council for Judea and Samaria recently legalized the largest-ever illegal construction project in the West Bank. Part of the project is situated on private land, which belongs to Palestinian residents of the village of Bil'in.

The project calls for the construction of 42 buildings containing approximately 1,500 apartments. The buildings, already in various stages of construction, are in the neighborhood of Matityahu East, which is located in the large ultra-Orthodox settlement of Modi'in Illit.

Peace Now and Bil'in residents filed a petition against the construction a week ago at the High Court of Justice.

About a year ago, following another petition by Peace Now and Bil'in residents, the High Court ordered a halt on the construction and occupation of the buildings.

Following an appeal to the State Prosecutor's Office, the National Fraud Squad opened an investigation into those involved in the affair. The neighborhood is being built by Green Park and Green Mount, companies registered in Canada, along with two other companies: Ein Ami and Hefziba.

The laundering of the buildings' construction allows members of the planning council, who were aware of the illegalities and did nothing to stop them, to avoid criminal charges and suits for damages.

The petitioners' attorney, Michael Sfard, who asked that construction be halted, said the planning authorities knew about the illegal circumstances and did nothing to stop the construction.

He said the body administering the separation fence planned a route that would intentionally leave land for the neighborhood on the Israeli side of the fence. This move, apparently, came at the request of the Housing Ministry, which sought hundreds of dunams of Bil'in's agricultural lands for Modi'in Illit's expansion.

"The takeover of the lands was carried out by a conspiracy involving private developers and Israeli authorities. Thus, criminal companies that stole private Palestinian lands won the protection of the fence - which was intended as a means of security and became a tool for annexation - as well as backing from the planning authorities, whose approval laundered the offenses," Sfard wrote in the petition. Justice Salim Joubran ordered the state to respond to the petition by March 6.

The petition stated that the planning council's decision would "bury the criminal act and the impaired rights of ownership deep in the earth, and would quickly lead to continued construction of the neighborhood, as if no offense had been committed and there were never any rights of ownership."

The planning authorities also refused to hear the claims of the residents of Bil'in who sought to prove their ownership of the land.

In September 2004, Moshe Moskowitz of the Civil Administration, the highest authority in planning and construction in the West Bank, wrote to Modi'in's council comptroller that "construction authorization for the new project of Matityahu East was doubtless given against the instructions of the existing [master] plan and therefore was not within the licensing authority's power."

However, last week's petition stated that Moskowitz and other members of the planning council, had a vested interest in legalizing the project, because the demolition of dozens of apartments would expose them to lawsuits by purchasers.

A lawyer for one of the settler's associations is suspected of purchasing the land for the project with an affidavit from the mukhtar of Bil'in. The affidavit allegedly claimed that the security situation prevented the lawyer from entering Bil'in to obtain the property owners' signatures.

In the decision to legalize construction on the new neighborhood, the planning council conceded that it had no master plan for Modi'in Illit, but cited an exception in Jordanian law - the basis for Israeli law in the West Bank - by which small communities do not require a master plan for the construction of new neighborhoods.

According to the Central Bureau of Statistics, in September 2006, 33,200 residents were living in Modi'in Illit.

By Meron Rapoport

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/829707.html

February 25, 2007

Hundreds of Palestinians and Israelis took part Friday in a demonstration marking two years since the beginning of protests against the building of the separation fence at Bil'in. Sixteen demonstrators were injured in clashes with security forces. Four were treated at the hospital and released.

Bil'in, near the settlement of Modi'in Ilit, has become a symbol of the struggle against the fence. Half of Bil'in's lands are on Israel's side of the barrier, and the town has been the scene of weekly protests, with the participation of Israelis, Palestinians and foreigners.

Demonstrators say their protests are non-violent, but in many cases soldiers have fired tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets, and demonstrators have thrown stones. One soldier lost an eye to a stone thrown by Palestinians, and three Palestinians each lost an eye after riot-control actions.

Demonstrators have video-taped protests, and in some cases Palestinian protesters were released after the tapes showed the military court that the demonstrators had not been involved in violence. Military Judge Colonel Shmuel Kedar recently said that in a video he was shown, "there is more violence on the part of security forces than demonstrators. Although the soldiers see the cameras, [they] do not restrain themselves from showing an ugly face to demonstrators who have come to protest in a democratic way."

Senior West Bank Fatah officials took part in Friday's protest. Among them was Mustafa Barghouti, who is expected to be appointed a minister in the new Palestinian Authority cabinet, and who said he feels a "new popular protest movement" was rising "and Bil'in is its symbol." MK Jamal Zahalka (Balad) was also present.

[JPN Commentary: Jonathan Cook accompanying a Machsom Watch activist through some of Israel's military checkpoints in the occupied West Bank writes [emphasis mine RM]:

"Contrary to the impression of most observers, the vast majority of checkpoints are not even near the Green Line, Israel's internationally recognised border until it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967."

[Machsom Watch activist Nomi Lalo cites evidence demonstrating that,] "the checkpoints and Israel's steel and concrete barrier in the West Bank -- or fence, as she calls it -- are not working in the way Israel claims. … Nomi is as sceptical of claims she hears in the Israeli media about the checkpoints foiling suicide attacks as she is about the army's claims that they have been removing the roadblocks. 'I spend all day monitoring a checkpoint and come home in the evening, turn on the TV and hear that four suicide bombers were caught at the checkpoint where I have been working. It happens just too often. I stopped believing the army a long time ago.'"

"'Why is it always teenagers being stopped at the checkpoints?" she asks … the Shin Bet [Israel's domestic security service] puts these youngsters up to it to justify the checkpoints' existence. Why would anyone leave Nablus with a knife and bring it to Huwara checkpoint? For God's sake, you can buy swords on the other side of the checkpoint, in Huwara village.'"

"when I try to take a photo, a soldier storms towards me barely concealing his anger. Nomi remonstrates with him, but he is in a foul mood. Away from him, she confides: 'They know that these checkpoints violate international law and that they are complicit in war crimes. Many of the soldiers are scared of being photographed.'" I believe that the importance of this point cannot be overstated: Many Israeli soldiers are aware, today, that they are complicit in war crimes. RM]

http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2007/833/re91.htm


Al-Ahram Weekly On-Line Issue 833
22-28 February 2007

Jonathan Cook joins a watchdog group on duty in the West Bank, documenting abuses and numberless humiliations that characterise the daily life of ordinary Palestinians under occupation.

The scene: a military checkpoint deep in Palestinian territory in the West Bank. A tall, thin elderly man, walking stick in hand, makes a detour past the line of Palestinians, many of them young men, waiting obediently behind concrete barriers for permission from an Israeli soldier to leave one Palestinian area, the city of Nablus, to enter another Palestinian area, the neighbouring village of Huwara. The long queue is moving slowly, the soldier taking his time to check each person's papers.

The old man heads off purposefully down a parallel but empty lane reserved for vehicle inspections. A young soldier controlling the human traffic spots him and orders him back in line. The old man stops, fixes the soldier with a stare and refuses. The soldier looks startled, and uncomfortable at the unexpected show of defiance. He tells the old man more gently to go back to the queue. The old man stands his ground. After a few tense moments, the soldier relents and the old man passes.

Is the confrontation revealing of the soldier's humanity? That is not the way it looks -- or feels -- to the young Palestinians penned in behind the concrete barriers. They can only watch the scene in silence. None would dare to address the soldier in the manner the old man did, or take his side had the Israeli been of a different disposition. An old man is unlikely to bedetained or beaten at a checkpoint. Who, after all, would believe he attacked or threatened a soldier, or resisted arrest, or was carrying a weapon? But the young men know their own injuries or arrests would barely merit a line in Israel's newspapers, let alone an investigation.

And so, the checkpoints have made potential warriors of Palestine's grandfathers at the price of emasculating their sons and grandsons.

I observed this small indignity -- such humiliations now a staple of life for any Palestinian who needs to move around the West Bank -- during a shift with Machsom Watch. The grassroots organisation founded by Israeli women in 2001 monitors the behaviour of soldiers at a few dozen of the more accessible checkpoints (machsom in Hebrew).

Checkpoints came to dominate Palestinian life in the West Bank (and, before disengagement, in Gaza too) long before the outbreak of the second Intifada in late 2000, and even before the first Palestinian suicide bombings. They were Israel's response to the Oslo Accords, which created a Palestinian Authority to govern limited areas of the occupied territories. Israel began restricting Palestinians allowed to work in Israel to those issued with exit permits; a system enforced through a growing network of military roadblocks.

Soon the checkpoints were also restricting movement inside the occupied territories, ostensibly to protect the Jewish settlements built on occupied territory.

By late last year, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, 528 checkpoints and roadblocks were recorded in the West Bank, choking its roads every few miles. Israel's daily Haaretz newspaper puts the figure even higher: in January there were 75 permanently manned checkpoints, some 150 mobile checkpoints, and more than 400 places where roads have been blocked by obstacles. All these restrictions on movement for a place that is, according to the CIA's World Factbook, no larger than the small US state of Colorado.

As a result, moving goods and people from one place to the next in the West Bank has become a nightmare of logistics and costly delays. At the checkpoints, food spoils, patients die and children are prevented from reaching their schools. The World Bank blames checkpoints and roadblocks for strangling the Palestinian economy.

Embarrassed by recent publicity about the burgeoning number of checkpoints, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert promised Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last December, that there would be an easing of travel restrictions in the West Bank. All to little effect, according to reports in the Israeli media. Although the army announced in mid-January that 44 earth barriers had been removed in fulfilment of Olmert's pledge, it later emerged that none of the roadblocks had actually been there in the first place.

WATCHING THE CHECKPOINTS: Contrary to the impression of most observers, the vast majority of checkpoints are not even near the Green Line, Israel's internationally recognised border until it occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967. Some are so deep inside Palestinian territory that the army refuses to allow Machsom Watch to visit them. There, the women say, no one knows what abuses are being perpetrated unseen on Palestinians.

But at Huwara checkpoint, where the old man refused to submit the soldiers know that most of the time they are being watched by fellow Israelis, and that their behaviour is being recorded in monthly logs. Machsom Watch has a history of publishing embarrassing photographs and videos of the soldiers' actions. It publicised, for example, videotape in 2004 of a young Palestinian man being forced to play his violin at Beit Iba checkpoint, a story that gained worldwide attention because it echoed the indignities suffered by Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

Machsom Watch has about 500 members, reportedly including Olmert's leftwing daughter, Dana. But only about 200 actively take part in checkpoint duties, an experience that has left many outspoken in denouncing the occupation. The organisation is widely seen by the Israeli public as extremist, with pro-Israel groups accusing the women of "demonising" Israel.

It is the kind of criticism painfully familiar to Nomi Lalo, from Kfar Sava. A veteran of Machsom Watch, she is the mother of three children, two of whom have already served in the army while the youngest, aged 17, is due to join up later this year. "He has been more exposed to my experiences in Machsom Watch and has some sympathy with my point of view," she says. "But my oldest son has been very hostile about my activities. It has caused a lot of tension in the family."

Most of the women do shifts at a single checkpoint, but I join Nomi on "mobile" duty in the central region, moving between the dozens of checkpoints west of Nablus.

She wants to start by showing me the separate road system in the West Bank, with unrestricted and high-quality roads set aside for Jewish settlers living illegally in occupied territory while Palestinians are forced to make difficult and lengthy journeys over hills and through valleys on what are often little more than dirt tracks.

Machsom Watch calls this "apartheid", a judgement shared by the liberal daily Haaretz newspaper, which recently wrote an editorial that Israeli parents ought to "be very worried about their country sending their sons and daughters on an apartheid mission: to restrict Palestinian mobility within the occupied territory... in order to enable Jews to move freely."

APARTHEID IN PROCESS: We leave the small Palestinian town of Azzoun, close by the city of Qalqilya, and head directly north towards another city, Tulkarem. A trip that should take little more than a quarter of an hour is now all but impossible for most Palestinians.

"This road is virtually empty, even though it is the main route between two of the West Bank's largest cities," Nomi points out. "That is because most Palestinians cannot get the permits they need to use these roads. Without a permit they can't get through the checkpoints, so either they stay in their villages or they have to seek circuitous and dangerous routes off the main roads."

We soon reach one of the checkpoints Nomi is talking about. At Aras, two soldiers sit in a small concrete bunker in the centre of the main junction between Tulkarem and Nablus. The bored soldiers are killing time waiting for the next car and the driver whose papers they will need to inspect.

A young Palestinian man, in woollen cap to protect him from the cold, stands by a telegraph post close by the junction. Bilal, aged 26, has been "detained" at the same spot for three hours by the soldiers. Nervously he tells us that he is trying to reach his ill father in hospital in Tulkarem. Nomi looks unconvinced and after a talk with the soldiers and calls on her mobile phone to their commanders she has a clearer picture.

"He has been working illegally in Israel and they have caught him trying to get back to his home in the West Bank. The soldiers are holding him here to punish him. They could imprison him but, given the dire state of the Palestinian economy, Israeli prisons would soon be overflowing with job-seekers. So holding him her all day is a way of making him suffer. It's illegal but, unless someone from Machsom Watch turns up, who will ever know?"

Is it not good that the military commanders are willing to talk to her? "They know we can present their activities in the West Bank in a very harsh light and so they cooperate. They don't want bad publicity. I never forget that when I am speaking to them. When they are being helpful, I remind myself their primary motive is to protect the occupation's image."

Nomi sees proof in cases like Bilal's that the checkpoints and Israel's steel and concrete barrier in the West Bank -- or fence, as she calls it -- are not working in the way Israel claims. The other day, says Nomi, she found a professor of English from Birzeit University held at this checkpoint, just like Bilal. He had tried to sneak out of Tulkarem during a curfew to teach a class at the university near the city of Ramallah, some 40 kilometres south. Nomi's intervention eventually got him released. "He was sent back to Tulkarem. He thanked me profusely, but really what did we do for him or his students? We certainly didn't get him to the university."

After Nomi's round of calls, Bilal is called over by one of the soldiers. Wagging his finger reprovingly, the soldier lectures Bilal for several minutes before sending him on his way with a dismissive wave of the hand. Another small indignity.

As we leave, Nomi receives a call from a Machsom Watch group at Jitt checkpoint, a few miles away. The team of women say that, when they turned up to begin their shift, the soldiers punished the Palestinians by shutting the checkpoint. The women are panicking because a tailback of cars -- mainly taxis and trucks driven by Palestinians with special permits -- is building. After some discussion with Nomi, it is decided that the women should leave.

ON THE OTHER SIDE: We head uphill to another checkpoint, some 500 metres from Aras, guarding the entrance to Jabara, a village whose educated population includes many teachers and school inspectors. Today, however, the villagers are among several thousand Palestinians living in a legal twilight zone, trapped on the Israeli side of the wall. Cut off from the rest of the West Bank, the villagers are not allowed to receive guests and need special permits to reach the schools where they work. (An additional quarter of a million Palestinians are sealed off from both Israel and the West Bank in their own ghettoes).

"Children who have married out of Jabara are not even allowed to visit their parents here," says Nomi. "Family life has been torn apart, with people unable to attend funerals and weddings. I cannot imagine what it is like for them. The Supreme Court has demanded the fence be moved but the state says it does not have the money for the time being to make the changes."

At the far end of Jabara we have to pass through a locked gate to leave the village. There we are greeted by yet another checkpoint, this one closer to the Green Line on a road the settlers use to reach Israel. It is one of a growing number that look suspiciously like border crossings, even though they are not on the Green Line, with special booths and lanes for the
soldiers to inspect vehicles.

The soldiers see our yellow number plate, distinguishing us from the green plates of the Palestinians, and wave us through.

Nomi is using a settlers' map she bought from a petrol station inside Israel to navigate our way to the next checkpoint, Anabta, close by an isolated settlement called Enav. Although this was once a busy main road, the checkpoint is empty and soldiers mill around with nothing to do. There are no detained Palestinians, so we move on.

Nomi is as sceptical of claims she hears in the Israeli media about the checkpoints foiling suicide attacks as she is about the army's claims that they have been removing the roadblocks. "I spend all day monitoring a checkpoint and come home in the evening, turn on the TV and hear that four suicide bombers were caught at the checkpoint where I have been working. It happens just too often. I stopped believing the army a long time ago."

We arrive at another settlement, comprising a couple of dozen Jewish families, called Shavei Shomron. It is located next to Road 60, once the main route between Nablus and the most northern Palestinian city, Jenin. Today the road is empty, as it leads nowhere; the army has blocked it, supposedly to protect Shomron.

A short distance away, also on Road 60, is one of the larger and busier checkpoints: Beit Iba, the site where the Palestinian was forced to play his violin. A few kilometres west of Nablus, the checkpoint has been built in the most unlikely of places, a working quarry that has covered the area in a fine white dust. Yellow Palestinian taxis are waiting at one end of the quarry to pick up Palestinians allowed to leave Nablus on foot through the checkpoint. At the vehicle inspection point, a donkey and cart stacked so high with boxes of medicines that they look permanently on the verge of tipping over is being checked alongside ambulances and trucks.

Close by is the familiar corridor of metal gates, turnstiles and concrete barriers through which Palestinians must pass one at a time to be inspected.

On a battered table, a young man is emptying the contents of his small suitcase, presumably after a stay in Nablus. He is made to hold up his packed underwear in front of the soldiers and the Palestinian onlookers. Another small indignity.

Here at least the Palestinians wait under a metal awning that protects from sun and rain. "The roof and the table are our doing," says Nomi. "Before the Palestinians had to empty their bags on the ground."

Machsom Watch is also responsible for a small Portakabin office nearby, up a narrow flight of concrete steps, with the ostentatious sign "Humanitarian Post" by the door. "After we complained about women with babies being made to wait for hours in line, the army put up this cabin with baby changing facilities, diapers and formula milk. Then they invited the media to come and film it."

The experiment was short-lived apparently. After two weeks the army claimed the Palestinians were not using the post and removed the facilities. I go up and take a look. It's entirely bare: just four walls and a very dusty basin.

HELPING THE OCCUPATION? How effective does she feel Machsom Watch is? Does it really help the Palestinians or merely add a veneer of legitimacy to the checkpoints by suggesting, like the "humanitarian post", that Israel cares about its occupied subjects? It is, Nomi admits, a question that troubles her a great deal.

"It's a dilemma. The Palestinians here [at Beit Iba] used to have to queue under the sun without shelter or water. Now that we have got them a roof, maybe we have made the occupation look a little more humane, a little more acceptable. There are some women who argue we should only watch, and not interfere, even if we see Palestinians being abused or beaten," which happens, as Machsom Watch's monthly reports document in detail. Even the Israeli media is starting to report uncomfortably about the soldier's behaviour, from assaults to soldiers urinating in front of religious women.

At Beit Iba in October, says Nomi, a Palestinian youngster was badly beaten by Israeli soldiers after he panicked in the queue and shinned up a pole shouting that he couldn't breathe. Haaretz later reported that the soldiers beat him with their rifle butts and smashed his glasses. He was then thrown in a detention cell at the checkpoint.

And in November, Haitem Yassin, aged 25, made the mistake of arguing with a soldier at a small checkpoint near Beit Iba called Asira Al-Shamalia. He was upset when the soldiers forced the religious women he was sharing a taxi with to pat their bodies as a security measure. According to Amira Hass, a veteran Israeli reporter, Yassin was then shoved by one of the soldiers and pushed back. In the ensuing scuffle, Yassin was shot in the stomach. He was then handcuffed and beaten with rifle butts while other soldiers blocked an ambulance from coming to his aid. Yassin remained unconscious for several days.

The notorious Huwara checkpoint, guarding the main road to Nablus from the south, is our next destination. Early in the Intifada, there were regular stories of soldiers abusing Palestinians there. Today, Machsom Watch has an almost permanent presence at Huwara, as do army officers concerned about bad publicity.

It is a surreal scene. We are deep in the West Bank, with Palestinians everywhere, but two young Jews -- sporting a hippy look fashionable among the more extreme religious settlers -- are lounging by the side of the road waiting for a lift to take them to one of the more militant settlements that encircle Nablus. A soldier, there to protect them, stands chatting.

As I am photographing the checkpoint, a soldier wearing red-brown boots -- the sign of a paratrooper, according to Nomi -- confronts me, warning that he will confiscate my camera. Nomi knows her, and my, rights and asks him by what authority he is making such a threat. They argue in Hebrew for a few minutes before he apologises, saying he mistook me for a Palestinian. "Are only Palestinians not allowed to photograph the checkpoints?" Nomi scolds him, adding as an afterthought: "Didn't you hear that modern mobile phones have cameras? How can you stop a checkpoint being photographed?"

The pleasant face of Huwara is Micha, an officer from the District Coordination Office who oversees the soldiers. When he shows up in his car, Nomi engages him in conversation. Micha tells us that yesterday a teenager was stopped at the checkpoint carrying a knife and bomb- making equipment. Nomi scoffs, much to Micha's annoyance.

"Why is it always teenagers being stopped at the checkpoints?" she asks him. "You know as well as I do that the Shin Bet [Israel's domestic security service] puts these youngsters up to it to justify the checkpoints' existence. Why would anyone leave Nablus with a knife and bring it to Huwara checkpoint? For God's sake, you can buy swords on the other side of the checkpoint, in Huwara village."

ANOTHER SMALL INDIGNITY: We leave Huwara and go deeper into the West Bank, along a "sterile road" -- army parlance for one Palestinians cannot use -- that today services settlers reaching Elon Moreh and Itimar. Once Palestinians travelled the road to the village of Beit Furik but not anymore. "Israel does not put up signs telling you that two road systems exist here. Instead it is the responsibility of Palestinians to know that they cannot drive on this road. Any that make a mistake are arrested."

Southeast of Nablus we pass the village of Beit Furik itself, the entrance to which has a large metal gate that can be locked by the army at will. A short distance on and we reach Beit Furik checkpoint. Again, when I try to take a photo, a soldier storms towards me barely concealing his anger. Nomi remonstrates with him, but he is in a foul mood. Away from him, she confides: "They know that these checkpoints violate international law and that they are complicit in war crimes. Many of the soldiers are scared of being photographed."

Faced with the hostile soldier, we soon abandon Beit Furik and head back to Huwara. Less than a minute on from Huwara (Nomi makes me check my watch), we have hit another checkpoint: Yitzhar. A snarl-up of taxis, trucks and a few private cars is blocking the Palestinian inspection lane. We overtake the queue in a separate lane reserved for cars with yellow plates (settlers) and reach the other side of the checkpoint.

We find a taxi driver waiting by the side of the road next to his yellow cab. Faek has been there for 90 minutes after an Israeli policeman confiscated both his ID and his driving licence, disappearing with them. Did Faek get the name of the policeman? No, he replies. "Of course not," admits Nomi. "What Palestinian would risk asking an Israeli official for his name?"

Nomi makes some more calls and is told that Faek can come to the police station in the nearby settlement of Ariel to collect his papers. But, in truth, Faek is trapped. He cannot get through the checkpoints separating him from Ariel without his ID card. And even if he could find a tortuous route around the checkpoints, he could still be arrested for not having a licence and issued a fine of a few hundred shekels, a small sum for Israelis but one he would struggle to pay. So quietly he carries on waiting in the hope that the policeman will return.

Nomi is not hopeful. "It is illegal to take his papers without giving him a receipt but this kind of thing happens all the time. What can the Palestinians do? They dare not argue. It's the Wild West out here."

Some time later, as the sun lowers in the sky and a chill wind picks up, Faek is still waiting. Nomi's shift is coming to an end and we must head back to Israel. She promises to continue putting pressure by phone on the police to return his documents. Nearly two hours later, as I arrive home, Faek unexpectedly calls, saying he has finally got his papers back. But he is not happy: he has been issued with a fine of 500 shekels ($115) by the police. Nomi's phone is busy, he says. Can I help get the fine reduced?

Jonathan Cook is a journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His book Blood and Religion was published by Pluto Press last year.

[JPN Commentary: A high level Israeli delegation will ask top U.S. officials to raise the sum of $2.4 billion in annual military aid that the U.S. pours into Israel. According to journalist Moti Bassok, "Israel is requesting only military aid, since it knows that a request for civilian assistance would not be met favorably in Washington". Seventy-five percent of the U.S. military aid paid to Israel is earmarked for purchases from American contractors. It is therefore no wonder that under the present aid agreement the U.S. has been changing the ratio of military to civilian aid, increasing the former while gradually canceling the latter. "Each year throughout the present agreement civilian aid was reduced by $120 million, while military aid grew $60 million. As of next year, annual U.S. aid will [… be] all military". RM]

Israel to ask U.S. for more military aid

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/830502.html

February 26, 2007

Israel will ask the U.S. government to significantly increase its military assistance to the country as part of a new multi-year aid agreement.

A high-level Israeli economic delegation led by Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer and Finance Ministry Director General Yarom Ariav will meet with an American team in Washington this week.

The present package, which ends this year, covers $2.4 billion in annual military aid.

Israel's request comes due to the military challenges and restraints it will have to face in the upcoming years and the weakening dollar.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, delegation members and others met at the Prime Minister's Office yesterday to discuss the requests Israel would present.

The level of aid to be requested was to be set at the meeting, but Washington asked Israel last week not to ask for a specific amount at this stage, but rather present its needs in principle.

The actual numbers will be raised in negotiations in the upcoming months.

Israel is requesting only military aid, since it knows that a request for civilian assistance would not be met favorably in Washington.

The talks over increasing military aid have been going on for half a year at various levels and in several frameworks: U.S. President George Bush and Olmert discussed the matter face-to-face last year, while the former treasury director general, Joseph Bachar, held a special meeting on the matter with senior administration officials in Washington in August.

The Americans have yet to provide a response to Israel, but the fact that the talks are continuing - and this time at a very senior level - has encouraged Jerusalem's higher echelons to believe that at least most of the request will be approved.

The present aid agreement was signed to cover 1998-2007. Annual aid granted to Israel in 1998 was $3 billion - $1.8 million in military aid and $1.2 million civilian aid.

Each year throughout the present agreement civilian aid was reduced by $120 million, while military aid grew $60 million.

As of next year, annual U.S. aid will total $2.4 billion - all military - unless a new agreement is reached.

In addition to Fischer and Ariav, the delegation will include Foreign Ministry Director General Aharon Abramovitch, the head of the National Security Council, Ilan Mizrahi, and Israel Defense Forces representatives, and the embassy in Washington.

[JPN Commentary: BUSTAN is a partnership of Jewish and Arab eco-builders, architects, academics, and farmers promoting social and environmental justice in Israel/Palestine. BUSTAN cultivates sustainable models to effect change by combining advocacy and in-depth political analysis with strategic action. BUSTAN utilizes the principles of permaculture and non-violent direct action across ethnic divides. more information about them can be found at www.bustan.org

The article below (meant as a call for help) gives a glimpse into what's happening to the Negev Beduins right now: Their crops are being destroyed in an effort to force them to give up on their way of life, and in order to allow the Israeli government to forcibly relocate them, making them totally dependent on government handouts and learned helplessness. If it reminds you of how the US government has been treating Native Americans, you're on the right track.

Bustan aims to point out that there is another way - the Beduins have a lot to teach Israeli Jews about how to live sustainably, and no solution which excludes the indigenous population is likely to work out. - RG]

Today, March 14th, Bedouin rain-fed food crops sown near the government-planned township of Lakiya in the Negev are being uprooted and overturned by Israel's 'Green Patrol.' This is the second time this year that fields are overturned - just last month some 1600 *dunams were destroyed. Since BUSTAN and 8 other NGOs partnered with Adalah to petition Israel's High Court against the aerial spraying of Bedouin food crops in 2004, the government's tactic has shifted from low-flying crop-dusters poisoning fields with agrochemicals (Monsanto's Roundup) - to plowing and overturning sown fields. It is no less cruel. BUSTAN fiercely condemns Israel's discriminatory and systematic policies of uprooting Bedouin from land, dignity, and culture. This is NOT a viable 'solution.' In fact, this is in violation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, to which Israel is signatory. BUSTAN calls upon the the Israeli government and the Israel Lands Authority (ILA) to immediately halt its destructive policies in the Negev. The only road toward a comprehensive solution involves sitting down with Bedouin leadership - and negotiating with the Regional Council of Unrecognized Villages (RCUV).

In a part of the country where most of the desert land is referred to as "mawat," or dead lands (according to Ottoman Land Laws), and despite minimal water access, Bedouin farmers work to till this holy land, to make it come alive with yields. Continually denying a formerly self-sufficient indigenous population access to subsistence farming and grazing herds - simply creates dependence on welfare hand-outs. What will remain after fully disrupting a once viable local economy in the desert? ABC's. More alienation. More bitterness. More crime. More drugs. And newly paved roads for newly seeded communities with newly planted grassy lawns for newly sprouted Jewish families that may not know just how expensive a price they'll pay to run their air conditioners in the summers and heaters in the winters - as this will be subsidized by the government. They also may not know how expensive a price Bedouin families are paying to have new neighbors. These 'pioneers' may not see themselves as political pawns in the game of Judaizing the region, but nonetheless, they are serving the political objective of maintaining a demographic balance. If the acts of forcibly containing Bedouin to redeem lands for Jewish settlement spawn an internal intifada, no government subsidy will protect lives in the Negev.

We urge you to get involved. More than just visiting and taking pictures on Bedouin camels and enjoying their bitter coffee on your vacation, PLEASE HELP work to develop the Negev for all its inhabitants. Despite the overflow of issues at hand, we must continue to protest the ongoing process of criminalizing Bedouin farmers/shepherds and converting Bedouin into a pauperized and unemployed enemy - referred to in Israeli law as 'intruders' that are 'spreading' - with contagion. We must make the connections - and continue to research how North American money is utilized to Green the Negev and subsidize new suburban havens with extremely water and energy-intensive infrastructure for Jewish students and young couples to grow grapes for wine or work in aquaculture in the desert - while Bedouin fields are cleared and Bedouin houses are demolished. Perhaps living in a new Jewish neighborhood or a single-family farm is better than living in a neglected and dismal development town and working in one of the Negev's heavily polluting chemical industries. But we must work for common goals of developing the desert for all its citizens in a democratic and sustainable manner. From past lessons learned - worldwide - healthy, sustainable development is dependent on partnering with the region's inhabitants, not uprooting them in our name. Next month BUSTAN hopes to organize a festival to showcase the region's stewards and buttress rain-fed organic farming so future generations of young Jews and Bedouin can learn from the successes of working with the desert, rather than replicating our failed attempts to conquer it. Please join us. We are too small to do this alone.

I leave you with the inspiring words of fellow green warrior Aliza Hava, "We Are One People, One Land."

Devorah Brous
www.bustan.org

*A dunam is 1/4 acre.

[JPN Commentary: Two major things emerge in Uri Avneri's essay. One is clear evidence that the plan to attack Lebanon existed before the kidnapping of soldiers by Hezbollah, and that the kidnapping was used by Israel as a pretext. The second thing, a more surprising one, is the fact that the US did exercise considerable control over the extent to which Israel was permitted to destroy Lebanon. Avneri points out that both what happened in Lebanon, and what's happening with Syria even as we speak - where the US has been preventing Israel from engaging in negotiations with Bashar al-assad - provides significant support to the claim that the US is exerting influence/control over Israeli policies and actions, and not the other way around. - RG]


Uri Avnery
10/03/07

Olmert's Truth

http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/channels/avnery/1173578966


IF GOD wills, even a broomstick will shoot. That is an old Yiddish adage. One could add now: If God wills, even Olmert can sometimes tell the truth.

The truth, according to the Prime Minister's testimony before the Inquiry Commission headed by Judge Vinograd that was leaked to the media yesterday, is that this was not a spontaneous reaction to the capture of the two soldiers, but a war planned a long time ago. We said so right from the start.

Olmert told the commission that immediately after assuming the functions of acting prime minister, in January 2006, he consulted with the army chiefs about the situation on the northern border. Until then, the prevailing doctrine followed Ariel Sharon's decision - logical from his point of view - not to react in force to provocations in the north, so that the Israeli army could concentrate on fighting the Palestinians. But this enabled Hizbullah to build up a large stockpile of rockets of all kinds. Olmert decided to change that policy.

The army prepared a two-pronged plan: an operation on the ground aimed at the elimination of Hizbullah, and an aerial offensive, aimed at the destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure, in order to put pressure on the Lebanese public which in turn would put pressure on Hizbullah. As the Chief of Staff, Dan Halutz, said at the beginning of the war: "we shall turn Lebanon's clock back 20 years." (a rather modest aim, compared to the famous proposal of an American colleague: to "bomb Vietnam back to the stone age".) The Air Force was also tasked with destroying Hizbullah's rocket arsenal.

But nowadays it is not proper anymore to attack a country without a convincing reason. Already before the First Lebanon War, the Americans demanded that Israel attack only after a clear provocation that would convince the world. The necessary justification was provided at the right time by the Abu Nidal gang, which tried to assassinate the Israeli ambassador in London. In the recent case, it was decided in advance that the capture of Israeli soldiers would constitute such a provocation.

A cynic might argue that this decision turned Israeli soldiers into bait. It was known that Hizbullah wanted to capture soldiers in order to force a prisoner exchange. The regular Israeli army patrols along the border fence were, in a way, a standing invitation to Hizbullah to carry out their evil design.

THE CAPTURE of the soldier Gilad Shalit by Palestinians near the Gaza border fence turned on a red light in Israel. Olmert said in his testimony that from that moment on, he was convinced that Hizbullah was about to try to carry out a similar exploit.

If so, the prime minister should perhaps have ordered the army to halt the patrols along the northern border, or to reinforce them in a way that would deter Hizbullah. That was not done. The poor members of the fateful patrol set out on their way as to a picnic.

The same cynic might argue that Olmert and the army chiefs were interested in a pretext in order to execute their war plans. They were convinced, anyhow, that the soldiers would be brought home in a jiffy. But, as the British royal motto says, Honi soit qui mal y pense - Shame upon him who thinks ill of it.

Anyhow, Hizbullah attacked, two soldiers were captured, and the planned operation should have started rolling smoothly. But that did not happen. The war did indeed break out, as planned, but from then on almost nothing went according to plan. Consultations were hasty, the decisions confused, the operations indecisive. It now appears that the plan was not yet finalized and confirmed.

The Vinograd commission is supposed to find the answers to some tough questions: If the war was planned such a long time in advance, why was the army not ready for war? How come the army budget was reduced? How come the emergency arsenals were empty? Why were the reserve forces, which were supposed to carry out the operations on the ground, called up only when the war was already in full swing? And after they were finally deployed, why did they receive confused and contradictory orders?

All these show that Olmert and the generals were grossly incompetent in their military decision-making. But they also lacked any understanding of the international scene.

NASRALLAH has openly admitted that he made a mistake.

He did not understand that there had been a change in Israel: instead of Sharon, an old war-horse who was not looking for action in the north, a new man had arrived, an inexperienced politician itching for war. What Hassan Nasrallah had in mind was just another round of the usual: the capture of some soldiers and a prisoner exchange. Instead, a full-blown war broke out.

But Ehud Olmert's mistake was even bigger. He was convinced that the United States would give him a blessing for the road and allow him to roam in Lebanon at will. But American interests, too, had changed.

In Lebanon, the government of Fuad Siniora has succeeded in uniting all pro-American forces. They have loyally carried out all of Washington's orders, have driven out the Syrians and have supported the investigation of Rafiq Hariri's murder, which is to provide the Americans with a pretext for a massive strike against Syria.

According to Olmert's leaks, Condoleezza Rice called him just after the outbreak of the war and conveyed to him the up-to-date American orders : it was indeed desired that Israel should deal a crushing blow to Hizbullah, the enemies of Siniora, but it was absolutely forbidden to do anything that would hurt Siniora, such as bombing Lebanese infrastructure outside Hizbullah's territory.

That emasculated the General Staff's plans. The main idea had been that if the civilian population in Lebanon was hurt sufficiently, it would put pressure on the government to act decisively against Hizbullah, enough to liquidate the organization or, at least, to disarm it. It is very doubtful whether this strategy would have succeeded if it had been carried out, but because of the American intervention it was not carried out.

Instead of the massive bombardment that would have destroyed the basic industries and facilities, Halutz had to be satisfied - after Condeleezza's phone call - with bombing the roads and bridges that serve Hizbullah and the Shiite population (including the supply lines for Syrian arms to Hizbullahland.) The damage was extensive, but not sufficient to bring Lebanon to its knees - if that was at all possible. Apart from that, the air force succeeded in destroying some of the long-range missiles, but the short-range missiles were not hit, and it was those that created havoc among the population in northern Israel.

On the ground, the operation was even more confused. Only during the last 48 hours of the war, when it was already clear that the cease-fire was about to come into force, was the major offensive, in which 33 Israeli soldiers died, set in motion. What for? In his testimony, Olmert asserts that it was necessary in order to change some points in the UN resolution in Israel's favor. We know today (as we said at the time) that these changes were worthless and they remained on paper.

THE INTERVENTION of Condoleezza Rice in the conduct of the war is interesting also in another respect. It sheds light on a question that has been engaging the experts for some time now: in the relationship between the United States and Israel, do American interests override Israeli, or is it the other way round?

This discussion came to a head when the American professors, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, published their research paper, according to which Israel imposes on the United States a policy that is contrary to the American national interest. The conclusion upset many who believe the opposite: that Israel is but a small wheel in the imperial American machine. (I permitted myself to argue that both versions are right: the American dog wags its Israeli tail, and the Israeli tail wags the American dog.)

When Condoleezza Rice encouraged Israel to go to war but vetoed an essential part of the war plan, it seems that she proved the two professors wrong. True, Olmert got American permission for his war, which served American interests (the elimination of Hizbullah, which opposed the pro-American Siniora government, though it officially belonged to it), but only with severe limitations (in order not to hurt the Siniora government).

THE SAME principle is now operating on the Syrian front.

Bashar al-Assad offers Israel peace negotiations without prior conditions. This way, he hopes to avert an American attack on his country. Like the two professors, he believes that the Israeli lobby rules Washington.

Almost all the important experts in Israel are in agreement that the Syrian offer is serious. Even in "security circles" some are urging Olmert to seize the opportunity and achieve peace in the north.

But the Americans have put an absolute veto on that, which Olmert has accepted. A vital Israeli interest has been sacrificed on the American altar. Even now, when Bush is already entering into some kind of a dialog with Syria, the Americans are prohibiting us from doing the same.

Why? Very simple: the Americans are using us as a threat. They hold us on a line, like an attack dog, and tell Assad: if you don't do as we wish, we shall release the dog.

If the Americans reach an agreement with the Syrians, using this threat among others, it is they who will garner the political profits from any accord we reach with Syria in the end.

That reminds me of the events of 1973. After the October war, Israeli-Egyptian cease-fire negotiations started at km 101 (from Cairo). At some stage, General Israel Tal took over as the chief of the Israeli delegation. Much later, he told me the following story:

"At a certain point, General Gamasy, the Egyptian representative, approached and told me that Egypt was now ready to sign an agreement with us. Full of joy, I took a plane and rushed to (Prime Minister) Golda Meir, to bring her the happy news. But Golda told me to stop everything immediately. She said to me: I have promised Henry Kissinger that if we arrive at an agreement, we shall transfer the whole matter to him, and he will tie up the loose ends."

And that is what happened, of course. The negotiations at km 101 were stopped, and Kissinger took control of the scene. It was he who reached the agreement, and the US was credited with it. The Egyptians became loyal followers of the US. The Israeli-Egyptian agreement was postponed for five years. It was achieved by Anwar Sadat, who planned his historic flight to Jerusalem behind the backs of the Americans.

Now the same may happen on the Syrian front. In the best case. In the worst case, the Americans will not reach an agreement with the Syrians, they will prevent us from achieving an agreement for ourselves, and thousands of Israelis, Syrians and Lebanese will pay the price in the next war.

Jewish Peace News Editors:
Judith Norman
Alistair Welchman
Lincoln Shlensky
Rela Mazali
Sarah Anne Minkin
Joel Beinin
Racheli Gai