Religion, Nationalism, and Terror

The J Street lobbying group that defines itself as “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace,” is leading a campaign to show support for “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon.  Simon has been criticized both for his incisive analysis of the role settlements play in preventing a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and for showing Israeli soldiers taking over a Palestinian home on the “60 Minutes” program broadcast on Jan. 25, 2009.

Simon’s  piece, entitled “Time Running Out For A Two-State Solution?” can be seen at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml.

The J Street statement of support for Bob Simon can be accessed at http://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/2747/t/3251/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=2523.

Bob Simon narrated an excellent segment on settlements as an obstacle to a two-state solution on “60 Minutes” on Sunday, Jan. 25, 2009. You can see it at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/23/60minutes/main4749723.shtml.

Email from Alex Grab in Tel Aviv, Jan, 16, 2009, 11:34 AM (posted with his permission)

I don’t watch much TV because it is so useless. They only bring Israeli generals and officials, ministers and reporters who are so uncritical of Israel that it is a waste of time. I mean after 1/2 an hour I turn it off.

But an hour ago or so something unbelievable happened. I turned on the TV and about 5 minutes into the program on the situation in Gaza, a Palestinian physician who worked in Israel many times and lives in Gaza with his children and knows Hebrew very well called the Israeli reporter in the studio (whom he knew very well) on his cell phone, and he was crying uncontrollably. He said that an Israeli tank just hit his house and injured or killed his children. This was live and it was unbelievable. The reporter kept his cell phone on for several minutes in the studio and you heard this physician shouting and crying into the cell repeating “Ya Allah why did they do it?” (in Hebrew). It was stunningly painful and obviously the Israeli reporter, who knew the physician, said that he would not turn off the cell in the studio, and we kept hearing the hysterical yelling of this poor Palestinian with his children bleeding around him. (I obviously could not see anything, I could only hear the man’s voice on his cell phone.) The reporter asked the physician where he lives and then asked the Israeli army on the air to send an ambulance to his home to help that family. After 3-4 minutes, the reporter excused himself and left the studio with his cell phone on to talk with the physician privately.

It was surreal and immensely painful. You heard the guy’s pain so very clearly and loud. It was not clear how many people were killed in that house.

Jonathan Freedland: Amid the horror and doom of Gaza, the IRA precedent offers hope, The

Guardian, Jan. 14, 2009

The Northern Ireland example is instructive. Through dialogue even the most implacable of enemies can make peace

The smart money in the Middle East is always on pessimism. Events can be relied on to get worse and worse. But perennial gloom has a flaw. Its unstated assumption is that the war between Israelis and Palestinians is somehow unique – that it is the only conflict in the history of the world that cannot be solved or even ended.

Yet even as the horror continues in Gaza, it’s worth recalling that people were once just as fatalistic about battles now long settled. Whether it was apartheid in South Africa or the 30-year bloodshed in Northern Ireland, there were plenty of dark days when the blood seemed as if it would never stop.

Which is why the mention of Northern Ireland, once a byword for strife, is now an invocation of hope. If republicans and unionists – who once wished each other dead – can sit in government together, then surely Israelis and Palestinians are not fated to fight for ever.

That message is in the air just now, with both the Irish prime minister and Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams urging the warring parties of the Middle East to learn their lesson and begin “dialogue”. Meanwhile, Tony Blair has been citing his own Northern Ireland experience as a useful precedent. Is he right? And if he is, what exactly are the lessons?

It’s a statement of the obvious that the two conflicts are not the same: none ever are. The wildest elements of the IRA were never committed, even rhetorically, to the destruction of Great Britain. Yet Hamas’s charter does call for the eradication of the state of Israel. (Those close to the organisation insist the document has in effect lapsed.)

Moreover, whatever brutalities were meted out by the British forces in Northern Ireland, they never pounded Belfast from the air using fighter jets. There was state collusion in killings, but the British army did not bomb entire buildings in the Falls Road because it suspected an IRA cell lurked within.

Nevertheless, there are important similarities. The two sides were fighting over the future of a small piece of territory. The unionist majority often complained that it stood alone, uncomprehended by the rest of the world. Demographics mattered, the notion that one group might soon outnumber the other. And religion was never far below the surface.

Amb. Marc Ginsberg: Gazans in Peril, Huffington Post, Jan. 13, 2009
So much as been written about the fighting in Gaza and its political and military consequences, but surely not enough has been written about the terrible humanitarian conditions that have befallen its unfortunate non-combatant inhabitants.Every party — yes, any party remotely involved in instigating or failing to prevent the latest outbreak of war in Gaza — is partly the cause as well as the source of any durable solution to this growing humanitarian calamity — and there are not enough fingers to point. Debating whether Hamas is justified in firing missiles into Israel or whether Israel is justified in its response is really not this blog’s principal focus, please. Neither is the plight of Israel’s southern cities and its inhabitants who have been terrorized far too long by Hamas’ brand of war-like coexistence.

My goal, however treacherous, is to set aside the political blame game that has characterized the debate, and to focus on the terrible civilian conditions inside Gaza with the hope that the plight of Gazans will foster expedited preparation for an emergency international relief effort to address the humanitarian crisis that grips Gaza now and which will surely get far worse in the days ahead.

Whenever Gaza’s guns go silent, tens of thousands of Palestinians caught in the crossfire between Hamas militants and Israeli forces will haltingly emerge from the rubble to survey the terrible destruction that has befallen them as winter rains add more misery to the situation.

Entire blocks of stores and homes have been destroyed; services have been disrupted; and families have endured a barrage of fire and counterfire rendering what passes as normality in Gaza a distant memory. If Gaza was destitute and replete with misery before the latest Middle East war, it surely will face an even bleaker existence in the days ahead.

Conditions throughout Gaza were bad enough for its inhabitants before the fighting — an economic blockade by Israel, and Hamas’ Islamic extremist economic disorder had collectively transformed Gaza into a state of perpetual depression.

But things have gone from very bad to much worse in recent days as fighting has escalated.

At this hour, Gazans have almost no electrical power, and are under almost a round-the-clock blackout. Store shelves are empty, urgent medicine is in short supply, and only a few homes have running water since there is no fuel to run the water pumps. Sewage is flowing in the streets, and medical authorities, who cannot cope with the flood of civilian victims, are concerned that this witch’s brew will breed a terrible post-conflict pandemic of assorted maladies that will only lead to more deaths. Under such conditions, most would flee becoming refugees again, but in Gaza there is nowhere to run. The borders are sealed and there is no escape.

MEMRI: Latest News, Jan. 6, 2009

Egyptian Cleric Safwat Higazi on Hamas TV: Dispatch Those Sons of Apes and Pigs to the Hellfire – On the Wings of Qassam Rockets

Following are excerpts from a speech by Egyptian cleric Safwat Higazi, which aired on Al-Aqsa TV on December 31, 2008.

Safwat Higazi: “Being killed is nothing new to us. It is what we desire and hope for. It is martyrdom, by Allah. This is Allah’s victory coming to us. It is Paradise with the first drop of blood of the martyr.[...]

“Allah is with us, and there is nobody with them. Allah is our God, and there is nobody with them. We say to them: We are not equal. Our dead go to Paradise, while your dead go to the Hellfire.” [...]

“The [Jews], who are as smooth as a viper, and who lick their lips as [does] a speckled snake, will never live with us in peace and harmony. They deserve to be killed. They deserve to die. They are the ones at whom the Qassam rockets should be fired. You should not care if you hit a man, a woman, or a child. Just like they killed your children – kill their children. Just like they killed your women – kill their women. Just like they destroyed your mosques – destroy their places of worship. Destroy… everything over there.”

Prayer for the South in Wartime,Israel National News, Jan. 2, 2009
by Hana Levi Julian

(IsraelNN.com) A new prayer written specifically for the besieged residents of southern Israel was approved this week by the Rishon LeTzion, former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu.

The prayer, which several youth movements have already adopted, has been distributed among both religious and secular Israelis. The seven-line supplication asks G-d to protect residents of the south and IDF soldiers fighting terrorism. It also asks Him to grant wisdom and strength to Israel’s leaders.

It can be recited at any time, but is being recommended specifically for times in public prayer when brief personal prayers are offered, and whenever a rocket launch is reported….

English Translation
“May it be Your Will, L-rd our G-d and G-d of our forefathers, that You will have mercy on us and on all the residents of the south.

Protect us in the bounty of your kindness and spread out over us the shelter of Your peace.

Strengthen the arms of the fighting soldiers who protect us and give their souls for us.

Protect them and guard them from all misfortune.

Foil the plans of our haters and enemies; “Their swords shall plunge into their hearts and their bows shall break.”

Sovereign of the Universe, give our leaders wisdom and courage and strength of heart to annihilate all of our enemies, and let the prayer of King David, may he rest in peace, come true regarding them: “I shall chase after my enemies and I shall catch up to them and I will not return until they are destroyed.” Amen.

Bernard Avishai Dot Com: Hebron Agonistes: Too Much For Israel, Dec. 22, 2008

It has been common for educated Israelis to think, and Israeli diplomats and American Jewish leaders to present, the settler community of Hebron as a kind of radical nuisance. Presumably, the settlers are a side-show of a defensive strategic policy, a touch of hubris gone wrong, a little understandible selfishness after centuries of self-effacement-anyway, a line that can be moved when the time is right, certainly not a country within a country that has grown, SimCity-like, into something the size of the Jewish colony in Palestine in 1946.

In this view-not entirely wrong-the settlers were post-1967 Israelis only more so: people who took classical Zionist ideas about settling the Land of Israel a little too seriously, or took the Jews’ election a little too literally, or accepted cheap mortgages from the Jewish Agency a little too opportunistically; people who have randomly scattered themselves in the occupied territory in a now obviously failed effort to annex the holy land, or just to show that Jews can live everywhere in it.

The settlers, presumably, have settled under the nose of a forbearing, once vaguely sympathetic Israeli government, otherwise preoccupied by encirclement and terror. But they are people whom the Israeli government-if it ever had a real peace partner in the Palestinians, and not jihadist terrorists firing missiles, or sending in suicide bombers-would clear out in a great show of sovereign will. The recent clearing of the “House of Contention” by the Israeli Army is proof, so the argument goes, of the Israeli army’s residual power. The more recent breakdown of the cease fire with Hamas is proof of how Israel faces an existential threat, and dares not be distracted by the settlers.

Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s picked up the scent of power, is defining a new centrism by triangulating these poles. He knows that Israelis have lost patience with Judeans, or at least the disquieting ones. He’s made a show of purging one of the most fanatic of the settlers, Moshe Feiglin, from the 20th. position in the Likud list for the Knesset (though many more remain in the top 30); and he is simultaneously telling us that both the peace talks Olmert conducted with the Palestinian Authority, and the “time of retreat” in Gaza, are over. No two-state solution will compromise the existence of Kiryat Arba (no more than the unity of Jerusalem), he says. But neither settler zealots nor Palestinian terrorists, presumably, will be allowed to challenge the existence of the state. Each side-some now, some later-will be forced to change their behavior by Israeli state force.

I WENT TO Hebron a couple of weeks ago, as part of a delegation of Israelis hoping to show a measure of solidarity with an Arab family who’s patriarch, Abed el-Hai, had been shot at point blank range defending his home from one Kiryat Arba settler as the House of Contention was being cleared. There is no need to sentimentalize this gruff, stolid man-whose many barefooted grandchildren, sticky from holiday candy and twittering over our cell phones, will be run over by global forces if peace should ever come. But let’s just say that a day in Hebron focuses the mind.

You think out from Hebron, and the holes in the common wisdom become obvious, well, certainly less abstract. A different pattern takes shape, and virtually every premise of the common wisdom falls away.

1. Kiryat Arba, with surrounding settlements, is a solid town of about 10,000 people and growing. Many of its youth were born there, marinating in a peculiar and vicious righteousness. But there can be no Palestinian state if Kiryat Arba remains; to keep its residents under Israeli sovereignty, you would have to cut the southern West Bank in half, and keep checkpoints all along the route from Gush Etzion. Kiryat Arba’s residents would never accept Palestinian citizenship, even if this were offered. Imagine offering Klansmen rule by Stokely Carmichael, or Martin Luther King, for that matter.

2. According to army intelligence, and demonstrated precedent, a substantial number of Kiryat Arba residents would be willing to violently resist the Israeli army. Reserve army units-young men from Herzliya or Netanya-will tell you the settlers are out of their minds. But this is not the only army. An increasing number of junior officers conducting the occupation come from the movements and homes of the settlers. The army is there, soldiers say, to keep the peace. But in any case, this means enforcing the status quo, in which settlements naturally expand.

3. There is nothing random about what the settlers are doing. In Hebron, the idea is to create a land bridge from Kiryat Arab to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. It is Abed el-Hai’s bad luck that is home is in the way, in the wadi below Kiryat Arba, which the settlers want to turn “Jewish.” Most nights, Kiryat Arba residents throw rocks, garbage, and bags of urine into his yard.

In the area known as H-2, where the settlers have rights under the Wye Agreement (you know, the agreement then-prime minster Netanyahu negotiated in 1998), the Arab population has declined from about 35,000 to 18,000.

The road from Kiryat Arba to the Tomb has a yellow (that’s right, yellow) line on it, indicating that no Arab is allowed to walk on it; the settlers push their baby-strollers freely, while army jeeps patrol up and down, and Arab kids watch from third floor windows, many of them with iron screens to protect them from rocks, etc.

The settlers have set up a synagogue on the land of Ja’abri family-another family in the way-which the Israeli High Court has declared illegal, and the army has taken down over 30 times, only to have the “minyan” rebuild it. During prayers, their children often throw rocks, etc., onto the homes of the Ja’abris. A stone’s throw in the other direction is the grave of, and monument to, Baruch Goldstein.

4. Multiply the Hebron problem by twenty, and you have the real, grotesque problem that occupation has engendered. Jerusalem is the radioactive core of it. Try to evacuate Kiryat Arba by force and tens of thousands will stream down from yeshivot in Jerusalem to stand with them.

No Israeli leader wants to deal with facing down the new Judeans-or can, without destroying Israeli social solidarity. I have written here before about how all fanatics live within concentric circles of support. No matter who wins a majority in the next election, about half of Israeli Knesset members will be from circles which the settlers count on-National Orthodox, Shas, Leiberman’s Russians, Haredi-people concentrated in and around Jerusalem, whom the settlers will tell you would be in settlements themselves if they had the guts; people who will nevertheless apply the “values” the settlers stand for to Jerusalem.

Again, Netanyahu has demoted Feiglin. But the government he will form will rest on this Judean coalition. And if Livni-Barak win, they will face an opposition nearly the size of their own, with many sympathetic members, and a fear of resting their coalition (as they will have to) on the Arab parties.

5. Hamas is growing in power-in the West Bank, too-directly as a result of this grotesquery. It is absurd to think of Gaza as a separate matter. Nor will the Hamas leadership be intimidated by shows of force. Actually, they thrive on it-precisely because eruptions of violence allow them to be seen as the steadfast opposition to the inertial expansion of Israeli occupation. An Israeli attack on Gaza, which must be bloody, will be play right into Hamas’s hands.

6. True, Israelis on the coastal plain are increasingly appalled by the settlers, and will tell you so. Livni’s biggest applause line at the Globes business conference last week was her insistence that, under her leadership, peace talks with the Palestinians will continue. But taking on the settlers is another matter. It is more politic to talk about smashing Hamas, whose missile attacks on Shderot truly are insufferable.

7. Netanyahu speaks of “economic peace” as alternative to the peace process. This is also absurd. Palestinians cannot build businesses with 500 checkpoints across the West Bank. Those checkpoints are mainly to protect the settlers.

WHERE DOES THIS leave us? The simple fact is, this problem is too big for Israel. We will need the world’s involvement; anyone who tells you different is either covering for the settlers, or afraid for electoral reasons to appear squishy about Israeli autonomy, or arrogant, or ignorant, or thick, or all of these at once. This post is not the place to describe what involvement means, though the contours of a two-state deal have been obvious for many years. The point is, what Hebron represents cannot be solved by this deal in a few decisive months, like the evacuation of the Sinai was. New changes to the landscape will take years. Or the landscape will look like Bosnia.

Perhaps the saddest part of all of this is that first patriarch of Hebron, Abraham, never turned promised land holy. When faced with contention, as his herdsmen quarreled with Lot, he said something unforgettable but forgotten: “Is not the whole land before you? Let’s part company. If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.”

Avi Issacharoff, Hebron settler riots can only be called ‘pogrom’ Haaretz, Dec. 5, 2008

An innocent Palestinian family, numbering close to 20 people. All of them women and children, save for three men. Surrounding them are a few dozen masked Jews seeking to lynch them. A pogrom. This isn’t a play on words or a double meaning. It is a pogrom in the worst sense of the word. First the masked men set fire to their laundry in the front yard and then they tried to set fire to one of the rooms in the house. The women cry for help, “Allahu Akhbar.” Yet the neighbors are too scared to approach the house, frightened of the security guards from Kiryat Arba who have sealed off the home and who are cursing the journalists who wish to document the events unfolding there.

The cries rain down, much like the hail of stones the masked men hurled at the Abu Sa’afan family in the house. A few seconds tick by before a group of journalists, long accustomed to witnessing these difficult moments, decide not to stand on the sidelines. They break into the home and save the lives of the people inside. The brain requires a minute or two to digest what is taking place. Women and children crying bitterly, their faces giving off an expression of horror, sensing their imminent deaths, begging the journalists to save their lives. Stones land on the roof of the home, the windows and the doors. Flames engulf the southern entrance to the home. The front yard is littered with stones thrown by the masked men. The windows are shattered and the children are frightened. All around, as if they were watching a rock concert, are hundreds of Jewish witnesses, observing the events with great interest, even offering suggestions to the Jewish wayward youth as to the most effective way to harm the family. And the police are not to be seen. Nor is the army.

Sarah Kraemer, My Story: Olive harvest 5769, Jerusalem Post, Nov. 30, 2008

“Where are we going?” I asked Arik, as we drove out of Jerusalem in his beat up Subaru, with three other volunteers: an older gentleman and a newlywed couple.

I was beginning the New Year of 5769 with a practical mitzva: serving as a “human shield” between Palestinian families, trying to harvest their olive trees in the West Bank, and Israeli settlers, trying to prevent them. My old friend, Rabbi Arik Ascherman, director of Rabbis for Human Rights, had invited me to come with him – to help in a small grove of trees in the southern West Bank. I hadn’t asked for details; scores of volunteers were being assigned daily to olive groves throughout the West Bank – depending on the readiness of Palestinian owners, the weather and the permission of the Israeli Civil Administration. I was happy to be a foot-soldier, and help out wherever I was needed.

“We’ll be in Hebron,” answered Arik, driving slowly past the Beit Jala checkpoint.

Hebron?! Why hadn’t I asked before? A year ago I had visited the old city of Hebron, home of the ancient Tomb of the Patriarchs, burial site of Abraham – the Father claimed by Judaism and Islam. For weeks after, I was haunted by images of humiliation. The Arab bazaar shuttered; Israeli combat soldiers patrolling its eerie, silent streets. Hebrew graffiti, signed with a Star of David – “Policeman, Soldier: I hate you; Death to Traitors” – scrawled on a rusted door. Two Palestinian girls with book bags hurrying to school, heads down under a barrage of foul language from Jewish pupils outside Beit Hadassah. I wondered if I could still get out of the car and go back to Jerusalem.

“We are going to help the Jabari family,” Arik continued, as we drove through the rocky hills. “They only have a few olive trees, but their land is next to the fence of the Jewish settlement in Hebron. Only once in the last seven years have they been able to harvest their olives. In other years, the settlers kept them from reaching their trees and took their olives. We are opening the harvest there, so that doesn’t happen.” As we drove deeper into the Hebron hills, my dread mixed with the joy of a bright, crisp fall day. The clean greens and browns were stunning. The yoreh, first rain, had poured down just two days before, washing the dusty trees and ancient rock terraces after a dry summer, and signaling the start of the olive harvest.

Amira Hass, This is Gaza, Haaretz, Nov. 27, 2008

If it’s not the power getting cut, leaving entire neighborhoods in darkness, then it’s the water not reaching the top floors or the cooking gas running out. If you have an electric generator, some small part of it is bound to be broken and unfixable, because even before the hermetic three-week siege, Israel prohibited bringing in any spare parts for cars, machines and household electric appliances.

And if you somehow manage to find the money for a generator that was smuggled through the tunnels (its price has doubled or tripled since last month), it’s at the expense of buying a heater (not electric, of course), English lessons, clothes for the children and visits to the doctor.

This is Gaza in November 2008. Just as Gaza is the emptying of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency storehouses and the farmers who sowed and watered, but cannot market, their tomatoes, guavas and strawberries out of the Gaza Strip because Israel forbids it, it is also the calmness with which people receive the sudden darkness and the jokes that there is not much food in the refrigerator to spoil anyway.

Gaza is the ability to tell jokes in any situation, and the burning insult of having no running water for three or four days. And yet, the children go clean and neat to school.

Gaza is the long Nasser Street which has been blocked to traffic for over a year. Its asphalt is torn out and it is riddled with potholes and mounds of sand. When Israel forbade bringing any construction materials and raw materials into the strip, the renovation work stopped on this thoroughfare, the main access to three hospitals, which are always in danger of equipment failure if some part breaks down.

But Gaza is also parents leaving their children alone at home, without fear, or letting them go to a playground far from home, or go by themselves to their grandmother in the Jabaliya refugee camp (in the streets parallel to Nasser Street).

Gaza is reports of policemen attacking Fatah supporters at a university, or the police closing a restaurant for one night because its owners didn’t report in advance about a symposium that was held in the restaurant’s hall, in which Hamas speakers participated and was organized by a research center associated with Ramallah authorities.

Gaza is the teacher who forces school girls to cover their heads, although senior officials assert that this is not the education ministry’s policy. It is exaggerations and false rumors, and it is also the Fatah detainees’ report that cameras were installed in the interrogation room to ensure that the interrogators act within the boundaries of the law. It is the surprise when “Hamas” police restore stolen property, even before it has been reported stolen.

Gaza is the feeling among Fatah supporters that the power has been stolen from them, and their fear of the security apparatus, as it is Hamas’ self confidence. It is the comparisons made with the intimidation methods in Yasser Arafat’s era and exchanging information about the suppression of Hamas activity in the West Bank.

Gaza is the anger of the entire public, including Fatah members, for what appears to be Ramallah’s deliberate neglect and indifference toward the strip and its residents’ fate.

Senior Israelis back Arab push for peace, Financial Times, Nov. 27, 2008

By Tobais Buck in Jerusalem and Roula Khalaf in London

A group of former senior Israeli security officers has launched a campaign to promote the Saudi-sponsored Arab peace initiative, in a fresh effort to help end six decades of conflict in the Middle East.

The rare Israeli appeal, in a full-page newspaper advertisement this week, was signed by more than 500 former Israeli generals, diplomats and intelligence, military and security officials.

It urged the country not to “ignore a historic opportunity which a moderate Arab world presents us with”.

Last week the Palestinian Authority also published full-page adverts in the Israeli press calling for support for the peace plan.

The attempt to breathe life into the Arab initiative, first proposed by Saudi Arabia in 2002 and endorsed by an Arab League summit, comes amid hopes in the region that the election of Barack Obama may refocus US attention on resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The Arab initiative offers Israel peace and normal relations with all Arab states in return for a full withdrawal from all land occupied in the 1967 war, including Palestinian territories and Syria’s Golan Heights.

The plan calls for creation of a Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital, and a just solution to the problem of Palestinian refugees, who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war between Israel and neighbouring Arab states. But its intention is to provide a general framework, leaving the details of negotiations to the parties directly involved.

The initiative, however, was ignored by Israel and the Bush administration, and poorly marketed by Arab states. Now it appears to be winning praise from Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, and some marketing muscle from Saudi Arabia.

A report published today by the Oxford Research Group, a UK think-tank, calls on the US and the European Union to put the peace initiative at the centre of Middle East policy. The report was drafted following a meeting between influential Israelis and Arabs, including Prince Turki al-Feisal, a prominent member of the Saudi royal family and the kingdom’s former spy chief.

In a foreword to the report, Prince Turki says that as “Israelis become more aware of the quid pro quo offered by the initiative they will see the great opportunity that this vision of a final and definitive peace between Israel and the Arab world offers”.

Danny Rothschild, a retired major-general in the Israeli army and chairman of the group behind the Israeli advert, said this week’s appeal was only the start of a broader campaign.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Held-at-Einab-Junction-In-by-Anna-Baltzer-081124-442.html, Nov. 24, 2008

Held at Einab Junction: Inside Israel’s New Terminals
By Anna Baltzer

Anna Baltzer, a Jewish American activist, was born in Berkeley, California. She graduated from Columbia University with a degree in Mathematics and Economics. She first travelled to the Middle East while studying in Turkey on a Fullbright Grant. She travels to the West Bank every year as a volunteer for the International Women’s Peace Service documenting human rights violations. She supports nonviolent resistance to the Occupation. She is the author of Witness in Palestine: A Jewish American Woman in the Occupied Territories. For more information see www.annainthemiddleeast.com.

When I first visited the West Bank in 2003, checkpoints were controlled by young Israeli soldiers, nervously clutching their weapons and yelling at Palestinians to stay in line. When I returned in 2005, I found many checkpoints replaced by metal turnstiles into which Palestinians were herded to wait for soldiers to push a button, letting them through one by one or sometimes not at all. Each year I return, the method of control over Palestinian movement is further institutionalized, most recently Israeli terminal-style buildings, entirely separating soldiers from the Palestinians whose movement they are controlling.I first encountered one of these terminals after visiting a women’s cooperative in Tulkarem to purchase embroidery to send home. Because there are no reliable postal services in the West Bank, and because I did not want to risk the products being damaged or confiscated by Israeli airport security if I transported them in my luggage, I knew I would have to send them to the US from a post office in Israel. I had traveled from Tulkarem to Tel Aviv once in the past by taking a shared taxi to the nearby Einab junction, where I had walked from the Palestinian road to the Israeli one and caught transport into Israel.

This second time, I was traveling with my backpack and six plastic bags full of embroidery, and I assumed the trip would be as straightforward as it had been in the past. When I arrived at Einab junction, I found a large new building, fortified by several layers of metal fences, walls, and gates. The first layer reminded me of rural parts of the Wall-wire fence reinforced with electric sensory wire and razor wire with a heavy iron gate. The gate was open but nobody was on the other side. I walked through and came to two large iron turnstiles surrounded by a wall of iron bars. The turnstiles were locked. Frustrated, I put down my six bags to rest for a moment. Maybe someone would come back? I waited, but still there was nobody.

I called out. “Hello? Anybody there?”

“Please wait a moment,” a staticky voice above me blared. I looked up to find a speaker attached to the turnstile.

I didn’t have much choice but to wait.

Whoever was operating the turnstiles didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry, so I took out my camera.

“Excuse me!” the voice snapped.

“Yes,” I answered as I took my first photo.

“Please put your camera away immediately!”

“Please let me in immediately,” I answered.

“I said to wait,” said the voice, and I answered, “And I am waiting.”

The light above the turnstile turned from red to green and I put away my camera and picked up my bags to walk through. It was difficult squeezing into the tight rotating cage with all my bags, and by the time I’d made it to the other side, I was hot and cranky. In front of me was a metal detector surrounded by iron bars. I began to walk through but the voice called out from another speaker above:

“Stop!”

I continued through the metal detector and groaned, “What?!” into the air, wondering where he was watching me from.

“Go back and put down your bags.”

I went back through the metal detector and set down my six bags, which were feeling heavier by the minute. I took the opportunity to take another picture. The soldier didn’t bother protesting this time, but ordered me to walk through the metal detector again.

I tried to pick up my bags again but he ordered, “No, without your bags.” I walked through. Nothing happened.

“Now, go back.”

I closed my eyes with a sigh, walked back, picked up my six bags, and walked through again before he could give me the order to do so. Somehow this seemed so much worse than the turnstiles and metal detectors I had seen at Huwwara checkpoint. At least there you could see the people humiliating you. Or maybe it was more upsetting because I wasn’t used to being the one humiliated.

Beyond the metal detector was another set of turnstiles, locked again. I took a deep breath and stared at the red light, hoping to see it turn green rather than let the guard hear my voice crack if I spoke. Thankfully, the turnstile buzzed and I squeezed through to reach the building itself. That was the end of the pre-screening. Now it was time for the real screening.

The inside of the building reminded me of an airport terminal-high ceilings and multiple floors, and multilingual signs for travelers. The ones here read, “Prepare documents for inspection” in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. The signs didn’t clarify where one was supposed to go, however. There were a series of five doors with red lights on top, and I called out, “OK, my documents are ready… Now what?” I had yet to see a human face.

This time nobody answered, so I asked again. Again, nothing. I set my bags down, annoyed. My back was hurting, I was sweating, and I didn’t know where I was or what was going to happen to me. I yelled, “Is anybody there?! Hellooooooo!”

Eventually a second staticky voice came through from a speaker on the wall. “Please proceed to the door.”

“Which door?”

“The one on the left.”

“Left of what? Where are you?”

“I can see you,” the voice said. “Walk backwards and go left.”

I saw a door behind me on the left and carried my bags over to it. Above the door was a red light, which I stared at. Nothing happened. I was ready to cry. “Now what?” I yelled. Silence. I yelled again, even louder.

“What am I supposed to do?!”

“Calm down!” yelled a cheerful soldier walking by on an upper level above me. He was finishing a conversation on his walkie-talkie, and put up his hand for me to wait. I glared at him. “Go there,” he pointed to another door near the one I was standing at, and began to walk away.

“No, please!” I blurted out, forgetting my policy of not pleading with soldiers. “You’re the first human face I’ve seen and I’m starting to lose it.”

He motioned towards the door and promised that if I stood there, the light would eventually turn green. I picked up my bags, approached the door, set them down, and waited. Eventually, the light turned green, this time accompanied by a little buzz that unlatched the full iron door. I expected to find a soldier on the other side, but as the heavy door slammed behind me I found myself in a tiny room with white walls, no windows, and a second iron door. That door eventually buzzed as well, and I struggled to open it as I held my bags, settling to kick one in front of me instead.

The next room had three walls and a double-paned window with a soldier on the other side. The soldier asked for my ID and I slipped it under the glass. He tried to make small talk and asked me what part of the United States I was from. I told him flatly, “For the first time in my life, I want to blow something up.”

He must not have heard me because he let me through to the next tiny windowless room. The next buzzing heavy door led out into the other open-spaced side of the terminal, where I picked up the pace, hoping to get out finally, an hour after I’d arrived. No such luck.

One more soldier behind a window beckoned for my passport again. “Where’s your visa?” he asked, not finding the stamped slip of paper issued by Israel when the passport itself is not stamped. I answered truthfully, “They told me at the airport that there were none left and that it would be OK.” As the words came out, I realized how absurd this sounded, and I kicked myself for falling for it when I’d flown in the week before. How could the airport run out of visa sheets? Wasn’t it more likely that they were deliberately trying to inhibit my travel in the Occupied Territories?

It was hard to blame the soldier, since, for all he knew, I’d snuck in over the hills of Jordan. “Whatever,” I sighed. “Call airport security-I promise I’m in the system.”

I knew it would be a while, so I sat down again. I thought I was past the point of anger until I noticed a line of 25 or so Palestinians waiting outside to come in from the other direction, heading back to Tulkarem. Had they been waiting there all this time? Why weren’t they being processed? I asked the guard holding my passport and he said he’d tend to them after I left.

It was one thing to feel frustrated and humiliated, but another to know that my ordeal had held up dozens of Palestinians from getting back to their homes and families. “Wait,” I said. “Are you telling me that in your fancy new facility you can’t process people coming in two directions? Don’t let the problem with me delay these people any longer.”

He told me not to worry, that the Palestinians were used to waiting. This made me even more upset. I insisted that I would rather wait longer myself, and eventually he beckoned the group forward. I marveled as they waited patiently and yet somehow not submissively, beacons of dignity next to my defeated and angry presence. I took out my camera and took a few photos. Within seconds, a guard appeared next to me-in person, nothing but air between us!-and said sternly, “Come with me.”

I followed the guard back towards the section of the terminal from which I had just come. We passed through the windowless rooms and into a new room with crates on the floor. From there, the guard opened another, even heavier iron door, and motioned for me to pass ahead of him. Expecting the guard to follow me in, I turned and instead found him placing my bags into the crates. Realizing that soldiers were going to go through my bags, I demanded to be present during the search to ensure that nothing would be damaged or stolen. “That’s not possible,” the guard said flatly, and the door slammed shut between me and my belongings.

I kicked the door with frustration, realizing that all my contact information for Palestinian organizers and friends was still on my computer. I realized that I still had my phone in my pocket and quickly called my friend Kobi, an Israeli activist. I told him where I was and asked if he might make some calls on my behalf. He said he’d do what he could and we hung up.

I looked around the room. It was empty except for a chair and an empty crate on the floor. There were no other doors, but there was a two-paned window with a soldier watching me from the other side of it. “What are you looking at?” I snapped at the soldier, and he walked out of view. Another soldier appeared, a young woman. She spoke into an intercom so that I could hear her through the window. “Please take off your clothes and put them in the container on the floor.”

It took a moment for the words to sink in. Once they had, I looked the soldier straight in the eyes, and I began to undress. I removed each piece of clothing slowly, not once taking my eyes off hers. I watched her with a look of hurt. I wanted her to see that she was not just searching me-she was humiliating me. Several times she looked away. When I was down to my underwear, the soldier stopped me; she said that was enough. A part of me wished that she hadn’t. Perhaps if I were completely naked, she would more likely recognize the extent of my humiliation and her role in it.

The iron door behind me buzzed and the soldier told me to place the crate containing my clothes and phone into the room where I had last seen the guard. My other belongings were long since gone, and I could hear soldiers in the next room going through them. When I got back to the room, the soldier in the window was gone. I sat down on the chair and waited. The soldiers next door were chatting and laughing. I imagined them examining my personal photographs and letters. I was too upset to sit still. I stood up and started pacing back and forth in the small room. I had to do something-anything-to express my emotions. If I could hear them, then they could hear me. I began to sing.

I sang an old song that I’d learned at summer camp as a child. Its words were meaningless, but I sang it at the top of my lungs. Within seconds, the female soldier was at the window, looking alarmed. I waved. I sang that stupid song until my voice hurt. It felt good to sing-I felt empowered. It was easier to act like a crazy person than a prisoner. If I was unpredictable, then they had lost the power to control me.

Half an hour passed. Or was it an hour? My energy had worn off and I sat down miserably on the chair. I was tired. The soldiers were gone from the next room now. What was taking them so long? It was cold in the room, and I had nothing to cover myself with. I began to shiver and rock back and forth on the chair. I had no more energy to yell. I began to cry. I cried for what felt like a long time. Eventually, the female soldier appeared in the window. I could tell she felt bad for me. I looked away. The door buzzed and she instructed me to open it. On the other side was a jacket and a cup of water. I put on the jacket and drank the water to soothe my throat, but I was unimpressed. I didn’t want a jacket or water. I wanted my freedom to leave. I wanted my dignity back.

Time passed. I stopped looking at the soldiers and talking to them. I stopped thinking of ways to pass the time or express myself. I didn’t even feel like myself anymore. I felt empty, defeated. I just sat and waited, with a feeling of profound loneliness.

After what felt like an eternity, the iron door buzzed and I opened it to find all my clothes and bags in a large pile brimming over the tops of the containers. The soldiers had emptied every single item separately into the crates. The papers from my notebook were strewn about loosely. Each piece of embroidery had been removed from its protective wrapper and crumpled into a pile. A can of tuna had been opened and left amidst the hand-sewn garments. Even the boxes of Turkish delight-a soft sticky candy covered with powdered sugar, which I’d brought for some friends-had been opened and rummaged through.

The only thing stronger than my anger was my desire to leave. I sat down miserably and folded everything back into my bags. I was crying uncontrollably, but I bit my tongue each time I was tempted to speak. When I was dressed and ready, I stood up, collected myself, and tried to open the door. It was locked.

“The door’s still locked,” I informed the soldier watching through the window.

“Yes, please wait a little longer.”

“Why?” I asked. “You saw everything I have. You know I’m not a security threat, and surely you know by now that I have a visa.”

“I’m sorry but you’re going to have to wait,” she said.

I couldn’t hold myself back any longer. I lost it. I opened up my bags and took out what was left of my canned tuna. With my fingers, I began to spread the oily fish all over the window.

“What are you doing?” asked the soldier, disturbed.

“You don’t respect my stuff, I don’t respect yours,” I answered.

Next, I opened a box of Turkish delight. “I’m not going to stop until you let me out,” I announced as I began mashing the gummy cubes into the hinges of the iron door.

“OK, OK,” said the soldier’s voice over the intercom. “You can go now.” The door buzzed.

I gathered my bags and walked out. A soldier was waiting for me on the other side. He gave me my passport and said I was free to leave. I called Kobi as soon as I was outside. He said it was the US Consulate that had helped get me released. The army claimed they were holding me because of the photographs I had taken inside the terminal. Interestingly, they hadn’t bothered to delete the images from my camera when they searched my bags.

I told Kobi what had happened. I felt as if I had lost a part of myself inside that terminal as I had slowly lost control. Kobi reminded me that even the option of losing control was a sign of privilege-Palestinians who behaved as I had would not likely have been freed. I tried to imagine what it would be like to endure such an invasive screening every day of my life.

Kobi told me a story about his Palestinian friend, Sara, whom he’d met in Maryland. Sara would frequently travel back and forth between her home in Palestine and the United States, where she was studying. Each time she returned to Palestine, she was able to walk right through the checkpoints. She had enough confidence to just assert her will and go through, simply by the fact that she was used to being treated like a person. And each time, after a few months in Palestine, she would lose that ability.

In just a few hours I had gone from empowerment to craziness to submission to destructiveness. What would I become after months of such treatment? What about a lifetime of the even worse treatment that Palestinians experience?

It was dark outside the terminal as I hung up the phone. I had been held for 3 hours, and there were no more buses running. I could see the lights of a settlement on a nearby hill. I began walking in what seemed like the direction of Tel Aviv. I stuck my thumb out to the occasional passing car, and eventually a settler stopped. He moved his gun out of the front seat so that I could get in. Feeling lousy about it, I accepted a ride to the nearest bus stop from where buses were still running to Tel Aviv. I boarded the first bus out and cried the whole way back to the city.

Gideon Levy: Despite everything, Hebron is still Palestinian, Haaretz, Nov. 23, 2008

The Pachao family was out Saturday for a Sabbath walk. Sarah and Yosef pushed the baby carriage, and the little ones, Ahuva, Gershon, Hananel and Noah, crowded into the carriage or walked behind it. Why did you come to live here, I asked? “Because of the good air.” The Pachaos, who are members of the Bnei Menashe, immigrated from India, near the Myanmar border, 10 years ago.

They were returning from Sabbath prayers at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, along with thousands of other Jews, who walked through the car-free street. This week’s portion was “Life of Sarah.” The Pachaos’ Asian appearance was not the only outstanding thing along the road connecting Kiryat Arba with Hebron, and its “House of Contention.”

A stranger coming to Hebron Saturday would be confused. Border Policemen speaking Amharic with settlers; their Druze friends chattering in Arabic; police, soldiers and settlers praying together in the Abraham hall; American and French Jews armed with machine guns; a sea of tents on the grass in front of the tomb structure. Above all, the surreal look of an abandoned Palestinian quarter, emptied of its inhabitants, a ghost town.

Through the protective wire fence erected to block settlers’ stones, occasionally the face of a terrified old woman, a frightened child or an embittered man would appear, shut up in their cage. It is not difficult to imagine what they felt Saturday on “Life of Sarah” Sabbath, which tells how Abraham purchased the cave for 400 pieces of silver.

The ridiculous visored cap I wore, which covered half my face to prevent the settlers from identifying me, failed in its duty. It is not good to be Gideon Levy on “Life of Sarah” Sabbath in Hebron. “Take your garbage and get out of here now,” thugs threatened here and there. But generally the Jewish quarter was very tranquil, and a “holiday atmosphere” prevailed, as they say. Only toward evening did menacing knots of young boys in their Sabbath white shirts begin to gather.

Gershom Gorenberg, The Case for Putting a Mideast Peace Agreement First | The American Prospect, Nov. 14, 2008
Barack Obama should address the need for an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement sooner rather than later.

Time’s up. Despite the bluster at George W. Bush’s Potemkin peace conference in Annapolis one year ago, Israel and the Palestinians will not reach a peace agreement by the end of 2008. Please folks, don’t all faint at once from surprise.

Barack Obama will inherit this mess, along with all the others. Very soon, he must decide how quickly to throw his weight behind Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, what to aim for, and how to succeed where so many others have failed.

The answer: Move fast, very fast. Ignore all advice from old diplomatic hands wholl tell you to avoid big, difficult issues and to stick to crisis management and interim accords. Seek a full end-of-conflict agreement. And apply lessons from your electoral campaign: Enforce absolute message discipline in your own team, and employ dramatic public events and rhetoric to restore peoples belief that change is possible.

The temptation for delay is obvious. The list of crises facing Obama starts with the economic collapse, Iraq, and Afghanistan. But as he’s said, “A president has to be able to do more than one thing at a time.”

Immediate, high-profile engagement with Israel and the Palestinians would be the clearest proof to frustrated American allies in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world that the Bush years of American unilateralism are over. Reaching an agreement would end the tension between American support for Israel and maintaining warm ties with moderate Arab regimes. It would eliminate one of the main causes of anti-Western resentment in the Arab world, reducing the influence both of Iran and of radical Sunni Islamicists.

By acting quickly — addressing the issue before he formally takes office and perhaps in his inaugural address, and by visiting the region early next year — Obama can exploit the awe that his election inspires. A small example: The daily Haaretz, normally a frighteningly staid newspaper, covered its entire front page on Nov. 4 with a photo of Obama, one hand held high, facing what looked like a pillar of cloud in the distance, as if he were Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The headline, in English, was “Yes We Can.” In January, Obama will still be a symbol of transformation. If he waits two or three years, he will be a shopworn president.