The Timing of Terror

August 11, 1998

In the wee hours of the morning of August 5, 1998, an Israeli patrol jeep was fired on near the Israeli west bank community of Yitzhar. It was a well planned ambush. The two young civilians, only one of whom was armed, were dragged from the jeep, and each shot in the nape of the neck, to ensure their death.

The tracks of the attacking vehicles led to Nablus, a city under the control of the Palestine Authority and the Palestine Liberation Army.

The background to the timing killings provides some insight into why the attack took place when it did.

On August 4, a discrete gathering took place in an East Jerusalem hotel, where members of the Palestine Authority Legislative Council met with Palestinian Arab human rights activists to prepare for the special PLC that was planned for the next day. On the PLC agenda: allegations of massive fraud.

Three Palestinian citizens groups have presented documented evidence that armed tax collectors of the Palestine Authority have been systematically embezzling funds from the health, education and welfare funds of the Palestine Authority.

Allegations of fraud are not new to the Palestine Authority, whose official Bank Leumi account on Hashmonaim street in Tel Aviv is nothing other than the Palestine Authority Yassir Arafat’s personal account, which can only be drawn on with Arafat’s personal signature.

That was the arrangement made between Arafat and Israel’s late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and such a “funding procedure” appears in writing in the Palestine Authority-Israel economic agreement that was signed in April, 1994.

The previous time that the Palestine Legislative Council had scheduled to deal with wide allegations of corruption in the Palestine Authority was on July 30, 1997, at a special session of the PLC that gathered for that purpose on that date at 4PM. However, at 1:30 PM, some Palestinian Arabs planted bombs at the crowded Machaneh Yehudah open market in Jerusalem, killing sixteen people.

Needless to say, as an American consular official reported to me, the subject of corruption was obfuscated by matters of security at the July 30, 1997 meeting of the PLC.

And so it is with the PLC session for August 5th. The corruption issue is off the agenda. Israel’s demands for security take its place.

Meanwhile, the Palestine Authority educational system has formally incorporated the Palestine National Covenant into its official school curriculum.

That means that Palestinian Arab school children learn that their role in life is to engage the state and people of Israel in a state of war.

Palestine Television airs daily scenes of little Palestinian Arab children who begin their daily classes in the Palestine Authority schools with the call to kill the Jews and to liberate Palestine.

That will most certainly divert the education for Palestinian nationalism from the civics of nation-building to an instinct to terror.

The focus of the PA curriculum remains the million Arabs who continue to dwell in the 1949 “temporary shelters” of the Palestinian Arab refugee camps, operated by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, on the premise and the promise of the “inalienable right of return” for Palestinian Arabs to reclaim the lands where hundreds of Israeli kibbutzim and cities have sprung up since the genesis of the Jewish state.

The Palestine Legislative Council could have devoted its August 5th session to take a major step towards housecleaning. After the murders of two Jews, the matter was deemed irrelevant. That is especially because the Hamas has been officially incorporated into the Palestine Authority. Advocates of the peace process had assumed that Hamas would be crushed by the PA, not welcomed as Arafat’s partner in the direction of the new Palestine Authority.

Yitzhar’s Neighbours

Center for Near East Policy Research

August 11, 1998

The following was culled from the August 7, 1998 column of Nachum Barnea, one of Israel’s outstanding correspondents and political observers, published in Yediot Ahronot, the country’s largest daily.

Barnea describes a visit to the Shehadeh Family in Burin, an Arab village near the Jewish community of Yitzhar, on Wednesday, the day two young Jews, killed by Arab terrorists, were being buried.

“Is there a difference between the residents of Bracha [another nearby Jewish village] and those of Yitzhar”, we asked.

Um-Basem, with the authority of the head of the house, her gray hair peeping out from her scarf, volunteered to reply. “A big difference”, she said. “Those of Bracha are better”.

“How”, we asked.

“In the beginning, they were the same. Afterwards, we killed one of Bracha’s head residents, and now they are okay”.

The room filled with smiles of approval. The sons smiled, and the daughters-in-law smiled and the grandchildren acted most joyfully, they who had previously acted nonplused in the face of the non-invited Jewish guests [Barnea here refers to himself]. who suddenly entered into their home.

“Now”, said of the daughters-in-law, “we are initiating Yitzhar“.

Israel’s Spy Was Right About Saddam

Center for Near East Policy Research

August 11, 1998

Former naval intelligence analyst Jonathan Pollard confessed to passing classified documents to Israel without authorization between 1981 and 1985. For this, he was rightly sent to prison for espionage. People who spy for allied countries and who spare the U.S. government the revelations of a trial usually get sentences averaging four years. What extraordinary things, then, must Pollard have done to draw a life sentence?

Prison sentences are supposed to be proportional to the harm done. The preface to the still-secret memorandum filed with the court by then-Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger states that “it is difficult to conceive of a greater harm to national security than that caused by [Pollard].” But while Pollard’s espionage subverted US policy in the Middle East, it barely hurt Washington’s intelligence operations.

Pollard gave the Israelis a roomful of analysts’ reports and satellite photographs — bread-and-butter intelligence products. He is not accused of giving away operating manuals or descriptions of the functioning of the satellites or of any other collection systems.

The kind of documents Pollard passed are written carefully to disguise the communications and agents on which they may be based. No U.S.communication intercept system was taken out of service or had its budget affected because of the Pollard case. Nor was any U.S. agent forced “out of the cold.”

Pollard’s damage to these sources and methods was theoretical.

The U.S. had given — and was continuing to give — Israel photos taken by the very same satellites from which came the secrets Pollard passed. There were no technical differences between the pictures Pollard was passing illegally and the ones the U.S. government was passing legally. These photos did not help the Israelis learn more about the satellites than they already knew. In fact, the U.S. government had briefed them and other U.S. allies on the capability of the satellites — especially after CIA officer William Kampiles sold the KH-11 satellite operating manual to the Soviets in 1978.

The difference between the pictures the U.S. government was giving to Israel and the ones that it was withholding lay not in sources or methods, but in the subject. Some senior officials of the U.S. government had decided that Israel should not have certain information about Iraq and other Arab countries because the officials did not like what Israel was doing with it. By passing precisely that information, Pollard damaged U.S. foreign policy. The fact that U.S. policy toward Iraq during the 1980s was bad did not give Pollard any right to subvert it.

Some senior U.S. officials were angry at Israel for getting in the way of their Middle East policy. In 1981, shortly after Israel had bombed the Osirak reactor that had been the centerpiece of Saddam Hussein’s nuclear weapons program, Deputy Central Intelligence Agency Director Bobby Ray Inman went to Capitol Hill to criticize the Israelis, who had used U.S. satellite pictures to plan the bombing. Mr. Inman said they had harmed sophisticated U.S. efforts to build an important relationship with Saddam.

Therefore he personally had just cut Israel off from satellite information about Iraq and later began to send satellite pictures to Saddam.

Mr. Inman was acting on behalf of many of the principal makers of U.S. foreign policy, including Mr. Weinberger and later Secretary of State George Shultz, who during the 1980s sacrificed much for their vision of a fruitful relationship with Saddam. Mr.Inman reported to incredulous senators in 1982 that U.S.intelligence no longer supported the conclusion that Iraq was a major sponsor of terrorism. High-level officials dismissed concerns about Baghdad’s purchase of a chemical facility that became the centerpiece of Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons program and during the 1980s these officials provided Saddam with U.S. weapons and intelligence. These officials also knew about — and failed to hinder — the transfer of German technology to the Saad 16 missile factory in northern Iraq.

This policy, vigorously pursued by Washington until the very eve of the Gulf War, turned Iraq into a danger to mankind. This policy helped supply the technologies that killed U.S. soldiers in the Gulf War — the technologies for which inspectors now are searching fruitlessly and that may well kill other Americans in the future. Pollard’s sin is blowing the whistle on an embarrassing policy — a sin for which he is serving a life sentence instead of four years.

Messrs. Weinberger, Shultz and Inman had every right to be wrong about foreign policy; Pollard had no right to express his disagreement through espionage. Nevertheless, it is wrong to criminalize differences over policy, and to use the justice system for personal vengeance. In the U.S., the penalty for subverting policy is being fired. For espionage on behalf of allies,the usual penalty is four years. Pollard has more than paid his debt.

Mr. Codevilla, a professor of International Relations at Boston University, served on the staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee between 1977 and 1985.

Report on Palestine Authority Summer Camps

Center for Near East Policy Research

August 4, 1998

Part 1. Educating Children to Violence
Part 2. Children’s Summer Camps are Military Training Camps
Part 3. Education Children to See Land of the State of Israel as Palestine and Israeli Arabs as Palestinians

1. Introduction

The Palestinian Authority runs official summer programs and activities for children that they publicize daily via their official television and newspaper. The main program is a network of summer camps run under the auspices of the PA. The declared aim of these camps is political education and military training of the children.

The child undergo training in weapons, hand to hand combat, as well as jumping through rings of fire. This training is mixed with open calls to violence, including a chant calling to push Israel into the sea. A clip broadcast tens of times tells that “they” destroyed and “took everything in 1948”. Finally, the map the children are taught has “Palestine” replacing the state of Israel while the children in the camps are divided into platoons named as regions in Israel. Numerous activities are geared to teach them that all the land of Israel is Palestine and they stress joint activities with Arab children in Israel, who are also called Palestinians. The box to the above right lists educational messages from television broadcasts and news articles from the summer camps.

Part 1 – Educating Children to Violence

Introduction:

The Palestinian Authority openly and actively educates to violence through summer camp activities, as broadcast on its daily television program which reviews the camp’s activities.

Education and Activities

* From a report on the Children’s Committee on Education
Girl: “I felt like an adult I held discussions with them and I may do so in the future, until we defeat the Zionist enemy with the help of the children, supervisors, teachers and soldiers “

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* On the summer camps broadcast, the announcer says:
“Jihad is the principle belief which will never end regardless of how many fall”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 12, 1998)

* “The camp theater group is planning to put on a play called “The Land My Land”, a national play which talks about the Palestinian’s devotion to his land even if it costs him his life.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 14, 1998)

* Member of Parliament, Jamilla Zidam said: ” These camps are a realization of our determination to mention the “tragedy” [Israel’s creation] in light of our right of return [to land in Israel]. She stressed that “these camps come to emphasize our determined position to continue in the paths of our fallen martyrs”.

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 22, 1998)

Songs

* Han Yunes Summer Camp

Boy sings:
I came to you with my sword in hand we will oust them [Israel] out to the sea. Your day is coming, conqueror, then we will settle accounts. Our accounts are unending in stones and bullets.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 2, 1998)

Girl in other framework

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* In a Han Yunes summer camp a boy calls out and his class shouts after him:

Boy: Youth win!
Class: Youth win!

Boy: Trained with weapons
Class: Trained with weapons

Boy: Revolution
Class: Revolution

Boy: Revolution until victory
Class: Revolution until Victory

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 2, ’97)

* In the program on the summer camps, on the parade grounds, one of the military trainers calls out and the children repeat after him:

“We have an obligation towards our country
We will protect her, both young and old
I am in a group of 500
My children are my redemption
My children, my children, oh, my country
are in the suicide squad

As long as the mine explodes
In a cry: Allah Akbar [battle cry “God is Great”]
I return to you, my country
The beloved land of Jerusalem

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* In the program about the summer camps, one trainee recites:

“With stones and bullets I will come to you, my country
Your soldiers and prisoners are guarding you
Young men and women and stones protect you
And where are you my country?”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 15, 1998)

* In the program about the summer camps, one boy sings:

One day they attacked
Attacked my country,
They killed the old and slaughtered the young
They burned the Koran and destroyed the house
They marched upon my heart
You are my country

Onward, to Jihad
Onward capture my country
Alla Akbar, [God is Great], Ah
Alla Akbar [God is Great], Ah
Alla Akbar, [God is Great] Ah
Alla Akbar, [God is Great] my country

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

* In the summer camp a boy recites:

“Palestine rebelled
Palestine was devoted
The belief is in its martyr
Blessed is Allah
Rebel, oh Palestine
Be devoted, oh Palestine”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 9, 1998)

* In the summer camp, and boy sings:

“Long live the intifada,
Long live those who participated
May your father die (Israel)
All who participated in you (in the intifada) are heroes
May your father die

[Later in the song] We will yet show Netanyahu [4x]

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

Part 2. Children’s Summer Camps are Military Training Camps

Introduction

* The atmosphere in the summer camps is that of a military camp. At the head of the camp staff is a camp commander and: “on the staff there are National Security men, military personnel and National Political Direction figures.”

(PA TV, July 12, 1998)

Summer Camp Goal Military Training for Children

* “Lieutenant Mahmad Matir of the Presidential Security Forces, who is responsible for the military training in the camp, believed that military training is obligatory for all participants in the struggle of our people, until we arrive at the point where all our people are well versed in military subjects. He added: “we also teach the girls the same military commands that the soldier learns.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* “The camp commander explained that the program has a number of aspects and among them is the focus on the military side, this is in order to create a generation which will be able to handle all possibilities. According to him: “Our people know the one truth and that is that the past is over, the present is here, and the future is open to all possibilities”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* The camp commander said: “The purpose of the establishment [of these camps] was to promote the coming generations from the cultural, educational, health and military aspects the deputy commander of the camp said that the camps are like a mission under the auspices of the political guidance to build a generation who is capable of shouldering the responsibilities of the present and the past, who can arrive at Jerusalem, fight the settlements and build the independent Palestinian state”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 19, 1998)

* The camp commander says: “I thank the military supervisor of the summer camps we have 9 military trainers and a training staff that are headed by 2 people holding the military ranks of lieutenant “

(PA TV, July 7, 1998)

* In the program on the summer camps, dedicated to the issue of food supplies to the camp, the narrator says: “There are those who believe that because these young girls and boys are little, they need less food, however, there are orders from the President that the quantity should be like any other soldier”.

(PA TV, July 16 98)

* In the program about the summer camps, the person in charge of supplies says: ” we are coming close to a state under the leadership of Arafat and then we will need all these trained young boys and girls”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 16, 1998)

Training, Symbols and Texts:

* “Lieutenant Manzar Zwayd held a lecture on the technical and tactical characteristics of the rifle”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 9, 1998)

* “The military trainer, Lawy Abu, gave a training session alone to children on the subject of the art of battle and self defense using samples made of tires, plaster and nails”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 12, 1998)

* “Children scream ‘commando’ and jump into a burning ring.”

(Three times on different days – PA TV, July 1998).

* “Mahman Alnamar, the trainer, noted that the young boys are learning many military commands such as those being learned by the soldiers”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* “Hareb Abu Nahel, the trainer, said that he teaches the young boys about all parts of the rifle and about the way to use them militarily”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* A huge picture of the Temple Mount is shown, covered with blood, arms and heads and with Arabian horses going up to the Mount, while the anthem is being played in the background. This picture is hanging on the wall of a school and girls are standing at attention, some of them saluting.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

Additional military activities for youth:

* The second training course in memory of the fallen soldier Halil Elwazir began yesterday. This course is military and voluntary, closed [held] in coordination with the Prevention Arm of the Security Staff at Tel Alhu Headquarters. Also, the first volunteer training course, ‘Jerusalem’, for ages 12-16 started yesterday and will continue for one month, in coordination with the Naval Police and with the participation of 80 young men. It has also been decided that a third training course in memory of Halil Elwazir will begin today, with the participation of 100 young men and in coordination with the Military Intelligence Apparatus and it will continue for a full month.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

Part 3. The Land of the State of Israel is Palestine. Israel’s Arab are Palestinians.

A prominent message in the summer camps is that the territories of the State of Israel are part of Palestine and that their Arab inhabitants are Palestinians. This idea is expressed through activities, symbols and songs.

Activities:

* Summer camp activities will begin tomorrow with the participation of boys and girls from the West Bank, Gaza and within the Green Line, with the purpose of continuing the integration among the children of our people two camps will be situated in Jaffa and Nazareth [Israeli cities]

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 14, 1998)

* (From occupied Jerusalem) “Under the title ’50 years of Occupation’ and under the slogan: ‘we will not forget and we will not forgive’, the Palestinian Training Center opened the summer camp that will concentrate its activities this year on the subject of 50 years of occupation. The activities will include visits to the destroyed villages in the Jerusalem region: Dir Yassin, Ein Karem, Malha, Amuas, Lifta and the Old City of Jerusalem [all in Israeli]”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 21, 1998)

* A “Kite Happening” was held in Gaza under the name ‘Kites with No Borders. The kites bore the names of the Arab villages [in Israeli] that were destroyed in 1948. One of the organizers: “This happening is called ‘Kites with No Borders’ so that the names of the villages that were destroyed will reach over the borders to the Palestinian youth.”

(Palestinian Authority TV, June 27, 1998).

* “A delegation from the program: ‘Children with No Borders’ from the Alfuar Refugee Camp concluded its visit in the city of the fallen soldiers Sachnin [in Israel] at the request of the new party, in Lod [Israeli city] the delegation visited the mayor, the monument for the martyrs of Land Day and the villages from which they were banished the delegation also accepted an invitation to participate in the summer camps in Acre and Nazareth [Israeli cities]…

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 21, 1998)

* The directors of the program ‘Children with No Borders, which belongs to the Palestinian Child Cultural Center in the Alfuar Refugee Camp, received an invitation from the Arab Academicians Institute in Acre [in Israel] to participate in a meeting in order to coordinate the participation of the [children of] the program ‘Children with No Borders’ – within the camp program ‘Connection with No borders’, which will take place at Acre Beach [in Israel]

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 22, 1998)

Symbols:

Group names:

The Children in the summer camps are divided into brigades. The brigades are named after areas in the State of Israel.

* “Abed El Aziz Abu Hatmah, the Political Coordinator gave a lecture to the “Safed” brigade, and the Political Guide Fuzy Braha gave a lecture to the Dir Yassin and Tiberias brigades on the subject of the geography of Palestine”.

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 11, 1998)

* “The commander [of the camp] said they were divided into four brigades, which carry the names of the Palestinian cities that were destroyed by the occupation in 1948.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 21, 1998)

* The commander of the ‘Scientists” summer camp: “the names of the children’s groups are the names of the villages and cities of before such as Dir Yassin, Dir Snin, Almajdal, etc.”

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 17, 1998)

* “[The camp commander said] The directorship for political and national guidance has taken upon itself to inform the camp participants that Palestine and all its cities and villages are our property and we are hers He added that there is a committee that deals with the preparation of maps which display our Palestinian villages and cities that the occupation destroyed in the process of conquering our land.”

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

The map of Palestine includes all of the State of Israel:

* On a report from the summer camps displays a giant map of “Palestine”, which erases all of the State of Israel. The reporter, standing next to the map, describes the self-sacrifice needed for Palestine.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 19, 1998)

* In a report on the Children’s Conference on Education, the participants wore shirts with the map of “Palestine” erasing all of the State of Israel.

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

Songs and Training

Four girls sing and dance:

“My country, I love her
My home is Gaza
My roots are in Haifa”

In a report on the summer camps:

Reporter: Where are you from?
Girl: From Beer Sheva
Reporter: Beer Sheva is one of the Palestinian cities now occupied

(Palestinian Authority TV, July 7, 1998)

* Vice General Abu Salam [The General Supervisor of the summer camps] said that we will not forget the names of our cities and the villages that were destroyed by the occupation, and we say to Netanyahu and his party that we will always work for the liberation…

(Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, July 12, 1998)

* A children’s television clip which was aired tens of times in the last months, depicts all of the country as Palestine and the Israelis as those who “took everything in 1948.”

The following is the some of the main text:

“My Country Her Name is Palestine” (children play and sing:)

“My box in my room, the room of my house, the house of my neighborhood, the neighborhood of my country and my country is very beautiful, there are houses and oranges and neighbors and trees ” [In the background there are children playing, and a multi colored model of the hills on which the children are “building” houses and “planting” trees]

One girl stops the singing and says: “Do you know what happened in 1948? They took everything! They emptied our room, they broke the house, they burned the forest, they changed the names, changed the names….

“This is still my country, she is very beautiful, the name of my country is Palestine”.

At the end of the clip, the children introduce themselves by first name and city, identifying their homes as places in Israel: a boy from Kfar Kassem, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa and others.

(Palestinian Authority TV, June 4, 19, 25, 29, and July 2, 7, 10, 12, 20, 27, 28, 1998)

Palestinian Media Watch
59 King George St. Jerusalem
Phone: (+972-2) 625-4140

The Odd Couple Fight an Odd Traffic System to Reduce Speed and Save Lives

David Bedein

August 4, 1998

To alleviate the many traffic concerns of the public, the Israeli government is planning to build Route 6, the Trans Israel high-speed superhighway that will connect the country from North to South. Israel’s first tollway, Highway Six, planned by the Trans-Israel Highway company, has been on the maps of Israel since 1976, planned as a 135 kilometer road, reaching from area north of Acre to the areas south of Kiryat Gat in the Negev.

Meanwhile, Jerusalem suddenly sports three superhighways that criss-cross the city.

The Finance and Transportation Ministries are confident that superhighways will be the appropriate solution to an increasingly automobile dependent nation.

It is exactly this dependency on automobiles and the repercussions thereof that Zvi Weinberger – the president emeritus of Machon Lev – Jerusalem College of Technology and member of the advisory council to the Israel Ministry of Transportation’s National Road Safety Authority – has been assessing.

Weinberger also heads the Center for Driver Research at Machon Lev

Also evaluating the risks is Dr. Elihu Richter, a medical doctor who heads the Unit of Occupational and Environmental Medicine at Hebrew University-Haddasah School of Public Health. Dr. Richter also heads the Betts Project for Injury Prevention. also located at the Hebrew University-Haddasah School of Public Health.

Although both Weinberger and Richter are men in their sixties who both originally hail from the United States, the similarities would seem to end there.

Weinberger, always wearing distinguished dark suit, conveys a peaceful presence and character, lives in the Orthodox neighborhood of Har Nof, a man who is a scientist and Torah scholar in his own right, He stands in contrast to Dr. Richter, a self-styled secularist Jew, and a different persona altogether- conveying a very outspoken and passionate personality.

Yet Weinberger and Richter are the seemingly odd couple who have teamed up to combine their energies and scientific insight to spend now and the years to come to fight for better road transportation polcies.

When you see them together, it’s like imagining Agudat Yisrael and Meretz in a coalition.

Weinberger sees nothing unusual about a physicist working with a doctor, explaining that while a physicist can analyze a factor like the impact of increasing speed on the increasing death rate on the road, Dr. Richter brings the discipline of medicine, disease control, and epidimeology to bear on the matter, viewing hundreds of people dying on the roads as you would understand the spread of a plague that would have to be cured.

In the view of Weinberger and Richter, the contagious behavior that people have learned from one another on the roads, the increase of speed limits and the government’s obsessive urge to increase the amount of motor vehicles on the road are all contributing to the victims that this plague is claiming every day.

Dr. Richter has introduced the concept of The Case Fatality Rate to measure the influence of increased speed on the road that will increase the number of of people killed amongst all those injured. The studies produced by Richter and Weinberger show that any 1 percent increase in speed will translate into a 4% increase in fatality.

In other words, the Case Fatality Rate relates to likelihood of getting killed of the people involve in a crash.

For people from North American who understand baseball jargon, it is like calculating a baseball player’s slugging percentage, based on how many extra-base hits he has in relation to his total amount of hits.

Only five years ago, Weinberger and Richter warned that the increase of the speed limit on interurban ‘roads (from 90 to 100 on main roads and 80 to 90 on smaller interurban roads) would have the effect of increasing the fatality rate by 20%, and that is exactly what happened. The Death rate on interurban roads went up from 259 to 319 in the first year after the speeds were raised, and the rate has remained steady ever since.

This Case Fatality Rate, once increased, has stayed high.

This is what Weinberger and Richter term ” a sustained impact”.

This contrasts with what happened when the government lowered the speed limit following the Yom Kippur War, in 1974, you witnessed a drop in road deaths from 719 in 1974 to 399 in 1984. The point is that when you raise the speed limit, you induce people to drive faster.

The new Highway Six – the Trans-Israel Highway, will raise the speed limit to 110 kilometers per hour, while the speeds on the highway are expected to go much higher. After all, the brochure issued by the Trans-Israel Highway Company and Sonol Oil Co, promises travel times of thirty minutes between Haifa and the Sharon area, which is a distance of 65 Km, implying a speed of 130 KPH while assuring only a forty minute ride from BeerSheva to “the central part of the country”, implying even higher speeds

Meanwhile, the Orthodox investor on Highway Six, Mr. Lev Leviav, does not want to collect tolls on Shabbat, recently telling Globes that this will be an incentive for people to drive faster on his road on Shabbat and spend less time on the road on Shabbat. What Leviav may not know is that there is already a 20% increase of deaths on the interurban roads on Shabbat.

To be considered too the overall economic implications and the direct additional costs to families and it is obvious why this topic has attracted such a high level of attention from a vast and varied section of the public.

Translate these new high speeds together with the resulting spillover effect onto the and similar lack Weinberger and Richter warn that Highway Six will also cause an immediate increase in fatalities on tributary roads as well as the road itself. They predict that the Highway Six will cause a rise from its current average of 550 per year to something approximating 750!

“Speed addiction has certain parallels to nicotine addiction,” Dr. Richter explains. This country caters to an addiction which is deadly. The population needs to realize that the time is now to stop advertising, “the fastest” roads and cars and start educating dangerous drivers.

Weinberger and Richter sadly surmise that the government incentive to higher speed on the Trans Israel highway will therefore increase the Case Fatality Rate, on weekdays and on Shabbat.. Since the specific government-directed mandate of the National Road Safety Authority is to bring down fatalities on the road, and since the government has now embarked on a policy that will increase deaths on the roads, Zvi Weinberger took an unusual step last week.

Weinberger initiated a “rump session” of the advisory council to the National Road Safety Authority the Belgian House on the Hebrew University Givat Ram campus, and invited Richter to lead a session of experts from all fields – engineers, environmentalists, transportation specialists, concerned citizens and Ministry of Health officials.

Weinberger would not wait for the government-appointed chairman of the advisory council, Mr. Yisrael Kaz, to call a special session of experts. Mr. Kaz is the Israel representative of Volvo and also acts as the representative of the Israel car import industry on the advisory council. Only last week, when Kaz was asked by Israel radio about more cameras on the roads that would photograph speeding drivers at every possible place, Kaz responded by saying that Israeli drivers ( his customers – d.s.b) should not be harassed so much.

The presentations outlined how Route 6 will fail to meet the public’s needs and will not serve their best interests.

At that session, scientist, Dr. Gary Ginsberg provided risk assessments which indicated that particulate emissions from increased vehicle transport, notably diesel, will increase death tolls by several hundred persons per year and gave person year. These risk assessments indicate that induced travel, higher speeds, and spillover effect from the Trans Israel Highway could bring us to death toll of more than 1000 or so victims by the year 2010.

Mortality from tailpipe vehicular emissions alone in Tel Aviv is around ten times that from motor vehicle accidents.

If Route #6 is built, the main avenue/mode of transportation for the next half-century will be automobile based.

This will increase the amount of car ownership which puts more and more people at risk from emissions of toxic gases. Lung diseases, bronchitis, and respiratory illnesses such as asthma will all prevail.

All the experts present concluded that only a a massive shift to rail travel, and speed restriction could bring death toll down to under 300 per year

Almost all the experts present at the meeting had pressed the Ministries of Transportation and Public Security for their own studies about the results of the rise in the speed limit. Neither government agency has been forthcoming, although the statistics speak for themselves..

Professor Gerald Ben David gave a report about the introduction of speed camera technology that was used in a project in Netanya for a period of six months, a program that reduced fatalities to zero during its test period.. Ben David detailed how the program could easily be applied throuout the country, using the five year program learned from Australia that introduced hundreds of speed cameras, combined with a brutal ad campaign. The government has not continued the funding of the Netanya program, nor will it consider the “Australian model”.

I met with Shmuel Hershkowitz, recently appointed by the Israel Ministry of Transportation to direct the National Road Safety Authority. This was an opportunity to ask Hershkowitz about government transportation policy. Hershkowitz rejects any notion that lowering or raising the speed limit will affect the amount of deaths on the roads. Hershkowitz’s passion is to get everyone to drive at the speed limit and a little bit above, with the thought that this will prevent collisions. He rejects the idea that corollary roads to main highways carry any spillover effect with increased collisions.

And he also rejects the notion that Israel will adapt Australia’s five year program of speed cameras and brutal advertisements that reduced the deaths on the road down under by half. Hershkowitz characterized the Australian model as a “terror” policy which Israeli drivers need not fear from our government in Israel.

All you have to do to get a shudder out of Hershkowitz is to mention Weinberger and Richter, whom he characterizes as “irresponsible populists”. He was particularly angry at Weinberger’s initiative to call a special session of his advisory council, which has not met since January.

Herhskowitz constantly brought in Germany as a model of traffic laws. So I asked him about the rule that I had witnessed in Germany that absolutely restricted trucks to the right lane of traffic, with a maximal speed of eighty kilometers an hour. Hershkowitz’s response was simple: In Israel, trucks of course drive in the right hand lane, except when they are passing.

Trucks seem always to be passing on Israeli interurban roads, and not at eighty Kilometers an hour..

Hershkovitz had little to say about another study of Dr. Richter, which shows that Israeli truck drivers are forced to drive 15 hour days, and that the Ministry of Transportation has done little of nothing to challenge the trucking contractors who force drivers to work in such dangerous conditions, with the threat that any driver who will not drive for 15 hours will lose his job. Hershkowitz spoke about going after the truck drivers, not the contractors, whose power may exceed that of the government.

A tragic case in point: In June,.1996, an unlicensed cement truck driver from Ramallah, working for the contractor, Tzvi Barashi, ran through a red light at French Hill and smashed a fiat in the oncoming lane, instantly killing journalist Michele Coraine and her visiting colleague from Belgium.

The driver was brought to trial and given a light sentence by then-judge Eli Rubenstein, now the Israeli Attorney General, on the condition that he would testify against the Barashi contractors who had hired him, knowing that he was unlicensed and unable to drive a cement truck. Despite the driver’s testimony and an order from the Israel High Court of Justice to indict Barashi, the Israel District Attorney’s office has dropped the case, “for lack of public concern”.

It is for lack of “public concern” that Herhskovitz could not delineate any new policy of enforcement or inspection of the truck driver companies, except to say that he had invited five trucking representatives to his office to warn them that the government could use its powers to close them down. When I asked Hershovitz if this included T’nuva and the other trucking giants in Israel, he was surprised at the question.

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Highway Six has been the reduction of train service in Israel, despite the fact that more than seven million train tickets were sold in the first six months of 1998. Suddenly, the forty million dollars needed to upgrade the train tracks to accommodate the new fast trains for Jerusalem were quietly transferred to the paving of Highway Six, which costs $2 million a kilometer to pave. Suddenly, on July 19, 1998. trains service that had operated to Jerusalem since 1892 came screeching to a halt.

This, despite the fact that the transportation of goods by rail rather than truck involves ten percent of the risk involved.

Meanwhile, at Weinberger’s rump session of the advisory council, members heard another surprising report that toll roads have lost money all over the world. The contract for Route 6 includes a clause that the government will make up any losses on the Highway Six toll road. Mike Friedman, a road specialist originally from Southern California, explained that in all three toll roads that he is familiar with, the Dulles toll road in Virginia, the Denver Airport Connection, and the Newport Beach, California toll road, are all rarely used and have failed miserably. Even though the banks own the road, the government shoulders the responsibility of paying the Africa-Israel group. In Israel, this “subsidy” could approach $1 billion! As taxpayers, is this a sure bet? Do high taxes have to become higher? The question that people in Israel need to ask themselves is whether health and education budgets have to be slashed in order to fund a dangerous, polluting, and sprawling blacktop?

“Whoever saves one life is as if he has saved the world.” The sages emphasize the value of even one human soul. The time is now and the power is in our hands to tell the government that we should reconsider our transportation future. 61% of the population think that the government should be spending money on building public transportation such as trains, subways and monorails. “Pikuach Nefesh” – the Jewish law of saving a life takes precedence of even the Sabbath.

The question that remains is whether “Pikuach Nefesh” be bought with special interest money?

In the coming weeks, Weinberger and Richter have assembled a new coalition to fight Highway Six, and the new government incentive to speed.

One new element that they are turning to is the religious sector of the country, to ask Rabbis and rabbinical courts to intervene to stop a policy that will cost lives. Most recently, the National Road Safety Authority organized a one day seminar on the Trans Israel Highway at Bar Ilan University, where they invited Rabbi Nahum Rabinowitz of Bar Ilan University to provide an invocation. Rabbi Rabinowitz, who was going to give a tepid speech in which he was going to mention the importance of highway safety and to encourage drivers to be more responsible. Yet once Rabinowitz took a look at the studies prepared by Weinberger and Richter, the Rabbi termed Highway Six as a threat to human life, and he warned that the planners of such a road must place the value of human life over the incentive to profits.

Weinberger and Richter postulate that a proper combination of environmental activists, scientific data and the Jewish moral precept of Pikuach Nefesh can still galvanize public opposition to the speed plague of death on Israel’s highways.

Hershkovitz and other government employees of the National Road Safety Authority may now be affected by Weinberger-Richter induced ulcers that may be painful and that may save lives.

Next week, Zvi Weinberger and Dr. Eli Richter have an appointment with the Chief Rabbinical council of Israel, where Rehovot’s chief Rabbi Simcha HaCohen Kook will be placing Weinberger and Richter’s conclusions on the agenda of the Rabbis of Israel. Richter, who often says that skullcaps just don’t fit his skull, will make an exception this time.

Human lives are at stake.

Rabbi Kook lives with the memory of his older brother, the previous Rehovot Chief Rabbi, Shlomo Kook, who lost his life, together with his wife and two of their children, all killed in a fiery collision in 1972.

Hatred Goes to Summer Camp

Center for Near East Policy Research

July 28, 1998

This is part of the material presented by Minister of Communications Limor Livnat at the July 1 cabinet meeting.

#1 Article On Summer Camps In Khan Yunis – 7 July 1998

a. Boy sings:
“I came to you; I came to you with sword in hand; I came to you to join and stand strong; so they won’t be insolent to me….

“I call for revolution in my land; we will carry it to the quiet sea; your day is near, occupier; and then we will close accounts; our account has no end in rocks and bullets.”

b. One of those responsible for the camp on behalf of the “Authority for the Direction of Policy and Concepts” explains that they are training the youngsters in various areas among them “firearms of course.”

c. Boy calls out and class responds:
“Children are victorious; Training with weapons; Revolution, revolution until the victory”

#2 Children’s Club Program – 19 June 1998

a. Girl sings:
“Hey hello Jerusalem, I am the salvation…; I will never be silent, never; I will return with tomorrow; And with me my heart and determination for Jihad; And after the religion you are the most important thing to me… “

b. Boy sings:
“We are your children Palestine, standing strong, standing strong;
Whatever the occupiers do, they continue with their blows;
We will learn the religious verses and fight our enemies;
We have abandoned the entire world, in the conflict we have abandoned;
Standing strong, standing strong, until the liberation of all of Palestine;
We will oust the occupiers, we will live in security;
No… and no flexibility, until all of Palestine returns to our homeland in peace, flying the flag of victory.”

#3 Film clip broadcast scores of times in last months

“My Country Named Palestine”

Children playing and singing:
“My box in my room. My room in my house. My house in my neighborhood. My neighborhood in my country. My country is very nice, it has houses and oranges and neighbors and trees… “
(In the background are pictures of children playing and a colorful model of hills upon which are being built homes and trees planted. Between frames for a split second the picture of an Israeli soldier advancing with a rifle is shown).

A girl stops the song and says: “You know what happened in 1948? They took everything! They emptied the room, broke the house, burned the city, changed the names, changed the names… They put my heart in a box and closed the box. It is still my country. It is very beautiful. The name of my country is Palestine.”

At the end of the clip children present themselves by first name and home, among them, Kfar Kassem, Jerusalem, Haifa, Jaffa etc.

Source: Palestine Media Review, directed by Itamar Marcus.
Translated by Aaron Lerner, Director, IMRA.

Israel Prepares for Trouble

Center for Near East Policy Research

July 28, 1998

Israel radio on Monday, July 13, reported that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met secretly with seven cabinet ministers for the third time on Sunday, to develop a “strategic policy” for dealing with the Arab Israeli population. The secret committee, including intelligence and security officials, reportedly determined that a “tough hand” may be needed to handle an increasing fanatical and fundamentalist tendency among the Arab Israelis, who comprise roughly 18 percent of Israel’s population.

Israel is feeling pressure from the Palestinians, neighboring Arab states, and even the United States, and is preparing for trouble. Egypt has effectively abandoned Israel and the United States over the impasse in the peace process, and Jordan this weekend also suspended relations with Israel. Jordan’s Petra-JNA news agency reported that Jordanian Senator Dhawqan al-Hindawi, head of the Jordanian delegation to the Arab-European Parliamentary Dialogue conference in Damascus, said in a speech to the conference that, “Jordan is currently freezing, without announcement, its dealings with Israel regarding issues stipulated in the peace treaty with Israel until the latter changes its current anti-peace policy and resumes the peace process on the Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese tracks.”

Jordan’s action further paves the way for an Arab summit that has been in the works for the past few months. Syria announced on Monday that it was opposed to an Arab summit until Arab states freeze all ties to Israel and reactivate the Arab economic boycott. Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam told the London-based Arabic newspaper “Al-Quds al-Arabi” that the 1996 Arab summit in Cairo had “adopted secret binding resolutions, stipulating a freeze in the normalization with Israel if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues his expansionist policies, the construction of settlements, and the destruction of the peace process.” With relations with Egypt and now with Jordan souring, Israel is running out of friends in the region.

The United States is also not hiding its frustration with Israel. On Monday, Netanyahu said Israel only awaited Palestinian adoption of commitments on Israeli security before it would accept the U.S. plan for troop withdrawal from the West Bank. Furthermore, he claimed, “In the recent days, we have made a significant progress in our understanding with the United States.” But responding to the Prime Minister’s comments, U.S. State Department spokesman James Rubin said, “The ball is not in the Palestinian court. The ball is in the court of the Israelis to try to work with the Palestinians and work with us…” In a meeting following Netanyahu’s speech, the Prime Minister and his security cabinet once again postponed a decision on withdrawal from the West Bank.

In a last ditch effort to forge an agreement, the United States has called for direct Israeli-Palestinian talks, and has reportedly threatened to abandon its role as mediator if talks do not show positive results. Both sides have agreed to hold a meeting, but the Palestinians have refused to reopen negotiations on the scope of the Israeli withdrawal. The Palestinian position is that the current U.S.-backed plan to turn over 13 percent is a compromise, and if negotiations are reopened, they will begin with their stated desire for control of 40 percent of the West Bank.

The London-based Arabic newspaper “Al-Zaman” reported on July 10 that ten days of secret Israeli-Palestinian talks had concluded in a European city, perhaps Oslo, and had ended in failure. The Israeli side, which supposedly included an advisor to Netanyahu and the deputy head of Mossad, reportedly turned down Palestinian compromise offers of 12 or 11 percent Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, and instead held firm to an offer of only a nine percent withdrawal. If this report is true, the prospects for talks later this week are grim.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa on Monday said that the planned talks were a “waste of time.” He told the UAE newspaper “Al-Ittihad” that “matters are at such a dangerous point they cannot be saved by negotiations here or there.” He told the newspaper “Al-Hayat” that he did not expect a solution to the West Bank situation by the end of July, and that the “general feeling” among members of the Clinton administration was that Washington would abandon the negotiations with Israel at the end of the month, whatever the result.

Finally, Radio Monte Carlo reported on Sunday that a group of 1,000 Islamic Jihad members met July 11 in the Gaza Strip refugee camp of Shati. At the meeting, Sheikh Abdullah al-Shami, a senior Islamic Jihad leader, reportedly called for renewed suicide operations against Israel.

As its plans for dealing with Arab Israelis reveal, Israel is scared. It is losing the support of Egypt, Jordan, and the United States, and its Arab neighbors are drawing closer together, preparing for a summit to devise a common Arab response to the stalled peace process. Parallel to plans for an Arab summit are hints of an “Arab NATO.” Meanwhile, the potential for another Intefadeh is increasing, and radicals are preparing for a suicide bombing campaign.

The revelation of Israeli planning for internal trouble says a number of things. First, it is a signal to Arabs that Israel will take a very hard line against a renewal of violence within Israel. But moreover, the existence of Netanyahu’s secret committee reveals a rush to address the country’s strategic weaknesses. As we wrote in our June 30 Red Alert (http://www.stratfor.com/services/gintel/region/stories/063098.html), Israel is undergoing a fundamental strategic review. Israelis have long prepared for medium to high intensity warfare–armor and air battles. They now appear to be shifting to a U.S.-like, two-pronged strategy of deterrence combined with unconventional, low intensity conflict. Israel’s plans to purchase submarines capable of launching missiles with nuclear warheads is the deterrent side. Preparations for the Intefadeh are the other side.

Israel can not stand another six months of news footage of soldiers firing plastic bullets at stone-throwing children. It can not tolerate suicide bombers destroying buses and markets. The question is, how can Israel stop it? Israel can attempt a total lock-down of the occupied territories, but can Israel also detain 18 percent of its population? It can attempt a decapitation attack, arresting or killing the leaders of the Palestinian unrest, but complete success at this strategy is nearly impossible, and new heads grow. It can attempt to infiltrate and disrupt the new Intefadeh, also a difficult and possibly futile task. Or, Israel can return to the table.

However the negotiations go, Israel is in a rush to revise its strategic doctrine to meet reality. Yes, Israel is scared, but Israel’s advantage is that, when it panics, it takes action to rectify the situation. Still unknown is whether Israel can complete preparations ahead of the Arabs.

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Manbar Attacks Labor Politicians

Center for Near East Policy Research

July 28, 1998

IMRA Introduction

Nahum Manbar, a product of the Labor movement who contributed heavily to the campaigns of many in the Labor Party – including Yitzchak Rabin, was sentenced recently for selling material to Iran for the manufacture of non-conventional weapons. His ties to the party were further illustrated when a Labor MK testified as a character witness during the sentencing hearing that Manbar deserved a break since he contributed to building a memorial to the assassinated Rabin. Before sentencing, Prime Minister Netanyahu told the press that Manbar’s crime was without precedent. Defense attorney Zichroni, charged that a former member of his defense team, Pninat Yanai, had an illicit relationship with the senior judge on the case, Amnon Strashnov, and supplied information used in prosecuting Manbar. Through the alleged relationship with the judge, Yanai is alleged to have learned that the judge was in contact with Prime Minister Netanyahu during the course of the case. The entire story has been labeled the “Manbar-Strashnov Affair”. All of the claims have been denied.

Manbar’s relations with the top flight politicians in Israel, and in particular with the heads of the Labor Party, heated the flames of the debate which took place over the Strashnov Affair. A leak came out from around Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu claiming that the previous prime ministers, Yitzchak Rabin and Shimon Peres, declined to act against Manbar because of his contributions to the Labor Party. In the meantime this balloon was loudly exploded, when all the heads of the legal system made it clear that the investigation of Manbar’s activities already began during Rabin’s period, and when it became clear in a conversation recorded by Manbar’s wife Francine, that Pninat Yanai knew from Netanyahu’s spokesman, Shai Bazak, of the intention to defame the heads of the Labor Party even before the end of the trial. Manbar himself has no interest in relating to the political gain which was attempted to be made from his trial. But he certainly has an interest in tying his name, as much as possible, to the heads of the Israeli government.

Question: Who did you meet with and why?

Manbar: I met with Peres at least three times. Once in the presence of MK Daliah Itzik. I had some suspicions. I felt that there were people, who for reasons I can’t detail now, painted me in the wrong colors, and I wanted for Peres to allay these concerns. Peres wasn’t the only one I met. I hosted Mrs. Leah Rabin in France with my wife. Eight days before Rabin was assassinated I was invited to a gala ball organized by the Tel Aviv Museum which I contributed to. I sat at the same table as Police Inspector General Gabi Last, who was then deputy commander of the police, and with Leah Rabin, and also Yitzchak Rabin himself joined us for a quarter hour. So I ask you, is it logical that a prime minister sits at the same table with someone who he knows is being investigated by the Mossad? It could only be if the information which that same prime minister has made it clear that there was nothing against me.

Question: Peres confirms that he met with you, but he claims that he doesn’t recall the topics of the conversations and their nature.

Manbar: Peres says that he doesn’t remember me. And I say that that he remembers me very well. I met him also an additional time regarding the establishment of “tolerance square” in Paris. But I don’t want just to talk about members of the Labor Party and not just Shimon Peres. Suddenly they don’t remember me. Everyone is running away from me. One day they will yet return. After I am exonerated. But then I won’t want them back.

Al-Ahram: Netanyahu, Negotiations, and More

Center for Near East Policy Research

July 28, 1998

The following are selections from articles which appeared in the Egyptian English weekly, “Al-Ahram” of Al-Ahram Weekly, during July, 1998

Why is Netanyahu So Popular
by Mohamed Sid-Ahmed

Excerpts

A nagging question that refuses to go away is whether Arab political forces can continue to maintain a total boycott of their Israeli counterparts at a time official Arab parties are engaged in a peace process with Israel. The question has become even more urgent since Netanyahu came to power, not least because the main argument he uses to justify not pulling out of the Occupied Territories is that the Arab states are not democratic, that they do not have solid institutions, that they have no scruples about resorting to military coups d’Å½tat and that if Israel were to implement the ‘land for peace’ trade-off it could well end up with neither land nor peace. The indiscriminate boycott of all Israeli political forces consolidates Netanyahu’s argument. An effective way of countering it would be to develop relations with forces inside Israel which accept the restoration of occupied Arab territories and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Surprisingly, however, all attempts made so far to establish contacts with the ‘peace camp’ in Israel have had only a limited impact. Moreover, it is a fact that Netanyahu enjoys wide popularity in Israel despite his blunders, mistakes and scandals. In his article entitled Netanyahu’s Safety Belt published in this month’s issue of Foreign Affairs, Ehud Sprinzak, professor of political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, calls the Israeli prime minister’s continued popularity “the great paradox of Israeli politics today”….

The most salient development in Israel in the recent period has been the shift in the political balance of power in favour of the Jewish religious forces at the expense of the traditional Zionist forces. Today, the newly powerful ultra-Orthodox forces are more concerned with their Jewish identity than with the Zionist solution of the Jewish problem. Sprinzak is sceptical about the possibility of any solution of the conflict under Netanyahu. He does not believe, however, that Netanyahu will always enjoy the support he now gets. He writes that “unlike the Israeli right’s hard core, which is ready to fight for the land of Israel and to accept the concomitant sacrifices, most Israelis are opposed to spilling blood to keep the West Bank or maintain Gush Emunim’s settlements”. Still, Sprinzak believes that the alternative to Netanyahu need not be a Labour-led government, but could be a government led by “a less tainted Likud figure like Olmert, Jerusalem’s ambitious mayor,” who could pre-empt upcoming disasters by accepting a territorial compromise. In such a context, the soft right could become a bridge between the moderate wing of the Likud and supporters of peace on the left.

This, of course, is a rather optimistic scenario, presupposing a dialogue between religious forces on either side of the confrontation line taking precedence over the traditional confrontation between pan-Arabism and Zionism. For a long time, hopes of a breakthrough towards peace were pinned on leftist forces on both sides of the barricades. Then came talk of the secular forces being the best equipped to achieve that objective. Now the task has been assigned to the conservative religious forces, who are totally out of touch with the requirements of the present so-called ‘globalistic’ world. Actually, it is important for the Arabs to prove themselves capable of becoming part of that world: the question is whether they can reach that objective better through communication with Israel or by remaining totally aloof from it. It will probably prove necessary to explore both courses concomitantly. How this can be achieved will need much creative thinking.

Writing on the Wall
Editorial, Al-Ahram Weekly, 23th – 29th July, 1998

Excerpts

A foiled car bombing attempt in West Jerusalem last Sunday should be seen as a warning of the mayhem expected to erupt in the event of the total collapse of Palestinian-Israeli peace talks…. While the Palestinians have accepted a US proposal for Israeli withdrawal from 13 per cent of the West Bank, Binyamin Netanyahu remains adamant in his rejection of the plan. He is simply turning a deaf ear to serious warnings by American, Egyptian and other leaders about the dire consequences of a complete breakdown in negotiations. President Hosni Mubarak has voiced strong fears of an uncontrollable outbreak of violence and acts of terror, not only in the Middle East but also in the United States, Europe and elsewhere. American officials have also sounded the alarm. Assistant Secretary of State Martin Indyk did not mince his words, describing the situation as “very serious” and warning that “we’re in the end-game.” In fact, Washington appears to be in a quandary: slighted by its ally’s rejection of its peace plan, but unable or unwilling to act against Netanyahu because of the strong pro-Israel lobby in the United States. Casting about for a way out, Washington proposed direct Palestinian-Israeli talks without US participation…. Washington is distancing itself from Israel without upsetting the Israeli lobby with outright action to pressure Netanyahu, such as a full official disclosure of the US peace plan. All indications are that Netanyahu is not budging and that the renewed Palestinian-Israeli talks will get nowhere. Netanyahu will have only himself to blame if a new Intifada, more violent than the 1987 movement, breaks out in the Occupied Territories, with fallout elsewhere.

FGM [female circumcision] Claims Another Victim
by Mariz Tadros

Early on Saturday morning, Mona’s mother heard that her sister-in-law was going to have her two girls, aged 11 and 12, circumcised. “When Mona found out, she told me that she, too, wanted to be circumcised like her cousins. She was so happy when I told her that I’d take her to be circumcised along with them.” Female circumcision, which is the excision of the clitoris and part or all of the labia minora, is rarely referred to as anything but as tahara, or “purification”. Mona Abdel-Hafez died Saturday night in a private hospital in the northern suburb of Madinet El-Salam.

Mona’s mother, who lives in a shanty Ain Shams neighbourhood, recounts the incidents that took place that night. At 7:30 p.m., doctors administered anaesthetics to the first of the three girls, but when they began operating on her, her screams were so loud that they gave her another dose to relieve the pain. She consequently remained unconscious until the next morning.

Doctors were in a rush to finish, so when it was Mona’s turn, they gave her two injections right away, one after the other. That was when the complications began. When her uncle insisted on knowing what was wrong, he was told plainly by the doctors — there were three of them — that she was dead. “Then they told us to take the body home and not to give them any hassle. When we objected, they tried to convince us that she was unconscious and that we should take her out of the hospital, but my brother informed the police,” said Mona’s mother, in tears. She is a widow and Mona was her only child. “She was going into fifth grade next year; you should have seen her, she was such a brilliant student,” she cried.

The mother was surprised to learn that the operation is banned in both public and private hospitals. “This is the first time we hear this today. We are poor and uneducated women; we have never heard that it is banned. If it does harm to a woman’s body, why did the doctors not tell us so?” she lashed out. The doctors charged LE80 for each circumcision.

One woman, a neighbour, interrupted: “We have been circumcising our girls from the dawn of time at the hands of midwives and barbers, and this has never happened except at the hands of doctors.” Many of the women agreed.

To them, the idea that some women may not be “purified” seems not only unimaginable, but also absurd. “Girls have to be circumcised, otherwise their sexuality will be uncontrolled,” explained one of the mourning women. “If they are not circumcised, no man will agree to marry them.” “Even if a man is sure of his bride’s chastity, he will be outraged when he finds out that she has not been circumcised. He probably will take her to a doctor himself to make sure she is circumcised,” another woman added. “To circumcise a girl is to obliterate the faintest possibility that she will grow up to be unchaste.”

A man who arrived to convey condolences said that since the days of Adam and Eve, all men and women have been circumcised, “and now they tell us that the government has prohibited the practice; you must be joking.” He added that he was aware that Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, issued a fatwa (religious ruling) that the practice is not obligatory under Islam. But the man said he was a devoted follower of the late Sheikh Mohamed Metwalli El-Shaarawi, who stressed several times that girls must be circumcised. Among the mourning men, the judgement was unanimous: it was the doctors’ fault; they should have been more careful with the anaesthetics.

Officers at Madinet El-Salam police station appear to be in agreement. The police report charged the doctors with negligence of duty while performing the operation. Nobody at the police station was aware that an order by the State Council, the highest administrative court, had banned the performance of the operation in public and private hospitals and clinics. A medical examiner’s report stated that Mona died of cardiac arrest that resulted from circulatory failure. The doctors were released on a bail of LE100 each.

Next morning, visitors to the private hospital where Mona died were confused when they found it totally deserted, except for one nursing attendant who said that all the doctors were away and that “there are no patients right now.”

The prosecution has ordered an investigation and Minister of Health Ismail Sallam has announced that the necessary legal action will be taken against the doctors. They will also be held accountable before the Doctors’ Association which will conduct its own investigation. If found guilty, the doctors may face up to three years in prison.

Dr Seham Abdel-Salam, from the FGM Task Force (a coalition of NGOs and individuals researching and lobbying against the practice) said that she hopes that Mona’s death, though a tragedy in itself, will provide additional proof that female genital mutilation (FGM) is not safe. Since 1994, the FGM Task Force has recorded more than 17 cases of FGM-related deaths that were published in newspapers, “in addition to the many, many who have died at the hands of midwives, barbers or doctors that we never heard of.”

The majority of circumcision operations are performed by the local midwife or barber, but some mothers believe that if the girl is taken to the doctor, it will be safer and less painful.

In Abdel-Salam’s opinion, this is an illusion, because research has shown that having a doctor perform the operation is by no means safer. If the doctor administers anaesthetics to the patient, it is only to make his job easier and not to relieve the patient’s pain. “After all, it is easier for him to cut an unresisting, unconscious girl than one who is crying, screaming and trying to escape. But from our research, it has been shown that once the effects of the anaesthetics wear off, the pain that these girls feel is tremendous,” she said.

“It is sad that the level of awareness about the harm caused by this ritual is still so low, but it is so difficult to change a tradition that has been upheld for thousands of years,” she added.

Arrogance and Amnesia
by Edward Said

[Heading:] US Foreign Policy Depends Purely on the Above [title]. And it will continue to do so as long as we all concur, writes Edward Said.

When it comes to Israel (leaving aside Indonesia, Laos, Cambodia, Bosnia, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Panama, and many other places where the US bears responsibility for international terrorism) there is a sublime sense constantly projected that the US is on the side of the right, justice, morality and peace. All challenges to that view are considered terrorism, unless Israel does it.

… The trouble is that as Arabs we never seem willing to engage the US intellectually and morally in ways that highlight the crimes committed against us. I have long said that the dismal ignorance of the US that exists in the Arab world — an ignorance blithely disconnected to the system of US exploitation and its organised cruelties against the non-white peoples of the world — makes us prey to the illusion that America is the only arbiter, the last superpower, the power with the greatest chance of giving us our due. At the core of our difficulty is the lamentable disunity of the Arab world, where rulers think in terms of the narrowest interest and no concern is given to the way in which Arab states are used against each other, traduced, robbed, punished and endlessly manipulated. To the official US we remain only “the Arabs”, an undifferentiated mass of turban-wearing nomads much given to fanaticism and violence.

… America cannot be confronted by brave slogans and the purchase of more new weapons from it. Like everything else in this secular world of ours the US has to be faced in detail, its policies exposed, its positions disallowed and unaccepted. What else is the unseemly begging directed at the US to continue its putrefying “peace process” now, after Netanyahu and the US have made (as they always intended to) a shambles of the whole thing, what else is this indecent appeal to revive the process but a shabby admission of impotence and acquiescence? Why don’t the Arab states in their greater wisdom declare their own peace plan — in which the whole world concurs — and prove to the whole world that no amount of American chicanery or cruelty will deflect us from our resolve?

I suppose that to wait for such determination is like waiting for Arab leaders with policy intellectuals and makers in tow, to come to the conclusion that if we need anything now it is a complete reevaluation of our policies vis-a-vis the United States, led by a critical evaluation of such arch-villains as Henry Kissinger.

Hebron Situation Report

Center for Near East Policy Research

July 28, 1998

The last months of PA administration in Hebron have witnessed the continued conflict between the Jewish and Arab communities of that troubled city. This Belfast of the Middle East is rapidly moving toward armed confrontation. This is a brief update of the current situation.

Human Rights

During the last few months human rights violations against local Palestinians by their own Police and Security apparatus have increased. Dissident voices have essentially been silenced. There is now a feeling of fear and apathy on the part of the Arab residents of PA controlled Hebron.

The violence against the Jewish community has become a manner of PA policy rather than a spontaneous outburst of emotions. These attacks are carried out with the tacit approval of the Palestinian Police and sometimes under their direct control. In the past, there have been many incidents of the activists being given a financial stipend for participating in violent demonstrations against the Jewish Community.

In the Israeli controlled areas, there has been no improvement in the areas of house demolitions and administrative detention. With callous disregard for the issues at stake, the Israeli Civil Administration continues the thoughtless policies of the Israeli Government in destroying Palestinian homes. For each new home destroyed a potential terrorist cell is created.

The Jewish community of Hebron has also suffered. The daily attacks launched against the Jewish community by a small minority of Palestinian activists continue to keep the situation unstable. These attacks have escalated from stone throwing to shooting at Jewish houses and cars. The fact that the PA encourages this has not been lost on the Jewish Community. The feeling that the IDF is helpless to protect them is giving credibility to the fanatic minority who advocate direct action against the Arabs.

At the same time the Jews are being alienated from the mainstream Israeli community who resent their presence in Hebron as being an unnecessary provocation and military expense. The result is that the Hebron Jews are sinking into a ghetto mentality and are becoming increasingly more unstable and prone to acts of counter violence.

Weapons

The Jewish community has always been provided with weapons by the IDF. These weapons are generally defensive in nature, consisting of surplus IDF army arms, and licensed pistols purchased legally on the Israeli market. In addition to this, the Jewish Community has the full protection and backing of IDF regular Army and Police units that are stationed both inside and near the Jewish Communities.

The PA has far exceeded the agreed upon limits which were set on their possession of semi-automatic weapons. They now possess a variety of assault rifles, sub-machine guns, machine guns, mortars, anti-tank weapons and grenades.

In addition to the massive Palestinian Police build up under Lt. Col. Abu Sine, there is a sizable independent unit of President Arafat’s Force 17 operating as a law onto itself. Beside this, unknown numbers of Col. Rejoub’s security forces and local PLO security unites under Gabril Al Backrin, the HAMAS and PFLP militias, operate more or less openly in the Hebron area. It has been estimated that there are between 3000 and 5000 serviceable weapons in the Hebron area. It is an open secret that weapons can also be bought under the indifferent eye of the PA in from various local arms merchants.

According to an independent Security Analysis, the situation is rapidly deteriorating and has reached a point where an outbreak of armed conflict between the Jewish and Arab communities is considered only a matter of time. For experienced observers, there is no longer any doubt that some trivial incident will set off the Hebron powder keg.

Hebcom Middle East Bureau
Analysis, Commentary, Information
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