“Strong together, we love Israel and trust the army” banner in Jerusalem. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Aug 7 2014 (IPS)

“Strong together, we love Israel and trust the army” – while a tentative truce takes root, banners adorned with the national colours still dominate cities and highways across the country.

Calling for unquestioned patriotism and solidarity, the embrace is a bear hug in the minds of those who question the merits and morality of Israel’s latest onslaught on Gaza.

It is tough to subscribe to the credo of peace when nationalist emotions are exacerbated by plaintive sirens and the deafening sound of Iron Dome missiles slamming incoming rockets, when rational judgment is mobilised for the war effort and crushes rational assessment of the effect of war.

War is the antithesis of peace is a tautology. Challenged by war, Israeli peace activists grapple with dilemma.... ordinary Israelis took refuge in the safety net of their emotions, seeking comfort in national anxiety, pronouncing moral judgment on the “sanctimonious” critics at home who contest the axiomatic assertion proclaimed time and again that “the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army”

A war, when launched, must be won. Yet this war results neither in victory nor defeat, is not a war to end all wars, but a war to avoid the next war by means of deterrence, maybe. In war, there is only loss, and losers, peace activists reckon.

If war will not have solved the conflict – it contains the seeds of the next round of violence – peace will, they assert.

But when the cannons roar, peace is silenced.

Stressing that there is no military solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Peace NGO Forum called for a ceasefire and a resumption of the negotiations towards a two-state solution on Day 22 of the operation.

The Peace NGO Forum is an umbrella platform for Jewish and Palestinian civil society organisations dedicated to peace within a two-state solution to the conflict. The partner organisations, which include the women’s peace coalition Bat Shalom and the Combatants for Peace movement, partake in networking, capacity-building and joint demonstrations,

The belated statement generated by the Israeli wing of the forum exposed the dilemma: “Israelis reserve the right to self-defence and deserve to live in security and peace, without the threat of rockets fired at them and enemy tunnels dug into their midst.”

And so, at its height, the war was justified, enjoying quasi-consensual approval ratings among Jewish Israelis. Social media brimmed with racist, intimidating, “Kill Arabs”, “Kill leftists” comments.

“No more deaths!” On Day 19 of the operation, 5,000 Israelis joined a rally organised by pro-peace civil society organisations. The emblematic Peace Now movement was absent, as was the liberal Meretz party. The protestors dispersed after rockets were fired at the Tel Aviv metropolis.

Succumbing willingly to the 24 hours a day news coverage on TV, ordinary Israelis took refuge in the safety net of their emotions, seeking comfort in national anxiety, pronouncing moral judgment on the “sanctimonious” critics at home who contest the axiomatic assertion proclaimed time and again that “the Israel Defence Forces is the world’s most moral army”.

Left-wing Israelis counter that self-righteousness is intrinsic in such proclamation.

“How can you not identify with our national pain when we’re under threat” is a blame often levelled by right-wingers against fellow Israeli peace activists.

The Israeli public which, in its overwhelming majority, is at the centre and right of the political spectrum, charges that the country is falling victim to ‘victimology’, the victim-focused coverage of the conflict.

Supporters of the peace movement see respect for “human rights as our last line of defence”, as Amnesty International director Yonatan Gher put it in the liberal daily Haaretz on Wednesday. They object to the disproportionate reaction of the military. Israel must understand the weakness inherent in its own military might, they suggest.

The mainstream’s assumption is that peace activists too often give in to ‘the mother of all tautologies’ – that “war is hell” and “evil” and, in essence, a war crime. Any sign of soul searching that this war is not just is resented as vacillation and unwanted self-flagellation.

Peace activists hold Israel’s policies in the occupied Palestinian territories as the source of evil.

The 47-year occupation, most Israelis argue, reduces their predicament to a simplistic imagery, because the occupation does not justify the hatred of Israel professed by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, and the repetitive cycle of violence. The occupation continues because peace is unattainable, they stress.

“Try,” retort peace activists, “We’ve proven enough that we’re strong enough to take a risk for peace.”

Israelis have been stuck in this perennial debate for 14 years.

During this time, they have experienced a flurry of conflicts with no end in sight: the 2000-2005 Palestinian Intifadah uprising, the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah, onslaughts on Hamas in Gaza in 2006 (“Summer Rains”), 2008-2009 (“Cast Lead”), in 2012 (“Pillar of Defence”), and now.

Disillusion and despair are all the more potent that, during the years of the Oslo_Accords, a process of mutual reconciliation engaged both Israelis and Palestinians towards tentative recognition of the other’s pain.

With the ensuing confrontations, both people quickly backpedalled to the existential, elemental, dimension of their conflict.

In adversity, it has become necessary for both Israelis and Palestinians not only to exclude any identification with the other’s pain but also to inflict pain on the other as the sole way to assuage one’s pain and deter the other from inflicting pain.

What, however, unifies the overwhelming camp of war supporters and the dedicated ranks of peace supporters is the acknowledgement that the reality is complex.

Mainstream Israelis realise that their argument that an assessment of the situation requires not being focused solely on the body count in Gaza is a lost cause.

Peace activists understand that the threat that triggered Israel’s operation is tangible, but also the direction in which its outcome might be leading, its consequences and implications for Israel, and, by correlation, for the Palestinians and for peace between the two peoples.

Their ideal of co-existence grinded by years of wars, peace activists reject the focus on suffering if it only serves the hackneyed precept that, on one hand, in war, the end justifies (almost) all means, or, on the other, that war cannot be justified.

They draw fine lines between exercising a legitimate right of self-defence against an unwarranted act of aggression and ever greater use of force, and between the morality, rights and laws of war and the wrongs of the Occupation.

And now that the war seems over, they hang their hope on the realisation by their national leaders that they will urgently initiate a bold diplomatic move towards peace with the Palestinians, and will not let the same amount of time since the previous operation be wasted lest the same, recurring, reality blows up in both peoples’ faces.

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Palestinian workers at the SodaStream plant. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
MISHOR ADUMIM INDUSTRIAL ZONE, Occupied West Bank, Feb 9 2014 (IPS)

The longstanding Israeli practice of labelling settlement products “Made in Israel” is leading to mounting opposition to the occupation.

Settlements are considered a violation of international law. In Israel, they aren’t. And so, more often than not, consumers of Israeli products across the world do not know whether they’re purchasing a product made in Israel proper or in a settlement.Germany, Israel’s strongest European ally, reportedly intends to widen the ban to private companies operating in the occupied territories.

This blurring of borders and labels by Israeli businesses trading on land, which the Palestinians envision as part of their future state, and the ensuing calls for boycott, have entrapped a Hollywood star in the nitty-gritty of the conflict, and in a conflict of interest.

Till recently, Scarlett Johansson doubled as charity ambassador for the British NGO Oxfam and as brand ambassador for SodaStream, an Israeli soda maker company listed on NASDAQ whose main manufacturing plant is established on an old munitions factory near the settlement Ma’aleh Adumim.

Her praise of the soda makers, carbonators, eco-friendly bottles and syrup flavours went viral even before the commercial was aired during the Super Bowl.

Oxfam, which opposes trade with settlements, pressed her to recant her support for SodaStream, but she instead resigned from Oxfam.

In a statement, Johansson extolled SodaStream’s commitment to “building a bridge to peace”, in that 500 Palestinians, 450 Israeli Arabs and 350 Israeli Jews are “working alongside each other, receiving equal pay, equal benefits and equal rights.”

Palestinians earn twice to three times as much working on the SodaStream assembly line than they would in the Palestinian Authority.

“This is a coercive relationship by definition,” counters Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement co-founder and Palestinian human rights activist Omar Barghouti.

“After decades of systematically destroying Palestinian industry and agriculture and imposing extreme restrictions of movement preventing many from reaching their workplaces, Israel has forced tens of thousands of Palestinian workers and farmers to seek jobs in illegal Israeli colonies.”

BDS activists dub the make-your-own home fizzy drink company a “blood bubble”.

“We’re an anomaly,” acknowledges SodaStream CEO Daniel Birnbaum, who describes himself as an ardent supporter of the two-state solution. He hastily invited foreign journalists on a tour of the controversial manufacturing facility.

He strikes a pose of self-righteous indignation at the BDS movement and on “why providing employment is an obstacle to peace.”

“If this area ends up as part of Palestine, I have no problem paying taxes to the Palestinian government,” he says, while commending Johansson’s “heroic stance”.

But, Barghouti tells IPS, “Through popular civil resistance and sustained BDS efforts, as against apartheid South Africa, Israel will be compelled to recognise our rights under international law and end its regime of occupation, colonisation and apartheid.”

In recent days, Nordic institutions decided to cut off their ties with Israeli companies involved in the construction of settlements or that maintain branches in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Danske Bank, Denmark’s largest bank, has blacklisted Israel’s Bank HaPoalim. The Norwegian Ministry of Finance excluded Israeli firms Africa Israel Investments and Danya Cebus from its Government Pension Fund Global.

PGGM, the Netherlands’ largest pension fund management company, withdrew all its investments from Israel’s five largest banks.

While the scientific agreement “Horizon 2020” recently signed by Israel and the European Union bans European funding to academic research carried out in the settlements, now Germany, Israel’s strongest European ally, reportedly intends to widen the ban to private companies operating in the occupied territories.

In July last year the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, released new guidelines forbidding EU institutions from providing grants or loans to Israeli organisations with ties to settlements.

Barghouti emphasises the rise in support for the academic boycott of Israel in the U.S. and Ireland, and the growing number of western artists who refuse to perform in Israel.

The CEO of the fizzy drink company seemed unfazed by the wave of BDS actions. “Nordic countries boycott products manufactured in this facility. We shifted the production to our plant in China.”

But U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has warned the Israeli government that if the peace talks collapse, Israel risks facing increasing threats of boycott and de-legitimisation campaigns.

BDS advocates an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, including the dismantling of Israel’s security barrier and settlements. The movement also calls for “the U.N.-sanctioned and inherent right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes of origin.”

For most Israelis, the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 War and their descendants to what is now Israel would be tantamount to upending Israel as a Jewish state. Recognition of Israel as such by the Palestinian Authority is a major demand of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Inversely, such characterisation is adamantly rejected by the Palestinians as it would be equivalent to ignoring not only the right of return, a major Palestinian demand and a core issue of the conflict, but also the existence of the Palestinian-Israeli minority which constitutes roughly 20 percent of Israel’s population.

Netanyahu has called a cabinet meeting to devise strategic options to counter potential European BDS initiatives.

“The most effective and immediate strategy to blunt BDS and other forms of political warfare is to end the massive funding given to radical NGOs that promote these anti-Israel campaigns,” NGO Monitor, an Israeli right-wing non-government organisation close to the Israeli government states on its website.

Children at an Israeli-Arab school set their sights high on harmony. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
KFAR QARA’, Northern Israel, Jan 27 2014 (IPS)

Welcome to Bridge Over the Wadi primary school, one of five bi-national schools under the “Hand-in-Hand” initiative of the Centre of Jewish-Arab Education in Israel. The centre strives to bring children from both communities to learn together in Hebrew and Arabic in the hope that they’ll bridge the divide between the two peoples.

All in all, there are only seven bi-national school establishments in Israel, amidst 3,000 or so separate Jewish and Arab schools.

But among the few, this one is unique. It’s the only such school established in a town populated by Israelis of Arab descent. Here, Jewish children are hosted by their Arab peers.Here, Jewish children are hosted by their Arab peers.

“It’s not an Arab school. Actually, we’re strangers in our own environment,” cautions principal Hassan Agbaria. “We have an offer: acceptance of the other, equality in rights, partnership. Peace is achievable by knowing each other and living together, at least at school.”

A Jewish-Arab school – let alone in an Arab town – is no trivial matter in a country where the Jewish majority is in conflict with the Palestinian people to whom the Arab minority belongs. One in five Israelis is an Arab of Palestinian descent.

Israel’s declaration of independence pledges to “uphold the full social and political equality of all its citizens, without distinction of race, creed or sex.”

In effect, the enduring conflict, persistent mistrust and charges of disloyalty to a state which defines itself essentially as Jewish, recurrent suspicions of unequal treatment, and discrimination based on religious-political identities have all left a deep mark on Israel’s Arabs.

“Children here see neither Arabs nor Jews but people,” stresses Uri Levror from the Jewish village Katzir.

The writing is on the school’s walls. “We must be the change that we wish to see in the world,” say Hebrew and Arabic translations of the adage attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. Parents who send their kids to school here answer the call for change from the existing order of things.

“We mustn’t wait for someone to create change,” says Ofri Sadeh from Katzir.

In this area of Galilee, Arab-origin citizens of Israel are the overwhelming majority. About 150,000 Arabs and 20,000 Jews live side by side, and apart.

Arabs make up 60 percent of the school’s 238 pupils. The staff is equally balanced as each classroom is co-taught by Arab and Jewish teachers.

Nothing is simple or utopian on the school benches. The dichotomy lies in the parents’ expectations and motivation. Through their children, Jews aspire to realise the elusive dream of peace and harmony.

“It’s an opportunity for our children to be imbued with values that are important for me and my husband. I want them to become better persons than us,” says Noga Shitrit, a mother of three from Katzir, and an educator at the mixed kindergarten attached to the school.

Arabs, for their children, desire the fulfilment of a no less elusive social promotion. “The best school!” proclaims Kfar Qara’ resident Rania Yahiya.

Second graders pay tribute to Nelson Mandela, pondering on quoted words of wisdom: “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.”

“People discriminate against others because of skin colour, language, gender, identity, Jewish or Arab,” stresses the teacher in Hebrew.

“And then comes Mandela,” another teacher chimes in, in Arabic. “He said, ‘We’re different, but equal.’ He had a dream. Which dream?” she asks, mixing up Mandela and African-American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King.

“May peace prevail,” comes a reply. “Stop the wars,” says another. The class dream their parents’ dream.

The teacher says, “Jews and Arabs are…” “Different!” the class answers in unison. “Different, but equal,” corrects the teacher.

“We instil these educational values so that threads of peace are woven into the fabric of their lives,” says vice-principal Masha Krasnitsky. “They’re fully conscious of bringing fresh ideas to the world. They’re caught in demanding and challenging situations, but they stand up to the test of courage.”

Under their teachers’ guidance, Arab and Jewish kids rejoice in each other’s holidays playfully.

But when national remembrance days are marked – Holocaust Day or the Day of the Fallen Soldiers – old passions are woken anew.

The school’s educators are in pursuit of a magical identity formula which will draw schoolchildren together around a collective experience untroubled by one seminal event’s memory – the creation of the State of Israel (1948) seen on the other side as the Great Palestinian Catastrophe, or Nakba.

“We’re a laboratory for the Israeli society,” says principal Agbaria. “We try to provide answers to questions which Israelis grapple with for over 60 years. Step by step, we come closer to the vision of living here with a declared identity, without fear.”

Playtime, announces the oriental music on the PA.

Hebrew almost naturally dominates kids talk. And though Arabic is, along with Hebrew, officially recognised and, at school, textbooks are in Hebrew and Arabic and kids learn in both languages, beyond the school’s perimeter Arabic is often perceived as the enemy’s language.

As rain falls, children huddle in a tiny corner, looking a lot alike. It’s been 10 years since this schools was set up. That’s also cause for celebration.

Ayman e-Deis near his demolished shack. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JORDAN VALLEY, Israeli-occupied West Bank, Jan 13 2014 (IPS)

Israeli settler Gadi Blumenfeld distributes machetes to 15 Palestinian labourers and instructs them to cut the thorns off of his dates’ fronds. “I might be stabbed in the back,” he says, “but thanks to farming, we keep the area safe from terrorists.”

Yet the fate of this arid strip of land that is home to 56,000 Palestinians and 7,000 settlers is uncertain as the rain.

A U.S. blueprint of a framework agreement for a two-state solution is said to put an end to Israel’s settlement enterprise in the Jordan Valley but to maintain an Israeli military presence for 10 years – contingent on the capacity of the future Palestinian state to protect not just itself, but Israel.“For this paradise on earth, we pay a heavy price. Settlements and military bases control our land."

Meanwhile, Blumenfeld prides himself on his dates – “fruit of our brains and their hands.” Israeli minds and Palestinian hands, he means.

In 2013, he produced 400 tonnes of prime Madjhoul dates from 5,000 trees which he planted on 400 dunam (400,000 square metres) since he settled in Patsa’el four decades ago. “We made the desert bloom, a miracle.”

Like Blumenfeld, Palestinian landowner Ameen Al-Masri, whose orchards are just a few kilometres away, is proud of his dates – “the mothers of the valley’s dates.” His farmland, he says is “Palestine’s most fertile off-season cash crops area.”

He owns the same amount of arable land as Blumenfeld. “For this paradise on earth, we pay a heavy price. Settlements and military bases control our land,” stresses Al-Masri.

After Israel captured the valley from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, tracts of land were expropriated from Palestinian farmers and allocated to settlements and military camps.

A segment of the Great Rift Valley, the Jordan Valley holds 28.3 percent of the West Bank’s land, and is the largest single Palestinian territory under full Israeli military and administrative rule, classified as Area C since the 1990s.

Only built-up areas – 13 percent of the valley – are under Palestinian rule, known as Area A.

Israel controls all the passages between it and the West Bank, and the border crossings on the Jordan River, the international border between the West Bank and Jordan.

Allenby Bridge is the only crossing to Jordan open to Palestinians from the West Bank.

“The Jordan Valley is a strategic buffer zone between a Palestinian state and Jordan. It must be kept under Israeli sovereignty because it prevents Jihadists, Al-Qaeda, Salafis from infiltrating Israel,” argues David El-Haiiani, head of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, which includes 21 Jewish settlements.

On Dec. 29, days before U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s visit to the area to seek approval for his framework agreement, the Israeli government approved a right-wing legislator’s bill which, if voted in parliament, would annex the Jordan Valley’s settlements and access roads to them to Israel.

Palestinians reject any Israeli presence, military or civilian, in the valley.

“If we agreed to a 10-year military presence here, [Israel’s Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu would find an excuse on the ninth year to expand it for another 10 years,” is Al-Masri’s calculation.

Blumenfeld also farms a 200-dunam orchard in the closed military zone that lies between the electronic fence and the Jordan River. “Palestinian workers aren’t allowed in,” he notes.

Though Israel signed a peace treaty with Jordan in 1994, anti-personnel landmines are strewn along the fence.

In the late 1960s, the jagged terrain was dubbed “the land of hot pursuits” against Palestinian guerrillas.

Now peaceful, the no-man’s-land is a land of wolves and wild boars, of sentry boxes, outposts and trenches – of sentinels left behind in a distant past.

“We didn’t come here for ideological reasons, but to farm and secure the area. We’re farmers, not politicians,” says Blumenfeld.

“I’m a peaceful man, a farmer,” Al-Masri concurs. “Yet farmers fight for their land.”

Many Palestinians living here are semi-nomadic sheepherders and seasonal farmers. Most are wretchedly poor; most work land they don’t own.

“If you don’t work for settlers, you don’t work at all,” seethes a Palestinian picking bell peppers in Patsa’el. About 6,000 Palestinians work in settlements.

Sheepherder Ayman eDeis is homeless. His shack and sheep enclosure were demolished twice this year – last time just before winter.

“The Israeli authorities won’t give you a permit, not in a lifetime,” he says, standing on the rubble of his home.

Israel counters that the dearth of building permits stems from the valley being a sensitive security area.

A water reservoir is under construction in the closed military zone to increase the irrigation capacity of four Israeli reservoirs and 12 artesian wells.

Settlers get sweet water from the West Bank’s deep aquifer, from the Jordan River, from flash floods.

Palestinian farmers wait for the rain, making use of the seasonal Ein Shibli spring and four licenced artesian wells. They can dig only 400 metres deep into the shallow aquifer, where water is saline.

In 2013, settlers produced 11,000 tonnes of dates, mostly for export. Palestinians produced 2,000 tonnes, mostly for local and Israeli markets. “The best business in the world today is the occupation,” says Al-Masri.

A World Bank report estimates that if Palestinians could exploit Dead Sea minerals in the southern Jordan Valley, their economy would derive up to 918 million a year.

Access to more farmland and water would deliver a further 704 million dollars to the economy. The Jordan Valley could become a Palestinian breadbasket.

“I don’t want a state on paper where Israel controls our resources and borders,” says Mahmoud Daraghmeh, an unemployed Palestinian engineer who sows yellow beans in his family plot. “This isn’t freedom. This isn’t a state.”

Blumenfeld watches the myriads of migratory starlings freely overlooking the border. “I love this valley,” he exclaims.

“Yet for a real peace agreement which the whole world guarantees; for the end of terror – because in the past, terrorists took control of territories Israel evacuated – for end of conflict, I’m willing to pay the price.”

A stretch of Route 443 near the Giv'at Ze'ev intersection. Barbed wire fencing forms a section of the Israeli barrier on the West Bank. Credit: Etan J. Tal CC BY 3.0

By Pierre Klochendler
ROUTE 443, Occupied West Bank, Dec 29 2013 (IPS)

The full moon sets; another dawn rises over Route 443. For over 40,000 Israeli residents and settlers commuting daily between Jerusalem and the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, it isn’t yet rush hour.

For hundreds of Palestinian construction workers who reside along 443, it already is. To get to construction sites inside Israel, they rise in the dead of night.

Route 443 is one of Israel’s major traffic routes. About 15 kilometres of the 28-kilometre trunk road meanders through the occupied West Bank, including four kilometres on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem.

In a landmark ruling four years ago, Israel’s Supreme Court annulled a military order which, for eight years, had completely barred Palestinians from travelling on 443.Route 443 is the story of the 46-year occupation of Palestine writ on forbidding signposts.

“We still can’t use 443,” rants Seif al Jamal from Beit Surik, a Palestinian village not far from the Modi’in checkpoint to Israel. “We wake up at 3:30 am instead of at 6 am.”

To enter Israel, entrepreneur Muhammad Farraj must pass through a checkpoint which blocks the access road linking his nearby village of Beit Sira to 443, drive on 443 a few metres, park by the roadside, and cross the Modi’in checkpoint on foot.

Such are the vicissitudes of Israel’s military rule. A simple 20-minute drive becomes a two-hour journey. For Route 443 is the story of the 46-year occupation of Palestine writ on forbidding signposts.

Signposts sometimes are incongruous. “It’s strictly prohibited to cross the road other than at a clearly marked Palestinian crossing,” reads one.

But there’s no crosswalk on 443’s four lanes, and traffic is at full speed. So the labourers literally run for their lives to reach the checkpoint.

In theory, Palestinians can drive along 443. In practice, it’s an exasperating experience. One can spend a whole day crisscrossing 443 without spotting a single Palestinian licence plate.

Route 443 was built in the 1980s for Israeli drivers seeking to escape the regular morning and evening traffic jams plaguing Highway 1, the Jerusalem-Tel Aviv thoroughfare.

At the time, residents from the 22 adjacent Palestinian villages joined forces with the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and petitioned the Supreme Court against confiscation of land for the purpose of laying out 443.

The petition was rejected on the grounds that Route 443 was meant to also serve the 35,000 Palestinians who live alongside it.

During the Oslo process (1990s), as the road to peace seemed assured, Palestinians used 443 to commute to the administrative and economic centre of Ramallah.

But in 2000, the Intifadah uprising erupted. Within two years, seven Israelis were killed in Palestinian attacks on Route 443. Scores were wounded.

As a result of deteriorating security conditions, the Israeli military authorities in the area closed 443 to Palestinian traffic.

Following the promulgation of the military order, Palestinian villagers and ACRI submitted a new petition to the Supreme Court challenging the legality of the sweeping travel ban, arguing that the collective punishment contradicted not only international humanitarian and human rights laws, but also the Court’s own previous judgment.

When the Court revoked the ban, the ruling stressed that the ban was “unauthorised and disproportional”, and that “freedom of movement constitutes a basic liberty, and it is a duty to undertake all necessary measures in order to preserve it in territory held by Israel.”

Yet at one fell swoop, the Court ordered the Israeli Defence Forces to find “another means” of ensuring the security of Israelis.

“The military commander in the area decided on such restrictive security arrangements that, in effect, Palestinians must mount at one point, and disembark very close by,” says Tamar Feldman from ACRI. “Besides, the passageway to Ramallah is closed.”

The military authorities did comply with the verdict, but the same security measures which were enforced during the Intifadah are still in place, Feldman stresses.

“The verdict was celebrated as a human rights achievement, yet legitimises the military’s own discretion powers while giving a sense of justice.”

Nothing’s changed. While driving up and down 443 though the Judean Hills, it’s hard to escape the sensation of being trapped along a frontline – sometimes on both sides of the road.

A web of electronic fences, watch towers and walls of concrete slabs – parts of which merge into Israel’s ‘Security Wall’ – insulates the driver from potential sniper attacks, concealing minarets of mosques, as if 443 itself ran inside Israel, not within the swath of land which Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Painted murals confer on the driver the illusion of a wall with a view.

Israelis are warned not to enter Palestinian villages. And if by mistake they do, a signpost reads ominously, ‘Israeli, beware, if you reached that point, you erred!’

Access roads to 443 from the villages are shut down with fences, metal gates, dirt barriers, roadblocks and blockers.

Palestinians are directed to alternative routes underneath 443, some of which are paved especially by Israel.

Most Israeli motorists justify the de facto ban and separate road system – “in case some lunatic shoots at us,” many charge.

“Layers of legislation, policies and practices have created a system of segregation and separation which discriminates the Palestinian population,” says Feldman.

Driving along 443 also allows the traveller to reflect on how the lay of the land has shaped the conflict. Perennial fixtures of the Israeli occupation pass before the eyes, be they the Bet Horon settlement or the Ofer military prison in which hundreds of Palestinians are detained.

Occasionally, it’s the weather that’s the real master of the land. When earlier this month a snowstorm hit the area, both Palestinians and Israelis were barred from driving along 443.

Some Israeli motorists felt so secure that they insouciantly stopped on the roadside to revel in the first snow, within striking distance from the incarceration facility.

Mahmoud Raba’I in Jinba. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JINBA, Occupied West Bank, Dec 26 2013 (IPS)

Jinba is in the crosshair of ‘Firing Zone 918’ – and ‘Firing Zone 918’ is a microcosm of the Israeli occupation. Together with seven other communities, Jinba is slated for demolition to make way for an Israeli training ground. Forced eviction hangs over a thousand Palestinians.

Mahmoud Raba’i is sowing wheat in his field. Winter is here, but it hasn’t rained a single drop in the rugged, unforgiving, South Hebron Hills. “God willing, rain will come and fill the wells,” the Palestinian farmer murmurs.

Jinba is home to 300 Palestinian tent- and cave-dwellers who struggle for the right to carry on living on their land like their forefathers.“We and our children live here; our sheep graze here. They want us to carry our land on our back and leave.”

It’s a furrow these subsistence wheat farmers and sheepherders have been ploughing generation after generation for over 150 years – steadily, relentlessly.

“This is our land,” Raba’i seethes. “We and our children live here; our sheep graze here. They want us to carry our land on our back and leave.”

Jabarin enters his cave. Mattresses are piled up against dark walls near tools. Toothbrushes, a comb, are strewn on a makeshift shelf. A stove lights his weathered face. “My grandfather, my father, and I were born here.”

The villagers in Jinba are among the West Bank’s poorest Palestinians. Living off the land isn’t easy when the land is under occupation.

In all 60.2 percent of the West Bank is designated ‘Area C’ – that is, under full Israeli military and administrative control. The largest community in the South Hebron Hills, the village of Jinba, is in ‘Area C‘.

The village has no access road, no running water and no electricity, no building permits, only demolition orders.

“We were handed demolition orders against the concrete poured on the floors of our tents and clinic. For everything we do, there’s a demolition order,” Jabarin tells IPS.

Jinba abuts Israel. Here, the infamous ‘Green Line’ which marked the border between Israel and the West Bank prior to the 1967 War is a white furrow crisscrossing the desert.

Strange boundary stones mark an area encompassing 12 Palestinian communities.

On them, commanding inscriptions in English, Arabic and Hebrew: “Danger. Firing Area. Entrance Forbidden.”

“Let’s get rid of the occupation,” reads the Arabic and Hebrew graffiti sprayed on the opposite side of a marker.

“Why a firing zone here? There’s enough open space inside Israel. They want to expel us and move us into heavily populated Palestinian areas. This firing zone’s just an excuse for Israel to pursue its land grab,” asserts Jabarin.

In contrast, ten illegal settlement outposts located within the firing zone are under no such threat.

Head of Jinba and guardian of his community, Jabarin incessantly patrols the village by foot to protect it from Palestinian smugglers and workers who cross into Israel illegally and, above all, from incursions by the Israeli military stationed in the area.

He documents the routine raids for the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, and is one of the petitioners to the Supreme Court in Israel in a 14-year legal battle against the firing zone.

In September, the court interceded in favour of mediation between the Israeli authorities and the Palestinians. But the pressure hasn’t stopped.

Jabarin’s daughter Nawal, 12, is scared. Only a fortnight ago, Jabarin was arrested on suspicion of arson at a military base. “I wouldn’t have been released after eight days if I wasn’t innocent,” Jabarin scoffs.

The legal battle against forced eviction from ‘Firing Zone 918’ is part of a three-decade war of attrition waged by the Israeli authorities and local settlers against 4,000 impoverished Palestinian dwellers in the South Hebron Hills.

Land expropriation, harassment and acts of vandalism perpetrated by settlers against them are common practice, and the lack of law enforcement is glaring.

Earlier this month, a military squad was seen inspecting 25 uprooted olive trees in ATuwani area. In a separate incident, two days earlier, in Umm elAra’is, Israeli troops cracked down on Palestinians who complained of a settler trespassing on their land.

A week earlier on the same spot, soldiers stood idly by while settlers attacked Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority is powerless in the face of these acts as it doesn’t control the area.

In solidarity with the peasants, peace activists have entered the fray.

Founded in 2009 by two Israeli physicists-activists, ‘Comet’ is a joint Israeli-Palestinian initiative. Its purpose – to provide basic solar and wind energy access to the off-grid, marginalised Palestinian communities of the area.

“Our NGO is political in essence,” Comet’s co-founder Elad Orian tells IPS. “We support their struggle to stay on their land.”

‘Comet’ builds and installs hybrid wind and solar mini-grids. These stand-alone systems provide about two kilowatt-hours per family per day to 2,000 Palestinians.

Rural electrification facilitates socio-economic empowerment, say the Gawawis encampment dwellers.

“Sometimes there’s no sun, no wind, but in general, thank God, the electricity works fine,” Abu ElAbed tells IPS.

“It helps us economically. Women prepare more butter effortlessly with the electric butter churn. And we have a refrigerator, a washing machine, a TV.”

Sixteen of the 24 installations operated by Comet are under threat of demolition.

“You need a building permit. It makes sense. The problem is you have a bureaucratic mechanism whose purpose is to prevent people from obtaining permits,” says Orian. “And the people subjected to this bureaucracy aren’t Israeli citizens.”

Fortunately, Comet enjoys German government support, both financial and political, and can afford to fight legal battles on behalf of the Palestinian communities.

Abu ElAbed recalls that the army came to Gawawis two years ago with a demolition order, “but we haven’t heard from them since.”

In Jinba, the local clinic, mosque and elementary school remain off the grid. Fields remain under Israeli rule. But the Palestinian flag atop the elementary school leaves no doubt as to whom the land belongs.

The Golan Druze feel the brunt of Syria’s civil war. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
MAJD E-SHAMS, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights , Dec 11 2013 (IPS)

The faint explosion is a reminder that though the newly refurbished fence protects their town, the two-and-a-half-year-old civil war which is tearing their motherland apart is never far off.

Separated from Syria for almost five decades, the Syrian Druze living in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights are coming to terms with the relative security stemming from their precarious neutrality in the Syrian conflict.

A thousand-year-old offshoot of Islam, the Druze are scattered across Syria, Lebanon and Israel. In this town of 11,000, the largely secular Druze fear the mounting influence of Jihadist rebel groups in the civil war.

“I support President Bashar Assad wholeheartedly because I’m Syrian,” says Hassan Fakhr-Eddin, a member of the close-knit community. “These foreign infidels, they want to turn secular Syria into an Islamist state.”

Though they’re outspoken about their unquestioned allegiance to Syria, politics are cautiously kept under a veil of secrecy.

By and large, Druze are loyal to the country they live in. But here, loyalty to Syria is challenged by the civil war.

At the beginning, the otherwise united and staunchly patriotic community split between Assad’s partisans and opponents. Brawls erupted.

“There are tensions between families and friends. I don’t speak to those who oppose Assad. They’re out of my life,” explains Ghandi Kahlouni, the local pharmacist.

“I’m against dictatorship, but also against any attempt to destroy Syria,” Kahlouni tells IPS. “Now it’s become clear – either you’re with Assad or you support the rebels and you’re a traitor.”

As their war-torn country sinks into an ever deeper quagmire, the Golan Druze are closing ranks. Dejected supporters of democratic change reckon that no revolution is worth the blood already spilled in Syria.

“Of course I’m disappointed, this isn’t what I had hoped for,” acknowledges Salim Safadi from the nearby Druze town of Mas’ade. “At the onset of the so-called revolution, we demonstrated for democratic change in Syria, and that’s legitimate.

“But then,” he continues, “Jihadist terrorists began to surf on the Syrian people’s hope for democracy. So it’s time to reflect. Currently, the alternative to Assad doesn’t provide such hope.”

War here is a distant memory. Israel captured the Golan Heights from Syria during the Six-Day War. Six years later, Syria fought another war against Israel to get it back, to no avail.

Ruins attest to the severity of the battle. An estimated 100,000 Golan Druze residents fled the war or were displaced, never allowed to return home. Families were separated. Only 22,000 Druze remain in a cluster of four villages, alongside 22,000 Israeli settlers.

Overlooking Syria, Israeli outposts are implanted on the mountain ridge that dominates the town, as well as in the centre of town. An Israeli flag flies atop the municipality building. It’s actually the only edifice adorned with the Star of David.

Others buildings wave the Druze colours. The Syrian flag is nowhere to be seen, so as not to scare off Israeli tourists, residents say.

Dolan Abu-Saleh is the head of the Majd e-Shams local council. An appointee of the Interior Ministry in Israel, he prudently urges the townspeople to refrain from taking sides in the Syrian conflict.

“Our heart goes out to the Syrian people. At the core of our sense of affiliation to Syria lays our attachment to the land and to our families there, but not necessarily to the regime,” Abu-Saleh tells IPS.

In 1981, Israel passed a law which applies Israeli laws and government to the strategic plateau. Backed by the international community, the Druze reject what in effect amounts to annexing Syria’s territory.

A full 90 percent of them have refused the proposed Israeli citizenship.

Himself a second-generation Israeli, the mayor insists the younger generation, uncertain of what the future holds in Syria, appreciate living under a strong and secure Israel.

“Security is a critical factor in shaping our faith,” says Abu-Saleh. “Youth see their future where it’s more secure. When they hear booms across the fence, they appreciate the value of security. “

Before the civil war, encouraged by the tuition-free education granted to them by the Syrian government, hundreds of Druze youth from the Golan would study science, medicine or dentistry in Syrian universities.

Now, they can be counted on the fingers of two hands.

“As a result of the influx of graduated professionals back home, the economy in the Golan Druze community flourished,” recalls Hamad Aweida, himself a Damascus University IT graduate and a local TV producer.

“Now many stay home, unemployed. The lucky few go to study in Germany, but it’s onerous,” Aweida tells IPS. “I fear that in three to five years, less educated people will be joining the workforce.”

Marah Sabra, 17, wants to emulate her elder sister Roseanne who studies education in the nearby settlement of Qatsrin to become a preschool teacher. “I love Syria and I wish her peace,” Sabra tells IPS from her home in Mas’ade. “But I’m afraid of the war. So my future lies here with Israel.”

The economic fallout is also felt in the farming industry. Apples constitute the main source of income for the Druze farmers.

Before the outbreak of the war, they’d export their apples via the Quneitra border crossing to Syrian markets under a special arrangement in force since 2005 that involves Israel, Syria, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

Now, the crossing of apples to Syria is in jeopardy. Though last March the farmers belatedly managed to export 18,000 tons from the previous fall’s yield, they don’t know whether exports to Syria will resume.

“Before the war, we’d receive two or three times the price we get now for a box of apples,” bemoans Tawfiq Mustafa as he waits for Israeli customers to exhaust his stock at the Al-Ya’afuri market.

Packing houses which once processed the fruit prior to distribution to Syria are full, holding 50,000 tons – the Druze’s annual production.

The orchards, meanwhile, have been left to the weeds.

Christian youth watch an Israeli military exercise ahead of joining the Israeli army. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
QATSRIN, Occupied Golan Heights, Nov 11 2013 (IPS)

In the municipal sports hall with an army officer to his side, Father Gabriel Nadaf, a Greek Orthodox Arab priest in full regalia, briefs Arab Christian twelfth-graders on the merits of serving in the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). “It’s only natural that the country which protects us deserves that we contribute to its defence,” he tells them.

A Christian teenager calls on the officer to reckon on the Christian conscripts’ cultural needs. The officer’s proclamation is unassuming: “The IDF is a melting pot.”

One in five Israelis is an Arab of Palestinian descent. Muslims constitute the overwhelming majority of this sizeable minority.

The 130,000-strong Arab Christian community is a tiny minority within the minority. They’re the original Christians of the Holy Land, the living stones on which the bi-millennial faith was built.“Jews call us ‘Arabs’. For Muslims, we’re ‘Christians,’ not Arabs. We’re Israeli Christians, nothing short of that.”

Encouraged by Nadaf to take advantage of Sunday rest, some 250 youth have preferred to show up at an event organised by the IDF Social Branch than to attend mass.

Entitled ‘In the fighters’ footsteps’, the week-long event brings twelfth-graders from around the country to the nearby Ahmadiyah training ground where, in order to boost their motivation before conscription, military prowess is demonstrated in front of them with the pyrotechnics of live ammunition exercises.

“Deep in the heart a Jewish soul…” the lyrics of the HaTiqva national anthem might have sounded awkwardly discordant to Arab Christians’ ears, yet these boy and girls throw in their lot wholeheartedly in this country.

Anan Nitanes is determined to join those who must join the army. “Israel gives me a lot. So I must give her back,” he tells IPS.

Father Nadaf’s endeavour is beginning to bear fruit – according to the IDF, some 100 Arab Christians are currently serving in the army, up from 35 in 2012, whilst an additional 500 are performing civil service, up from 200 during the same period.

Last year, as he was officiating in the Church of the Annunciation, Nadaf was called up by Bishara Shlayan, a boat captain who resides in Nazareth – Israel’s largest Arab city once dominated by Christian churches, now two-third Muslim.

Shlayan required the priest’s religious imprimatur to his local Forum for the Enlistment of Christian Youth.

Originated in his difficulty to get his son Amir into the army, the initiative exposes conflicting identity dilemmas.

“Jews call us ‘Arabs’. For Muslims, we’re ‘Christians,’ not Arabs. We’re Israeli Christians, nothing short of that,” Shlayan tells IPS.

“We’re Palestinian Christians, an integral part of the Palestinian people,” retorts Azmi Hakim, chairman of the Greek Orthodox community in this Galilee town. “No schizophrenia here.”

Shlayan’s project has also thrown Israel’s Arab Christians into the national “one people, one draft” debate over sharing the national burden more equitably.

Israel is a Jewish state in the sense that its defence is above all the duty of its six million Jewish citizens. Military service is compulsory for 18-year-olds – or should be.

In effect, some 40 percent potential draftees – mostly ultra-orthodox Jews, roughly 12 percent of age-draft youth – are traditionally exempt from it.

The other segment of the population exempt from the draft is the Arab citizens of Palestinian descent. They’re branded by fellow Jewish citizens a “fifth column” suspected of “double allegiance”.

Most Muslims don’t serve in the army. Exceptions to the sweeping exemption, Bedouin, who are Muslim, enlist in the army on a voluntary basis; for Druze, an offshoot of Islam, military service is mandatory.

Shlayan’s forum has now expanded into the Sons of the Alliance Christian party which preaches greater loyalty to the State of Israel.

“Arab citizens enjoy security, but many in their heart dream of Israel’s destruction. Whatever happens to the Jews will happen to us as well,” Shlayan charges.

Hakim reproves Shlayan’s accusation: “This army occupies Palestine. My state fights against my people. This forum for enlisting Christians is a Zionist conspiracy to separate the Christians from the rest of the Palestinians.”

“Besides, ultra-orthodox Jews don’t serve and yet their rights are respected,” Hakim protests.

Arab citizens are made to feel second-class citizens. An endemic dearth of building permits affects their towns and villages. Higher unemployment, inferior municipal services, unequal allocation of resources in education and housing are their common lot.

Banned from the Church of the Annunciation for promoting the draft, Nadaf was embraced by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At the sports hall, it is Deputy Defence Minister Danny Danon who has come to pledge his support.

“I salute your willingness to integrate into the society,” Danon tells the assembly of age-draft Christians.

“We’re citizens who aspire to become full citizens,” Nadaf tells Danon.

Inducements in the form of cheaper loans, job opportunities, government allowances and tax breaks often lure non-Jewish military service aspirants.

“The government plans to advance land re-zoning plans and allocations of plots for Christian ex-servicemen and women,” Danon promises. “The State of Israel is opening its doors to you. We want you ‘equal amongst equals’.”

A question flies from the hall. “When will housing projects break ground?” asks a teenager determined to give the government’s preacher a hard time.

“Our objective isn’t to build houses but to issue tenders for the allocation of plots for those who served in the army,” cautions Danon. “You mustn’t join because you may get a plot of land. Don’t be afraid. Be strong. Do the right thing.”

Samir Jozen encourages his daughter Jennifer to join the army next summer. “So what if we don’t get 100 percent of our rights. What we have, Syria’s or Egypt’s Christians don’t have,” is his declaration of faith.

For now, Arab Christian youth seem to see in the military service a communion of sort with Israel, a conversion from being Arab to being Israeli, a rite of passage from being rejected to hoping to be accepted, and the core of a stronger Christian identity in a precarious area.

As Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and nuclear talks on Iran’s disputed nuclear programme continue, a unique international conference, “A Middle East without Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)”, was held in Jerusalem.

The topic is taboo because Israel maintains a veil of “studied ambiguity” on its alleged nuclear arsenal.

At the Notre Dame hotel in Jerusalem, the singular get-together took place: Ziad Abu Zayyad, former head of the Palestinian delegation to the Arms Control and Regional Security (ACRS) multilateral talks; Dan Kurtzer, former peace mediator and former U.S. ambassador to Israel and Egypt; and young and veteran activists against the proliferation of WMDs.

Mordechai Vanunu, also present, is forbidden to speak to foreigners or leave Israel.“The nuclear issue is Israel’s last taboo.”

Invoking his opposition to WMDs, the former nuclear technician revealed in 1986 details of his country’s alleged nuclear weapons programme to the British Sunday Times. Abducted by Mossad intelligence agents, the Israeli whistleblower spent 18 years in an Israeli jail, including more than 11 in solitary confinement.

“Ten years ago, we couldn’t even have a conference disembodied from reality,” notes an enthused Kurtzer.

This is no longer pie in the sky, but a very public event on an issue forcibly kept out of the public eye in Israel.

The conference was organised by the Palestine-Israel Journal (PIJ), a joint civil society publication dedicated to the quest for peace in the region.

“Track-Two diplomacy will have an effect on Track One, formal diplomacy,” explains the diplomat who is now a professor of Middle East policy studies at Princeton University. “If not this year – next year or the year after.”

The conference was held just a few days prior to the start of Round Two on Thursday Nov. 7 between Iran and the P5+1 group of six major powers (Britain, China, France, Russia and the United State, plus and Germany). Round One ended on a positive note.

Notwithstanding the persistent suspicion that Iran is racing towards nuclear arms, the only major player in the Middle East which, allegedly, possesses a nuclear arsenal is Israel.

Allegedly, because reports on the issue – all from foreign sources – have neither been confirmed nor denied by Israel. Maintaining its veil of “studied ambiguity”, Israel hasn’t signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Israel’s nuclear policy is defined in one sentence: ‘Israel won’t be the first to introduce nuclear weapons in the Middle East.’

“If Israel won’t be the first, it won’t be the second either,” quips Israeli non-conventional weapons expert Reuven Pedatzur.

Vanunu knows well the consequences of breaking the strict censorship code on the issue. Public debate is nonexistent. “The nuclear issue is Israel’s last taboo,” says Pedatzur.

A presentation on “Fissile Material Controls in the Middle East” by Princeton University’s Senior Research Physicist Frank von Hippel proposes a ban on plutonium separation and use; an end to the use of highly enriched uranium (HEU) fuel; an end to enrichment of uranium above six percent; and no additional enrichment plants.

It’s only natural that Israel’s nuclear programme would take centre stage. The Dimona nuclear plant is scrutinised. “Freeze, declare, and then step-by-step reduction of Israel’s stocks of plutonium and HEU,” is what Israel must give in return for von Hippel’s global proposal.

Yet despite across-the-board harmony on the need to free the world’s most volatile region from the most volatile weapon, the speakers failed to reach a consensus on the practicality of focusing on the region’s one and only country believed to have nuclear arms.

“This excellent proposal is premature,” comments Pedatzur. “Dealing with Israel’s nuclear programme is a non-starter. If the U.S. will exert pressure on Israel, maybe; unfortunately, I don’t see any U.S. incentive.”

Kurtzer chimes in: “The U.S. is specifically interested in stopping nuclear weapons proliferation. Regarding Israel, we’re back to the question of non-declared status, and the U.S.’ strong bilateral relationship, a fact of life.”

Following the Madrid Peace Conference (1991), Israel participated in the ACRS multilateral talks.

Israel focused on the regional security component; Arab states (led by Egypt) on the arms control component – that is, on controlling Israel’s suspected nukes. The talks collapsed in 1995.

Secure in its don’t-talk-about-it comfort zone, Israel is ready to discuss a WMD-free zone and thus forgo the ultimate deterrent against its so-called eternal enemies, but only within a comprehensive peace settlement with all of its neighbours, including Palestine, Syria and Iran.

That’s a state of affairs as hypothetical as it is improbable.

“Israel wants the international community to agree de facto to its nuclear status,” bemoans Abu Zayyad. “Assuming it’s out of it, Israel isn’t against a nuclear-free Middle East. That’s ridiculous.”

Abu Zayyad reflects the traditional Palestinian position. Both the nuclear weapons issue and the peace vision must be approached “correlatively, not sequentially.”

Is there a linkage between or amongst these issues?

“The formal answer of diplomats is ‘No’,” says Kurtzer. “But surely, as the debate takes place in a civil society forum like this one without being cut off – here’s the linkage.”

Israel rejects any linkage between its nuclear programme and the nascent regional détente.

“A Russian-American agreement to move the chemical weapons from Syria; Iranian and U.S. presidents speaking for the first time since 1979; Palestinian-Israeli negotiations,” enumerates Hillel Schenker, PIJ co-editor with Abu Zayyad. “This creates a constructive background for moving forward toward a WMD-free Middle East,” he concludes.

Eager to pour cold water on the conference’s optimism, Pedatzur enumerates inversely: “Chemical weapons use in Syria’s civil war; failure till now to resolve Iran’s nuclear crisis; Israel’s continued possession of nuclear weapons and occupation of Palestine. A WMD-free Middle East can’t be established any time soon.”

Kurtzer says “To the extent the U.S. is ready to exercise its influence and power, a regional security breakthrough can occur which will ease the way for us not only to have a discussion on the possibility of a WMD-free Middle East, but to actually start engaging on these issues.”

Abu Zayyad advocates a global arrangement. “When you speak about Israel, Israel speaks about Iran; Iran about Pakistan; Pakistan about India, etc.” – the nuclear chain.

The conference may have succeeded in breaking through the censorship surrounding Israel’s assumed nuclear weapons, but not the taboo on Israel effectively creating a WMD-free Middle East.

Aweinah ploughs his field with the help of British volunteers. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
BATTIR, Occupied West Bank, Nov 3 2013 (IPS)

“O green Battir, mother of the air,” Mariam Ma’mmar sings in praise of her village. As the hot season draws to a close, the land – her people’s strength – dries up. Not here in her Battir, where a peaceful form of resistance against the Israeli occupation is taking root.

The 5,000 people of Battir pride themselves on their cultural and historical relation to the landscape.

Ensconced in 554 sq km of dry stone walls, the largest network in the whole of Palestine of terraced fields, orchards and vegetable gardens cascade down into a deep, steep-sided valley.Battir is the exception to Israel’s rule in the West Bank – the only Palestinian village where the Green Line doesn’t exist.

Owing to the Roman cistern and aqueduct, water flows all day long, flooding and feeding the agricultural terraces.

Eight natural springs shared amongst Battir’s eight families fill the ancient irrigation system, nurturing dreams of self-sustenance, brimming with life, for everything that reaffirms their connection to the land grows in Battir.

Long gone are the days when the reputation of its aubergine, the betinjan battiri, spread beyond Battir’s confines.

It’s a pitched battle now. On one slope, the invader presenting a united front of stiff pines planted around Israeli settlements; on the other, in scattered ranks, the gnarled olives, symbol of the Palestinian attachment to the land. Pine needles acidify the soil and endanger the nourishing olives, notes Ma’mmar.

The Har Gilo and Beitar Illit settlements grow behind the pines. A third one, Givat Ya’el, is developing. The standard eight-metre-tall wall of concrete slabs slowly crawls towards Battir, impounding large tracts of Palestinian land on its way.

“The wall will make Battir crazy. It’ll cut the irrigation. Farmers will lose their land,” Ma’mmar protests. “O Israel, Take away my life; don’t take my land away…” the cry of her heart.

Initiated in 2002 at the height of the second Palestinian Intifadah uprising to protect Israelis, the security barrier of walls and fences encroaches on most of the territory which Palestinians envision as part of their future state.

Israel’s Defence Ministry has been trying to erect the wall in the valley since 2006.

“There’s no reason to build the wall. No Israeli was injured or killed here,” says Battir Mayor Akram Badr.

The villagers petitioned the Supreme Court in Israel to divert the barrier and thus prevent the confiscation of land and destruction of the rich environment and its irrigation system. They gained improbable support from the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, a governmental body.

In May, the court interceded on the villagers’ behalf. It suggested that the Defence Ministry propose “non-physical” alternatives to the wall.

A court decision is pending for December, but alternatives are already in place. Surveillance cameras and sensors are posted on hilltops. Patrol roads crisscross the area. Security vehicles monitor the safe passage of the daily dozen trains.

“We’re optimistic,” says Mustafa ‘Aweinah, a Battiri farmer.

The newfound confidence conjures up the lay of the land in terms of its historical precedent.

The fields stretch beyond the Ottoman-era railway which meanders between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv-Jaffa.

The tracks overlap the 1949 demarcation line, the famed “Green Line” drawn in the Armistice Agreement signed in Rhodes which ended the first Arab-Israeli war. The train hasn’t stopped here since then.

At the time, Hassan Mustafa, a Battiri journalist who’d graduated at the American University in Cairo managed, by ways of persuasion and relations, to extract from Israel an extraordinary concession in the annals of the conflict.

In exchange for their commitment to protect the railway, the farmers retained the right to cultivate their land across the tracks, inside Israel proper.

When Israel captured the West Bank in 1967, the Green Line ceased to prevail. The international community insists it be recognised by Israel as the basis for future borders in the current negotiations with the Palestinian Authority towards a two-state solution.

Thanks to the local hero, Battir’s special status survives to this day. “We stayed on the land by the political wisdom of the late Mustafa,” stresses ‘Aweinah. “His legacy is an attachment to the court case.”

Battir is the exception to Israel’s rule in the West Bank – the only Palestinian village where the Green Line doesn’t exist.

In all 3,000 dunam (300,000m2) – that is, 30 percent of the village land – straddle the Green Line and lie inside Israel. Every other part of Battir falls under either full Israeli control (Area C) or mixed Palestinian administrative/Israeli security control (Area B).

In stark contrast with other planned segments of the barrier where weekly battles pit Palestinian demonstrators against Israeli soldiers, in Battir, farmers cultivate a peaceful form of resistance.

“By promoting ecotourism, the Battiris protect themselves. They compel Israel to guarantee their land,” explains Battir landscape eco-museum director Michel Nasser.

Armed with spades and pitchforks, a delegation of the British Consulate in Jerusalem helps ‘Aweinah plough his plot and plant broad beans.

“We’re here to express our solidarity and contribute to the ecotourism of the place,” serving British consul-general Sir Vincent Fean tells IPS. 

“Our aim is to ensure that, together with the local people, we present a peaceful, economically sound prospect of coexistence. Battir can be a model.”

No stones hurled here. Instead, there are hiking trails designed to explore the area’s pristine beauty; a guest house due to open this month; and the eco-museum inaugurated in February. Thousands of tourists visit Battir over the year.

“A green, environmental, Intifadah,” smiles Badr.

Awaiting the court ruling, the villagers sought to have Battir listed as a World Heritage site recognised by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) which approved Palestine full membership two years ago.

They hoped the nomination would be granted as emergency measure to convince Israel to reroute the barrier.

But in June, the Palestinian Authority renounced pressing ahead with the endeavour so as to respect its commitment to refrain from unilateral moves during the nine months allocated to the peace talks.

The call for prayer echoes across the valley. Ma’mmar’s brother Ibrahim intones his own prayer, “O Land of Battir, where we multiply and live.”

Israel keeps urging the group of six major powers to agree nothing less than a full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear capability. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might have to come to terms with settling for an agreement which, though sustainable, falls short of his longstanding demand.

As the nuclear talks between Iran and the P5+1 group (Britain, China, France, the U.S., Russia and Germany) were under way last week in Geneva, the Israeli prime minister was visiting an armoured regiment on a training exercise along the Israeli-Syrian frontline in the occupied Golan Heights.

“It would be a historic mistake to relieve the pressure on Iran without dismantling its nuclear capability,” he warned. “Iran is currently down. Setting off the sanctions in full force to bring about the desired results is feasible. I urge the international community to do so.”Gone are the days when Netanyahu could threaten Iran by drawing a red line on the quantity of uranium enrichment of 20 percent purity required to produce weapon-grade nuclear material.

The first round of talks ended on a positive note but didn’t seem to heed the Israeli prime minister’s call to maintain – let alone upgrade – sanctions imposed on Iran by Western nations.

“There’s an agreement in principle to go for a gradual approach,” Shlomo Brom, a strategic expert at the Tel Aviv-based Institute for National Security Studies, tells IPS.

“Iran wants a substantial removal of sanctions at the initial stage for only limited concessions; the P5+1 want exactly the opposite. The negotiations will consist in building a wise enough process to play between these two poles.”

Hence the upsurge of insistence from Israeli officials that the P5+1 powers don’t drop their guard, amidst assessments that the negotiators are mulling partial sanctions relief in exchange for Tehran’s willingness to downsize its uranium enrichment programme.

“The greater the pressure on Iran, the greater the chances for diplomacy, so it would be stupid to reduce the sanctions prior to a satisfactory solution,” Israeli Strategic and Intelligence Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz tells IPS.

“Our request, demand, policy and the way we try to convince our allies is, ‘you inflicted effective pressure on Iran; don’t make it collapse’,” Tsahi HaNegbi, a foreign affairs and defence committee legislator close to Netanyahu, tells IPS.

Gone are the days when Netanyahu could threaten Iran by drawing a red line on the quantity of uranium enrichment of 20 percent purity required to produce weapon-grade nuclear material.

Iran limited the quantity of its enriched uranium of 20 percent purity below the 250 kg threshold. “This isn’t the parameter to judge Iran’s nuclear progress,” says Brom.

By installing more than 1,000 advanced centrifuges, Tehran roughly quintupled its ability to enrich uranium from a lower level of purity. The intermediate enrichment level thus became irrelevant.

So did Netanyahu’s red line.

So a year later, at the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu went back to basics, demanding a full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Balancing the fact that Israel isn’t a negotiating party, Netanyahu enhanced his country’s role by striking a tough stance tinted with gloom and doom, and self-righteousness.

“If Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone,” he told the U.N. General Assembly earlier this month. “Yet in standing alone, Israel will know that we’ll be defending many others.”

The nuclear talks resume in a fortnight. A six to 12-month timeframe to conclude a deal is being evoked.

Time is indeed of the essence, stresses HaNegbi: “This timeframe for us is forever. Negotiations with Iran already took over a decade. We already ran out of time. We won’t wait for, say, nine months.”

Heading a delegation of diplomats and defence officials to the U.S., Steinitz isn’t optimistic: “The Iranians can easily reduce enrichment temporarily and then resume it.”

Still, he’s willing to give time a chance. “If in the meantime the Iranian freeze any activity, the timeframe might be reasonable.”

“Cautious Iran won’t provoke the parties during this period,” Brom says. “So whether talks take one or even two years isn’t important – so long as they result in a satisfactory agreement. There’ll be a freeze on additional nuclear progress – but no suspension – and therefore enough time to negotiate.”

Where time is most critical is when Tehran achieves ‘breakout capacity’ – the ability to dash towards a nuclear weapon if it chose, before Israel took pre-emptive action.

Breakout time depends on the number and efficacy of each centrifuge; on the accumulated material’s quantity and quality; and, if Iran expelled the International Atomic Energy Agency monitors, on the length of time from that moment till Iran builds a bomb.

The negotiators must ensure that an agreement includes a set of parameters which allows enough time – the longer the better – to neutralise breakout capacity in such a sustainable way that enables pre-emptive action to stop it, Brom explains.

“Netanyahu won’t get everything he wants. Dismantling Iran’s nuclear programme means a five-year breakout time – precisely the same amount of time it takes for an average state to produce a nuclear weapon from scratch – that won’t happen.

“If there’s an agreement, breakout time will be between a few months and five years,” Brom predicts.

“A compromise resulting in Iran possessing a bomb not in a few months but in two to five years isn’t a great achievement. Meanwhile, the sanctions which took years to establish will have been removed, and renewing them will be impossible,” counters HaNegbi. “There won’t be any leverage left.”

Earlier this month, the Israel Air Force held a long-range drill including air-to-air re-fuelling and dogfights over Greek waters.

It’s an open secret that prominent Israeli military officials and experts cast doubt on the merits of military action on Iran.

A strike would postpone Iran’s progress towards acquiring nuclear capability for only a few years and wouldn’t prevent the process itself, Brom emphasises.

“The purpose is to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. It’s well understood that an agreement is better than a military operation – if you get the same results. Moreover, an agreement is accompanied with assurances of assessment, plus monitoring and verification systems.

“Netanyahu will have no other choice but to accept such agreement,” Brom concludes.

“Does Israel have chemical weapons too?” is the question posed by the U.S. publication Foreign Policy, citing a newly uncovered CIA document from 1983 which alleged that Israel is likely to have developed such weapons. Written ten years after the 1973 war in which Egypt and Syria attacked Israel, the CIA document revealed in Foreign Policy alleged that “Israel undertook a programme of chemical warfare preparations in both offensive and protective areas.” True or not, the report underpins Israel’s doctrine to deter frontline Arab states from attacking it by tilting the balance of power in its favour, Prof. Shlomo Aronson, Israeli weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) scholar at the Hebrew University Jlem tells IPS. “Since the Arab states started to produce chemical weapons, it would be quite natural that Israel has something similar. They have chemical weapons. We must have them as well.” “Syria produced chemical weapons to balance the threat of Israeli nuclear weapons,” Ziad Abu Zayyad, former head of the Palestinian delegation to the Middle East peace talks on Arms Control and Regional Security (1991-1996) tells IPS.“Since the Arab states started to produce chemical weapons, it would be quite natural that Israel has something similar."
“While we cannot confirm whether the Israelis possess lethal chemical agents,” the CIA report said, “several indicators lead us to believe that they have available to them at least persistent and non-persistent nerve agents, a mustard agent, and several riot-control agents, marched with suitable delivery systems.” It’s been known since the early 1970s that chemical tests are conducted at the secretive Israel Institute for Biological Research located in the town of Ness Ziona, 20 km south of Tel Aviv. The secret Intel file identified “a probable chemical weapons nerve agent production facility and a storage facility at the Dimona Sensitive Storage area in the Negev desert,” – that is, in the vicinity of the nuclear research centre where it’s widely assumed that nuclear warheads have been manufactured. Whether Israel retains the alleged chemical stockpile is unknown. Officially, it neither confirms nor denies the existence of a chemical weapons programme – let alone of a nuclear weapons programme – and intentionally shrouds in ambiguity its suspected weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programme, only exhibiting chemical warfare protection drills and gas mask kits distribution centres. Aronson deciphers the Israeli WMD doctrine – “not to admit the existence of WMDs before peace prevails; not taking the Arab people hostage to the behaviour of their leaders; not committing publicly to any red line in the realm of unconventional weapons.” Israel signed the Chemical Weapons Convention (September 1993) which prohibits the production, stockpiling and use of such arms, but never ratified it. If implemented, the convention would endow chemical weapons inspectors with intrusive powers, notes Aronson. “The treaty could allow inspectors in Israel’s facilities, including the nuclear facility.” Abu Zayyad believes that after Syria, Israel should disarm from its chemical weapons. “There should be a linkage,” he tells IPS. “We’re aiming at a WMDs-free Middle East.” Israel rejects any demand to link Syria’s chemical disarmament with a ratification of the Convention that would lead to the dismantlement of the arsenal it reportedly has. “The big difference is Syria, not Israel, uses chemical weapons,” Aronson points out. “Conventional Israel was never accepted. Unconventional Israel was, and is, accepted. Our very survival rests on unconventional weapons.” “Peace is the sole solution to Israel’s security predicament,” counters Abu Zayyad. Israel declines to answer queries by foreign journalists, opting instead for more discreet reactions in the local media. “Some of the countries in the region don’t recognise Israel’s right to exist and blatantly call to annihilate it,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson was quoted in the liberal newspaper Haaretz.” “In this context, the chemical weapons threat against Israel and its civilian population is neither theoretical nor distant,” the official said by way of rationale for not ratifying the Convention. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry flew to Jerusalem to brief Netanyahu about the U.S.-Russian framework agreement on terminating Syria’s chemical weapons the day after it was a done deal. “If we achieve that,” Kerry declared, “We’ll have set a marker for the standard of behaviour with respect to Iran and North Korea.” “The determination the international community shows regarding Syria will have a direct impact on the Syrian regime’s patron Iran,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said to Kerry. “If diplomacy has any chance to work, it must be coupled with a credible military threat.” Netanyahu knows that the U.S., after having precisely adopted such a two-pronged approach on Syria, cannot afford not to back Israel publicly on Iran, even as Tehran is signalling readiness to compromise on its nuclear programme. And for the time being, demands for Israel to disarm from its alleged poison gas arsenal are bound to evaporate into thin air.

The end of the world’s most enduring conflict was always regarded as the essential linchpin of Mideast security. As direct talks between Israelis and Palestinians resume following a three-year hiatus, it seems too late for peace between them – if the declared goal of a peace deal within nine months is achieved – to end the violence unleashed by the ‘Arab springs’.

Since the resumption of the peace negotiations last month, from Lebanon to the north, Syria to the east, and Gaza and Egypt to the south, rockets sporadically target Israel.

As they closely monitor leakages from the civil war in Syria and the perils of civil wars in Egypt and Lebanon, Israelis like to say, somewhat self-righteously, that their country “is a villa in the jungle” and that the two-and-a-half-year Arab turmoil has already taken more lives than the 100-year conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Throughout the Israeli-Arab conflict, Palestine conjured up a raison d’être for the Arab and Islamic world, the banner under which their peoples mobilise. This continued from the war that created Israel (1948) to the Suez Crisis (1956), the Six-Day-War (1967), the 1973 War, and the two Lebanon wars in 1982 and 2006. This, besides the two Palestinian Intifadah uprisings in 1987-1993 and 2000-2005 and countless campaigns against Palestinian groups.

And throughout the quest for peace, from the inception of the peace process at the Madrid Conference (1991), many processes were inaugurated with great pomp – at the White House, in Camp David, Taba, Sharm el-Sheikh, Annapolis, now again in Washington.

Peace treaties were signed between Israel and Egypt (1979) and between Israel and Jordan (1994).

But the numerous agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinians – the Oslo Accords (1993), the Cairo agreement (1994), the Wye River Memorandum (1998), the Roadmap for Peace (2003) – were never fully implemented.

Until recently, the region still lived to the beat of periods of tension and quiet, of conflict and conflict resolution between Israel and the Palestinians.

Hence, during Israel’s operation Pillars of Defence against the Islamic resistance movement Hamas in Gaza last November, the U.S., the U.N., Egypt and Qatar (to name a few) were involved in negotiating a ceasefire.

Common wisdom had it that the resolution of ‘the mother of all conflicts’ would contribute greatly to regional stability and appeasement.

Nowadays it’s the other way around. The international community fears that the winds and fires of the ‘Arab springs’ will trigger instability in Israel and the occupied territories.

For their part, Israelis and Palestinians seem to worry more about what surrounds them than what divides them, as if they were protected under the eye of the cyclone blowing on their turbulent region.

Both Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas share the same concern. Both stress that the Arab upheavals are a key motivation for engaging in peace talks now.

Though the conflict isn’t the source of the ‘Arab springs’, it’s still a unifying dimension of the Arab condition. A sovereign independent Palestine remains an elemental Arab demand, side by side with the demand for democracy, respect for human rights, and social justice.

For years, the status of the U.S. in the region was largely dependent on its administration’s ability to act as an “honest broker” between Israelis and Palestinians.

These days, the U.S. role is judged as to its administration’s capacity to stop the carnage in Syria and to influence the Egyptian military to proceed with its promised roadmap for a return to democracy.

The multiple crises which plague the Middle East – notwithstanding the great issue of a nuclear Iran – certainly factored in the U.S. decision to prod Israel and the Palestinians to finally agree to renew the peace process.

The U.S. hopes that resumption of talks will demonstrate the effectiveness of its Mideast diplomacy, given that President Barack Obama until now has given priority to mediation, containment and crisis management over military intervention. The killing of three Palestinians in a West Bank confrontation on Monday cannot have helped continuation of the talks.

Whether this expectation is confirmed or not, it definitely shows that the U.S. still believes that a resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict could impact positively on the region as a whole.

But the current peace endeavour is both a historical mission and mission impossible.

The Palestinians (supported by the U.S.) have long insisted that a two-state solution be based on the ‘Green Line’ which marks the ceasefire line with the territories occupied by Israel in the wake of the Six-Day War.

Yet until now, the demand is, at least outwardly, rejected by Netanyahu.

In the past, Israel agreed to negotiate the five core issues at the heart of the conflict – Jerusalem, settlements, borders and security, refugees and water – on the basis of the Green Line.

This time, Abbas had to reconcile with Netanyahu’s stance that nothing is agreed upon as long as nothing is agreed upon by Netanyahu himself, and thus the talks are held without preconditions, from a maximalist Israeli standpoint.

The situation on the ground is no less challenging.

About 400,000-500,000 Israelis live in settlements on territories which the Palestinians envision as part of their future state. And as the talks were under way, Israel pledged to build over 2,000 settlement homes.

Besides, a two-state solution would have to take into account not only a re-partition of historical Palestine but the fact that Israel actually negotiates with only part of the Palestinians, those who live in the West Bank under Palestinian Authority rule. Hamas, Abbas’s nemesis in control of the Gaza Strip since 2007, opposes a two-state solution.

So the chances of a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians or, alternatively, of an interim agreement on a Palestinian state with provisional borders recognised by Israel and the U.S., are slim.

And though it appears that the old conflict pales in comparison to the bloodletting in Syria and Egypt, whether its resolution has an appeasing influence on the region and on the Iranian nuclear crisis will be determined by the substance of the agreement itself, either final or interim, especially with regard to how the Green Line factors.

Tzion Swery at a makeshift memorial to his lost children. Courtesy: Pierre Klochendler

By Pierre Klochendler
TEL AVIV, Aug 12 2013 (IPS)

Standing in front of the makeshift memorial corner of his deceased children that he arranged in the room , Tzion Swery says to himself, “How ironical that we mark the 12th anniversary of their death on Tuesday just as Israel starts releasing Palestinian prisoners.”

The Israeli government’s decision, starting Tuesday, to free 104 long-serving Palestinian and Palestinian-Israeli prisoners, whom it calls “terrorists” because they took part in attacks which killed Israelis, coincides with the resumption of peace talks, revived after a three-year hiatus.

The phased release of prisoners sentenced for life prior to the Oslo Accords of September 1993 was approved a fortnight ago, to the dismay of the victims’ families.

In the historic agreement signed 20 years ago by former prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and former Palestine Liberation Organisation chairman Yasser Arafat, both Israel and the PLO agreed to “recognise their mutual legitimate and political rights” and negotiate a two-state solution to their conflict. The accords never materialised into a final peace agreement.“Only god can forgive. I won’t forgive the murderers of my son... Yet I’m ready to compromise, to reconcile, to open a new page.” -- Yitzhak Frankenthal, bereaved father of a soldier

The newly-resumed talks intend on finishing what the Oslo Accords started. Following the release of a first batch of 26 veteran prisoners, a second round of negotiations will begin on Wednesday in Jerusalem and in the West Bank town Jericho.

The rest of the 104 prisoners will be set free in three additional stages, conditional on progress made during the nine months allocated for the talks which officially began in Washington Jul. 30.

“We put our trust in the political and judicial systems that these murderers never see the light of day,” protests Swery. “Releasing them is as if they killed our children twice.”

Swery has been in mourning for the past 12 years. In August 2001, at the height of the second Palestinian Intifadah uprising, his son Doron, his daughter Sharon and his son-in-law Yaniv Ben-Shalom were killed in a drive-by shooting on an occupied West Bank road.

His granddaughters Shahar and Efrat, then three months and one year old, survived the attack. His daughter, their mother, protected them with her body. The perpetrators were caught and sentenced to consecutive life imprisonments.

The men convicted of killing his family are not listed for release.

Not all parents think as Swery does. “Arik was 19 years old, a lovely boy who smiled all the time,” said Yitzhak Frankenthal, bereaved father of a soldier.

Arik Frankenthal was kidnapped and killed by Hamas militants while hitchhiking his way home from his base in July 1994.

Nineteen years on, still coping with the loss of his son, Frankenthal leads an organisation of Israeli and Palestinian bereaved parents determined to work together for the sake of reconciliation, tolerance and peace.

“We need to overcome the psychological barriers of fear, hatred, mistrust, ignorance, and to push both governments to make peace,” he says. 

“If the same people who sent these prisoners against Israel now talk with Israel, the prisoners shouldn’t continue to be in jail,” former Palestinian peace negotiator Ziad Abu Zayyad tells IPS.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, more than 6,000 Palestinians are currently in Israeli jails. They represent one of the most painful issues of the conflict, not only for Israelis.

“Each prisoner has also a family, a community, and many people are involved emotionally,” Abu Zayyad points out.

For the Palestinians, they are “freedom fighters” resisting the Israeli occupation – for them, the worst form of terror. Their release is a long-standing demand.

“This cycle of bloodshed must stop. Releasing prisoners gives a signal to the Palestinian people that the Israeli government is serious, and thus helps create a better climate for the negotiations,” stresses Abu Zayyad.

The issue pits not just Palestinians against Israelis but Israeli families against one another.

“If releasing murderers is a condition for peace, then this isn’t peace at all,” objects Swery.

“I lost Arik precisely because there’s no peace between us and the Palestinians,” says Frankenthal.

“Unfortunately, the only language that we Israelis understand is the language of force, of power,” Frankenthal adds. “If there’s no terror, no need to talk with the Palestinians; if there’s terror, why want to talk. It’s a catch 22 situation.”

Frankenthal points at the powerful solidarity campaign organised by segments of Israel’s civil society for the release of soldier Gilad Shalit who was abducted in 2006 by the Islamist resistance movement Hamas.

After more than five years in captivity, Shalit was exchanged for more than 1,000 prisoners.

“Palestinians who fight soldiers are real soldiers. Releasing them is legitimate,” acknowledges Swery, “Just like when armies exchange prisoners. But these particular prisoners are murderers.”

The prisoners who will be released in four batches starting Tuesday took part in attacks that killed Israelis prior to the Oslo Accords in 1993.

“What’s the difference between a Palestinian fighter – in our point of view a terrorist – who puts a bomb in a cafe and kills 10-15 people, and an Israeli pilot who bombs Gaza City and kills 10-15 Palestinians?” retorts Frankenthal.

Whether they are “terrorists with blood on their hands” or “freedom fighters” or both, Palestinian prisoners conjure up all the elemental emotions which Israelis and Palestinians grapple with in their inextricable conflict – fear and blame, hatred and revenge, crime and punishment, loss and grief.

Whether terror is inflicted by Palestinians or by the Israeli occupation, neither side can forgive or forget – even the most committed peace lovers.

“Only god can forgive,” says Frankenthal in a murmur. “I won’t forgive the murderers of my son. They’d bring my son back, I’d forgive them. Yet I’m ready to compromise, to reconcile, to open a new page.”

A settlement construction in Ariel in the Occupied West Bank. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Aug 6 2013 (IPS)

The fresh Palestinian-Israeli peace drive stems from the realisation by all parties involved in the process that diplomatic isolation constitutes a strategic threat to Israel. This isolation whip will be held above Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s back for as long as it takes for him to agree to the pre-1967 lines as basis for the end of the 46-year occupation.

In the absence of such commitment from Netanyahu, what has paved the way for a resumption of peace talks after a five-year hiatus is the Israeli cabinet’s approval of the release of 104 veteran Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for more than 20 years, plus an unofficial and partial settlement freeze.

The Israeli media reported that Netanyahu committed to U.S. Secretary of State Jim Kerry to limit the issuing of building tenders to 1,000 housing units in the settlement blocs during the nine-month period allocated to the peace talks. But no tender has been issued.

His defence minister, Moshe Ya’alon, referred in the Israeli media to “many strategic considerations, which may be revealed in the future” as catalyst for Israel’s tactical decisions.

What are those hidden strategic considerations?

On one hand, Netanyahu fears that in absence of progress on the peace front, the U.S. will be reluctant to provide diplomatic or military support to Israeli aerial strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites, if he decides to order such strikes.

Even if he refrains from doing so but, at the same time, refrains from negotiating seriously with the Palestinians, Israel might not have a say in the international management of the Iran nuclear crisis.

It might also find it harder to have Israel’s position on the Syrian civil war, or on the risk of an Egyptian civil war, taken into consideration internationally were it to be held responsible for a lack of progress in peacemaking.

On the other hand, it would be extremely difficult for the U.S. and the European Union (the members closest to Israel within the Quartet for Mideast Peace which also comprises the United Nations and Russia) to convince their Arab allies that they’re powerful enough to manage the crisis in Syria and Egypt, and with Iran, if they are powerless vis-à-vis Israel.

In that case, a military intervention on Iran’s nuclear installations – be it a U.S. attack or an Israeli one with or without U.S. acquiescence – would be vilified, and not only by the Arab world. It would also harm Washington’s Mideast interests.

Other elements affect Israel’s strategic thinking.

Though it had already become clear that Kerry succeeded in jumpstarting the peace process, the EU nonetheless decided to divulge new guidelines requiring from its 28-nation bloc a coordinated treatment of future funding and cooperation agreements with Israeli entities.

Notwithstanding various European Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment (BDS) actions, the new directives, to be effective in 2014 instruct the EU member-states to ban agreements with Israeli organisations or individuals operating beyond the pre-1967 lines.

Israel will be required to sign on any such future agreement that the beneficiary respects the new guidelines.

Such stamp of approval of the EU stance that Israel’s claim of sovereignty over the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is illegitimate is of course adamantly rejected by Netanyahu.

There are now five months until the beginning of 2014 for Israel to show progress at the negotiating table, and to negotiate better terms of implementation of future agreements with the EU.

Another Israeli consideration is the threat of yet another reproving fall at the U.N. General Assembly annual meeting.

For the past two years, both the UNGA and the U.N. Security Council have been grappling with Palestinian bid for recognition of statehood. In 2011, the bid was postponed, yet bounced back the following fall.

In 2012, the 193-member assembly voted overwhelmingly to upgrade Palestine from “non-member observer entity” to a “non-member observer state”. The conferred legitimacy entitles Palestine to join international institutions such as the International Criminal Court.

In such case, Palestine would be empowered to launch criminal procedures against Jewish settlements or against any Israeli military assault, on the Gaza Strip for instance.

Though Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas succumbed to joint U.S.-Israeli pressure and put his statehood offensive on hold, by and large, the more Palestine’s status and legitimacy is enhanced internationally, the more Israel’s status and legitimacy is deteriorating.

Come September, and Netanyahu understood that he would stand powerless against anti-Israel initiatives at the U.N.

It’s now sinking in amongst Israeli decision-makers that it’s not the Palestinians who constitute a strategic threat to Israel, but the stalemate with them.

Hence, upon arriving to the U.S. on Monday for the official opening of the peace talks, the Israeli negotiating team went first to meet U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

The purpose of the meeting was not only to brief Ban Ki-moon about the resumption of the negotiations but, more importantly, to ensure that the U.N. will support the talks and, subsequently, will prevent any further unilateral initiatives against Israel during the process.

With all the scepticism and pessimism heard in the region, there’s a historical parallel to Israel’s sudden infatuation with peace.

Former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s military and civilian disengagement from Gaza exactly eight years ago this summer was triggered by threats of diplomatic isolation.

A huge Damocles Sword is hanged over Israel’s head as the world is sick of Israel’s occupation.

Israel’s status depends now on the international community’s appreciation of the vicissitudes of the process, and judgment of the progress made by Israel in the painful quest for a final agreement.

The accumulation of diplomatic isolation on Israel is what may finally give peace its best chance.

Abed Khatout (left) from the Arab-Israeli band Khalas and Koby Farhi (second from left) from the Jewish band Orphaned Land with musicians in Tel Aviv ahead of joint concerts in Europe. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
TEL AVIV, Jul 28 2013 (IPS)

Two heavy metal bands, the Israeli-Arab Khalas (‘enough,’ in Arabic) and the Orphaned Land, a Jewish band, performed simultaneously this week under the roof of Club Hangar 13 in the refurbished port of Tel Aviv. The bands are slated to play together this fall in a series of 18 gigs across Europe.

Though the artistic cooperation is hailed as a major breakthrough – it’s quite rare that a Jewish band plays along with an Arab band even if it is an Israel-Arab one – both bands would rather play their heavy metal Rock’n’Roll with a musical twist than play the strings of their conflicting identity.

Abed Khathout, bass guitar player and leader of the Israeli-Arab band, is from Acre in northern Israel. He made sure to downplay expectations during a rehearsal. “We’re metal brothers before anything else. Music is what connects us.”

The ‘disconnect’ is actually with Khalas’s Palestinian brethren from the occupied territories who argue that musical ventures portrayed as coexistence projects condone the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

“Cultivating brotherhood, sharing the stage shows that rock music is above politics,” stressed Koby Farhi, leader of the Jewish band, and lead singer.

Orphaned Land music is a mix of New Age beat. Their lyrics conjure up prophetic peace amongst religions.

Khalas musicians are Israelis of Palestinian descent. They define themselves as Palestinians. Yet how they define themselves is challenged by how others define them.

“We were supposed to have a gig in November in Egypt. One week before the tour, we got cancelled. Well, we have Israeli passports,” said Khathout.

Their beat is imbued in the hafla (party) Cairo style. During their show, they suitably sang Alf Leila wa Leila, (A Thousand Nights), a hit from the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum.

Orphaned Land has performed in Turkey and boasts it is “popular in the Arab world.” The confusion between Turkish and Arab identities is common in Israel due to the Islamic roots of both Turks and Arabs.

But Orphaned Land is persona non grata in the Arab world. Their undesirable status stems from their Jewish origin.

The musical score played by the two bands has one underlying refrain – music is without borders. Yet, as borders are a core issue of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, politics takes the lead, and in the final analysis, where you live is who you are.

One in five Israelis is an Arab of Palestinian descent. Indeed, most regard themselves as Palestinians, or as “Israeli Palestinians”. Most Israeli Jews define them as “Israeli Arabs”. Right-wing Israel Jews see them as a ‘fifth column’.

Most Palestinians call them the “1948 Arabs” for remaining in the nascent Jewish state during the troubled times.

When Israel fought its war of independence in 1948-9, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to become refugees. Many amongst those who remained inside Israel were displaced as “internal refugees”.

For the Palestinians, Israel’s war of independence is the Great Catastrophe, or Naqba.

Farhi made every possible effort to emphasise the spirit of togetherness. “Tonight is the second time we play together – Orphaned Land and Khalas, as Israelis and Arabs,” he said.

But of course both bands are Israeli. The fact is many Israeli Jews, for whom being Jewish and Israeli is almost the same thing, almost unconsciously refer to their Arab compatriots as just Arabs.

And it seemed to suit the Arab band not to be branded as Israeli. It’s not easy to live as part of a minority caught in a war between their people (the Palestinians) and their country (Israel).

“We hate it when everyone expects us to sing about the occupation just for being Palestinians,” said Khathout.

Palestinians from the West Bank and East Jerusalem might disagree. Since the second Intifadah uprising (2000-2005), they’ve been maintaining a cultural boycott of Israel in protest against the occupation.The ‘disconnect’ is actually with Khalas’s Palestinian brethren from the occupied territories who argue that musical ventures portrayed as coexistence projects condone the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In any case, the strict closures enforced in the West Bank by way of checkpoints, special roads reserved for the settler population, fences and separation walls, don’t help cultural exchanges.

Restriction of movement is being eased during the Muslim holy month Ramadan. The elderly faithful from the West Bank are temporarily allowed to pray at the Haram es-Sharif, Islam’s third holiest shrine, which stands inside Jerusalem’s walled Old City.

The easing of the closure is probably because there are peace talks in the offing.

Apart from the core issue of borders, national identity is a major stumbling block. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that Israel be recognised by the Palestinians as a “Jewish state”. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is opposed to agreeing to such definition of Israel for it would ignore Israel’s large Palestinian minority.

In Gaza, ever since the Islamic Resistance Movement Hamas’s takeover (2007) and the ensuing Israeli siege, artists such as Arab Idol Mohammad Assaf are barred from entering Israel.

The European Union recently announced that, effective 2014, its 28 member-states would be required to differentiate between Israel proper and Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem in all cooperation and funding agreements.

For most Israeli Jews, the 200,000 inhabitants who live in East Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhood aren’t settlers; they’re “Jerusalem residents” and, of course, Israelis.

The 400,000 settlers who live in the West Bank define themselves simply as Israelis.

For the EU and many countries who don’t recognise Israel’s legitimacy in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Israelis who live there define their identity by imposition rather than by recognition.

“I’m strongly against boycotts,” declared Farhi. “The purpose of art is harmony and coexistence precisely in places of disharmony.”

Orphaned Land and Khalas have a modest dream – “to share a bus together” during their grand tour of Europe.

A new neighbourhood under construction in Ariel settlement. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
ARIEL, Occupied West Bank, Jul 19 2013 (IPS)

As the European Union delegitimises the settlement enterprise further by officially announcing that, effective Jul. 30, its 28 member states are required to differentiate between pre-1967 Israel and Israeli-occupied territories, Israelis supportive of a two-state solution vigorously lead their own boycott campaign against Ariel, a settlement town of 20,000.

The fresh EU directive bars funding or cooperation with settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Future agreements with Israel will stipulate that the settlements are not part of Israel, and thus will not benefit from these agreements.

Last month, Mc Donald’s-Israel declined to open an eatery in the first mall to be built in Ariel. With over 170 branches in the country, of which some 40 are kosher, the fast food chain’s franchise is owned by Omri Padan, a founder of Peace Now.

The activist group’s chairman, Yariv Openheimer, qualifies both decisions as “moral and legitimate”.

“The Israeli government is fighting a lost battle against a worldwide understanding that the occupation must end,” Openheimer tells IPS. “Israel can force neither individuals and companies nor diplomats to participate in settlements activities.”

How is the campaign perceived in Ariel?

Having just completed a four-day infantry exercise in the area, conscripts leave a pile of assault rifles on the lawn of the municipal pool and line up in front of the barbecue grill.

“That’s an Ariel burger,” jokes a soldier at the thought that the fast food chain spoiled their chance for a Big Mac delight.

“We’re against any boycott,” declares Ariel Mayor Eliyahu Shaviro. The Council of Jewish Communities of Judea and Samaria, the settlements umbrella organisation in the West Bank, demands that “all European projects (for Palestinians) be stopped until the unilateral EU decision is rescinded.”

“These are not boycotts against Israel,” Openheimer cautions. “Many Israelis also disagree with the settlements enterprise and don’t buy their goods, especially since peace talks hit a dead end (in 2010).”

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement appeals very little to pro-peace Israelis who suspect the initiative is not directed only at settlements but against Israel proper.

Ariel is the one settlements targeted by the Israel boycott campaign.

In 2011, 145 academics opposed to settlement expansion announced their boycott of Ariel College with its 18,500 students and staff – to no avail. Six months ago, the government officially recognised the college as a fully accredited university.

Several actors, authors and directors refuse to work at the town’s Centre for the Performing Arts inaugurated three years ago.

Many companies, including Barkan Winery, Multilock, Bagel-Bagel, all of whom exported goods manufactured in the Barkan industrial zone near Ariel, Israel’s largest in the West Bank, have relocated their factories.

“Arabs might return to a cycle of violence if they’re unemployed,” warns Shaviro. “We mustn’t harm education, culture or businesses. We’ve got to preserve coexistence and the fabric of life here.”

“The settlers take advantage of cheap Palestinian labour force with barely any rights,” counters Openheimer. “They reap hefty revenues from the flawed political situation.”

But why boycott Ariel and not other settlements?

“Ariel’s residents aren’t ideological settlers, just ordinary Israelis who moved there for cheaper housing,” says Openheimer.

“The settlers invest lots of energy to create a symbol of normalcy, as if Ariel resembled Tel Aviv. Thus most Israelis feel that the settlements are in Israel, which they’re not, and the boycott tells them that.”

“The state sent us here. We’re deep in the heart of the national consensus,” Shaviro tells IPS. “Whoever refuses to visit Ariel, we’re fine without him.”

In return for former prime minister Ariel Sharon’s decision to unilaterally withdraw soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip eight years ago this month, former U.S. President George W. Bush stated in a letter the following:

“In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centres, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return” to the pre-1967 lines.

The oblique reference to “major population centres” meant that within a two-state solution, the U.S. would eventually consent to the annexation by Israel of east Jerusalem’s Jewish neighbourhoods and of four settlement blocs – including Ariel.

If attached to Israel, the ‘Ariel finger’ would be just that – a finger stuck in the midst of a future Palestinian state, almost dividing it in two subdivisions while being surrounded by it.

A 20-minute drive on Highway 5 exemplifies the finger-like link between Ariel and Israel. The road is insulated by fences.

“The people who built Ariel (in 1978) knew they had the power to prevent a Palestinian state,” reckons Openheimer.

President Barack Obama never endorsed the Bush Letter to the letter, declaring instead in 2011 that “the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed (territorial) swaps”, without referring to settlement blocs.

“There’s a wide national agreement that Ariel is part and parcel of Israel, with or without peace,” claims Shaviro.

When the ten-month settlement freeze ended in 2010, a building project broke ground in Ariel, which now materialises as a cottage neighbourhood with a view.

In all, 650 housing units are currently under construction. The university is putting the final touch on a new library edifice and expanding the campus. There’s a building boom in the air. But it might be short-lived.

“Not a single building permit has been allocated for a whole year,” the mayor says. “I expect the government to expand settlements.”

U.S. Secretary of State Jim Kerry, engaged in a sixth round of Mideast shuttle diplomacy, hopes to bring Israel and the Palestinian Authority back to the negotiation table before September.

Meanwhile, the soldiers enjoy a splashing moment at the pool with a water war game. The municipal host knows it – their guests are more at the heart of national legitimacy than his settlement.

For Israel, what must be exercised in the volatile struggle for power and democracy in Egypt are, above everything else, three follow-on principles: stability within its institutions, particularly the armed forces; security in the Sinai Peninsula and the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, which both border Israel; and peace with Israel itself.

Following the overthrow of President Mohammed Morsi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prudently instructed Israeli officials to lock themselves in silent diplomacy, lest public statements, comments or debates be misinterpreted as meddling in internal Egyptian affairs.

Israeli security officials fear a weakening of Egyptian law and order could upset the relative quiet prevailing both in the Sinai desert and on the Gaza front.

When Morsi won the presidential race a year ago, Israelis assumed Cairo would quickly transform into some Sunni version of Tehran in cahoots with the Islamist resistance movement Hamas in Gaza.

In retrospect, Morsi was good for Israel, even better than Mubarak. He threatened to amend the 1979 peace treaty, but under United States pressure, respected it.

Refusing to have any dealings with Israel, he delegated his security prerogatives to the military establishment – which would eventually depose him.

In the meantime, the military, Israel’s sole contact with Cairo, managed the cold peace status quo between the two countries well. Security cooperation and coordination between the two neighbours was never so tight.

The Egyptian “big brother” presided over Palestinian brothers in Gaza. In some sort of post mortem acknowledgement, Israeli commentators are quick to point out that during Morsi’s one-year tenure, Gaza was quieter than ever.

The numbers speak for themselves. In the first six months following Operation Pillar of Defence (November 2012), only 24 rockets were launched on southern Israel, in sharp contrast with the 171 rockets that rained on Israel during the parallel period after Operation Cast Lead (December 2008-January 2009).

Morsi’s administration wasn’t just instrumental in brokering a ceasefire during Israel’s most recent onslaught on Gaza but also responsible for monitoring its implementation. With prodding from Egypt, Hamas’s own security units reined in cross-border attacks.

When Islamic Jihad guerrillas fired rockets on Israel’s Negev desert only a fortnight ago, Egypt, still under Morsi, effectively prevented a potential escalation.

Precisely because of his Islamic credentials, Morsi did what his anti-Islamic predecessor never dared do in Gaza.

The Egyptian military intensified its campaign against tunnels used by militants to infiltrate activists to Sinai and to smuggle weapons, food and other goods to the Palestinian territory otherwise asphyxiated under the double-barrelled Egyptian-Israeli blockade.

In parallel with the construction of the security wall by Israel, the Egyptian army made sustainable efforts in Sinai at both blocking African migrants and smugglers, and acting against global Jihadist and other Islamist militants.

In the midst of last week’s political climax, it was widely reported in the local media that Israel agreed to allow additional Egyptian forces police the area of northern Sinai which abuts the Gaza Strip.

According to the peace accord, any Egyptian military reinforcement in the demilitarised zone is conditional to Israel’s green light.

During last week’s turmoil, the only gunfire heard by Israeli soldiers patrolling the area adjacent to the Egyptian side of the border was that of celebrations at Morsi’s destitution.

But for the last couple of days, the Sinai has been witnessing a resurgence of incidents. On Friday, two days after Morsi’s removal from power, militants attacked a police station in Rafah as well as army checkpoints protecting the al-Arish airport, both near Gaza, resulting in six Egyptian soldiers killed in the separate incidents.

Consequently, the Rafah border crossing to and from Gaza is closed until further notice. That does not bode well for Hamas’s already embattled status.

On Sunday, for the first time in a year, an explosion hit the pipeline conveying natural gas to Jordan.

At this critical juncture, Israel’s supreme interest boils down to letting the regime – any regime, be it military or civilian, religious or secular – win over the hearts and minds of the Egyptian people so that stability is restored in Egypt, and beyond.

Ultra-Orthodox worshipper Jenny Menashe argues with Rabbi Nahum Weiss. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Jun 12 2013 (IPS)

The struggle for gender equality and Jewish pluralism took a highly symbolic turn on Sunday at the Western Wall, Judaism’s most revered site and emblem of unity, as a group of women known as “Women of the Wall” prayed legally and in a way they saw fit.

For 24 years, the Women of the Wall, a Jewish feminist group, have demanded the right to carry and read aloud the Holy Book of Judaism at the Western Wall (“Kotel”, in Hebrew) while wrapping themselves in prayer shawls, donning phylacteries and wearing skullcaps.

According to the Jewish Orthodox Law, only men may don the Tallith, the Tefilin and the Kippa and read the Torah aloud while praying during religious ceremonies. As such, the women’s demand is anathema to Jewish Orthodoxy, Israel’s prevailing stream of Judaism.

The conservatives, reformist, progressive and liberal movements with which the Women of the Wall are affiliated, though prominent in the United States, are a minority in Israel.

The Kotel’s esplanade on Sunday resembled a fortified battlefield, with two opposing camps deeply divided on religious duties and gender rights readying themselves for yet another showdown."It's a shame we're relegated to pray like lepers."
-- Ya'ara Nissan

Approximately 300 women, who intended to mark the first day of the Jewish month of Tamuz in full regalia, fought their way through a crowd of similar size of infuriated ultra-Orthodox men.

“These women want to tear Judaism apart. Secular Jews wouldn’t dare falsifying the word of God, but these women, they change Judaism from within,” warned Nahum Weiss, rebbe of a Talmudic school.

Hundreds of police officers – at least two per woman – were deployed between the two camps to prevent the violence that characterised the previous monthly prayer, when Yeshiva boys and seminary girls hurled garbage, diapers and eggs at the Women of the Wall.

This time, men let loose a flood of abusive invectives against the women: “Go pray with the Muslims!”; “Go home to America!”; and “You don’t belong here!”

Jenny Menashe, from the group Women for the Wall, the Women of the Wall’s Orthodox alter ego and whose motto is “preserving the sanctity of the wall”, called on fellow male coreligionists to “allow women to handle these women”.

Placards read, “You make up a new religion, built a new wall!” The group Women of the Wall responded with an Orthodox Hassidic hymn, “The whole world is a narrow bridge; above all, don’t be afraid.”

Policewomen escorted the women to the Kotel’s female section, where they were kept behind barriers to avoid further conflict with Orthodox worshippers. A prayer-like lamentation arouse from the male section to cover the women’s prayers. To practice their faith at the Kotel, men have at their disposal a space twice as large as the women’s.

“It’s a shame we’re relegated to pray like lepers,” deplored Ya’ara Nissan, “It shows what happen to women when they get out of the kitchen.”

A turning point

Two months ago, as if abiding by Orthodox edicts, the police would arrest women for praying at the Kotel in their own way. But on Apr. 25, the Women of the Wall won a historic victory in the long struggle for recognition of their practises and against the Orthodox authorities in charge of prayer rules at the holy site.

Judging that their unorthodox behaviour does not disturb the peace and that, on the contrary, ultra-Orthodox Jews are those who cause disorder, the Jerusalem District Court ruled that the Women of the Wall could pray at the wall.

Judge Moshe Sobel, an Orthodox Jew himself, wrote in his decision that the Women of the Wall’s practices constitute neither a violation of “local custom” nor a provocation.

The court also ruled out police interpretations of a previous Supreme Court ruling from 2003, stating that women are neither forbidden from holding their own prayer services at the Kotel nor required instead to congregate at the nearby Robinson’s Arch.

“Today the Women of the Wall liberated the Western Wall for the entire Jewish people,” clamoured Anat Hoffman, the organisation’s chairwoman.

In response to the court ruling, Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz protested, “I implore the authorities as well as the silent majority who care deeply for the Kotel to prevent extremists from turning it into a site of antagonism between brothers.”

On Sunday, the ultra-Orthodox rabbis called for married and seasoned men to demonstrate their opposition to the Women of the Wall, instructing the hot-tempered single pupils to remain in their Talmudic schools, so as not to turn the protest into yet another unmannerly and disgraceful brawl.

But instead of the thousands expected, only hundreds answered the call.

By and large, the prayer service was peaceful. A few eggs landed at the feet of the Women of the Wall’s male supporters. “They planned a demonstration of force and demonstrated their weakness,” noted one.

“They’re getting used to us,” Hoffman observed cautiously. “The Kotel is a place for all communities and streams of Judaism,” declared spokeswoman Shira Preuce, adding, “The Orthodox Rabbinate fears women empowerment, fears changes.”

A shifting political balance

Indeed, Orthodox Judaism is gradually losing power in Israel.

The political landscape is now such that the Orthodox lobby at the Knesset is unusually weak, and ultra-Orthodox legislators sit in the opposition with liberal, progressive and Arab parties. The relationship between state and synagogue is now shifting in favour of more progressive Jewish currents.

A draft conscription law could break the ultra-orthodox Jews’ longstanding exemption from serving in the Israeli army, while non-Orthodox rabbis now receive state salaries and Jewish Israelis are allowed to marry under any rabbinical council within Israel.

Majda el-Batsch on her rooftop with the Dome of the Rock in the background. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
OCCUPIED EAST JERUSALEM, Jun 5 2013 (IPS)

Majda el-Batsch was eight years old in June 1967 when she heard about the war that year. “I didn’t know what war meant,” she recalled. More than four decades later, the Palestinian reporter is still grappling with the meaning of what is known as the Six-Day War.

Yaki Chetz is 68 now, but in a way he remains a 21-year-old Israel paratrooper locked in a war whose outcome remains unresolved. From an old Jordanian bunker, he demonstrates a close combat situation accompanied by a battle cry: “You’re the enemy!”

Yaki Chetz, in a former Jordanian trench on Ammunition Hill, remembers the 1967 war well. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

Chetz and el-Batsch don’t know each other – Chetz fought in the war, while el-Batsch lived through it – but both offer clear examples of how people still hark back to a war that left an indelible mark on Israelis, Palestinians and the region around them.

On June 5, 1967, Israel launched a pre-emptive war against Arab armies amassed on its border. Within six days it had captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip (from which it withdrew unilaterally in 2005), the Sinai desert (which it returned to Egypt in exchange for a peace treaty signed in 1979), and Syria’s Golan Heights.

“We listened to the radio. Men painted windows in dark blue; women made bread,” el-Batsch recalled of the war. From her rooftop of her family’s house in the Muslim quarter of the walled Old City, one can scope out the lay of the land – Israeli flags; Al-Aqsa mosque, holy to Muslims; the Dome of the Rock holy to both Jews and Muslims; and the Western Wall revered by Jews.

El-Batsch can escape neither history nor her memories, such as her recollection of a heartening rumour that circulated among and gripped Palestinians trapped in the Old City at the beginning of the war. “‘The Iraqi army has come to save us,'” el-Batsch recalled people saying."No power that dominates other peoples lasts forever."
-- Majda el-Batsch

For Chetz, Jerusalem evoked a different sentiment. “Religious people nurtured feelings towards Jerusalem, but for us, soldiers, Jerusalem was just a border town,” he said.

Wanting Jerusalem

Following Israel’s war of independence in 1948, East Jerusalem – including the Old City – was conquered and annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The nascent Jewish state instated the city’s western sector as its capital, a situation that prevailed for two decades.

But on June 6, 1967, a battalion of Israeli paratroopers was assigned the mission to take over a strategic hillock dominating the no man’s land dividing Jerusalem. “The mission was Ammunition Hill – not Jerusalem, not the Old City,” Chetz emphasised.

After five hours of hand-to-hand combat, 105 Jordanians and 35 Israelis had died on the hill, 18 of them from Chetz’s platoon.

“I was so fearful,” Chetz remembered. “The Jordanians were waiting to kill us. I thought, ‘I’ve got only five metres to live.’ It was sheer survival. So many soldiers, friends killed. I felt desperate. I didn’t think about Jerusalem.”

As one of the last survivors of his platoon, Chetz became an accidental hero of the quasi-battle that sealed Jerusalem’s fate. By the time Israeli paratroopers entered the Old City, Jordanian defences of East Jerusalem had already been broken following the battle for Ammunition Hill, and so little fighting took place. “We entered the Old City without firing a shot,” Chetz recalled.

For the Palestinians, so great had been their confidence in victory that the shock of defeat was even greater.

“I remember my older sister telling us she’d seen an Israeli soldier, and the neighbours calling her a liar,” el-Batsch remembered. “[Palestinians] had heard the Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, preparing them for triumph. They couldn’t accept being defeated twice – the catastrophe of 1948 and in 1967.”

So deep was the Israelis’ certainty of their annihilation, on the other hand, that the surprise of their military triumph aroused national elation, except amongst those to whom Israel owed its victory.

“We prayed at the Western Wall but, really, I felt terrible,” Chetz related.

It’s a sentiment echoed by el-Batsch. “People were in shock,” she noted, adding, “The Israelis were drunk with victory, exhibiting their tanks and warplanes.”

Two generations later, Israeli seventh graders sing a patriotic hymn that glorifies Chetz and his comrades’ self-abnegation, while the old battlefield has become a shrine that schoolchildren and conscripts visit to pledge their growing commitment to Jerusalem, according to Chetz.

He hailed a group of visiting soldiers, asking “What is Jerusalem for you?” The soldiers responded in unison, “Praise you, O Jerusalem, Israel’s capital for eternity! We honour thee, people of Israel!”

“They’ll fight for Jerusalem,” Chetz concluded.

Hoping for peace

Chetz and el-Batsch live parallel lives with opposing expectations that do not intersect and probably never well.

“Jews can celebrate their traditions, but we, Christians, Muslims, must have a permit to reach our places of prayer,” protested el-Batsch. “That’s the logic of the occupation.”

Both Chetz and el-Batsch are secular, and both would probably agree that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict over Jerusalem is essentially nationalistic. Both wish for a two-state solution that will end the conflict. Both want peace.

Yet religion and historical sentiment are never far off. As he faced the Western Wall, Chetz noted that “3,000 years of history” connected him with the site, while el-Batsch adopted a different stance. “I don’t care about history or mythology. It’s not a matter of proving to me or me proving to you who lived here beforehand, but whether I can live with my rights in my own sovereign state,” she argued.

Both want East Jerusalem.

“Today, Jerusalem is united and annexed, and that’s a steady reality,” Chetz claimed, even as el-Batsch pointed out, “Israelis should learn from history. No power that dominates other peoples lasts forever.”

“We want freedom. You can’t come just because you’re a Jew and take our land,” she added.

No immediate prospects exist to reconcile Israel’s hold and Palestinians’ claim over East Jerusalem, even as both peoples believe Jerusalem is the cradle of their religion and their nation and that East Jerusalem belongs exclusively to them.

“I’m optimistic,” said Chetz. “I believe in peace – but not now. Meanwhile, Jews and Arabs will continue to live together. Jerusalem will be the same as today, with no borders again.”

“If you’re wise, compromise with me in peace, give me control of myself,” implored el-Batsch. “Stay on your side of town; I’ll stay on mine. Otherwise, there will be bloodshed again.”

The ceasefire line in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, May 20 2013 (IPS)

Israel is being drawn into Syria’s quagmire as it threatens to act further on transfers of “game-changing” weapons to hostile protagonists involved in Syria’s civil war, be they Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, Jihadist Sunni rebels, or loyalist forces of President Bashar al Assad.

The country does so reluctantly while knowing full well the consequences of such actions. Within weeks, Israel has expanded its list of “tie-breaking”, “game-changing” and “deterrence-diminishing” weapons defined as a “red line” to its security.

Initially, a red line was drawn on any foe gaining control over Syria’s chemical weapons arsenal. These weapons, while being used increasingly in the war, are for the time being still secured by Assad’s forces.

But on Jan. 30, when Israeli warplanes destroyed a convoy carrying surface-to-air S-17 missiles supplied by Iran and bound for Hezbollah, it became clear that another type of red line was being crossed, from Israel’s standpoint.

Though it didn’t formally take responsibility for the airstrike, Israel declared it would not tolerate the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, with whom it fought an indecisive war in 2006.

Meanwhile, Iran hopes that greater Hezbollah firepower will deter Israel from striking Iran’s nuclear sites, should it decide to do so.

On May 4 and May 5, Israel followed up by bombing shipments of Iran-made Fateh-110 missiles destined for Hezbollah.

Unlike rockets currently in Hezbollah’s arsenal, the more accurate surface-to-surface Fateh-110 missile is capable of reaching strategic targets south of the Tel Aviv metropolitan area in Israel.

In the last decade, Syria has chosen to ignore Israeli attacks on its territory, including one against its nuclear reactor (Deir ez-Zour, 2007) and another on Hezbollah’s chief of operations, Imad Mughniyeh (Damascus, 2008).

Yet in the wake of the latest airstrike – perhaps because the U.S. Pentagon confirmed Israel’s responsibility and thus, Syria couldn’t possibly keep mute – this time, Syria threatened to retaliate.

To add credibility to Damascus’ threat, Hezbollah also threatens to open a new front on the Syrian Golan Heights, occupied by Israel since 1967.

Following the 1974 Separation of Forces Agreement signed by Israel and Syria, the Golan Heights have largely been quiet, aside from occasional and unintentional mortar fire in the past six months leaking from battles in Syria through the ceasefire line and resulting in Israel’s responding with artillery fire.

Israeli security analysts believe that Assad won’t dare risking engaging a far more formidable enemy than the rebels, even by proxy, while fighting for his own survival. But they won’t say it out loud.

Ten days after the last bombing, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, flew to Sochi for an urgent meeting with Vladimir Putin to try to persuade the Russian president to freeze his country’s commitment to supply anti-aircraft S-300 batteries to the Syrian army.

S-300 anti-aircraft missiles can threaten Israel’s airspace, as they’re capable of intercepting Israeli jets upon takeoff.

The provision of S-300 batteries is a long-standing issue between Israel and Russia, and it’s still unclear as to whether Russia will honour the arms deal with Syria.

Netanyahu’s office says the meetingwth Putin was at the Israeli prime minister’s request, perhaps because other sources indicate that Putin summoned the Israeli leader to warn him of the perils of further interference in Syria.

After all, no one wants Syria to implode – let alone explode and destabilise the entire region. And it’s no secret that Russia is determined to keep Assad in power.

Evidence of such determination are the recent leaks to U.S. newspapers of Russian warships patrolling the Mediterranean Sea near Tartus, Russia’s naval base in Syria, and of new shipments of Russian-made Yakhont anti-ship missiles to Syria.

These shipments serve as another “game-changer” that could target Israel’s offshore natural gas drilling rigs, at a time when Russia has agreed with the United States to host an international conference on Syria next month.

To complicate matters further, it’s now becoming patently obvious that Israel’s ever-evolving red lines, if taken to their logical conclusion, could lead to targeting not only shipments of advanced weapons systems and their recipient – Assad’s army – but also, albeit indirectly, the supplier itself: Russia.

Israel’s decision-makers are engaged in a balancing act between their preference for “Israel’s man in Damascus” (as a former Mossad Intelligence chief, Efraim Halevy, recently called Assad in Foreign Affairs) and Israel’s red lines.

Responding to Syria’s threats by words of an “official” in the New York Times, Israel threatened Assad with impending demise.

Correlatively, another “official” in the Times of London declared, “Better the devil we know than the demons we can only imagine if Syria falls into chaos.”

When asked which side he favoured in the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1989), then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir quipped, “We want them both to win.” Similarly, Syria’s civil war seems to serve Israel’s interests, as long as it’s a tie.

How Israel can enforce its red lines – by neutralising missiles shipments as they’re being delivered to, or assembled in, Syria? How would Moscow react? How would Damascus react? – is no longer so simple.

After all, if Israel and Russia both want Assad to stay in power, then why try to dissuade Russia from boosting the embattled Syrian leader’s loyal forces? The answer comes almost inadvertently from the “official” in the Times of London: Israel “underestimated Assad’s staying power”.

Meanwhile, the United States still grapples with how to react to the use of chemical weapons in Syria – a “game-changer” as far as President Barack Obama is concerned, yet not one that changes their Israeli ally’s hands-off approach to the civil war.

Caught in a miniature cold war between Russia and the United States, Israel risks sinking into the civil war’s quagmire and allowing Iran to evade further scrutiny on its nuclear programme while the international community is preoccupied with the situation on the ground in Syria.

Yara Mashour, editor of Lilac magazine, wants to confront and challenge stereotypes of Arab women. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
NAZARETH, Northern Israel, May 17 2013 (IPS)

With a subtle blend of colour and shadow, 20-year-old Sumoud Farraj prepares for a photo shoot. Next month, along with three other young Arab women, she’ll appear in a designer miniskirt on the cover of Lilac, an Arabic-language women’s magazine.

Lilac‘s editor-in-chief, Yara Mashour, is in the business of breaking taboos and stereotypes with beauty and fashion. “Lilac isn’t just a regular fashion magazine; it’s a magazine with a cause,” she stresses.

The “cause” is to try to change how Arab women see themselves, how Arab men see them, and how Jewish Israelis see their fellow citizens of Palestinian descent (one in five Israelis is Arab).

In traditional societies accustomed to veiling beauty, exposing one’s beauty requires no small amount of steadfastness – sumoud in Arabic, and Farraj’s first name.

“Some people reject me because of my modelling ambitions,” says Farraj. “I can live with rejection. I am who I am, and I’ll move forward to be known – not just in Israel, but around the world.”

“Our predicament as Arab women demands a mini-revolution – to help ourselves attain freedom, mental and social, and realise ourselves, because we often need our husband’s, parents’, and society’s permission to do something daring.”

Challenging stereotypes

In 2011, Mashour decided to publish a cover picture of Huda Naqash, a Nazarene model crowned Miss Earth, in a bikini swimsuit. It was the first time ever that an Arab woman posed for an Arab magazine in such an outfit.

“Miss Huda rocks this earth!” read the caption. Thanks to the Internet, the tremor was felt throughout the Arab world, arousing a passionate virtual debate with over 70,000 mostly critical posts on the Saudi Arabia-owned Al-Arabiya website.

The suggestive photo was meant to illustrate engrained misconceptions and stereotyping of Arab society in general, Mashour points out. “There was no earthquake,” she adds. “Naqash didn’t get killed. No one threatened her. More than a model in bikini, the picture showed that Arab societies are gradually becoming more liberal in accepting changes.”

“I’m confident in my readers,” adds Mashour. “They mustn’t agree with me – you don’t like Lilac, don’t buy it – but we must debate in a democratic manner.”

Unperturbed by what she calls “this ridiculous media buzz”, she followed up last fall with the same model posing in sexy lingerie.

Powered by women

On Mashour’s desk sit copies of Lilac‘s ancestors from the 1970s, with models in poses more indolent than Naqash’s. “We went through many changes,” she says.

She evokes the Egyptian cinema’s golden era – its suggestive scenes and passionate kisses – and the ensuing conservative reaction. “Now we’re trying to revisit that period of freedom.”"We're trying to revisit that period of freedom."
-- Yara Mashour

“I’m ready to pose in sexy lingerie,” affirms Farraj.

Lilac is the hook at the end of “The Fishing Rod”, or As-Sinara. Founded in 1983 by Mashour’s father, Lutfi, As-Sinara was the first independent Arabic-language weekly published in Israel.

Following Lutfi Mashour’s death in 2007, the three women in his life inherited his media venture. Yara became Lilac‘s editor, her sister Varia took over the advertising agency, and their mother Vida replaced her late husband as senior editor.

Common wisdom had it that with women at the helm, the newspaper would soon write its own eulogy. Yet As-Sinara remains Israel’s most widely circulated Arabic-language weekly and only newspaper managed by women.

“Women are more open and courageous than men,” quips Varia Mashour. “The male staff are scared of changes. We try things until things work out.”

Pushing for equality

Female innovation – more than empowerment – is what drives Yara Mashour. To innovate, she says, is to break the encirclement of her own existential isolation as a woman in a mainly conservative community, as a Christian in a mainly Muslim society, as a Palestinian in a mainly Jewish state, and as an Israeli in a mainly Arab Middle East.

“We’re on our own,” she confides. “We’re politically uncertain of our place. We want Israel and the world to see us and understand us, to accept us as equal in terms of laws, society and economy.”

Her father would say, “We say we’re first Palestinians; second – Arabs; third – Israelis. But in reality, we behave first like Israelis; then like Arabs; and only then like Palestinians. We’re Israeli – the way we think; react; speak. In essence, we’re all the same, Jews, Arabs. They, the Jews, are the other part of us.”

“I’m a Palestinian,” stresses Mashour. “I’m an Arab; I’m a woman; I’m an Israeli. And I’m trying to make people who’re part of this definition accept me, because I’ve accepted them.”

It’s easier to convince Arab Israelis that women should be equal to men than to convince Jewish Israelis that Arab Israeli women and men should be equal to them, Mashour notes. “Israeli Jews are stuck; know very little about us, though we’re looking them in the face.”

“The one good thing is that Jews and Arabs who live together influence each other,” Mashour adds on a more optimistic note, showing the current cover of 19-year old Lina Makhoul, an Arab woman from the mixed Arab-Jewish town of Acre who just won Israel’s version of “The Voice”.

For Lilac‘s next issue, business-like Mashour has a more traditional cover of a model dressed in a wedding gown.

“In our society, marriage is still the most important ‘job’. We bring to light any woman who wants to achieve a career. Become economically independent, then get married and have children,” she urges, conceding that this goal has not yet been reached. “But we’ve opened an expanding fashion and modelling industry.”

“My next project is to find a Palestinian model from Palestine to participate in international pageants, and to wear a bikini – if that’s what’s required,” but Mashour knows that this task will not be easy.

One of the students at the Gymnasia Herzliya School checks on the plastic bottles containing samples of a blue-green algae called Spirulina. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
TEL AVIV, May 12 2013 (IPS)

At the Gymnasia Herzliya School in Tel Aviv, 20 ninth and tenth graders are testing the simplest, cheapest and fastest way to solve the problem of malnutrition among their peers around the world.

Under the guidance of their principal and biology teacher, these Israeli teenagers are attempting to breed a blue-green algae called spirulina, widely believed to contain a miraculous array of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

Fourteen-year-old Miri Wolozhinski says her involvement in the experiment stems from a desire to help “those in need”, while her classmate, Anouk Savir-Carmon, rails against “the absurdity that in the 21^st century there are still hungry children.”

According to a United Nations report released last October, nearly 870 million people, or one in eight, suffered from chronic undernourishment between 2010 and 2012. The World Health Organisation (WHO) says malnutrition is caused by “inadequate or unbalanced food intake or … poor absorption of food consumed.”

The students here believe they can help rectify this bleak situation. Having studied the various properties of the microscopic algae, Savir-Carmon explains to IPS, “Sixty to 70 percent of its mass is protein; the rest contains carbohydrates, antioxidants, Omega-3 fats, vitamins, minerals – in short, everything needed for nourishment.”

A study published by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) in 2008, based on an experiment conducted in Mexico, showed that 10 grammes per day of powdered spirulina supplement were sufficient to combat child malnutrition.

The same study showed that severely malnourished infants admitted to a village health clinic in Togo recovered within weeks of taking 10 to 15-gramme doses of the dietary supplement mixed with millet, water and spices every day.

Known in the scientific community as multicellular photosynthetic Cyanophyceae, the algae is thought to have existed in salt water and some freshwater lakes for over three billion years.

It is considered a “complete protein”, containing all nine essential amino acids that human beings need to survive. Commonly dubbed a superfood, spirulina eclipses all other whole foods such as unpolished grains, beans, fruits and vegetables and non-homogenised dairy products.

Although the algae develops naturally in tropical lakes in Central and Eastern Africa, the derived dietary supplement – sold as flakes, pills or tablets – comes with a hefty price tag and is available only in select natural and health food stores.

Convinced that the prohibitive cost is a result of large-scale and ineffective breeding methods requiring expensive equipment, students at Gymnasia Herzliya are determined to find cheaper ways of growing the cyanobacteria.

They began by diluting a culture sample, obtained from the ‘Adama’ algae farm located in the Negev desert, with chemicals like sodium bicarbonate, potassium nitrate, sodium chloride, phosphate sulphate and magnesium sulphate “for optimal breeding and mandatory alkalinity,” explains a ninth grader named Fea Hadar.

Using the Internet as their guide, students taught themselves everything they could about the algae’s taxonomy, structure, nutritional benefits and growth conditions.

At first, each pupil was assigned the care of one recycled plastic bottle containing a sample of the culture. Since spirulina, like any other plant, needs carbon to photosynthesise, the students would simply “shake the solution every two hours,” recalls Savir-Carmon.

Four months ago, their algae advisor Boris Zlotnikov devised a more efficient system, arranging rows of bottles on a discarded wooden stand and hooking them up to an electric system of pumps, pipes and thin hoses that breathe air into the solution, stirring the algae constantly. “It now grows very fast,” notes tenth grader El’ad Dvash.

Last week, as the solution took on a dense emerald colour, they celebrated their first harvest, drying the biomass outdoors.

“With 650 litres of algae culture, we produced the equivalent of 65 kilos of dry matter,” boasts Dvash.

The class retained some algae in a makeshift reservoir in order to test more archaic breeding methods, without using electricity.

“We’re busy formulating a protocol for ultimate spirulina breeding – in pools, bottles, under various weather and economic conditions, with or without electricity, instruments or resources,” 15-year-old Ori Shemor tells IPS.

“We still have to conduct a series of experiments which will take into consideration light, temperature and humidity variations,” Shemor explains.

Already the project has generated a buzz, with researchers at the Bar-Ilan University’s Algae Biotechnology Centre volunteering to help the budding scientists devise a model to increase the algea’s protein concentration.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has offered to help the students circulate their protocol through its Associated Schools Project, a global network connecting nearly 10,000 education institutions in over 180 countries, while Rotary International has shown a willingness to partially fund the project.

Last month, an Ethiopian education official visited the breeding premises in Tel Aviv. The governments of South Africa and Lesotho have also expressed interest in the project, said Ze’ev Degani, the school’s principal and the brains behind the initiative.

He told IPS the pilot project has the potential to reach between 700 and 1,000 schools around the world. “Half a million children will be growing spirulina in pools and bottles for themselves within two years,” he predicted.

Though the students have registered their experiment under a start-up company entitled Algeed, they are determined to resist the laws of the free market.

Rather than sell the supplement, Savir-Carmon says he and his classmates will “transmit our knowledge to help other pupils around the world grow it for themselves.”

Some have criticised the experiment for having lofty goals, but Degani believes it has a clear rationale – to create a new kind of food chain based on solidarity, until food autonomy prevails and malnutrition becomes extinct.

A student of the renowned educator and philosopher Paulo Freire, Degani is of the firm opinion that teaching and learning must go beyond the walls of a classroom to touch the lives of those who struggle to survive war, poverty, and inequality.

“We’ll make protocols, not money,” he vows.

Zein Abu-Mariya (17) with his parents after nine months in Israeli custody. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
HEBRON, Occupied West Bank, Apr 22 2013 (IPS)

“Three interrogators questioned me for three hours. I was handcuffed. They beat me, slapped me, kicked me, boxed me, accused me of throwing stones; played a video of a demonstration. I denied I was there. So again, they beat me up,” recounts Zein Abu-Mariya, 17, seated on a sofa next to dad.

“They pressured my son to confess,” Hisham chimes in. “‘If you don’t sign, you’ll be treated like an animal,’ they threatened.” Zein acquiesces.

In March 2012, in the dead of night, he was arrested by Israeli soldiers. Thirty-six hours later, he was brought before a judge. He stood at 35 court hearings, spent nine months in the HaSharon jail minors section; yet was never convicted.

In January, his father finally managed to bail him out. Back home, waiting for an impending court hearing, Zein strikes a defiant pose: “I don’t want to go back to jail, but I’m not afraid; I got used to it.”

He’s gone back to school, but he was held back one year. “My friends ask me what jail is like – just in case.”

Zein’s testimony – like that of many other minors – reveals one of the most painfully enduring experiences of life under occupation.

“Put yourself in their shoes,” U.S. President Barack Obama recently told young Israelis. The issue of Palestinian children in Israeli military detention provides a dramatic example of just how far the U.S. president’s plea is from being fulfilled.

In February, 236 Palestinian minors were incarcerated – 39 aged 12 to 15 – reports rights group Defence of Children International.

Each year for the past ten years, 700 children aged 12 to 17, most of them boys, are arrested by Israel – an average of two per day– estimates the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) in a report also published in February.

UNICEF concludes that ill-treatment of imprisoned children “appears to be widespread, systematic and institutionalised” throughout the process, from arrest to interrogation, prosecution, eventual conviction and condemnation.

Its report points to practices that “amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment according to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention against Torture” ratified by Israel.

Parents aren’t always notified of their child’s arrest. Most arrests occur at night. During questioning, minors are denied access to a lawyer, or the presence of a relative. Most are accused of throwing stones at Israeli soldiers and vehicles.

“These stones can cause death,” maintains Israeli Foreign Ministry deputy spokesperson Ilana Stein. “But putting children in jail isn’t something we like.”

The report’s 38 recommendations for bettering the rightful protection of Palestinian children are assigned dutiful consideration. “We actually worked on the report with UNICEF because we want to improve the treatment of detained Palestinian children,” Stein says.

“Such Israeli reaction is good,” welcomes ‘Adli Da’ana, education officer with UNICEF in Hebron. “But on March 20, they grabbed 27 kids in the Old City of Hebron, just like that, in one fell swoop. So is this what they call re-considering their policy?”

Military laws are particularly harsh on children.

The alternative Israeli website 972.com recently brought up the imaginary case study of two 12-year-olds – one Israeli settler, one Palestinian – getting into a fight, and compared the judicial consequences.

An Israeli minor sees a judge within 12 hours; for a Palestinian child, it could take up to four days. Before seeing a lawyer, an Israeli child can be held for two days, a Palestinian child for 90 days. An Israeli child can be held 40 days without charge; a Palestinian child, 60 days.

A 12-year-old Israeli can’t be held during trial; a 12-year-old Palestinian can be held up to 18 months before trial.

Chances of bail before trial stand at 80 percent for Israeli children, at 13 percent for Palestinian children. And while there is no custodial sentencing in Israeli civilian law for a minor under 14, a 12 year-old Palestinian can be incarcerated under Israeli military law.

“The most urgent change is to ensure children spend the least possible time in jail,” urges Na’ama Baumgarten-Sharon, researcher at B’tselem, the Israeli human right organisation. “Children must be brought before a judge in much less time.”

Implemented starting Apr. 2, a military order supposed to reduce the length of pre-trial detention stipulates that Palestinian children under 14 should be brought before a judge within 24 hours of arrest and children aged 14 to 18 within 48 hours.

“Even when there’s realisation that things need to change, it’s a slow process,” notes Baumgarten-Sharon. “The only form of punishment is jail. There’s no other alternative.”

Smain Najjar lives in the Jewish-controlled part of Hebron. Only 17, he’s already been arrested four times on suspicion of stone throwing.

“The first time, it was while playing soccer with friends. I was nine. They locked me in a cold-storage box for six hours; then let me go.

“The second time – I was 11 – they held me for three hours at a nearby checkpoint because I got into an argument with a settler my age.

“The third time, they took me to the nearby settlement’s police station; I was 14.

“The fourth time – last November, during Israel’s military operation on Gaza – I spent four days at the Ofer detention centre. I’d been arrested on my way home from an evening shift at a coffee shop.”

Anxious, his mother Suad kept calling his cellphone. After a while, a voice answered, and ordered, “Stop calling this number, we’ve arrested your child.”

Smain has dropped out of school. “Maybe I’ll become a sports coach,” he says.

“We help these kids find their future, rebuild their personality. Unfortunately, sometimes we fail. Once arrested, it’s a cycle of arrests,” says psycho-social counsellor Ala’ Abu-Ayyash.

Smain likes to take refuge in his dovecote. He says the doves provide an escape from the darkness of life. The doves circle in disarray till one is caught.

Palestinian youth in the Old City of Jerusalem are taught a different version of historic events than their Israeli counterparts. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Apr 12 2013 (IPS)

At Dar el-Eitam Islamic Orphanage, a secondary school under Waqf (Islamic trust) supervision located in Jerusalem’s walled Old City, Palestinian twelfth graders prepare their Tawjihi (A-Level) in history. On the wall behind the teacher are two portraits of “martyrs” killed during the Second Intifadah uprising (2000-2005).

Simultaneously, Israeli sixth graders from the Eshkol communal villages adjacent to the border with Gaza are in Tel Aviv on a tour of Independence Hall, a national shrine where, on May 14, 1948, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion read the declaration of independence of the state of Israel.

“The U.N. voted for the Partition Plan but because the Arabs didn’t accept it, the plan didn’t materialise and, the following day, the Independence War broke out,” declaims Israeli guide Lili Ben-Yehuda to the children.

Back in the Islamic school in Jerusalem, history teacher Iyad el-Malki tells his class, “The Jews wanted two states — the Palestinian state and the Israeli state. Didn’t they take over the West Bank twenty years later, in 1967, and settle on our land?” he asks his class rhetorically.

"Textbooks play a crucial role in educating children and forging their ideology as adults"
On Nov. 29, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted in favour of the termination of the British Mandate of Palestine and for the partition of the land into two independent states – one Jewish, one Arab.

For Israelis, the vote portended the creation of their state six months later; for Palestinians it meant the “Nakba”, meaning catastrophe, when the Palestinians went from being a majority on their land to a minority in what would become Israel.

Observing how two classes – one Israeli, one Palestinian – are taught an elemental moment of their common history proves that “historical events, while not false or fabricated, are selectively presented to reinforce each community’s national narrative”, says a recently published study on Palestinian and Israeli textbooks.

Entitled “Victims of Our Own Narratives? Portrayal of the ‘other’ in Israeli and Palestinian schoolbooks”, the study found, “Both sides are locked into self-national narratives inherited from the conflict.”

“Each side negatively pigeonholes the other,” Sami Adwan, associate professor of education at Bethlehem University and co-author of the study, told IPS. “And both fail to include information about the other’s culture, religion, daily life.”

In the Oslo Accord (1993), both parties agreed to “recognise their mutual legitimate and political rights” and negotiate a two-state solution to their conflict. Yet almost twenty years on, mutual recognition – let alone a two-state solution – is not on the map, literally.

And it will continue to evade the map while textbooks, which “play a crucial role in educating children and forging their ideology as adults”, according to Adwan, do not acknowledge the existence of the “other”.

Analysing more than 3,000 texts in 94 Palestinian and 74 Israeli books over a period of three years (2009-2012), the study identified maps as vivid evidence of each side’s attempt to erase borders and, thus, historic claims.

“Children grow up on both sides with the representation that the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea is really their homeland,” Daniel Bar-Tal, professor of research in child development and education at Tel Aviv University and the study’s co-author, told IPS.

And whereas schoolbooks “consistently describe the other community as acting to destroy or dominate its own community, it depicts its own actions as peaceful and acting in self-defence”, explains the study.

Educational systems on both sides are different.

In existence since 1948, the Israeli system is heterogeneous, comprised of secular and religious state schools, and of unaffiliated ultra-orthodox schools. All use different textbooks.

Created in the early 2000s, the nascent Palestinian system is more homogenous, with pupils learning the same textbooks.

For Adwan, textbooks reflect the reality experienced by both people: “Israelis see the Palestinians as only waiting for the opportunity to attack them. Still under occupation, Palestinians see their land being taken away from them,” he says.

The study also compared teachings referring to glorification of martyrdom and self-sacrifice.

Palestinian sixth graders can read in a language book, “Death before submission, forward!” — an injunction reminiscent, Israeli critics say, of past suicide bombings.

Israeli second graders, on the other hand, are taught the story of Joseph Trumpeldor, an early Zionist whose last words while defending a Jewish settlement against Arab attackers reportedly were: “It’s good to die for our country.”

Implications for peace-building

During the Oslo peace years, as Israelis and Palestinians were cautiously reaching out towards each other, Bar-Tal was in charge of preparing Israeli state textbooks for a new peace age.

For him, “The purpose of national narratives is first to mobilise people, prepare them to fight for the cause.”

But they can also, equally, be used to prepare people for peace.

In the 1990s, Israel started to come to terms with the issue of Palestinian refugees. For the first time, textbooks acknowledged that Palestinians did not choose to flee during Israel’s war of independence but were, in many instances, forced to do so.

In 2007, Yuli Tamir, a liberal education minister, introduced the term “Nakba”, which refers to the forced Palestinian exodus, into Israeli Arabic-language textbooks destined for Israeli pupils of Palestinian descent.

Two years later, the ‘N’ word was expunged; Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then justified the decision by saying that the term was “propaganda against Israel”.

Against this backdrop, the study appears to have deep implications for peace-building, suggesting that the textbooks made up by adults are not yet engaged in preparing children for an ethos of peace.

As a result, the research report is emerging as a microcosm of the conflict and its divergent narratives, with Israeli government officials who have long criticised the content of Palestinian textbooks rejecting the study’s findings altogether.

“Our children are taught to love peace; theirs to hate us,” Yossi Kuperwasser, director-general of Israel’s Strategic Affairs Ministry and a former senior military intelligence officer who monitors Palestinian statements deemed “inflammatory” by Israel, tells IPS.

Even before the study’s publication last month, Israel’s Ministry of Education issued a pre-emptive statement dismissing the research as “biased, unprofessional and significantly lacking in objectivity” and the findings as “predetermined”.

“It’s not an academic study,” accuses Kuperwasser, “but rather, a political report used for besmirching Israel and its education system.”

The Palestinian Authority, on the other hand, has expressed “openness” to the findings, according to Adwan.

Though he would “like to see textbooks present the other side in a more human perspective” Adwan believes “daily reality must also reflect that move”.

Tens of Israeli children visit the shrine of statehood each day, re-enacting the historic moment of their state’s declaration of independence.

Meanwhile within the walls of the Old City where the Islamic orphanage and secondary school holds classes, Palestinian students sing their national anthem, most without much anticipation, as if statehood for them was a forlorn dream.

U.S. President Barack Obama’s Middle East visit has eased a good deal of friction between Israel and the U.S. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Mar 23 2013 (IPS)

On his visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories, U.S. President Barack Obama laid out his vision for a revival of the long-stalled peace talks. Yet, it was clear from his statements that a settlement freeze is no longer an immediate requirement. And, he carefully avoided mentioning the pre-1967 lines as the basis for a two-state solution, to the Israeli Prime Minister’s delight.

Back in May 2011, on the eve of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Obama made a speech on the broader Middle East.

He then declared: “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps so that secure and recognised borders are established for both states.” His call was a first for a sitting U.S. president, and a low-point in Israel-U.S. relations.

This week not a single time – neither in Jerusalem nor in Ramallah – did the U.S. President mention the June 4, 1967 ceasefire lines.

At his meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, he conceded that “the Palestinian people deserve an end to the occupation.” But he outlined his vision of a Palestinian state as “the homeland of the Palestinian people alongside the Jewish State of Israel,” ignoring the Palestinian President’s opposition to such definition of Israel. Some 20 percent of Israeli citizens identify themselves as Palestinians.

And whereas addressing the Muslim world in Cairo during his first trip abroad of his first term he had insisted that “it’s time for these settlements to stop,” on his first trip abroad of his second term he rejected the Palestinian demand that Israel resumes its settlement freeze as precondition to a resumption of peace talks.

“How do we get sovereignty for the Palestinian people, and how do we assure security for the Israeli people? That’s the essence of this negotiation,” said Obama.

“That’s not to say settlements aren’t important. It’s to say that if we solve those two problems, the settlement problem will be solved,” he reasoned, next to a stone-faced Abbas. “So I don’t want to put the cart before the horse.”

“It’s not only our perception that settlements are illegal. Everybody considers settlements… more than a hurdle towards the two-state solution,” Abbas protested.

If that’s so, why such a turnabout in U.S. policy; why such realignment with the Israeli position?

After a ten-month settlement freeze in 2010; after barely three weeks of bilateral negotiations in September of that year; and three-and-a-half years of futile diplomacy nudging the parties to return to the negotiating table, Obama realised he “screwed up somehow” as he candidly said next to Netanyahu.

He now invokes political constraints and recalcitrant constituencies on both sides as impediments to a resumption of peace talks.

On the Palestinian side, the schism between the West Bank and Gaza, between the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas that is adamantly opposed to negotiations with Israel – let alone to its recognition – doesn’t bode well for statehood.

“Waiting and longing is the theme of our political agenda – longing for Palestinian unity; waiting for the new Israeli government’s directions,” says Mahdi Abdul Mahdi, founder of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA).

“We’re only left with our narrative. That is why the PA is losing its credibility.”

“It’s the Israeli government’s duty to halt settlement activity,” Abbas told Obama. Yet, he didn’t explicitly demand a settlement freeze as prerequisite to talks.

The small opening in the Palestinian position could provide an opportunity for U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, back on Saturday to Jerusalem and Ramallah, to discuss ways to translate the Obama vision into concrete steps for a resumption of negotiations.

For Abdul Hadi, renewed U.S. efforts at brokering talks reflect a tighter convergence of interests with Israel, a result of the two allies’ shared concerns with regard to the Arab Awakening.

“Obama’s visit here was to clarify the U.S. presence in the region and open a fresh chapter of support and enhancement in the strategic alliance with Israel under the new government,” says Abdul Mahdi.

Conscious that the sustainability of the new Netanyahu government depends largely on the Jewish Home party, Obama spoke over Netanyahu’s head. This party, if not opposed to talking with the Palestinians per se, rejects a two-state solution and advocates the annexation to Israel of 60 percent of the West Bank.

He reached out to Israeli university students; inspired them to reach out to their Palestinian neighbours; touched them on the immorality of the occupation – and received a standing ovation which Netanyahu would envy.

“Political leaders will never take risks if the people don’t push to take some risks. You must create the change that you want to see,” Obama urged.

Obama’s call was a first for a U.S. president, but that didn’t seem to trouble the Israeli leader.

Whether or not Obama is trying to ‘do a Cairo to him’, Netanyahu is counting on the fact that an awakening against the injustice of the occupation by the same young generation of Israelis who demanded social justice in the summer of 2011 is far from guaranteed.

“The speech is no problem for Netanyahu unless Israelis buy into its core premise – that if Israel only pushes harder for reconciliation, regional hostility to Israel will gradually melt. On that, as the elections proved in January, Israelis are thoroughly divided,” cautions David Horovitz, the Times of Israel website’s editor-in-chief.

Though Obama tactfully avoided demanding any tactical concession from Netanyahu, there’s little doubt as to what the fulfilment of the U.S. strategic goal entails – eventually, the settlements must stop; a Palestinian state must be created on the basis of the pre-1967 borders through negotiations.

But that’s not for the immediate future.

Meanwhile, so long as the borders of a future Palestinian state aren’t specified, and settlement expansion is not on the agenda, the Israeli Prime Minister has no reason to worry about the future of his new-born coalition, and can even afford to pledge Israel’s commitment to a two-state solution as he did during the presidential visit.

U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in Israel on Wednesday, his first destination abroad of his second term, to pay a visit to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu whose own second consecutive term will have started only 48 hours beforehand. No wonder that the true purpose of the U.S. President’s visit is defined as reaching out to the Israeli people.

“White smoke in Jerusalem,” announced political pundits. There’s finally a government in Israel. One day prior to the deadline allocated to him by law to form a coalition, Netanyahu informed President Shimon Peres on Saturday evening that he has a government.

“We face a decisive year in the fields of security and economy, and efforts to promote peace,” he told Peres.

But before facing a decisive year, Netanyahu must face a decisive week – the Obama week.

Netanyahu’s majority coalition of 68 legislators in the 120-member Knesset parliament depends largely on the two rising stars of Israeli politics – Yair Lapid and his centrist party There’s a Future (19 seats) that appealed to the middle class with its “equal sharing of the social burden”; and Naftali Bennett and the Jewish Home party (12 seats) linked to the settlers’ lobby.

Netanyahu’s confidantes, former defence minister Ehud Barak, and traditional Likud party buddies were ousted from politics; his ultra-orthodox allies, from the coalition.

“Netanyahu is in a weak position vis-à-vis Obama not just because he’s increasingly alone at the helm, but he’s yet to forge a new policy. Obama knows that. So he’ll hear what the President has to say, but won’t have much to say himself,” says Channel 10 correspondent Yonatan Regev.

“We’ve got a clear policy – on Iran, the Arab world, the Palestinian issue,” retorts Yossi Kuperwasser, director-general at the Ministry of Strategic Affairs.

Regev suggests that “Obama and Netanyahu aren’t the best of friends after all.”  Precisely because they’re not ‘best friends’, Obama sent out some ‘feel good’ messages in an exclusive interview to Israel’s Channel 2 last week.

He went out of his way to refer to Netanyahu by his nickname (“Bibi”) at least ten times, declaring, “We’ve got a terrific businesslike relationship. He’s very blunt with me about his views on issues; I’m very blunt with him about my views on issues.”

“We may differ here and there about what exactly constitutes the right move that would promote our joint interest towards peace,” cautions Kuperwasser. “Matters are discussed, but we’re very close. That’s the atmosphere that’ll characterise the visit.”

On Obama’s agenda is the spring-to-summer red line on Iran obtaining capability to develop nuclear weapons drawn by his host, which if crossed would trigger an Israeli strike on its nuclear sites. And, spring’s in the offing.

Meanwhile, Tehran is reportedly diverting some enriched uranium for research, thus slowing down its march towards an atomic bomb, so that no one knows for sure when Netanyahu’s red line will be drawn.

His opposition to a unilateral attack on Iran notwithstanding, Obama has sought to assuage Israeli misgivings. “Iran possessing a nuclear weapon is a red line,” he said on Channel 2, adopting the Netanyahu language. ”When I say all options are on the table, all options are on the table.”

“It’s not, ‘All options are on the table’,” says Kuperwasser. “There’s need for a credible military option to convince the Iranians to stop their programme.”

Also on the agenda is renewal of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) of President Mahmoud Abbas, who Obama will meet on Thursday.

“Israelis are concerned with socio-economic issues – the price of apartments; the draft of ultra-Orthodox students who’re exempted from military service; the budget,” says Regev.

Immersed in domestic politics for the past three months and in the foreseeable future, Netanyahu has had no time to devote to policy-making. So it’s hard to believe he’ll be hard-pressed by Obama to move forward on the only foreign policy issue on which he can call the shots – peace-making with the Palestinians.

Abbas’s successful bid for UN recognition of ‘Palestine’ as a non-member observer state in November has sparked Palestinian protests against the Israeli occupation.

“Obama’s visit to Abbas is a sideshow to contain the Palestinian problem and give life support to the PA so that it doesn’t collapse but carry on its mission in this transitional phase until the Israelis wake up to realise that they must work for a two-state solution before it’s too late,” says Mahdi Abdul Hadi, founder of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (PASSIA).

In September 2010, Netanyahu refused Obama’s request to extend a ten-month moratorium on settlement construction; as a result, Abbas refused to have peace talks extended.

Kuperwasser dismisses a renewed settlement freeze: “We’ve been there already. The fact is the Palestinians prefer to opt for a unilateral policy and receive UN declarations with no meaning on the ground instead of negotiating with us without pre-condition possibilities to change the situation in both our favour.”

In a sign that a resumption of peace talks isn’t expected during the presidential visit, U.S. officials have said that Obama will resort to listening to his Israeli and Palestinian interlocutors, and reach out to the Israeli people directly.

Hence, the preview of the President’s trip recently posted on YouTube by the White House highlights a speech on Thursday in front of Israeli students.

“This really is the true purpose of the visit – the ability for the President to speak directly to the Israeli people about the future that we want to build together,” says U.S. Deputy National Advisor Ben Rhodes in the video clip.

During his first trip abroad of his first term, Obama addressed the Muslim world from Cairo University, unaware he had become a source of inspiration for the Arab awakening.

Yet if Obama hopes that he’ll touch Israelis the way he touched the Arab world; that Israelis will emulate the motto ‘Yes We Can’ and reach out to the Palestinians, may be in for a big disappointment.

The Palestinian village Zaatara at the foot of Herodion. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
JERUSALEM, Mar 16 2013 (IPS)

If Herod the Great was a controversial figure of his time, 2,000 years on the controversy isn’t about his legacy; it’s about who holds the rights to excavate and preserve his artefacts.

A new exhibition at the Israel Museum which, for the first time, displays the king’s relics, might serve as a great tribute to him, but is also a powerful reminder of how the history of the Holy Land and today’s conflict between Israel and the Palestinians have become intertwined.

On top of a hill “raised to a greater height by the hand of man; rounded off in the shape of a breast,” as Flavius Josephus, Jewish historian of Rome described it, the old monarch had a fortress-palace erected as memorial for himself; and named it after himself – Herodion for Herod.

Herodion, from where the bulk of the exhibition originates, is visible from Jerusalem and dominates the Judaean desert, since 1967 part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank which the Palestinians seek as part of their future state.

Herodion is in Area C, namely 62 percent of the West Bank maintained under full Israeli control since the 1993 Oslo interim peace accords. An Israeli military base protects the site.

The Holy Land changed hands time and again since Herod’s time, but at 758 metres high, the lay of the land looks unchanged – at first glance.

Dotting the surroundings, Israeli settlements and Palestinian villages vie for rights to the land.

Appointed by the Romans, Herod ruled the vassal kingdom of Judaea, part of the Palaestina province of the Roman Empire, for 33 years between 37 and 4 BCE.

“He was a cultural bridge, working on both sides, caught between the exigencies of the Roman Empire and that of Judaism,” says David Mevorah, the exhibition’s curator. “By his people he was regarded as a convert Jew; by Rome as a client king. But Judaea prospered in his time.”

Exquisite tableware from glass and fine and glossy red roman pottery; a statue of Cleopatra, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt; a decorated basin, a gift from his patron Emperor Augustus, whose bust is on display; his royal highness’s bath – all were found in situ.

Adorned with stucco and rare frescoes of sacred landscapes and navy battles painted with pigments on plaster, also imported from Herodion is the royal chamber.

The jewel of Herod’s crown, so to speak, is the reconstruction of his mausoleum which sheltered what archaeologists believe is the sarcophagus in which his body was placed. The man surely possessed a taste for the arts – even on his deathbed.  “He was very aware of historic memory,” comments the curator.

Here nowadays, historic memory refers mostly to competitive national quests.

Excavations at Herodion began in 1972 under Israeli archaeologist Ehud Netzer. “No one asked us or consulted us, then or now,” protests Jamal Amro, a Palestinian scholar from Bir Zeit University familiar with the site.

“The Israelis plundered Herodion,” he adds. “Israel uses archaeology to shape history and validate the country’s occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem.”

After prolonged exploration, Netzer uncovered Herod’s tomb in 2007. Two years later, he died in tragic circumstances at the site.

It took three more years to move some 30 tonnes of carved masonry from Herodion to the museum. “We actually moved thousands of fragments to our laboratories, working intensively from here on restoration and reconstruction,” says Mevorah.

“We’ve performed quite an important role for world cultural heritage,” says Israel Museum director James Snyder. But the self-complimentary effusion has been short-lived.

Palestinians complain that Israeli archaeological activities in Palestinian territories are illegal. “According to international law, this is a crime,” declares Amro. “Israel must recognise the rights of the Palestinian nation to their historical sites.”

The Israeli government lists Herodion as a national heritage site. Granted full membership of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the Palestinian Authority now wants to nominate Herodion for recognition as a world heritage site.

“The Oslo Accord makes Israel responsible for custodianship over archaeology in the West Bank until a final settlement is reached,” retorts Snyder.

A ruthless ruler who had the last lineage of the Hasmonean dynasty that ruled before him executed, including high priests, opponents, his beloved second wife and three of his children, Herod was feared by his subjects. In Christianity, he’s ‘Horrid Herod’, thought of as a serial baby killer.

At the museum, he is mostly remembered as a master builder for his colossal projects, including expansion of the Second Temple in Jerusalem revered in Judaism. Centuries later, the Haram al-Sharif or Noble Sanctuary would be edified on its ruins.

For Amro, “Herod and Herodion are important not only to Jews but to Christians and Muslims. We should be in charge.”

“We borrowed the artefacts as authorised loans; we’ll retrocede them once the exhibition wraps by year’s end,” assures Snyder.

The question is where the relics will be returned to, and to whom. “To the authority in charge of archaeology in the West Bank,” clarifies Mevorah. That is, to the ‘Civil Administration’, a well-known euphemism for Israeli military authorities in the West Bank.

“They’ll never give back the artefacts to us, forget it,” protests Amro, not sure himself whether “it” refers to the site and its treasures or to the West Bank.

“When Israel signed the Camp David peace accord with Egypt in 1979 and withdrew from Sinai,” recalls Snyder, “there was a very intelligent division of material: what related to Egyptian heritage was returned to Egypt; what related to Jewish heritage stayed with Israel.”

Would such a model be applicable to Israel and Palestine were peace to be signed between them? “I’m just a museum director, but it was well done,” says Snyder.

Filling up the Dead Sea could be just a pipe dream. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
EIN FESHKA, Occupied West Bank, Feb 26 2013 (IPS)

Two of the three main objectives of the Red Sea-Dead Sea canal project grapple with how to “save the Dead Sea” and “build a symbol of peace in the region.” With Israeli-Palestinians relations and the Dead Sea at an all time low, questions arise whether the ‘Red-Dead Canal’ (as it is known in environmental jargon) could save not only the hyper-saline desert lake but peace itself.

If the grand project gets the green light from the World Bank, its implementation will depend on donors’ investment. The international economic climate is not auspicious.

Jordan would be allocated the largest portion of desalinated water with 230 million cubic metres a year (Israel and Palestine would equally be apportioned 60million cubic metres a year), but many Jordanian environmentalists object to the project.

“The whole plan takes place on Jordanian territory,” says Munqeth Mehyar, director of Friends of the Middle East-Amman. “And Jordan is hard-hit by the global economic downturn. That doesn’t bode well for international aid.

“Besides, the project will only employ 1,700 people and only during the peak years of construction,” he says, referring to the World Bank’s feasibility study released in January.

Above all, for the canal to come into existence and thrive, cooperation between the three beneficiaries who share the Dead Sea will be critical. This, in turn, depends on the political situation.

“The water conduit will be vulnerable to terror attacks,” Gidon Bromberg, director of FoEME-Israel warned at a joint press conference in Tel Aviv with his Jordanian counterpart. “The Egyptian gas pipeline destroyed several times is a case in point.”

On the outskirts of the Palestinian oasis town of Jericho just north of the Dead Sea, Palestinian labourers are busy planting date palms in a field which ‘belongs’ to an Israeli settlement.

“We have no access to the Dead Sea; it’s occupied land. How could such a canal help us?” says a Palestinian labourer.

“We don’t call the Dead Sea ‘occupied’,” retorts Silvan Shalom, the Israeli minister for regional development.

“The canal could lay a strong basis for peace had the Palestinians not been left away from it,” says Mehyar.

This is strongly refuted by Shalom: “If the Palestinian Authority would like to join us, they’re most welcome. But the real partners are Israel and Jordan.”

Comments from all sides point to present and potential conflicts over the project.

“The project won’t serve its peace-building purpose – unless the Palestinians are not in full control of their shores of the Dead Sea, not just in command of the project,” Mehyar stresses.

“Israel will have to recognise Palestine as a riparian of the Dead Sea,” Bromberg chimes in. “I don’t see the current nationalist government giving in. And if the government doesn’t give in, potential donors won’t give the free money.”

In the course of its feasibility study, the World Bank cautioned that “there has been no clear consensus as to whether the project would have a peace dividend or not.” However, later on it insists that “there is a potential peace dividend from the project.”

Seduced entrepreneurs envision (prematurely maybe) the promised “peace dividend” in the form of Disneyland-style artificial lakes for recreational, touristic purposes in the Arava desert, ideally transformed into a “Valley of Peace”.

But that might be putting the cart before the horse.

Water (as in existing water resources, not new sources) is a core issue of conflict resolution between Israel and Palestine, and negotiations have been at a standstill since 2010. So, phasing and synchronising the complex political and technical elements stemming from the project idea will be the key to success.

Aside from an implausible phased recognition by Israel of Palestinian riparian rights of the widening shores of the Dead Sea – rights over the exposed land is gradually becoming a bone of contention between the two parties – for any phased implementation to meet the project’s objectives, a minimal requirement of 75 percent of the full-scale scheme would need to be implemented.

“The World Bank experts are telling us, it’s all or nothing – either we go the whole way or we don’t do anything at all,” protests Bromberg.

Green activists prefer to throw their support behind a more modest combination of alternatives dubbed ‘CA1’ in a study of over 20 options published by the World Bank correlatively with the feasibility study.

‘CA1’ proposes desalination at the Red Sea and at the Mediterranean Sea, where there are already two desalination facilities (one of them, in Ashkelon, Israel, is the world’s largest); water importation from Turkey; and water recycling and conservation.

Such a plan would require sustained cooperation between the beneficiaries and, in order to change patterns of water behaviour in industry and agriculture, a carrot-and-stick policy of incentives and penalties.

“These changes in water use could be incrementally achieved and would provide sufficient water to restore the lower Jordan River and stabilise the level of the Dead Sea above its current level,” the World Bank acknowledges.

FoEME calls for restraint on development in absence of firm evidence that the ‘Red-Dead Canal’ won’t harm the environment.

“Rather than a ‘go’ for one megaproject that will tie us up all for the next 50 years, we could implement several small-scale, flexible projects which are responsive to technological changes and which, together, will achieve the same results,” says Bromberg.

It might be more feasible to change the course of nature than for political and financial interests in the Red-Dead Canal to run their course, say advocates of the scheme.

“All the parties, including Syria, pump water from the Jordan River. It isn’t solely in our hands,” Shalom admits.

“These kinds of projects are very attractive to leaders: a fabulous cutting-ribbon ceremony; a 10 billion dollar project; ten companies who get the lion’s share; and a handful of people who become very wealthy,” says Bromberg.

So, is a new dawn rising on the desert? Not as fast as the Dead Sea succumbs to lower and lower man-made tides, vanishing in the glistening mirage of its own restoration. Just ask FoEME.

Excerpt:

Skiing on Mount Hermon in the Golan Heights. Credit: Pierre Klochendler/IPS.

By Pierre Klochendler
MOUNT HERMON, Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Feb 13 2013 (IPS)

Unbending winds howl in the mountain, seldom carrying echoes of the two-year-old civil war closing in on Damascus just 35 kilometres away. But Israelis revel in immaculate pleasure. Albeit an internationally-recognised Syrian territory, the Israeli-controlled high ground is de facto their one and only ski resort.

“It’s the first time I ski,” says Ilana Marciano from the Mediterranean city Netanya as she laboriously extracts herself from the 60-centimetre layer of snow, “Amazing, just great!”

Mt. Hermon is all grainy snow this winter, an exotic fantasyland really for people more accustomed to the fun of sea and sun. Some 10,000 visitors flock to the ski resort on a regular day, according to the site management.

‘Jabel a-Sheikh’ as the mountain range is known in Arabic is hailed by Israelis as their country’s “eyes”. Perched high above the border triangle between Israel, Lebanon and Syria, Mt. Hermon provides a bird’s-eye view on large swaths of territory from its 2,236 metre height.

There the Israeli military maintains several observation and intelligence posts. On a clear day one can see Damascus.

To the northeast, Syrian military positions dominate the Lebanese Beqaa valley. At 2,814 metres, atop a buffer zone between Israeli and Syrian fortifications, is ‘Hermon hotel’, the world’s highest UN peacekeeping station.

The Golan Heights were conquered by Israel from Syria in the wake of the June 1967 Six Day War. They were briefly re-conquered by Syria six years later but reoccupied by Israel immediately thereafter.

During the Israeli invasion, some 100,000 Syrian Druze fled the Golan Heights. Now, alongside 20,000 Druze who remained on the steep slopes of Mt. Hermon in four towns and villages, 18,000 Israelis have made the Golan plateau their home in 32 settlements.

Beyond the 80-kilometre fence, the minefields and the military outposts scattered along the UN-monitored ceasefire line, beyond the 0.5 to 10 km wide buffer zone, Syrian villages and fortified positions are clearly visible.

In May 1974, Israel and Syria signed the Separation of Forces Agreement, which to this day is cautiously respected by both sides. For almost four decades, the strategic highland has remained frozen in status quo suspended between peace and war, like swinging chairlifts so to speak.

A strange sense of entrenched oblivion haunts Mt. Hermon.

If it wasn’t for the border clash in June 2011 near the Druze town Majdal Shams in which some 20 Palestinian and Syrian protestors were shot while attempting to penetrate the Israeli-controlled area, or for a few errant mortar shells which landed on this side of the fence in November, the bloody civil war raging in nearby Syria would hardly be felt.

“There’s no tension; it’s peaceful here,” says Amit Rotem, a student from Jerusalem. “Until something happens, nothing happens, that’s the way I see it. Because we’re used to it – that’s how we live.”

Yet most recently, on Jan. 30, tension reached new peaks with an Israeli airstrike near a military research centre located in the vicinity of Damascus allegedly on a weapons convoy suspected of carrying SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles to the Shia militia Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Three days earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had warned against Syria’s chemical and biological arsenal “coming apart”.

At the heavily-protected ski resort, fun goes on as usual. “This incident didn’t even cross my mind,” notes a passing skier, “Maybe I’m too optimistic.”

“(Former president) Hafez Assad and his son and successor Bashar Assad gave us long-term quiet. I hope the situation won’t deteriorate further,” Shaul Ohana, the ski resort manager tells IPS.

In 1981, Israel passed a law which applies its “laws, jurisdiction and administration” to the Golan Heights, thereby in effect – if not formally – annexing the occupied territory. Some 10 percent of Syrian Golan Druze accepted Israeli citizenship but the law was never recognised by the international community.

During the 1990s, two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, expressed their readiness to return Mt. Hermon and, by and large the Golan Heights, to Syria for peace.

“In retrospect, the mere thought that a withdrawal from here would be considered is whimsical. There’s nothing to return. And to whom would you return the Golan anyway,” says Ohana.

A law passed in 2010 stipulates that handover of any annexed territory – be it the Golan Heights, including Mt. Hermon, or occupied east Jerusalem – as part of future peace deals requires either a super-majority in parliament or a national referendum.

“Mt. Hermon will always be with us,” is the self-confident leitmotiv heard on the slopes.

From a 2,000-metre high perspective, nobody seems to worry that the strategic mountain, its natural reserve and ski resort of 14 pistes and five lifts arrayed on 45 kilometres of pristine slopes might one day be returned to Syria.

Risks of war, chances of peace with Syria – both seem from here virtually remote. (End)