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The Situation

Monday-Friday reports by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)

High alert

Friday, October 17, 2003

Fear the fear, canvas still life, acrylics, 50x70 cm by Silvia Rosenberg

The security services say there is a high alert – it’s been reported that some 40 general terror alerts, meaning intelligence tidbits about plots for attacks, have reached the police. Israelis in the hundreds of thousands are holidaying this weekend – today, some 40,000 are in Yehoshua Park in north Tel Aviv for one of Red Bull’s ‘Flugtag’ festivals, while over the last three nights, similar numbers have attended events such as the Abu Gosh’s liturgical music festival, the Haifa film festival, the Acre fringe theatre festival, and Tel Aviv’s art festival at the Reading power plant. Security has been very tight at all the events, and will remain so through the weekend. But it is difficult to shake the sense of insecurity after reading in Yedioth this morning how the suicide bombing woman at the Maxim restaurant in Haifa, first ate lunch before setting off the bomb – and how her original intention, according to Shin Bet investigators, was to blow herself up at Rambam Hospital.

Meanwhile, Maariv’s Dan Margalit has a scoop this morning claiming that in 2000, Iran offered to negotiate with Israel, including discussion of the Ron Arad issue, but the foreign minister at the time, David Levy, turned down an invitation to Tehran for ministry director general Eitan Bentsur to begin the talks, because of fear Bentsur might be held hostage. Then-premier Ehud Barak also ignored the overture from Iran. Levy told Margalit the Iranian message was not ‘solid’ and that Israel did not believe it was a serious approach.

In any case, several thousand people demonstrated last night in Tel Aviv demanding the government not trade away Mustafa Dirani in the upcoming prisoner exchange with the Hezbollah, or at the very least make sure that information about missing aviator Arad’s fate be included in the deal. Arad bailed out of a fighter jet over south Lebanon 17 years ago, and after being held by Amal and then Dirani, a south Lebanon Hezbollah official, he was handed over to Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Lebanon. That was the last known of his whereabouts. Dirani was subsequently kidnapped to be used as a bargaining card for information about Arad’s whereabouts.

But despite the demonstration, the Prime Minister’s Office seems determined to go ahead with the deal, including trading away Dirani. A statement issued by the PMO said that after the deal Israel would still have significant bargaining cards for any future negotiations with Iran. Those cards apparently include Iranians convicted in Germany of the political assassination of an Iranian opposition figure.

Jerusalem meanwhile issued an angry statement in response to Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad telling the Islamic summit that ‘Jews rule the world by proxy'’ and the world's Muslims should unite, using non-violent means for a ‘final victory.’ Israel said the comments were an insult to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. The Malaysian foreign minister didn’t quite help matters by saying the problem was the creation of the state of Israel – and that his prime minister was just trying to say how putting some thought to a problem is the first step to solving it.

On another front, after a few days of fuming about Switzerland hosting the ‘Geneva Initiative’ government officials were saying this morning that no formal protest would be lodged with Bern about the Swiss support for the draft of an unofficial Israeli-Palestinian peace treaty.

In other developments, the army arrested eight suspected terrorists in the West Bank while FBI investigators joined Palestinian Authority security services personnel, looking for those responsible for the bombing of an American convoy in Gaza this week; and the Prime Minister’s Office announced Sharon would be going to Russia in two weeks for meetings with President Vladimir Putin, to discuss, among other things, Russia’s help for the Iranian nuclear program.

The Geneva Initiative remained high on the agenda this weekend, which is the climax of the New Year’s celebrations that begin with Rosh Hashanah and end with Simhat Torah. The accord has flushed the Left’s cheeks, while public opinion polls for the upcoming municipal elections show that the economy – now officially in a state of dangerous deflation of 1.5 percent a year at current rates and still dropping – is going to hurt the Likud at the polls. Both Likud and Labor campaign headquarters admit that that the Likud could lose some cities and mid-sized towns to Labor candidates. Historically, that doesn’t necessarily mean a resurgent Labor in the next elections, but there is no question now in Israeli politics that the Geneva accords, which are presumably to be delivered to every household in the country later this winter, has finally positioned the Left as having an alternative to the government’s policies. Now all it needs is a viable, credible leader, presumably other than Yossi Beilin, who reportedly is now trying to organize an international peace summit in coordination with the Egyptians.

The Situation Archive

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