The Situation

Monday-Friday mid-day reports from Israel by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)

Remedia, Jenin, and humanitarian gestures

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Scanned silver leaves digital image by Robert Rosenberg

Another domestic story involving death was the murder of an innocent Pardes Hanna couple when a Hadera underworld figure threw a hand grenade into a used car lot last night, part of an ongoing protection racket that the police have failed to crack. The killing of the couple, who were shopping for a used car when the hand grenade blew up in front of them, has prompted the police to admit they have had difficulties dealing with the racketeering problem. One man is under arrest but he claims to have an alibi.

A third issue, somewhat less domestic, was the High Court of Justice’s unanimous decision to accept a petition by actor/director Muhammed Bakri against the Film Censorship Board, which last year banned his film, Jenin, Jenin, on the grounds “it propagated the lie there was a massacre in Jenin.” The film never mentions the word massacre, said Bakri in his appeal against the ban. The justices, who viewed the film, ruled that charges the film contained lies were not enough to ban it, the three-justice panel said, adding that the film board was not empowered to decided what was and was not an untruth. The first screening of the film in an Israeli hall (until now it could only be shown in private) was scheduled for December 8. Demonstrations against it are likely. Bakri told Israel Radio that ‘those who say the film is full of lies are telling lies.’ The film was one of the first made in Jenin after the Israeli campaign in the town during 2002’s Operation Defensive Shield, and was based on first hand accounts by Jenin residents about what they experienced during the battle. Some of the accounts, most notably those by a Jenin hospital director about shots being fired at the hospital, were subsequently proven to be inaccurate. Reservists who were on active duty in Jenin during the fighting charge the film libels them, the army, and the country. In a related development, about 150 people demonstrated outside the IDF military court in Jaffa today as lawyer Dov Khenin delivered his summation in the defense of five conscripts who refused to enlist in the army “in light of the brutal policy of occupation and oppression which the IDF represents and implements.” The verdict in the high profile case of pacifist Yonatan Ben-Artzi, nephew of Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who refuses to enlist in the army, is due tomorrow.

Meanwhile, as Jerusalem police tried to decide whether to arrest or release Sheikh Tamini, the chief justice of the Islamic courts in the Palestinian Authority, after he weas detained last night on his way to an East Jerusalem restaurant to break the nightly Ramadan fast. The Hebron-based Tamini, known for his firebreathing sermons, was at Al Aqsa Mosque last Friday without a permit, said police, and delivered a sermon full of incitement against Israel and America. Judging from similar arrests in the past, the sheikh is likely to get a warning and be released.

Also due tomorrow is a Palestinian Legislative Council session to vote confidence in the new PA government headed by Ahmed Qurei’. The Palestinian prime minister yesterday told a group of American supporters of Peace Now that he “personally favors” the Geneva accords. His office is in touch with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s, said Israel Radio this morning, but Qurei’ prefers to hold off on any meetings between the two premiers until there are some tangible agreements hammered out behind the scenes.

Sharon told a rare – and brief -- press conference today that he wants ‘a faster pace’ of what Israelis have come to refer to as ‘humanitarian gestures’ toward the Palestinians. He said that ‘our problem is that when conditions are eased, like lifting checkpoints, terror increases. But it is necessary to ease conditions for the Palestinian population, both as part of the effort to bring peace closer and to fight terror. As long as the civilian population is not involved in terror, it won’t be harmed,’ said Sharon. The prime minister said he dispatched Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter to Europe this morning for a round of meetings with his counterparts to explain Israel’s perspective on Palestinian terrorism and to beef up cooperation with those foreign security services. In Washington, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz was going into a second day of meetings with U.S. officials, denying that recent steps taken by the IDF to ease conditions in the territories were meant to ease American pressure.

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