Monday-Friday mid-day reports from Israel by Robert Rosenberg
Images by Silvia Rosenberg (unless otherwise noted)
Plans and meetings
Friday, November 28, 2003
Look at your demons, from the Goddess series, acrylic and pencils on paper by Silvia Rosenberg
Suddenly, there’s talk of Sharon having a plan, and there are meetings – in London, Spain, the Dead Sea (on Jordan’s side) and who knows where else – between Israelis and Palestinians, in efforts to break deadlocks, sound out the other side, and pass messages.
The Omri Sharon-Jibril Rajoub meeting, in London, is of course the most interesting of all, since it is clear that just as Sharon represents his father, Rajoub represents Arafat, and while Sharon says he will never meet Arafat he appears to have given into the idea that Arafat is not irrelevant. Officially, the meeting in London is a British Labor Party-hosted ‘seminar.’ Unofficially – but according to Israeli press reports this morning – it is an opportunity for Sharon Jr. and Rajoub to discuss ways to break the deadlock.
While that meeting is getting most of the press, others are also being mentioned. There’s a Jerusalem Post report about a two-day Dead Sea conference indirectly financed by the Pentagon through UCLA’s Ronald W. Burkle Center for International Relations, that included Mohammed Rashid, the mystery financier who works closely with Arafat (and who has long been accused of corruption) and a Mohammed Dahlan aide on the Palestinian side, with Labor MK Ephraim Sneh, ex foreign ministry and Mossad official David Kimche (a Geneva accord supporter) and Haaretz military analyst Ze’ev Schiff on the Israeli side. The discussions were moderated by Steven Spiegel. The meeting was meant to discuss possible ways to revive the roadmap, said the Post, which between the lines seemed critical of the meeting.
Meanwhile, another meeting between Israeli and Palestinian officials was set for today in Madrid, said Israel Radio, The conference, which also includes American, European and Jordanian officials, will be discussing an international solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel will be represented by Likud MK Gideon Sa'ar, Labor MKs Dalia Itzik and Danny Yatom, and Balad MK Ahmed Tibi. The Palestinians will be represented by former security affairs minister Mohammed Dahlan and Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Sha'ath, said the radio report.
The flurry of meetings, just a few days before the much-touted launching ceremony of the Geneva accords and the right after Prime Minister Ariel Sharon began speaking in albeit vague terms about a unilateral Israeli moves if the Palestinians are not forthcoming, seem to have paved the way for unusual steps in the U.S. Congress. According to a Haaretz report, at least two resolutions have been introduced to Congress calling on the administration to back the two ‘private’ peace initiatives – the People’s Voice petition promoted by Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, and the Geneva Accords, promoted by Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabo. The latter two were informed this week that U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell that he wants to meet with them, though a date has not been chosen.
Nor has a date been chosen for a Sharon meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’, with Sharon saying that there are contacts underway for such a meeting and Qurei’ saying that without some firm commitments in advance to changes on the ground no meeting will take place. The Americans are trading gingerly around all of this. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs William Burns is supposedly due back in the region this weekend, but John Wolf the roadmap supervisor, is nowhere in sight. Of course, neither is any sign that either side is taking any steps down the roadmap’s first street: dismantling the terrorist infrastructure -- and the illegal outposts that went up after March 2001.
In other developments, Brig. Gen. Eliezer Shakdi has been tipped by Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon as the next air force commander, starting in April 2004. The current commander, Dan Halutz, has hopes of becoming the first air force commander to reach the chief of staff’s seat and has been said to be Sharon’s favorite candidate for the job after Ya’alon. But Halutz has been very controversial over the past year and the odds have worsened lately that he will get the job.
And in a tragic traffic accident, the commander of the police force’s elite counter-terror unit, Yamam, was seriously wounded early this morning when he was hit by a truck while trying to help a man hurt in a traffic accident on the main Haifa-Tel Aviv coastal road near the Zichron Yaacov exit. The accident turned into a 10-car pileup, with at least five others injured seriously enough to need hospitalization. Ironically, another officer in the elite unit was killed in an earlier motorcycle accident near Tel Aviv while on his way to work, and the commander of the unit was on his way to headquarters to deal with that emergency.
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Left, Jewish, Arab, Sephardi, Ashkenazi, new immigrant or fifth generation.
Too many issues divide too many people here. But Ilan Ramon, the somewhat baby-faced
air force colonel selected as the first Israeli to go into space on board the
American shuttle craft, was one of those heroes whose deed fired the imagination
of Israelis across every spectrum. Even the most cynical and skeptical had to admire
not only his ascension to that vaunted gallery of people who had the 'right stuff' to
go into space, but the grace with which he did so, the alomost childlike joy he
so generously gave of himself during those live broadcasts from space on board the shuttle,
and the faith in science and humanity that he expressed during his broadcasts.
And then the shuttle crashed, and with it, another hero was gone.
So much hope was pinned on Ramon's trip and in a way, the shuttle disaster tragedy
was more than the loss of an Israeli hero, but like the Rabin assassination,
the loss of the hope for heroes. Get the book. It's short, concise, informative and moving. (RBR)
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