The Situation

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Geneva’s launched and Assad speaks

Tropical landscape, 70x50 canvas by Silvia Rosenberg

he ceremonies launching the Geneva initiative continue to preoccupy the Israeli press, and the reports that Secretary of State Colin Powell plans to meet with Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabo, the initiative’s team leaders, prompting outrage on the Right. Industry Minister Ehud Olmert was the most moderate in his reaction: ‘I don’t doubt Powell’s friendship for Israel. I just doubt his judgment.’ Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meanwhile was still out of sight, at home on the Sycamore farm, said his office, with the flu. Geneva detractors included some 250 rabbis, who issued a statement calling the Israelis backing Geneva ‘traitors.’ There were calls from the Left for the attorney general’s office to examine the rabbi’s statement, to determine if it was a form of incitement.

The Right, such as Likud MK Yuval Steinitz, was saying that ‘the big winner was Yasser Arafat and nobody else.’ According to Steinitz, the entire Geneva initiative was an ‘Arafat plot, he proved he is much smarter than Beilin and his gang, and he delivered a grave blow to Israel and the United States … I know this both from my role (as Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman) and from the public material ... This is not a peace deal. It’s a deal to destroy Israel.’

While the Geneva plan was of major interest, no less interesting was the interview Syrian President Bashar Assad gave to the New York Times. The consensus among analysts was that Assad’s interview was aimed much more at Washington than Israel. Rightist Shinui minister Eliezer Sandberg told Israel Radio that Israel rejects Assad’s proposal to pick up the negotiations where they left off, as Assad said, ‘with 80 percent’ of the issues resolved. ‘Before any movement toward withdrawals from anywhere,’ said Sandberg, ‘first let’s hear what he says about peace, about normalization, about what peace would mean.’ But Steinitz said that if Assad makes a move – in Damascus, he doesn’t even have to come to Jerusalem – ‘indicating he is ready for a lengthy real peace with Israel, then we should open negotiations with him – without preconditions, of course.’

n the West Bank, Israeli troops continued making arrests of wanted men – yesterday it was Ramallah, today Jenin, where a Fateh-affiliated Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade activist was killed in a shootout. The IDF insisted yesterday that the timing of its Ramallah operation tactical and not connected to the Geneva initiative – but according to an analysis in Haaretz this morning, the army operations are meant to get as much done as possible before ‘Hudna-2’ kicks in. While the Palestinian Authority’s Saeb Erekat was saying that Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’s statements about Israel ceasing construction of the fence were not preconditions for a meeting with Sharon, other Palestinian sources were worrying aloud that the intensive IDF operations could sour the putative cease-fire talks slated for Cairo, and if that cease-fire is not universal across all the Palestinian groups, Qurei’ is unlikely to find an Israeli partner in Sharon for any kind of general cease-fire.

And in another development, after months of denying involvement and refusing to cooperate with their interrogators from the police and Shin Bet, Yitzhak Pas of Hebron and his brother-in-law Mattitiyahu Shvu of the Maon Farm settlement outpost, cut a plea bargain deal with the prosecution and were convicted by a Jerusalem District Court today of weapons-related charges, including posession of more than 40 kilograms of explosives. Pas’ baby, Shalhevet, was shot to death by a Palestinian sniper in Hebron in the early months of the intifada, becoming as much a cause celebre for Israel supporters as Muhamed Dura, the Palestinian boy shot to death in the opening days of the intifada, was for supporters of the Palestinian cause. The police and Shin Bet meanwhile remain stumped by the murders of at least eight Palestinians killed on West Bank roads over the past two and a half years by what is suspected to be a ‘Jewish underground’ operating in the territories with support from extremist elements in the settler community. The verdicts for Pas and Shvu are expected in another month or two. An earlier group of settlers convicted of trying to blow up a girls’ school in East Jerusalem received a heavy 15-year sentence from a Jerusalem court earier this year.

And finally, a genuine winter storm brought enough rain overnight to flood some streets in Bnai Brak, the Tel Aviv suburb, where firemen were called in to rescue drivers and passengers stuck in cars caught in huge puddles that blocked and snarled traffic for kilometers in every direction.

Today's Situation || Yesterday's Situation