The Situation

Who's in charge?

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Tropical landscape, 70x50 canvas by Silvia Rosenberg

olice, Border Patrol, Shin Bet and army forces were on high alert along Wadi Ara, and between Afula and Beit She'an after a terror alert came in prompting the police to shut down the Wadi Ara road for hours this morning as they searched for a suspected terrorist making his way into Israel from the West Bank.

The New York Times interview with Syrian President Bashar Assad continued making waves, with Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom promising that if Syria ‘renounces terrorism’ Israel would ‘seriously consider’ engaging Damascus in dialogue. Former Israeli negotiator with Syria, Maj. Gen. (res.) Uri Saguy, told Channel 10 news last night that it would be ‘tragic’ if Israel does not respond positively to the Assad interview. But Maariv was reporting this morning that Israel turned down a ‘hudna’ feeler sent by Damascus through a third party, suggesting that Israel cease overflights over Lebanon and other military activity along the northern border with Lebanon and Hezbollah would cease its military activities. At a second stage, the quiet would be turned into renewed peace negotiations between the two countries. Maariv said government officials claimed the proposal did not come from Syria, but according to reporter Ben Caspit, the international third party had a green light from Damascus to make the proposal.

he Geneva Accord also was continuing to make waves. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, obviously miffed at the way Israeli politicians, including Vice Premier Ehud Olmert, called on him not to meet with Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabo, said publicly that nobody would decide for him whom he would meet with. It has become an open assumption in Israel that the warm relations that were so evident between Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and President George Bush over the last three years have soured somewhat, but according to analyses in the press, government officials say that relations are fine. According to those officials, Iraq and the presidential election are the main issues of concern to the White House right now, and that tension is only with Powell, whom Jerusalem has long considered somewhat ‘pro-Palestinian.’ Israeli Ambassador Danny Ayalon, speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said that the Powell-Beilin-Abed Rabo meeting was merely Powell being polite, and it does not reflect a change in U.S. policy, ‘which is committed to the roadmap.’

On the ground, the IDF did lift three key checkpoints -- one around Ramallah, suddenly freeing traffic between the Palestinian Authority ‘capital’ and the villages and suburbs around it, and two in the Halhoul area, freeing Palestinian traffic in the area north of Hebron and south of Bethlehem. The move came after two intense days of IDF arrest operations in Ramallah and Jenin, in which five Palestinians were killed – three Hamas men, one Tnazim man, and a nine-year-old boy who, said the army, was throwing a Molotov cocktail at soldiers. Palestinians warned that the operations could sour the Cairo talks about a cease-fire, and others claimed the operations were meant to torpedo the Geneva ceremonies on Monday, something the army denied.

In Jerusalem, the Supreme Court issued an injunction against screening the controversial movie ‘Jenin, Jenin,’ made by Israeli-Arab actor-director Mohammed Bakri in the Jenin refugee camp after the Israeli raid there in April 2002. The film was banned by the Israel Fuilm Council, and the Court lifted that ban, but imposed the injunction against showing the film in Israel until it decides whether to hear appeals against the lifting of the boycott submitted by families of soldiers killed in Jenin and by soldiers who served in Jenin. The petitioners demanding the film be banned claim the film calls the soldiers who fought the war criminals, and is full of lies, such as a claim the local hospital was demolished. Bakri says he made a film about how the Palestinian residents of Jenin felt and not a film about how Israeli soldiers felt.

In another decision, the High Court ordered the Interior Minstry to move its notorious East Jerusalem offices, long criticized as overcrowded, understaffed and unfit to serve the public. Even the state agreed to the order – but the state has already agreed to two previous court orders calling for the offices to be moved. The court order says the ministry has 19 months to move – but must immediately increase the staffing in the offices and keep it open longer. The offices issue ID cards, passports, and other certifications required by East Jerusalem Arabs who need to prove their residency in the city to get benefits for which they are eligible as residents of the Israeli capital.

Also in East Jerusalem, peace demonstrators and local residents of Jebel Muqatar, an all Arab neighborhood in southeast Jerusalem joined forces to protest against the start of construction work on a privately financed 550-unit Jewish housing complex in the neighborhood. One demonstrator was injured when hit by a tractor. Police on the scene calmed down the stormy scene, and no arrests were made.

And this afternoon, Housing Minister Effie Eitam, leader of the National Religious Party and a member of Sharon's ‘inner cabinet,’ is slated to attend a Torah installation ceremony in a synagogue at what the settlers call the ‘The Heroes' Outpost,’ an illegal outpost between Kiryat Arba and Hebron, where a Palestinian ambush last year killed nine Israeli security officers from Kiryat Arba and soldiers – including the local brigade commander. The outpost has been dismantled several times by the army, each time resurrected by Hebron settlers. Eitam’s presence at the ceremony today indicates his ministry, which controls all the government funding for public housing, might be secretly financing the wildcat settlement, which is one of the outposts Sharon has promised U.S. officials will be removed.

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