The Situation

Expectations for a hudna

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Tropical landscape, 70x50 canvas by Silvia Rosenberg

chools across the country received updates from the Education Ministry on how to maintain security after an Islamic Jihad suicide bomber and his guide who had once worked at a factory next to a school in Yokne’am were captured yesterday evening by security force son their way to a suicide bombing at the school.

The capture coincided with the Palestinian meeting in Cairo for formal ceasefire talks but while Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher was optimistic that the Egyptian-mediated talks would be successful, there was skepticism in Israel about the durability of any agreement because the Palestinians -- and Egyptians – were stating explicitly that the success of the ceasefire talks would be dependent on Israeli cooperation. And what the Palestinians expect in terms of cooperation is likely far from what Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his government would even consider offering. Nonetheless, Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’ has stopped referring to necessary Israeli steps such as dismantling the separation fence where slices into the West Bank, as conditions for a meeting between him and Sharon. Some reports say there are quiet deals being worked out between the two prime minister’s offices, with some of the results already becoming evident on the ground – some critical roadblock checkpoints were lifted yesterday near Ramallah and between Hebron and Bethlehem, easing freedom of movement for Palestinians in those areas, while in Rafah, Palestinian Authority security forces were said to be keeping an eye on the smuggling tunnels to keep them shut down (Israeli reports also said that for the first time, Egypt was also sealing the tunnels on its side).

The pressure on both sides from the White House to calm things down – and even to try to make a little progress on their own, continues. The Bush administration remains committed to the roadmap, said a White House spokesman, but it also supports Secretary of State Colin Powell’s meeting tomorrow with Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabo, the Geneva Accord architects. That’s obvious pressure on the Sharon government, which has been very outspoken against the Accord and the meeting. But there’s also pressure on Qurei’ – the Palestinian prime minister cannot expect any high level meetings with Bush administration officials until after Qurei’ meets with Sharon, and presumably, successfully.

n another front, while the European Union welcomed Syrian President Bashar Assad’s statements in the New York Times earier this week about readiness to resume peace negotiations with Israel, Assad told a press conference today that he was disappointed Israel did not respond more positively to his offer.

An Israel Radio poll published this morning found that 72 percent of the Israeli public believes that after Assad’s statement, Israel should renew negotiations with Syria – but the 64 percent of the public is against ‘very significant’ concessions on the Golan Heights in a peace deal. The same poll said that 60 percent of the public is against the Geneva Accord and 40 percent is in favor. Some 73 percent of the public, crossing all party lines from Right to Left does not believe that Arafat supports the Geneva Accord. There’s a slight majority of 51 percent against 49 percent in favor of Powell meeting with Beilin and Abed Rabo. Other views by the public included a preference for Yossi Beilin as the leader of the new social democratic party, Yay’ud (an acronym for Working, Democratic Israel, which also means Vocation), but that Labor should not join forces with Yay’ud, while on the other side of the political spectrum, the moderate Zevulun Orlev is much preferred over the more militant Effi Eitam as leader of the National Religious Party, boith by the general public and by NRP and National Union bloc voters.

In other developments, a Jaffee Center report by Brig. Gen. (res.) Shlomo Brum says that dogma and politics influenced pre-Iraq war Israeli intelligence assessments of Baghdad’s long-range missile capabilities and its weapons of mass destruction program. The report says the implications of exaggerated warnings about Iraqi capabilities is potentially damaging to Israeli intelligence credibility in the eyes of foreign intelligence services. MK Yossi Sarid called for a special inquiry into the pre-war assessments, while MK Yuval Steinitz said there already was such a parliamentary inquiry by a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee subcommittee that Sarid is not a member of. Sarid charges the MKs chosen for the subcommittee inquiry supported the exaggerated assessments produced at the time by Maj. Gen. Amos Gilad, who now heads a new ‘Political-Security Department’ in the defense ministry and is considered the most influential advisor to Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

And while charges were pressed against the state prosecutor who leaked the report about allegedly illegal foreign donations and loans to the Sharon election campaign in 1999 and his sons to pay back those loans, a majority was counted ahead of a vote in the Knesset House Committee to strip the parliamentary immunity from two Likud MKs who voted twice during a Knesset vote on the state budget earlier in the fall. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein is due to step down at the end of the year and has been instructed by Justice Minister Yosef Lapid to issue a decision whether Sharon and/or his sons should be prosecuted in the so-called Cyril Kern affair or the so-called Greek island affair, before the end of the month. There is no consensus in the press so far about which way Rubinstein will go on the issues, but it is nearly certain that if he does not recommend prosecution, there will be petitions to the High Court demanding the attorney general explain why not.

Speaking of the courts, several of the soldiers who participated in the battle in the Jenin refugee camp in April 2002, during Operation Defensive Shield, have filed civil libel suits against actor-director Mohammed Bakri, whose film Jenin, Jenin, continues to be a cause celebre for freedom of speech and the peace camp, and a red flag for the Right and the political establishment. The soldiers charge Bakri with deliberately lying in his movie. According to Israeli libel law, the burden of proof is on the accusers, but Bakri could face difficulties in proving his innocence, for the film does include charges made by Jenin residents that the IDF demolished a hospital (which it did not) and that there was a massacre of hundreds in the camp (it was subsequently proven that some 50 camp residents, almost all combatants, were killed in the fighting).

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