Text by Robert Rosenberg
Photo of the Day by BauBau
Paintings by Silvia Rosenberg

Today's Situation

Dismantling a Kahanist outpost synagogue

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

roops were flowing to a hilltop near the settlement of Tapuah, known as a Kahanist stronghold in the West Bank, to dismantle an ‘oputpost’ building designated by its builders as a synagogue and college for teaching the doctrine of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane. The army moved within a few hours of a High Court of Justice ruling against a petition to leave the building alone. Hundreds of Kahanist supporters and other settlers – mostly youth, said Israel Radio – were also streaming to the site, with unarmed clashes erupting between the army and the settlers trying to defend the building.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom was forced to deny that there is any plan for him to meet with Pakistan President Pervez Musharaff after his Likud colleague, Agriculture Minister Yisrael Katz told Israel Radio he received an invitation to the Muslim state through an official at the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and would be visiting Pakistan with a small group of United Nations officials. Katz, who earlier this month leaked the –plans to double government investment on the Golan Heights to try to squash any possible negotiations with Syria, said his invitation to Pakistan was the result of improved Israeli-Pakistani ties. He told the radio ‘I ascribe great importance to the coming visit … The fact is that the two countries, along with many others, are walking alongside President George Bush, nations who are fighting terrorism, certainly constitutes a basis for cooperation, especially in agriculture and food production, which can certainly aid Pakistan and Israeli-Pakistani ties in the future.’ Pakistan’s foreign ministry denied it had invited the Israeli minister.

‘Israel reserves the right to defend itself and its citizens,’ said a defense ministry statement after Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz ended a meeting with senior army and other security officials to discuss the ramifications and possible Israeli reactions to yesterday’s Hezbollah rocket fire at an Israeli bulldozer clearing a minefield on the border with Lebanon. One soldier was killed and another seriously wounded in the single rocket rocket fire that struck the armored bulldozer’s cabin. According to foreign minister Shalom, the Hezbollah attack was proof Syria is ‘not serious’ about its peace overtures to Israel. According to the defense ministry, Syria and Lebanon and Iran are all responsible for the Hezbollah’s actions.

n analysis by Haaretz military affairs reporter Amos Harel on the rocket fire said that Hezbollah is worried both by Syrian proposals for renewed negotiations, and by a recent statement made in Tehran by the head of the Iranian National Security Council that if Israel withdraws from the Shaba farms area, Hezbollah will have no reason for any further attacks on Israeli positions. Not that Israel will be running to quit the farm area, at the intersection of Israel, Syria and Lebanon. The UN maps showed the Shaba farm belongs to Syria, which is why Israel did not withdraw from it in May 2000 when it quit south Lebanon.

But meanwhile, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, clearly reluctant to engage the Syrians, is conditioning any talks with Syria on it rolling up the Hezbollah and shutting down Damascus offices maintained by radical Palestinian organizations, including Hamas, before any talks can begin. Yesterday, he commented on the Syrian overtures by telling the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that ‘of course, everyone here should know that talking peace with Syria means returning all of the Golan.’ Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon, meanwhile told Channel 2 last night that ‘it would be worth seriously examining’ the Syrian peace proposals.

On the eastern front, Jordanian Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher rebuffed Sharon’s criticism yesterday of Amman’s involvement in pressing the international court at the Hague to rule the separation fence illegal. Muasher said the fence is damaging to Jordan’s national security interests – Jordan is worried that the pressure on the Palestinians created by the fence will force a mass emigration of Palestinians into the Hashemite Kingdom. He’ll have a chance to tell Silvan Shalom that next week, when the Israeli foreign minister is slated to visit Jordan, in part to try to explain the fence to his counterpart. An Israel Radio report said Shalom’s visit would be preceded by the release of Jordanians, mostly illegal alien workers, held in Israeli prisons.

srael was also paying attention to the meeting today in Cairo between Jordan’s King Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. According to both Zvi Bar’el of Haaretz and Ehud Ya’ari of Channel 2, Abdullah is busy putting together a new Arab initiative, based on revival of the Saudi Arabian initiative. The plan, indicated reports, would reform the political process to include Arab state representation on the Palestinian negotiation team with Israel, as guarantors of the Palestinian commitments, and to offer Israel full normalization as part of an overall deal with the Palestinians based on quitting all the territories captured in 1967.

On the ground, Israel was reporting that five mortar shells were fired at the Gush Katif settlement bloc in Gaza Strip, with no injuries or damage reported. The Palestinians were reporting that IDF bulldozers demolished 13 homes near the Egyptian border in Gaza, and at least 10 Palestinians were injured in the crush and disorder of the queues of day laborers waiting to cross into Israel from Gaza at the Erez Junction crossing station, where a suicide bomber killed four Israelis earlier this week, demolishing much of the border crossing and reducing it from 30 waiting lanes for the workers, to four, until the crossing is rebuilt.

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January 15, 2004 A Palestinian refusenik writes an open letter to the Jewish people by Palestinian-American Ray Hanania, who mourns the loss of sense of humor on both sides of the conflict.

January 6, 2004 Death of a Road Map : Ex-Mossad chief Efraim Halevy has finally said what has long been obvious - the Quartet Roadmap for peace is all but dead. Actually, Ariel Sharon said the same thing in his speech to the Likud party convention, though it may have sounded as though he was saying the opposite.

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[an error occurred while processing this directive] in Frosties, the anthology of quotations

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