Blair goes from Jerusalem to Ramallah

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

British Prime Minister Tony Blair spent the morning with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem, and judging from their joint press conference Blair succeeded in persuading Sharon that the international conference Blair is promoting for February will not be a forum for attacking Israel but rather will focus on consolidating Palestinian state-building efforts, including the all-important anti-terror campaign Sharon insists on seeing before the roadmap can commence. Israel Radio, at least, reported that Blair used his ‘Oxford English to explain what Sharon has been saying, that if the Palestinians fight terror, the roadmap can ensue.’

Sharon, like most Israelis, is wary of international forum where Israel feels it is always in the minority, subject to attack from all sides. Blair seemed to have originally proposed his international conference plan as a full-scale peace confab, but since then, perhaps under some pressure from the White House, retreated to defining the conference as focused on ways to help the Palestinians move governmental, security and economic reforms forward.

Blair thus left Jerusalem with Sharon’s support for an international conference that Sharon called ‘very important,’ but has no intention as of now to allow Israeli representatives attend. Of course, after Shimon Peres becomes part of Sharon’s government, if the problem of Peres’ title in the new coalition is ever resolved, Peres could persuade Sharon that it would be smart for Israel to attend the conference. Peres was on Blair’s schedule for a 20-minute meeting while the British premier was going to give Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom 10 minutes. So Shalom apparently canceled his meeting.

From Jerusalem, Blair was heading to Ramallah to meet with PLO Chairman Mahmoud Abbas and Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei’, where he would no doubt find enthusiastic support for the international conference. But Blair (who reportedly will try to duck a visit to Yasser Arafat’s grave in the Muqata compound) will be asking the Two Abus (Mazin and Ala) for more than declarations against terrorism. He’ll want to see some action. Blair insisted at the press conference that there cannot be progress toward an independent Palestinian state without an end to terror.

Blair’s visit was of much less interest to the Israeli press this morning than the uproar over the appearance of settlers wearing an orange Magen David (Jewish star) a reference to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear under Nazi occupation in Europe. The outrageous comparison between what the Nazi machinery did to Jews in the 1940s and the Israeli government and Knesset’s decision to evacuate and compensate the settlers of Gaza and four settlements around Jenin in the northern West Bank, has sent Holocaust survivors to radio stations and the newspapers to speak out against the latest settler movement tactic. True, the orange badge tactic was a personal initiative taken by some in Gush Katif but it quickly spread from the Gaza settlers to some in the West Bank as well.

The ugly Jewish star tactic came as the establishment settler movement, Yesha Council, has joined a call by one of its leading members, Pinhas Wallerstein, to actively, physically resist evacuation, up to including breaking the law, if necessary. That has the Justice Ministry, police and army worried, and not only because the Yesha Council members get their salaries from the state. The last time the Justice Ministry considered prosecution of Israelis for sedition was 1994, in the months before the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin. The Shin Bet and police meanwhile are said to keep ratcheting up their security in and around Sharon – and the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif, which some of the extremist settlers have targeted in the hope that an explosion there would put an end to any disengagement or withdrawal from any of the territories because it would force a religious war between Israel and the Islamic world. Like other extremists in the region, those extremists know that God is on their side.

Ironically, the very use of the Jewish star and the threats of violence have convinced many Israelis that there will be more bark than bite in the settler resistance, because as each day goes by they are painting themselves into a corner, distinguishing themselves from all other Israelis, whom the polls insist are consistent in their support of disengagement. The Yesha Council now plans a presumably more sympathetic protest – ‘From Kiev to Jerusalem’ it’s called, and it involves bringing thousands of settlers and their supporters to demonstrate around the clock outside the Knesset until the government agrees on a national referendum about the disengagement. It remains to be seen whether anyone other than settlers and their children join the demonstration.

Meanwhile, less than a week after another one of the IDF operations in Khan Yunis meant to put an end to mortar fire on Gush Katif settlements, the army was back in the Gaza city, trying to find mortar launchers. There was some more house demolition in the areas near Neve Dekalim and at least one Palestinian was killed so far since the operation began overnight. Inside the Green Line, police said a Beit Shemesh woman was knifed to death outside her home yesterday by a terrorist who escaped over the Green Line a few kilometers away. The investigation continues.

And in Iran, a top minister says that a recently arrested spy ring passed on information about Iranian nuclear weapons efforts to Israel and the U.S.

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