Nazis then and now, Friday, December 09, 2005

The condemnations were quick to come, of course – and it didn't hurt Israeli reporting on the Iranian president's anti-Semitism that coincidentally, Haaretz ran as its lead headline this morning a report that Brazilian authorities are investigating a man in that country alleged by several other countries to be 95-year-old Alois Brunner, the world's most wanted Nazi war criminal. It has been widely claimed for more than four decades that Brunner found refuge from Nazi hunters in Syria but if he is alive in Brazil, the world might yet be in for a full-scale Nazi war crimes trial. The Haaretz report said its reporters had spoken with the suspected war criminal, who by his account is 'on vacation' in Lucerne, Switzerland, but plans to return to Brazil. He fo course denies having anything to do with Brunner -- and curiously, the newespaper noted that that the man's voice 'sounded much younger than that of a 95-year-old.'

In any case, the Iranian president's remarks were widely and oft quoted here, described as anti-Semitic, and clear evidence of the danger of the Tehran regime. The host of condemnations of the Iranian president's remarks, from Kofi Annan to the EU and the White House, was mentioned in the reports, but the emphasis was on the Iranian's enmity, not the world's condemnations.

Nonetheless, the main story of the morning was the burial of the soldier slain yesterday at the Qalandiya checkpoint, when a Palestinian man knifed the soldier in the neck, just above the safety collar of a ceramic flak vest. The Israelis shut down the checkpoint, which is the main passageway between Ramallah and Jerusalem, used by thousands of people every day. The same might happen to the Hawara checkpoint in the northern West Bank, because a youth was arrested there this morning carrying two bombs. The army said it would reconsider the closure after the weekend.

The closed checkpoints are now on the agenda in the meeting scheduled this afternoon between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David Welch and Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat. Welch had been slated to come to the region to hammer down the final details of the agreement reached between Israel and the PA by his boss, Condoleezza Rice last month. The most immediate of those details was the 'safe passage' between the West Bank and Gaza for Palestinians, in other words, an agreement that would enable Palestinians to travel between Gaza and the West Bank, something Israel has prevented since the early 1990s, but which the Oslo agreement was supposed to enable, through the 'safe passage' route.

But after this week's Netanya suicide bombing, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered not only more vigorous military action against wanted terrorists, but also an end to all bilateral discussions between Israeli and Palestinian officials on the issue of the safe passage. Just before the bombing, the two sides had reached an impasse over how long a Gazan would be allowed to stay in the West Bank, with Israel insisting on no more than 10 days, and there was also some dispute about whether Israel would allow West Bankers travel to Gaza. In short, Rice's agreement said that the safe passage route – convoys of buses traveling through Israel with a military escort – was supposed to begin next week, but now Welch will spend his time just trying to get Sharon to agree to resume the talks, let alone show more flexibility toward the Palestinians. But Israel is demanding the Americans put more pressure on the Palestinians to cease violence all around – there were a few more mortars fired at Israeli communities bordering Gaza last night, with Israeli artillery responding. Neither side wants an escalation, but neither side has the willpower to break the cycle – without U.S. intervention.

Abbas will be able to point to Palestinian Authority arrests of Islamic Jihad figures in the Bethlehem area, but the Israelis are very dubious that PA President Mahmoud Abbas has the strength – or will – to engage in a clash of wills with the armed groups. True, Hamas is abiding by the tahadiye, the 'lull' in fighting, but inside Abbas' own Fateh, there are cells of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades that are not obedient to him. Still, since the Islamic Jihad, which was responsible for all five suicide bombings in Israel in 2005 (so far), has made clear it is not playing by the rules laid down in the Cairo agreement for the tahadiye there is some hope that a Palestinian consensus will emerge allowing Abbas to do more than make a few arrests. The IDF, by the way, arrested 19 Palestinians overnight, mostly from Islamic Jihad.

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