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VOL4., ISSUE 49 -- Israeli Government Funneling Money To Outposts: A private Israeli television station reported Friday that the Israeli government is funneling money into the establishment of illegal settlements in the West Bank, as well as paying to dismantle them.  Under the Road Map, Israel is obligated to dismantle all settlement outposts established since March 2001.  According to the report, the funds for setting up a number of illegal outposts have been channeled through a branch of the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency.  The money, which comes from the agriculture budget, was passed on by the agency to a body representing the settlers in the occupied territories, the members of which then use the funds as they see fit.  Some of the money was put towards establishing illegal outposts such as Adei Ad, located between Ramallah and Nablus.  Government sources denied knowing that the money was being used for illegal settlement activity, saying they only learned of the phenomenon after they were approached by the Defense Ministry.  The issue is slated to be debated in the Knesset tomorrow.  Knesset Member Avshalom Vilan said, "It is absurd" if the government of Israel is, with one hand transferring money to set up the outposts, and with the other paying money to get rid of them.  If that is not the state acting at the height of stupidity, I don't know what is." (AFP, 6/27/03)

Millions To Evacuate One Settlement: NIS 2.5 million "this is the amount that the evacuation of Givat Yitzhar cost the Israel Defense Force and police. This amount includes, among other things, the cost of personnel, food, transportation, and use of IDF and police vehicles, as well as the financial damage caused by demonstrators to the army vehicles, especially the bulldozers.  During the evacuation, the tires of some 15 military vehicles were punctured, the windshields of bulldozers were painted over, and some of the machines" oil lines were cut.  "The IDF was forced to bring combat soldiers for the evacuation, who were taken off security duty to come to Yitzhar,â€? a senior military source said.  The police also removed large forces from duty for the operation.  1,200 members of the security forces took part in the operation, including 700 soldiers and over 500 police officers. (Mariv, 6/24/03)

Israelis Support Hudna, Bush Involvement: Israel Radio's website said that a survey conducted by the Magar Mochot Institute on June 24-25 found that 73% of Israelis support a ceasefire with the Palestinians (also known as a hudna), while 23% don't back such a move.  Further, 46% of respondents believe that the evacuation of illegal outposts that is being carried out by Ariel Sharon is just an act, and only 38% of respondents think it's the real deal.  About two-thirds of respondents (65%) back the intensive involvement of the President George Bush in the Israeli-Palestinian political process, while just 30% object.  Meanwhile, 64% do not support the pronouncement of the Union of Rabbis that the Road Map stands in contrast to the opinion of the Torah, and 71% do not support the decision of the Union of Rabbis that states no Israeli government has the authority to declare the establishment of a Palestinian state and to evacuate outposts or towns.  Just 19% support the Union of Rabbis in both instances. (Israel Radio website, 6/26/03)

Into The Valley: The Israeli Defense Ministry and the IDF have begun planning the route of the separation fence for dozens of kilometers in the Jordan Valley, meant to circumscribe the Palestinian [areas] from the east.  Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced three months ago that he intends to build a western fence that leaves the Jordan Valley outside Palestinian territory.  Sharon said that the fence will be 700 kilometers in length, and now, in response to his declaration, the Defense Ministry and the IDF's building unit have begun to plan the first 40 kilometers, from Bezek River in the southern Beit Shean Valley to Tirza.  In addition, the Defense Ministry and the IDF have prepared aerial photographs and analysis for the next section: from Tirza to the settlement of Maale Ephraim near the Trans-Samaria Highway.  The fence at this point is supposed to separate the Jordan Valley communities and adjacent settlements from Palestinian territory.  Sources in the defense establishment say that preparations have been made for approval of the final route, which is supposed to receive government backing.  The IDF has also begun to learn the operational significance of building the fence along the Jordan Valley.  One assessment is that the Palestinians will have a difficult time committing terror attacks inside the Green Line and will turn their fire toward the settlements and security troops.  The intention to build a security fence in the Jordan Valley aroused criticism in the political establishment, including in the cabinet, who said that this way, almost no territory will be left for the Palestinians.  U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice also criticized the planned route of the separation fence in her weekend meeting with Sharon, saying that the U.S. sees it as highly problematic since the Palestinians think Israel is using the fence to determine political borders and annex Palestinian territory. (Mariv, 6/23/03 & Haaretz, 6/30/03)

The Envelope, Please: Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz presented to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon his outline of the "Enveloping Jerusalem" plan, a separation fence around the city.  According to the outline, Rachel's Tomb in Bethlehem will also be included within the fenced-in area.  The Palestinian residents who are to be "annexed" to Israel will receive special permits allowing them to cross into Palestinian Authority territory.  In addition, it was decided to put up two fences on the eastern side of Jerusalem, an internal fence that would pass along the city's municipal border and an external fence that would extend eastward to the settlements of Maale Adumim and Kfar Adumim.  The fence is intended to protect the Jewish settlements and perhaps to serve as an additional stage in the plan to unite Maale Adumim with Jerusalem.  Sharon decided a year and a half ago that the "Enveloping Jerusalem" plan would include Maale Adumim, Givat Zeev, and Givon, together with the Palestinian neighborhoods of Abu Dis, Azariya, Anata, Hizma, and Beit Iksa.  Sharon retracted his decision after security officials expressed their reservations about it. (Maariv, 6/29/03)

Rebbes Rebel, Part I: Last Monday, hundreds of hardline rabbis in the Union of Rabbis denounced the Road Map to Middle East peace and urged Prime Minister Ariel Sharon not to hand over biblical land in the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state, saying such a step would violate Jewish law.  "No one in the world, from drawers of water and hewers of stone to prime ministers, has the right to give up one grain of the land of Israel," said former Sephardi chief rabbi Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu .  "The Holy One, blessed be He, gave us the land of Israel.  There is holiness in every single grain."We speak on behalf of the Jewish people past, present, and future.  It is forbidden to give land away,â€? said Shalom Gold of Jerusalem’s Har Nof congregation.  Former Ashkenazi chief rabbi Rabbi Avraham Shapira said that handing over territories is a “particularly grave transgression.â€?  Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, rabbi of the West Bank settlement of Elon Moreh added, “The government has decided on alien sovereignty over the land of Israel and the earth is burning beneath our feet.  We are defending with our bodies against the great danger every single moment and we have no rear lines.  I call upon the great rear line to arise and come to life, from Metulla to the Negev.  The trust must be reawakened.  And meanwhile we shall remain on the hilltops, as a spearhead with no rear lines.â€? (Ha’aretz, 6/24/03)

Rebbes Rebel, Part II: Responsible members of the Israeli political establishment were not amused with the rebbe rebellion.  Labor Knesset Member Avraham Burg, son of the late National Religious Party chief Yosef Burg and himself Orthodox, requested Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein to attend a discussion in the Knesset Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee about the rabbinical rulings.  Burg attacked the rabbis as “rebels and inciters� and said they must be dealt with as such.  “The State of Israel belongs to the Jews, and God does not intervene in political matters,� Burg said in comments quoted on Israel Radio.  He said the ruling forbidding the handing-over of land was a form of “invitation to assassination,� of which, he noted, the rabbis would be guilty.  Rabbis have urged settlers occupying the hilltop redoubts to resist passively.  But there have been scuffles with security personnel as well as injuries—reminiscent to many of the infighting that took place in the weeks prior to the 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an ultranationalist religious Jew.   The Rabin assassination was also preceded by rabbinical rulings that suggested Rabin should be targeted for killing as a result of his pursuit of a land-for-peace deal with the Palestinians.  The Shin Bet security service believes there is now an increased threat of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon being harmed by right-wing Israeli extremists.  Burg called on Rubinstein to “immediately stop turning a blind eye to the rabbis’ activities, which are liable to make the blood of soldiers and political leaders free game, as has already happened.�  Labor whip Knesset Member Dalia Itzik called on Rubinstein to indict rabbis on the public payroll who are part of the forum that made the inflammatory statements.    Knesset Member Ran Cohen also called for charges to be pressed against the rabbis.  They cannot be on the public payroll and at the same time be involved in subversive activities, Cohen said. (Ha’aretz, 6/24-25/03)

Bad To The Bone, Part I: Commenting in Ma’ariv about the outpost evacuation at Givat Yitzhar, Hemi Shalev wrote, “The evacuation of the outpost at Givat Yitzhar looked good on the cameras of TV networks worldwide, and gave Prime Minister Ariel Sharon valuable brownie points in the U.S. administration.  This was a PR event, a well-directed one, in which all of the sides played their parts perfectly: Sharon kept his promises, the army carried out orders, and the settlers cried bloody murder and put up fitting resistance.  At the end of the play, as the curtain fell, everyone went home to wait for the next installment.  This is, of course, a geometrical sequence.  For every outpost evacuated, the settlers will establish ten more, and these will immediately be added to the list of ‘unauthorized’ outposts that must be evacuated as soon as possible.  The dramatic scenes of ‘brother against brother’ will be played on an endless loop, with sky-high ratings, and everyone will leave happy.  This guarantees that everyone will focus solely on the meaningless things and ignore the main point.  Because the immediate, cardinal, and critical problem that faces Israel is not to be found on those isolated hilltops with a generator or a trailer, but in the large settlements from which they sprouted.  The settlements pose an impassible obstacle in the long term, preventing the establishment of a contiguous, viable Palestinian entity, but they are also the main obstacle to solutions in the short term.  Every time an attack takes place on this side of the Green Line, politicians, analysts, and local council heads cry, ‘Why isn’t there a fence?’ while the answer is clear to everyone: there is no fence because there are settlements, and if there were no settlements, there would have been a fence long ago.� (Ma’ariv, 6/23/03)

Bad To The Bone, Part II: Hemi Shalev continued, “Because the government does not even believe itself when it says that the separation fence is only a security tool that does not mark any border.  That is the reason that Sharon is not capable of ordering the construction of the fence along the Green Line, because that would mean leaving settlements ‘outside the fence’ and on the other side of the future border.  On the other hand, and for the same reason, neither can Sharon include the settlements inside the fence, because then the move would rightly be seen as unilateral annexation of large slices of Judea and Samaria, and as a deliberate blow to the political process.  That is how the settlements got stuck like a bone in the throat, not only in the throat of a peace agreement that still cannot be seen on the horizon, but also in the throat of interim agreements meant to protect the citizens of Israel.  In this way the public is now eating what Ariel Sharon himself cooked more than 20 years ago, when he served as agriculture minister in the first Likud government.  Unlike the settlement policies of the Labor government that rule until 1977, aimed at guarding well-defined ‘security zones,’ Sharon’s goal was to create an irreversible situation in which no Israeli government would be able to withdraw from any territory in Judea and Samariaâ€∫Sharon scattered the settlements in strategic points, lengthwise and widthwise, and set the Israeli presence in the territories deep in the ground, with stakes of iron, in hardened concrete.  He thought of everything, except of a possibility that would certainly have seemed fantastic to him: the possibility that the day would come when he would be the one who would want to leave, at least partially, only to discover that it is impossible, because it is already too late.â€? (Ma’ariv, 6/23/03)

Oops!â€∫I Did It Again: “In 30% of the targeted killings executed using Air Force helicopters, the IDF hit innocent civilians,â€? admitted IAF Commander Maj. Gen. Dan Halutz in Tel Aviv last week.  “Never, except in one instance (in which Salah Shehade was assassinated) was an order given to hit anyone except the target himself.  In the case of Shehade, the decision was made to carry out the assassination despite the fact that his wife was by his side.â€?  In crowded urban areas, the chances of hitting innocent people is higher.  A senior Air Force official said that after firing, the Air Force control center monitors events on the ground, and if it transpires that in the course of the action it is necessary to stop it, this is done by officers at the control center.  For example, the officer said that in a recent assassination in Gaza, officers in the control center noticed that there were many Palestinians crowded within the area.  Since the missile had been fired at its target, officers ordered the pilots to divert the missile from its course to an open area.  Unluckily, the missile that was diverted hit a building near the area where the people were crowded and caused the death of three innocent Palestinians. (Yedioth Ahronoth, 6/25/03)

Gas Deal On Front Burner: Israeli Infrastructure Minister Yossi Paritzky and Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayyad discussed Israel’s purchase of natural gas from fields offshore from Gaza, jointly owned by British Gas and the Palestinian Authority (PA).  Fayyad told Paritzky that the PA was prepared to accept Israel’s demand for examining the PA’s involvement in the deal.  Fayyad added that the PA would provide complete transparency on all financial aspects of the natural gas project.    For its part, last week, British Gas disclosed the security arrangements for supplying natural gas from the PA to Israel.  British Gas Israel general manager John Field told the Knesset that his company’s Gaza offshore natural gas fields were the safest natural gas source for Israel.  He said British Gas will retain full control over the flow of gas from the field, from the Ashkelon control center.  Field added that the PA’s revenue from natural gas sales were likely to partially replace aid money currently transferred to the PA, and would not actually increase the money available to it.  “The sale of gas to Israel will only increase Israeli control over where the money goes,� Field said.  “The PA also regards as important a guaranteed source of gas for operating its Gaza power station and for other future projects in power production and water desalination.�  (Globes, 6/23-24/03)

Heard It Through The Grapevine: Israel will be able to triple its duty-free wine exports to the EU to 3,000 tons as of September.  Israel and the EU will conclude an agreement to boost Israel’s duty-free wine quota to the EU in a few weeks, and Israel will simultaneously raise its quota for duty-fee EU wine exports to Israel from zero to 2,000 tons a year.  Israel Desk Officer at the EU Commission Loic Lallemand Zeller said that the EU had proposed increasing Israel’s duty-free quota to 5,000 tons a year, but Israel declined.  Israeli Ambassador to the EU Oded Eran explained that the offer meant also increasing EU duty-free wine exports.  Israel’s opposition to the deal was based on the large agricultural subsidies in many European countries, including subsidies for vineyards that greatly reduce the price for their wines.  Israel is concerned that low-priced vino could flood its market.  Another reason why it would not be worthwhile for Israel to expand its quota is that Golan Heights Winery’s vineyards are beyond the Green Line.  The company is therefore ineligible for the EU duty exemption, which does not apply to Israeli goods produced beyond the Green Line.  The EU plans to impose a 4-8% levy on Israeli goods produced in the territories.  Israeli-EU trade totaled 16 billion euros last year, including 5.6 billion euros in Israeli exports and 10.5 billion euros in imports.  The EU estimates that goods made beyond the Green Line account for 100-200 million euros a year of Israeli exports. (Globes, 6/23/03)

Accord Of The Flies: Israel and Jordan are cooperating in a war against the flies that seriously annoy residents of the Jordan Valley on both sides of the border.  There was recently a meeting between representatives of the two countries to discuss the issue.  The Jordanians reported on a spraying operation they are conducting, while the Israelis presented the “Clean Jordan Valley� plan, which calls for agricultural waste to be removed in an orderly fashion.  In related news, Israel and Jordan agreed to create more industrial zones where businesses from the two states work together to produce goods to sell in the U.S.  An agreement signed at the recent World Economic Forum (WEF) added two more Qualified Industrial Zones to the half dozen that have been created since Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in 1994, and it expanded one of the existing zones.  Also at the WEF, Israeli Infrastructure Minister Yossi Paritzky refused to sign a “declaration of principles� regarding the Red-Dead Canal project (linking the Red Sea and the Dead Sea) because it referred to the rights of the Palestinians and their demands for territory and water; for this reason, the document was not presented at the conference.  Jordan’s infrastructure minister told conferees that the project would cost around three billion dollars, and that the governments want World Bank funding to make it a reality.  But a World Bank representative said there is no money in its pockets for the canal.  Perhaps it’s just as well.  A new study from the Israel Geological Institute shows that should the canal be built, the waters of the Dead Sea would be covered with white gypsum, underneath which bacteria would color the water green and red, and the sea would emit a strong smell of rotten eggs. (Yedioth Ahronoth, 6/23-24/03 & AP, 6/23/03)

Peace Of  My Heart: Early morning.  Nasser kisses his wife Marina goodbye.  He also parts from her parents, Luda   and Misha, and goes to work.  This is not a scene from a movie, nor a play or an excerpt from a literary work.  This is a slice of Israeli reality taking place in the city of Tira, near Kfar Saba.  According to the heads of Arab communities in the area, there are close to two hundred Jewish-Arab couples living precisely this way, happily and peacefully.  At least 190 Jewish women are married to Arab men, and dozens of additional unmarried Jewish women live with Arabs.  The message that all the women try to convey is captured by Stella, who is married to a local resident.  “We respect the Muslim religion and they respect the Jewish religion.  There is no coercion or pressure here, only love and tolerance.  Let the leaders come and see how people live here in Tira,� she says. (Ma’ariv, 6/25/03)

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OLAM MEANS OLAM, MR. PRESIDENT: LOYALTY AND TRUTH MATTER ITS NEVER RIGHT TO DEFY GOD AND BETRAY ISRAEL

Date Added: Wednesday, June 25th, 2003
Contributed by: RCN Administrator