CRACKS IN THE ICE

     A writer describing in a fictional scenario something like the Israeli history of the past period might well have been accused of over-dramatizing and too frequent use of Deus ex machina.

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     In the months following the withdrawal from Gaza, the Israeli political scene seemed stuck in a rut. Having quickly and efficiently removed the army and settlers from the Gaza Strip, PM Sharon seemed in no mind to follow it up by any further move, or to seek a minimum of rapprochement with the Palestinians.

     Quite the contrary, in fact: withdrawal from Gaza was followed by an intensification of the nightly raids and detention of militants by Israeli forces, in the heart of the West Bank cities -- sometimes penetrating deep into Ramallah, the Palestinian de-facto capital, to snatch Palestinians away close to the bureau of President Abbas himself.

     Nor was there a let up in the continuing construction of the Separation Wall/Fence/Barrier, cutting away the lands of Palestinian towns and villages. (The Christian pilgrims who arrived in December were among the first to pass through the lattice labyrinth of the Control Station, the single remaining passage through the newly built high wall between Bethlehem and Jerusalem...)

     Also the evacuated Strip remained under intensive Israeli pressure. Fighter planes and helicopters were constantly in the air over Gaza, and navy gunboats harassed Gazan fisherman off the shore, just as they did before the withdrawal. Most important, the border crossings -- Gaza's vital economic lifeline -- remained subject to arbitrary Israeli closures without prior notice.

     Had Sharon chosen a more forward policy towards the Palestinians, he could have counted on considerable public support. Opinion polls showed a majority of Israelis willing to go far beyond the limited step of giving up the Gaza Strip and to accept a withdrawal from most of the West Bank. And no less than 49% seemed to have no problem even with the once-taboo idea of evacuating the Arab neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem.

All this was, however, a passive position -- usually given in response to such hypothetical questions as "What concessions should Israel agree to if and when negotiations with the Palestinians are resumed?"

     The positive answers did not entail any significant increase in the rating of peace-oriented opposition parties, or any massive participation in extra-parliamentary actions demanding that the government take new diplomatic initiatives.

     There was, in fact, no challenge to Sharon's decision to put off the opening of negotiations until a misty future time "when the Palestinians put a complete end to terrorism" (which Sharon himself clearly never expected to happen, and certainly did nothing to help make it happen...).

     Sharon's policies met no significant opposition from the Left due to the loyal presence in his coalition of the Labour Party, headed by its "Eternal Party Leader" Shimon Peres.

     When he joined the cabinet, back in 2004, Peres had clearly stated and stipulated that this was "a strictly temporarily measure" with "the sole purpose of ensuring a majority for the Gaza Disengagement." Once the Disengagement was completed, however, Peres and his fellow ministers made clear their intention of staying on until the general elections scheduled for November 2006 -- though they could offer no satisfactoryy explanation as to what worthy political or social goal they expected to promote by so doing.

     Sharon was also spared the need to confront any real pressure from outside. In fact, he was still reaping the handsome diplomatic and propaganda dividends of the Gaza withdrawal.

     Throughout, the international media had been given free access to the Theatre of Operations, which is far from a normal IDF practice. As a result, all through August worldwide TV screens were flooded with images of Israeli soldiers struggling with settlers. For months afterwards, fulsome editorials praised Sharon for his courage -- even in countries like France where he had hitherto gotten bad press.

     What these TV images could not appropriately convey was how small a part of the Occupied Territories the Gaza Strip is, nor how limited and

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circumscribed was the Palestinians' freedom even in formally evacuated Gaza.

     In the months following the withdrawal, there was a veritable flood of foreign diplomats and statesmen from hitherto "unfriendly" countries arriving in Israel or holding conspicuous meetings with Israeli representatives in other venues. To the evident pleasure of Sharon and his Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, many of them stated that "the ball is now in the Palestinians' court."

     Furthermore, by a kind of time-honoured rule, the US and other international players avoid putting any serious pressure on an Israeli Prime Minister who is about to face the voters in general elections. With the elections scheduled for a year ahead that meant that no positive development in Israeli-Palestinian relations was to be expected during that entire period (but a lot of negative things, bloody escalations of all kinds, would go on unchecked).

Poverty: who cares?

     A roughly parallel situation prevailed in another area -- the rapidly increasing gap between the rich the poor in the Israeli society. Once proud of its egalitarian social policies, Israel has become more socially polarized than any of the Western democracies to which it claims to belong.

     This has been going on over two decades, regardless of which party was in power. But the process was greatly accelerated and exacerbated in the past two years with the Finance Ministry held by Binyamin Netanyahu. In conscious emulation of "neo-liberal" policies current in the US, Netanyahu mercilessly slashed the welfare benefits, cut the education budgets, fought head-on with the trade unions and instituted tax reforms benefiting the rich.

     The social effects of such government policies were not a secret. Frequent news items, some screened on prime time, showed impoverished citizens searching for food scraps in the garbage and ill old people facing the cruel dilemma of buying food or medicines -- since they could not afford both.

     Charity associations reported the ever-increasing demand for their services, and crowded soup kitchens sprang up all over the country. And statistics compiled by reputable institutions -- not only oppositional NGO's, but even some government agencies -- clearly indicated the continued enriching of the rich, impoverishment of the poor and erosion of the middle class.

     Still, though for a large part of the Israeli public all this has become the most pressing and paramount of issues, groups active for Social Justice repeatedly failed in their efforts to bring out the impoverished and dispossessed masses to protest on the streets. Nor did these masses display a significant tendency to abandon their decades-long tradition of voting for the Likud -- though their plight has been greatly worsened by a Likud-led government.

     The Labour Party, once Likud's fierce political and ideological rival, was certainly not regarded as a viable alternative by the inhabitants of the slum neighbourhoods and "development towns."

     A junior partner in the government in which Netanyahu so mismanaged the economy, Labour -- led by the octogenarian Peres -- was coonsidered a moribund party, clinging to the faded past glories of its central role in creating the state of Israel and having little to say to the Israelis of the present and even less to offer for its future.

     The only visible source of political instability was the continuing "rebellion" of hard-liners inside the Likud, who had opposed the Gaza withdrawal and continued to snap at the PM's heels even after it was completed.

     Sharon was known to be contemplating the idea of breaking away from the Likud and forming his own "centre party", so as to get rid of that hindrance. However, many of his advisers cautioned him against the idea, since all previous politicians who broke away from a major party failed and were marginalized. (That happened even to David Ben Gurion, revered Founding Father of the State of Israel and Sharon's own mentor in the early stages of his military-political career.)

     After scoring a major victory over the hard-liners in late September, Sharon seemed to have shelved these plans of breaking away.

     In October, analysts and pundits were virtually unanimous in predicting that 'the Likud would remain the ruling party of Israel for the foreseeable future'. It was taken for granted that the battle between Sharon and Netanyahu in the Likud

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Leadership Primaries, scheduled for April 2006, would determine the identity of Israel's next Prime Minister.

     The general elections of half a year later were expected to do no more than set the stamp of approval on the Likud's choice, or at most determine the identity of its junior coalition partners. And since it was also taken for granted that Shimon Peres would hold on to the Labour Party leadership, this issue did not arouse any great suspense, either.

     But all these considerations and calculations did not take into account an energetic, radical trade union leader who was soon to upset the applecart.

Social justice on the agenda

     Amir Peretz was born in Morocco and arrived in Israel as a child, one of the great migration of Jews from the Arab and Muslim countries in the 1950's. His family settled in the impoverished town of Sderot in the Negev.

     Like others of his generation, Peretz grew up feeling that his town was neglected and the inhabitants deprived of essential resources. They felt they could get no hearing in an arrogant political establishment, dominated by descendants of the early pioneers who came from Eastern Europe -- an establishment in which the Labour Party was then the dominant force.

     In addition to the economic deprivation, the town's proximity to the Gaza Strip border made it on occasion a convenient target for Palestinian attacks, often launched in retaliation for Israeli attacks in other sectors. In effect, the inhabitants of Sderot became hostages for military policies on whose formulation they had little influence.

     The accumulated feeling of frustration and bitterness drove most of Peretz's neighbours and contemporaries to support the oppositional Likud, then led by the charismatic Menachem Begin, helping it into power. Peretz, however, turned to the Labour Party and took up in all seriousness the social-democratic ethos that most Labourites altogether abandoned since the 1970s. He also adopted outspoken dovish positions where the Palestinians were concerned.

     After having been Mayor of Sderot, Peretz entered national politics and in the 1980s became one of Labour's "promising young Knesset Members".

     He then broke away from Labour, to become head of Israel's veteran trade union federation, the Histadrut, helping it out of a deep crisis. After leading several militant, large-scale strikes and protracted labour disputes, his moustached visage became widely known throughout Israel -- admired by some and loathed by others. He also created a strong political base in his own political party, known as "Am Ehad" (One People).

     It was Labour's Shimon Peres who in 2004 conceived the idea of bringing Peretz back into the party fold (the similarity between their family names was to become the source of countless confusions and often hilarious jokes).

     Peres seemed mainly concerned with using Peretz's "shop-steward legions" in order to defeat former PM Ehud Barak, at the time trying to stage a comeback and seize the party leadership. Until quite late in the leadership contest Peres did not seem to take seriously the possibility that Peretz himself might enter the race -- much less, that he would win.

     On the very day of the Labour primaries, the polls still predicted a comfortable Peres victory. Yet after a tense night, it was Amir Peretz who delivered the victory speech, to a crowd more youthful and more boisterous than the Labour Party headquarters had seen in quite a long while.

     It was far more than a personal change of a leader, and far beyond an internal Labour Party event. After decades of being essentially the party of the affluent middle class, most of it ethnically of Ashkenazi (East European) origin, the party suddenly acquired a real claim to bearing the name "Labour". With a leader drawn from the heart of both the trade unions and the Israeli-Moroccan community, Labour has literally overnight gained some attractiveness in the traditional Likud constituency.

     By the same token, however, the new development was far from universally welcome among Labour's own traditional electorate or among the established party hacks. This was especially manifested in the highly ungracious attitude of the defeated Peres, who refused to make the traditional conceding phone call to the victor and continually muttered of Peretz's "ingratitude" and "impertinence."

     Gershon "Gigi" Peres, the defeated Labour leader's brother who is a building contractor and never held public office, went as far as making crude racist slurs about Peretz and his supporters -- from which brother Shimon failed to dissociate himself.

     On the other hand, most senior Labourites kept private their misgivings about the party's new leader, at least for the moment.

     In the week since Peretz's election the party's ratings in the polls jumped sharply upwards, and for the first time in many years both newspaper commentators and the general public started to consider seriously the possibility of Labour winning the coming elections.

     Likud leaders could not hide their panic, speaking with manifest alarm about "The Peretz Threat" and evidently at a loss in devising effective counter-measures.

     Netanyahu was now conceived of as a major liability, bearing responsibility for the harsh economic measures which alienated his party's electoral base among the masses and left it wide open to Peretz's appeal. PM Sharon made a visible effort to dissociate himself from the Netanyahu policies, and the new Finance Minister Ehud Olmert announced a "Crash Program to Eradicate Poverty."

     However, in a series of fiery speeches Peretz pointed out that Sharon had fully approved all of Netanyahu's measures and that they would never have been implemented without the PM's backing. TV footage of Sharon speeches to that effect, delivered on the Knesset floor when Netanyahu had presented his annual budget, was purchased by the Labour Campaign Headquarters.

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     Meanwhile, the elections date was no longer in November 2006: Peretz's very first act as the new party leader was to announce Labour's withdrawal from the government and into active opposition.

     Within a bare week, he managed to drag the party's reluctant ministers out of their comfortable portfolios, thereby depriving the Sharon Government of its parliamentary majority and forcing early elections. After some wrangling and a minor constitutional crisis, the elections date was set at March 28, 2006.

     Peretz had a clear strategy mapped out: change the terms of reference under which Israeli elections campaigns have been hitherto fought, place the socio-economic issues to the fore, and win the votes of the vast and growing mass of poor and impoverished Israelis.

     For at least some weeks it seemed to work. The themes of Social Justice suddenly dominated the media and the public debate, to the exclusion of nearly everything else. Politicians from the entire spectrum, including those hitherto known as firm advocates of free-market policies, burst out with solemn promises to work for improving the lot of the poor. So did even the wretched Netanyahu, whose sudden pledges to totally reverse all that he did as Finance Minister did not add to his credibility.

     Not that Peretz confined himself to dealing with socio-economic issues, such as his constant demand to increase the legal minimum salary to the equivalent of a thousand US Dollars.

     On the night of November 12, four days after being elected party leader, Peretz addressed a crowd estimated at 200,000, attending the annual memorial for the Rabin assassination -- as always, the year's largest gathering of peace-minded Israelis.

     Peretz's name had been added to speakers' list on the very last moment, but his speech was the one that captured the following day's headlines -- even though he shared the podium not only with the defeated Peres but also with the specially arrived ex-US President Bill Clinton.

     Repeatedly addressing the martyred Rabin, Peretz implicitly anointed himself Rabin's successor: "Ten years ago your voice reverberated across this square, Yitzchak -- until the assassin's bullets silenced it. You are not with us today, but your way is vibrantly alive. Some try to deny it, but it will not avail them: the way of Oslo is alive, it continues the life that was denied you, and it offers our only hope.

     Ongoing rule in the Territories is a recipe for sinking into a morass, a loss of values and morality. We need a Moral Roadmap whose guiding star is respect for human dignity. A Moral Roadmap means ending the occupation and signing a permanent agreement. A Moral Roadmap means defending the value of each and every person in Israel -- their dignity, their families, and their livelihood.

     I am the child who came to Israel fifty years ago, at the age of four. I am the child who grew up in the time of the Fedayun [cross-border infiltrators of the 1950's] and nowadays lives with his family under the shadow of the Qasam rockets. The children of my hometown Sderot have their sleep troubled by the fear of the Qasams, while their contemporaries in Gaza wake up with sonic booms.

     I have a dream, Yitzchak. I dream that one day the no-man's-land between Sderot and Beit Hanun will flourish. I dream of factories going up there, and recreation areas, and playgrounds where our children and the Palestinian children will play together and build a common future.

     When this dream comes true I could go to your grave, face you and say: rest in peace, Yitzchak. You have earned your final, undisturbed rest. You were murdered, yet you won!"

     Noticeably, this year's Rabin Memorial had few of the hand-painted placards visible in earlier years, nor could one hear the chanting and heckling of grassroots activists frustrated by what they heard from the podium.

     A bit unfairly to Rabin -- after all, this was supposed to be a mourning event -- many of the participants went away with a feeling of elation, more hopeful than they had been for years. But this elation was to prove quite short-lived.

PM fights back

     Ariel Sharon had once before been in a somewhat analogous situation. In 2003 hundreds of prominent Israelis and Palestinians had gathered at Geneva and solemnly signed a detailed draft peace agreement.

     At that time the Geneva Agreement was headline news, which gained high ratings in the opinion polls and threatened to completely wrest the political initiative out of Sharon's hands.

     But the PM quickly came up with an effective, drastic counter-move: the Gaza Disengagement Plan. It immediately captured back the full attention of the public. Long before the Strip was actually evacuated Geneva faded into a fuzzy memory.

     The advent of Peretz required as drastic a riposte, and Sharon immediately knew what it must be. However risky his advisers considered the idea of breaking away and forming a new party from scratch, staying in the Likud had suddenly become much riskier.

     Staying in the Likud meant that throughout the coming elections campaign the PM would be constantly burdened with the albatross of Netanyahu and of Netanyahu's regressive economic policies. Perhaps even more important, editorial writers and opinion makers were now talking of the Likud as "a hidebound anachronism" while Peretz's "miraculously revitalized Labour" was increasingly coming to be considered "the wave of the future."

     Sharon felt the urgent need to act before such trends stabilized -- and he did. Within less than two weeks, the new Kadima ("Forward!") Party was a fact -- a major one -- on the Israeli political scene.

     The apprehensions of Sharon's advisers were soon proved groundless, as the new party defied all precedent and soared to lead the polls far ahead of all others.

     The Likud was clearly pulverized, with poll after poll showing that Sharon has effortlessly managed to

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entice the solid majority of its voters to his new party. Hitherto the foremost party of Israel, with fully forty seats in the 120-member Knesset, the Likud slid down to become the third or even fourth-ranking party. At its lowest ebb some polls actually predicted for it a single-digit number of seats in the coming elections.

     Not surprisingly, in the weeks following the rupture, more and more of the high ranking Likud members went over, in addition to the staunch Sharon loyalists who had followed their leader when the new party's chances were not yet clear. A conspicuous example of open opportunism was set by Defence Minister Mofaz, who originally stayed in the rump Likud, attempted to contest its leadership and even poured some abuse at the "leftist" Sharon, only to nimbly jump over and join the same Sharon a few days later.

     After a vigorous fight with Foreign Minister Shalom, Netanyahu assumed the leadership of a wreaked party and the slow uphill struggle to recovery. Before starting to campaign in earnest, Netanyahu had to wage a rather futile effort to get rid of the organized extreme-right factions which assumed a disproportionate power in the shrunken Likud, giving it an unhealthy fanatic coloration.

     That was followed by a protracted struggle with the Likud ministers, who had to be dragged "screaming and kicking" out of their ministries in the Sharon cabinet.

     Sharon also pulverized effortlessly the Shinuy Party of the TV host turned politician Yosef ("Tommy") Lapid, which had been "the rising star" of the 2003 elections. At that time, Shinuy had garnered 15 seats by presenting itself as "The Sane Centre Party for the Middle Class", conducting a vicious hate campaign against the ultra-Orthodox and promising to work for "clean government" and promote Free Market economics.

     Three years later, most of these fifteen seats seemed destined to fall into Sharon's lap -- even though the PM had never been much of a militant secularist, and had several corruption scandals to his dubious credit. The notoriously fickle and vaguely defined part of the Israeli electorate known as "The Centre" is predominantly dovish, though in a rather shallow way. Sharon's evacuation of Gaza seemed to overshadow other considerations and issues.

     However, Sharon still faced the challenge of Peretz. Throughout November, the two of them conducted what the press dubbed "The War of the Stars", trying to outdo each other in gaining the support of prominent public figures.

     At first, Peretz seemed to hold his own in the contest. For example, the noted economist Avishai Braverman -- formerly of the World Bank and nowadays president of Be'er Sheba University -- had been on Sharon's shopping list but unexpectedly declared for Labour and started an energetic campaign on behalf of Peretz, whom he dubbed "The Champion of Social Democracy."

     Proclaimed as Labour's candidate for Finance Minister, Braverman soon proceeded to considerably water down many of the Labour Leader's economic pronouncements, so as to render him "more acceptable to the business community."

     Far more of a firebrand was the sharp-tongued Shelly Yehimovitz, one of the country's prime radio and TV commentators who never made a secret of her radical views.

     She abandoned a lucrative media career in order to compete for a place in the Labour electoral slate: "I would never before have dreamt of taking such a step -- but I have known Amir for many years, I know what he wants to do and can do for the poor and downtrodden, and I want to be at his side when he sets out doing it!"

Labour slipping down

     A blow for which Peretz could not find an adequate response: Sharon got Shimon Peres to break after more than half a century with the Labour Party and join Kadima.

     Evidently, Peres did not need much persuasion. Though he shared with the media his "hesitations" on the issue and kept everybody at tenterhooks for more than a week while he went to Barcelona and back, there is good reason to believe that his mind was already made up long before.

     Angry Labourites later criticized Amir Peretz for not having made Peres his formal second-in-command, so as to tempt him to stay in the Labour fold. But most likely, Peres would anyway have preferred to remain Sharon's loyal lieutenant (which he had been, to all intents and purposes, for the past four years) rather than assume a position under a man he clearly considered an "ungrateful" social inferior.

     Cultivating Peres was certainly a useful investment for Sharon. A considerable number of Labour voters who were never happy with the new party leader visibly moved over, and in all polls Labour started losing ground to Kadima. To add to the Labour leadership's predicament, it was also deserted by former PM Ehud Barak.

     Unlike Peres, Barak did not go over to the competing party -- especially that Sharon made clear that he was emphatically not welcome there. Instead, he just withdrew from participation in the party's elections campaign -- waiting either to be called back and given a commanding position in the party, or to capitalize on an eventual Peretz failure.

     The Labour campaign, however, faced a more fundamental problem, which was indeed predicted by many observers from the moment Peretz announced his plan of campaign: under the conditions prevailing in the Middle East it is extremely difficult to keep public attention concentrated on socio-economic issues and perilously easy to distract it elsewhere.

     First it was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who (for reasons apparently having to do with internal Iranian politics) made a whole series of inflammatory statements, calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" and for Israelis to be "resettled in Germany and Austria" and for good measure

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denying that the Holocaust had taken place. Thereby, he not only damaged his country's delicate position in the international arena and handed the Sharon Government a whole series of easy diplomatic coups. Unwittingly, he also intervened in the Israeli elections and gave government ministers a welcome chance to make alarming speeches on the need to "unify against the Iranian threat" (and forget lesser issues such as poverty).

     Virtually unmentioned went the sober fact that Iran may or may not gain nuclear arms at some future date, while Israel is known to posses hundreds of them already for decades -- plus missiles quite capable of reaching Iran from Israeli territory, as well as missile- carrying submarines rumoured to be already prowling unobtrusively off the Iranian shore.

     Once the Iranian hullabaloo subsided, there came up a more humdrum issue -- namely, for the umpteenth time an escalation with the Palestinians. Within a month, the Islamic Jihad carried out two suicide bombings, respectively at the Israeli towns of Netanya and Hadera; there was an increase in daily shooting of Quasam rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory; and for good measure, some Lebanese-based Palestinian groups occasionally shot at towns along Israel's northern border which had been left alone since the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Lebanon in May 2000.

     According to government speakers -- whose version was accepted unquestioningly by most Israelis, certainly by the impoverished masses that Peretz was courting -- all this was nothing but unprovoked terrorist aggression.

     Few heard or cared about the increasing number of Palestinians killed in Israeli ground and air raids into the Palestinian cities -- civilians, including children, who fell victim to "regrettable collateral damage"; militants shot while "resisting arrest" or "trying to escape"; and those who were the deliberate targets of "targeted killings", i.e. assassination.

     Whatever the cause and whoever was to blame, escalation there certainly was.

     Israeli artillery installed its batteries around the Gaza Strip, launching heavy salvos in retaliation for any missile shot from the Palestinian side; Palestinian militants penetrated into the ruins of former Israeli settlements in the northern Strip, from which they could shoot at the hitherto-untouched Israeli city of Ashkelon, where a major power station and an oil pipeline are located; the Israeli side declared these former settlements a "no-go area", and warned that any Palestinian venturing into them may be summarily shot; Palestinian families living in the vicinity were shown on TV hurriedly packing and fleeing, one more stream of refugees in Palestinian history...

     So far, there were few actual casualties from the artillery shelling, with gunners targeting the fields outside the Palestinian towns. A dangerous game. When the same tactic had been used at Lebanon in 1996, just one artillery shell going a slight bit astray was enough to kill 102 villagers at Qana.

     Motti Morrel, Peretz's campaign manager, dared state in public the suspicion shared by many others: that the escalation had been initiated by the Sharon Government with the deliberate aim of distracting public attention from poverty and festering injustice. But Morrel's boss was quick to reprimand him and dissociate Labour from a statement conceived as "anti-patriotic" and "a justification of terrorism."

     Deliberate or not, the weeks-long escalation certainly had the effect of derailing Amir Peretz's campaign and making its themes seem irrelevant, even though there was no change in the rank conditions of poverty.

     Peretz was driven to various emergency measures in an effort to prove his nationalist and patriotic credentials. Following the Netanya bombing, he hurriedly convened the ex-generals in the Labour

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Shout it from the rooftops!

(...) Your campaign will have no chance, Mr. Peretz, if the impression arises that there is no real difference between you and Sharon. You must convince the Labour Party refugees who are becoming attracted by Sharon that there is a profound difference between your program (negotiations with the Palestinians and a peace agreement) and that of Sharon (unilateral diktat, which will bring neither peace nor security).

     Sharon is interested in downplaying this difference. By the same logic, your interest is to emphasize it, to shout it from the rooftops.

     People in love with ambiguity will vote for Sharon. That, you can't change. But a large part of the public, especially in the centre, is longing for a bold leadership with a clear message. Here - and only here! - lies your big chance, Mr. Peretz.

     As Rabbi Nachman of Braslav said, many years ago: "The whole world is a narrow bridge, and the main thing is to have no fear at all!

Uri Avnery, Dec. 24, in an Open Letter to Amir Peretz

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leadership, who were dubbed "The party's Security Cabinet." Peretz declared his support for "United Jerusalem, Undivided Capital of Jerusalem", in effect turning back from the taboo-breaking position that Labour had assumed under his rival Barak, and also approved of new construction in the giant West Bank settlement of Ma'aleh Adumim, part of Sharon's "settlement blocks."

     No more was heard of the "Moral Roadmap" which Peretz had proclaimed at the Rabin Square, or of Oslo (which Peretz's advisers proclaimed to be "electoral poison"). Instead, Peretz announced that "precisely the peace-seekers could and would fight all the more intransigently against terrorism."

     Then, a "committee of experts" ceremoniously unveiled Labour's New Political Program. The "creative new element" turned out to be having Israel "lease the settlement blocks from the Palestinians, as Britain leased Hong Kong from China." Left wing critics pointed out that such a "99-year lease" was only semantically different from the outright annexation proposed by Sharon -- and that the idea had the effect of linking Labour's name, for

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the historically minded, with one of the most unsavoury episodes in the annals of 19th Century colonialism.

     The main effect of all this was to erase the confident and assertive image which Peretz originally conveyed, make him look apologetic and defensive -- a bad posture for an oppositional leader seeking to storm the entrenched positions of power.

     Week by week, Labour went down in the polls, losing all the ground which it gained in the first weeks of Peretz and then falling even below the 19 seats it had garnered in 2003.

     Though quite a few Israelis still considered Peretz the candidate best fitted to tackle socio-economic issues, only a few regarded him as able to deal with defence and security, and even less -- as qualified to be Prime Minister.

     The trend-setting weekend cartoon of Yediot Aharonot, which once depicted Peretz as a plucky knight challenging King Sharon, now showed a Sharon Colossus contemptuously towering over a diminutive Peretz and a diminutive Netanyahu to his flanks -- which quite accurately reflected the situation in the polls.

The Sharon tide

     To the growing amazement of the commentators, Sharon and Kadima continued what seemed an unstoppable upward swing.

     An ever-greater part of the Israeli electorate appeared to place their confidence in Sharon. By mid-December, it became the common wisdom to state that the campaign had already been effectively decided, and that Sharon would return as prime minister, stronger and more unrestrained then ever.

     Contemplating Kadima's phenomenal rise in the polls, pundits concluded that Sharon -- for most of his 50-year military and political career a highly debatable controversial figure -- had in his old age learned to convey a "Father Image" (or, as some claimed, a "Grandfather Image"), making the electorate trust him almost blindly. Sharon gave nobody more than vague hints about his future plans.

     The Kadima Program, duly published and offered to the public gaze on the party's website, offers little guidance. Kadima did officially commit itself to the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel -- the first time that a party explicitly advocating this solution seems destined to become Israel's ruling party -- but with so many riders and conditions attached as to make this virtually meaningless.

     By no means was it made clear what territory Sharon was ready to cede to the new Palestine, and whether or not there would be any kind of territorial continuity. And no word about when the process bringing about the Palestinian state would begin (if ever).

     In fact, much of Sharon's wide appeal seemed to derive from the voters attributing to him a plan which appeared in no Kadima document: namely, to complete construction of the West Bank Fence/Wall and then withdraw to that line and dismantle the settlements lying beyond the fence -- which would then be declared unilaterally into Israel's border.

     Sharon repeatedly denied that he had any such intention, and reiterated that his one and only plan was "adherence to the Road Map." According to Sharon's exegesis (by no means the only possible interpretation of that internationally-renowned document) that meant that Israel would wait for the Palestinians to "crush terrorism" and would have until then no obligations to fulfill.

     Still, the voters persisted in believing what Sharon did not say. "For the first time we see voters who not only tolerate lying candidates, but actually want their candidate to lie to them" said Prof. Ze'ev Sternhall, political scientist and commentator.

     Quite a few other commentators, such as former Education Minister and present Ma'ariv columnist Amnon Rubinstein, took for granted that Kadima is indeed "the party of further unilateral disengagements" and strongly approved of it: "At last we have a true mass party of the Sane Centre. It avoids the right-wing illusion that we can keep all the Territories and the left-wing illusion that there is a Palestinian partner with whom we can negotiate and make peace. Kadima stands for the only realistic choice: Israel should decide for itself what territory it wants to keep and which must be given up, and unilaterally draw its own permanent borders."

     Even Yossi Beilin, leader of the Meretz/Yahad Party, who was architect of both the Oslo Agreement and the Geneva Initiative and thus a chief proponent of the above-mentioned "left-wing illusion", declared his intention to bring his party into Sharon's cabinet: "The government which will be formed after these elections is going to draw Israel's permanent borders, and we should be there to influence the process."

     On the other side of the political spectrum, the settlers were not deceived by Sharon's official designation of the Fence/Wall as "a purely defensive perimeter", and its erection caused an increasing polarization in the settler community.

     Settlers left "within" the Fence route grew secure and confident in being "a de-facto annexed part of Israel" -- as, for example, the secretariat of Alfey Menashe settlement near Qualquilia wrote in an add offering cheap subsidized housing to Tel-Avivians which they hoped to entice.

     Meanwhile, settlers left on the "outer" side grew increasingly desperate, some of them approaching Knesset Members of the aforementioned Meretz for help in getting evacuated and compensated already. "We don't want to go through a long dying process," one of them declared in a tearful TV interview.

Riding for a fall

     Whatever the reasons, the polls showed Sharon continuing his relentless march, week after week, far outstripping all others and maintaining a secure grip over his new party. Kadima was a new, jury-rigged party, composed of refugees from Likud, Labour and other parties who placed their political future in

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Sharon's hands and of hitherto uninvolved public figures which the PM had handpicked. The party's hastily drawn bylaws officially invested Sharon with sole and exclusive decision-making power on all-important issues, no option for a Likud-style internal opposition to form.

     A vague Kadima pledge to "change the system of government" was widely interpreted as indicating a Sharon plan to introduce some kind of presidential system which would give him that kind of untrammeled power in the country as a whole -- and it seemed that he would get the power to do it.

     Former radical Haim Hanegbi, a new-made Sharon adherent, proclaimed Sharon to be the long-sought "Israeli De Gaulle", who would evacuate the Israeli settlers from the West Bank as De Gaulle removed their counterparts from Algeria. But the PM himself was reportedly more fascinated with a slightly later stage in the late French President's career -- namely the formation of the Gaullist Party, which long outlived its creator to become a permanent major feature of French politics.

     Adding to the fast forming Sharonist-Gaullist myth was Sharon's success in easily bypassing issues that should have been major stumbling blocks for a politician fighting a major elections campaign. The various elections scandals to which his name was attached made no dent in his standing at the polls. Not even when his son Omri Sharon made a plea bargain and admitted his guilt on several charges related to campaign funding irregularities, potentially carrying prison terms. As numerous press articles had it, Omri was shielding his father, since letting prosecution evidence be presented in court might have implicated the PM -- which the voters evidently considered as no more than an exemplary expression of filial duty.

     Indeed, Sharon felt confident enough to spread his wing over others implicated in corruption such as Likud Minister Tzahi Hanegbi (no relation to Haim), accused of having abused his ministerial powers to appoint political cronies to lucrative government jobs. On the very same day that he was summoned to police investigation, Hanegbi bolted Likud to become the latest recruit to the ranks of Kadima. At a specially convened press conference, he was heartily welcomed into his new party by the Prime Minister -- who evidently assumed this would help the Kadima campaign. The weekend polls proved him right.

     To the frustration of Netanyahu and the settlers, their effort to use the continuing rocket attacks out of Gaza in order to discredit Sharon's withdrawal from the Strip came to naught. The highest pitch of demagoguery, of a kind which could have caused a Labour government serious trouble (and did, in various past elections) just passed by the unruffled Sharon, who did not bother to make any answer. "On the face of it, the right-wingers had a point," wrote Ofer Shelach in Yediot Aharonot. "Before the withdrawal from Gaza, Sharon said that there would be no Qasams, and the settlers said there would be. If you don't go into the deeper underlying causes, they seem proven right. But the public just does not want to listen to them..."

     The light stroke suffered by Sharon seemed no more than one more slight hurdle, to be lightly jumped over in a campaign which seemed more and more to resemble a triumphal procession. After a very brief hospitalization, the Prime Minister was photographed shaking hands and lightly joking with his doctors, "as good as new." That, at least, was the impression successfully conveyed through the media.

     The Prime Minister's health did not become a major campaign issue. Rather than make voters doubt Sharon's capacity to govern, the stroke merely increased public sympathy and further buoyed his ratings.

     Sharon's doctors appeared at a highly publicized and well-attended press conference (it was political correspondents who were invited by the Kadima PR section, rather than those who have some independent knowledge of medicine). Smilingly, the doctors flooded their hearers with an enormous outpouring of obscure but impressive medical terms about their illustrious patient. This was described as "the most candid act of self-exposure ever performed by an Israeli politician."

     As was to be revealed all too soon, the doctors neglected to mention the grave risks of a second and worse stroke, involved in the very medication they had given Sharon. No mention, either, of the fact that any other 78-year old patient who underwent a slight stroke would be strongly advised to take some weeks of rest. Even a patient not involved in the highly stressful simultaneous running of a major elections campaign and a minor shooting war.

     And so Sharon went back into the fray, running full steam ahead to what seemed an inevitable victory. Even when the TV evening news announced that the police had "solid evidence" of the Prime Minister having received three million of dollars in bribes from the Austrian casino tycoon Martin Schlaff, nobody got too exited. While going through the motions of outrage to be expected in such circumstances, frustrated opposition politicians made cynical jokes: "Sharon will find a way to let it add to his ratings." In fact, it was only half a joke.

     A Classical Greek dramaturge would have called it hubris -- the kind of arrogance that can arouse the ire of the gods.

Shaping the heritage

     "His Last Battle" and "PM fighting for life" proclaimed the enormous banner headline, after the dramatic night when a literally global attention was focused on Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital. Citizens were tearfully asked to pray for Sharon, and children arrived at the hospital gates bearing touching naive drawings as gifts for the ailing Prime Minister.

     Within hours of his being rushed to the operating room, it had become clear that even under the most optimistic of medical scenarios Sharon would never again function as prime minister or party leader. This opened the very real possibility that the Kadima Party, which one man had conjured out of

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thin air, would soon return to the same primal condition, its leading members and voters speedily dispersing to their parties of origin.

     Labourites felt (though they took care not to speak it out loud) that this was Peretz's one remaining chance to regain the initiative. Similar thoughts abounded in the neighbourhood of Netanyahu and other Likud leaders. Commentators predicted a more equal, three-way race, ending with three major parties of more or less equal power (and a quite complicated political situation after the elections).

     For the time being, however, it was agreed by all the contending parties that active electioneering should be suspended for a while, until it became clear if Sharon was going to live and whether he would ever wake from his coma.

     As everybody agreed, while an aggrieved people was worried about the fate of their chosen leader, it would be improper for politicians to sling mud at each other. On the other hand, the temporary assumption of power by Deputy PM Ehud Olmert in no way counted as electioneering. Especially as Olmert was so very modest and self-effacing about it.

     The media continually praised Olmert's decision not to move into Sharon's gaping empty office, and to leave the PM's chair at the cabinet meeting hall conspicuously vacant. In numerous interviews in press, radio and TV, he reiterated again and again how overwhelmed he was at the heavy responsibility so suddenly and tragically descending on his shoulders. He looked very sincere and statesmanlike when looking directly into the camera and stating, with some emotion in his voice, how overjoyed he would be for Sharon to recover and take charge again.

     Meanwhile, Olmert had quickly and efficiently received the fealty of the other leading figures in Kadima (the only one quibbling about it was Peres -- and he was bought off with the prestigious but mainly symbolic second place on the Kadima electoral slate). Olmert also received a long and hearty phone call from President Bush, effectively recognizing him as heir presumptive.

     Quite soon, the polls started giving Olmert as high a rating as they had given Sharon -- though until the fatal stroke, he had been the least popular of the Kadima leaders.

At first, the leaders of other parties consoled themselves by considering this a momentary emotional reaction by an Israeli public feeling sympathy with the ailing leader. But the trend continued and became even stronger, confirmed in poll after poll: Kadima surging ahead, with 40 seats and more -- just as under Sharon -- Labour and Likud trailing far behind, with less than 20 seats each and in close competition for the title of second-rate party.

     Meanwhile, the Sharon Heritage was being born and elaborated at record speed -- even quicker than the Rabin Heritage appeared in the wake of the November 1995 assassination. Given the man's 50-year long military and political career, most of it checkered and highly controversial, the Sharon Heritage could be construed as meaning and including any desirable element.

     Sharon the resolute warrior and cross-border raider was responsible for the heroic crossing of the Suez Canal in 1973 -- but also for the Quibia Massacre in 1953, Sabra and Shatila in 1982 and sundry other acts definable as war crimes under accepted international norms. In later years he became also the benign gentleman sheep farmer romping happily with his grandchildren in the pastoral landscape of his Negev farm (the biggest privately-owned agricultural establishment in Israel). And it would be quite justified to remember Sharon as by far the largest settlement builder in Israel's history, and also as the biggest (in fact, the only real) destroyer of settlements.

     So far it seems that the people in the best position to select what would compose the Sharon Heritage (i.e., Olmert and the other Kadima leaders, as well as the sons Omri and Gil'ad Sharon) place the emphasis on the dovish incidents of his life, which may provide a reason for guarded optimism.

     In fact, Olmert's own career is quite as checkered and contradictory as Sharon's, though lacking a conspicuous military component. He started political life at the extreme right in the immediate post-1967 period, championing the slogan "Don't give back a single inch!"

     As mayor of Jerusalem in the 1990's he persistently encouraged and facilitated the creation of new "Jewish neighbourhoods" in East Jerusalem. The "Har Homa" project was carried out in the teeth of worldwide condemnations, and at the same time Olmert denied building permits to Palestinians, ordering the demolition of houses that they anyway built.

     He also had a share in responsibility for the Wailing Wall Tunnel provocation in 1996, which sparked riots and armed confrontations costing more than a hundred Israeli and Palestinian lives.

     Yet even at that time he cultivated a personal friendship with then Labour Party leader Ehud Barak and materially helped Barak's victory in the

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1999 elections -- for which the Likud hard-liners never forgave him. By the way, his own son Saul joined the Yesh Gvul movement and declared his refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories.

     After entering national politics and holding various ministerial portfolios, Olmert became more and more conspicuous as a leading Likud moderate. He spoke both privately and in public of disengagement from the Gaza Strip, long before Sharon became identified with the idea.

     Moreover, he went on record in support of a far more extensive evacuation of West Bank settlements than the token four that Sharon did dismantle simultaneously with the ones in Gaza.

     As with other moderates issuing from the ranks of the Likud and the right wing, Olmert's main motivation was "The Demographic Threat." As he

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stated in a memorable Yediot Aharonot interview in December 2003: "We are getting near to the point when the Palestinians say -- okay, we don't want a state, just give us the vote [to the Knesset].

     When that happens, we have a huge problem. You can see how difficult it is to get international support, even when they use terrorism. If they ask for the vote, the whole world will support them, and we will lose everything, all that we built in more than a hundred years. Before that happens, we must draw the border according to demographic principles, to have no more than 20% Arabs compared with 80% Jews inside Israel."

     To the interviewer's question "But that's more or less the percentage within the Green Line, without the Territories?" Olmert had answered "Yes, that's true" and refused to elaborate further. (Here quoted from Yediot Aharonot of January 13, 2006 -- where the 2003 interview was re-published following Olmert's sudden accession to power.

Drawing the Hamas in

     It has become fashionable -- and not entirely without a reason -- to castigate Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) as being weak and ineffectual. PM Sharon has indeed striven to create that impression from the very first day that Abbas succeeded Arafat. A weak and ineffectual Palestinian leader is by definition a "non-partner" with whom there is no need to negotiate.

     In truth, Sharon has not only stated that Abu Mazen was weak, but also did all in his power -- and the Prime Minister of Israel has a lot of power in the matter -- to make it true in reality.

     Still, Abu Mazen could unquestionably be credited with initiating a bold and profound move, changing the Palestinian political system in a way never seriously tried by Arafat. Namely: drawing the Hamas movement to compete in free elections and take part in the Palestinian Legislative Council, set up under the Oslo Agreements in 1994.

     Taking over the Palestinian leadership at the end of 2003, under conditions not dissimilar to those which now propelled Olmert to the seat of power, Abu Mazen had little of the charisma and personal following which made the very person of Arafat into a major unifying symbol of Palestinian nationalism. He certainly had neither the wish nor the ability to crush the Islamic opposition by force.

     What he did was to seek a wide National Consensus among the major Palestinian factions. In return for urging Hamas participation in the legislative elections, and holding out the possibility of their inclusion in a future Palestinian cabinet, Abu Mazen had asked -- and gained -- Hamas adherence to the Tahadiya (truce). This meant an almost complete suspension of Hamas military actions against Israeli targets -- civilian or military.

     What was left vague was the possibility of altogether disbanding the Hamas militias -- a demand voiced by Sharon mainly as an excuse for not entering into negotiations, and a bit more sincerely by the Americans and the Europeans. For its part, the Hamas leadership was willing to consider, without commitment, the possibility of integrating Hamas fighters into the unified Palestinian armed forces to be created.

     Even so, it was the continuing Tahadiya that gave Abu Mazen some kind of concrete achievement to present to the international mediators (and to Israel -- except that Sharon was not really interested). In January 2006, Israeli Security Chief Diskin gave a (completely unacknowledged) tribute to Abu Mazen's policy by stating that the number of Israelis killed in Palestinian attacks during 2005 was only half as that in 2004. This Diskin attributed to the truce observed by Hamas throughout the past year, with very few exceptions, leaving the Islamic Jihad as the main perpetrator.

     Those who get their information from the mainstream Israeli or Western media tend to lump Hamas and Jihad together, as two Radical Islamic terrorist organizations. Anyone familiar with the Palestinian society would immediately know the difference, which indeed grew deeper in the course of 2005.

     The Islamic Jihad is a small paramilitary group, having little popular following, with few electoral prospects -- and the Jihad leadership did not even try to contest he elections. Hamas, on the other hand, is a massive political and social movement with branches in every Palestinian town, village or refugee camp.

     Only a minority of the Hamas members ever held a gun or an explosive charge, and among the masses the movement is especially renowned for its unmatched network of charity organizations. For more than a decade it is obvious that, should a stable two-party system develop in Palestine, Hamas would be one of the two main parties -- as opposed to Fatah, the veteran party which had led the Palestinian National Movement for nearly half a century.

     Throughout 2005, the Fatah leadership and cadres were thoroughly learning and re-learning a simple truism: Any long-established ruling party submitting its power to the test of free elections runs the risk of losing. Especially so if the voters have reasons to feel displeased with them -- which Palestinian voters in 2005 certainly did.

     In its nearly forgotten origins, Fatah had been an organization devoted to the armed struggle, pure and simple. But at least since the Madrid Conference in 1991 and the Oslo Agreement in 1993, it had committed itself to a diplomatic process with Israel (when the current Israeli government was willing) and with the Americans and Europeans). Armed struggle was reduced to an occasional auxiliary role.

     A decade and a half of this gained the Fatah leadership, controlling the Palestinian Authority, many of the outer trappings of a sovereign state, but very little of the substance.

     While being regarded by the international community as a semi-state entity and expected to fulfill the obligations of one -- especially with regard to imposing Law and Order in the territory supposedly under their control -- Palestinian lawmakers and

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ministers could not so much as guarantee their voters the simple right to travel to the neighboring village.

     At any time, Palestinian freedom of movement could be subjected to arbitrary closures and roadblocks, at the discretion of Israeli military commanders and their judgment of "the needs of the struggle against terrorism."

     Despite rather feeble American requests for Israel to ease up on these travel restrictions, by the end of 2005 the army has proclaimed the "anti-terrorist measure" of completely forbidding the inhabitants of the Jenin, Nablus and Tulkarm Districts -- some 800,000 persons -- to travel to the rest of the West Bank.

     Nor could the Palestinian government and parliament do anything to prevent Israeli forces from entering any West Bank city or village at any time (but usually at night) and arresting whoever they wanted on charges of terrorism, or without preferring any charges -- including political activists and electoral candidates, or even elected members of the Legislative Council itself.

     Added to the voters' frustration with the Fatah leaders' failure to procure real freedom from the oppressive Israeli military power is the widespread accusation that some of these leaders did manage to considerably line their own pockets in the course of the past decade. (Curiously, Palestinian voters seem far more sensitive to the issue of corruption than their Israeli counterpart).

     Such accusations were especially -- though not exclusively -- leveled at the Fatah Old Guard, the layer of veteran PLO activists who had lived through decades of exile and came back to the territories after Oslo. The younger Fatah generation, those who became involved during the First Initifada of the 1980's and spent years in Israeli prisons, had a better public image.

     This long-dormant conflict inside Fatah was brought to a shattering climax by the approach of elections. After considerable wrangling, Fatah decided upon holding primary elections to select the party's candidates for the general elections -- a complete innovation in the Palestinian political system, and indeed in the Arab World as a whole.

     The Fatah primaries ended with a clear victory for the younger generation. Especially impressive was the victory of Marwan Barghouti, whose incarceration in the Israeli prison enormously increased his popularity; posters showing Barghouti defiantly holding his manacled hands above his head were seen everywhere in the Palestinian Territories.

     There followed an attempt by the Old Guard to ignore the result of the primaries and present a Fatah electoral slate dominated by their own people. This was answered by Barghouti and his followers breaking away and forming their own slate, which the polls indicated would draw away the bulk of the Fatah voters. (The ironic parallel with the Sharon's Kadima did not escape Palestinian as well as Israeli observers...)

     A hastily patched up compromise brought a shaky unity between the two factions, with the younger generation getting most of their demands.

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Free Barghouti!

In prison or outside, Marwan Barghouti is one of the most important Palestinian leaders.

Everybody knows: sooner or later he will have to be released.

On the eve of crucial elections in both Palestine and Israel, while violence is escalating, the release of Barghouti can create a new dynamic for peace and save the lives of Israelis and Palestinians.

Release him now!

Gush Shalom ad in Ha'aretz Dec. 30, 2005

pob 3322, Tel-Aviv, Israel 61033

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     In the process, it became a more or less officially accepted fact of life that Marwan Barghouti's prison cell had been transformed into a major focal point of Palestinian political life, where many of the most crucial decisions are being taken. And most observers agreed that he would not likely serve out the five consecutive life terms that the Tel-Aviv District court imposed on him two years ago...

Elections under siege

     Barghouti has become Fatah's major electoral asset, "The Palestinian Nelson Mandela." Even with him at the top of the slate, however, the superficially reunited Fatah campaign compared unfavourably with the smooth, well-organized and coordinated effort put on by Hamas. Abu Mazen urgently needed a visible achievement to show the voters, and the Israeli side seemed quite unwilling to provide him with anything of the kind.

     US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice did oblige, at least to some degree. In the kind of gesture that was quite common during previous administrations but became extremely rare under Bush, she paid a personal visit to the region.

     Directly upon arriving in Jerusalem, she more or less ordered the dilatory Sharon to at last accept the opening of the Rafah Border Crossing between the Gaza Strip and Egypt, from where Israeli forces had been withdrawn in August. The Israeli demand to have a safeguard against arms smuggling was answered by the stationing of European observers.

     It was, in fact, a minor issue which -- given a modicum of goodwill and common sense, should have been settled in one or two days. The fact that it had dragged on for three months, and needed such a blatant high-level US intervention to resolve, boded ill for the chances of dealing with more difficult and complex issues.

     Still, it was an achievement, touching directly the daily life of hundreds of thousands of Gazans. Abu Mazen made the most of it, inaugurating the new crossing in an impressive formal ceremony. For the first time since 1967 the Palestinians had considerable (though not quite complete) control over at least

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one of their borders. And Gazans who could afford the fare were now free to go anywhere in the world, without Israeli controls and restrictions.

     Anywhere, that is, except for the West Bank, which lies such a short distance away, and where, many Gazans have close family members whom they had not seen in five years or more. An Israeli promise to Rice, to allow guarded bus convoys between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank was not kept "because of the continued shooting of Quasam missiles." The Americans did not make too much of an effort to get it implemented.

     Meanwhile, Gazans do not even have the option of traveling to the West Bank by the long way around, through Egypt and Jordan. At the crossing between the West Bank and Jordan, still very much under Israeli control, the guards are under strict orders not to admit anyone resident in the Gaza Strip.

     Within a few weeks, the achievement at Rafah was dimmed when unruly militias -- embarrassingly, ones linked to an undisciplined faction of the Fatah Party itself -- several times closed off the newly opened crossing, broke down the border fence and engaged in shooting sprees in which two Egyptian soldiers were killed. Other rampages involved the taking over of Palestinian Authority public buildings for hours or days, and the kidnapping of foreign nationals.

     The Palestinian security forces seemed unable to stop these factions -- acting from often-incoherent motives and apparently under nobody's control. Hamas speakers charged (and quite a few people believed them) that it was all done deliberately, to create conditions of chaos that would provide a pretext for postponing the elections.

     Whether or not these charges were true, the militia rampages throughout the Gaza Strip certainly served to further discredit the Fatah movement and sharpen the contrast with the "highly disciplined, smoothly operating and clean handed" Hamas. They also played into the hands of Sharon (then already well on the way to his final collapse, though nobody knew it) who triumphantly pointed to this "proof positive " of Abu Mazen's "total impotence."

     With Hamas sweeping the municipal elections in mid-December and taking most of the main West Bank cities, there was an increasingly desperate pressure of Fatah leaders to postpone the legislative elections, slated for January 25. The Israeli side seemed to offer a convenient pretext, by forbidding the holding of Palestinian elections in the East Jerusalem post offices -- where they had been allowed in 1996 and 2005. Israeli police arrested Palestinian candidates for the crime of conducting "unauthorized" electioneering on Jerusalem soil.

     Postponing the elections on these grounds would have been -- at least officially -- an act of defending vital Palestinian interests on the emotive issue of Jerusalem. (But Hamas was not deceived, and its speakers issued dire warnings to Abu Mazen against any such idea.)

     As often, the final arbiter turned out to be Washington. By not acting, the Americans would have allowed Israel to go on preventing the Jerusalem elections, and thus trigger the indefinite delay of the elections as a whole. Some elements in the administration, never happy with the participation of "terrorists" in the Palestinian elections, were in favour of that course.

     In the end, however, the administration decided to give precedence to "democratization of the Middle East" over "the war against terrorism." Two envoys were going to be dispatched, to inform Sharon of that decision and "advise" him to take a "flexible" position on the East Jerusalem elections. They were already waiting at the airport in Washington when the news came of Sharon's cerebral hemorrhage.

Olmert's test

     It fell to Ehud Olmert to take the expected decision and remove the impediments from the Palestinian elections in Jerusalem. His first major act as Acting Prime Minister. It was taken in the face of the expected howl by the Likud leaders, who charged that this was "a frontal attack on the Unity of Jerusalem, capital of Israel." (A kind of poetic justice, considering the countless times that Olmert himself, as Mayor of Jerusalem, used the self-same piece of demagoguery.)

     This was a relatively easy decision, both because Olmert was merely following a ten-year old precedent and because Israeli governments are in the habit of following this kind of direct "suggestion" from Washington. But the Palestinian elections, which now seem destined to take place on schedule after all, would present a far tougher challenge -- whatever their outcome.

     It seems unquestionable that Hamas would emerge from these elections as a major party in the Palestinian parliament. The question whether its representation would be smaller, equal or greater than that of Fatah, would apparently be resolved only on elections night itself (which is precisely where such questions should be resolved in free democratic elections). Then would come the issue whether Hamas would become part of the Palestinian cabinet, or stay a large and militant parliamentary opposition.

     Quite a tough decision for the Hamas leaders themselves. Would they be willing to abandon the intransigent opposition to Israel enshrined in their "Islamic Charter" and get directly or indirectly involved in negotiations (assuming, of course, that Israel is ready to talk to them)? Some of the leaders, at least, seem to be seriously considering this possibility, even in public, and even in interviews to Israeli TV.

     For their part, the Americans would have to decide whether or not to carry out their threat to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority because of Hamas involvement in its institutions -- which may cause its collapse. (But the US did not cut off relations with Lebanon just because Hizbullah had several ministers at the cabinet table in Beirut.) And the Europeans, too, will have to take some fundamental decisions. Possibly the toughest decision,

Page 13

however, may fall into Ehud Olmert's lap, and the Sharon Heritage will not be sufficient to guide him.

     Had he still been at the helm, Sharon would have probably just gleefully seized on this opportunity to declare, once and for all, that "There is no Partner." But Olmert will have to take his own decisions -- with still two months to go until his electoral test, having still no popular mandate of his own, the peak of his career still ahead of him. Whatever he decides may effect the lives of many people for a long time to come.

     And so, we go to print in a situation of uncertainty and a lot of unanswered questions. By the time you read this, you may know a bit more.

The Editors

****

Why make it easy for them?

     During a brief interlude between two terms in the military prison, refuser Uri Nathan found time to talk to Adam Keller.

     At a Bible class in my elementary school, we learned about some war that the ancient Hebrews waged against some of their enemies, the Amalekites I think.

     What I remember was that after winning they slaughtered all their captives, which was okay as far as God was concerned, but an officer who looted some property was punished very severely. The teacher asked us who had acted wrong in this affair and I said it was the prophet who urged the Hebrews to start this war. It was not the answer she expected.

     Not that at the time I had any idea that I would one day refuse to do military service. In fact, a cousin of whom I was very fond was a soldier, and our favourite play was for him to order me around as if I was a little soldier myself. The army looked to me like a glamorous, swell place to be.

     My mother's family in the Kibbutz had a high regard for military service; it was very much a part of the Kibbutz ethos. My mother broke with that way of life in the 1970's; it was very difficult to be a single mother in a Kibbutz at that time. For some time she lived in New York.

     As I was growing up, she did not often talk to me directly about politics. I did get from her a very strong feeling of a comprehensive morality, a morality that applies equally to all human beings without distinctions. Very much a non-nationalistic education.

     By the way, my relatives from the Kibbutz have accepted the fact of my refusal; they told my mother they respect my decision.

     When I started high school it was already clear to me that I would either refuse conscription or just get out of the army through the Kaban (Mental Health Officer), which is what quite few young people do nowadays. Going in and serving three years as a soldier was not an option.

     When I was in the Tel-Aviv Pupils' Council, there was a girl who introduced me to socialist ways of thinking and acting. I became involved with Democratic Action, a radical group still often called "Nitzotz" (Spark) for the paper they once had and which was closed by the government. They operate a kind of community centre in Jaffa, to help Arab children who live in bad slum conditions.

     I started also going to the demonstrations of Socialist Action against the Netanyahu economic policies, and to picketing the Defence Ministry when children were killed in the Territories.

     A friend told me about the protests against construction of the Wall, at Budrus Village. There was a special training session before we went there, but it did not really prepare me for the Border Guards rushing in and swinging their clubs and hitting everybody on the head while arresting us. Very scary.

     In the police station we were Israelis and internationals from the ISM and a Palestinian who had not even participated in the demo, they just dragged him out of his home nearby and accused him of stone throwing.

     We declared solidarity; nobody goes away until everybody is released. The officer argued with us for several hours and in the evening he did let all of us go. This gave me an appreciation for the power of non-violence -- not so much the demo itself as this confrontation inside the police station.

     In my last year at school we started organizing an anti-militarist student group. That was when the Education Ministry started this program nicknamed "A major for every minor."

     Until then, the army was every year sending a young corporal to the school to talk about what the army is like. They started feeling that corporals don't have enough "authority" and don't succeed in giving the pupils motivation to become soldiers. From now on it was going to be a lieutenant colonel as an integrated part of the school staff, a kind of Teacher of Military Affairs.

     Our principal decided to invite an Air Force Brigadier, who was a graduate of the school, to give a lecture. On the day he arrived, two others and I chained ourselves to the school gate with a sign "No Entrance to the Army." Our friends stood around us and gave out leaflets, while hostiles were cursing us and some threw stones.

     It got into the media, and all kinds of politicians reacted to it. More attention than anything I was involved in before or after.

     In fact the general did go into the school. As I later heard, much of his lecture was devoted to attacking us. The principal imposed on me what he called an educational punishment: to write a paper about the failure of the Camp David talks in 2000. He said I should understand the complexity of the situation.

     I wrote the paper. I concluded that Barak did not make very generous offers that the Palestinians rejected. Rather, both Barak and Arafat played like puppet masters with the fate of Israelis and Palestinians.

     At about this time I got called up to do medical examinations in preparation for enlistment.

     I did it, but I told them it was no use to examine

Page 14

me since I was certainly going to refuse.

     This would have been the moment to ask for the Conscience Committee, but I didn't do it. In order to succeed in this committee, you have to fit yourself to the army's concept of "pacifism", which is that all violence is the same. If somebody attacks me in the street and I don't turn the other cheek, than I am not a pacifist, case closed.

     It is not like that at all. Pacifism is essentially a reaction to the wars of the Twentieth Century, to the industrialized killing of people by the million in assembly line fashion. In the First World War the European countries lost whole generations of men,

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and in WWII again. Russia still does not have enough men, more than fifty years afterwards!

     The only pacifism they accept is when you declare that going to Bil'in and shouting at the soldiers that they are dirty bastards is "verbal violence." You have to be against that just as much as you are against the trench warfare in which two hundred thousand soldiers were killed in one day. The same phenomenon, the only difference is the size!

     If I have to pretend and lie in order to get out of the army, I prefer to go to the Kaban and pretend I am a bit crazy. Not to the Committee and pretend that I believe in total nonsense.

     On the day I had to go in, Shaul Mograbi-Berger was with me, who had already been imprisoned several times and prepared me for all the rigmarole. The Shministim (High School Refusers Group) went with us up to the gates of the Induction Centre in Tel Hashomer, a very nice demo.

     Two girls in flowered dresses carried big baskets from which they distributed gifts to all the passing soldiers. They gave them pairs of plastic handcuffs, with a note saying "Dear soldier, this may help you in the sacred duty of defending Greater Israel against Palestinian children." Also my best friend was there, who is not much of a leftist but he came to see me off. (He is now undergoing a military training course.)

     Inside, they stood all of us in line and told us we were soldiers now and to take off all necklaces and bracelets because wearing them was against regulations. Some of the young people made a bit of trouble about that. Only later they noticed I was a more serious kind of troublemaker.

     It was a lieutenant who judged me that first time. She said that if everybody did what I did, there would be no army and the Arabs would come to slaughter us. I said if everybody was like me, we would be out of the Territories and there would be peace. She said: "One week in prison."

     In fact, it was only four days, because of the New Year. After the holiday I was back and this time they had a lieutenant colonel to deal with me. He spent nearly half an hour debating, asked some intelligent and penetrating questions. For example, when I bought clothes, did I make sure they were not produced by child labor at sweatshops in the Far East? But his main argument was that the Rule of Law was sacred. The order to enlist was not Manifestly Illegal; therefore I had a moral duty to obey it.

     I feel a bit sorry for people like that. They need to feel an all-powerful State all the time behind them, they would be totally confused and helpless if this crutch was taken away. The State gives them the concept of the Manifestly Illegal Order as a sop to salve their consciences.

     I met this kind of argument also outside the army, the people who say that leftists should not refuse to serve the occupation because this legitimizes rightists refusing to evacuate settlements. Bullshit! I respect settlers who say that law is not above everything and are willing to pay the price for their principles. However, I think it would be clear to any impartial observer that the principles that motivate me are far more moral than theirs.

     When the government evacuated Gaza, they should have said this was done because occupation and settlement are immoral. They should not have put all the emphasis on the argument that "everybody must obey the Law." The law can be unjust, and then civil disobedience is justified.

     Anyway, after this philosophical discussion the colonel sent me to 21 days in Military Prison 4, with my big pile of books. I sat in the cell and read for hours. I read Gandhi's "My Experiments with Truth" from cover to cover. It made me decide to become a vegetarian. It also made me decide to fast on Yom Kippur, for the first time in my life.

     I was attracted by Gandhi's approach of empathy and compassion, of openness to the thoughts and feelings and ideas of others. I felt I should apply this also by not maintaining an attitude of loathing and disgust towards the Jewish religion and its observances. Also, around me were many prisoners with a traditional attitude to religion. Especially to observing the fast on Yom Kippur.

     Most of the people in the military prison are from the marginalized groups, Orientals, Russians, and Ethiopians. They get in mainly for going AWOL and desertion, or for drugs and alcohol. Most of them just don't want to serve in the army. They go to prison again and again, in the end the army lets them go but until then they suffer a lot. I tried to help the prisoners who sat with me, gave tips on how to get to the Kaban. Also the phone numbers of contacts in the New Profile movement who could offer some help.

     I was especially touched by R., who originally came from one of the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. His family is in a very bad economic situation, he wants to work and help them instead of spending three years in the army doing something stupid.

     He had been on hunger strike for a whole month, but nobody was willing to listen to him. He was very desperate. I put him in contact with Smadar Ben Nathan. I hope that by now she has gotten him out, she is a clever lawyer with a lot of experience.

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     After the first 21 days I took for myself a unilateral one-week leave before showing up again at the Induction Centre. The colonel asked me why had I gone AWOL and I said I did not want to miss the dramatic productions of the pupils in my former school. He said that was not very funny. So eventually I got 35 days, combination punishment for refusing orders and going AWOL. In this term I had the nastiest moment, though in the end it strengthened me.

     One Thursday in the prison they suddenly told me I was being transferred to Open Detention at the Ofer Camp. They actually thought they were doing me a favour and sending me to a place with better conditions.

     Now, I knew what is Ofer. I knew it is a prison camp for Palestinians near Ramallah. In fact, when I participated in the solidarity action after the Budrus demo, our main purpose was to prevent our Palestinian fellow from being sent to Ofer. But when I heard that I was going there I somehow assumed that Ofer also had a section for Israeli prisoners. I did not see anything especially wrong with being imprisoned there instead of another prison.

     It was a big mistake, I found out already on the way. Being in Open Detention at Ofer means in fact being part of the prison staff, working in the kitchen and the warehouse and other work needed for running the camp. It also meant that in case of a riot by the Palestinian prisoners, I could be one of the people who take weapons out of the camp armoury and distribute them to the Riot Squad.

     Of course that was the very last thing I wanted to be doing. But it occurred to me that refusing in such circumstances could count as "disobeying an order under fire" and I remembered hearing that the army treats that far more severely than simple disobedience. Just how severely I did not know, but quite frankly I was frightened.

     Should a prison riot really have broken out while I was there, I don't know what I would have done. Probably wriggling out in one way or another.

     As soon as I got there I asked to be sent back to the normal prison. The officer was quite reasonable. After all, being there instead of the normal prison is considered a kind of preferential treatment, not a punishment, so you can decide you just don't want the favour. He said I could go back, but only after the weekend. Until then, there would be no bus going in or out.

     There was a public phone, and I immediately called my friends and asked them to do everything they could to make sure I would get out of there. I decided that if I am not sent back after the weekend, I would go on a hunger strike. But in the meantime, I did agree to work in the Ofer warehouse.

     The work in itself was not terrible, just sorting out some odds and ends. But I knew that I was helping the staff in the place where Palestinians are taken when the army raids their homes.

     I could not see any of the Palestinian prisoners, but I knew they were there behind the high inner wall and the barbed wire. It was a very wretched weekend, even though nothing special happened and in the end the bus did arrive and took me back.

     In the balance, this was a very strengthening experience. Until then my refusal was mainly a rational act. I am against the occupation; of course I refuse to serve the occupation. During that weekend it became a very emotional issue, a face-to-face confrontation with something utterly disgusting that I totally rejected. It makes me more determined to go on with this.

     For how long? I don't know. I know I could get out whenever I want. Just say that I want to see the Kaban, and they will be overjoyed, fall over their themselves to get rid of me as quickly as possible. I saw it with other refusers who took the decision. But why should I make it easier for them?

     This week I am again taking a few days off. It doesn't matter whether I go to prison for refusal or AWOL. I will get a bit of rest, and also participate in Bil'in this Friday, marking a year to its anti-Wall struggle (Jan. 19). Then I will go back to the Induction Centre and the game will go on.

     What I would like best of all is the kind of discharge paper which The Five got after their court martial, after two years in the military and civilian prisons. You know, their discharge paper stated that they are Forbidden to Serve in the Army. Yes, totally forbidden to ever set foot again inside the army. The army thinks of them as a danger, a threat, and it has put it in writing.

     This is the testimonial I would like, the kind of document I would frame and put on the wall and boast of to my grandchildren.

     I am not sure I will get something like that. But even if in the end it will be just a psychiatric discharge from the Kaban, there is nothing shameful about that. Nothing at all!

Uri Nathan can be contacted c/o Efrat Nathan, 51 Ge'ulah St., Tel Aviv or at efratn@012.net.il

****

Pilot or prisoner

Idan Halili solves the feminist dilemma

     In the 1950s, the fact that the state of Israel established conscription for 18-year old girls as well as boys was internationally touted as a sign of gender equality in the young country. In reality, it was anything but.

     Female soldiers were excluded from combat duty and most other meaningful military jobs, and could not rise to the high ranks in the military hierarchy. Their role was strictly auxiliary, and in fact most of them were uniformed secretaries in military offices.

     For the generations of women who went through this experience, the memory of having to prepare coffee to officers remained as the symbol of humiliating subservience. And though few talked about it openly, sexual harassment seems to have been very widespread, and for decades was more or less openly condoned by the military authorities.

     Things started to change in the 1990s. A young woman named Alice Miller obtained a civilian pilot's certificate and armed with it asked the Air

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Force to admit her to combat pilots' training. She got enormous public attention, especially due to the blatant remarks she heard from then President Ezer Weitzman when asking for his support ("Maidele, a woman can't fly a fighter plane, just like a man can't darn socks").

     Though Miller never made it, other young women did eventually get into pilots' training and in quite a few other hitherto exclusively male branches of the armed forces.

     The most thorough in promoting this kind of equality was the 'Border Guard'. For its command, this was a timely and convenient way of dealing with the severe manpower shortage they faced since the outbreak of the Second Intifada, with their rough troops asked to "restore order" in an ever-increasing number of rebellious Palestinian towns and villages.

     At a special press, conference the Border Guard proudly announced that young women in considerable numbers have been inducted into their ranks, on a completely equal footing with male conscripts, and that they were "doing very well in training."

     Not only in training, it turned out. Pess reports and the testimonies of Palestinian civilians collected by human rights monitors made it clear that the young women Border Guards did take up their new duties with great enthusiasm and a strong motivation. They soon proved every bit as capable of brutality and wanton cruelty as their male colleagues.

     Israeli feminists increasingly felt that this struggle for equality has taken a very wrong turning. In fact, Alice Miller herself -- interviewed by Yediot Aharonot on the occasion of several young women graduating from the Air Force Academy -- seemed not quite happy with the revolution she had pioneered.

'Neither coffee nor a club!'

     All this history was very evident in the slogan chanted by some fifty activists gathered on the morning of November 15 outside the Army Induction Centre at Tel Hashomer: "Wield neither coffee nor a club -- give the army a big snub!" Above the crowd floated various coloured banners and placards: "Neither a secretary nor a pilot -- don't join the army of sexual harassment!" and "Feminists don't serve Sexism and Machoism" as well as "Release the CO's" and "We refuse to be enemies."

     They have all come in order to accompany the 18-year old Idan Halili, bound to the Military Women's Prison for refusing to join the army.

     New Profile defines itself as "a feminist anti-militarist movement of women and men." During the past ten years, the group's activists passionately threw themselves into the defence of a great variety of refusers and CO's of both genders, without deeply inquiring into the ideology (or lack of one) which caused a person to get caught in the gears of the military machine. Clearly, however, they felt a special affinity with the arguments set out in Halili's Letter of Refusal, sent to the army some months before.

     "My choice is to refuse to become part of the culture of brute force, which the army instills in its members and projects on society as a whole. Instead of military service, I choose to volunteer for work benefiting those whom our society tends to neglect and humiliate. I look for a way of contributing to society without being forced either to oppress or be oppressed. Refusal is a choice that allows you to express yourself, to promote equality with those around you instead of hierarchy, and to finally allow some space for human dignity."

     Upon receiving the letter, the military authorities refused to let her appear before the Conscience Committee, since "her refusal was politically motivated."

     Originally she intended to appeal to the Supreme Court, but the previous experience of girl refusers making such appeals was not encouraging, and there was a danger of creating a negative precedent. Instead, New Profile decided to back her in a public and media campaign. The conditions did not seem very auspicious for that, either -- in the past year, the incarceration of several COs has passed virtually unnoticed by the media and the general public. But Idan Halili's case did not.

     She embarked on the normal course -- a declaration of refusal leading to imprisonment, release at the end of the term and a new refusal and a new imprisonment. What was quite unusual was that in the intervals in between prison terms she managed to have no less than four TV interviews on different channels.

     There were also radio news items and articles in the printed papers, and a veritable flood of pieces in the Internet news websites (which, being a newly-emerged kind of media, are very much dominated by young reporters and editors).

     New Profile distributed thousands of leaflets and published an ad in Ha'aretz entitled "Feminism and Conscience." The Tsavta Hall, traditional gathering place of peace-minded Tel-Avivians, was the venue for a public meeting where Tal Haran read a poem about Biblical judge Iftach sacrificing his daughter at the altar. Prof. Cynthia Enloe, a guest speaker from the US, spoke of examining militarism from a gender perspective (which is her academic specialty).

     There were support meetings also at the Tel-Aviv University and at various Left and Feminist clubs, cafes and institutes.

Various other groups joined in the struggle, among them The Feminist Women's Home, Refusers' Parents Forum, The Shministim (High School Seniors' Letter), the Women's Coalition for a Just Peace and the Support Center for Victims of Sexual Abuse.

     Knesset Members Zehava Gal'on and Roman Bronfman sent protest letters to the Minister of Defence. So did Prof. Cynthia Coburn of England and the American activist/playwright Eve Ensler, who also obtained a big campaign donation from a fund set up to help "urgent and unexpected feminist issues" emerging around the globe.

     After a month and half, the army's Manpower Department seems to have had enough. On December 25th Idan Halili was after all summoned to appear before the Conscience Committee, and had a chance

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to set out her arguments eloquently and at length.

     Two days later she was informed that, while the committee members "were not convinced that she is a pacifist" they nevertheless concluded that "she is unfit to serve in the military, and is hereby exempted on grounds of unfitness."

New Profile, pob 3454, Ramat HaSharon 47100, Israel

newprofile@speedy.co.il

****

Ben Artzi back to prison?

     Most people assumed that the struggle of CO Yoni Ben Artzi is long since over. After all, at the end of nearly two years of imprisonment for his refusal to enlist, Ben-Artzi had been granted a complete discharge from any kind of military service. That was in January 2004, and since then Ben Artzi had lived the life of a normal young civilian.

     As it turned out, the army is far from through with him. They want to settle an old account. Though he no longer owes them obedience, they retroactively want to go on punishing Yoni for having refused the order to enlist at the time he had not yet been exempted. Concretely it means four more months behind bars. (Officially, it's two months plus a 2000 Shekel fine, failure to pay which would entail a further two months -- but for the same reason that Ben Artzi utterly refused to be part of an army, he also refuses to pay them a single penny.)

     It was a special bench at the Military Appeals Court, composed of five generals, which had issued this ruling on the first day of 2006 -- confirming an earlier ruling by the Jaffa Court Martial. Strangely, the fifty-page verdict practically accepted the two main claims made by Yoni since the beginning of his ordeal in 2001, and which until now the army always denied: a) He is indeed a pacifist, and b) The military committees examining his beliefs were totally incompetent and biased, and had no intention of granting him a fair hearing.

     Why, then, does he nevertheless have to go to prison? Well, he was legally a soldier, the order to enlist was not Manifestly Illegal, and therefore he was duty bound to obey it -- and the Rule of Law must be preserved at all costs. (It is not always like that in cases of soldiers and officers who killed or seriously hurt Palestinian civilians, but that is a different story...).

     Also, the five generals-judges ruled, Ben Artzi had been offered a "reasonable compromise between his beliefs and good social order...namely, to do Civil Service in a Military Framework." Yoni had been utterly wrong in quibbling and insisting on an "Alternative Service completely detached from any

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Only in Israel

General Yishai Be'er, President of the Military Court of Appeals which Jan. 1, 2006 sent Yoni Ben Artzi to prison, is not only a general, but also a professor at the Faculty of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem -- the same university where Yoni Ben Artzi enrolled as a student since his release from prison two years ago (though at a different faculty).

--------------

kind of military supervision." Even if truly a sincere pacifist, he should not have asked for the moon...

     And so, on the morning of February 15, Yoni Ben Artzi must leave his university studies and show up at the gates of Military Prison 4, where he would spend the next four months, unless his lawyer Michael Sfard can convince the Supreme Court to hear his further appeal.

     "If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, that will be the first time Yoni will get a hearing from civilians. In more than four years, a young man who utterly refuses to be a soldier was judged again and again for that refusal -- always by judges in uniform, whose considerations are wholly and purely military" Matanya Ben Artzi, Yoni's father, told TOI.

Contact: mbartzi@yahoo.com

****

Hands off the olive trees

David Forman Jerusalem Post Dec. 26 2005

     There were a number of media reports last month about Jewish settlers in the northern West Bank cutting down hundreds of Palestinian olives trees. I believe these reports are true. In fact, it is almost impossible to keep track of how many times such heinous acts have been perpetrated against innocent Palestinian farmers.

     I recently joined a group from Rabbis for Human Rights on a mission to the South Hebron Hills. Our purpose was to aid farmers there who were cultivating their fields in preparation for the planting of olive trees. Olives represent 60 percent of Palestinian crops.

     We wanted to protect these Palestinians from marauding settlers who, we had reason to expect, might prevent them from working their lands -- or worse, replicate what the ruffians from northern Samaria had been doing.

     Most of the Palestinian fields in the South Hebron Hills area have already been expropriated by the government for settler use under the guise of creating "security zones" on what now have become state-owned lands.

     There seems to be a coordinated plan by the government, IDF, civil administration and Jewish settlers to make the South Hebron area "Arab Free." This effort includes the destruction of houses, tents and caves. It apparently involves sealing wells, uprooting orchards, poisoning grazing fields and preventing Arab residents from farming their land and tending their livestock.

     These measures appear to be carried out as if to exhaust the local Palestinian population, to further impoverish them and to run them off their land without compensation.

     In the South Hebron Hills, Israel's Supreme Court delineated which of the few remaining fields could be cultivated by Palestinians. These extend to the valley below the villagers' tent city, which lies between the settlement of Sussiya and the ancient city of Susya, including the ridge opposite the settlement.

     On our trip, we encountered harrowing Jewish

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religious fanaticism. Even with the legal ruling of the Supreme Court and with the Palestinians coordinating with the IDF as to where they could plow, the villagers were afraid to begin work until we arrived.

     Upon our arrival, they began plowing. Within minutes, about 60 settlers from Susya appeared, rifles slung over their shoulders, descending upon the few Palestinians working their fields.

     We alerted the army, which sent some soldiers to arbitrate between the settlers and the villagers. After initially talking only with the settlers, in order to avoid a confrontation -- instigated solely by the residents of Susya -- the army declared the area a closed military zone.

     As we tried to explain to the soldiers what was agreed to, dozens of teenagers from the settlement approached the Palestinians and unleashed a string of verbal attacks that were nothing less than blood curdling. They called an elderly Palestinian women "whore," "pig," "dirt" -- vowing -- "we will finish you off!"

     Finally, an army commander came; informing the Arab villagers that all work would have to cease until maps of the area could be produced that outlined exactly where they could plow -- despite the High Court's ruling and the initial coordination with the army.

     The officer tried to negotiate a compromise that would limit the Palestinian lands to be cultivated and that would exclude the ridge near Susya out of "concern for the safety of the settlers." This was a spurious claim, as these villagers have never been even remotely involved in acts of terrorism.

     Even after the maps arrived clearly indicating that the Palestinians could plow on the ridge in question, the army had to remain in order to prevent the settlers from continuing to harass them. However, the settlers won the day, as their delaying tactics basically cost the Palestinians a day's work.

     After the destruction of olive groves in the north, one would have expected the army to protect the Palestinians and to apprehend the criminals who destroy their property. This never happens, nor are perpetrators of virtually all settler violence against Palestinians ever arrested and tried. In contrast, Palestinian violence committed against Jews has the army immediately closing off Palestinian towns and villages and arresting dozens of suspects.

     Most disturbing from my point of view is that these settlers parade around as proud religious Jews, posing themselves as defenders of the faith. But, even a cursory reading of Jewish texts tells us: "When you besiege a city for a long time... you must not destroy its trees, wielding an ax against them" (Deuteronomy 20:19).

     We returned home with the sad feeling that the next day, with no Israeli delegation present, the settlers would continue their bullying of Palestinians with impunity. In this way they would be exposing the nature of their so-called Judaism -- foreign to everything I believe as a religious Jew. My Judaism teaches me something quite the opposite of theirs, and apparently of our government's too: "There shall be one law for the citizen and the stranger who dwells amongst you" (Exodus 12:39).

Postscript: As I write these lines, 140 trees were cut down in the Palestinian village of Burin.

****

Olive war escalates

Kibbutzniks side with Palestinians

Adam Keller

     More than twenty years ago the village of Salem, about five kilometres east of Nablus, had the misfortune to get the Israeli nationalist-religious settlement of Elon Moreh established on the mountain ridge just above the village houses. With the passing years, this enforced neighbourliness became ever more oppressive.

     Claiming an ever-widening area as their "security perimeter", the Elon Moreh settlers are harassing Salem farmers and preventing their access to olive groves and pastures that happen to lie within that "perimeter."

     Harassment increased considerably in the last four years, after the settlement sent out an "outpost" nicknamed "Hill 792", inhabited by a band of the "Wild Hilltop Youth", notorious even by settler standards for their extremism and violence.

     (The Elon Moreh extension is one of the "unauthorized" outposts which Sharon solemnly promised to evacuate, three years ago, at the June 2003 Aqaba Summit. And, indeed, some paper work was done, but the outpost is still there.)

     To add to the villagers' predicament, at the beginning of the Intifada the army banned Palestinian motorists from using Road 557 nearby. The settlers interpreted that military order very broadly, as meaning that Palestinians are also forbidden to cross the road by foot in order to get to their fields on the other side. And the settler Security Section, who are armed and equipped by the army, proceeded to energetically enforce that prohibition.

     Altogether, reports out of Salem and other villages in its vicinity often tell of physical assaults on farmers and shepherds, sheep stolen or killed, and olive trees damaged.

     Israeli peace activists are by now well aware of the crucial role they could play in such situations. Often, Palestinian villagers accompanied by Israelis (and internationals) can reach and cultivate lands which settler violence would have otherwise made completely inaccessible.

     The Olive Harvest Coalition was set up some years ago through the efforts of such indefatigable activists as Yaakov Manor of Kfar Saba and Rabbi Arik Ascherman, Director of Rabbis for Human Rights. By now, it has become a fixed feature in the Israeli peace spectrum. Every September and October dozens of activists take days off from their regular jobs and get up very early in the morning, so as to get in time to the threatened West Bank villages and put in a day's work as unskilled labourers/human shields. This year, in fact, the olive harvest was quite poor -- which made it all the more

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urgent to help the villagers collect all that their trees could provide.

     In the Nablus Area villages, the harvest began in a deceptively calm way. Following several Supreme Court appeals in which the army's behaviour in previous years was sharply criticized by the judges, military units took a bit more seriously than usual their duty (as laid down in International Law) to protect the civilian population under their rule. Activists reported on how startled the settlement "Security Personnel" looked when army officers firmly forbade them to interfere with the harvest and blocked them from areas where they had been used to roam freely.

     Even in places where serious violent incidents happened in previous years, Palestinian families and Israeli activists worked together in an atmosphere of good fellowship and easy camaraderie. There was also a significant presence of international volunteers, especially members of the Ecological Community of Tamera, passing by on their "Political Pilgrimage" aimed at helping the achievement of peace and rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians.

     Though most of them are originally from Germany, the group's members have lived long enough at Tamera in South Portugal -- which has a very similar climate to the country they were visiting -- to become expert olive harvesters. Israelis and Palestinians alike burst out laughing when a young German woman remarked, "This is child's play, our olive trees are much higher."

     But the idyll did not last long. Baulked in the daylight, the settlers came back in the night, after the harvesters ended work and the soldiers went away with them. Olive groves, by their very nature, take up a lot of space -- each tree needs its own elbowroom to grow and develop. It is impossible to mount effective guard over the whole of them. And the settlers could choose their time and place.

     Hundreds of olive trees were uprooted or chopped down. Many others were set on fire. Due to the lack of recent farmer and shepherd access, there were tall, dense and dry weeds under and between the trees. They helped the flames to spread quickly. In the morning, villagers arrived to find a scene of utter desolation.

     From Salem, such scenes soon spread all over the West Bank, down to the Hebron Hills at the extreme southern edge. The police put the number of destroyed trees at 733. But according to a partial list compiled by B'Tselem, Yesh Din and Rabbis for Human Rights, at least 2,750 Palestinian olive trees torched, chopped down or -- in some cases -- uprooted whole, stolen and lucratively sold to affluent Israelis who like to decorate their gardens with an olive tree. The actual number might be still higher, since apparently some villagers felt it was useless or dangerous to report the destruction of their trees.

     Settlers have done it before, but never on such a scale and in such a systematic and blatant way. Clearly, the aim was to intimidate the Palestinian villagers and tell in the most direct and brutal way that cooperation with Israeli peaceniks "does not pay." In more than one village, farmers seemed indeed terribly apprehensive, afraid of losing what little livelihood they still had left.

     The settler offensive had, however, also the effect of focusing enormous media spotlight. For quite a long time, the issue of Palestinian olive groves had dropped almost completely out of the public gaze, being mentioned only in the low-circulation peace-minded magazines and in activist email lists.

     Overnight, it had become headline news and the subject of heated editorials. TV reporters flocked to the destroyed olive groves, and the footage of a crying Palestinian matron, clinging disconsolately to the bole of a destroyed tree, was prominently shown at prime time.

     The settler brutality also had a considerable effect in the Kibbutz Movement -- once the very backbone of the Israeli Peace Movement, which in recent decades had fallen into a profound and chronic crisis.

     Yoel Marshak, head of The Kibbutz Movement's "Missions Department" and the son of a famous hero of the 1948 war, has long been waging a struggle to preserve the utopian and egalitarian Kibbutz traditions and adapt them to changing conditions.

     Besides working with slum dwellers Marshak has also been involved for years with the Palestinian olive groves (he has spent six years in charge of his own Kibbutz's plant nurseries). The high-profile settler ravages aroused many of Marshak's fellow Kibbutzniks, making them a familiar sight in the battleground that the olive groves had become:

Kibbutz Movement communiquŽ, Nov. 29

     (...) On Saturday, November 26, a number of us went with Salem farmers to try and rehabilitate what we can from the chopped-down trees. Revenge was swift: that same night, hilltop settlers came down and chopped down more trees. Old farmers who arrived there in the morning managed to see the choppers finish their "work" and return to the outpost.

     In view of this ongoing and grave reality, we have decided to embark on a long-term campaign, in cooperation with Salem farmers and shepherds, and in full coordination with the Salem municipal council. Work on the ground will be carried out with the presence and participation of Israeli adults and youth. The goals are:

     A. To enable Salem farmers cultivate their olive groves and freely graze their herds on their own land.

     B. To plant new saplings instead of trees which are beyond salvage.

     C. To improve the access road, so that farmers can reach the groves using ordinary vehicles.

     D. To convey a clear message that we shall not silently accept this thuggery and vandalism. To demand that the police and military do their job: enforce the law, secure farmers and their property, and prevent settlers from repeating their deeds.

     This campaign is already under way: we have begun cultivating, rehabilitating trees and herding

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livestock. Planting of new saplings will begin shortly, as soon as enough rain falls to ensure proper sapling growth. The campaign will take up all of the coming year, at least until the end of the olive harvest next fall. This is a long-range effort, requiring patience, stamina and resources.

     Our bitter experience leaves no doubt that these rehabilitation efforts will meet again and again with acts of destruction and violence from local settlers, and with woefully inadequate response from law enforcement authorities. Yet, it is incumbent upon us to set out on this nonviolent struggle of replanting and joint work, and stand up to the reckless waves of lawlessness by perpetrators of uprooting and destruction.

The communiquŽ was signed: Yoel Marshak, Kibbutz Movement HQ, 13 Leonardo St., Tel Aviv 61400; Uri Pinkerfeld, Kibbutz Revadim, Zip 79820; Ehud Krinis, Kibbutz Shoval ehudkr@shoval.org.il

     During November the issue started to gather momentum in the media, coming up also on the Knesset floor and in cabinet meetings. One scandalous revelation after the other about the police way of (not) handling Palestinian complaints regarding settler attacks.

     Israeli police stations are mostly located inside settlements where Palestinians are just not admitted at the outer gate. In the rare cases where they did succeed in lodging a complaint (for example when accompanied by Israeli activists) the policemen -- many of whom are settlers themselves --- eventually stamped the case "closed due to lack of evidence."

     That was also the fate of the police investigation in the one case where an Alon Moreh settler actually lost his identity card right next to the destroyed olive tree...

     On January 10 Yuval Diskin, Director of the Shabak Security Service, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee that his service had handed over to the police and army the names of settlers involved in uprooting the olive trees. "Neither of the recipients did anything with the information, they are just turning a blind eye to settler violence" he charged.

     Defence Minister Mofaz felt obliged to announce throughout the media the "immediate" implementation of eviction orders, issued long ago, against three "outposts" whose inhabitants are implicated in vandalizing the olive groves. (Up to the time of writing, it remained a declaration.)

     He also promised to look into giving compensations to the owners of destroyed olive trees, "if it is proven that they were really destroyed by Jews." (Settler council spokesperson Emily Amrusi claimed that "the Palestinians and leftists have done it themselves, in order to defame us and get compensations from the government.")

     The olive issue became part of a larger imbroglio. By chance, Ariel Sharon's stroke and the assumption of power by Olmert precisely coincided with the deadline set by the Supreme Court for eviction of settler bands from two illegally seized properties.

+++ Documents procured by the Peace Now movement's Settlement Watch convinced the judges that settlers in Amona, northeast of Ramallah, have seized by force a parcel of land whose private Palestinian ownership is completely undisputed. The court ordered the state to demolish by mid-January nine settler houses erected on the land.

     A similar order was issued with regard to shops in the Hebron Wholesale Market, which had been closed by the army "for security reasons", and which the settlers then seized and turned into apartments without the slightest shred of legal authorization.

     The settlers, considering this an opportunity to restore their "deterrence" which was considerably eroded with the evacuation of the Gaza settlements, embarked upon large-scale rioting.

     The Olmert Government, at its very inception, seems headed towards a confrontation -- which may end either with a substantial change in the situation or (as often before) with a "compromise" that would leave intact the settler power on "The Wild West Bank."

     For its part, the Olive Coalition -- now active not only in the harvest period -- intends to organize a large-scale tree planting, jointly by Israelis and Palestinians, on the impending Tu Bish'vat (the Jewish Tree Holiday). The Palestinian Popular Committees, who share in the same initiative, have already ordered 40,000 saplings.

****

Tali Fahima

Plea bargain sealed

     What appears to be the end of the legal proceedings in the case of Tali Fahima took place in the Tel Aviv District Court Thursday, Dec. 22.

     The judges approved the plea bargain, which was a face saving device for the court, the State Prosecution and the Shabak Security Service.

     Under the terms of the deal Fahima agreed to plead guilty to a series of charges including "contact with a foreign agent", "passing information to the enemy" and "violating a ban on Israelis entering the 'A' [Palestinian-controlled] Areas." In exchange, more serious charges were dropped, including "helping the enemy in wartime", "support for a terror organisation" and "possession of a weapon."

     While justice was not served, this was a reasonable pragmatic decision by Fahima and her lawyers. On the first day in court, the possibility of a death penalty was discussed -- and while that was a very theoretical possibility, the original charges could well have led to as much as twenty years behind bars.

     In any case, had she insisted on proceeding with the trial, it would have taken at least another year, and perhaps far longer -- in view of the slow pace of the court and the long list of witnesses still in store. And for all that time she would have remained behind bars, whatever the final outcome.

     Instead, with a three-year term of which more than a year was already served, she now has a reasonable chance of getting released in 11 months.

     That still depends on the Prison Authority granting her the customary "third off for good behavior." However, the Shabak -- whose opinion is

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decisive with such requests by "security" prisoners -- against its habit gave its consent as part of the plea bargain.

     Tali Fahima managed to break several taboos: she is the first peace activist stemming from the underprivileged population of the "development towns", where ignorance and hatred for Palestinians are cultivated along with poverty, unemployment, substandard education and insufficient medical services.

     It cannot be ruled out that Ms. Fahima was punished more severely than if she would have been an activist of the usual middle class background. Some commentators regard it as a manifestation of apprehension in the establishment: the fear of losing the blind support given to the anti-peace, pro-occupation policy of the government within a large segment of the Israeli population, the part Fahima originates from.

     Her visits to Jenin allowed the Israeli public to get acquainted with militia leader Zakharia Zbeidi, with whom she met and for whom she volunteered to serve as a "human shield" at a time when there was a very concrete daily possibility of his being assassinated by the Israeli "Special Units."

     For the first time, a Palestinian militant has been extensively interviewed (in Hebrew) on all Israeli electronic and printed media. His personal history, including the killing of his mother and brother by the Israeli army in the infamous invasion of Jenin, has been reported upon.

     Instead of a demonizing one-dimensional caricature, the human face of the Palestinian militant struggle was given a hearing in a very prominent manner.

     In fact, he had some success in conveying to the Israeli public the image of an impressive person, a man of honor and courage, and a credible partner for genuine peace.

     Paradoxically, the Fahima Trial continued uninterrupted even while the army and security services themselves recognized Zbeidi as a partner to the Palestinian Tahadiya (truce) -- indeed, the main enforcer of the truce in his city of Jenin. This certainly detracted from the credibility which public opinion was ready to give the proceedings against Tali Fahima.

     In the court of law, Fahima had no real chance of getting acquitted. After all, she had indeed done several things that Israeli law considers illegal and punishes severely, and the prosecution was in a position to prove to the court's satisfaction that she did. The situation is far more ambiguous with regard to the court of public opinion.

     Unlike earlier activists who were castigated as "traitors" and were taken to be such by the overwhelming majority of Israeli society, public opinion with regard to Tali Fahima was divided from the first time the public heard of her up to the day of her verdict (which in media reports was generally taken as at least half a victory) and will probably remain so also in future.

     There were a considerable number of activists and supporters who backed her to the hilt, regularly demonstrated outside the court and packed the courtroom (except during the sessions held in camera, when they waited impatiently in the corridor outside). The red-on-white T-shirts with her picture became quite a hit with numerous youths.

     Perhaps more important, a considerable section of the Israeli society -- including a lot of mainstream columnists and quite a few politicians -- tended to take the prosecution's case with more than a pinch of salt. At most, they criticized her acts as "mistaken" or "naive" rather than treasonable. The only ones really ready to denounce her as a traitor were those who apply the same epithet indiscriminatingly to every "leftist."

     Moreover, several of the prosecution witnesses -- like the Palestinian prisoner who retracted on the stand everything he said while under interrogation and claimed that the words incriminating Fahima had been extracted from him by force -- certainly served to discredit the Shabak and the State Prosecution. (Even though, by a legal sleight-of-hand, the incriminating testimony was nevertheless accepted by the court as valid, and might have served to secure Fahima's conviction),

     In conclusion, one may say that, instead of the intended show trial of a humbled heretic, the Fahima Trial served to deepen doubts and divisions in the Israeli public as to both Israel's relations with the Palestinians and the role of the security services and the judicial system.

Contact:

Prof.Jacob Katriel <jkatriel@techunix.technion.ac.il>

+++ "Who is afraid of Tali Fahima and why?" was how the invitation started for a Dec. 29 evening in the Pundak-Sagi family's Herzliya home. The circle who had supported Tali Fahima sat together with her lawyer, the human rights attorney Smadar Ben-Natan, philosophy lecturer/activist Dr. Anat Matar and last but not least Sara Lahiani, Tali's mother who through the difficult way of her daughter made many friends among "the radicals."

****

The crosses of Vanunu

     The "Nuclear Whistleblower" Vanunu remains very much a prisoner -- though allowed a bigger space -- and what is not easy at all: he himself is the guard charged with seeing to it that he keeps the restrictions. After losing in November (28th) his libel suit against the daily Yediot Aharonot, he also saw the court reject his appeal to have the restrictions removed (Jan. 12).

     Doomed to stay in a country hostile to him and expected not to speak to foreign journalists who are much less hostile, Mordechai Vanunu continues to live on his creative imagination.

     In his niche at the East Jerusalem Anglican Church (St. George's Cathedral) he was Dec. 25 all alone celebrating Christmas -- not allowed to join his hosts who went on pilgrimage to Bethlehem. (Going to the Occupied Palestinian Territories is in

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Vanunu's case considered as going abroad, therefore off limits.) But, his staying home made it into the news: Ronny Shaked wrote about it in a sympathetic tone in ... Yediot Aharonot:

     "A large number of crosses were brought into his room, and Vanunu (...) announced that he would spend the holiday praying and reading the numerous letters sent to him by his admirers all over the world."

     One of his supporters is Harold Pinter, the recent Nobel Laureate. Ha'aretz readers were reminded of Pinter's "sustained opposition to Israel's 18-year imprisonment of Mordechai Vanunu, for revealing nuclear 'secrets'" (Michael Kustow, Ha'aretz, Dec. 08: "Incomparable, this core voice").

     Esse est percipi -- Vanunu doesn't give up.

Letters of support to: Mordechai Vanunu, c/o St. George's Cathedral, PO Box 19122, East Jerusalem 91191 Israel; email: vmjc1954@gmail.com

****

Someone small will die

Yigal Sarna

Open Letter to Shabak Director Yuval Diskin

Yediot Aharonot, Dec.15.

Dear Mr. Diskin,

     I know this letter will make it to you. I know you're a busy man, so I'll take your attention away from the pressures of targeted killings for a few minutes only.

     Which brings me to my main point: Our return to the days of targeted killings. After a break in which we've started to live and breathe again, you've decided to return us to those terrible years, 2002-03. It's as if we've learned nothing.

     But in the meantime several books, by researchers and people in the field no less qualified than your people, and less restrained by strict organizational discipline, have testified to the mistakes stained with our blood.

     I'm sure you've read "Boomerang" by Ofer Shelah and Raviv Drucker, about the failure of our leadership, and Shlomi Eldar's "Gaza as Death", which talks about the desperate lives that lead to a neighbor's suicide, and "The Seventh War," by Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff, which beats its chest (amongst other things) about the targeted killings, specifically the killing of Ra'ed Karmi that brought upon us a huge wave of terror attacks.

     These books give witness to the routine of assassinations, the digestive juices, and the hunter's thirst that have developed inside [Defence Minister] Mofaz's security establishment, at a time when we must use our brains a little bit. We paid a terrible price for this, but the dead remain silent.

     Alongside these three books, I would present you with two witnesses. One can no longer appear on any stage. The other is alive, and is an expert witness from your organization.

     The first is Anna Orgal. In mid-2003 she said to her friends, "some small person like us will die tomorrow." They had just heard on the radio that Hamas leader Abdul Aziz Rantisi had been killed in Gaza.

     "We have to be more careful than ever after assassinations," said Anna. "It's the little people like us, people without cars, who pay the price for these killings. Someone small, who takes the bus, will die."

     Then she got on the bus to go home and was killed by a terrorist from Hebron, who blew up himself and the bus.

     A short while after I wrote about her death I met my expert witness.

     "Do you know how many times we've celebrated the death of the last terrorist?" said Nahman Tal, a former senior Shin Bet operative.

     He's one of your people, Yuval, a true senior figure, someone who has seen everything and heard everything. Listen to what he has to say:

     "We always raised our glasses for a toast, but all of a sudden there was another one. Sometimes the break lasted a year, sometimes a few years. But eventually it all returns."

     For more than 40 years Tal pursued the Palestinians. After joining the Service in January 1955 he worked the villages, after the Six Day War he moved to Gaza and Lebanon. There's nothing he hasn't seen, nothing was hidden from him. "Stupidity" is how he describes what he saw.

     He rose through the ranks and survived all the wars and watched everything that transpired in Beirut and in the Balata refugee camp.

     "You will never subdue a group in the midst of a nationalist rebellion," he told me. "You know how many victory parties I've attended to celebrate our victory over terrorism?"

     It's a phrase that should be engraved on the wall of the room in which you'll have your next party to celebrate the next assassination. You might want to also add Anna's more modest statement: "Someone small will be killed tomorrow."

     Every assassination makes the monster grow four new heads. Please, stop this march of blood and stupidity. Because the buck stops with you.

****

Poetical boycott

Date: January 5, 2006

To: Yitzhak Eizenberg Shalom

Re: 5th International poetry conference in Jerusalem

     Thank you for your invitation to participate in the international poetry festival in Jerusalem in 2006. I would like to take my name out of the list of participants. I read these days on the barbarism at Jerusalem's northern entrance, Qalandia Checkpoint.

     I oppose an international poetry festival in a city in which the Arab inhabitants are oppressed systematically and cruelly, imprisoned between walls, deprived of their rights and living spaces, humiliated in checkpoints and the international laws are violated.

     I think that even poets were not allowed in the past, or in the present, to ignore persecutions and discriminations on a racial or national basis.

yours

Aharon Shabtai

The poet Aharon Shabtai teaches Hebrew Literature at Tel Aviv University.

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Bil'in's struggle

On the ground, among the public, at court

     The persistent struggle of the Bil'in villagers against the Separation Wall/Fence being erected on their land is increasingly getting the attention and involvement of the Israeli mainstream.

     In August and September, the army made a concerted effort to break the protests by force, and make of Bil'in an intimidating "example" to other villagers contemplating resistance to decrees and oppressive measures.

     However, the repeated "preemptive" occupation of the village by large army forces, intended to prevent the weekly Friday processions, simply shifted the struggle from the Fence construction site to the narrow streets of the Bil'in built-up area. For village youth defying the imposition of curfew and playing hide-and-seek with soldiers, that was actually a better terrain than the open fields where confrontations usually take place. Also, despite the numerous roadblocks all around, the aroused Israeli peace activists found creative ways of reaching Bil'in -- and even in far bigger numbers than usual (see TOI-121, p.23).

     In October and November, the army tried another tack: massive surprise raids in the late night or early morning and the snatching of village youths (often chosen at random) from their beds, to spend months of quite unpleasant detention at the Ofer Prison Camp. Many of them are still incarcerated at the time of writing.

     Efforts to get media attention were of no avail -- detentions of Palestinians by the army are a daily (or rather, nightly) occurrence, and editors made no distinction between the ones accused of "terrorism" and the Bil'iners whose only crime was participation in civil disobedience.

     Illogically but predictably, the media was a bit more interested in Israeli activists detained at Bil'in, though their detentions usually last no more than a few hours. (On one occasion, TOI-editor Adam Keller was among a group who were held at the Giv'at Ze'ev police station after chaining themselves to the pillars of a Fence section under construction. The news of his brief detention, sent out over our email list, evoked a heart-warming wave of responses.)

     Also the arrests failed to intimidate the villagers. Quite simply, the alternative of giving up the struggle and tamely accepting the loss of more than half their lands and livelihood was far worse than anything the army could inflict on them.

     In fact, at precisely this time the example of Bil'in was energetically taken up by the nearby village of Aboud, which stands to lose much land to the Wall and also become enclosed in a narrow enclave. The people of Aboud started holding regular Friday processions of their own, with the dedicated Israeli activists of Anarchists Against Fences dividing their time and energy between the two villages.

     Meanwhile, Israel's First Channel TV -- whose normal reports from Bil'in consist of brief snippets of a violent confrontation, devoid of any context -- suddenly screened a prolonged and quite sympathetic in-depth feature by the veteran reporter Menachem Hadar.

     This was the first time that Israeli viewers could hear of the background to the Bil'in struggle -- namely, that the route of the Fence in this sector had been devised so as to make a deep indentation into Palestinian territory for the explicit purpose of providing for future expansion of the giant Modi'in Illit/Matityahu East settlement (whose original part had been built in the 1990's on earlier-alienated lands of Bil'in and other Palestinian villages).

     Among others, Hadar interviewed Adv. Michel Sfard, the intrepid human rights lawyer who lodged a Supreme Court appeal on behalf of the people of Bil'in.

     Sfard drew the TV reporter's attention to the real-estate aspect. The process of taking away Palestinian land and using it to house Israeli settlers involved turning parcels of farmland into whole new neighborhoods of high-rise apartment buildings, enormously increasing their value. Profits, conservatively estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars and possibly at billions, were unobtrusively flowing into somebody's pockets.

     Hadar mentioned the real-estate aspect in general terms. Akiva Eldar of Ha'aretz, with a long experience in investigating the doings of the settler movement and its supporters in the government apparatus, eventually published a series of articles showing that the Bil'in lands had come into the settlers' hand through manifestly fraudulent "sales" and "land deals" -- with active help from officials in the "Civil Administration" of the West Bank military government.

     As described by Eldar, the settler construction company presented to the Civil Administration a sale document supposedly signed by an inhabitant of Bil'in, handing over his land to them. Such sales have to be witnessed by the Mukhtar (village headman) to assure their authenticity. However, the officials accepted instead an affidavit signed by the settlers' own lawyer, who had never set foot in Bil'in, since "the security situation made it too dangerous for a Jew to enter the village" (sic!).

     The Civil Administration then declared the land in question to be "state land" and leased it back to the settler builders. The first the real owners in Bil'in heard of it was when settler bulldozers started to work on their land, protected by soldiers -- and they had certainly never seen any of the money.

     Further, Eldar revealed that the hundreds of the housing units being presently built on Bil'in lands, comprising the settlers' "Matityahu East Neighborhood", lacked any kind of a legal building permit. The officials (many of them settlers themselves) had turned a blind eye after being told that the necessary permits would be procured and presented in future.

     All these disclosures made a very significant difference, both for the situation on the ground and for the attitude of Israeli public opinion.

     The main handicap under which the Bil'in struggle

Page 24

has been laboring, as far as Israeli public opinion is concerned, is the conviction of most Israelis that the Wall/Fence/Barrier is a vital security measure, necessary in order to keep suicide bombers away from the Israeli population centres.

     For the potential targets of such bombers, the exact route of the life-saving barrier can seem a petty-fogging detail, and the taking away of Palestinian lands and olive groves -- as a minor and unavoidable side-effect.

     Indeed, some columnists have accused the Bil'in demonstrators of "trying to keep the terrorist murderers' highway into Israel open." But the construction and extension of settlements is a horse of a completely different color, an issue for which the average Israeli has little interest or sympathy; and for shady deals enriching real-estate dealers -- even less.

     As a direct result of the new disclosures, the Peace Now movement became increasingly involved in the Bil'in struggle. Peace Now, which shies away from the anti-Wall struggle but regards settlements in general and settlement extension in particular as its staple, organized a well-publicized visit to the settlement construction site, by Israelis far closer to the mainstream than those who were hitherto involved in this area.

     The Bil'in villagers themselves, well-known for coming up with creative ideas, decided to take a leaf from the settlers' book: set up an "outpost" of their own, right next to the illegally created settlement neighborhood -- and compare the army's reaction to this creation of "facts on the ground" to the action it takes (or does not take) when settlers do the same.

     Money was collected in the village to buy a caravan and have it placed on a piece of land owned by a Bil'in farmer, about a kilometer away on the far side of the Fence route. (It was, in fact, the same kind of caravan used by the settlers, though they usually get theirs financed by government budgets.)

     Within 36 hours the army issued an eviction order and took away the caravan, in spite of passive resistance by dozens of villagers and peace activists holed up inside it. The villagers immediately raised donations from groups such as Gush Shalom and within a short time a second caravan was bought and installed on the same spot.

     There followed a memorable night, of which visiting groups were later to hear from Mohamed Khatib of the Bil'in Popular Committee Against the Wall.

     "It was a rainy day and the army only noticed the new one in the evening. The Civil Administration officer came, but we noticed he didn't have the right form for removing the caravan.

     He told us: this will not help you long; I will return in the morning. We asked, why are you so hot about our one trailer? What about the 750 houses the settlers are building over there without a permit, illegal even according to your own law? He said: well, with fixed structures the procedure is more complicated.

     That gave us the idea, but we had only a few hours. We did it, Palestinians, Israelis and internationals and, yes, also one sympathetic settler living in Modi'in itself. We worked throughout the night: bringing over the building materials, struggling through a lot of rain and mud.

     The windowpanes we got from one of our Bil'in people, we told him how important it was and he immediately helped us dismantle them from his windows and bring them here.

     You should have seen the face of the CA officer when he came back in the morning. We told him: you now have the form for taking the caravan, okay, you can take it. But about this brick house which is now here, you told us yourself the procedure is more complicated..."

     Indeed, the CA issued a demolition order for the

--------------

Today's Maccabees

On the eighth evening of Hanukkah -- and first day of 2006, a Gush Shalom bus brought activists to celebrate Hanukkah at the Palestinian 'outpost'

     "It may look strange that we light the candles of a Jewish holiday at this place", Uri Avnery said while lightning the first candle, "but we are standing here on the land of the Maccabees. It is here that they were born and here they started their revolt. The rebellion of the Maccabees is not only a Jewish symbol; long ago it has become a worldwide symbol of the struggle against oppression, occupation and injustice. The people of Bil'in are the Maccabees of these days, and the occupation is Antiochus.*"

     The Hanukkia (candelabra), more than two meters high, was constructed on the spot from irrigation pipes, on an idea of kibbutznik Teddy Katz, who brought the pipes with him.

     Soldiers and settlers who looked on from a distance did not believe their eyes: some seventy Israelis and Palestinians, among them a lot of children, and among them the eight holding candles (or rather torches), one by one placing them in the huge Hanukkia while making each their own statement: I came here to light a candle against the settlers who by force take possession of land that belongs to others, contrary to the Jewish values they profess to honor / because of all the trees being uprooted / all the houses being demolished.

* Antiochus Epiphanes was the Greek king of Syria, against whose tyrannical rule the Maccabees rebelled 2174 years ago.

Gush Shalom, pob 3322, Tel-Aviv; www.gush-shalom.org

--------------

Bil'in Outpost -- which was named "The Joint Struggle Centre" -- but up to the time of writing did not carry it out. Volunteers regularly sleep there at night, anyway, and in the day it is the focus for various visitors and delegations.

     Meanwhile, Peace Now lodged an appeal to the Supreme Court, based on Akiva Eldar's revelations and on further information gathered by the movement's Settlement Watch.

     After a session in which the settlers themselves admitted they had no permit whatsoever for half of the housing units being constructed, the court issued an order halting the construction work on that half.

Page 25

     A later session got an extension, halting work in the entire site until the judges could take a thorough look at the validity of the permits the settlers claimed to have for part of the housing units. Moreover, the settlers were also forbidden to populate the apartments already completed on the site.

     All this made the villagers and their supporters more hopeful regarding the outcome of Adv. Sfard's appeal, due to be presented on Feb. 1 (though it would probably not be concluded on that day). The court will be asked to change the route of the Fence so as to restore to Bil'in its lands on the other side.

     There is already a precedent, in the court's ruling concerning villages in the Qalqiliya Sector, that it

--------------

The army gets mad

     Bil'in, Friday, Jan. 20 -- thousands of Palestinians from Bil'in and elsewhere, among them prominent candidates in the forthcoming elections, got together to mark a year of non-violent protest against the Wall.

     At about noon taxis arrived at the central square (on this day festooned with elections posters), dislodging some three hundred Israelis who joined the Palestinians.

     It was expected that a march of thousands would meet less army violence than usual. Not so. Even before the entire march had gotten to the Fence, dull explosions were heard from the front, and tear gas canisters started whistling overhead.

     "Trigger-happy today, are they?" remarked a young Englishwoman. She stood her ground, covering her face with a scarf. "Don't run. Hyperventilation makes it worse."

     Not everybody was that cool, but Israeli and Palestinian organizers were stopping the stampede, urgently calling out: "Turn Right! Turn Right!" Turning right meant going northwards, parallel to the Fence, towards the sector where it has not yet been built up and where crossing is possible. Soldiers were rushing to head off the new line of march. Behind, Palestinian medics were taking an unconscious young man to a waiting ambulance.

     "Quick, quick!" A gap has appeared in the soldiers' skirmish line, and dozens sprinted across the ugly scar in the earth and to the other side of where the Fence is due to rise. At the apex of the group which made it into the olive grove on the other side were three youths bearing green Hamas flags, one with the red DFLP emblem and an Israeli holding aloft a Gush Shalom sign with the flags of Israel and Palestine intertwined -- all panting from exertion and smiling at each other, partners in a single enterprise.

Anti-Wall Coalition, Adar Grayevsky adargray@yahoo.com

--------------

is inadmissible to route the Fence so as to include land earmarked for future expansion of settlements.

     The people of Bil'in are, however, far from relying on that. The Friday processions continuing week-by-week, often encountering violence from the army -- but no more attempts to suppress them altogether.

****

'Who is the coward?' -- 'Me, Sir'

     Ever since there were armies in human societies, courage had always been a basic part of their ethos. In many armies, even not so long ago, a soldier fearing to go into battle might have been put to death on the spot.

     Even in modern Western armies, which gave up the worst barbarities (at least towards their own soldiers), a soldier being exposed as "a coward" might expect both a severe punishment from his commanders and the jeering and derision of fellow-soldiers. Paradoxically, it might be said that for a soldier to openly admit being afraid is an act requiring courage.

     Something of this kind happened on the night of November 23, 2005, outside the Palestinian city of Jenin -- in a forward base operated by "Duvdevan", an elite Israeli unit specializing in raids into Palestinian cities with the proclaimed aim of capturing "wanted terrorists." (In a conspicuously high percentage of the cases, such operations end with the wanted terrorist being killed while "resisting arrest" or "trying to escape.")

     The target for that evening was a certain Abu Al-Rob of the Islamic Jihad, whom the Security Services held responsible for sundry heinous acts and might have been truly guilty of at least some of them. (Since he was killed "while resisting arrest" a few hours later, the matter of his guilt will never come to a court of law).

     All seemed routine -- except that some ten minutes before theey were due to board the vehicles, the fighters of one of the teams went to the commander, identified as "Lieutenant-Colonel A. and -- "with tears in their eyes", as it was later recounted by witnesses -- told him they were not capable of undertaking this mission.

     The commander burst out shouting: "Who are the cowards here?" The team commander, an officer at the rank of lieutenant, raised his hand first, and was then joined by three other fighters. (The total number of soldiers in such a team was not disclosed, but from the context seems to be between ten and fifteen.)

     The commander responded by shouting invective and making wild threats for several minutes, then gave up and went to Jenin with the other teams. As mentioned, they did accomplish their mission. Nevertheless, the incident sent shock waves throughout the army, the highest echelons were informed already the same night, and a general reportedly expressed regret that the IDF is not in habit of summarily executing cowards. The affair was soon leaked to the press and published prominently by Yossi Yehoshua of Yediot Aharonot.

     A whole stream of articles published over the next weeks gave a more or less clear idea of what led the soldiers to take this step. They had gone on such missions often before, over the past two years, and had the name of "a good and experienced team." What happened to change that was an earlier mission, in the beginning of November, when their

Page 26

team -- apparently by itself -- was sent on a raid into the town of Kabatya.

     On that occasion, they were discovered prematurely by the Palestinian militiamen whom they came to surprise. Soon, they found themselves trapped in the middle of Palestinian territory, surrounded and under withering fire from all directions.

     It seems the soldiers had been promised that in such an eventuality, the army would immediately send overwhelming forces to extricate them. In the event, help was tardy and their frantic calls for help were answered with a curt "hold on." Help came only after three hours, which must have seemed like eternity, and they got out living but deeply shaken.

     As fellow soldiers later told, soon after they came back to camp they broke down and found it difficult to recover from the effects of what happened in Kabatya. They asked for urgent psychological help -- which was not provided, though army regulations say the services of a Mental Health Officer should be available to any soldier who needs or asks for them.

     The team commander, who had been in Kabatya himself, warned his superior that the team was in no condition to fight. But until the final confrontation, the commander seems to have considered that the best way to deal with these soldiers' anxieties was just to send them into action again.

--------------

The lost higher values

     "In other armies they would already have been shot in the back." And "You're not a group of 'pussies.' You can't kill Arabs and then cry about it." That's what commanders in the IDF have to say to soldiers who are obviously suffering from a deep trauma.

     "Kill and then cry." There was a time when we could hear these words very frequently, as proof of the supposed higher morals of the IDF. "Our strength lies in the fact that we, like everyone, carry out brutal acts of war. But when we return to camp at night we cry over the brutality we carried out in the morning," said a combat veteran after the Six Days' War, and his words were printed in a famous book of "Soldiers' Dialogue" and became the motto for the following generation of soldiers.

     But here we have an officer rebuking his soldiers: There is no way you can kill Arabs by day and cry about it by night. As if killing -- especially the killing of Arabs -- is ordinary, routine.

     Once upon a time, it was important to us to at least appear to grapple with difficult moral issues. Apparently, today it is somewhat less important.

From "Is our army as ethical as we think?" by David Zonshein, Yediot Aharonot Internet version, Dec.8. Zonshein, a first lieutenant in the IDF reserves, served a prison term for refusal to serve in the Occupied Territories, and was among the founders of the Courage to Refuse movement

--------------

     The four's fellow-soldiers stood by them, meeting with Lieutenant- Colonel A, asking that they will not be punished and stating "They are among the best soldiers in this unit, perhaps in the entire army." And their parents were busily speaking to the press on their behalf: "Our sons are good soldiers, but they are not robots. They are human beings, and human beings can break at one stage or another. We were always warned of the mental problems that crop up in this kind of unit, but we never thought things can deteriorate so far. The commanders totally abandoned our sons and did not look out for them, despite all the alarm signals which they gave" (Yediot Aharonot, Dec. 25).

     The army's higher echelons reserved judgment, their only immediate reaction being to belatedly send senior Mental Health Officers to the unit. The final decision was kicked all the way upstairs, to Army Chief-of-Staff Dan Halutz in person. After several weeks he decided to cashier the team commander and another one of the four, who was a sergeant. Neither one would ever again be allowed to have a position of military command. The remaining two "would be able to continue as infantry soldiers, but not in Duvdevan." (In fact, they are anyway near the end of their three-year term.)

     Halutz also strongly reprimanded Lieutenant-Colonel A., as well as another officer -- a captain -- who had also sharply tongue-lashed the four. Halutz said that the unit commanders should have been more alert and attentive to the soldiers' emotional response, and condemned the harsh style employed by the commanders in talking to the soldiers.

     Shortly afterwards, the Duvdevan Unit went into action for the first time since "The Incident", and commanders were "pleased with their performance." Reason for satisfaction: they had surrounded a house in Jenin, with the result that "a senior wanted terrorist was shot dead while trying to escape"...

Page 27

Page 28

Three Fingers, No Fist

Uri Avnery

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Jan. 9, 2006

     A political earthquake before an election is an unusual event, but not unknown. A second earthquake in such a period is already rare. But a third earthquake before an election, a short time after the first two -- now, that is really scary.

     Well, it has just happened. The nomination of Amir Peretz as leader of the Labor Party had already changed the political landscape of Israel. That is what pushed Ariel Sharon to create the Kadima party, the "Big Bang" that changed the landscape once again. Now, with the collapse of Sharon, the landscape has changed yet again -- and this time beyond recognition.

     Eighty days before the elections, the competition starts again right from the beginning. What will happen to Kadima? What kind of leader is Ehud Olmert? How will the parties do in the elections? Who will be the next Prime Minister? What kind of coalition will come into being?

     Important questions. None of them has a clear answer at this time.

     Kadima was born as Sharon's personal party. He was the glue that held together the extreme right-winger Tsachi Hanegbi and the self-declared peacenik Shimon Peres, militarist Shaul Mofaz and former leftist trade union leader Haim Ramon.

     The first thought after Sharon's massive stroke was: this is the end of Kadima. Without Sharon, the entire package will fall apart. Only a miserable group of orphans will remain, something like a political refugee camp.

     But that is really not certain at all. True, if someone joined this project only because he adores Sharon or needs a Big Father, he may now want to return to his former home. But if someone has already found a new home in Kadima, he will remain.

     Who? First of all, the opportunists who have no chance of snatching a Knesset seat any other way.

     But not only they. True, Kadima has no real program, no ideology. But its fuzzy sentiments and vague ideas can serve as a surrogate for a program. Many people entertain a hazy longing for peace -- not peace with clear-cut contours, with a clear price, based on a compromise with the Palestinians, but a kind of abstract "peace."

     This goes together with the slogan that one cannot trust the Arabs, that with Arabs you cannot make peace. This basic racism, perhaps a natural result of 120 years of war and conflict, expresses itself also in the feeling that the Jewishness of Israel should be reinforced and that Jewish traditions should be preserved, a vague, but nonetheless powerful sentiment.

     Altogether this is a popular mixture, common to a significant proportion of the Israeli-Jewish public. It can serve as a convenient alternative to the explicit policies of the Left and the Right -- all the more so since the public has become deeply suspicious of programs, ideologies and everything that looks like a miracle cure. The slogan could be: the vaguer, the better.

     Until now, the Kadima people had put their trust in Sharon, believing that he would know what to do when the time came. They were sure that he had solutions -- even if they did not know what they were -- indeed, without wanting to know. Now this opaqueness can turn out to be an advantage in itself. A party that has no clear answer to anything can attract everyone.

     It is possible that the party called Forwards will go backwards; that it will not reach the 42 seats promised to Sharon by the opinion polls. For better or worse, Israel will now be a normal Western-style country, with normal political parties headed by normal politicians.

     And no politician is more normal than Ehud Olmert, the quintessential politician, who has never been anything but a politician, a politician pure and simple.

     He is not a Great Father. Neither a glorious general nor a great thinker. He has no charisma, no vision, and no exceptional integrity. At the start of his career, he soon betrayed several of those who favored him. But he is shrewd, smart, sober, ambitious and glib on TV, a politician, without grandstanding and poses.

     He landed in his present position by sheer accident. The title 'Deputy Prime Minister' was given him as a consolation prize, because Sharon could not satisfy his craving for the powerful Finance Ministry, which had already been promised to Netanyahu. As compensation, Sharon conferred on Olmert a title that was quite meaningless, because it meant only that Olmert would chair cabinet meetings on the rare occasions when Sharon was abroad.

     Now, suddenly, the empty title turns out to be an excellent springboard. Automatic procedures have turned Olmert into Sharon's temporary successor, and in politics, as is well known, nothing is more permanent than the temporary. The first to occupy a position has a huge advantage over all challengers.

     One can trust Olmert not to do foolish things. If he maintains a steady hand until the elections, he has a chance to become the next prime minister.

     Israeli politics now resemble the three fingers of a hand: Likud, Kadima and Labor. Three fingers instead of a fist. If one of them does better than the others, its leader will probably be called upon to form the next government.

     But even when the three would end equal, Kadima has an advantage, since it occupies the place in the middle. When three lie in a bed, the one in the middle is always covered. In such a case, Olmert will be able to form a coalition either with Likud or with Labor. He will have no ideological qualms -- he can be a leftist or a rightist, as required.

     The situation presents a challenge to Amir Peretz. Since his nomination, his campaign has not left the ground. The massive figure of Sharon left no space for any contenders. Sharon had the initiative, with the media dancing around him. Now, with Olmert, Peretz has a much greater chance -- provided he does not appear to be a second Olmert. Vagueness is good for Olmert, it is bad for Peretz.

     Peretz has chosen the slogan "The Time Has Come!" A vague slogan that says nothing. He must move ahead, demonstrate leadership, present daring initiatives, capture the imagination, prove that he is capable of bringing about a revolution both in matters of peace and social affairs. It is hard to win, easy to fail. Now it's up to him.

     And all this, of course, is also true for Netanyahu on the other side.

     After the third earthquake, these elections are good for democracy. For the first time in years, the public is faced with three clear options, represented by three parties with three leaders:

     On the right there is Likud under Netanyahu, championing the continuation of the occupation and the enlargement of the settlements, placing territory above peace.

     In the middle, Kadima under Ehud Olmert, will try to continue the ways of Sharon: annex territories and fix new borders for Israel unilaterally, adding some meaningless gestures spiced with vague slogans about peace.

     On the left, Labor under Amir Peretz will call for practical negotiations with the Palestinians, aimed at bringing an end to the conflict.

     If these alternatives are clear-cut, and if the candidates do not try to obscure the differences between them, these elections can be really democratic, offering the public a real choice. Voters will have to make the choice themselves, instead of leaving their fate in the hands of the Great Father.

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End of infancy

Ofer Shelah

Yediot Aharonot Jan. 6.

     Ariel Sharon's five years in power were a time of public infantilism in Israel. In September, 2000 reality was turned on its head for a large segment of Israeli society: The dream of peace evaporated, and most people bought Ehud Barak's line that "We offered them everything and they said 'no.' " The meaning was clear: "we've got no one to negotiate with, and that's not going to change."

     Since this political-security crash was accompanied by an economic crash, the result of worldwide financial trends together with the intifada, most Israelis found themselves in a threatening, frightening situation that seemed simply impossible to deal with.

     Since then, like a group of scared children, just about everyone has rallied behind this huge father figure, a man who weathered other difficult times.

     He never said what he actually intended to do, and for a long time he did nothing (and still won the 2003 election in a landslide). Afterwards, he did a lot but never bothered explaining. The public didn't care. At least daddy was home.

     This was also the situation leading up to the 2006 elections, at least until Wednesday night. Our infantilism was such that no one really cared what Sharon's plans were, if there would be more unilateral disengagements or not (as he, himself, claimed and only a few people believed him) or what he did plan to do.

     Sharon's seasoned image consultants created an image of mythic proportions: He was an incredible giant, a throwback to a different age. Others could never approach him.

     The public willingly disengaged from the thought process and was completely willing to hang the country's fate on the shoulders of one man.

     In this context, the post-Sharon era will be a return to adulthood. People who now support Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, Amir Peretz or any other candidate won't be able to hang their support on old myths.

     The people seeking to fill Sharon's shoes must present some sort of ideology, a support staff and agenda that will speak to potential voters -- because their personal images will not encourage the sort of blind faith that Sharon merited.

     On the diplomatic front, the days of "Arik will know what to do," and it's twin phrase, "Only Arik can do what needs to be done" are over -- two phrases that have helped Israelis, politicians and simple citizens alike, to avoid responsibility for what's going on around them.

     His heirs will not be able to escape the results of their actions and their words like Sharon has done. Sharon could hold back from responding to Qasams from Gaza or Katushyas from Lebanon, and with a shrug of the shoulder could ignore those who viewed these events as a direct consequence of Sharon's actions and failures.

     Future prime ministers will have to explain, to convince -- and the convinced public will bear responsibility for those choices.

     There are many reasons to choose them: Israel's relationship to the internal disputes of the Palestinian Authority, the possibility that Hamas will gain power and perhaps join the government; preparations for potential conflict; dealing with security challenges near and far, delineating responsibility between different branches of Israel's security establishment.

     These, and dozens more reasons, most of which Sharon never dealt with but most Israelis believe he is the most suited to deal with.

     Daddy's gone. From now on, childhood is over.

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In this issue:

* CRACKS IN THE ICE (editorial overview), p. 1-13

 -- Poverty: who cares? p.2

 -- Social Justice on the agenda, p.3

 -- PM fights back, p.4

 -- Labour slipping down, p.5

 -- Shout it from the rooftops, p.6

 -- The Sharon tide, p.7

 -- Riding for a fall, p.7

 -- Shaping the heritage, p.8

 -- Drawing the Hamas in, p.10

 -- Elections under siege, p.11

 -- Olmert's test, p.12

* Why make it easy for them? p.13-15

* Pilot or prisoner? p. 15-16

 -- Neither coffee nor a club! p.16

* Ben Artzi back to prison? p.17

* Hands off the olive trees (David Forman) p.16-17

* Olive war escalates (Adam Keller) p.18-20

 -- Kibbutz Movement communiquŽ, p.19

* Tali Fahima, p.20-21

* The crosses of Vanunu, p.21-22

* Someone small will die (Yigal Sarna) p.22

 -- Poetical boycott (Aharon Shabtai) p.22

* Bil'in's struggle, p.23-25

 -- Today's Maccabees, p.24

 -- The army gets mad, p. 25

* 'Who is the coward? Me, Sir', p.25-26

* Three Fingers, No Fist (Avnery) p.28-27

* End of infancy (Ofer Shelach) p.28-26