Palestine-Mandate

The first I heard of this article, The Gaza Bombshell, in the current issue of Vanity Fair, was about 36 hours ago, thanks to Angry Arab’s tantalizing multiple postings on his blogspot.

Angry Arab wrote, at the end, summing up: “By the way, I really think that the Vanity Affair’s article on US and Muhammad Dahlan was very important. It reveals a lot about US foreign policy making in the Middle East. But I should add a caveat: it is clearly written with the full cooperation and support of Israeli intelligence sources. In fact, if you read it carefully, the Israelis come across as wise and informed, and the American as bumblers and unwise. Keep that in mind. The side that comes across well in such articles is the side that leaked the most to the writers”… Angry Arab’s discussion of the Vanity Fair article was on Monday, March 03, 2008 here.

This article is extremely embarrassing, both to the U.S., and to the Palestinian Authority.

For background, see one of Palestine-Mandate’s previous posts (on 26 November 2007 - just before many of the interviews that the Vanity Fair’s author conducted in Ramallah and in Gaza and in Cairo) “Rice: And I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, Hamas won?“

Yesterday, at a meeting at the Muqata’a Presidential HQ in Ramallah that was scheduled even before Israel’s latest military escalation in Gaza over the last week which resulted in Mahmoud Abbas suspending post-Annapolis negotiations with Israel, most of the cast of characters was present, shockingly. Only Muhammad Dahlan, the still-not-totally-out but discredited Palestinian formerly rising-star “strongman”, was not visible. There was U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice — actually accompanied by Elliot Abrams, David Welch, the U.S. Consul in Jerusalem Jacob Walles, and Lt. General Dayton (in a suit) and Lt. Gen Fraser (in an Air Force uniform)! They were all there!

Rice was not asked about the Vanity Fair article in the rather tightly-controlled press conference after her meeting in the Muqata’a — but she had been asked about it by a journalist in Egypt earlier in the day. At that time, Rice replied that she had not read the article — and from what she said, it seemed that she really had not read it…

The Gaza Bombshell is a must-read article, but here is a very brief excerpt by way of intro: The Vanity Fair article states that “Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.) But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza. Some sources call the scheme ‘Iran-contra 2.0′, recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well” …

Today, one of the Israeli Arab journalists who writes often rather speculative articles for the Jerusalem Post, Khaled Abu Toameh, sketched a useful resume of one aspect of the story: “The report uncovers three different confidential memos that describe the covert plan: One, prepared by US Consul-General in Jerusalem Jake Walles, states how the Bush Administration intended for him to tell Abbas in Ramallah in 2006 to dissolve the Hamas government if it would not recognize Israel, promising the US would back him if he did. ‘We believe that the time has come for you to move quickly and decisively’, the text reads. ‘If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform. If you act along these lines we will support you both materially and politically… We will be there to support you’. The second memo, drawn up by the State Department, asserts that means had to be found to produce an ‘endgame’ by the end of 2007 for Abbas to remove Hamas from power by collapsing the government, and that he must be given the means to strengthen his forces. According to the Vanity Fair report, the third memo, described as a US ‘action plan’ for the PA president, set out a plan by which Abbas would fire his own Fatah-Hamas ‘unity’ government and rely on a security deal between Dahlan and Dayton to strengthen Fatah’s forces. Meanwhile, the magazine said, US officials led by Rice had spent several months begging Arab governments for money in order to supply Fatah’s forces with new weapons from Egypt under a previously undisclosed covert US program - a scheme described by some sources as ‘Iran-Contra 2′. Dahlan goes on the record about these events for the first time, saying that despite pleas from Fatah that they were unprepared for elections, Bush pushed ahead. ‘Everyone was against the elections’, Dahlan is quoted as saying. ‘Everyone except Bush. Bush decided, “I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority”.’ Following Hamas’s victory, ‘everyone blamed everyone else’, the report quotes an official with the Department of Defense as saying. ‘We sat there in the Pentagon and said, “Who the f*** recommended this?” ‘ ” This report in todays JPost is here.

But, Secretary Rice’s remarks in Egypt that she had not (yet) read the Vanity Fair article was not the end of the story. At the U.S. State Department daily briefing back in Washington, there was an extensive exchange between a spokesman and journalists:

“QUESTION: Nick Spicer, Al Jazeera English. I was wondering if you might possibly comment on a Vanity Fair article alleging to lay bare a – I quote it – a covert initiative implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to provoke a Palestinian civil war. I know that’s pretty strong language. Could you react to that, please?

MR. CASEY: Well, I can reprise the lengthy comments that I made this morning. I can also point you to the answer the Secretary gave in Cairo on this this morning. Look, first of all, let’s be clear about what U.S. policy has been and will be. U.S. policy is to support a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is to support the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority, specifically, working with President Abbas and his cabinet. The U.S. policies in this regard have been transparent and open. They’ve been discussed publicly by the President, the Secretary of State and many others, both in public fora as well as in testimony to Congress. That policy includes, very specifically, a desire to help support, build and enhance Palestinian institutions. We made it very clear when Hamas came to power that we would continue our no-contact policy with Hamas and that we intended to continue to work specifically with those institutions that were under the authority of the president. As you recall, we also had to have a very extensive review of all U.S. aid, not only direct aid but also that provided through NGOs, to make sure that none of that money was going to Hamas so long as Hamas refused to comply with the Quartet principles, meaning requiring it to recognize Israel’s right to exist, to recognize the validity of the very instruments by which government was allowed to form for the Palestinian Authority, also eschewing violence as a matter of policy.

“So all that is prelude and let me just say this: The story alleges that there was some kind of secret plot on the part of the U.S. Government to create a internal conflict within the Palestinians, specifically an armed conflict. That’s absurd. That’s ridiculous. I said this morning that I think Vanity Fair should stick to arty photos of celebrities since clearly, at least in this instance, their efforts at serious journalism leave something lacking. And on that note, how do I really feel? Yeah.

QUESTION: Cancel your subscription.

MR. CASEY: Unfortunately, don’t have one. Anything else? One in the back. Got two. Got one in the back and one in the front.

QUESTION: I hate to be the bad guy.

MR. CASEY: That’s okay. Barry, you’re never the bad guy. We are glad to see you back here.

QUESTION: Thank you. Now, it’s one thing to deny that the U.S. is working to create conflict between the two Palestinian factions. That’s absurd, you say.

MR. CASEY: Mm-hmm.

QUESTION: It’s another thing to say, as you also said, U.S. supports Fatah institutions. The military, security, is a Fatah institution. Is the U.S. trying to help Abbas’ people be stronger? And, of course, they use their strength partly in civil conflict with Hamas. Follow me?

MR. CASEY: Barry, our goal –

QUESTION: So it’s not an airtight denial?.

MR. CASEY: Sure, but our goal was, is, and I suspect will continue to be building Palestinian institutions so that when you get, as we hope to get –

QUESTION: Right.

MR. CASEY: — to the conclusion of a peace process that establishes a two-state solution, that there are Palestinian institutions that we and the Israelis and others can rely on to be able to implement and carry out the law, carry out the terms of the agreement. And our support isn’t for parties; it’s for the legitimate institutions of the country that are willing to work towards that end. And that’s always been our policy. It’s been open and transparent and above board. The security assistance we provide, as well as humanitarian and others, has been out there for people to see. So arguing that there was some kind of, you know, plot back there, or what my Spanish friends would call a mano negro, is just silly.

QUESTION: That comes down to supporting Fatah since they’re the legitimate group supporting U.S. goals –

MR. CASEY: Well, again, remember where we started this movie. After the election and after the Hamas-led government came to power, the position of the Quartet, including the United States, was very clear: We would not be able to support or engage with that government as long as it refused to acknowledge the basic Quartet principles. We’ve said, and you’ve heard from the Secretary many times, it’s hard for us or anyone else to ask the Israelis to engage with a ‘partner for peace’ who denies that nation’s right to exist, who believes and continues to support the use of terror against it, who denies the fundamental agreements with which they have been established as a government and which refuses to act in any kind of good-faith manner. So again, the policies here are quite clear. But the fact that we and the Quartet thought that the Hamas-led government ought to acknowledge those basic principles in order for us to be able to work with them and have them engage legitimately with the Israelis as a partner for peace is, you know a totally different matter.

QUESTION: Tom.

MR. CASEY: Charlie.

QUESTION: You know that the Congress prohibits giving lethal aid to the Palestinians, and therefore you couldn’t actually arm Fatah to take on Hamas.

MR. CASEY: Right.

QUESTION: Do you know of any discussions between the Administration and the Saudis that the Saudis would pay the bill to fund the rearming of Fatah?

MR. CASEY: Well, Charlie, I know there has certainly been a lot of discussions with other countries in the region and those discussions are ongoing about how you work to support President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad. You know, in terms of the details of who said what to whom over time, I honestly don’t have them. I can’t guarantee you there was never a conversation like that. But you know, the bottom line is an argument that says that the legitimate efforts of the Palestinian Authority president to develop his institutions, including his security institutions, is the cause of or the reason for Hamas violence is one of the worst examples of blaming the victim I can come up with in recent memory.

QUESTION: Tom, I’m not quite sure I follow that.

MR. CASEY: Okay. Well, let’s do some more of it.

QUESTION: Let’s try again. You don’t know of any — you don’t know of any specific discussions between the Saudis and the Administration wherein they would what you can’t do legally, which is to arm Fatah?

MR. CASEY: Charlie, I’m not aware of any particular conversations in that regard. I can’t speak for every institution of the U.S. Government. What I can say is we have made it a very open and transparent issue that we wanted to work on behalf of the government of President Abbas and work for him and with him to be able to strengthen the legitimate institutions of the state and work with those institutions that were willing to be a partner for peace. And again, I don’t know how many times this was discussed in public in open settings by the President, the Secretary, by other members of the Administration. And to, you know, call that policy a covert plan is just — sorry, it doesn’t pass the reality test”.

This is a terrifying article, reported by the AP this morning:
“Palestinians say they know when an Israeli drone is in the air: Cell phones stop working, TV reception falters and they can hear a distant buzzing. They also know what’s likely to come next — a devastating explosion on the ground. Palestinians say Israel’s pilotless planes have been a major weapon in its latest offensive in Gaza, which has killed nearly 120 people since last week …
The use of drones is shrouded in secrecy, and Israeli defense officials refuse to comment publicly on whether they are being used in airstrikes in Gaza. However, Israeli officers in private conversations have confirmed use of the weapons. Wary Gaza militants using binoculars are on constant lookout for drones. When one is sighted overhead, the militants report via walkie-talkie to their comrades, warning them to turn off their cell phones and remove the batteries for fear the Israeli technology will trace their whereabouts. A militant from the southern Gaza Strip who belongs to the Islamic Jihad group said drones were mostly used to target individuals, and not structures. He said they often hovered at much higher altitudes than manned aircraft and their missiles were frequently more destructive, leaving deep gashes where they landed. The militant said the drones usually targeted slow-moving targets, like people walking, or cars slowing down to avoid potholes in a road. ‘It looks like it makes small circles in the sky, but before it’s about to fire a missile, it slows down’, the militant said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared being identified by Israel. ‘It’s not like any other plane. You don’t see the missile leaving, it’s very quiet’ …

” ‘Our experience is that the drone missile is successful in hitting its targets, and it’s deadly’, said Dr. Mahmoud Assali, a Palestinian physician who works in the emergency room of a northern Gaza Strip hospital that has often treated Palestinian gunmen hit by Israeli drones. ‘The drone has a zone of around 15 meters (50 feet) where it decimates everything. It targets people and leaves them in pieces’, Assali said … Jaber Wishah, deputy director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, said his group has received reports about drones firing missiles for more than three years. ‘The kind of missile — from the shrapnel we’ve gathered — appears to be small’, Wishah said. ‘But do we have documentation, photographs of a drone? We don’t’.”

This AP story adds: “Damian Kemp, an aviation desk editor at Jane’s Defence Weekly, said Israel is probably the first country in the world to use unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, for both surveillance and to fire missiles. Israel is a world leader in the field and ‘capable of doing everything from the very small to the very large’, he said … Israel has long been considered the world leader in drone technology and proudly exhibits its products at international air shows. But it maintains its drones are for surveillance purposes, and refuses to confirm using them in airstrikes. Doron Suslik, a top official at the Israel Aerospace Industries, which manufactures drones, said the company has customers from all over the world, including Switzerland, France and India, with annual sales of $500 million to $600 million. He refused to divulge the drone’s military capabilities, citing his clients’ desire for confidentiality. Government and army officials also refused to comment on the drone’s firing capabilities”. This AP story is published here.

This came by email from Geneva this evening: “The United Nations Special Rapportur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, John Dugard, issued the following statement today — “The present situation in Gaza and neighbouring Israel cannot be allowed to continue. Palestinian rockets fired into Israel violate the rules of international humanitarian law and terrorize Israelis. Israel’s excessive and disproportionate response has likewise been unlawful in terms of international humanitarian law. The failure to distinguish between civilian and military targets violates one of the most fundamental rules of humanitarian law. Collective punishment and the terrorization of an occupied people are also unlawful. It is imperative that every effort be made to bring the violence to an end. This can be done only by negotiation and mediation. The United Nations is the obvious body to initiate such talks between Hamas in Gaza, the Israeli Government and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah. At present the United Nations is restrained by the United States, the European Union and Israel from speaking to Hamas and this has left it powerless to fulfill its principal duty of maintaining international peace. The Secretary-General of the United Nations must find the courage to overcome this obstacle and initiate meaningful talks between all parties. Without this the cycle of violence is doomed to continue”.

Also, from Geneva, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour issued this statement today: “The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour expressed alarm Monday about the violence that has been taking place in Gaza and Israel over the past few days. While recognizing Israel’s right to defend itself, Arbour condemned the Israeli Defence Force’s disproportionate use of force. The High Commissioner called for an impartial investigation into the reported killing of dozens of civilians, including children, in the IDF operation. Arbour also strongly condemned the rocket attacks by Palestinian militants against Israeli civilian targets. ‘These attacks are in clear violation of international humanitarian law’, she said, ‘and those responsible must be held to account‘. Arbour stressed that Israel, as the occupying power, bears a particular responsibility under international human rights and humanitarian law to protect the civilian population and civilian installations in Gaza. She called on the government of Israel to conduct impartial investigations into the killings of civilians, make the findings public and hold any perpetrators accountable. She also reiterated her earlier warning that collective punishment is prohibited under international law. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urged the international community to step up pressure on both sides to uphold their obligations under international human rights and humanitarian law, and to ensure that failure to do so is dealt with appropriately.

Reuters wrote yesterday about the upcoming visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice to the region that: “Three months ago, Israelis and Palestinians pledged at a peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, that they would seek a deal by the end of the Bush administration in January 2009. The window is fast narrowing and diplomats and experts note talk has become more vague, with suggestions of only a framework agreement by year-end, or a so-called ’shelf agreement’ that could be dusted off by the next president. But a senior U.S. official said it was too soon to write off prospects of a deal and Rice’s goal on this trip would be to keep talks moving between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and pro-Western Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas … Rice is expected to lean on Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak to concede to Abbas’s demand to ease checkpoints in the West Bank and give Abbas’s forces more responsibility. But officials said she would make clear U.S. support for Israel’s right to defend itself … Rice’s first stop is due to be Cairo on Tuesday where she wants answers over how Egypt will secure its border with Gaza after hundreds of thousands of Palestinians breached it last month to buy goods unavailable due to an Israeli blockade This Reuters report is here.

There have been some hints, just slight ones, that there might be some light between Rice’s position and Israel’s, concerning the re-opening of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, but that is not totally clear.

It was Rice herself who stayed up all night in November 2005 — it was even her birthday, she said — to get an agreement on opening this crossing, following Israel’s unilateral September 2005 “Disengagement” from Gaza. The formula had Palestinians running the show on their side of the crossing — but under Israeli real-time “supervision” via video link from some control booth near the Kerem Shalom crossing, perhaps some 15-20 minutes real travel time away.

Now, of course, there is a Palestinian split — and Hamas in Gaza wants to be a part of this deal. The Palestinian leadership in Ramallah, particularly President Mahmoud Abbas, objects, though Hamas says it would not mind some sort of “power-sharing” arrangement. What Hamas objects to is any Israeli role in a re-opened Rafah.

Egypt’s Intelligence Chief Omar Suleiman, who has been very involved — and who would have to sign on to any revised deal — just cancelled a proposed trip to Israel next week to discuss this, and the release of IDF Corporal Gilad Shalit, who was seized from near the Kerem Shalom crossing in June 2006, and who is still being held somewhere in Gaza. Israeli officials told Israeli newspapers that they believed Suleiman had cancelled his trip because of all the build-up toward an all-out Israeli re-invasion of Gaza.

Suleiman will, however, participate in a meeting with Rice in Egypt (Tuesday?)…

While the U.S. is firmly condemnatory of the Palestinian “projectile” attacks (Qassams, Katyushas, and mortars), they have also been warning Israel to consider carefully the consequences of its actions, and to keep the humanitarian situation in Gaza in mind.

I wonder if, perhaps, Rice herself might cancel her visit to Jerusalem (and Ramallah), if the present Israeli-Gaza fighting continues and escalates.

In her blog, Just World News, Helena Cobban takes an overview of the Gaza situation, writing:

“Haaretz’s Amos Harel describes the ‘dizzying’ pace of events between Israel and Gaza in the past week:

‘On Sunday, the media were busy with the IDF’s intensive preparations for the possibility that Hamas would march thousands of Gazan Palestinians into Israel. Furloughs were canceled, units were sent forward from training bases and senior commanders stayed in the field to supervise the preparations. By Monday, it became clear that Hamas had chosen to avoid a confrontation. Only a few thousand people attended the rally in Gaza and only a few dozen bothered showing up at the Erez crossing. Hamas made up for its disappointment with the poor turnout by firing rockets at Sderot, injuring Yossi Haimov, 10, in an incident that was chillingly televised. On Wednesday, the IDF and the Shin Bet security service killed five Hamas activists who had returned to the Gaza Strip from training in Iran and Syria. Hamas retaliated with almost 50 rockets, one of which killed Roni Yihye at Sapir College, adjacent to Sderot. Ashkelon was also hit‘.

“… But as Harel notes, the options of what this ‘decisive’ thing might be run from the radically de-escalatory (move into negotiating a ceasefire with Hamas) to the radically escalatory (a big ground operation into Gaza accompanied by, as Vilnai wants, some elements of ‘Shoah’.)
…
“Condi Rice is to be in Israel next week. Will she be promoting the cause of escalation or de-escalation? Up until now, she and the Bush administration have favored or perhaps even pushed for just about every escalatory move the Israeli government has ever made against its neighbors. But it would be great if this time around she could take a calm look round and see the dangers for all involved in the region– who now certainly include the US– if she gives the nod to an escalation against Gaza.
…
“Finally, I can’t stop this post before commenting on the horror and the complete inappropriateness of deputy minister Vilnai using the term ‘Shoah’ to refer to what he was threatening in Gaza. He later backtracked some and said all he meant was ‘a disaster’ (which is bad enough, especially if threatened against a highly populated territory in which non-combatants far outnumber combatants. But in Israel, is the term ‘Shoah’ commonly used to refer to relatively banal events? I thought it was used, like the term capital-H Holocaust in English, to refer to a single, extremely horrific episode of evil”. Helena’s thoughts are posted today here.

It seems that Vilna’i said exactly what he said. Israelis understand it exactly the same way as everybody else does. Of course all these threats are horrible and disgraceful. I would only ask Helena: is a disaster a relatively banal event?

Ramattan News Agency published this account of the last minutes of a five month old baby who died in Gaza City on Thursday (28 February) in a second airstrike in recent weeks on the supposedly abandoned Ministry of Interior building: ” ‘The baby sucked milk, he was playing with his mother, I was reading a book when a rocket hit Ministry of Interior’, the father, Nasser Al-Boraiy, said. With the first rocket, the electric power was cut off; darkness filled the …house.
Stones and pieces of the asbestos ceiling poured on the head of the laughing baby. The explosions continued as two other rockets hit the building. ‘I looked for my baby in darkness between the ruble, I did not realize where is he, when he cried a once, I followed the direction of his voice’, the father said. ‘My hands touched my baby who was breathing hard, I felt a warm liquid on my two hands to realize that he is wounded’, Nasser Al-Boraiy said”.

The baby was killed by the shrapnel of an Israeli missile.

The Ramattan report continued: “The father carried his baby to the nearby Shifa Hospital, blood was streaming from his tiny head. In the hospital, the father went in a panic of hysteria to realize that his sole baby was killed. The tears showered the face of the father when he saw the shoes of the baby.

” ‘After five years of treatment from sterility, I had a baby; I do not imagine that I lost him in a second’ …

The mother of the baby was shocked when she realized that she lost her baby, she fall unconscious, she laid on the bed at the reception department while her baby was in the morgue. On Thursday morning, she strongly cried when she saw the ‘empty’ bed of her baby, after arrived in the house from the hospital”.

In this report from Gaza, Ramattan addes that “Mohammed Al-Boraiy is not the sole child who was killed in the Israeli series of air rids across the Gaza strip, three others were also killed on Wednesday evening in the northern Gaza Strip town of Jabalya. Medics reported that Anas Al-Manama, 10, Bilal Hijazi, 11, and Mohammed Hamada, 11, were killed in Jabalia last night in an Israeli Air Strike”.

This report can be found online here.

Twenty Palestinians were killed in Gaza today, and several in the West Bank as well.

The photo below shows a Palestinian man fainting after seeing the bodies of four children in a morgue in Beit Lahyia (in the northern Gaza Strip), also on Thursday:

Here is a photo from the funeral today of the student killed by a massive chest wound after a Qassam rocket fired from Gaza hit his car in the parking lot of Saphir College near Sderot:

The student, 47-year-old Roni Yehiye, father of four, who was receiving vocational re-training, died of his wounds on the spot.

The photo below shows his son mourning during the funeral.

Today, the European Parliament adopted a resolution saying that “The policy of isolation of the Gaza strip has failed at both the political and humanitarian level … The civilian population should be exempt from any military action and any collective punishment.”

Israel’s Haaretz newspaper, using reporting from Reuters and its own reporting as well, added that the resolution also said: “The European Parliament calls on Israel to cease military actions killing and endangering civilians, and extrajudicial targeted killings”.

The lawmakers also urged the Gaza Strip’s rulers Hamas to prevent the firing of rockets into Israel.

However, the report noted, “EU lawmakers have no power over the bloc’s foreign policy” … This Haaretz story is posted here.

Meanwhile, in another story with a Europe angle, the Jerusalem Post reported that “An Israeli prime minister has never visited Brussels on a formal diplomatic mission. ‘It’s just never worked out’, the diplomatic official said … Part of Israel’s strategy to strengthen relations with Europe is to de-link those ties from the vicissitudes of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In the past, Israeli-European ties fluctuated parallel to progress, or the lack thereof, on negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. ‘The Europeans are, in general, not pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli, they are pro-peace process. Progress with the Palestinians meant better relations with Europe’, the Israeli diplomatic source said. Jerusalem’s new strategy is to enhance cooperation with Europe in a variety of fields and to demonstrate that Israel can help with some of the EU’s many interests in the region. To that end, Israel has in the past few weeks sent a detailed plan to the European Union asking to enter into negotiations on cooperation in nine fields. The cooperation would entail ’significant’ Israeli inclusion into an array of EU institutions in fields such as finance, education, environment, youth development, law enforcement, security cooperation and scientific research collaboration … Another aspect of Jerusalem’s strategy to strengthen ties with Europe is increasing contact with the continent’s growing Muslim communities. ‘Europe is becoming more and more Muslim, and we have identified a need to reach out to these populations’, the diplomatic official said”. This JPost article is posted here.

On a night tour of Ramallah last night, I was reminded that today is Valentine’s Day. I would have forgotten, had I not seen the big red hearts in store fronts in the streets around Manara Square, the center of town. Florist shops were open late, preparing bouquets of beautiful red roses.

On my way back home, I stopped with a friend for Arabic pastries in the famous original Eiffel bakery on the main Jerusalem-Ramallah road. Just a little ahead, it was clear that there was something going on. Garbage bins were overturned in the street. Men in the bakery said that protesters were throwing stones at cars. The target of the anger was a new rule by the Palestinian Authority (PA) requiring Palestinians to pay all their back utility bills for electricity and water — or risk not receiving driver’s licenses or any other official documents. Since the start of the Second Intifada, with increasing Israeli security restrictions, many workers lost their jobs in Israel, and unemployment rose precipitously. Then, following a Hamas victory in parliamentary elections in early 2006, a U.S. and European Union boycott of the PA meant that nearly 160,000 government employees were not paid their salaries for over a year, and had to take bank loans to tide them over. Since the Hamas rout of Fatah security forces in Gaza in mid-June 2007, the donors have relented on the Ramallah-based PA, and government employees are now receiving their salaries — but repaying last year’s bank loans with 24% of their take-home pay. In short, there are few indebted Palestinians who can pay all the back bills at once.

Suddenly, a caravan of PA security vans zipped up to the Eiffel bakery, and three or four dozen PA security men descended from their bright blue cars with weapons in their hands, and closing the visors on their white safety helmets. They briskly chased the protestors off — back to the Amari refugee camp in downtown Ramallah from where they had come.

On my way back home, I entered my neighborhood, and there I saw three Israeli military vehicles pulled up at a local grocery story that stays open late. But, it wasn’t a coffee break. A dozen or more Israeli soldiers in olive green uniforms were standing outside, with their weapons, and a few of the bored young men were pointing the rifles and looking down the gun barrels at residential apartment buildings where families live.

Today, the AP reports from Gaza that “the territory is flooded with carnations that had been grown for export to Europe [but which cannot be transported out]. After the Hamas takeover, Israel and Egypt closed Gaza’s borders, banning trade, and only a fraction of the millions of carnations grown in Gaza this season were sold to Europe under a limited arrangement with Israel. On Thursday, Gaza flower growers dumped carnations at the Sufa crossing with Israel in protest. Al-Wakid, a policeman who’s stayed off the job since the Hamas takeover, said he began buying flowers for Valentine’s Day four years ago, when he was engaged. Since then, his wife has come to expect the gesture, he said. Across the street at the Rose Flower Shop, two young women, one dressed in a black Islamic robe and head scarf, bought a bouquet of roses, a rare sight in Gaza. The shop had managed to bring in 500 roses from Israel, using Gaza medical patients treated in the Jewish state as ‘mules’, and had about 50 roses left…” This report, by AP’s Karen Laub, is posted here.

Nahum Barnea wrote in an article published in Israel’s YNet today that “Someone has to take up the task of doing serious research regarding the part played by the clouds in the country’s military history. We know about operations that were postponed because of fear of casualties, or because of disagreement among senior officials, or because of American pressure. It is doubtful whether anyone ever counted the number of operations cancelled because of the weather. During the Sharon era, and not only then, clouds were used as an almost permanent prevention method. A terror attack would infuriate the prime minister. He would demand immediate military action, a harsh one. Sorry, the army would say: There are clouds. Until the clouds cleared, the prime minister’s anger would subside, and so forth”.

Is this like counting to ten?

Barney continues: “Therefore, we don’t have wars in winter. All the wars we initiated took place in the spring and summer (with the exception of the Sinai campaign in 1956, but in that war Israel had European partners that dictated their own timetables.) The war in Gaza will also have to wait, apparently. In addition to all the familiar dilemmas that accompany the decision on a large-scale military operation, there is also the weather problem. The situation in Sderot and Gaza-region communities is intolerable: This should be the starting point of any discussion. It is not similar to the Syrian bombardments on Galilee kibbutzim during the ‘60s or the Katyushas fired at Kiryat Shmona during the ‘70s and ‘80s. The politicians can continue to praise the perseverance of residents from morning till night, yet the sad reality is that the town is half-empty, schools and places of employment are half-empty, and those who stay live under constant fear. A government that exposes its civilians over an extended period of time to a war of attrition of this kind does not deserve to stay in place. A large-scale operation in Gaza is supposed to achieve two objectives: Block the arms smuggling path in Rafah, and paralyze the Qassam fire from Gaza City and its environs. These are two fronts that necessitate simultaneous handling: Operating on one front only won’t resolve a thing”. This article was published here.

Actually, rain is forecast for the next few days, and winter is not quite over. Nevertheless, other Israeli press reports indicate that Hamas leaders have gone underground — perhaps literally — after all the open talk recently, including in yesterday’s meeting of the Israeli cabinet, about increased “targetted assassinations”, mainly this time targetting the Hamas leadership.