Palestine-Mandate

Yossi Sarid has written this in an article published in Haaretz today: “Now, in retrospect, some claim that the disengagement from Gaza was a bad deal. Regret is now the bon ton. But there is nothing to regret. It is easy to imagine what would have happened in the Land of Hamas had 8,000 Jewish settlers still been stuck there, in the crossfire. Thousands of soldiers would have had to protect them, every man as he went out, every woman as she went in, every grandmother and grandson on their way to yoga … The disengagement was actually a step in the right direction, but it was a small, belated, crooked step. Belated, because we waited for the occupation to go bad and fall into the hands of Hamas like a rotten fruit; small, because you cannot separate those which are attached, the West Bank and Gaza; and crooked, because it was wrong to disengage into a situation of abandon, without any kind of agreement, without handing the territory over to an Arab, international or mixed trusteeship. The feigned regret is meant to thwart the great withdrawal that Olmert promised and has already changed his mind about. Not only is there no such withdrawal on the horizon, but even the outposts are now being cleansed and legitimized. Ehud Barak and Haim Ramon are the chief purifiers: they beg the land robbers to evacuate the scene of one crime so that they will be allowed to commit legal crimes elsewhere. Any highway robber would leap at the chance”… The full essay by Yossi Sarid can be read here .

This was probably the toughest moment yet in the whole Annapolis process. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice headed for previously-announced talks in the region just as the most ferocious and deadly Israeli military incursion in Gaza in years was abruptly wound up — possibly specifically because of her visit.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his negotiators had angrily announced last weekend that they could not continue talks with their Israeli counterparts under the circumstances.

Palestinian students in their school uniforms left their classrooms in East Jerusalem on Monday, groups of girls, and then groups of boys, to demonstrate on the main Salah ad-Din Street against the Israeli military actions in Gaza — shouting, burning garbage in the street, and throwing stones — as the casualty toll mounted. One Israeli car was attacked, and its windows broken. Israeli police on big and sturdy horses pushed back the groups of school children, and four arrests were made. There were other less polite demonstrations and responses elsewhere in the West Bank, with at least one Palestinian death. And Israel’s Palestinian-Arab citizens also marched in protest in Arab towns in Israel.

For months, Palestinians have been saying with concern, the feeling of a new Intifada is in the air.

Rice arrived at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport by 12:30 pm on Tuesday – after already holding morning meetings in Egypt – and, for the first time, drove straight to Ramallah without talking to Israeli officials first. She arrived at the Muqata’a presidential compound by 1:35 pm.

The main focus of her visit was to get the Palestinian Authority leadership to agree to resume post-Annapolis “core issue” and “final status” talks with Israel.

At a joint Rice-Abbas press conference in Ramallah after their meeting, Rice appeared unusually accommodating and sympathetic. And Abbas appeared firm, even adamant. The Palestinian President said that there would have to be a cease-fire before negotiations resume.

Abbas repeated this position on Wednesday morning – but then reversed his position within hours (CNN called it a U-turn), either in response to a phone call from Rice, as some reports indicate, or in response to threats of a total cut-off of international aid, as other reports speculate, or because he really believes that ‘The peace process is a strategic choice”, as he himself said, believing it is the only way to give the Palestinian people better lives.

At the very least, it was an extremely gracious concession to a visiting guest, and it may yet cost him dearly.

Time Magazine’s Tim McGirk wrote later on his Time Magazine blog page that “It seemed like the most craven of climb-downs”, and he was not alone in this opinion.

What we know for sure now is that the parties have said they intend to resume negotiations.

In the Muqata’a press conference with Rice on Tuesday, the Palestinian President said: “We warned repeatedly that Israel must not insist on its security first (only)”, and said that “Security must be reciprocal for both sides, in the proper social and economic atmosphere”.

Abu Mazen stated with some intensity that: “No one, under any pretext, can justify what the Israeli military did (in recent days) when 120 died, including many children and civilians. We need a comprehensive and reciprocal truce in Gaza and the West Bank, so that 2008 is (can be) the year of peace”. He continued: “We want to work on activating the Fourth Geneva Convention. Security is vital for both parties, and it can only be achieved through a political solution, not military power…”

A Reuters correspondent in the travelling State Department press corps tried to press Abbas to specify what it would take to resume talks with Israel. The answer from Abbas was: “These talks are not a luxury, they are something very important”.

Nobody in Ramallah asked about the Vanity Fair article — though while the journalists were waiting for the press conference to begin, a colleague from Japan’s NHK television said Rice had been asked about it at a press conference in Cairo this morning, though her answer was not clear. (We later learned, from the U.S. State Department transcript of the Cairo press conference, that Rice said she had not – yet – read the Vanity Fair article which was already being widely circulated on the internet, but she was able to add that all the blame should be put on Hamas.)

The first (pre-approved — by Muqata’a press officials) question in the Ramallah press conference was from a Palestinian reporter who asked: “Can you tell us where negotiations stand now, because nobody sees any results?”

Rice replied: “We’ve been very active the last several days” and went on to add that the present problems can be blamed on Hamas “starting with the illegal coup”. Abbas said nothing.

Several of the minor characters in the Vanity Fair story were present in Rice’s entourage at the Muqata’a in Ramallah today - Elliot Abrams, along with David Welch, as well as Consul in East Jerusalem, Jacob Walles

The Vanity Fair article had reported that the magazine “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 [Muhammad] 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.) … 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”…

Ma’an News Agency reported Wednesday that Dahlan denied some of the allegations made in the Vanity Fair story.

The Vanity Fair article also reported that “Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. ‘The administration spoke with one voice: “We have to squeeze these guys”. With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead’.”

And, there’s more. The Vanity Fair article also said that “At the end of 2006, Dayton promised an immediate package worth $86.4 million—money that, according to a U.S. document published by Reuters on January 5, 2007, would be used to ‘dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza’. U.S. officials even told reporters the money would be transferred ‘in the coming days’. The cash never arrived. ‘Nothing was disbursed’, Dahlan says. ‘It was approved and it was in the news. But we received not a single penny’. Any notion that the money could be transferred quickly and easily had died on Capitol Hill, where the payment was blocked by the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. Its members feared that military aid to the Palestinians might end up being turned against Israel. Dahlan did not hesitate to voice his exasperation. ‘I spoke to Condoleezza Rice on several occasions’, he says. ‘I spoke to Dayton, to the consul general, to everyone in the administration I knew. They said, “You have a convincing argument”. We were sitting in Abbas’s office in Ramallah, and I explained the whole thing to Condi. And she said, “Yes, we have to make an effort to do this. There’s no other way”.’? At some of these meetings, Dahlan says, Assistant Secretary Welch and Deputy National-Security Adviser Abrams were also present”…

Just as they were present in Ramallah again on Tuesday.

The theme of Hamas-is-to-blame and Hamas-is-responsible was repeated throughout Rice’s meetings and comments during the trip – only President Abbas refrained from comments in this direction, exhibiting unusual restraint on this topic.

On Wednesday afternoon, Rice told journalists in a press conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni that “There are enemies of peace that will always try to hold hostage the Palestinian cause and the future of the Palestinian people for their own state. And Hamas, which in effect, holds the people of Gaza hostage in their hands, is now trying to make the path to a Palestinian state hostage to them. And we cannot permit that to happen”.

Earlier on Wednesday, as the Israeli Security Cabinet was meeting on the situation in Gaza (the Security Cabinet later announced it had decided to continue Israeli military operations against Hamas in Gaza), Rice held a second meeting with Palestinian negotiators (Ahmad Qurei’/Abu Alaa’, and Sa’eb Erekat).

A spokesperson for the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem later confirmed to this reporter that this meeting was indeed held in the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem Consulate – a move with some weighty symbolic significance, as the PA has been insisting on Israel “reopening Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem”.

Palestinian President Abbas, who was not present at the meeting in the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, said again on Wednesday morning – before his abrupt change of mind – that “The negotiations must be started, but after the truce … Once the truce is achieved, the road will be open for negotiations”. He also said that Rice told him she would send an envoy (Assistant Secretary David Welch) to Egypt, and that “there are real efforts being exerted by Egypt for the truce”.

A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed that Welch went to the airport to head back to Cairo around mid-day Wednesday, even before Rice concluded her private meeting with Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

One result announced by Rice, in a press conference with Livni after their meeting, is that Welch would be going to Egypt “to look at the entire situation in the Gaza. We have been working all along with Egypt and with Israel, and indeed with the Palestinian Authority, to deal with the situation that has obtained in Gaza since Hamas’ illegal takeover there. That means security issues, it means humanitarian issues, it means trying to do something about the tunnels which continue to be a problem”.

There is still no indication of any deal near on the important issue of reopening the Gaza-Egyptian border at Rafah – which was breached to the world’s astonishment in a spectacular break-out by Palestinians from Gaza on 23 January. After a few days’ multi-million dollar shopping spree, the Gazans returned home to life under an otherwise near-total blockade, and subsequently under renewed Israeli attack.

It was Rice herself who had been able to engineer the break-through, in November 2005 – after staying up all night, in Jerusalem, and on her birthday – that resulted in the agreement on movement and access which allowed the Rafah crossing to open with PA personnel, plus the physical presence of European Union monitors and a real-time Israeli security supervision via video camera from the Kerem Shalom some kilometers to the south.

The Israeli Security Cabinet said, rather cryptically, in a statement issued after the conclusion of its meeting on Wednesday morning that the Israeli government would work “To reduce the strengthening of Hamas, including in coordination with – and by – Egypt“.

Earlier in the week, Reuters reported that “Israeli and European officials said one proposal under consideration would seek to open the Rafah border crossing to cargo, expanding on its former role for travellers only. Israeli defence officials said that could be acceptable to the Jewish state as a way of limiting its responsibility for supplying Gaza’s 1.5 million residents. But Egypt opposes any attempt by Israel to shift the burden, Western diplomats said … Javier Solana, the EU’s foreign policy chief, told reporters in Jerusalem his bloc’s border monitors were ready to return to Rafah after a nearly nine-month absence provided any agreement includes Egypt”.

Solana was visiting President Abbas in the Muqata’a on Tuesday just an hour before Rice arrived.

The other result announced is that Lt. General William Fraser, who traveled to the region with Rice’s party and departed with it as well, will be holding what the Americans are calling a “trilateral” – a meeting Fraser will chair with Israelis and Palestinians participating – to review where things stand concerning the “Roadmap obligations” that both Israelis and Palestinians are supposed to fulfill. Rice stressed several times that both sides have a long way to go in this respect.

Rice also indicated, several times, that there needs to be improvement in the lives and situations of Palestinians on the ground.

Fraser’s “trilateral” will be next week, probably Thursday, (and not this week as the Israeli press has reported). A spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv confirmed that Fraser will be returning in a few day’s time.

Rice told journalists traveling with her on the plane, according to a transcript released by the U.S. State Department, that “the report is to me, and it wasn’t a judgment on Roadmap obligations, it was sort of his first take on what needs to be done”.

It would appear, from Rice’s use of the verb’s tenses, that Fraser’s report has already been written and presented (to her, at least), and the conclusions it draws would then most probably have already been at least mentioned during her visit.

Rice continued, “But I expect that he will clearly talk directly to them [both parties – Israelis and Palestinians] about what needs to be done and ways to get it done. I don’t personally like the term ‘judge’ very much, because it sounds like somebody who sits above and hands down decrees. This is more an iterative effort of working with the parties to see if we can’t really make some group movement on these Roadmap obligations, and that’s how I expect Fraser will carry it out”.

Here are several interrelated news items of interest today:

The Jerusalem Post reports that “The head of Hamas’s political bureau in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, rejected a request by Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa that Hamas unilaterally stop firing Kassam rockets at Israel, according to a report in the London-based daily Al-Hayat on Wednesday. Arab diplomatic sources told the paper that Moussa had met Mashaal in Damascus a few days ago to propose that Hamas hold its fire. Mashaal, however, reportedly shrugged off the request, insisting that Hamas would only end the rocket fire if Israel reciprocated in accordance with the equation ’stopping Israeli aggression in return for stopping rocket fire’.” This news item is posted here .

The JPost may, or may not, have picked up this item from Ma’an news agency in Bethlehem: “The exiled head of Hamas’ politburo, Khalid Mash’al, has rejected a proposal by the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Mousa, suggesting that Hamas unilaterally stop firing homemade projectiles at Israeli towns bordering the Gaza Strip, Arab diplomatic sources said on Tuesday. Mash’al insisted that any ceasefire must be bilateral, meaning that Israel should halt its attacks on Gaza in exchange for Hamas halting the launch of the projectiles. Mash’al and Mousa met a few days ago in Damascus. Sources who knew the outcome of the meeting said that Hamas also insisted that Israel should not have any role, physical or electronic, in operating the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. In addition, the sources said, Hamas insists that the European monitors stationed at the crossing should be based in the Egyptian border city of Al-Arish, not in Israel, that Palestinian security forces stationed at the crossing be affiliated to President Mahmoud Abbas, not the government of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Hamas also wants to have its own checkpoints on the road to the crossing point, and a share of the economic benefits of trade that passes through the crossing. Sources also highlighted that contacts between the Egyptians and Hamas are still ongoing in attempts to hammer out an agreement on several issues that emerged after the breach of the border wall between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Some Palestinians from the Gaza Strip are still detained in Egypt after that incident, and the Egyptian authorities are still upset at Hamas’ behavior after the incident”.
This Ma’an news report is posted here .

The JPost also reported today that “The Security Cabinet was discussing the escalation in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning. The ministers were debating various courses of action, military and political, including a large-scale ground operation”. This JPost news is included in a longer story here .

The JPost adds, in another story, that “Foreign Ministry spokespeople are refusing requests to appear on Al-Jazeera because of what the ministry deems heavily biased coverage of the situation in the Gaza Strip, a ministry official said Tuesday … To support the argument of an Al-Jazeera bias, one Foreign Ministry official quoted from comments senior Hamas official Mahmoud Zahar made Monday on Hamas’s television station, Al-Aksa, saying that ‘after I thank God, the Praised and the Almighty, I thank the people of the media… specifically the Al-Aksa and Al-Jazeera stations, and all the stations that showed pictures of the pulse of the Palestinian majority’. ‘Thank you to all those who gave support in presenting the pulse of the Palestinian majority, which says we will resist until the Day of Judgment’, he said … The Foreign Ministry official said these comments only strengthened the ministry’s charges that Al-Jazeera was biased in its coverage, and that the ministry believed the station was cooperating with Hamas, against Fatah. Ministry officials held meetings last week with Al-Jazeera’s representatives in Israel, including its bureau chief Walid al-Omary, to discuss the coverage. The Foreign Ministry has charged that Al-Jazeera was in cahoots with Hamas in broadcasting what Israel believed was a staged candlelight protest that followed a government decision last month to reduce electric and gas supplies to the Gaza Strip. Omary denied Tuesday that his network was providing anything but a factual picture from Gaza, adding that the network took pains to cover both sides. Indeed, he said, his camera crews were attacked by angry Sderot residents when they went to cover the story in that city last week. ‘We are not inciting, not provoking’, he said. ‘We don’t have planes, missiles and artillery, and are not part of the confrontation. We are covering this like all others’. Omary said his network frequently had Israeli officials and spokespeople on the air, and that if the Foreign Ministry did indeed carry on with its boycott, other Israelis and government officials would still be willing to be interviewed. ‘We feel sympathy for the suffering of all’, he said. ‘But if you compare the situation in Israel and inside Gaza, you know what happened - more than 120 people were killed in Gaza, and three Israelis were killed. That’s the situation in the Middle East, we are just delivering the news’.”
This JPost report on the Israeli Foreign Ministry boycott of Al-Jazeera is published here.

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”.

Uri Avnery sent this article today:

“WE ISRAELIS live in a world of ghosts and monsters. We do not conduct a war against living persons and real organizations, but against devils and demons which are out to destroy us. It is a war between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness, between absolute good and absolute evil. That’s how it looks to us, and that’s how it looks to the other side, too.

Let’s try to bring this war down from virtual spheres to the solid ground of reality. There can be no reasonable policy, nor even rational discussion, if we do not escape from the realm of horrors and nightmares.

After the Hamas victory in the Palestinian elections, Gush Shalom said that we must speak with them. Here are some of the questions that were showered on me from all sides:

-  Do you like Hamas?

Not at all. I have very strong secular convictions. I oppose any ideology that mixes politics with religion - whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian, in Israel, the Arab world or America.

That does not prevent me from speaking with Hamas people, as I have spoken with other people with whom I don’t agree. It has not prevented me from being a guest at their homes, to exchange views with them and to try to understand them. Some of them I liked, some I did not.

-  It is said that Hamas was created by Israel. Is that true?

Israel did not ‘create’ Hamas, but it certainly helped it along in its initial stages.

During the first 20 years of the occupation, the Israeli leadership saw the PLO as its chief enemy. That’s why it favored Palestinian organizations that, it was thought, could undermine the PLO. One example of this was Ariel Sharon’s ludicrous attempt to set up Arab “village leagues” that would act as agents of the occupation.

The Israeli intelligence community, which in the last 60 years has failed almost every time in forecasting events in the Arab world, also failed this time. They believed that the emergence of an Islamic organization would weaken the secular PLO. While the military administration of the occupied territories was throwing into prison any Palestinian who engaged in political activity - even for peace - it did not touch the religious activists. The mosque was the only place where Palestinians could get together and plan political action.

This policy was, of course, based on a complete misunderstanding of Islam and Palestinian reality.

Hamas was officially founded immediately after the outbreak of the first intifada at the end of 1987. The Israeli Security Service (known as Shabak or Shin Bet) handled it with kid gloves. Only a year later did it arrest the founder, Sheik Ahmad Yassin.

It is ironic that the Israeli leadership is now supporting the PLO in the hope of undermining Hamas. There is no better evidence for the stupidity of our “experts” as far as Arab matters are concerned, stemming from both arrogance and contempt. Hamas is far more dangerous to Israel than the PLO ever was.

-  Did the Hamas election victory show that Islam was on the rise among the Palestinian people?

Not necessarily. The Palestinian people did not become more religious overnight.

True, there is a slow process of Islamization throughout the region, from Turkey to Yemen and from Morocco to Iraq. It is the reaction of the young Arab generation to the failure of secular nationalism to solve their national and social problems. But this did not cause the earthquake in Palestinian society.

-  If so, why did Hamas win?

There were several reasons. The main one was the growing conviction of the Palestinians that they would never get anything from the Israelis by non-violent means. After the murder of Yassir Arafat, many Palestinians believed that if they elected Mahmoud Abbas as the new president, he would get from Israel and the US the things they would not give Arafat. They found out that the opposite was happening: No real negotiations, while the settlements were getting larger every day.

They told themselves:  if peaceful means don’t work, there is no alternative to violent means. And if there be war, there are no braver warriors than Hamas.

Also: the corruption in the higher Fatah echelons had reached such dimensions, that the majority of Palestinians were disgusted. As long as Arafat was alive, the corruption was somehow tolerated, because everybody knew that Arafat himself was honest, and his towering importance for the national struggle overrode the shortcomings of his administration. After Arafat, tolerating the corruption became impossible. Hamas, on the other hand, was considered clean, and its leaders incorrupt. The social and educational Hamas institutions, mainly financed by Saudi Arabia, were widely respected.

The splits within Fatah also helped the Hamas candidates.

Hamas, of course, had not taken part in previous elections, but it was generally assumed - even by Hamas people themselves - that they represented only about 15-25 percent of the electorate.

-   Can one reasonably expect the Palestinians to overthrow Hamas themselves?

As long as the occupation goes on, there is no chance of that. An Israeli general said this week that if the Israeli army stopped operating in the West Bank, Hamas would replace Abbas there too.

The administration of Mahmoud Abbas stands on feet of clay - American and Israeli feet. If the Palestinians finally lose what confidence they still have in Abbas, his power would crumble.

- But how can one reach a settlement with an organization that declares that it will never recognize Israel and whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state?

All this matter of ‘recognition’ is nonsense, a pretext for avoiding a dialogue. We do not need ‘recognition’ from anybody. When the United States started a dialogue with Vietnam, it did not demand to be recognized as an Anglo-Saxon, Christian and capitalist state.

If A signs an agreement with B, it means that A recognizes B. All the rest is hogwash.

And in the same matter: The fuss over the Hamas charter is reminiscent of the ruckus about the PLO charter, in its time. That was a quite unimportant document, which was used by our representatives for years as an excuse to refuse to talk with the PLO. Heaven and earth were moved to compel the PLO to annul it. Who remembers that today? The acts of today and tomorrow are important, the papers of yesterday are not.

-  What should we speak with Hamas about?

First of all, about a cease-fire. When a wound is bleeding, the blood loss must be stemmed before the wound itself can be treated.

Hamas has many times proposed a cease-fire, Tahidiyeh (’Quiet’) in Arabic. This would mean a stop to all hostilities: Qassams and Grad rockets and mortar shells from Hamas and the other organizations, ‘targeted liquidations’, military incursions and starvation from Israel.

The negotiations should be conducted by the Egyptians, particularly since they would have to open the border between the Gaza Strip and Sinai. Gaza must get back its freedom of communication with the world by land, sea and air,

If Hamas demands the extension of the cease-fire to the West Bank, too, this should also be discussed. That would necessitate a Hamas-Fatah-Israel trialogue.

-  Won’t Hamas exploit the cease-fire to arm itself?

Certainly. And so will Israel. Perhaps we shall succeed, at long last, in finding a defense against short-range rockets.

-  If the cease-fire holds, what will be the next step?

An armistice, or Hudnah in Arabic.

Hamas would have a problem in signing a formal agreement with Israel, because Palestine is a Waqf - a religious endowment. (That arose, at the time, for political reasons. When Caliph Omar conquered Palestine, he was afraid that his generals would divide the country among themselves, as they had already done in Syria. So he declared it to be the property of Allah. This resembles the attitude of our own religious people, who maintain that it is a sin to give away any part of the country, because God has expressly promised it to us.)

Hudnah is an alternative to peace. It is a concept deeply embedded in the Islamic tradition. The prophet Muhammad himself agreed a Hudnah with the rulers of Mecca, with whom he was at war after his flight from Mecca to Medina. (By the way, before the Hudnah expired, the inhabitants of Mecca adopted Islam and the prophet entered the town peacefully.) Since it has a religious sanction, its violation by Muslim believers is impossible.

A Hudnah can last for dozens of years and be extended without limit. A long Hudnah is in practice peace, if the relations between the two parties create a reality of peace.

- So a formal peace is impossible?

There is a solution for this, too. Hamas has declared in the past that it does not object to Abbas conducting peace negotiations, on condition that the agreement reached is put to a plebiscite. If the Palestinian people confirm it, Hamas declared that it will accept the people’s decision.

- Why would Hamas accept it?

Like every Palestinian political force, Hamas aspires to power in the Palestinian state that will be set up along the 1967 borders. For that it needs to enjoy the confidence of the majority. There is no doubt whatsoever that the vast majority of the Palestinian people want a state of their own and peace. Hamas knows this well. It will do nothing that would push the majority of the people away.

- And what is the place of Abbas in all this?

He should be pressured to come to an agreement with Hamas, along the lines of the earlier agreement concluded in Mecca. We believe that Israel has a clear interest in negotiating with a Palestinian government that includes the two big movements, so that the agreement reached would be accepted by almost all sections of the Palestinian people.

-  Is time working for us?

For many years, Gush Shalom was telling the Israeli public: let’s make peace with the secular leadership of Yasser Arafat, because otherwise the national conflict will turn into a religious conflict. Unfortunately, this prophecy, too, has come true…

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.

According to CNN, “Arab media was reporting early Saturday local time that Egypt’s government has invited the leaders of Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah group to Egypt to discuss the situation. ‘I and all of my brothers in the Hamas leadership welcome participating in this meeting and will seek to make the dialogue a success’, Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal told CNN in a telephone interview from Damascus early Saturday. Meshaal said, however, that he has received no official invitation from Egypt and was responding to the reports of the planned invitation. He said he does not know how Fatah will respond. Hamas and Fatah have been involved in a power struggle over creating a unity government that has resulted in violence in Gaza and the West Bank … Hamas leaders have denied participating in bringing down the wall, but voiced support for the action. Palestinians in Gaza have faced difficulty obtaining supplies since Israel sealed its border with Gaza one week ago in an effort to quell rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel. That was on top of shortages of such items as cigarettes, cement, chocolate and soda since Israel began restricting the flow of non-humanitarian goods into Gaza after Hamas seized control of the territory in June”. [n.b., There was also a layer of earlier financial and import restrictions imposed by Israel since Hamas won a majority of seats in elections for the legislative council and then formed a PA government in the spring of 2006]

CNN also reported that “It was not immediately clear whether Egypt intends to seal the border or merely regulate the flow“.

This CNN report is here.

The AP has just updated its story on the situation at the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, which Egypt did not close today, despite a deadline passing: “Militants in black clothing, some of them masked, stood atop a bulldozer as it knocked down concrete slabs under the watchful eyes of Hamas security officials, who turned a blind eye and were later seen patrolling on the Egyptian side of the border.
Thousands of Palestinians flooded into Egypt, pushing through several openings as Egyptian troops retreated to their bases on the other side of the border. Palestinians positioned cranes next to the border and lifted crates of supplies into Gaza, including camels and cows … Earlier Friday, Hamas gunmen fanned out along the Gaza side of the border, attempting to create order. For the first time since the border wall was torn down in a series of blasts on Wednesday, Gaza’s Hamas rulers deployed their most elite forces to contain the rowdy crowd. Hamas is clearly seeking to flex its muscles ahead of a potential new border agreement with Egypt that the militants hope will help end a 2-year-old blockade imposed by Israel and the West. The group called for a three-way meeting among Hamas, Egypt and the Fatah movement of President Mahmoud Abbas to try to come up with a new border arrangement for Gaza. ‘If the leadership in Ramallah refuses this call, we will not stand idle until the siege overruns life in Gaza’, Hamas said in a statement … Egyptian forces shot in the air, fired water cannons and — in a particularly forceful display — deployed dogs to hinder the flow of Gazans into Egypt. Dogs are considered impure by observant Muslims. As bulldozers ripped down the wall and Gazans jumped over, soldiers ran with their dogs to chase the infiltrators. Hamas militants then opened fire on the dogs, killing three of them. An Egyptian soldier was slightly wounded in the leg, likely from gunshots fired by Hamas militants on the Gazan side, an Egyptian officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not allowed to talk to the media. Five policemen were also injured by stones hurled by Gazans. Egyptian ambulances rushed into a patch of land separating Egypt from Gaza to pick up the injured, with Hamas militants clearing the area of people so they could arrive and do their job. Egypt has rejected any suggestion of assuming responsibility for the crowded, impoverished territory — a hot issue in light of comments this week by Israeli officials who said the border breach could relieve the Jewish state of its burdens in Gaza. Israel withdrew its troops and settlers from the territory in 2005, but it still controls access into and out of Gaza, in addition to its airspace and harbors. Israel also provides the fuel needed to run Gaza’s only power plant — the withholding of which is currently causing severe power outages. In an interview published Friday, President Hosni Mubarak decried the situation in Gaza as ‘unacceptable’ and called on Israel to ‘lift its siege’ and ’solve the problem’. ‘They should get things back to normal according to previous agreements and understandings’, Mubarak told the weekly Al-Osboa. He also invited rival Palestinian factions to Cairo for talks, but did not mention a date. Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said Palestinians had to keep the barrier open ‘until the crossings are reopened’. ‘The gaps shouldn’t be closed because they provide urgent assistance to the Palestinians’, he said. Both Egypt and Israel restricted the movement of people and goods in and out of Gaza after Hamas won parliament elections in 2006, and further tightened the closure after Hamas seized control of the area by force last June”. This AP report is posted here.

Now, this is a very dangerous moment. The killing and fighting has escalated to the brink of a major conflict — one that all sides have said they want to avoid. But, the momentum is there.

And, tonight, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas — who last spring said that Hamas in Gaza were terrorist murderers — called the senior Hamas leader in Gaza, Mahmoud Zahar, to offer his condolences on the death of his son. It was the second of Zahar’s sons to be killed by the Israeli military.

Reuters reported this evening that “Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called a leader of rival Hamas on Wednesday to commiserate on the killing of his son by Israeli forces, Hamas said, the first such contact since a Palestinian factional schism last year. Hamas routed Abbas’s secular Fatah to take over the Gaza Strip in June, prompting the Palestinian president to shun the Islamist group and step up Western-sponsored peace efforts with Israel. Hamas refuses to give up fighting the Jewish state. Hamas said Abbas suspended his boycott by phoning Mahmoud al-Zahar, a senior Hamas official whose son, a gunman, was among 18 Palestinians killed in Israeli attacks on Gaza on Tuesday. ‘In the first call since June, President Mahmoud telephoned Dr. Mahmoud al-Zahar … and paid his condolences at the killing of Zahar’s son, said Taher al-Nono, spokesman for the Hamas administration in Gaza. ‘The telephone conversation was very friendly and the two leaders spoke at length about the current political situation and they both stressed the unity of the Palestinian people regardless of the differences’ … Israeli officials have said rapprochement between Abbas and Hamas could scupper peace talks”. The Reuters report of the Abbas condolence call to Zahar is published here.

Going into Gaza this morning, we passed through the big new — and mostly empty, due to the closure — Erez Terminal (style = airport terminal, but with more overhead monitoring and a wierd body x-ray machine you must pass through, feet spread apart, hands held high up in the air, for your return to Israel). After getting through the passport control (Do you have another passport? Why didn’t you bring it with you? Why did you choose to enter Israel with this passport?  Why did you choose to enter Israel with this passport?  Why did you leave your other passport in Jerusalem? Why did you leave your other passport in Jerusalem? Why did you leave your other passport in Jerusalem???? — until a supervisor intervened), Israelis with sleek automatic rifles, held pointed down close to the body along their sides, but their fingers on the trigger ran towards us and told us in Hebrew (luckily I was with some Israeli Arabs who translated) to move back, move back, there are incoming rockets and there is a safe area in the back.

At the end of the day, a journalist and NGO researcher who joined the touring NGO group of physicians I was with, received an SMS message on his mobile saying that two Palestinians had been killed — a man and a woman — by an Israeli attack in retaliation for the morning’s Qassam attack.

There is a new Palestinian coordination point for passport control — the first in six months, since Hamas routed Fatah security in mid-June. It is a little field office, with welders working on iron bars that held up plastic ribbed roofing, and probably future crowd control barriers. The man inside said that he works with the Palestinian Authority Ministry of Civil Affairs in Ramallah (!!!!). At the end of the day, as Erez was almost closed, we saw him walking back to the Palestinian posts (about a half-kilometer away) from the Israeli border terminal — just part of the job, the end of the day report.

Meantime, the IDF spokesperson reported this evening, in an email advisory sent to journalists, that “The [Israeli] Commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, Brigadier General Noam Tivon, and the [Israeli] Head of the Civil Administration, Brigadier General Yoav Mordechai, met today with a delegation of the heads of the Palestinian security apparatus led by Hasin A-Sheh, the Minister for Civil Affairs in the Palestinian Authority. The meeting took place in a positive atmosphere as the two sides discussed security issues and the coordination of security and civil affairs. Coordination meetings, such as these, take place occasionally; however, this was the first time in seven years that the meeting was held in Ramallah”.

Of course, this coordination meeting just happened a day before U.S. President George W. Bush visits the West Bank — so they had something to talk about besides the new atmosphere of cooperation at the very farthest Israeli edge of Erez Checkpoint. I’ll bet the Israelis are making damn sure that Bush won’t be attacked or assassinated while here …

Meanwhile, while there is one big step forward, with the new signs of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation (Hamas said they could live with Fatah/PA people manning the checkpoints in Gaza, in order to make them functional so people can get in and out), there are two steps backwards: Israel appears to be giving bird flu vaccinations and other medicines only to the West Bank, and not to Gaza — as if bird flu would magically stop at the border, if anyone in Gaza got infected. In another email message sent around to the press, the IDF spokesman reported that “In light of the discovery of the ‘Avian Influenza’ (bird flu) in Israel , the Civil Administration is preparing to provide assistance to aid in the early discovery of the virus in order to prevent the disease’s spread in Judea and Samaria [this means West Bank] region. The Civil Administration will coordinate the delivery of samples from birds in the Judea and Samaria [West Bank] region for examination in Israeli laboratories, via the Palestinian Authority (PA). In addition, the Civil Administration continuously works to prevent the spread of various diseases. For example, last Thursday, January 3rd, 2008, the Civil Administration coordinated the passage of over 50,000 doses of vaccine against foot and mouth disease to the PA”.