Palestine-Mandate

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”.