A very appropriate place for Arafat to be buried

KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip (AFP) - Unkempt, ankle deep in rubbish and the air thick with flies from the stinking market next door, the Arafat family plot could not be a more inauspicious burial place for the icon of Palestinian nationhood.

As Yasser Arafat (news - web sites) fights for life in a Paris hospital, Israel has made clear that it will not accede to the veteran Palestinian leader's wishes to be buried in Jerusalem and instead wants his final resting place to be in Gaza where his father and sister are already entombed.

Less than 100 square metres (yards) with two dozen tombs already in pride of place, a minimum of mourners would be able to crowd the site, stumbling over the the roughshod ground to pay their last respects.

Hidden behind a cement wall and accessible through a solitary white, metal door encrusted with mud, nothing could be less imposing or more humiliating for a man who is now unlikely to achieve his dream of a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.

Bin liners, a child's T-shirt and a traditional red keffiyeh (headdress of the type favoured by Arafat) are ground into the dust. Empty crisp bags, milk cartons, plastic bottles and broken glass are strewn across the burnt grass.

Overgrown scarlet and white bougainvillia do nothing to sweeten the nauseating stench of rotting fruit and meat, laced with dung from half-dead donkeys tied up in the adjacent market.

Laundry hanging from a run-down high-rise flat flaps over the grave of Arafat's sister, Yussra al-Qidwa, who was laid to rest in August last year, alongside their father.

But locals used to the filth and stench of the depressed town barely even notice, shrugging their shoulders when asked if they thought it a befitting final resting place for the hero of their struggle for freedom.

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Watermelons and Bombs (Cornell Sun)

by Benjamin Birnbaum
Sun Staff Writer
HAIFA, Israel -- Riding an Israeli bus can be a harrowing experience. You get on, look for the seat nearest the back, and sit down. With each stop, you nervously inspect the oncoming passengers. You tell yourself that the odds of your being blown up are so extremely slim that your worry is unwarranted, yet are still haunted by images of charred-out buses from the nightly news. In short, you feel as if you are playing Russian roulette.

Knowing how apoplectic I would get taking Israeli buses, I was curious to hear the testimony of an Israeli bus driver and learn about life in Israel's most dangerous profession. And on the three-hour nighttime bus ride from Jerusalem to Haifa, I got my chance.

The driver had turned out the lights, scrapping my reading plans, so I made my way down the aisle to speak with him.

I had found the right man.

'Last January,' he began, 'an Arab man boarded my bus carrying a watermelon in a paper bag -- a popular bomb-smuggling tactic. I yelled 'TERRORIST,' and a soldier on board rushed over and subdued him until the police came. Amazingly, the bomb didn't detonate.'

The bus driver, Tamir Davidovich, lives with his family in the Haifa suburb of Kiryat Shmuel. On the night I spoke with him his wife was having a C-section with their third daughter.

Delving further into his episode, Davidovich would interrupt himself to yell out the names of the Palestinian cities we were passing -- 'Tulkarem! ... Qalqilya!' -- visible to our right beyond the fence being built to keep out suicide bombers. We were driving up Israel's 'thin waist,' seven miles at the narrowest point between its Mediterranean coast and the 'Green Line,' Israel's unofficial border with the West Bank. During the day, you can see each from opposite windows. Asked whether he worries about himself, Tamir answered: 'I can't control the future. And if I constantly worry, I'll drive myself crazy. So, I don't worry.'

'But, you ask, how was I so sure he was a terrorist?' said Tamir, still basking in his heroic moment. 'Watermelons aren't in season in January!'

Davidovich brushed off the incident and went to work the next day. Reading The Onion's mock news item -- 'Israeli Bus Driver Demands Raise' -- I thought of him.

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Shin Bet: Palestinians increasing use of children in terror

According to a Shin Bet report obtained by The Jerusalem Post, the use of children in attacks is now common among all the Palestinian terror organizations.

Since the outbreak of violence in September 2000, the number of Palestinian minors involved in terror has escalated. Up until Bintawi's arrest on Thursday, 126 minors were involved in planned and executed terror acts since the beginning of 2004, with a total of 309 in the past four years.

Children as young as 11 years old are easily persuaded to join the conflict with assurances that they will gain respect in the next life. Terror organizations then distance the young recruits from their families and schools and subject them to religious and nationalistic indoctrination, the report says.

Besides being influenced by programs broadcast on Palestinian Authority television encouraging them to support jihad, children are taught in schools and summer camps, under the banner of Islam, to back resistance acts against Israel and identify with martyrs.

Parents also permit their children to participate in mass rallies in the West Bank and Gaza organized by various terror organizations. Children are often filmed carrying mock weapons or wearing explosive belts with bandannas tied around their heads, as if dressing up as martyrs.
In June 2002, security forces in Hebron discovered a photo of a baby wearing a mock explosives belt. Other children mentioned in the Shin Bet report include a 13-year-old boy from Tulkarm who, after his arrest, admitted that he had been recruited by the Islamic Jihad to carry out a suicide attack in Israel and a 15-year-old girl from Bethlehem with similar plans. The girl told security officials that her uncle, a senior Fatah Tanzim official in the city, had helped her.

In June 2003, Sa'ad Oudeh, 17, blew himself up at the French Hill intersection in Jerusalem, killing seven Israelis.

The Shin Bet report also revealed that terror organizations hide bombs inside children's toys and satchels in order to evade detection.

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Room at the tomb: Jews return as residents to matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem

Room at the tomb: Jews return as residents to matriarch Rachel in Bethlehem
By israelinsider staff October 25, 2004

For the first time in hundreds of years, Jews are taking up permanent residence in Bethlehem. Two families, including parents and children, arrived Sunday at the new Rachel's Tomb residential complex. The families are living in newly built apartments on property purchased, over the course of the last several years, from Arab owners.

Israel Defense Forces officers on Monday told the families and the yeshiva students who are staying there that the army was waiting for directives from the political echelon regarding whether they could continue to remain at the site.

Right-wing activists and people involved with the yeshiva were preparing to ultimately bring 10 families to live there and transform it into a settlement near the holy site, on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem, to provide a basis for a permanent Jewish presence in that region.

Tens of thousands of people are expected to arrive Monday night and Tuesday for special prayers in memory of Mother Rachel on the traditional anniversary of her death.. Groups and individual worshipers from the length and breadth of the religious spectrum are expected to visit the site to mark the date, as they have in previous years.

The project is backed by the Rachel's Children Reclamation Foundation, Uvneh Yerushalayim; and Yeshivat Beit Orot.

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Hizbullah flies first drone in Israeli airspace

Hizbullah sent its first reconnaissance drone into Israeli territory Sunday, flying over a northern corner of Israeli before crashing into the sea.

The flight by the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militant group is believed to be the first hostile aerial incursion from Lebanon into Israel since Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command members flew over in a hang glider in 1987 and killed six soldiers before being shot dead.

Hizbullah said in a statement that its military wing, the Islamic Resistance, sent its first-ever drone over 'occupied northern Palestine, flying over several Zionist settlements, reaching the coastal settlement of Nahariya and returning safely to its base.'

It was unclear if the drone was a homemade, makeshift aircraft or bought from abroad. Hizbullah, which is on the U.S. State Department list of terrorist organizations but considered in Lebanon to be a resistance group, did not describe its capabilities, say how many it had or provide further details.

Hizbullah's al-Manar TV station said the 'Mirsad 1' drone flew over Israel at a low altitude for 20 minutes without providing further details. Mirsad means 'observation post' in Arabic.

Israel's Army claimed the craft was Iranian-made and confirmed it penetrated Israeli airspace early Sunday and flew over western Galilee.

'This incident is part of the terrorist activity carried out by the Hizbullah terrorist organization with the support of Iran and Syria under the auspices of Lebanon, with the aim of targeting Israeli citizens,' the Israeli Army said in a statement.

Later, the Lebanese military said two Israeli drones twice violated Lebanese airspace Sunday afternoon, reaching the coastal town of Damour, south of the capital, Beirut. The Israeli Army refused to comment on the Lebanese statement.
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Analysis: US, Europe preparing to gang up on Israel?

In the wake of US President George W. Bush's reelection, Washington and the European Union are set to mend fences by launching a joint initiative to jumpstart the drive for a Palestinian state in the heartland of biblical Israel.

The effort is being driven by British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who sees American support for the swift implementation of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Arab conflict as the best means to heal rifts created in Europe by the war in Iraq.

Blair wants Bush to make the Middle East 'peace' process the focus of his second term.

Alongside Blair's maneuvering, EU foreign policy czar Javier Solana last week released his own 'action plan' aimed at using Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza retreat to revitalize stalled implementation of the Middle East Road Map.

Sharon has insisted the Gaza pullout is a unilateral move being taken because there is no partner on the Palestinian side, and that the Road Map, while still accepted by Israel, must be temporarily frozen until the Arabs stop murdering Jews.

The EU, meanwhile, is said to be drafting plans to deploy a peacekeeping force to the Gaza Strip following Israel's withdrawal, making future IDF anti-terror incursions next to impossible.

Israel on the chopping block?
The American-led war in Iraq has created deep rifts between Washington and its British ally and the rest of Europe.

Following Bush's reelection last week, Blair made it clear the president's second term must be focused on healing those rifts by making common cause of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

'I have long argued that the need to revitalize the Middle East peace process is the single most pressing political challenge in our world today,' Blair told reporters at 10 Downing Street last Wednesday.

Coming dangerously close to using the so-called 'Israeli occupation' to legitimize Muslim violence, Blair urged relentlessness in both 'our war against terrorism and in resolving the conditions and causes on which the terrorists prey.'

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Israel expects that Arafat will get his plug pulled in a day or two

By Israel Insider staff and partners November 8, 2004

Israeli officials believe that the decision has been made to disconnect life support Tuesday or Wednesday, ynet reported, citing official sources. They are planning for a funeral in Gaza between Thursday and Saturday. Mahmound Abbas and Ahmed Qurei are heading for Paris to escort the corpse. Security officials are preparing for massive disturbance throughout the territories and in Israel's Arab sector.

ynet reports that a reliable Arab website (it didn't say which) reports that Suha Arafat has been told by doctors that her husband is 'already dead' and that there is no longer any point in keeping him alive. Apparently there has been a request by Palestinian officials to keep him hooked up to life support machines for another day or two to allow preparations to take place.

Debkafile reports that the French government is demanding Arafat's disconnection and removal forthwith. France has set the timetable as a death announcement by Tuesday evening, a memorial ceremony in Paris on Wednesday followed by departure for the Mideast -- Cairo or Amman. In the former case the burial is likely to be in Gaza, in the latter in Jericho.

Debka reports that Arafat's wife Suha will demand that Abbas and Qurei sign documents drafted by her French lawyers guaranteeing her a multimillion dollar inheritance and pension as the price for her switching off life support systems. Apparently Suha has not been successful in extracting from her brain-dead husband the access information for various bank accounts he controls.

Debka describes the behind the scenes bickering over the pretence of Arafat's allegedly reversible condition. 'Suhah Arafat sacked the PLO ambassador Leila Shahid, the Palestinian spokesperson who issued almost daily bulletins after Arafat arrived in Paris.'

At that point, the French apparently decided that enough was enough, Debka reported: 'What happened next was that Christian Estripeau, spokesman of the French military health services, informed Mrs. Arafat that he would issue no more bulletins on Arafat?s condition; neither would Percy hospital. She was given to understand that the hospital had kept her husband artificially alive as long as it intended to. The conversation followed a decision by a top-level conference of French officials, attended also by the president, to disengage from the pretence that Arafat was still alive. They realized it was no longer tenable without compromising the military hospital?s ethical position and medical credibility.' "

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Islamic Children's website shows decapitated head of female suicide bomber

This is the head of the suicide bomber who blew up two Israeli policemen in Jerusalem (real heroes who stopped a much worse attack), who was the hostess of a children's TV show. -EoZ

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HRW: Child suicide attacks 'must stop'

An international human rights group has called on Palestinian militants to stop using children in suicide bombings and military attacks.

Human Rights Watch made the call after a 16-year-old bomber blew himself up in a Tel Aviv marketplace on Monday, killing three Israeli civilians.

The New York-based group claimed at least 10 bombers aged under 18 have attacked Israel in the past four years.

The group behind Monday's attack has said it does not recruit children.

'Any attack on civilians is prohibited by international law, but using children for suicide attacks is particularly egregious,' said Jo Becker, advocacy director for children's rights at Human Rights Watch.

'Palestinian armed groups must clearly and publicly condemn all use of children under the age of 18 for military activities, and make sure these policies are carried out.'

A senior member of the political wing of the group behind the Tel Aviv attack, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, admitted to the BBC the group had made a mistake by recruiting 16-year-old Amer al-Fahr.

The organisation was looking at improving checks on applicants' ages, he added. (How any news organization, even the BBC, can write this sentence with a straight face is beyond me. - EoZ)

The other main Palestinian armed groups have also publicly disavowed the use of children in suicide attacks.

Yet the Human Rights Watch report claimed that the three most active militant groups - Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade - have all despatched under-age bombers during the four-year-old conflict with Israel.

The al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade has been accused of sending four child bombers into Israel.

Three attacks by 17-year-olds were linked to Islamic Jihad, Human Rights Watch said.

Hamas and the PFLP have been linked to two attacks each, the group added.

Some senior militant figures have said they consider children of 16 as adults, the organisation said.

TEENAGE SUICIDE BOMBERS
Jan 2002: Safwat Rahman, 17
Mar 2002: Ayat al-Akhras, 17
May 2002: Issa Badir, 17
Jun 2002: Hamza Samudi, 17
Mar 2003: Sabih al-Saoud, 16
Aug 2003: Islam Qteishat, 17
Aug 2003: Khamais Gerwan, 17
January 2004: Iyad al-Masri, 17
Source: Human Rights Watch

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Arab News Op-Ed on Bush

Taheri is a good writer and I am pleasantly surprised that the Saudi Arab News published this. - EoZ
W2: But Who Is He?
Amir Taheri, Arab News

JEDDAH, 4 November 2004 — With President George W. Bush re-elected for a second term, the Middle East and the Muslim world beyond would do well to take a second look at the man who would lead the American “superpower” for four more years.

Who is George W. Bush? Is he a bumbling, low IQ rich kid, playing dummy for sinister ventriloquists? Or is he the populist demagogue in blue shirtsleeves out to sell the gullible Americans a bill of good?

If he is any of those things one must wonder how he has succeeded in persuading more than 50 million Americans to vote for him for a second time.

Is it not possible that he may be a traditional conviction politician of the kind that became endangered species after the cultural revolutions of the 1960s?

The first thing that we need to note is that Bush returns in a stronger position. He becomes the first candidate since 1988 to win the US presidency with a majority of the popular vote. He is also the fourth American president in more than half a century to win a second term. Also, he is the first US president since 1901 to enter a second term with his party in control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He has won more votes than any president in all American history in an election that also saw the largest voters’ turnout ever in the US. This point merits attention because some people outside the US had assumed that Bush, having “stolen” the 2000 election, did not represent the American people.

Such assumptions enabled many people to present themselves as “anti-Bush” rather than plain anti-American. Now, however, it would not be easy to disguise anti-Americanism as anti-Bushism.

The second point to understand about Bush is that he is the first US president for half a century to be prepared to use American power, including military force, in a decisive way and, when necessary, regardless of what the global glitterati and the “international community” might think. The fact that he is able to do so is due to the 9/11 events that changed America forever.

Bush’s victory underlines another often overlooked fact.

The United States, far from being the hedonistic liberal society represented by Hollywood elite, is, in fact, a conservative traditional society. This enables Bush to assume a missionary posture that would be unthinkable in other democracies, especially in Europe.

Unlike European, and some American, politicians, who deal in shades of gray, Bush sees the world in black and white terms. When Bush says: You are either with us or against us, he really means it. He perceives of good and evil as physical realities, and not metaphysical abstractions, affecting the lives of both individuals and nations. French President Chirac likes to call Bush “a cowboy” while Japanese Premier Koizumi describes him as “Gary Cooper at High Noon”.

According to an old Arab saying a man is best known through his enemies rather than his friends. The logic of this is that a bad man might choose good friends. Well, here are some of Bush’s enemies: Mulla Omar, Osama Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and, oh yes, the speculator George Soros.

Some world leaders have tried to understand George W. Bush based on what they know of his father’s tenure as president. The older Bush, however, was a classical style balance of power player raised on a fare of Cold War politics. To him the highest call of politics was to defend and perpetuate the status quo. The younger Bush, on the other hand, is a change-maker, as evidenced in his domestic and foreign policies.

Love him or hate him, W will be around for four more years. And, unlike in his first term in which he was dogged by memories of the 2000 dispute in Florida and cast by his foes as a usurper, he is now the undoubted leader of his people.

In the past four years some countries and leaders adopted a waiting-it-out policy in the hope that Dubya will not get a second term. That policy is no longer a realistic option.

The Palestinians cannot wait four more years in the hope that George W. Bush’s successor will, once again, unroll the red carpet for Yasser Arafat to the White House. If they want to talk to Washington they have to come up with a new leadership.

The mullas cannot afford to wait four more years in the hope that Bush’s successor would swallow a nuclear-armed regime in Iran. Syria cannot ignore the latest Security Council resolution on Lebanon for four more years. Iraq’s enemies cannot hope to fight for four more years to prevent stabilization and demcoratization.

While the world must accommodate and work with W2, it is also important that George W. Bush, too, should review its policies and, above all, style, in the second term. Dubya could repeat Ronald Reagan’s experience who, despised by many in his first term, ended up by winning virtually everyone’s admiration in his final four years at the White House.

W2 would need to modify the needlessly abrasive style of sections of his administration. It needs to ruffle fewer fathers when there is no need to do so. Having shown that he is capable of waging war in military terms he now needs to also show that he can make more effective use of diplomacy, both official and public, and the magnetic pull of American culture and values. More urgently, Bush needs to explain the United States’ involvement in Iraq more convincingly to his own people. Many enemies of Iraq and the US have built their strategy on the hope that rising doubts about the necessity, not to say legitimacy, of the war might sap public support for the president’s ambitious dreams for a new Middle East.

The American people have decided to give George W. Bush the rare privilege of a second term. There is no reason why the rest of the world should not also do so.

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More Palestinians Watching TV

Don't they look like they live in squalor, poor and desperate circumstances forcing them to have to blow themselves up? - EoZ
Wed Nov 3, 4:05 PM ET
Palestinian men look at US presidential candidates Republican George W. Bush (L) and Democrat John Kerry (news - web sites) on TV in the West Bank city of Hebron.(AFP/Hazem Bader)

Now, these guys are in a Lebanese refugee camp, where they haven't fought Israelis for years. But they have to keep their guns with them at all times, just in case! -EoZ
Thu Oct 28, 8:40 PM ET
Palestinian fighters watch news on Arafat at their post in the Ain el-Helweh Refugee camp in southern Lebanon.(AFP/Mahmoud Zayat)

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Blair wants Bush to pressure Israel

British Prime Minister Tony Blair devoted much of a brief speech congratulating President George W. Bush on his reelection Wednesday night to a call for a new coordinated effort to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Describing the need for such a solution as the 'single most pressing political challenge in our world today,' Blair urged the president to seek peace 'between Israel and Palestine' with the 'same energy' that he has pursued his agenda in Iraq. Blair placed this quest in the context of 'resolving the conditions and causes on which the terrorists prey.'

Blair's dramatic emphasis on the issue, and his pledge to work with Bush to advance it, underlined the British prime minister's desire to be seen as seeking a dramatic Israeli-Palestinian breakthrough in order to pacify the vast contingent of critics, inside and outside his own Labor party, of his firm alliance with Bush over the Iraq war.

And as we all know, devoting energy to I/P means pressuring Israel to keep giving Palestinians whatever they are asking for. -EoZ

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Palestinians kicking back, watching the tube

See? They're just like us - only with assault rifles! - EoZ

Wed Nov 3,10:31 AM ET
Palestinian gunmen watch a television news report on the US presidential elections at the Ain el-Helweh refugee camp in southern Lebanon.(AFP/Mahmoud Zayat)

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Does Arafat have AIDS?

(Paris) As French doctors continue to run tests on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat some medical authorities not connected directly to his case are suggesting that he may have HIV/AIDS.

Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath Monday said that all types of cancer had been ruled out.

Arafat has been visibly ill for more than two weeks. Last Wednesday he collapsed and briefly lost consciousness. Initial blood tests performed in the West Bank revealed a low blood platelet count. The Palestinian leader was airlifted to France where he is undergoing more tests.

But, with leukemia and other forms of cancer ruled out, the list of possible diseases is narrowing.

A low blood platelet count is a sign of a weakened immune system. In addition to cancer, the low count could be attributed to bleeding ulcers, colitis, liver disease, lupus, or HIV. It is believed that ulcers and colitis have already been ruled out.

Arafat has lost a considerable amount of body weight. Hopital d'Instruction des Armees de Percy, southwest of Paris, also has some of France's best HIV/AIDS doctors.

For several years there have been suggestions that Arafat was bisexual.
Ion Pacepa, who was deputy chief of Romanian foreign intelligence under the Ceaucescu regime and who defected to the West in 1978, says in his memoirs that the Romania government bugged Arafat and had recordings of the Arab leader in orgies with his body guards.

If the suggestions that Arafat has AIDS are true, it is doubtful it would be made public.

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Israel to offer $10 million for Ron Arad info

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon confirmed on Sunday morning that the Israeli government has decided to allow the offer a US$10 million reward for significant information on the fate of air force navigator, Ron Arad, who was shot down over Lebanon 18 years ago, Channel 2 TV reported Saturday.

The Israeli government agreed to offer the reward owing to the urgings of a special committee devoted to locating the missing navigator.

The committee, which was established two years ago, has been pressing the matter since its conception, but security forces objected until now, saying that such an initiative would interfere with other efforts to obtain information regarding the fate of Arad, Israel Radio reported.

According to Army Radio, the reward money would be funded in part by the government and in part by private contributions.

The station said the offer would be published worldwide on December 1.

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