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RAMALLAH REFUSES TO DANCE TO HAMAS’ CUE

Ramallah refuses to dance to Hamas’ cue
By Avi Issacharoff, Ramallah, West Bank
Ha’aretz
April 28, 2008

Half an hour later than scheduled, the lights were dimmed and the audience quieted down at Ramallah’s packed Kasbah Theatre. City luminaries, humble villagers and Europeans garbed in smart suits sat side-by-side to watch a performance by the Italian dance troupe, Bottega. For an instant, one might have thought that the well-dressed crowd had assembled in Tel Aviv or a European city. But the large number of smokers who filled the mezzanines revealed the event’s actual location.

Khaled Elian, the organizer of the Contemporary Dance Festival, took to the stage. He looked emotional and perturbed. In the past week, a number of articles calling for the festival to be canceled have appeared on television channels and Web sites run by the Islamist group Hamas. One article claimed the event was akin to “dancing on the blood of the martyrs.” Another argued that Islamic law forbids women and men from dancing together. Others argued that organizing a dance festival at a time when battles are raging in the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, was treason on the part of its rival Fatah, which controls the Palestinian Authority areas in the West Bank.

Well aware of the criticism against him, Elian rebuffed his critics. “There are people who say art is forbidden these days,” he emotionally declared from the stage of the packed theater in Ramallah. “To them we respond, so is lying. The people who organized this festival are the same that lead the resistance against the occupation. The festival will continue!” The crowd burst into a round of applause.

A tale of two cities

In the past few weeks, unknown Islamists have blown up a women’s hair salon, an internet cafe, a library belonging to a Christian organization and have even tried to damage the famous restaurant at the Al-Deira Hotel located on Gaza’s beachfront. These attacks on “Western symbols” seem to be gathering pace, though the Hamas government does not support them outright. Meanwhile, the third annual Contemporary Dance Festival in Ramallah started 10 days ago, and the 14 dance groups from Europe, as well as 12 Palestinian dance groups, found themselves in the middle of a political and theological tempest.

The manager of the Italian group last night addressed the audience immediately after Elian. “I would like to say a few things before we begin,” he told the crowd in English, and then greeted them good evening in Arabic. “Ana mabsut bi Ramallah (I am pleased to be in Ramallah)”, he said. His heavy accent raised a few smiles in the audience. “We are proud to be in Palestine and present our show,” he then said, in English. “We are dancers and dancing is our life. It isn’t just entertainment, but our way of supporting Palestine and Palestinians. Tomorrow we are going back home so shukran (thank you).”

The performance began. Six dancers in minimal dress came on stage, including a scantily-clad dancer that the brochure says symbolizes ostro (the north wind). As she kisses the dancer next to her, she breathes life into him. The crowd does not seem either shaken or enthused by the sensuousness displayed. Ana, a 27-year-old woman from Spain, said she was surprised by the act’s risque. “It’s different from what people in Ramallah are used to,” she explained.

Ana is wearing a kaffiyeh, a traditional headdress for Arab men, to show her support for the Palestinians. Meanwhile, the show, which incorporates break-dancing and improvisational moves, hip-hop and touches of classic ballet, continues. One of the youths in the crowd, Amal, explains in fluent Hebrew that she heard about the festival through the media. A short inquiry reveals Amal is from Haifa. “I heard that Hamas rebuked the organizers because of events in Gaza and I came to show support,” she said. “I think it’s important to preserve art for those who oppose the occupation. They have to be educated and enlightened and not entirely focused on military issues. The religious people can pray and do whatever they want except tell us secular people what we can or can’t do.”

Toward the end of the performance, the music becomes more up-tempo. The dancers ask the audience to clap their hands, and the audience responds by clapping loudly. Jamil, a dancer of the debke dance that originated in the Levant area, said after the show that art must not be neglected. “It’s true that we come from a traditional society but we have to look ahead,” he said. “Contemporary dance is a new concept for most of us, or at least for me, but I like it.”

LEBANESE VILLAGES EMPTY AS SHIA MILITIA TRAIN IN IRAN

Hizbullah builds up covert army for a new assault against Israel
Villages empty as Shia militia sends recruits to tough training camps in Bekaa Valley, Syria and Iran, reports Mitchell Prothero in southern Lebanon
By Mitchell Prothero
The Observer (UK)
April 27, 2008

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/27/israelandthepalestinians.lebanon/print

The dead of southern Lebanon watch the living from the sides of buildings and from lampposts, their faces staring out defiantly from posters, heads often superimposed on bodies of generic men in uniform. These are Hizbullah’s martyrs: men killed fighting against Israel before it abandoned the occupation of the south in 2000 or in the numerous clashes since, including the bloody summer war of 2006.

The images are often the only public acknowledgement of the individuals who make up this most secretive of institutions: Hizbullah’s military wing.

But an Observer investigation has discovered that this covert organisation is quietly but steadily replacing its dead and redoubling its recruitment efforts in anticipation of a new, and even more brutal, conflict. Hizbullah has embarked on a major expansion of its fighting capability and is now sending hundreds, if not thousands, of young men into intensive training camps in Lebanon, Syria and Iran to ready itself for war with Israel. ‘It’s not a matter of if,’ says one fighter. ‘It’s a matter of when Sayed Hasan Nasrallah [Hizbullah chief] commands us.’

The group’s policy of refusing to discuss military matters extends to the highest levels. In speeches and rare interviews, Nasrallah refuses to answer even the simplest questions about the military wing, never referring even to the fact that his eldest son, Hadi, was a fighter himself. Life as a Hizbullah fighter is anonymous until death. But meetings with fighters, activists, Lebanese security officials, the UN peacekeepers along the border and residents of south Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut, where the group is most active, offered a glimpse inside the workings of a group rarely open to outsiders. None of the sources within the group can be named - Hizbullah has barred members from speaking with the Western media since the mysterious death of a top commander, Imad Mughniyeh, in a Damascus car bomb.

‘The most important thing is to never talk,’ says one fighter, who agreed to speak about the group without revealing his name or specific duties inside ‘the Islamic Resistance of Lebanon’, as the military wing of Hizbullah is known. ‘From the moment we begin our training, we are told two things: never disobey an order and never talk about the resistance. Hizbullah is not a job, it is not a family. It is a mix of religion, honour, dignity and discipline. It is my life.’

But what is becoming more obvious, even as Hizbullah tries to hide it, is that the group has embarked on an unprecedented build-up of men, equipment and bunker-building in preparation for the war that almost everyone - Lebanese and Israeli - considers inevitable. ‘The villages in the south are empty of men,’ said one international official. ‘They are all gone, training in Bekaa, Syria and Iran.’

A trip by The Observer through villages in the Hizbullah heartland confirmed a conspicuous lack of fighting-age men. Visible were several new martyr posters, but unlike the traditional ones they portrayed anonymous, fresh-faced youngsters without military garb. According to locals, these are boys who have been killed accidentally in the latest wave of training in Iran. In the city of Tyre, too, posters showing young men killed in training exercises are cropping up. One is of Ahmad Hashem, killed while instructing recruits in the use of rocket-propelled grenades.

The initial training and selection of recruits is done in Lebanon, with Iran preferred for training on specialities - use of certain weapons, RPGs and anti-tank missiles - that require firing live rounds. ‘But mostly the training in Iran is in theoretical things: philosophy, religion. The best training for fighting is done here in Lebanon,’ said a fighter. ‘We are so close to Israel here that our training becomes real.’

Israeli official statements suggest the increasingly aggressive recruiting results from the heavy casualties suffered by the group in 2006, a notion dismissed by sources within Hizbullah and even by the US military. While Israel contends that between 500 and 700 Hizbullah fighters were killed, the group itself said that about 80 fighters had died. Hizbullah sources admit that the losses were double that figure, while the US military study decided the death toll was 184.

‘How could they be lying so much?’ asked one resident of the south. ‘People would not tolerate not having a funeral or posters of their son or husband. If it were 700 dead fighters, we would all know. We’d know more people killed, we’d be hearing the complaints from the families. Where can you hide 700 dead bodies in south Lebanon? It’s too small.’

Losses aside, before 2006 most observers also widely overestimated the size of the military group. Some analysts put it as high as 5,000 men with more than 10,000 reservists, including its allied Amal - meaning Hope - militia supporting them.

‘Ridiculous,’ says the Hizbullah member. ‘Before 2006 there were not more than 1,000 professional fighters, guys who manned bunkers and conducted operations full-time. The rest are trained and armed but lead ordinary lives unless called upon.’

This assessment is supported by regional intelligence services and Lebanese Shias, but now signs of the militia’s dramatic expansion are alarming Hizbullah’s domestic and international enemies.

The US military study described Hizbullah’s military wing as ‘completely decentralised’. Its commanders famously exercised this independence when they refused orders by the top command to abandon Bint Jebel in 2006 - then under massive Israeli ground assault. The town did not fall and Hizbullah rank-and-file today laud the refusal of orders as one of the biggest victories in the war. Recruiters closely watch youngsters for this kind of nerve and self-motivation, selecting the most talented boys for advanced training when they reach adulthood.

Hizbullah fighters describe a series of units - built around specialities such as rocket teams, heavy weapons experts, infantry, scouts and or part-time basis. ‘Some units will be sent for training or operations for one, even two, years. Others continue to work or go to school. But even if you work your life is still Hizbullah. They call and that’s it - you go. Maybe you tell your boss or professors you’re going to Qatar or something for family reasons. But you never tell anyone what you’re really doing.’

The decision to expand both the military wing and the supporting militias stems not from the losses during the 2006 war but from Hizbullah’s success as a conventional military force in that conflict, says a Lebanese army commander who has worked with the group, his view being confirmed by the US military study. ‘They were guerrillas during the occupation but shocked Israel in the war by standing and fighting from fixed positions. Even badly outnumbered, they held territory with minimal losses even under assault from tank units,’ he says. ‘Now they want to expand to make sure they can stop the next invasion before the tanks reach the flat plains of the Bekaa, where Israel’s armoured units will have the advantage.’

Another crisis driving the build-up is Lebanon’s political conflict, which pits Hizbullah and its allies against a coalition of Sunni, Druze and Christians supporting the Western-backed government. Street fights between Sunnis and Shias are becoming commonplace but Hizbullah cannot afford to take its men away from the bunkers in the south to fight on the streets of Beirut, say members of Amal and the Lebanese army.

‘They know they can’t send their best fighters, or the Israelis could attack. Israel will always be their main focus. But they have access to many that are good enough to fight with rocks, sticks and maybe some guns. They’re training those guys to fight the Sunnis in Beirut,’ says the army officer.

One Hizbullah fighter says he hopes that the situation doesn’t deteriorate into them taking up arms against other Lebanese groups, but admits it is possible. ‘God willing, I will never fight a Lebanese, but I will if ordered.’

“GOOD FENCES MAKE GOOD NEIGHBORS, ESPECIALLY WHEN YOUR NEIGHBORS ARE YOUR ENEMIES”

Egypt Builds a Wall. And changes its tune on Israel’s barrier.
By David Schenker
The Weekly Standard
April 28, 2008

www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/015/010aplyi.asp?pg=1

Much ado has been made of the Israeli security fence isolating the West Bank. When it is completed in 2010, the barrier – which runs roughly along the 1967 border between Israel and Palestinian territory – will span nearly 500 miles. Israelis say the purpose of the structure is to curtail terrorist attacks against the Jewish state. There’s little reason to doubt them: Despite a March attack that killed eight students at a Jerusalem seminary, statistics suggest that the barrier and a corresponding one around Gaza are working.

West Bankers condemn the structure because it encroaches into pre-1967 Palestinian territory, limits mobility, and separates farmers from their fields. Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since June 2007, describes its territory as “a big prison.” Until recently, Egypt too was a vociferous critic. In 2003, Egypt’s foreign minister at the time, Ahmed Maher, described the structure as “defying international legitimacy and world public opinion.”

Even as Israel moves expeditiously to seal off its West Bank threat, however, Palestinians face the prospect of another wall hemming them in. This latest wall is not being constructed by the Israelis, though, but by Egypt, which seeks more protection from its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.

Cairo has every reason to be concerned. In January 2008, Hamas demolished the Gaza-Egypt border fence, allowing an estimated 700,000 Palestinians – nearly half of Gaza’s population – to stream into the Sinai desert. Initially, Cairo viewed the Gaza breach as an opportunity to solidify its pro-Palestinian bona fides. Then reality set in. Egypt, it seems, was concerned that Palestinians entering the Sinai might exacerbate Egypt’s own terrorism problem. In April 2006, 23 tourists were killed in a car-bomb attack in the Sinai resort town of Dahab; two days later, U.N. Multi-national Force Observers, enforcing the Egypt-Israel peace treaty, were targeted by suicide attacks.

For Cairo, the threat extends beyond Sinai. Islamists in Egypt – led by the Muslim Brotherhood – have been making significant political gains in recent years, winning an unprecedented 88 of 444 elected parliamentary seats in 2005. The prospect of Hamas’s hooking up with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood terrifies the government of Egypt. As one Egyptian political analyst describes it, “Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood on steroids.”

Less than two weeks after the Gaza breach, Cairo took draconian measures to return the Palestinians to Gaza. It arrested dozens – including a group of armed Palestinians reportedly planning to attack Israeli tourists in the Sinai – and quickly resealed the border with miles of barbed wire. Hamas cried foul and pledged that it would not allow the border to remain sealed. In February, two Egyptian border guards were injured by Palestinian gunfire and several more were treated for broken bones after being hit by rocks thrown across the border.

With tensions along the border increasing, Egypt has softened its position on Israel’s West Bank barrier. In March, Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit said, “Whoever wishes to build a security fence on his land is free to do that.” Subsequently, it was announced that Egypt, with $23 million in U.S. assistance, would build its own fence along the border with Gaza. Teams from the Army Corps of Engineers are expected in Egypt shortly to advise the project.

At least in part, Cairo’s change in attitude was driven by Washington. For more than a decade, weapons have moved freely into Gaza via ubiquitous smuggling tunnels linking Sinai to Palestinian areas and bypassing Israeli scrutiny. Since Hamas’s Gaza takeover, though, the issue has increasingly garnered attention, as longer-range katyusha rockets – presumably transported via these tunnels – have started falling on Israeli cities with greater frequency. During the 2008 budget discussions, Congress was so concerned about perceived Egyptian inaction on the tunnels that a clause was inserted to condition nearly $100 million in U.S. aid on Cairo’s countering these smuggling routes.

For Cairo, the U.S. pressure was a blessing in disguise. The Egyptian government gives a lot of lip service to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, while privately it is apprehensive about the militant nature of Hamas-ruled Gaza. These sentiments have only been heightened by recent political and social inroads made by Egypt’s own Islamists.

At the end of the day, the Gaza border is above all else a matter of Egyptian national security. So despite the obvious comparisons that will be drawn between the Israeli and Egyptian barriers, Cairo had few alternatives other than to move ahead with a wall of its own. As Israel learned some time ago, good fences make good neighbors, especially when your neighbors are your enemies.

“IN THE NEW COLD WAR SHAPING UP BETWEEN ISLAMISM AND THE DEMOCRATIC WEST, ISRAEL HOLDS THE FRONT LINE”

Dead end: The heartbreaking realities of today’s Israel
By David Pryce-Jones
The National Review
April 7, 2008

Israel’s enemies have always wished to destroy it, of course, but what’s new this time is that they are avoiding the set-piece battles that lost them all previous wars, and are instead elaborating the tactics of terror. Islamist Iran has made itself the driving force. The terrorist movements Hizbullah and Hamas are both Iranian satellites, and their presence on Israel’s borders ensures that Iran can already engage in terrorism on its own terms and at times of its own choosing. There’s a civilizational dimension to it as well: Science and technology have hitherto given Western states their supremacy over the Muslim world. As Iran moves toward possession of the nuclear weapon, this historic advantage is neutralized. A nuclear-armed Iran will be able to promote terror at state level, changing the balance of forces as never before against the West in general and Israel in particular. You don’t have to be in Israel very long, or hold many conversations, to realize how the threat from Iran induces denial in some and fear in others.

In the new Cold War shaping up between Islamism and the democratic West, Israel holds the front line. Once again, the values of the opposing sides are irreconcilable. Israel, and behind it the United States, treats even the most intractable issues as open to negotiation and compromise. In the Arab and Muslim order, power is absolute and has to be victorious, so “negotiation” and “compromise” are euphemisms for shame and surrender.

The present plight of the Palestinians perfectly illustrates how the logic of absolute power dictates extreme behavior. For the past 50 or so years, Arab nationalism had been the dominant ideology in the Middle East. Fatah under Yasser Arafat, a typically absolute leader, was the Palestinian branch of Arab nationalism, but its failure to provide a decent life for the masses was total. Islamism appeared a viable alternative. The founding of Hamas in 1987 as an Islamist movement was thus a challenge to Fatah. Slowly but steadily, the conflict between Hamas and Fatah grew, and came to an inevitable head in the civil war in Gaza in 2005. This was small-scale, but still brutal enough to frighten the population into submission.

Civil war has divided the Palestinians ideologically and even geographically, with Hamas in Gaza and Fatah on the rump of the West Bank. The loser, Mahmoud Abbas, heir of Arafat as leader of Fatah, is a broken man. Nominally he governs from his office in Ramallah, but actually he is hardly more than a figurehead. Maj. Gen. Gadi Shamni, the general officer commanding the Israeli army’s central command, makes the stark point that, without the Israeli presence on the West Bank, Hamas would take over within two days. Yet out of the blue, President Bush said that he expects the Palestinians to have a state of their own by the end of the year, and to guarantee Israeli security on top of it. The Western powers have pledged $7.7 billion to Abbas, though how much of this will ever find its way to the people on the street is a very open question.

It is crassly Eurocentric to think that this can be negotiated to any conclusion. Iran evidently has the opposite, Islamocentric belief that power is indeed absolute, and that the conquest of Israel is not only desirable but achievable. As the ayatollahs see it, the fighting launched by Hizbullah in 2005 led to a temporary stalemate, and with a lot more arms and money they will do better next time. Hamas operates identically. The borders of the Gaza Strip with Israel and with Egypt are fortified and closed. Hamas activists have been smuggling arms through tunnels dug under the border with Egypt.

Over the last 18 months, Hamas and affiliated Islamist groups have fired some 8,000 rockets and other missiles to a depth of about twelve miles into the Israeli territory adjoining the Gaza Strip, and especially the small town of Sderot, with a population of 20,000, many of them immigrants. Known as Qassams, these rockets are erratic, and have killed only about a dozen people, though maiming many more, and driving out of their homes hundreds of others. The rockets are fired from behind a screen of civilians so that Israeli countermeasures are liable to kill innocent women and children, prompting an international outcry that the response is “disproportionate” and thus handing Hamas a propaganda victory. As a constant needling challenge to Israeli sovereignty, yet not one so damaging as to merit serious reprisal, the Hamas tactic displays undoubted imagination and innovation, however callous. The shaping of the conflict remains with them.

Lately Hamas organized a mass breakout through the fortified barrier with Egypt, and used this occasion to bring into Gaza Iranian-made Grad missiles with a heavier payload and a longer range than the Qassams. (They also brought in a number of men, possibly from al-Qaeda, trained in Iran.) At the beginning of March, several of these Grads hit the city of Ashkelon, which has a population of 120,000 and much industrial capacity. At the same moment, a barrage of some 50 Qassams was fired daily. Here was an escalation of the ongoing test of strength. An Israeli armored column then entered Gaza and killed about 120 Palestinians, most of them from Hamas, only to have to withdraw to the usual worldwide clamor about “disproportion.” Olmert made it plain that if Hamas desisted from violence he would accept a truce. “We don’t have a policy of operations, but rather one of systematic fighting, over time, every place there is terror,” he said, or, in plain language: He has no idea what to do. As if to prove Olmert’s helplessness, a Hamas gunman shot dead eight teenage students in a religious seminary in Jerusalem.

The military strategist with whom I talked argues that there are no solutions. A truce only allows Hamas to rearm. In his view there is no alternative to a local version of the Petraeus surge, an occupation of Gaza in great force, and a clearing-out of Hamas. As the terrorists can’t easily be identified and separated out from civilians, the operation would be “like punching air,” both necessary and futile. Which is the problem in a nutshell.

HAMAS TRYING TO CREATE A PALESTINIAN CATASTROPHE FOR PROPAGANDA PURPOSES

Hamas disrupts fuel supplies to Gaza
By Khaled Abu Toameh
The Jerusalem Post
April 28, 2008

www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1208870504767&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Hamas militiamen in the Gaza Strip on Sunday attacked fuel trucks headed toward the Nahal Oz border crossing, forcing them to turn back, sources in the Palestinian Petroleum Authority said.

The fuel was supposed to go to the UN Relief and Works Agency [UNRWA] and hospitals in the Gaza Strip, the sources said.

“Dozens of Hamas militiamen hurled stones and opened fire at the trucks,” the sources added. “The trucks were on their way to receive fuel supplied by Israel. The drivers were forced to turn back. Some of them had their windshields smashed.”

The Palestinian Petroleum Authority reached an agreement with Israel over the weekend to receive 250,000 liters of fuel after UNRWA complained that it did not have enough fuel to distribute food aid to more than 500,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The Palestinian Authority Health Ministry also accused Hamas of blocking fuel supplies to hospitals and clinics in the Gaza Strip. The ministry said Hamas gunmen opened fire at a number of trucks that were trying to transfer fuel to the hospitals and clinics.

Eyewitnesses in Gaza City said that at least on four occasions over the past few weeks, Hamas militiamen confiscated trucks loaded with fuel shortly as they were on their way from Nahal Oz to the city.

They added that the fuel supplies were taken to Hamas-controlled security installations throughout the city.

“Hamas is taking the fuel for it the vehicles of is leaders and security forces,” the eyewitnesses said. “Because of Hamas’s actions, some hospitals have been forced to stop the work of ambulances and generators.”

PA officials in Ramallah said Hamas’s measures were aimed at creating a crisis in the Gaza Strip with the hope that the international community would intervene and force Israel to reopen the border crossings.

“As far as we know, there is enough fuel reaching the Gaza Strip,” the officials said. “But Hamas’s measures are aimed at creating a crisis. Hamas is either stealing or blocking most of the fuel supplies.”

They pointed out that last week Hamas dispatched hundreds of its supporters to Nahal Oz to block the fuel supplies from Israel. Hamas claimed that the protest was organized by farmers and fishermen demanding an end to the blockade on the Gaza Strip.

The officials also noted that the shortage in fuel supplies has created a high-priced black market for individuals and institutions.

UNRWA workers admitted over the weekend that Hamas had prevented some fuel trucks from entering the Gaza Strip.

Hamas has also been exerting pressure on the Gaza Petrol Station Owners Association to close down their businesses so as to aggravate the crisis. Some of the station owners and workers said they were afraid to return to work after receiving death threats from Hamas militiamen and ordinary residents desperate to purchase gas and diesel for their vehicles.

FULL ITEM

THE BBC GOES NATIVE: AN ANALYSIS OF BBC ARABIC

By Trevor Asserson and Deena Pinson (bbcwatch)

(Trevor Asserson is a British solicitor and was a senior partner in one of the world’s largest law firms. Deena Pinson is an academic and a graduate of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.)

I: INTRODUCTION

The BBC has been broadcasting for some years in Arabic on radio. In March 2008 it will commence broadcasting in Arabic on television. This is likely to increase the impact of the BBC in the Arabic speaking world.

Our study of BBC Arabic radio broadcasts shows what a baleful influence that has been, providing the Arab speaking world with a ‘respectable’ platform for terrorist organizations, rogue states and those who hate the USA and Israel. We believe that BBC Arabic Television will follow the same pattern.

II: METHODOLOGY

We decided to conduct a study of BBC Arabic during the 2006 War between Israel and the Hizbullah in Southern Lebanon because the war presented a sizeable body of material about a single unfolding story.

We recorded, translated and transcribed the BBC’s principal news analysis program, Hadeeth Al-Sa’a, for a period of four weeks from 19 July to 20 August 2006. We analyzed views expressed by the invited program guests whose selection we believe is the weather vane of BBC attitudes.

We categorized all program guests, based on what they said, as either neutral or likely to encourage support or antipathy for one of the warring parties. In order to lend depth to the categorization, we graded their attitude as mild (1) or forceful (2). We also graded the likely impact of an individual guest based both on his status, the institution he represented and the nature of his argument and the manner of its conveyance. The aggregate words spoken multiplied by the attitude and impact grades provided a ‘weighted word’ count.

Our detailed findings are set out in the attached table at Schedule I.1 We set out in Schedule II a summary of views expressed by individual program guests together with selected quotations which we think indicate principal views held by the person quoted.

We have not considered the time given to individuals. What they say, rather than the speed at which they say it, appears to us to be a more sensible measure.

III: BBC OBLIGATIONS

The BBC has an obligation to be fair and impartial. It fails time and time again, as our earlier reports have shown. The Independent Panel, set up by the BBC to analyze its Middle East broadcasts, recognized the systemic problem within the BBC and recommended that it set up a ‘guiding hand’ to monitor its programs to ensure that it achieves its obligation of due impartiality.2 The BBC refused and instead set Jeremy Bowen in charge of its Middle East broadcasts, despite there having been questions raised as to his impartiality.

The BBC guidelines explain that:

“…due impartiality does not require absolute neutrality on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles”.3

The BBC has always ignored our calls for it to explain how it interprets those words. In fact the BBC appears to ignore them. Thus it refuses for example to use the word ‘terrorist’ to describe the blowing up of a school bus full of children, because it wishes to remain “neutral”.4 This refusal was maintained notwithstanding a call from the Independent Panel to use the word terrorist more widely.5

Hizbullah is listed by the UK government, amongst many others, as a “terrorist organisation.” This is the same UK government through whose laws the BBC was born and is sustained. Hizbullah is armed and trained by Iran, a country whose President has called for the total destruction of Israel.6 This is a public call for genocide. Israel has a free press; an independent judiciary; and representative forms of Government. Iran and the Hizbullah do not. If the BBC had remained attached to democratic principles it should be more ready to give air time to the dilemmas of a democratic Israel than to its undemocratic enemies.

In fact we identified 17 spokespeople for Hizbullah and Iran amongst program guests and only 5 for Israel.7

It is hard to avoid the conclusion that the BBC has in fact become detached from democratic principles and has become a proactive participant in the war of ideas, reflecting back to the Arabic speaking world some if its nastiest views.

IV: OVERVIEW OF FINDINGS

We found that, excluding ‘neutral’ guests, some 82% of program guests were pro Hizbullah and some 18% pro Israel.8 Our analysis of weighted words produced identical results – 82% weighted words pro Hizbullah and 18% pro Israel.

In terms of attitudes to the 2006 War, our findings are alarming, but given our previous reports, unsurprising. The airtime given by BBC Arabic to the pro Hizbullah position outweighed that given to the pro Israel position by a ratio of some 4.5 to 1.

What was more surprising was the very marked anti American sentiment which we detected. Many program guests expressed blatantly and viciously anti American positions, examples of which are set out below. While this unto itself may be acceptable and even desirable in a free press, the latitude afforded to these guests in sharing their sentiments, the highly evident disproportion in the representation of such views and the relative absence of challenge of these views in a manner which would conform with journalistic principles of impartiality and balance prompt serious concern.

In addition we came across a number of quite extreme statements. For example we were told that the bombing of an electricity station was a “crime” which is “unprecedented historically”9 and we learn that it is US policy “to crush the Palestinians completely and to take all of their lands.”10 When comments as extreme as this go uncorrected and unchallenged, the BBC appears to have tossed its moral compass into the waves and completely to have lost its bearings.

What emerges is a BBC which is providing a solid and respectable platform for anti Western ideologues. Many of these people have respectable sounding titles and doubtless – on television – will be smartly turned out. However their words will support people seeking to undermine the social values of those who built the BBC and who continue to pay for it.

V: ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE USA

The following is a selection of some of the statements made by various program guests, indicating their attitudes towards the USA. The identity of the speaker and date of the interview are in the endnotes, together with a reference to the page in Schedule II where the full quotation can be found.

When reading these words it should be remembered that they were broadcast by the BBC, the incumbent national UK broadcaster, during a period when the UK had soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting shoulder to shoulder with the USA against a threat of Islamist terrorism which had brought bloody death and destruction to the streets of both London and New York.

While some of the statements are by themselves innocuous, taken together they amount to a campaign to delegitimise and demonize the USA in the eyes of the Arabic speaking world.

“…[we] are doubting their [America’s] sincerity and respect”11

“America has to change its politics and speak honestly”12

“That [Bush] government wanted to have complete control over the world”13

“…the world, which is controlled by the US”14

“…the main side of this conflict is the US”15

“As we all know on the Arab street, if your enemy is Israel or America, you are on the right side”16

“…the problem is not with Israel; it is with the American Government…American politics is a failure that has no logic”17

“This talk about the war being that of Iran and Syria is nonsense. However, it is true that this is an American war; that was stated clearly by Condoleezza Rice”18

“Hizbullah has been leading this fight with dignity and justice… the positions of Europe and America center on their own obsessions … their war on terror… and they have considered Hizbullah a terrorist group, which is, of course, wrong”19

“…there is a kind of vision in the American government…to crush the Palestinians completely and to take all of their lands”20

“…the Americans constantly talk about breaking the hearts and minds of the Arabs and Muslims”21

“This new [American] strategy…is totally contrary to the principles of human rights”22

VI: ISRAEL DEMONISED

The 2006 War started when Hizbullah invaded Israeli territory, attacked an army convoy killing some Israeli soldiers and kidnapping two others. Israel responded with a massive bombardment of Hizbullah positions and economic targets in South Lebanon, being the area controlled by Hizbullah. This was followed by an invasion in the last days of the war. Hizbullah rained thousands of medium range missiles on Israeli civilian areas.

There were civilian and military deaths and destruction on both sides, although all agree that the Lebanese suffered more deaths and greater destruction. There were massive population evacuations in both Israel and Lebanon from the affected areas. Israel was criticized internationally for overreacting to the initial aggression. After the war Amnesty International accused both sides of carrying out indiscriminate attacks against civilians.23

The BBC Arabic gives little indication of the destruction, the evacuations and the deaths (often of Israeli Arabs), caused by the thousands of Hizbullah rockets fired into Israel. By contrast some of the language used to describe Israel is hysterical in tone and the translated transcript reads like an Islamist extremist tract. Here are some examples:

Facing the “Israeli aggression”24

Israel is said to have “evil objectives… this way of twisting things and the aggressive attitude”25

“…the Israeli military machine…works to a great extent based on hatred”26

“Israelis, who are violating all international law”27

“…breaching all of the international laws”28

“The crimes that they are committing…a real crime, which contradicts all of the laws”29

“…barbaric Israeli attack”30

“…the barbaric Israeli army”31

Lebanon is facing “a barbaric war”32

They are “destroying villages completely”; they are “racist barbaric”33

“We are facing a monster who does not care about the law or about morals…a killer monster”34

“…Israel is the deadly monster…a destructive monster”35

“They are committing massacres”36

“… the atrocities in Lebanon that we have seen so far from Israel, including all of their massacres”37

There is a need for an “assurance against further [Israeli] massacres”38

They refer to “a month of killing our children”39

There is reference to “this ugly crime against the Lebanese and the Palestinian people”40 (notwithstanding that Israelis including Israeli Arabs were in fact being killed by Hizbullah rockets at the time.)

“…this is collective punishment, Nazi punishment”41

VII: ANALYSIS OF THE CAUSES OF THE WAR

Almost all commentators at the time agree that the initial Hizbullah incursion and kidnap of two Israeli soldiers caused the war. Without it there would have been no war. One obtains a very different view from listening to BBC Arabic:

“…the kidnapping of the two soldiers was just an excuse”42

“I believe that the reason for this attack is not the two soldiers”43

“…we all know that this attack over the last three weeks has nothing to do with the release of the Israeli detainees…Israel wanted to destroy the infrastructure of Lebanon and this is part of historical revenge against the Lebanese people”44

“Olmert took…the kidnap of the Israeli soldiers as an excuse to invade, destroy and kill innocent people”45

“…I don’t see any relationship between Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and the existence of Hizbullah”46

VIII: ABSURD COMMENTS

There are some comments made by program guests which are so shrill and absurd that they should disqualify these guests from being given air time by any serious broadcaster. The BBC Arabic brings us the following gems:

“Israel is a country that wants to expand and they have a plan to force on to the regions of Palestine, Lebanon or even Egypt”.47 (In fact, Israel has voluntarily withdrawn from territory in Gaza (Palestine), Lebanon and Egypt.)

“…barbaric Israeli attack, which kills everybody everywhere”48

“We faced Israel in 1967 and won militarily”.49 Israel would doubtless be happy to suffer a repeat of its military defeat of 1967.

“These are crimes unprecedented historically”50 (referring to the Israeli bombing of electricity stations).

“Israel is extensively targeting every part of Lebanon”.51 In fact, Israel was targeting Hizbullah controlled South Lebanon. In Beirut people were sunbathing on the beach.

“…it became apparent that Israel is targeting the entire Lebanon, its people, and infrastructure”52

“…all the massacres committed by Israel, like no one in history has seen something similar. It is even worse than what Germany committed”53

IX: DANGEROUS COMMENTS

UK and indeed Western foreign policy is presently pre-occupied with a belligerent Iran which is issuing blood curdling threats against the West, supporting terrorists who threaten the West – including Hizbullah – and is building a nuclear capability.

One would like to imagine that the BBC would be supportive of the intellectual battle which the West is fighting. At the very least, one would hope that the BBC would be balanced in its coverage of the issue. In fact the BBC appears to be lending support and providing a platform to those who legitimize Iranian aims and deprecate those of the West.

“I hope that Iran has something to scare Israel, as an Arab citizen from the Middle East. I wish that all Arab countries would have nuclear weapons”54

“Iran’s opinion is rooted in morals and rules, legal and logical”55

“…claims of Iranian instigation are untrue”56

Europe and America “have considered Hizbullah a terrorist group, which is of course wrong”57

The Hizbullah soldiers are referred to as “martyrs…the honor resistance which does the utmost that any group can do…to defend their country”.58

Calling the Lebanese who died in the conflict “martyrs [whose] blood is still fresh”.59

“Hizbullah was clear that their operation…targeted military objectives, not civilians, as did Israel”60

“I will ask Iran, and every Arab country who can, to have nuclear weapons”61

X: CONCLUSION

The BBC Arabic radio appears to be out of control. It is providing a platform for a wide range of anti Western and in particular anti American ideologues to express their nasty, at times absurd and sometimes dangerous views in a forum that is almost invisible to most Westerners. The often unchallenged broadcast of such views by the BBC gives those views a veneer of legitimacy and truthfulness.

Overall, in the 25 programs analyzed, there emerges an unmistakable identification with parties with whom Israel is in conflict. While most programs provided a forum for the expression of a variety of positions, the blatant disproportion, both quantitatively and qualitatively, in the voice afforded to the respective views points to an unequivocally biased program to the detriment of the Israeli position. Frequently, program hosts make no pretence at objectivity, and even when the questions posed by the host were relatively neutral, they were often tainted by clear animosity toward Israel and the West, while generally no attempts were made to challenge the virulently anti-Israel and anti-West views expressed.

The relative lack of Arabic speakers amongst those who pay for the BBC means that the BBC does not benefit from the criticisms of the general listening public as it does for its English speaking programs. The corrective influence which those complainants normally provide is necessarily absent.

Having rejected the Independent Panel’s recommendation to appoint a “guiding hand” to monitor its Middle East output, the BBC has no systems in place to know what its own journalists think. We are not aware of any systematic method it has for monitoring program content. It seems that the BBC has less control of its Arabic programs than of any others, because it appears that relatively few of its senior staff speak Arabic.

We are left with the disturbing fear that the most powerful media organization in the world has left the fox guarding the hen house.

***

The footnotes and schedules to this report, referred to above, are available in the pdf version of the report which can be downloaded here (sixth report).

FULL ARTICLE

DAVID SAMUELS: INTO RAMALLAH WITH GEORGE W. BUSH

The Father of Palestine: Into Ramallah with George W. Bush.
By David Samuels
The New Republic
February 13, 2008

http://tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=1ca859ac-c2ef-48a3-9326-5927c7b3c21b

“I’ve never been to Ramallah before,” one of the White House correspondents says, gazing out at the cold gray mountains outside Jerusalem. The walls and ceilings of the buses provided for the press are lined with strips of old shag carpet, and it takes two skinny Third-World-person-sized seats to fit a single network cameraman accompanying President Bush on the first leg of his pilgrimage to the Middle East. The printed sign in Hebrew at the front of the bus reads HEBRON. This is an armored bus that has been diverted from its normal route in the West Bank, which explains why the windows are so thick and the aisles are so narrow.

The rest of the reporters in the bus stare out the windows, trying to make heads or tails of the bleak, rain-swept moonscape of the Judean Hills. It is one of the great disappointments of first-time travelers to Jerusalem that the hills surrounding the city where King Herod ruled and Jesus was crucified look nothing like softly glowing Bible
illustrations of well-fed cows and humble donkeys. Instead, the scenery largely consists of barren fields of broken rocks that look like they were smashed by a surly giant with a sledgehammer.

Ripped from Ambien-induced slumbers at 5:45 a.m., the White House press has been fed an Israeli hodgepodge of hummus, eggs, smoked fish, and coffee for breakfast in the lobby of the Dan Panorama Hotel before being swept for weapons and explosives by the Secret Service and then badged in the lobby by future “Good Morning America” host Dana Perino. In addition to the White House photo badge, there is also the hexagonal traveling-pool badge and a Palestinian Authority press badge bearing the insignia of the P.A. and the Palestine Liberation Organization, two organizations that also might as well be located on the moon.

“THERE ARE NO PEOPLE,” SOMEONE GASPS

Driving through the rain in Ramallah, we pass through a cordon of Palestinian Authority soldiers in brand-new camo uniforms carrying M-16 rifles that looked as if they had been freshly unpacked from their crates. “There are no people,” someone gasps, as we head into the sterile zone set up by the Palestinian Preventive Security Force with the aid of the Americans over the past few days.

Residents in the streets surrounding the Muqata – the old British prison that served as Yasser Arafat’s headquarters and has since been inherited by his successor, Mahmoud Abbas (“Abu Mazen”) – have been told not to go out onto balconies or roofs and to stay away from windows while the president is here.

The largely fictional nature of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank is shown by the fact that only a token handful of Abbas’s Presidential Guards are allowed inside the sterile zone, which has been secured by U.S. sniper teams and electronic warfare specialists.

In the week before the president’s visit, the Israel Defense Forces spent four days arresting wanted men in Nablus, a city that the Authority had declared to be a shining example of its recent security successes. Israel also cut fuel supplies to the Gaza Strip, the seaside jail where a majority of the Palestinian population lives under the control of Hamas, the murderous Islamist militia that won a plurality of the votes in the Palestinian elections in January 2006 and now showers Southern Israel with rockets.

Having been stripped of its democratic mandate by Abu Mazen, Hamas replied by taking control of the Gaza Strip in approximately 48 hours between June 12 and June 14, 2007, exposing the hollowness of the American commitment to the electoral process and also the inability of the Palestinian security forces to defend themselves with their slick new American-donated weapons.

“WE GOT WINNIE”

At the entrance to the Muqata, visitors are greeted by a large portrait of Arafat in a black and white kaffiyeh hanging next to his colorless successor, Abbas. “The South Africans got Nelson Mandela,” a Palestinian friend from Jerusalem once told me. “We got Winnie Mandela.” As a student of revolutionary movements, my friend believes that the personal character of the historical leader has a determining impact on the political culture of the future state.

In his view, Arafat’s essential trait was duplicity. By being all things to all people, and refusing to commit himself to a single course of action, Arafat’s legacy is that he has made it impossible for the Palestinians to choose their own fate.

The press is rushed from the armored buses to the Muqata’s main briefing room, a professional-looking setup with state-of-the-art overhead light arrays and other CNN-ready paraphernalia put together at a cost of over $1 million in U.S. taxpayer money in order to provide American officials like the president and the secretary of state with a secure, camera-ready location from which to transmit their latest newsworthy pronouncements.

On the wall near the door hangs a large printed plastic banner of the gold-topped Dome of the Rock rising above the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. The White House press corps is seated near the door, in case something happens and they need to be hurried back to the buses. The Palestinian press corps, shivering outside in secure tents, will soon be allowed to take their places across the aisle, in a section of folding chairs in front of Abu Mazen’s podium.

A CONVENIENT MYTH

Even if Abbas is a “good man,” in the patronizing formula adopted by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, it is hard to see why the president of the United States believes so strongly in the likelihood of brokering a peace deal between a weak Israeli government and a Palestinian Authority that exists largely on paper and has no obvious means of future support.

It is true, of course, that the fiction of the Palestinian Authority is convenient for everyone. Without the myth of Palestinian self-government, Israel would be forced to rule the West Bank directly, the Americans would pressure Israel to leave, and the Jordanians would go weak at the knees at the thought of a second Gaza Strip arising on their border. Still, confusing the fig leaf offered by the P.A. with a functioning state seems like too big a blunder even for an administration that brought us the failed U.S. puppet government in Iraq.

When it comes to describing the purpose of today’s staged event, the reporters in the room are therefore in a double or triple bind. It is rude to say that the Palestinian Authority is a fiction and that a peace treaty signed with an imaginary entity would be a joke. It is rude to say that there is no immediate solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Because it is rude to say these things, it becomes difficult – if not impossible – for reporters and editors to think about why the president is here.

IRAN, IRAN, IRAN

In the more conspiratorially minded climates of the Middle East, for example, it did not escape notice that the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) announcing that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program was published after the U.S. Army announced that attacks on U.S. troops by IEDs and other explosive devices of Iranian origin had fallen by nearly two-thirds.

It was also noted that President Bush had publicly approved of the Russian decision to ship nuclear fuel rods to the Bushehr reactor. In the opinion of regional conspiracy buffs, the president was pursuing a secret deal with Iran, and the focus on a grand plan for peace between Israelis and Palestinians in 2008 was intended to give plausible cover to a trip whose real purpose was to reassure the skittish Kuwaitis and Saudis that the Americans were not planning to fold up their tents and go home.

In the meantime, the White House press corps has been left to speculate on the chances for solving the 100-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict in the next twelve months while watching one of the Muqata flacks hang foam-backed Palestinian eagles on little hooks at the front of each podium.

A young Palestinian reporter seated in front of me is writing down a question in her lined notebook, in case President Bush calls on her. “Mr. President, there has been talk about you giving the green light to the Israelis about a military strike,” she writes. A woman from the U.S. Consulate distributes Star Trek-like devices that will allow the reporters to hear a simultaneous translation of Abbas’s remarks.

“THEY’RE COMING!”

At 11:07, eight minutes early, a wedge of security people moves toward the stage. “They’re coming!” the press handlers announce. The sound of shutters going off fills the room like someone flipping through a deck of plastic-covered playing cards. “Two minutes, guys.” The room falls silent. The truth is that it is difficult if not impossible for any native-born American to travel on a presidential plane, go through the endless security checks, and bear witness to the extreme precautions that are taken to ensure the president’s safety at every stop, and still conclude that what you are watching is void of significance.

Faster than expected, Bush walks in from the cold and winks at the traveling press, who generally seem to like him. Next to him is Abbas, who wears a gray suit with a white shirt and a dull striped tie as he addresses the leader of the free world for the cameras: “Our people will not forget Your Excellency,” Abbas begins in Arabic, “and your commitment toward the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.”

The father of the future state of Palestine fumbles with his earpiece, which is not working. “I haven’t got it yet,” Bush says. He points to a White House correspondent in the front row. “You better stay awake,” he jokes. Everyone laughs. The Palestinian press is discovering what the American reporters already know, which is that Saint George, Defender of Western Civilization is also a world-class cut-up.

FINALLY THE EARPIECE IS FIXED

“Our people, Your Excellency,” Abbas begins again. The president’s earpiece still isn’t working. “I agree completely,” Bush says. Finally the earpiece is fixed, and he settles in to listen as Abbas praises “our Palestinian people who are committed to peace as a strategic option.” It would be easier for everyone, of course, if Abbas were given to praising “our Palestinian people who are committed to peace,” without adding that odd little phrase at the end.

Well, the truth is, it’s an old formula, you can hear the presidential translator, Gamal Helal, saying, as he explains what “strategic option” really means for the umpteenth time on the way back to Jerusalem.

Bush turns his face to the camera as he steps to the microphone. “We have met a lot in the past, and I’m glad to finally have a chance to sit down in your office to discuss important issues,” Bush begins. The translation audio goes out again. “Listen, they say I have enough problems speaking English as it is,” Bush jokes, unflustered.

ALICE IN WONDERLAND

He is lean and fit and achingly sincere. Standing next to Abbas, he looks like Jimmy Stewart side by side with the Walrus from Alice in Wonderland. The Palestinians are entrepreneurial people who can create jobs, Bush says, in an encouraging way that makes him sound like he is addressing a Hispanic job fair in San Antonio. A handful of people want to dash the aspirations of the Palestinian people by fomenting chaos and violence.

“We are fully satisfied,” Abbas says, in answer to a question from a Palestinian journalist about the results of the meeting. “We spoke about all topics. ... We are agreed on all topics. All topics are clear.” His habit of talking out of the side of his mouth makes him sound like he is slightly soused.

While news reports will portray the American president as having expressed empathy with Palestinians, or condemned the Israelis, or predicted a peace treaty by the end of the year (“Bush expects to see Palestinian state before he leaves office,” says USA Today), or done other consequential things, the truth is that nearly every sentence out of his mouth has already been said someplace else. Those sentences that don’t fit the expected storylines are ignored.

CONDI STARES STONE-FACED AT THE ENORMOUS PLASTIC DOME OF THE ROCK

“Look, the U.N. deal didn’t work in the past,” Bush says, in answer to a Palestinian question about why the United States doesn’t simply enforce the relevant U.N. resolutions relating to Israel the way it did with Iraq – i.e., by bombing. Seated at the side of the room, out of Bush’s direct sight line, Rice stares stone-faced at the enormous plastic Dome of the Rock banner. On another day, with another president, a statement that the “U.N. deal” no longer applies to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might be diplomatic dynamite.

But the truth is that this is Bush, and besides, no one cares anymore. “We can stay stuck in the past, which will yield nothing good for the Palestinians, in my judgment,” the president explains. “Do you want this state, or do you want the status quo? Do you want a future based upon a democratic state, or do you want the same old stuff?”

“We’ll take a state,” Abbas interjects, showing a welcome sign of life. But what he wants doesn’t matter all that much anymore, either. If the occupying Israeli army disappeared from the West Bank tomorrow, it is doubtful that he would last more than a few months.

“See, the past has just been empty words, you know,” Bush says, leaning over the podium in an oddly ruminative moment. “I’m the only president that’s really articulated a two-state solution so far – but saying two states really doesn’t have much bearing until borders are defined, right-of-return issues resolved, Jerusalem is understood, security measures – the common security measures will be in place.”

A Palestinian reporter asks Abbas how he expects to reclaim the half of his future state that is currently under the control of Hamas. “Gaza is considered a coup by us,” Abbas says.

On cue, a cellphone starts ringing at the side of the stage, filling the room with the familiar sound of the adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. “We consider it a coup d’etat,” Abbas repeats, his upper lip twitching. The Palestinians crack up. “We spend in Gaza fifty-eight percent of our budget,” he explains. “It is our duty toward our people that we provide them what they need.”

BACK IN JERUSALEM

Back in Jerusalem, I ask National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley how it is that 58 percent of the Palestinian Authority budget goes to Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas. I suggest that the figure is particularly disturbing in light of the $7.4 billion in aid pledged to the Palestinian Authority at the recent Paris donors’ conference. A tall and courteous national security expert, Hadley has the slight stoop of a man who has spent the better part of his life standing at briefing podiums set up for men who are four or five inches shorter than he is.

“Let me reframe your question, if I can,” Hadley says. “What is Salam Fayyad, as prime minister in this Palestinian Authority, what is he going to do?” He is playing for time as he tries to sort out the small mess that Abbas has made.

“We don’t have a presence in Gaza and haven’t for a long time,” Hadley parries, as though he wishes to avoid any accusation that the national security adviser’s office is getting a cut, too. Finally, he gives in. “We worry about it. Salam Fayyad worries about it. He and President Abbas have no interest in strengthening Hamas,” he says, adding, “If you want to get back in and restore the status quo ante to the Hamas coup, the last thing you want to do is stop the money flows.” The logic of this last statement is debatable.

For a moment Hadley looks flummoxed, and then he decides to cut his losses and move on, like a man who lost a hand at whist. “Are there risks? You bet,” he says briskly. “Are they concerned about it? Sure. Are we concerned about it? Sure.”

AN IMAGINARY PALESTINIAN PARTNER

There is no shortage of theories in Jerusalem as to why Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has chosen to lend himself so enthusiastically to the goal of reaching a final-status agreement with an imaginary Palestinian partner. The theory put forward in public by Olmert himself is that the circumstances for an agreement are unlikely to be as favorable to Israel in the future as they are now, with Bush in the White House.

“If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights ... the State of Israel is finished,” Olmert told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. More cynical minds have plastered the walls near the Prime Minister’s office at 3 Rehov Kaplan with posters that show a mournful Olmert behind bars in shirtsleeves and a necktie, beneath the legend: even Bush can’t save you.

The popular depiction of Olmert as a sly and personally corrupt lawyer whose shaky judgment resulted in the debacle of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon has some truth to it, yet it slights his ability to finesse big egos while acting in surprising ways that in another life might have won him a job as consigliere for the Bonannos or the Sopranos.

MAKING HIS FOREIGN MINISTER LOOK LIKE AN UNRULY TEENAGER

When Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni launched a campaign to replace him as head of his own Kadima party, for example, Olmert adopted the masterly and entirely counterintuitive strategy of doing absolutely nothing. If Livni wants to sit in Cabinet meetings in the morning and go to rallies against me in the afternoon, his attitude proclaimed, that’s her business.

After successfully making his foreign minister look like an unruly teenager, he made his victory complete by appointing her chief negotiator with the Palestinians. Olmert is also surprisingly tall.

“It was a good visit, a productive visit,” he intones in a mellow voice, when I ask him how the president’s visit went. As he speaks, he palpates my hand as though he was using some kind of ancient Ayurvedic medical technique to judge the fitness of my heart and my liver.

I ask him whether Bush’s summary statement on Thursday at the King David Hotel (known for a brief moment as the “King David Statement”) contained anything new – Bush’s description of Israel as a “homeland for the Jewish people, “ for example. “He said it in Annapolis also,” the prime minister said, in the tones of a man who has just enjoyed a relaxing hot bath. “It is always refreshing to hear it.”

After another minute of chitchat, he glides out of his office and over to the Cabinet room to accept the resignation of Minister for Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, a former nightclub bouncer from Moldova.

ONCE TOUTED AS THE BILL CLINTON OF THE LABOR PARTY

Later in the day, I meet with Deputy Prime Minister Haim Ramon in his half-empty office. Ramon has spent most of the last 15 years in the Cabinet, and was once touted as the Bill Clinton of the Labor Party, before his career was briefly derailed by a sexual harassment case. Now he is the second-ranking member of the government.

“The prime minister and the defense minister had talks with four eyes and six eyes with the president about Iran,” Ramon says, using the Israeli locution for private meetings. “Those talks were very important.” Before the NIE, Ramon says, he estimated the chances of a U.S. attack on Iran at 5 percent. Now he estimates the chances at 2 percent.

Bush told Olmert that he would not waste his precious last year in office on brokering a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians unless both sides were serious about reaching a deal. It is the opinion of the government of the State of Israel that a deal can in fact be reached, Ramon says. “It doesn’t mean that on the first of January, 2009, a Palestinian flag will be raised over Jerusalem, “ he cautions. “But we will reach a framework, a Declaration of Principles, in 2008, and that will be the agreement that will be implemented in the future.”

“A SHARP GLIMMER OF UNDERSTANDING PENETRATES MY FOGGY BRAIN”

When I ask Ramon whether he shares Olmert’s opinion that Israel will be “finished” if the two-state solution collapses, he cocks his head. “I say that Israel is risking itself as a Jewish and a democratic state,” he says. In Ramon’s view, and in the view of most members of the cabinet, continuing the occupation poses a strategic threat to Israel. “We are not doing a favor for the Palestinians,” Ramon says. “This is a conflict between Israel and Israel itself.”

It would be wonderful if the Palestinian government somehow gains enough strength to carry out its commitments under the road map, Ramon suggests. If not, he continues, “we have to take unilateral steps that will solve these issues.”

A sharp glimmer of understanding penetrates my foggy brain. The Americans and the Israelis speak with such assurance about reaching an agreement by the end of 2008 because they are talking about a paper agreement with a paper partner to create a state that will only exist on paper.

“WE NEED TO DEFINE OUR BORDERS AND TELL THEM, ‘BYE-BYE’”

If a strong Palestinian government “untainted by terror” never arises – as seems quite possible, if not likely – then Israel will withdraw from most of the West Bank anyway. “It is up to us to secure our own future,” Ramon says, spreading his hands wide apart.

“We can live without peace with the Palestinians, but we can’t continue to live with the occupation. We need to separate from them. We need to define our borders and tell them, ‘Bye-bye, go live however you want, and peace be with you. And, if you want to keep fighting, we’ll kill you until you stop.’”

Among the range of sources I speak to inside and outside the current Israeli government, no one suggests that Olmert’s weak coalition is up to the task of bulldozing large Israeli communities like Kiryat Arba that are located east of any future border. No one I talked to, from politicians to generals, expects combat-hardened U.S. or British or French troops to arrive to police the West Bank.

No one wants to see the West Bank become another Gaza Strip. No one believes the badly fractured Palestinian polity is capable of meeting its commitments. Which means that most Israeli troops and settlers will stay more or less exactly where they are today. If the Palestinian security commitments will mostly exist on paper, the Israeli disengagement from the West Bank, unlike the disengagement from Gaza, will also exist mostly on paper.

“A STROKE OF POLITICAL GENIUS”

From the standpoint of its inventors, at least, the paper disengagement is a stroke of political genius that gives all the parties most of what they want. The Israelis will get international credit for committing to do in the future what they are not able to do in the present – namely, to withdraw large numbers of Israeli soldiers and settlers from the West Bank.

The fiction of an Israeli withdrawal can support the fiction of a Palestinian state run by Abbas and Fatah, whose physical security will be insured by the presence of actual Israeli troops on the ground.

The Americans can get a diplomatic success that can give added credibility to a diplomatic alliance against Iran, or peacemaking efforts with Iran, depending on how the wind blows in the next six months.

Starved of political legitimacy and government funding, settlements east of the future border will slowly wither on the vine, making an actual Israeli withdrawal – when it happens, with or without the establishment of a Palestinian state, whether Fatah or Hamas is in charge – that much easier.

IN TWO YEARS, THE P.A. MAY NO LONGER EXIST, EVEN ON PAPER

It is easy to imagine why, within the historical parameters of the conflict, any Palestinian leader worth his salt would find such a reasonable yet utterly ridiculous exercise – in which the “right of return” is finally assigned to the dustbin of history – to be an unbearable humiliation, and refuse to sign it, just as Yasser Arafat refused to sign the real-life version of the same agreement at Camp David.

Then again, in another two or three years, the Palestinian Authority may no longer exist, even on paper. The fact that the State of Israel is widely loathed does not diminish the extent to which 15 years of failed Palestinian state-building followed by the failure of the Second Intifada have turned the Palestinian national cause into a byword for gruesome terror bombings and children wearing toy suicide belts in parades.

All you need to do is spend a day driving around Israel and then through the West Bank to see the results of the last 15 years. Israel is a modern First World country whose standard of living is much higher now than it was before Oslo. The Palestinians are beggars.

“DON’T TOUCH THAT, IT’S GARBAGE”

I spend my last few days wandering the Old City of Jerusalem and getting reacquainted with Palestinians I know in the antiquities trade.

My friend Badawi’s store is filled with junk, which he uses as a way to calibrate the wants of his customers and what they will be willing to pay. There are strings of silver-inlaid worry beads, engraved plates, daggers, traditional Palestinian headdresses, and other heirlooms that West Bank villagers have sold to feed their families.

“Don’t touch that, it’s garbage,” he instructs me, when I pick up some Turkmeni rings from a bowl.

What I have learned from the afternoons I have spent sitting in Badawi’s shop is that commerce is different in Middle Eastern societies than in Anglo-European societies, where commodities are stubbornly believed to have a natural price.

As a result, most Western people find prolonged negotiation to be quite stressful. They pay too much, or become flustered and walk out. Here, fantasy and desire are the acknowledged foundations of any negotiation; negotiation is a way of understanding the mind of your opponent before arriving at a price.

SPOUTING SLOGANS AGAINST THE JEWS

When we are finished eating lunch, I go across the way to visit Mahmoud, another dealer I have known for years. Bundled up against the cold, he talks about his education at St. George’s School in East Jerusalem.

A year and a half ago, his son came home from school spouting slogans against the Jews, he says. After consulting with a friend, he enrolled his son in a program for cross- cultural understanding at the YMCA in West Jerusalem and paid to send him on a month-long group trip to Austria. Now his son has Jewish friends.

Still, Mahmoud watches where his son goes, and with whom. As he talks, he reminds me of the parents I have met in inner-city neighborhoods who try to keep their kids away from gangs and drugs. No one could ever convince Mahmoud that Jewish supremacy in his ancestral city is just, any more than they could convince him that the Palestinian national movement since Oslo has been anything other than a failure.

“I went to the mosque today, and the sheik was talking about the difference between legal settlement and illegal settlements,” he says, in his soft voice, seeking to define the situation more precisely. “And one man stood up and said, ‘There is no difference between settlements and the State of Israel. The fundamental basis of the state is illegal.’

“Now, it doesn’t matter whether I agree with him or not,” he continues. “But, when I was leaving the mosque, I turned to my friend and I asked him, ‘What do we want? Do we want these slogans from the past, or do we want a state?’ My friend couldn’t answer me. This is the problem of Palestine today.”

(David Samuels writes for The Atlantic, Harper’s, and The New Yorker.)