Israel Update for August 2009

At the same time, the Ha'aretz newspaper reported that Netanyahu-worried about the stability of his coalition which includes several pro-settlement parties, including his own Likud party-has approved a plan devised during the previous Olmert government to construct up to 450 apartment units and homes in the large Jewish neighborhood of Pisgat Ze'ev, located in northeast Jerusalem. Construction will reportedly begin early next year. The Israeli leader has stated several times in recent months that he will not halt building inside any portion of Jerusalem's wide municipal boundaries. The United States government insists on at least a one year total construction freeze, including in portions of Jerusalem captured by Israel in 1967.

Plans were filed with the Jerusalem municipality on August 23 for a new Jewish housing project called Ma'ale David. The proposed gated community would include over 100 luxury apartments in several buildings, a communal swimming pool, and a synagogue. The new homes would be built in the middle of the Arab neighborhood of Ras Al Amud on land owned by Bukharan Jews since the nineteenth century. The land was previously the site of Israel's Judea and Samaria police headquarters, which has been moved to an area below the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives. Anti-settlement Arab and Israeli groups are expected to strongly oppose the project.

Meanwhile Israel's capital city was again the scene of Palestinian-Israeli building tussles during the month. Several Arab families were evicted after the Supreme Court ruled in favour of a number of Jewish families who had earlier judicially proven that the homes belonged to their relatives before the Arab residents had illegally occupied them after five Arab armies attacked the nascent Jewish State in 1948. The evictions were quickly condemned by the US and British governments. The Israeli Peace Now group noted that many Jews are living in homes in other parts of the city whose original Arab owners had fled the fighting, expecting to return after the anticipated military annihilation of the emerging state.

Several weeks later, dozens of left wing protesters who oppose Jewish home building in eastern Jerusalem clashed with right wing supporters of such construction. The confrontations took place outside of the former Arab-run Shepherd Hotel one mile north of the Temple Mount, which is scheduled to be transformed into apartments for observant Jews.

The demonstrators were there in response to a special dinner being held inside the building, where former US Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee was the featured guest. Now the host of his own television programme on the Fox News cable channel, Huckabee later told reporters that he "honestly assessed" President Obama's proposal "to establish a Palestinian state in the middle of the Jewish homeland" to be "virtually unrealistic."

Little Town Of Bethlehem

As if to confirm Huckabee's contention, some 2,000 delegates from the Palestine Liberation Organization gathered in the Arab town of Bethlehem in August for a fiery convention which hardly added to expectations that Obama's emerging peace plan will eventually be implemented. Indeed, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said the convention had "buried the peace process" for some time to come. The Fatah parlay, in the world renowned Judean town where Israel's ancient King David and his descendent Jesus were born, was the first formal PLO political gathering in over 20 years.

The "Sixth General Assembly" featured many hard line threats and accusations against Israel, along with fierce disputes between rival factions inside the PLO that actually led to fistfights on several occasions. The main battle lines were drawn between the so-called "Old Guard" led by Yasser Arafat's successor as PLO chief, Mahmoud Abbas and other longtime Arafat cronies, and the "Young Guard" that publicly demands internal reforms in the organization-widely viewed as full of corruption.

Even before the convention got underway the first week of August, disputes were swirling over who was or was not allowed to attend. The radical Hamas movement announced that it would not permit any of the nearly 400 Fatah delegates who reside in the Gaza Strip to travel to Bethlehem unless Abbas released hundreds of Hamas activists arrested in his Palestinian Authority zones of control in recent months, which he refused to do. The PA chief then publicly promised the Gaza delegates that their phoned in votes would be counted for the election of a new 21 member PLO Central Committee and a 120 member Revolutionary Council (historians say the 120 number was chosen when the PLO was founded in 1964 in a deliberate attempt to mirror, and eventually replace, the 120 member Israeli Knesset).

Several Israeli Knesset members expressed disgust when it was learned that the Netanyahu government was allowing a number of prominent Palestinian terrorists to cross Israeli security lines to attend the Fatah convention. Among them was Khalad Abu Asba who participated in the worst ever PLO terror attack in 1978, known as the Coastal Road Massacre. The heinous assault left 38 Israeli bus passengers dead, including 13 children, and over 70 wounded. Widespread Israeli public anger that Abu Asba had been allowed to attend the Fatah convention only intensified when he brazenly told the gathering that he had "no remorse" over taking part in the massacre.

Rigged Vote?

The missing Gaza delegates and their mostly "Young Guard" supporters charged that their ballots had mostly not been counted in the final vote tallies, which they claimed swung the Fatah elections entirely in favor of Abbas and his Old Guard camp. In fact, all 21 of the PLO Central Committee candidates endorsed by the PA leader were initially said to have been elected, which prompted some delegates to term the vote more fraudulent than the apparently rigged Iranian presidential election last June. Many angry delegates declared that they would break away and form a new political grouping to rival Fatah, which dozens later did after the convention ended.

Realizing that the acrimonious gathering might actually erode into armed clashes, Abbas tired to quell the storm by announcing that a recount would be held where it would be made certain that all Gaza votes were included in the tally. Somewhat different results were then announced after the convention had formally ended, including the election of a female candidate (none had won in the first vote tally), along with several prominent Young Guard leaders. Still this did not end the disputes, and the entire Gaza Strip Fatah leadership resigned from the party to protest what they termed "massive voting fraud."

Chief among the announced Young Guard winners was Marwan Barghouti, who many left wing Israelis and Palestinians would like to see become the next PLO chief since they believe he has the popular street support to carry on with Yasser Arafat's "pragmatic" style of peacemaking, which combined an olive branch with a gun. The former Tanzim militia force leader is currently serving five life sentences in an Israeli jail for his involvement in plotting several Tanzim terror attacks that took five Israeli lives during the Al Aksa uprising earlier this decade. Another surprise winner is actually an Israeli Jew, Uri Davis, known for his strident anti-Zionist political leanings.