Israel Update for September 2005

SIMPLE FARMER

For the first time ever, Ariel Sharon addressed the UN General Assembly during his September visit-prompting several Islamic delegations to storm out of the illustrious chamber, including Iranian and Syrian diplomats.

After repeating the usual mantra that "Jerusalem is Israel's eternal capital" and noting that he is a farmer as well as a politician who "loves the land of Israel," Sharon surprised many Likud activists by echoing most other world leaders in calling for the establishment of a Palestinian state next to Israel.

"The Palestinians will always be our neighbors. We respect them, and have no aspirations to rule over them. They are also entitled to freedom and to a national, sovereign existence in a state of their own." However, the Premier went on to call upon Palestinian leaders to "end all terrorism and incitement of violence and hatred" against Israelis if they want such a state to flourish. The UN speech came one week after Sharon told Israel's Channel 10 that "not all settlements in Judea and Samaria today will remain Israeli."

While Sharon was basking in the glow of his generally well-received UN speech, Israeli Attorney General Menachem Mazuz announced he would look into media reports that the PM had violated campaign laws by accepting large contributions from wealthy Jewish couples who paid $10,000 to attend a gala fundraising dinner in New York. Under Israeli law, campaign contributions from foreign donors are limited to $7,500 per couple. Several were said to have given additional sums to the Sharon campaign. The reports hardly helped his Likud party re-election prospects, refreshing memories of earlier campaign finance scandals that have shaken the Sharon family.

OVER AND UNDER THE TOP

Binyamin Netanyahu's standing in the fractured Likud party and the wider populace rose after one of his main complaints concerning PM Sharon's Gaza withdrawal plan proved prescient. He had long argued against the proposal to abandon control of the Philadelphi Corridor, located along the strategic southern Gaza border with Egypt, to Palestinian and Egyptian control. This would seriously endanger Israel's future security, he warned, with the border morphing into a major weapons smuggling conduit. Arab security personnel would do little if anything to stop illegal cross-border smuggling of heavy weapons, Netanyahu forecast, despite the fact that such arms are banned under the 1993 Oslo accord. Such weapons would then be used to launch ever more dangerous attacks upon nearby Israeli population centers like Ashkelon.

Even strong Israeli advocates of the government's Gaza withdrawal plan were shocked over how quickly Palestinian and Egyptian security personnel lost all control over the border corridor. This came soon after Sharon agreed to a compromise Egyptian plan that would close the Rafah border crossing outpost for up to six months while repairs are made, to be reopened under the auspices of European security monitors.

The chaotic border scenario unfolded when hundreds of Palestinians burrowed or blasted holes in the border fence and poured into Egyptian territory just hours after the final Israeli soldiers left the Gaza Strip on September 12th. Later the same day, lightly-armed Egyptian border guards were overwhelmed as tens of thousands of Palestinians forced their way through the Rafah crossing point. Who was entering Sinai and where they were going was anybody's guess. Many Palestinians said they were simply hoping to be reunited with family members living on the Egyptian side of the border. But others quickly faded into the sandy desert; their whereabouts and future intentions unknown.

Israeli media outlets reported that dozens of shoulder-launched anti-tank and aircraft rockets had been smuggled into Gaza across the porous border, which was finally sealed on September 18th by reinforced Egyptian and Palestinian forces after being virtually open to all comers for over one week. However Israeli army intelligence officials later countered these reports, stating that no such rockets or other heavy weaponry made it into the Gaza Strip. Still they estimated that up to 2,000 Russian-made rifles and many hand grenades and bullets were brought in by returning Palestinians, along with other banned weapons and illegal drugs. Later, the Ma'ariv newspaper reported that Kais Obeid, a senior Hizbullah leader in charge of overseeing terrorist contacts with the Palestinians, had actually flown from Beirut to Sinai to meet with leaders of the Fatah-linked Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades terror group who had slipped across the unsecured border.

While an estimated 100,000 Palestinians were traipsing back and forth across the open border, a general alert was sounded in Israel when a large hole was discovered in the northern Gaza Strip security fence, not far from Ariel Sharon's private ranch. Authorities ordered local Israeli residents to remain in their homes as a search was conducted for the suspected infiltrators. Although it later turned out that involved Palestinians were simply entering Israel to look for work, the breech raised fresh concerns that determined terrorists will take advantage of the lack of internal Israeli control in the Gaza coastal zone to plan and execute new terrorist atrocities.

BURNING PASSIONS

The Israeli public was equally traumatized in September when thousands of Palestinians went on a televised rampage in and around all uprooted Gaza Strip Jewish communities. The looting later spread to a couple of evacuated settlements in the hills of northern Samaria that were supposed to be still under overall Israeli army control.

Although it had long been anticipated that Hamas militants would dance on the roofs of abandoned Israeli homes, it was not expected that they would gleefully desecrate former Jewish synagogues while rejoicing over their perceived 'victory over the Zionist enemy.' There was additional widespread disgust when hundreds of Arab vandals plundered technologically advanced agricultural hothouses in the southern Gaza Strip that had been purchased by wealthy American Jews to provide continuing employment for local Palestinian residents.