By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
Ha'aretz
The way things looked yesterday afternoon, the cease-fire hadn't breathed its last. According to Hamas, the official expiration date falls today, December 19. But in fact, resuscitation efforts - by the Israelis, mostly - continue. Paradoxically, it's defense officials regularly accused of warmongering who are trying to prevent renewed fighting.
True, rockets have been hitting communities around Gaza in recent weeks, but senior security officials still feel the time is not yet ripe for a broad ground operation. This is the view not only of Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Maj. Gen. (res.) Amos Gilad, head of the Defense Ministry's political bureau, but also of Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, who isn't pressing for action either.
There are myriad arguments against a war in Gaza, but the strongest is the one defense officials can't utter aloud because it has to do with the politicians above them. It would be hard to go into Gaza at the height of an election campaign. When one considers how political battles are already affecting decision making and public statements, it's not difficult to imagine what it would be like to try to run a war in the period leading up to the vote.
So for the time being we can expect turbulent times along the Gaza border, but in the slightly longer run, Israel (and more importantly, perhaps, Hamas) does not have an interest in an all-out confrontation. Even when the pronouncements sound more insistent than ever, it's worth recalling how many times in recent years Israel has found itself in a similar situation - and ultimately decided not to take action. It's quite possible that a major operation will eventually take place, but the decision to go ahead will only be made when there's a genuine sense that there is no other choice.
The Israel Defense Forces recently updated its operational plans for various potential escalation scenarios. It has also formulated different levels of response that fall short of an all-out war. But the chief of staff knows that there's no such thing as a half-war, and that even a limited entry into part of the territory (the logical targets would be the rocket-launching areas in northern Gaza and the smuggling zone in the south) could evolve into something bigger.
And while the military plan is relatively clear, there is still a gaping hole in the political sphere: Just what will Israel do after the IDF occupies the Gaza Strip? The ministers currently pushing for action are liable to find themselves in the position of former U.S. secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to admit that the Bush administration did not adequately prepare itself for what would happen after the occupation of Iraq. "Stuff happens," Rumsfeld explained with a shrug when confronted with images of the widespread mayhem in Baghdad.
Amos Gilad has made it clear in media interviews that we saw what happened when we went into Lebanon in 1982 to expel Fatah and ended up creating Hezbollah. We need to take into account that an occupation of the Gaza Strip would require us to feed 1.5 million people, endanger relations with Egypt and Jordan and potentially ignite a firestorm in the Muslim world.
It's hard to say that Israel made the most of the months of the cease-fire. The government approved the budget for upgrading the protection of communities near Gaza only two weeks ago, after six months of pleading from Barak and Ashkenazi. Introduction of the Iron Dome system for rocket interception is not likely to meet the ambitious timetable set by the defense establishment.
A rocket expert familiar with the program says that "Rafael [Advanced Defense Systems] is doing excellent work, but there are still some problems in integrating all the parts. One reason is that Barak did not a appoint someone as a 'czar' holding all the authority, as was done in the past with projects like the Arrow missile." The saga of the flawed handling of the Qassam interception program will soon receive a scathing assessment in a report by the state comptroller.
Early electioneering
The Israeli reporters invited to the office of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Tuesday evening asked him a raft of questions about the upcoming Israeli election. Abbas, with Israeli MK Ahmed Tibi (Ta'al) in attendance, was evasive. "It's an internal Israeli matter. We'll work with any government that is elected in Israel," he said.
When asked about continuing his tenure, he explained almost casually that there will be elections for the Palestinian presidency and parliament next year. Even though Hamas opposes early parliamentary elections, which are currently scheduled for January 2010, Abbas said that if the attempts to renew the dialogue between Fatah and Hamas are not fruitful, he will unilaterally declare early elections. "And what will happen if Hamas refuses to go along? How will you hold elections in Gaza?" he was asked. He didn't have an answer.
Although the likelihood of elections in the territories soon is low, the two organizations were going at it this week as if they were in the throes of a heated campaign. Last Saturday, Hamas held a rally in Gaza marking the 21st anniversary of its founding, and the crowd numbered around 200,000. It was a tremendous show of power, not only because of the event's magnitude (about every seventh Gazan took part), but also because of the exemplary order. A Gazan journalist says the money Hamas spent on the rally could have easily helped several thousand people survive the difficult siege conditions for another month.
Meanwhile, on Monday at the Muqata in Ramallah, there was a reception for the 227 prisoners Israel released as a gesture to Abbas. The crowd here was only in the hundreds, but they waved Fatah and Palestinian flags and cheered loud and long for Abbas when he began to speak. Ironically, while Abbas and Fatah are succeeding where Hamas has so far failed - prisoner releases and improving the economy - Fatah had trouble recruiting a big crowd for its event.
But Hamas has other problems to contend with. The consensus that once prevailed in the organization is cracking. At the beginning of the week, the rifts were hard to obscure, as Khaled Meshal, head of the political bureau in Damascus, announced that the truce was ending, while Hamas spokesmen in Gaza were saying that everything was still open. Within 24 hours, everybody in Damascus and Gaza was touting the new official line: The cease-fire is over, but Hamas will respond only if attacked by Israel.
Like the frog in the pot
The repulsive spectacle about Gilad Shalit staged by Hamas at its Gaza rally once again reflects the deep cultural chasm between the two sides. While the organization follows the Israeli media and many of its leaders are alumni of Israeli prisons, they still don't get us and we don't get them. The show in Gaza was a modern incarnation of an old Islamic practice of publicly scorning an enemy before going out to battle. It's also Hezbollah-type thinking, aimed at the soft underbelly - public consciousness. However, if the hope in Gaza was that such a spectacle would hurt Israeli morale, it mainly evoked disgust at Hamas' disdain for human life. At the same time, it's very possible that the numerous ways Israeli is putting pressure on the people in Gaza is only boosting support for Hamas.
The Shalit affair has become a pretext for political mudslinging, which isn't doing a thing to help secure his release. The organizations calling for his release have become a national movement, headed by a retired brigadier general and with the soldier's picture printed on T-shirts. It's hard to know if any of this is bringing results or only reinforcing Hamas' assessment that it can break Israel's fortitude.
The handling of the Shalit affair will certainly be pored over in the future. The foul-ups, particularly at the start, could well deserve the state comptroller's scrutiny. There were plenty of steps that Israel could have taken early on: declaring the Palestinian prisoners and Shalit prisoners of war, forbidding Red Cross visits to the prisoners, or abducting Hamas members from Gaza to serve as bargaining chips. Each of these ideas has its potential benefits and risks. But any move like this would also have necessitated negotiations that would last even more months, during which the risk of Shalit being harmed or disappearing would increase.
It's unlikely that Shalit will return home during the tenure of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, under whom the abduction occurred. Ofer Dekel, the coordinator of the negotiations who has already considered resigning several times, will probably step down around the time Olmert leaves office. The exhausting negotiations before the prisoner swap with Hezbollah placed him in a harsh confrontation with the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet security service.
The argument between Dekel and Shin Bet chief Diskin has not abated and is particularly charged. It is still going on for two basic reasons: The IDF messed up when it did not thwart the abduction and the Shin Bet messed up when it couldn't locate Shalit.
Throughout the time that has passed since, various operational plans for rescuing Shalit from Gaza have been considered. But they never went ahead because the intelligence wasn't precise enough and the army couldn't come up with a plan with a good chance of rescuing Shalit while getting the rescue force out of Gaza with minimal casualties. The IDF is presuming that Hamas has learned the lessons of the failed Nachshon Wachsman rescue operation, which ended with the soldier being killed by his captors when the Sayeret Matkal burst in to where he was being held. Arab media reports that Shalit is being held somewhere booby-trapped with explosives are being taken as credible.
There are plenty of logical explanations on why Shalit has still not been rescued, more than 900 days since he was abducted, just as there are plenty of excellent reasons not to re-occupy the Gaza Strip. But Israel's dilemma is reminiscent of the fable about the frog that's put into a pot of hot water where the temperature rises one degree at a time. The creature becomes accustomed to the steadily worsening situation without fully appreciating its implications.
Police say youths in southern Sweden set fires and hurled rocks at police in unrest sparked by the closure of an Islamic cultural center.
Police spokesman Charley Nilsson says no injuries have been reported, but several trailers, containers, garbage bins and at least two cars were set ablaze in Malmo, Sweden's third largest city. One person was arrested.
The violence has escalated every night since Monday, when police removed squatters protesting the eviction of an Islamic group from their basement premises in an immigrant neighborhood. Nilsson says leftist activists from other parts of the city have joined the protests.
Police say there are no immediate signs of a link to the violent protests in Greece.
United States 143,000
Britain 4,100
Romania 600
Australia 300
El Salvador 200
Denmark 55
Lithuania 53
Estonia 38
AP:
Turkish nationalists have criticized the online apology and on Monday a group of some 60 retired Turkish diplomats described the move "as unfair, wrong and unfavorable to national interests."
"Such an incorrect and one-sided attempt would mean disrespecting our history," the diplomats said. Devlet Bahceli, the leader of the Nationalist Action Party said: "No one has the right to insult our ancestors, to present them as criminals and to ask for an apology."
By late Monday, there were no public threats of legal action over the petition.
Charter 08
The following text of Charter 08, signed by hundreds of Chinese intellectuals and translated and introduced by Perry Link, Professor of Chinese Literature at the University of California, Riverside, will be published in the issue of The New York Review dated January 15, which goes on sale on January 2.
The document below, signed by over three hundred prominent Chinese citizens, was conceived and written in conscious admiration of the founding of Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia, where, in January 1977, more than two hundred Czech and Slovak intellectuals formed a loose, informal, and open association of people... united by the will to strive individually and collectively for respect for human and civil rights in our country and throughout the world.
The Chinese document calls not for ameliorative reform of the current political system but for an end to some of its essential features, including one-party rule, and their replacement with a system based on human rights and democracy.
The prominent citizens who have signed the document are from both outside and inside the government, and include not only well-known dissidents and intellectuals, but also middle-level officials and rural leaders. They have chosen December 10, the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the day on which to express their political ideas and to outline their vision of a constitutional, democratic
On December 8 two prominent signers of the Charter, Zhang Zuhua and Liu Xiaobo, were detained by the police. Zhang Zuhua has since been released; as of December 9, Liu Xiabo remains in custody.
—Perry Link
Chrysalids
I. Foreword
A hundred years have passed since the writing of
By departing from these values, the Chinese government’s approach to “modernization” has proven disastrous. It has stripped people of their rights, destroyed their dignity, and corrupted normal human intercourse. So we ask: Where is
The shock of the Western impact upon
The failure of both “self-strengthening” and political renovation caused many of our forebears to reflect deeply on whether a “cultural illness” was afflicting our country. This mood gave rise, during the May Fourth Movement of the late 1910s, to the championing of “science and democracy.” Yet that effort, too, foundered as warlord chaos persisted and the Japanese invasion [beginning in
Victory over
During the last two decades of the twentieth century the government policy of “Reform and Opening” gave the Chinese people relief from the pervasive poverty and totalitarianism of the Mao Zedong era and brought substantial increases in the wealth and living standards of many Chinese as well as a partial restoration of economic freedom and economic rights. Civil society began to grow, and popular calls for more rights and more political freedom have grown apace. As the ruling elite itself moved toward private ownership and the market economy, it began to shift from an outright rejection of “rights” to a partial acknowledgment of them.
In 1998 the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase “respect and protect human rights”; and this year, 2008, it has promised to promote a “national human rights action plan.” Unfortunately most of this political progress has extended no further than the paper on which it is written. The political reality, which is plain for anyone to see, is that
The stultifying results are endemic official corruption, an undermining of the rule of law, weak human rights, decay in public ethics, crony capitalism, growing inequality between the wealthy and the poor, pillage of the natural environment as well as of the human and historical environments, and the exacerbation of a long list of social conflicts, especially, in recent times, a sharpening animosity between officials and ordinary people.
As these conflicts and crises grow ever more intense, and as the ruling elite continues with impunity to crush and to strip away the rights of citizens to freedom, to property, and to the pursuit of happiness, we see the powerless in our society—the vulnerable groups, the people who have been suppressed and monitored, who have suffered cruelty and even torture, and who have had no adequate avenues for their protests, no courts to hear their pleas—becoming more militant and raising the possibility of a violent conflict of disastrous proportions. The decline of the current system has reached the point where change is no longer optional.
II. Our Fundamental Principles
This is a historic moment for
Freedom. Freedom is at the core of universal human values. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom in where to live, and the freedoms to strike, to demonstrate, and to protest, among others, are the forms that freedom takes. Without freedom,
Human rights. Human rights are not bestowed by a state. Every person is born with inherent rights to dignity and freedom. The government exists for the protection of the human rights of its citizens. The exercise of state power must be authorized by the people. The succession of political disasters in
Equality. The integrity, dignity, and freedom of every person—regardless of social station, occupation, sex, economic condition, ethnicity, skin color, religion, or political belief—are the same as those of any other. Principles of equality before the law and equality of social, economic, cultural, civil, and political rights must be upheld.
Republicanism. Republicanism, which holds that power should be balanced among different branches of government and competing interests should be served, resembles the traditional Chinese political ideal of “fairness in all under heaven.” It allows different interest groups and social assemblies, and people with a variety of cultures and beliefs, to exercise democratic self-government and to deliberate in order to reach peaceful resolution of public questions on a basis of equal access to government and free and fair competition.
Democracy. The most fundamental principles of democracy are that the people are sovereign and the people select their government. Democracy has these characteristics: (1) Political power begins with the people and the legitimacy of a regime derives from the people. (2) Political power is exercised through choices that the people make. (3) The holders of major official posts in government at all levels are determined through periodic competitive elections. (4) While honoring the will of the majority, the fundamental dignity, freedom, and human rights of minorities are protected. In short, democracy is a modern means for achieving government truly “of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
Constitutional rule. Constitutional rule is rule through a legal system and legal regulations to implement principles that are spelled out in a constitution. It means protecting the freedom and the rights of citizens, limiting and defining the scope of legitimate government power, and providing the administrative apparatus necessary to serve these ends.
III. What We Advocate
Authoritarianism is in general decline throughout the world; in
1. A New Constitution. We should recast our present constitution, rescinding its provisions that contradict the principle that sovereignty resides with the people and turning it into a document that genuinely guarantees human rights, authorizes the exercise of public power, and serves as the legal underpinning of
2. Separation of powers. We should construct a modern government in which the separation of legislative, judicial, and executive power is guaranteed. We need an Administrative Law that defines the scope of government responsibility and prevents abuse of administrative power. Government should be responsible to taxpayers. Division of power between provincial governments and the central government should adhere to the principle that central powers are only those specifically granted by the constitution and all other powers belong to the local governments.
3. Legislative democracy. Members of legislative bodies at all levels should be chosen by direct election, and legislative democracy should observe just and impartial principles.
4. An Independent Judiciary. The rule of law must be above the interests of any particular political party and judges must be independent. We need to establish a constitutional supreme court and institute procedures for constitutional review. As soon as possible, we should abolish all of the Committees on Political and Legal Affairs that now allow Communist Party officials at every level to decide politically-sensitive cases in advance and out of court. We should strictly forbid the use of public offices for private purposes.
5. Public Control of Public Servants. The military should be made answerable to the national government, not to a political party, and should be made more professional. Military personnel should swear allegiance to the constitution and remain nonpartisan. Political party organizations shall be prohibited in the military. All public officials including police should serve as nonpartisans, and the current practice of favoring one political party in the hiring of public servants must end.
6. Guarantee of Human Rights. There shall be strict guarantees of human rights and respect for human dignity. There should be a Human Rights Committee, responsible to the highest legislative body, that will prevent the government from abusing public power in violation of human rights. A democratic and constitutional
7. Election of Public Officials. There shall be a comprehensive system of democratic elections based on “one person, one vote.” The direct election of administrative heads at the levels of county, city, province, and nation should be systematically implemented. The rights to hold periodic free elections and to participate in them as a citizen are inalienable.
8. Rural–Urban Equality. The two-tier household registry system must be abolished. This system favors urban residents and harms rural residents. We should establish instead a system that gives every citizen the same constitutional rights and the same freedom to choose where to live.
9. Freedom to Form Groups. The right of citizens to form groups must be guaranteed. The current system for registering nongovernment groups, which requires a group to be “approved,” should be replaced by a system in which a group simply registers itself. The formation of political parties should be governed by the constitution and the laws, which means that we must abolish the special privilege of one party to monopolize power and must guarantee principles of free and fair competition among political parties.
10. Freedom to Assemble. The constitution provides that peaceful assembly, demonstration, protest, and freedom of expression are fundamental rights of a citizen. The ruling party and the government must not be permitted to subject these to illegal interference or unconstitutional obstruction.
11. Freedom of Expression. We should make freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom universal, thereby guaranteeing that citizens can be informed and can exercise their right of political supervision. These freedoms should be upheld by a Press Law that abolishes political restrictions on the press. The provision in the current Criminal Law that refers to “the crime of incitement to subvert state power” must be abolished. We should end the practice of viewing words as crimes.
12. Freedom of Religion. We must guarantee freedom of religion and belief and institute a separation of religion and state. There must be no governmental interference in peaceful religious activities. We should abolish any laws, regulations, or local rules that limit or suppress the religious freedom of citizens. We should abolish the current system that requires religious groups (and their places of worship) to get official approval in advance and substitute for it a system in which registry is optional and, for those who choose to register, automatic.
13. Civic Education. In our schools we should abolish political curriculums and examinations that are designed to indoctrinate students in state ideology and to instill support for the rule of one party. We should replace them with civic education that advances universal values and citizens’ rights, fosters civic consciousness, and promotes civic virtues that serve society.
14. Protection of Private Property. We should establish and protect the right to private property and promote an economic system of free and fair markets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce and industry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We should establish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to the national legislature, that will monitor the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderly manner. We should institute a land reform that promotes private ownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, and allows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected in the market.
15. Financial and Tax Reform. We should establish a democratically regulated and accountable system of public finance that ensures the protection of taxpayer rights and that operates through legal procedures. We need a system by which public revenues that belong to a certain level of government—central, provincial, county or local—are controlled at that level. We need major tax reform that will abolish any unfair taxes, simplify the tax system, and spread the tax burden fairly. Government officials should not be able to raise taxes, or institute new ones, without public deliberation and the approval of a democratic assembly. We should reform the ownership system in order to encourage competition among a wider variety of market participants.
16. Social Security. We should establish a fair and adequate social security system that covers all citizens and ensures basic access to education, health care, retirement security, and employment.
17. Protection of the Environment. We need to protect the natural environment and to promote development in a way that is sustainable and responsible to our descendents and to the rest of humanity. This means insisting that the state and its officials at all levels not only do what they must do to achieve these goals, but also accept the supervision and participation of non-governmental organizations.
18. A Federated Republic. A democratic
19. Truth in Reconciliation. We should restore the reputations of all people, including their family members, who suffered political stigma in the political campaigns of the past or who have been labeled as criminals because of their thought, speech, or faith. The state should pay reparations to these people. All political prisoners and prisoners of conscience must be released. There should be a Truth Investigation Commission charged with finding the facts about past injustices and atrocities, determining responsibility for them, upholding justice, and, on these bases, seeking social reconciliation.
China, as a major nation of the world, as one of five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, and as a member of the UN Council on Human Rights, should be contributing to peace for humankind and progress toward human rights. Unfortunately, we stand today as the only country among the major nations that remains mired in authoritarian politics. Our political system continues to produce human rights disasters and social crises, thereby not only constricting
Accordingly, we dare to put civic spirit into practice by announcing Charter 08. We hope that our fellow citizens who feel a similar sense of crisis, responsibility, and mission, whether they are inside the government or not, and regardless of their social status, will set aside small differences to embrace the broad goals of this citizens’ movement. Together we can work for major changes in Chinese society and for the rapid establishment of a free, democratic, and constitutional country. We can bring to reality the goals and ideals that our people have incessantly been seeking for more than a hundred years, and can bring a brilliant new chapter to Chinese civilization.
—translated from the Chinese by Perry Link
I didn't waltz while I was in Vienna a week ago. The toes I stepped on were metaphorical. They say it takes two to tango. Or to do a waltz. They also say it takes two to make peace. They (whoever they are) have never attended a peace conference.
Some 200 people sat in a splendid conference room at Vienna's Hofburg Congress Center, the former imperial palace, for the 16th International Media Seminar on Peace in the Middle East, organized by the UN's Department of Public Information and the Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs in Austria on December 2 and 3.
The city, smothered with Christmas decorations, seemed to be gift wrapped to welcome the participants. Since the theme of the conference was "The role of the international community," it is hardly surprising that the seminar was attended by more than just those directly affected by the Israeli-Palestinian situation. An Obama-supporting Native American by the name of Silverbird, for example, handed out business cards listing him as "ambassador, historian, entrepreneur."
Seeing as it was a media conference, I unapologetically spent time interviewing other journalists. Indeed, it was the discussions during coffee breaks or while seeking the nightlife in a city that goes to bed early which proved most interesting. A journalist from Jerusalem doesn't often get the chance to talk to a colleague from Algeria, even off the record.
A chat with the Cairo bureau chief of Al Arabiya News Channel, Randa Abul-Azm, was also illuminating. When I mentioned the Sunni-Shi'ite split, she countered: "That's an American invention. It didn't exist before the Iraqi invasion." I suggested that Egypt take some responsibility for Gaza, eliciting the response: "You can't expect Egypt to absorb the refugees. We're overcrowded as it is."
Fritz Froehlich, coordinator for "UNRWA at 60," pointed out that the problems have only just begun. In his assessment, the issue isn't the number of residents currently in Gaza, but the exponentially growing number in the future.
Many participants expressed concern about the Hamas hold on Gaza, cutting it off from the West Bank more effectively than any Israeli-imposed sanctions ever could.
Clearly we have a long way to go to reach solutions. The opening panel demonstrated just how far.
UN UNDER-SECRETARY General for Communications and Public Information Kiyo Akasaka stressed that "the process under way has kindled new hopes that peace can be attained" and read a message from Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urging: "If people are to have faith in the political process, there is a need for tangible improvements in living conditions and security."
Throughout, the UN struggled to preserve an image of impartiality. But the feeling of hope and goodwill dissipated as the PA's deputy foreign minister, Almutawakel Taha, took to the floor with a speech that strung together every cliché in the book, starting with: "The crucifixion continues in Palestine, not only of human beings but of birds, children, trees and houses..."
I wondered if the "so on and so forth" I heard through my headphones was the literal translation of Taha's speech or a sign the simultaneous interpreter couldn't keep up. This wasn't a peace dialogue; it was a Palestinian narrative. A very distorted version of the truth.
I sat there, far from home, wondering about the ramifications of walking out of the conference in its first session. I decided to stick around, if only to counter some of the arguments in my own speech in the afternoon panel. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait that long.
ELI DAYAN, a former deputy foreign minister in Israel, who spoke immediately after Taha, put aside his planned address and responded directly to Taha's attack. The Moroccan-born Dayan, kippa on head, recalled good neighborly relations with Arabs. He also noted that when he served as mayor of Ashkelon, the city where he still lives - under almost daily rocket fire - his first step was to create a working relationship with the mayor of Gaza. Such speeches don't help promote peace in any way, Dayan berated Taha.
Dayan said there is a consensus in Israel for the two-state solution and much of the Arab world is no longer taking the stance of non-recognition of Israel. "We should be looking ahead," Dayan said. He also took the co-hosts to task, stating: "The UN should lay off its ritual annual decisions condemning Israel, which have no effect."
His sentiments were echoed by two other Ashkelon residents: Benny Vaknin, who has just been reelected mayor after a period out of office, and a Mekorot water company official, Sion Cohen.
Vaknin, Cohen and others were in Vienna to discuss the Israel-Palestinian Civil Society Initiative, chaired by Prof. Ilan Juran. The initiative, which got off the ground following the Moscow seminar two years ago, furthers peacemaking through inter-community cooperation at a local level. Juran noted the joint wastewater program between Hadera and Beit Sahur. Hadera Mayor Haim Avitan explained the triple advantage: saving water, preventing pollution and building trust. Beit Sahur Mayor Hani al-Hayek also urged the use of joint projects for peace.
WHEN IT was my turn to speak, I felt like a party pooper. A string of panelists had warned Israel and the Palestinians that "time is running out." But how can you make real peace while holding a stopwatch? Peace is more than a signed document and photo opportunity. The aim should be to stop people from suffering or being killed. It seems more important to use the coming year to develop environmental, health and educational projects than to chase an elusive agreement, especially when the world's ability to fund even these projects is limited. Sitting comfortably in the old imperial palace, it was as if participants were deliberately avoiding the topic of the Iranian threat and evidence of global jihad.
I was also ignoring Austria's own past, although a German participant suggested I visit Vienna's Jewish Museum, and I wondered if I could find the building where my late aunt used to live - and, perhaps, a clue to the exact fate of her parents in the Holocaust.
One issue I was not prepared to overlook at a conference addressing human rights: captive IDF soldier Gilad Schalit and the several MIAs. A member of Women in Black heckled me about the Palestinian prisoners, but, I pointed out, she knew exactly where they are, how they spend their time, and when they can have visitors.
WHILE WE were away, Kassams continued to fall and terrorists were arrested on their way to carry out an attack in Tel Aviv. As I returned, Israeli police evacuated Hebron's House of Peace, and hotheads attacked local Palestinians. I was pleased I didn't have to face questions on that, inexcusable, behavior.
At Ben-Gurion Airport, I overheard a discussion about Hanukka presents. I collected my suitcase, put aside emotional baggage, and headed for home in Jerusalem, far from Vienna's Christmas lights.
We might not have made peace, or even danced together, but perhaps we had taken a step - or two - in the right direction.
The Tajikistan Foreign Ministry handed a Russian diplomat a protest note on Friday following the decapitation of a Tajik national last week near Moscow in what is believed to be a race-hate murder, according to Russian news agency RIA Novosti.
Investigators said earlier that the two Tajiks, aged 20 and 22, were returning from work through a local wood last Friday night when they were attacked by unknown assailants.
According to the Russian non-governmental organization SOVA, 68 people died and 262 were injured in racially motivated attacks in the country in the first eight months of this year. Eighty-five people died in race-hate murders in 2007 in
