The Sarah Palin shocker

Wasn't it impressive how Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain was able to keep the selection of his running mate, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, 44, a secret until an hour before the official announcement last Friday?

Sen. Barack Obama had earlier done a good job of keeping the Democratic vice-presidential choice, Sen. Joseph Biden, a surprise.

It's reassuring that there are still some politicians who can keep a secret.

Less classy, however, was how Palin diverted attention - when she was introduced to the media - from the out-of-wedlock pregnancy of her 17-year-old daughter, Bristol, by having the girl hold the governor's new baby. More on this later.

OBAMA'S CHOICE of Biden left me unmoved. Obama should have swallowed his pride and begged Hillary to be his running mate. She would have jumped at the chance - and old Bill could have been shut up with an appointment to the Supreme Court. An Obama-Clinton ticket would have been pretty unbeatable.

Biden first captured my attention in the 1970s because of the publicity he got over a series of partially successful hair transplants - let's just say it's an issue I track.

Since 1988, Biden's been a perennial presidential candidate. He roots for Israel when we're under attack, but probably won't support Israel's quest for safer boundaries. He's long opposed the presence of Jews in Judea and Samaria. And it's unlikely he'll be leading the charge against keeping Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Still, in picking another liberal senator, one with a strong Washington and foreign policy resume, Obama has done himself no harm.

WHEN YOU apply the "above all, do not harm" yardstick to McCain's selection, the results are far less straightforward. Sarah Palin's trajectory runs from her PTA to the Wasilla city council and mayoralty - Wasilla is 50 km. north of Anchorage - to, in December 2006, the governor's mansion.

John McCain reportedly met Palin just once, six months ago, before summoning her last week and offering her the job. She must have made a good first impression.

There's little question that in selecting Palin, McCain was focusing more on his electoral strategy than on what might happen after inauguration day. In that sense he reminds me of Ariel Sharon, who assumed he'd be around to manage politico-security affairs for years to come.

Politically, the choice of Palin seemed smart - at least until the story about Bristol's pregnancy broke.

McCain is distrusted by social conservatives. Palin's credentials as a reform-minded, pro-life, pro-gun, family values, frum Christian - someone who didn't hesitate to tax big oil or challenge the country-club wing of the Republican Party - certainly help shore up this important Republican constituency, which might otherwise have stayed home on election day.

Selecting what everyone assumed was a super-mom with charm - a mother of five, the youngest a Down syndrome child - has its appeal. Her main concerns, like those of most Americans, are domestic. If Biden tries to embarrass her in a debate by asking about the capital of Tajikistan (Dushanbe), he'll only make himself look smug. Most regular Americans don't know it, either.

At first the only controversy surrounding Palin involved her attempt to get her former brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. She's said her sister's ex threatened to kill their father.

But Bristol's pregnancy generates lots of questions: How can we believe that McCain knew about the 17-year-old's condition yet still selected Palin? My bet is he didn't know. And if he didn't, what does that tell you about the people McCain turns to for advice?

On the other hand, more than a third of births in America are to unmarried mothers. In places like New York City, a majority are out of wedlock. It's not the pregnancy that's such a big deal, it's the sense that Palin is a hypocrite. But maybe that's not the way Christians will see it. After all, didn't Jesus teach: "He that is without sin among you, let him cast the first stone..."

PALIN'S LACK of experience outside Alaska is very troubling. But I'm hoping that if he wins, McCain, 72, is going to be around long enough to mentor her.

In truth, as the Democrats correctly pointed out when Obama was being criticized for lack of experience, the Bush II administration was top-heavy with seasoned national security types: Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney - and they managed to lead America into a pointless war in Iraq.

Speaking of Iraq, let's pray that McCain will do an about-face, decide that the government of Iraq is "capable of governing itself" and honor Baghdad's request for a troop withdrawal by 2011. He'd also be wise to rethink his commitment to keep US troops on the ground until the first Jeffersonian democracy in the Arab world takes shape.

But what if Palin does have to become the commander-in-chief sooner rather than later?

The Obama campaign is dismissive: "John McCain put the former mayor of a town of 9,000 with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency." I'm not going to make believe they don't have a point. But for me, the even bigger question is whether Palin has the temperament, judgment and wisdom to be president. She doesn't have much executive experience - Alaska has only 700,000 people. Obama, of course, has no executive experience at all.

It's OK with me if she believes God created the world, and that maybe the threat of global warming is not quite as dire as Al Gore would have us believe. I'm more concerned about her character. Can she keep an open mind, can she analyze situations on a case-by-case basis - or will theology and ideology predetermine her decisions? Can she - for example - accept that abortion is a personal choice and should not be criminalized?

As for the Jewish angle, I'm relieved that McCain passed over two Jewish politicians - Congressman Eric Cantor and Senator Joe Lieberman. He also passed over a Mormon, and you don't see them getting their knickers in a twist. I live in a country where practically the entire government is Jewish - and, let me tell you, I sometimes long for a sympathetic Alaskan or Mormon to set matters right.

Something also tells me that Palin will be a powerful voice for making the US less dependent on Arab oil.

Am I bothered that Palin - like a majority of US Jews - has never been to Israel?

If only visiting here inoculated politicians from leaning on Israel to make dangerous concessions. Sometimes it does work out that way. But while Jimmy Carter could draw a topographical map of Israel blindfold, he's become an apologist for Arab intransigence. Bill Clinton was no stranger here, and yet he helped bring about Oslo.

Still, it's too bad that Palin was not on the radar of any major pro-Israel group, and that we know little about her attitude toward Israel, except that she has a tiny Israeli flag in her office.

OF COURSE, Israel isn't at the top of the agenda for most US Jews either. If it were, they'd be pressing Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin to oppose an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines; to support the inclusion of strategic settlement blocs in any final peace deal. US Jews would be demanding that the candidates denounce Mahmoud Abbas every time he openly demands the "right of return" for millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants to Israel proper; and they'd want the candidates to say whether they consider the Jerusalem neighborhoods of East Talpiot, Pisgat Ze'ev and Har Homa to be part of Israel's capital or not.

PALIN reportedly wore a "Pat Buchanan in 2000" button. She claims she really didn't endorse the affable anti-Semite. Whatever. I doubt she has a clue about Buchanan's attitude toward Jews. No one has suggested that her brief encounter with Buchanan is akin to Obama's long-term relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Like I said, most Jews won't be voting on the basis of what's best for Israel. And the last time I checked, Moses hadn't returned to say that Judaism and the liberalism of West Side Manhattan were one and the same. So it's outrageous to discount Palin because, in the words of one Jewish political operative quoted in the Post, "There is no Jew outside of Alaska who has had a relationship with her."

Excuse me? We're going to demonize Palin because she doesn't know from knishes?

Palin's husband, Todd, is part-Eskimo. I'd venture to say that, outside Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policemen's Union, few liberal Jews have met many Eskimos. That's probably because for all these folks' cosmopolitan pretenses, if you don't shop at Zabar's, you don't count. Talk about being parochial.

THE PALIN pregnancy business erupted as I was writing this column - the latest twist in an extraordinary campaign. It's shaping up to be the most fascinating presidential race since I moved to Israel - and stopped voting in US elections.

Protecting Israel's home front

Unlike apartment buildings in New York, London or Melbourne, most homes in Israel come equipped with bomb shelters. Newer dwellings have reinforced concrete "safe rooms," while older buildings rely on communal shelters.

Though they are ubiquitous, Israelis seldom give shelters much thought. Maybe we ought to - given recent statements by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that in any future war, life will not go on as usual. The next conflagration could well "reach the cities and homes of Israeli citizens."

Some, including former defense minister Moshe Arens, argue that such talk moves Israel perilously close to accepting the proposition that nothing can be done to protect the home front. In an interview with the Post, he decried what he sees as the abandonment of Israel's long-standing determination to make the protection of its civilian population the highest imperative.

THE HOME front first came under assault in the 1948 War of Independence, when the Egyptian air force bombed Tel Aviv. Once the IAF came into its own, the skies above were secured and the main threat facing civilians stemmed from terrorism.

Israeli strategists emphasized engaging the enemy on its territory. But, unfortunately, as the instruments of war available to our foes became more varied, shielding the home front wasn't always possible.

In the 1981 Gulf War, 39 crude (in terms of accuracy) SCUD missiles launched by Saddam Hussein's Iraq exploded in metropolitan Tel Aviv, causing damage but relatively little loss of life.

In May 1982 Palestinian terrorists, who then reigned supreme in south Lebanon, unleashed a barrage of 100 Katyushas on northern Galilee. Then, on June 3, Israel's ambassador in Britain, Shlomo Argov, was gravely wounded in an assassination attempt. Israel responded to these Palestinian provocations by launching Operation Peace for Galilee, whose immediate goal was to remove the rocket threat.

On average, two IDF soldiers lost their lives each month in the buffer zone Israel subsequently established in south Lebanon to protect the home front. Yet Israel's new enemy, Hizbullah, nevertheless managed - in April 1996 for example - to send rockets our way. While Israel's tough retaliation helped deliver a period of relative quiet to the civilian population, its stationing of troops on Lebanese soil proved unpopular. It was also a militarily dubious approach, prime minister Ehud Barak claimed.

Barak's abrupt pullout from Lebanon in 2000 allowed Hizbullah to set up shop flush against the border with Israel.

During the Second Lebanon War in summer 2006, Hizbullah's onslaught of 4,000 rockets and mortars reached practically as far south as Netanya, forcing a third of the population into shelters. Forty-three citizens were killed, including seven children. Hundreds were wounded.

In the south, meanwhile, following Israel's 1994 post-Oslo withdrawal from Gaza's Palestinian population centers, terrorists launched thousands of rockets and mortars against Israeli civilians. The situation deteriorated further after disengagement in 2005, when all Israeli citizens and soldiers pulled out of Gaza entirely.

The temporary cease-fire now in place, episodically violated by the Palestinians, is likely to end in grief.

The threats facing Israel's population from enemy projectiles - short- and long-range - are daunting: Iran has recently provided Hizbullah with missiles capable of hitting just about every part of Israel, reports say.

The strategic threats emanating from the arsenals of Iran and Syria, and the more tactical menace posed by Hizbullah and Hamas, demand individual assessment and appropriate counter-measures.

AS RECENTLY enunciated by Olmert, Israel's war strategy is "to bring about a quick victory at minimum cost" without conquering enemy territory yet without showing the kind of restraint the IDF manifested in Lebanon.

For Arens, the failure to conquer and hold enemy territory to put the guns out of range is anathema. He would employ ground action to promptly "eliminate" the "insufferable" threat of rockets in Gaza. He'd do the same with regard to short-range Hizbullah rockets, employing the IAF to handle their longer-range weaponry.

Jews did not return to Zion to sit in shelters, he says.

We urge current policymakers - whatever their chosen strategy - to discard any approach that embraces the irresponsible proposition that Israel's population cannot be protected. The mistakes of the Second Lebanon War must not be repeated, on any front.

Ramadan, 1429

From Granada in Spain and Aubervilliers in France, to Cairo and Jakarta, more than a billion Muslims are this month marking the "handing down" of the Koran. Through daytime fasting, Ramadan, which this year falls September 1-30, is a time to subjugate the body to the spirit.

The advent of Ramadan, which most Westerners would hardly have noticed a decade ago, now merits coverage in such disparate media as the Dallas News and London's Times.

In a passage that Jews who observe communal and personal fast days can identify with, a Muslim contributor to the Times explained that "The late afternoon is always the hardest part of the fast." The Los Angeles Daily News tells its readers that the fast is over only when the "crescent of the moon has been sighted," while The Iowa City Press Citizen empathizes with how difficult it must be to keep the holiday in a place where Muslims are a small minority.

This is also the period when the faithful try to resolve their differences peaceably.

The Pakistani military said it would suspend offensive operations against the Taliban.

As a Ramadan goodwill gesture, Egypt opened the Rafah crossing between Sinai and Gaza.

And Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement announced it is committed to negotiating with Hamas rather than fighting - even though the two sides can't even agree on the time of day. Daylight Savings Time in Gaza ended Saturday, but will last for several more days in the West Bank. Also in Gaza, thousands of government employees, among them teachers and medical workers associated with Fatah, are on strike against the Hamas government.

Curiously, this is also a time when some non-Muslims are prone to blame anyone but Muslims for the violence and frustration so prevalent in Islamic civilization.

For instance, an Agence France-Presse dispatch begins: "As most of the rest of the Islamic world welcomes Ramadan... Palestinians in the Gaza Strip warily brace for another holiday under a crippling [Israeli] blockade."

No mention is made of Hamas's adamant refusal to recognize previous Palestinian agreements, end violence against non-combatants, or even accept the right of the Jewish state to exist. There's nothing about Gilad Schalit; or about tons of humanitarian aid Israel has allowed in; or about the 200 Hamas-authorized (and revenue-producing) tunnels between Sinai and Gaza which funnel, among other commodities, arms, missiles and explosives; or about concerted preparations for further aggression. AFP notes only that "Israel has kept the sanctions in place despite a two-month-old truce with Palestinian militants which has mostly halted rocket fire on southern Israel."

DESPITE the fact that the second intifada was launched from the Temple Mount in September 2000, Israel is going to great lengths to accommodate Muslims from Judea and Samaria who wish to attend Friday prayers on the Mount. Married men between 45 and 50 and married women 30-45 can request entry permission, with the expectation that it will be granted. Men over 50 and women over 45 can enter freely.

In addition, for this month the opening hours of checkpoints between the West Bank and Israel proper are being extended. Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons will be allowed to receive special Ramadan packages from their loved ones. And Arab citizens of Israel will be permitted to enter PA-controlled Area A, from where all Israeli citizens are normally barred.

To sensitize Israeli soldiers who come into contact with Palestinian Arab civilians during the holiday, the Civil Administration has distributed leaflets explaining the times, dates and customs of Ramadan: "Soldiers [are] directed to show consideration for the population and instructed to avoid eating, drinking and smoking in populated areas, with an emphasis on the crossing points."

RAMADAN may be an appropriate time for Muslims to reflect on the challenges of faith and modernity. Much of the bloodletting in the Mideast and other Muslim population centers takes place among believers themselves - between those who appear ascendant, who want to return Islam to its most bellicose and imperialistic path, and those who seek coexistence with the "other."

Only when Muslims who aspire to live in harmony with those who do not share their faith are able to triumph over the fanatics will peace between civilizations become a reality.

For this, we too pray.

From Humphrey to Obama

On this day 40 years ago, Hubert H. Humphrey accepted the nomination of the Democratic Party for the presidency of the United States. As rioting raged outside the Chicago convention hall, he began his stirring oratory by citing St. Francis of Assisi: "Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light."

Humphrey, who ultimately lost to Richard M. Nixon, may have been the last instinctive friend of Israel to seek the presidency. It was uncomplicated to be a friend of Israel in 1968, even though Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, only weeks earlier.

It was clear in those days that Israel faced an Arab world that refused to accept a Jewish state anywhere in the Middle East; that whatever its blunders, Israel was fundamentally in the right; that Arab diplomacy from the 1917 Balfour Declaration through to the 1967 Arab Summit in Khartoum was nothing but a litany of rejectionism.

On the night Humphrey accepted the nomination, Barack Obama, born August 4, 1961, was seven years old. For Obama's generation, and even more for the ones following it, political, moral or theological certainties about Israel - or about anything else - are passé.

LAST NIGHT, as this newspaper was going to press, it was Obama's turn to accept the Democratic presidential nomination in Denver. Delegates had decamped to the Invesco Field at Mile High stadium so that Obama could speak in front of 75,000 enthusiastic supporters. Sen. Hillary Clinton had earlier moved that the nomination be offered to Obama by acclimation.

In the course of the convention, delegates heard vice presidential nominee Sen. Joe Biden declare that the Bush administration had failed to defeat al-Qaida and the Taliban, "the people who actually attacked us on 9/11," while getting bogged down in the war in Iraq.

They applauded as Bill Clinton declared: "Hillary told us in no uncertain terms that she'll do everything she can to elect Barack Obama. That makes two of us."

The Obama-McCain campaign kicks off in earnest after next week's Republican National Convention, and Israelis have been watching the presidential race with fascination. While the Israel-America relationship is fundamentally solid and bipartisan, Washington and Jerusalem have had their ups and downs in every administration from Harry S Truman to George W. Bush.

We do not take it for granted that both candidates define themselves as friends of Israel - yet friendship has to be backed by substance.

• On Iran, Obama says he does not want Israel to feel as if its "back is against the wall," and wants America "to act much more forcefully." Yet he would also try to talk the mullahs into being better global citizens. What specific steps on Iran would an Obama-Biden administration take in its first six weeks?

• On borders and settlements, this is what Obama told the Post in a July interview here: "Israel may seek '67-plus' and justify it in terms of the buffer that they need for security purposes. They've got to consider whether getting that buffer is worth the antagonism of the other party."

Biden once warned premier Menachem Begin that if Israel did not cease settlement in Judea and Samaria, the US would have to cut economic aid to Israel.

Do Obama and Biden think it is possible to be "pro-Israel" in 2008 while being sanguine over an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 Armistice Lines? Where does the campaign stand on strategic settlement blocs and a Jewish presence in such Jerusalem neighborhoods as Gilo, East Talpiot and Har Homa?

• On Palestinian refugees, Mahmoud Abbas has called for the "right of return" to Israel proper for the refugees and their descendents. What's the campaign's position?

IT MAY be unrealistic for Israelis to expect that an administration taking office in January 2009 will empathize with Israel the way a 1969 Humphrey White House might have.

But what the Obama-Biden ticket needs to demonstrate is that backing for a secure Israel living within defensible boundaries is as integral to Democrats today as it was when Hubert Humphrey was their standard-bearer.

WRAP -- Gilad Schalit and Little Rose

Police Blues

Aug. 26, 2008

Lurid details are now emerging about the murder of four-year-old Rose Ron - allegedly by her grandfather, with the complicity of her mother (the two were married). Police suspect Rose's body was placed in a suitcase and dumped in the Yarkon River.

Since the story of her disappearance first broke on Sunday and her haunting portrait seared itself into the public consciousness, we all feared something evil had happened to her. Now we know it did.

Meanwhile, two alleged organized crime figures, brothers Itzik and Meir Abergil, are facing extradition to the United States over their reputed involvement in the 2003 murder of an Israeli drug dealer in Los Angeles. Their syndicate is also reportedly implicated in the botched mob hit on a Bat Yam beach last month that saw an innocent bystander, Marguerita Lautin, shot dead in front of her children and husband.

Chaim Nachman Bialik, the legendary Hebrew poet, was said to have coined the Zionist credo: "When the first Jewish prostitute is arrested by the first Jewish policeman and sentenced by the first Jewish judge, we can consider ourselves a sovereign state."

Israel has achieved this, and more.

Protecting law-abiding citizens from evil and the criminal falls mostly to the guardians of civilized society, the police. Yet as the Post has been reporting since Monday, the police itself is under criticism: Key field assignments, set to take effect next year, have apparently been made on the basis of cronyism. Even the appearance of favoritism, let alone the reality, shakes the already wobbly faith of Israelis in their political and legal systems.

WHEN ISRAEL'S top cop, Insp.-Gen. David Cohen, decided to transfer his number two, Deputy Insp.-Gen. Shahar Ayalon, to the post of Tel Aviv police chief and replace him with the current head of the Tel Aviv district, Cmdr. Ilan Franco, he created at least the appearance of impropriety, casting himself and Avi Dichter the minister for internal security, in a dismal light.

Franco would be positioned to replace Cohen as Israel's top cop, even though a 2007 panel headed by former District Court Judge Vardi Zeiler specifically recommended against giving Franco the country's top police post. The Zeiler Committee was set up to examine the police command's questionable handling of suspicions that a rogue cop had maintained ties with underworld figures Oded and Sharon Perinian.

Besides his plan to promote Franco, Cohen also embarked on a series of appointments intended to help old friends (Dep.-Cmdr. Jackie Bray and Cmdr. Shai Amihai, for instance) and hinder those who aren't - specifically, Cmdr. Uri Bar-Lev, a reform-minded manager credited with a huge drop in crime in the southern district.

Rather than advance him through the ranks, Cohen allowed personal animosities to rule and ordered Bar-Lev to take paid educational leave. Bar-Lev, a decorated veteran of an elite IDF unit, already holds two undergraduate degrees and refused to waste public funds on unnecessary study or be put out to pasture. Cohen then released a bogus statement announcing that Bar-Lev had decided to quit, to which Bar-Lev responded: "I have no plans to resign for the next 10 years."

Bar-Lev is precisely the kind of policeman a good boss should be nurturing, and a chorus of universal outrage has rightly erupted over Cohen's abysmal treatment of him, and Dichter's failure to date to decisively rectify it.

CAN A force plagued by a lack of professionalism and a leadership vacuum afford to lose a commander of Bar-Lev's caliber? And for what? To make room for more of the commissioner's good ole' boys?

Israelis cannot help but wonder how we got saddled with the apparently mendacious Cohen and, in Dichter, a minister who seems more concerned with respecting "the organizational culture" of the police than its effectiveness.

This episode is not only about an honest, dedicated and charismatic cop being unwarrantedly shunted aside, but, most fundamentally, about a law enforcement organization begging for upstanding leadership, adequate resources and competent ministerial oversight - and, so far anyway, getting none of these.

The buck stops with Dichter, a former Shin Bet head and now a candidate for Kadima's leadership. The minister of internal security, who appointed Cohen to the commissioner's job, is failing the public, and should get a grip or hand over to someone who can.





'Unparalleled cruelty'
Aug. 26, 2008

There are an estimated 8,500 Palestinian Arab prisoners from the West Bank and Gaza in Israeli custody. Over 5,000 of them are serving out sentences; 2,300 are awaiting trial, the remainder are in administrative detention.

No one would suggest that Israeli prisons are fun places. Each inmate has loved ones who presumably miss them dearly. That said, the incarcerated are menacing figures in the Palestinian "resistance," many having planned, executed or enabled attacks aimed at murdering or maiming Israelis in buses, cafes, nightclubs and hotel banquet rooms.

Recently, prisoners in a high-security wing of the Sharon penitentiary - killers mostly - complained to a visiting delegation from the Israel Bar Association of mistreatment: stuffy rooms, poor lighting and such. A more serious allegation, which requires a response from Prison Services Commissioner Lt-Gen. Benny Kaniak, is that members of the elite Nachshon Unit have used dogs to "humiliate" the inmates.

The lawyers also questioned the continued incarceration of Mahmoud Azan, who reached Israel from Afghanistan and has been held in administrative detention for 10 years. Israel is reportedly prepared to deport Azan, but no country will have him. Bar Association chair Yuri Guy-Ron declared that the lawyers' subsequent report shows the importance of "having objective professional representatives of the bar continuing to visit prisons in order to view prison conditions."

It certainly does. Which is why we are gratified that, on any given day, Israeli prisons are hosting Red Cross representatives, journalists, lawyers and prisoners' advocates, as well as family members. Prisoners are even permitted conjugal visits.

WITH THESE thousands of prisoners in Israeli custody, Palestinian society cannot fathom - yet is delighted to exploit - Israelis' fretting over Gilad Schalit, their lone Israeli prisoner, who will mark his third birthday in captivity this Thursday.

Putting aside the fact that Schalit is not a terrorist but a simple soldier who was guarding sovereign Israeli soil when he was abducted on June 25, 2006; and that he had done no Arab any harm, probably never having fired his weapon except in training, the biggest distinction between him and the thousands of Arab prisoners Israel holds is that not one of them would want to switch places with the Israeli captive for even a day.

Why? The IDF soldier - who under international law should be treated as a POW - is not allowed to see Red Cross representatives or consular officials (Schalit also holds French citizenship). Hamas boasts that he is not permitted to exercise in the sunshine. Not only are his parents forbidden to visit him, only rarely has even a letter or video reached them - and any that did were intended to serve the enemy propaganda machine.

Insight into the heartless environment in which Schalit is being held can be gleaned from the popularity of a mock recording of the soldier's mother addressing her son. Gazans by the thousands have downloaded the sound file onto mobile phones and computers.

Yesterday, meanwhile, Israel released 198 long-serving Palestinian prisoners, including several killers, in a misguided gesture intended to boost PA President Mahmoud Abbas's standing among his people.

Abbas could have used a Ramallah ceremony welcoming the men to talk about reconciliation; to say that the sooner the 60-year-plus war against the Zionist enterprise was halted and a two-state solution accepted by the Arabs, the sooner many more prisoners would be released. He could have mentioned Schalit, if only on humanitarian grounds.

Instead Abbas told the crowd: "We will not rest until [all] the prisoners are freed and the jails are empty," specifically citing Marwan Barghouti, serving five consecutive life terms for murder; Ahmed Saadat, imprisoned for the assassination of cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi; and Aziz Duaik, a Hamas politician taken into custody in response to Schalit's abduction.

It is sobering to remind ourselves that Abbas reflects the most moderate of Palestinian opinion.

Writing in Yediot Aharonot on Monday, novelist and playwright Yoram Kaniuk, a government critic who has long expressed compassion for Palestinian suffering, did what Abbas should have done. He urged ordinary Palestinians to call for better treatment of Schalit, and say: "Keeping a young person imprisoned without trial, without his parents being able to visit him, is unparalleled cruelty."

It is.