A Third Lebanon War May be on the Horizon

Is Nasrallah miscalculating?

It's been fairly quiet along the Gaza-Israel border, hasn't it? Well, actually, no. Approximately 107 Kassam rockets and 66 mortar shells have been fired by Palestinians at Israel since the end of Operation Cast Lead on January 18, 2009. Shells hit yesterday at the Erez crossing meters from ambulances about to evacuate Gazan heart patients for treatment in Israel; Kibbutz Alumim was also targeted.

Despite what Palestinian supporters call the "siege of Gaza," Israel routinely trucks-in tons of food and supplies to the hostile Strip and is responsive to humanitarian appeals for medical evacuations. But the "siege" - such as it is - ought to continue until IDF soldier Gilad Schalit is released and Hamas abides by the demands of the civilized world to end terrorism, recognize Israel and assume as binding previous commitments made by the Palestinian Authority.

To it credit, Human Rights Watch has belatedly - ok, very belatedly - labeled Hamas's bombardment of Israeli civilians a "war crime." For the most part, however, unless Israel retaliates in a robust manner, no one takes much notice of how many rockets are fired from Gaza into Israel.

THE more worrisome - for now - powder keg is along the border with Hizbullah-subjugated Lebanon.

Last month a huge Hizbullah arms depot located on the outskirts of Khirbet Slem blew up, sending shock waves across the border. In an atypical reprimand, UN Under-Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations Alain Le Roy publicly criticized Hizbullah for violating UN Security Council Resolution 1701 (which brought the Second Lebanon War to an end in the summer of 2006). In the past three years, Hizbullah has been illegally replenishing its weapons, which are mainly shipped by its Iranian patrons with Syrian connivance.

Hizbullah seems intent on carrying out a mega-terror attack in Israel or the Diaspora ostensibly in retaliation for the 2008 liquidation in Damascus of Imad Mughniyeh, the group's principal terror-master. The likelihood may be that Hizbullah will attack an Israeli airliner, diplomat or some Jewish target abroad. Meanwhile it has been engaging in psychological warfare - blasting the muezzin's call to prayer across the border and sending its operatives, dressed in civilian clothes, to the border fence.

Last week on Israel Radio, Defense Minister Ehud Barak sent a warning to Hizbullah: An attack against Israeli or Jewish targets anywhere would result in painful reprisals against Lebanon's infrastructure as well as Hizbullah strongholds. On Sunday, Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon reiterated that Israel would hold not only Hizbullah, but the Beirut government responsible for violence initiated in Lebanon. And yesterday Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu added his voice, warning Lebanon/Hizbullah not to attack because if it did Beirut will be held responsible.

In an amiable interview with Al-Jazeera on Sunday - there was some joking about whether a jet passing overhead was Israeli - Hashem Safi al-Din, who is chairman of Hizbullah's executive council, taunted our defense minister: Act "foolishly" and "the war of the summer of 2006 will look like a joke," he warned. While asserting that Hizbullah did not seek war with Israel, Safi al-Din let drop that, "Today we are more powerful, and this is thanks to the 2006 victory, which is why we think the Israeli threats are hollow and meaningless." The "resistance," he claimed, has long possessed "rockets that can reach every house in Tel Aviv."

It is hard to know whether Lebanese internal political developments are contributing to Hizbullah's jingoism. Lebanon elected a new parliament in June when Hizbullah supposedly suffered an electoral setback; yet the formation of a government is still far-off. The ever-mercurial Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, has switched sides - sort off - from the Christian-Sunni March 14 Coalition to cast the fate of his people with the Shi'ites.

IN August 2006, Hassan Nasrallah admitted that had he appreciated the ferocity of Israel's response to Hizbullah's aggression, he would have never sent his men across the border. Now, with new weapons in-hand, Nasrallah may calculate that Israel will abjure hard-hitting retaliation, even for a mega-terror attack, in order to keep its population safe from reprisal bombardment in a third Lebanon war.

It would be too bad for us all if Nasrallah's destiny was to keep making the same stupid mistake.

FATAH MEETS & IRAN RACES (two postings)

Abbas's bully pulpit


In keeping with a long tradition of "helping Abu Mazen," Israel made it possible for Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah General Assembly to gather 2,000 delegates in Bethlehem beginning August 4. The assembly is an effort to demonstrate that Fatah remains the vanguard of the Palestinian polity. Delegates have come from around the Arab world, save for Hamas-controlled Gaza.

The atmosphere for the conference was auspicious. The Obama administration has been ostentatiously leaning on Israel to halt all housing construction over the Green Line. Life under the "occupation" - now that the Palestinians are not systematically shooting at us - isn't at all bad. Over the weekend, for instance, the main north-south West Bank highway, Route 60, was jammed with Palestinian and Israeli traffic; intrusive security restrictions affecting average Palestinians were nowhere to be seen. The West Bank economy is doing relatively well. And Israel's leadership has committed itself to the establishment of a demilitarized Palestinian state.

Under these circumstances one might have expected Abbas to finally begin the process of socializing Palestinians to the idea of coexistence with Israel and the need to compromise on borders and refugees. Instead, Fatah remained steadfastly uncompromising.

Armed resistance, Abbas's assembly declared, remains legitimate though for tactical reasons will be held in abeyance - for now; violent "civil disobedience" is laudable; recognition of Israel as a Jewish state is out of the question; and Fatah will continue to insist that the descendants of some 700,000 Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war - today numbering in the millions - have a "right of return" to Israel proper to, in effect, demographically asphyxiate its Jewish population.

Abbas summed matters up this way: "The Fatah movement was established so as to liberate all the Palestinian lands and we will not concede even a single inch. We will continue our struggle and with the path of resistance until we establish our state whose capital is a united Jerusalem that is purged of settlements and settlers."

He then invoked Jerusalem's place in Islamic and Christian traditions, willfully disregarding what Zion has meant to Jewish civilization from time immemorial.

SOME SAY the bellicose rhetoric is traceable to schisms within Fatah pitting old timers led by Abbas and Ahmed Qurei, who returned from Tunis with Yasser Arafat after the 1993 Oslo Accords, and the transitional generation of Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub and the popular Marwan Barghouti (imprisoned in Israel on multiple counts of murder). They, in turn, are challenged by a politically toothless younger generation - some associated with the Aksa Martyrs' Brigades (Fatah's armed wing).

Others suggest that Fatah did not want to appear "soft" toward Israel in relation to Hamas. But the Islamists have been losing their appeal among Fatah's disenchanted bourgeois base partly because of the way they have been coercing religious behavior on Gazans. Fatah is now slightly more popular than Hamas among all Palestinians.

Still, many of them view the assembly with a cynical eye. That Abbas was re-elected "general commander" running unopposed did not help Fatah's credibility.

FOR Israelis, what matters is that rather than demonstrating leadership, Abbas and Fatah made demagogic appeals to a Palestinian street that sees moderation as weakness. This self-defeating intransigence is a deep-seated facet of Palestinian political culture. Abbas had a bully pulpit to coax the population in a more moderate direction, yet he and other Fatah leaders took the easy road - scapegoating Israel.

Still, the assembly generated enough prevarication and dissimulation to perpetuate the pose that Fatah is a genuinely "moderate" alternative to Hamas.

Abbas apologists will claim that the Palestinian Liberation Organization - not Fatah - acts for the Palestinians. In fact, Fatah controls the PLO. They will point out that Prime Minister Salaam Fayad, a technocratic outsider, is actually running the Palestinian Authority in a constructive manner with Abbas's blessing. This claim has more justification, though Fayad, who was imposed on Abbas by the US, has limited influence.

When the incendiary rhetoric from Bethlehem is over, chances are unfortunately remote that Washington - much less Europe - will ease off on the red-herring issue of settlements to take Abbas to task for not using the assembly to preach peace, compromise and coexistence.

At times like this, it seems "helping Abu Mazen" has become an end in itself.

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Boycott Ahmadinejad


Say what you want about Iran - at least it's not North Korea. There is a world of difference between a totalitarian state ruled by a demigod, where the merest blush of opposition is unimaginable, and an authoritarian regime, rooted in religious fanaticism, in which the members of the ruling clique publicly duke it out. But what if those distinctions become less meaningful as Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and his protégé President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad continue to consolidate power while their regime takes its final steps toward constructing a nuclear weapon?

This week saw Bill Clinton parleying with Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. In return for the visit - Pyongyang insisted on the former US president, husband of the current secretary of state, as emissary - the North Koreans released two American journalists they were holding hostage.

With this US concession in the bank, Kim may now be willing to return to "six-party" talks - if Washington relaxes existing sanctions and drops its demand that North Korea first give up its nuclear weapons program.

MEANWHILE, it's becoming increasingly apparent that Ahmadinejad is the true face of the Iranian regime directed by Khamenei. Having stolen the anyway rigged June 12 election, the two leaders don't seem bothered that their political adversaries boycotted Ahmadinejad's second-term swearing-in ceremony.

These dissidents - former presidents Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and Muhammad Khatami, for instance - are mostly embittered reactionaries, not liberal reformers. Now, a new intramural dispute is raging over whom Ahmadinejad will appoint as his senior vice-president (and possible successor). On the sidelines, Mir Hossein Mousavi, the defeated presidential candidate - no flaming liberal himself - is left to post his criticisms on the Internet.

According to The New York Times, Ahmadinejad is in firm control. He's backed by Khamenei, parliament and the Revolutionary Guards, and enjoys the acquiescence of influential religious figures.

Indeed, anyone who watched Khamenei as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Ahmadinejad throughout the inauguration ceremony and saw the men warmly embracing afterward would not delude themselves into thinking that the two are not in lock-step.

AS IF to bookend events in Iran and North Korea, this week marks the 64th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

Even if Iranian elites remain divided over Ahmadinejad, this in no way diminishes the dangers represented by the country's nuclear program. If anything, Khamenei may have an incentive to accelerate the project to rally the nation and underscore the prowess of his leadership.

But what if the cost of pursuing the bomb undermined his position? As it is, many educated Iranians have lost faith in the legitimacy of their political system because of the election fiasco. Inflation hovers at 26 percent; real unemployment is probably 40%. The world's second-largest oil-producer has to import 40% of its gasoline.

Now more than ever, the country desperately needs international investment. The bad news is that it's getting it. China announced this week an investment of $3 billion-$6b. in Iran's oil sector. Pakistan announced freight train service between the two countries. And an unnamed European company will reportedly invest $4 billion in Iran's Lavan gas field.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton insists that engagement with Khamenei and Ahmadinejad is still on the table. The administration set a September deadline for the Iranians to start talking. Teheran's apologists say the time limit resulted from Zionist pressure and isn't based on any objective threat. Others imply that it's too late to talk - or to level draconian sanctions.

London's Times reported this week that "Iran has perfected the technology to create and detonate a nuclear warhead and is merely awaiting the word from... Khamenei, to produce its first bomb."

Either way, the current Iranian leadership is not interested in substantive negotiations.

YET THE stakes are far too high to give up. Iran is not North Korea. The Obama administration should lead the civilized world in refusing to recognize the Ahmadinejad regime. It should offer to cooperate with any Iranian leadership that abandons nuclear weapons, ends support for terrorism, and frees political prisoners.

Iran is the lynch-pin to President Barack Obama's hopes for a world that is free of nuclear weapons. Conversely, an Iranian nuclear bomb would unleash a new atomic arms race in the already volatile Middle East.

Swine flu in Israel

Wrong on H1N1


When mid-summer headlines warn that 700 young Israelis may die in the course of 2010 from the H1N1 virus, it is natural to feel anxious. A quarter of Israelis, say health experts, may contract swine flu, leaving a third of the population sick at home. Some 150,000 Israelis could find themselves hospitalized. If the epidemic gains momentum, authorities would have to close schools, kindergartens and daycare centers. Gatherings from classical concerts to football matches might be canceled. Commuters would be dissuaded from using crowded buses. We could see people walking down the streets wearing surgical masks.

Two basic questions come to mind: How concerned should Israelis be? And is the government of Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu - he's also health minister - managing preparations for the crisis effectively? The two issues are obviously connected.

Experts surmise that the death rate from swine flu is not likely to go beyond that of regular influenza. That still means more people will die - many hundreds as usual of the regular flu, and hundreds more of swine flu. The difference is that H1N1 appears to be particularly risky for people between 15 and 49, whereas regular influenza tends to be most harmful to the elderly and those whose immune system is compromised. People over 40 seem to have acquired immunity due to previous exposure that makes them less susceptible to H1N1 virus.

Israel's public health system is positioned to provide citizens with protection on par with those of other advanced societies where sanitary conditions are good and adequate supplies of expensive antiviral drugs are readily available. Contingency plans for more hospital beds and enhanced emergency services are in the works. So, based on what we know today, there is no reason for panic.

YET AUTHORITIES face a dilemma that brings us back to the question of the government's approach to the epidemic. Scientists are at work perfecting a vaccine that could be available in early winter. But there are no guarantees that H1N1 will not mutate into a different strain by the time the vaccine is disseminated. Moreover, people will require two inoculations against H1N1, and getting them to come back for their second jab could prove problematic. Those who need to be vaccinated against the regular flu would have to get three separate shots. The Center for Disease Control in the US is urging people over 65 who routinely take the seasonal vaccine to do so as soon as it is available. We trust Israel's health funds will follow the CDC's lead.

An H1N1 vaccine that is rushed from the laboratory to the pharmacy could have unanticipated side-effects. But the critical public policy decision pending is whether to purchase in advance the not-yet-perfected vaccine and do so in huge quantities. Netanyahu has ordered that NIS 450 million already earmarked for the purchase of medications that would expand the arsenal of treatments available for cancer, mental illness, heart disease and other serious disorders be redirected for battling H1N1. And he has ordered that masses of Israelis be vaccinated. But many may refuse, as is their right. The Health Ministry would then be stuck with expensive vaccine.

In contrast, US health officials plan to focus their vaccination efforts on pregnant women, people who live with or care for children younger than six months, health care and emergency services personnel, people between the ages of six months and 24 years, and people aged 25 through 64 who are at higher risk for H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems.

Israeli health experts are divided over the wisdom of Netanyahu's approach. Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman favors something closer to the US approach, which would protect those most vulnerable and avoid decimating the expanded health basket for other diseases.

The main reason to vaccinate citizens in a nationwide program is to lower the pool of people who could prove to be a reservoir of new infection. Is Netanyahu's judgment to give priority to eradicating H1N1 at the expense of other public health concerns the right call? Not if you believe that H1N1 is already an epidemic/pandemic that cannot be eradicated, but that it is only a serious condition for a relatively small and identifiable population. That seems to be the scientific consensus. A poll of family doctors in Israel found that most oppose Netanyahu's approach.

We urge him to rethink his plan for mass inoculations at the expense of the expanded health basket.

East Jerusalem evictions

Jews & Sheikh Jarrah

It was not a pretty picture. The belongings of two Palestinian Arab families dumped in the street after they were evicted from their homes in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. They were expelled on Sunday after Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the land upon which their homes were built belonged to the Sephardi Jewish community.

This area, also known as "Simon the Just," was purchased by Jews at the end of the 19th century during the Ottoman Empire. According to The New York Times, the evacuated houses were built in the 1950s by the United Nations for refugees who had fled west Jerusalem during the 1948 war. When Israel captured east Jerusalem from Jordan and united the city, after the 1967 Six Day War, the families were permitted to stay on as tenants. At some point, they stopped paying rent having become convinced - we know not by whom - that the Jews' deed to the land was a forgery.

It took a large force of police to carry out the evictions in the face of opposition from the residents, left-wing Jewish supporters and foreign demonstrators.

Coming on the heels of the controversy surrounding the nearby Shepherd Hotel complex, which was also purchased to create Jewish residential housing, the evictions drew worldwide condemnation. The international community says Israel has no legal claim to east Jerusalem; nor does it accept Israeli sovereignty over west Jerusalem.

Israel finds itself in the anomalous position in which not a single nation recognizes Jerusalem as our capital. All foreign embassies are located in Tel Aviv. Meanwhile, European governments, with Britain often in the lead, have invested vast resources, sometimes surreptitiously, in promoting Arab claims to east Jerusalem (and the West Bank), bankrolling organizations, many staffed with Israelis and sporting Hebrew names, whose mandate is, in effect, to promote EU policy vis-à-vis Jerusalem and the West Bank.

The British Consulate in Jerusalem explicitly denies that Israeli courts have jurisdiction over east Jerusalem. Its diplomats term the Arab connection to Sheikh Jarrah "ancient."

Media coverage of the issue has been overwhelmingly supportive of the Palestinian position.

THERE happens to be another side to this argument.

Put aside, for our purposes here, the ancient Jewish connection to Jerusalem and Zion's centrality to Jewish civilization over the millennia.

Begin instead with the fact that there is no neatly delineated "east" and "west" Jerusalem - one section housing Arabs and the other Jews. Jerusalem beyond the Green Line is home to some 200,000 Jews and 270,000 Arabs, though 66 percent of all residents are Jewish. The city is built on a range of hills and valleys. Arab and Jewish neighborhoods crisscross in the north, east and southern sectors.

Sheikh Jarrah, in the northeast, is strategically situated on the way to the Mount Scopus campus of the Hebrew University. During the 1948 war, Arabs massacred 78 doctors and others who were heading by convoy to Hadassah hospital, also on Mount Scopus. Today, in addition to the hospital (which serves both Israelis and Palestinians) and the university (which has thousands of Arab students), the area is also home to Israel's police headquarters and Justice Ministry.

Staunchly right-wing Orthodox groups have been competing with Gulf Arabs in the quest to purchase properties in the area. (Israel does not forbid Arabs from buying land in Jerusalem.)

In this particular rivalry, we side with the Jewish groups, even if this newspaper is sometimes put-off by the way they see the world, because whatever arrangements may ultimately be negotiated for sharing Jerusalem, mainstream Israelis will insist on unfettered access to Mount Scopus via Sheikh Jarrah.

As far as British claims of an "ancient" Arab connection to the area, Nadav Shragai convincingly documents, in the latest "Jerusalem Issue Brief" published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (www.jcpa.org), that the Jewish connection to what is today Sheikh Jarrah predates the founding of both Christianity and Islam.

That said, we are not enthusiastic about the purchase of property or the construction of Jewish residential housing in heavily Arab neighborhoods when not dictated by strategic imperatives.

Jews and Arabs are destined to share this city. Both peoples would be wise to avoid actions that exacerbate tensions.

Gays murdered in Tel Aviv

Wild weed


We do not know who carried out the ghastly shooting at a gay youth support center in Tel Aviv Saturday night. Some in the media and in the political establishment have jumped to the conclusion that the rampage was motivated by homophobia. Others speculate that the shooter may have been a homosexual with a grudge. We reserve judgment about the identity of the perpetrator; but like most Israelis from across the political and religious spectrum, we condemn this unprecedented assault.

Foremost, our condolences go to the families of Nir Katz, 26, from Givatayim, and Liz Tarbishi, 17, from Holon. Ten of the wounded remain hospitalized, several in intensive care, and we wish them a full and speedy recovery.

For some of the families, Saturday night's bloodbath was a double trauma since there were parents who did not know about the sexual orientation of their children.

The emotional nature of the reaction to this vile attack is understandable. MK Nitzan Horowitz of Meretz, who is gay, participated in an impromptu rally to protest "incitement" against the gay and lesbian community. Granted, there is prejudice against gays in Israel. Yet gay activists readily grant that Israel is one of the world's most progressive countries in terms of equality for sexual minorities, and in some respects - military service, for instance - far more advanced than many other Western societies.

Not only did major political figures rush to condemn Saturday night's attack, but even the ultra-Orthodox Sephardi, Shas Knesset faction - some of whose members have been vitriolic against gays - issued a statement condemning the violence and calling for the capture and prosecution of the attacker.

THROUGH the haze and shock of Saturday night's attack, it is important to maintain perspective. Whoever did it - gay or straight, observant or secular - was a wild weed and not indicative of their community.

Gays in Israel are not oppressed. There is no culture of marginalization. While community standards vary from place to place, gays in metropolitan Tel Aviv are valued citizens. The TA municipality helps fund the annual gay parade. Even in comparatively conservative Jerusalem, an openly gay man, Sa'ar Nethaniel, served on the municipal council in the previous government. It is true that the gay parade invariably generates local ultra-Orthodox opposition. In 2005 a haredi man from Kiryat Sefer stabbed three participants at Jerusalem's gay parade. Not only was he convicted of attempted murder, but ultra-Orthodox leaders have incrementally toned down the vociferousness of their anti-parade agitation. While in deference to local norms, gay pride events in Jerusalem have become relatively (and appropriately) understated. Mutual - albeit tacit - accommodation, backed by the Jerusalem Open House and the mainstream haredi leadership, is a fact of life.

Tolerance toward gays is nothing new. As early as 1953 the attorney-general of Israel issued instructions not to prosecute gay activities. In 1992, the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1988 was expanded to prohibit anti-gay discrimination in employment. In 1994, the Supreme Court recognized same-sex partner benefits in the private sector; in 1997 these were extended to the public sector. In 2000, the age of legal consensual homosexual relations was lowered to 16.

Same-sex couples can today legally adopt children. Gay marriages abroad can be registered as legal in Israel. Knesset legislation provides gays with enhanced civil liberties protections. Many municipalities do likewise. Moreover, gay life - far from being delegitimized - is a not infrequent theme in our cinema (The Bubble, Yossi & Jagger), music (Dana International), theater (Passing the Love of Women) and literature.

Contrast the situation in Israel to gay life in neighboring Arab and Muslim countries.

In Iran, homosexuality is outlawed; sodomy is a capital crime. The mullahs endeavor to make the lives of gays miserable. Scores have been flogged and others executed. Gays are not as relentlessly persecuted in Saudi Arabia, but sodomy is punishable by death. In relatively tolerant Turkey, gay life is not criminalized, but neither is there much forbearance for outward displays of homosexuality.

Saturday night's carnage in Tel Aviv is heartbreaking. It is not - at least based on what we know now - cause for national consternation over the place of gays in Israeli society.