THE HAMAS CEASE-FIRE OFFER

Hamas is reportedly offering to end the bombardment of Israel from Gaza, cease terrorist attacks and halt arms smuggling.

In return, Israel would have to cease all retaliatory military activities inside the Strip and extend the arrangement to Judea and Samaria at a pre-determined future date. Moreover, Israel would have to agree to the opening of the Rafah crossing between the Egyptian Sinai and Gaza and ease the shipment of cargo via Israel.
The Egyptians are now working on getting the smaller extremist groups active in the Strip to abide by any deal Hamas makes.

Hamas made its tahadiyeh offer to Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, who has been trying to broker a deal that would bring a respite to Sderot and other Israeli border communities while improving humanitarian conditions in the Strip, where most people live on UN food aid.

LET'S REMIND ourselves of just what Hamas is, and what it wants. In Arabic, the word hamas means zeal. It is also an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement. Hamas's founding charter commits it to the destruction of Israel, and to raising "the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine."

How did such an organization come to control Gaza? In the summer of 2005, Israel - not wanting to rule over a million Palestinian Arabs and recognizing that it had no partner for peace - unilaterally withdrew its soldiers and uprooted its settlements from the Strip. The response of the Palestinian polity could not have been more unwise.

In January 2006 the Palestinian people gave Hamas a large majority in its parliament. When the international community insisted that Hamas accept previous (unfulfilled) PLO commitments, including an end to violence, Hamas cut a interim deal with PA President Mahmoud Abbas. The two factions would rule jointly in order to keep the international aid spigot flowing.

Nonetheless, on June 25, 2006, Palestinian extremist groups crossed the Gaza-Israel border at Kerem Shalom, via a tunnel, and killed two IDF soldiers while kidnapping Cpl. Gilad Schalit, who remains in Hamas captivity.

Then in June 2007, Islamist forces violently ousted Abbas's Fatah supporters and, in effect, created a rump Palestinian government of their own. That's when Gaza was placed under more stringent Israeli and international sanctions.

In response, the Islamists accelerated their war of attrition against Israel, even as they cynically exploited the suffering of their own population. They trained their guns on "the Zionist entity" while expecting it to provide them with butter.

In January 2008, Hamas orchestrated the destruction of the border fence between Gaza and Sinai. That intensified pressure on Egypt to come up with a solution.

Suleiman is expected to come to Israel soon to sell his deal with Hamas to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

THE PROSPECT of a six-month truce is superficially enticing - even one that is, in the words of Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal, purely "tactical." Youngsters in Sderot would have their first Kassam-free summer in seven years; the nation could observe a tranquil 60th Independence Day, and the coming holidays - Jerusalem Day and Shavuot - could be enjoyed in serenity. Regrettably, however, experience shows that Hamas will use this time to rearm and regroup, then come at Israel twice as hard.

Moreover, the price of saying yes would be a massive boost to Hamas's standing and torpedo any prospect of cutting a deal with moderate Palestinians.

Unfortunately, the situation is exacerbated by Abbas. Concluding his final White House meeting with George W. Bush on Saturday, the Palestinian leader told his people that the peace talks with Israel are going nowhere because of "settlement expansion."

Yet negotiating precedent makes plain an Israeli readiness to dismantle the overwhelming majority of settlements, and Olmert has stressed repeatedly his sense of an Israeli imperative for an accommodation. If the talks are indeed as fruitless as Abbas claims, therefore, he must be making unrealistic demands, from a position that combines weakness with ineptitude.

So what should Israel do about Hamas's truce offer? A counter-proposal might be the wisest approach.

First, Hamas should free Gilad Schalit in an exchange palatable to the Israeli body politic; next, it should allow American-trained forces loyal to Abbas to be redeployed throughout Gaza. Only then should Jerusalem accept a truce - with the explicit proviso that any sign of enemy war preparations would instantly void the cease-fire.

The price of rice

It surprises and humbles when a crisis comes, seemingly, out of nowhere, to upset the agenda we thought we had set for ourselves, our businesses or our government.

Such is the case of the global food crisis, which the UN World Food Program has termed a "silent tsunami." Globalization has created a degree of interdependence never previously imagined. Whether we like it or not, the world is ever more integrated politically, culturally and economically.

We are now learning more about rice then, perhaps, we ever cared to. How many of us knew that Thailand was the world's biggest rice exporter and the source of most of Israel's supply? And who would have imagined that 225 million people a year could be fed on the six percent of Asian rice lost each year to rats?

More significantly, experts say that there is no sudden shortage, but rather a steadily mounting demand. Rice consumption has risen 40% in three decades, according to the UN.

Whatever the nature and extent of the crisis, even the most downtrodden of humanity do not face mass starvation. But the 1 billion "very poor," who live on $1 a day, confront worsening malnutrition. For Israelis, and others fortunate enough to live in the developed world, the impact is likely to be more on our pocketbooks than in our stomachs.

It was not always so. The patriarchs Abraham and Isaac left the Land of Israel because of famine and drought. The fulfillment of Joseph's prophecy, of seven years of famine, forced Jacob to send his sons to Egypt in search of provisions. Famine remained a recurring theme throughout the Bible. The Sages considered famine an even greater evil than war.

TODAY'S FOOD crisis is precipitated by an assortment of mostly demographic and economic factors. For instance, as the 1.1 billion people of India and the 1.3 billion of China have grown relatively affluent, it's only natural that they have begun eating more grain and meat. This has impacted on the balance of demand for these products. Meanwhile, as the US and EU convert corn into ethanol fuel, demand for cereals has soared. Add to this mix a series of natural disasters - cyclones in Bangladesh, droughts in Australia and floods in North Korea - that have resulted in poor harvests, and one can understand the pressures that have prompted food riots in 33 countries. Many nations have imposed price controls on rice or are subsidizing its purchase. Big rice producers including Vietnam and India have restricted exports.

WHAT DOES all this mean for Israelis? The government and importers insist there is no actual rice or food shortage, though increased demand may be causing prices to fluctuate. Israeli consumers can expect to spend more on food in the coming weeks. We consume relatively little rice per capita, yet price increases of 50-60 percent do rile. A package of rice now costs about NIS 12.5, up from for NIS 7.5. Some chains are limiting purchases.

Our sense of anxiety is worsened by largely unrelated increases in the price of bread, pasta, potatoes, dairy products, coffee, corn, cooking oil and even tehina. Adding to our worries is a report that Argentina, which supplies 50% of Israel's frozen meat, has suspended exports. The price of domestically supplied fresh meat at the neighborhood butcher is unlikely to remain static.

Nothing makes people more jumpy than telling them not to panic - and yet, objectively, there's nothing to panic about. Sure it's regrettable that food prices are rising, but the government should not be stampeded into precipitous actions that might upset market forces in a way that does more harm than good. At the same time, we do want the government to scrutinize developments and, if necessary, sensibly target financial assistance through the National Insurance Institute to those most hard-hit by higher food prices.

Short-term, the government should consider encouraging farmers to grow more wheat. Strategically, it might be prudent for policymakers to reexamine the extent of our economy's move away from agriculture - which now represents just 2.6% of GDP. Of course, thinking seriously along these lines would entail addressing the country's chronic water crisis. And that is one calamity that should take no one by surprise.

Peace and the Golan Heights

Syria and Israel are said to be indirectly negotiating a deal over the return of the Golan Heights in exchange for a peace treaty between the two nations. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is reportedly acting as the intermediary and will meet with President Bashar Assad in Damascus over the weekend.

For over 40 years Israel has been willing to explore the possibility of a withdrawal to the international border (not the 1949 Armistice Line that was the demilitarized zone) in exchange for true peace. The Golan would have to be completely demilitarized; the Syrians would have to commit not to obstruct the flow of water into Israel; and there would have to be ironclad international guarantees that the treaty would stand the test of time.

It is germane to recall how Israel first came to control the strategic mountains in the first place. In the early 1960s Syria sought to divert the flow of water from Israel. Saboteurs based in Syrian training camps infiltrated via Jordan and Lebanon. In April 1967, the Syrian military that was entrenched atop the Heights, which tower 700 meters above the Galilee, unleashed an unusually fierce shelling of Israeli communities below. Then IDF chief of General Staff Yitzhak Rabin warned the Ba'ath regime that it would face severe consequences if its unprovoked aggression persisted.

In response, a Syrian-Egyptian alliance, under Russian sponsorship, readied for war. Then Syrian defense minister Hafez Assad - Bashar Assad's father - announced that his country was ready to "liberate" and "explode the Zionist presence in the Arab homeland. The Syrian army with its finger on the trigger is united. I, as a military man, believe that the time has come to enter into a battle of annihilation."

Facing massed armies on its borders and hysterical threats from Arab leaders, Israel struck first on June 5, 1967 and captured the Golan along with Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Sinai. Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur in 1973, but was repulsed.

SINCE THEN, the Syrians have remained a force for instability in the region. They are a state sponsor of terrorism, house Hamas in Damascus and maintain Hizbullah's lifeline to Teheran. Along the way, Syria has been implicated in the assassination of Lebanese politicians and in funneling jihadi gunmen into Iraq. Syria has virtually melded its foreign and security policies with those of Iran. And now it is revealed that, for the past five years, Syria has been collaborating with North Korea on building a nuclear reactor for the production of plutonium.

It is unclear why Syria leaked news of Ankara's efforts to facilitate a deal on the Golan. Does Assad want to distract the world from revelations in Washington about his ties to North Korea? Was the mysterious liquidation of Hizbullah's Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus Assad's way of signaling a readiness to break with Hassan Nasrallah and Iran? Has Syria's Alawite ruling clique rethought its relationship with the Persian Shi'ites given that its own population is 74% Sunni Arab?

WHATEVER HIS motivations, Israel should judge Assad by what he says and what he does. Assad insists that even under a peace treaty normalization is out of the question. This is how he put it at a conference in Damascus last week: "Restoration of land and rights may lead to relations based on routine, but not [necessarily] normalization. What happened in Jordan and Egypt is proof to us that the public does not want normalization, and therefore nobody can impose it on anybody else. I know that the Syrian people reject normalization and therefore I will not impose it on them."

It is in Israel's long-term interest to have a peace treaty with Syria, but not at any price. Israel would have to make irrevocable strategic concessions. So it's hard to imagine many Israelis having the confidence to support a deal that does not signify a true opening of genuine peaceful relations.

If Assad wants a treaty, we urge him to come to Jerusalem or invite Prime Minister Ehud Olmert to Damascus. After 60 years of unremitting anti-Israel and anti-Semitic incitement Syrians may indeed not be ready for normalization. But if he wants Israelis to risk all by ceding the Golan, Assad is going to have to show that he truly wants a change - and he is going to have to take some chances too.

Hamas's Apologist

Jimmy Carter, the 83-year-old former US president, has been on a "study mission" to our region, visiting Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Syria and Jordan. On Monday, back in Jerusalem, Carter announced what he'd learned: The Arabs want peace; the problem is Israel.

Carter met with Hamas leaders in Cairo and Damascus and held a joint session with both factions in Damascus. He came out of those sessions convinced that Hamas wants peace.

The former president sounds like a moral relativist, for whom there are no universal truths by which to judge behavior. This is manifested in the juxtapositions he so effortlessly makes. Speaking Monday, he denounced the Palestinians' "despicable terrorism" against Sderot. Yet when Israel tracks down and arrests the "despicable" terrorists, Carter gets equally passionate about the need to release them - 11,600 (Carter's numbers) now in Israeli prisons, "many of them women and children."

To Carter's muddled thinking, Palestinians and Israelis are equally responsible for the conflict. After all, Palestinians launch Kassams into Israeli kindergartens, and Israelis live over the Green Line.

Since Annapolis, Carter claims, there's been no real progress because of "settlements" and "roadblocks" and because Israel has turned Gaza into one big prison. That Jews also have claims in Judea and Samaria, that checkpoints have proven to keep terrorists from blowing up buses and cafes, that every last Israeli soldier and "settler" has been yanked out of Gaza - none of this turned up in Carter's study mission.

But he did conclude that "despair leads some people on both sides to resort to violence."
Carter professes to understand why Israel is "reluctant" to negotiate with Hamas. The organization refuses to renounce violence, has "yet" to recognize Israel and doesn't accept the 1993 Oslo Accords. But Carter forgives all this. He "understands" that Hamas feels "some violence is necessary" to keep the Palestinian issue alive, and that when the organization is sidelined, the "cycle of violence" is exacerbated.

Carter spent seven hours with Hamas leaders during which they told him they would accept Israel's existence if it withdrew to the 1949 Armistice Lines; if any deal reached between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and PA President Mahmoud Abbas was approved in a Palestinian referendum; and if Hamas had the prerogative to disagree with the referendum results.

To sum up Carter's assessment: Hamas wants peace. It is ready now for a cease-fire - even one that doesn't immediately include the West Bank. It also supports the Arab League peace plan that could flood Israel with millions of refugees - a scheme no Israeli government could accept.
That Hamas carried out an attack against the Kerem Shalom border crossing on Saturday, wounding 13 soldiers - while its leaders were telling Carter they supposedly wanted peace - is irrelevant, Carter insists, because the mission had been planned "months in advance."

WE ARE grateful to Carter for raising the issue of Gilad Schalit with his interlocutors. The former president promises that Hamas will now allow the kidnapped soldier to write a second letter to his parents. At the same time, he should know that Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have routine access to the Red Cross and can write to their loved ones even without presidential intervention.

Carter, of all people, ought also to know how far Israel is prepared to go for peace. It ceded every inch of the Sinai to Anwar Sadat. But the Egyptian leader first demonstrated that he genuinely sought an accommodation with Israel.

When King Hussein embraced Yitzhak Rabin, a peace treaty resulted 100 days later.
One could imagine a situation in which Israel would talk with Hamas. After all, when Yasser Arafat claimed to be ready to end the "armed struggle," Israelis desperately tried to reach an accord with him. A Hamas that is prepared for real compromise will always find Israel ready.
Shortly after meeting with Carter, though, a Hamas spokesman declared that the Islamists remained committed to "resistance" and opposed Egyptian cease-fire proposals.

Carter's "study mission" failed to uncover the obvious: Hamas is a toxic opponent of peace. Too bad that in the twilight of his public life, Carter has undermined the relative moderates among the Palestinians and become an apologist for violent religious fanatics.

The price of freedom

Never in the ebb and flow of its long, rich and complicated history has the Jewish people experienced greater national, political and personal freedoms than it enjoys now. There are no ghetto walls. We are Jews by choice and we identify with the Jewish past, share in the Jewish present and look toward a common future.

The more we know about Jewish civilization, the greater our literacy, the less the open door of 21st-century modernity beckons us to abandon the values of our forefathers and foremothers.

With numerous and diverse avenues of Jewish expression to be explored, this may be the most exciting period in modern Jewish history.

Half of all US and UK Jews marry out. That is a fact. But many of these couples and their children can still be part of our community if they, and we, make wise decisions.

Yet, paradoxically, while Jews worldwide have never had more personal liberty, the well-being and security of the Third Jewish Commonwealth has never been under greater threat.

THESE ARE the thoughts that concern us as we approach the evening of April 19 - corresponding to the 15th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan - to celebrate Pessah, "the season of our freedom."

By tradition the festival commemorates God's deliverance of the Jewish people from Egyptian bondage. Thus the Exodus became the founding narrative of Jewish peoplehood and the centerpiece of Israel's sacred history. In ancient times this deliverance was marked by the eating of the Paschal lamb sacrificed in Jerusalem's Holy Temple.

Today, our attachment to this ancient spring festival remains imprinted on our collective psyche. Across the world, Jewish people will participate in ceremonial Seder meals centered around the Haggada's Four Questions. While the more pious among us will scrupulously observe the minutiae of the festival's rules, it behooves all Jews to focus on the meaning - and cost - of freedom, liberty and self-determination.

In the renascent Jewish homeland, which marks its 60th independence day next month, Israelis are grappling with how to cherish tradition while respecting the individual's right to freely disregard (sometimes foolishly) what should be treasured.

Consider the latest quarrel in Jerusalem over the sale of hametz during Pessah. A very few stores sell bread, which the law allows so as long as they don't ostentatiously display it in public. This strikes us as a reasonable compromise. So why interfere with it?

When issues of personal freedom, religion and collective values are at stake, coercion is not only counterproductive, it is often also unnecessary. Seventy percent of Israelis won't go near bread during the festival; 60% would like to see stores closed on Shabbat. That's because the values and mores of Jewish civilization appeal to traditional and secular Jews even when the motivation is not necessarily halachic.

And yet this age of great personal freedom will not have achieved its full potential until non-Orthodox and secular Jews - to paraphrase popular theologian Dennis Prager - start taking Judaism as seriously as do the Orthodox.

MOREOVER, given the threats the Jewish global collective faces, stemming mainly from the menace of Islamist extremism, Jews had better stop dissipating their energies and resources in internal bickering.

Iran is hurrying to build nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. It may take another year or two, but the mullahs don't see the international community standing in their way. This week's meeting of the permanent members of the UN Security Council, plus Germany, in Shanghai on the Iranian issue reiterated that message. (The failed agenda was to coax Iran - which has rejected every economic, diplomatic and security offer thus far, including civilian nuclear cooperation - into reopening negotiations.)

As Iranian leaders employ disinformation, obduracy and guile to keep the world powers spinning their wheels, we hear Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisting that Iran's efforts will, at the end of the day, fail.

The mullahs take their extremist Islam very seriously. It is the bedrock of their perverted vision of world domination. In this "season of our freedom" we need to recommit to our own Jewish and humane values. And if we cherish our freedom, we need to recognize that it comes at a price.