FEBRUARY/MARCH 2006

The Israeli government on Sunday froze the transfer of millions of dollars in funds to the Palestinian Authority and urged international donors to do likewise as it announced its first sanctions against an incoming Palestinian government headed by Hamas.

The cabinet of Ehud Olmert, acting prime minister, adopted the measures a day after the swearing in of a new Palestinian parliament in which the militant Islamic movement has an overall majority.

“It is clear that in light of the Hamas majority in the Palestinian Legislative Council and the instructions to form a new government that were given to the head of Hamas, the PA is in practice becoming a terrorist authority,” Mr Olmert told ministers. “The State of Israel will not agree to this.”

Hamas officials said formation of a government could still be two to three weeks away after the party on Sunday named Ismail Haniya, one of its Gaza leadership, as its choice for prime minister. He will on Monday embark on coalition talks that could bring minority parties and technocrats into a national unity government.

The Israeli government, however, decided not to wait for the outcome before acting. It will immediately suspend monthly payments of around $50m of customs and tax receipts it collects on behalf of the PA under an economic protocol established in 1994.It will also ban the transfer of arms and military equipment to the PA security forces.Hamas parliamentarians will be denied the VIP privileges customarily extended to Palestinian officials to allow them to travel between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Any on Israel’s wanted list will continue to be subject to arrest.

The cabinet shelved proposals to seal off the Gaza Strip or halt the movement of goods to and from the territories.The PA relies on a combination of tax transfers from Israel, domestic revenue and foreign budget support to meet a monthly $100m wage bill for some 135,000 public employees.

Undercover of Cartoon Scandal Israel moves on with expansion plans.

Israel unveils plan to encircle Palestinian state

· Olmert says he will keep control of Jordan valley
· Pullouts likely as acting PM follows Sharon's vision

Chris McGreal, Jerusalem
Wednesday February 8, 2006

The acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said yesterday that he plans to annex the Jordan Valley and major Jewish settlement blocks to Israel in drawing new borders, according to a television station that recorded an interview with him yesterday.

In Mr Olmert's first policy statement since he succeeded Ariel Sharon last month, Channel 2 television said that he made clear he intends to carry through his predecessor's vision of creating an emasculated Palestinian state on Israel's terms.

If the Jewish state were to annex all of the Jordan Valley, which is dotted with small settlements, it would leave a future Palestinian state on the West Bank entirely surrounded by Israel and without a direct link to neighbouring countries.

The interview was to be broadcast late last night. Channel 2's political affairs reporter, Nissim Mishal, told Army radio that Mr Olmert, who is favourite to win next month's general election, also plans further unilateral withdrawals similar to the settler pullout from Gaza last summer.

"He talked about Israel having to maintain a Jewish majority in the state of Israel, meaning that we have to create a new border, what is called final borders. He knows that we can't negotiate with Hamas. So the only conclusion that can be derived from this is that, in order to reach final borders, Israel will have to carry out additional [unilateral] withdrawals," said Mishal.


Photo:The Jordan Valley has a rich history, and agriculture has been carried out here for some 10,000 years. www.homepage.mac.com

Mr Olmert said he intends to annex the three main settlement blocks of Ariel, Gush Etzion and Maale Adumim as well as the Jordan Valley, the TV station said. The pressure group Peace Now estimates 185,000 of the 244,000 Israelis in the West Bank outside Jerusalem are resident in the settlements Mr Olmert wants to keep within Israel's border.

That would mean removing about 60,000 settlers, many more than were forced out of Gaza. On Monday the defence minister, Shaul Mofaz, said the government was considering unilaterally imposing the borders of a Palestinian state.

"If we won't be able to reach agreed-upon borders, we will operate in a different way, which it is not appropriate to detail now ... we don't need to wait for someone else to impose our fate," he said. "In the coming years, and I'm talking about a few years, the final borders of the state of Israel will be set down, and the future of most of the settlements in [the West Bank] and the Jordan Valley will be decided in these two years."

Yesterday Mr Mofaz said Israel would keep targeting Palestinian armed groups, hours before an air strike killed two men in Gaza said by the army to be al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades members responsible for firing rockets into Israel.

Israel has killed nine Palestinians this week, mostly Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa members, in response to rocket attacks, one of which injured a baby. The army also killed an Islamic Jihad activist in Nablus yesterday. Buildings in Israel were damaged yesterday by rockets from Gaza. The army struck a bridge and shelled roads to try to stop rockets being moved to launch sites.
UPDATE details:
Israel cuts off eastern West Bank from rest of West Bank,
By Amira Hass
Last update - 02:35 13/02/2006, Haaretz Correspondent
While the international community busied itself with the disengagement from the Gaza Strip last summer, Israel completed another cut-off process, which went unnoticed: Israel completed cutting off the eastern sector of the West Bank from the remainder of the West Bank in 2005.
Some 2,000,000 Palestinians, residents of the West Bank, are prohibited from entering the area, which constitutes around one-third of the West Bank, and includes the Jordan Valley, the area of the Dead Sea shoreline and the eastern slopes of the West Bank mountains.
Military sources told Haaretz that the moves have been "security measures" adopted by the Israel Defense Forces, and have no connection to any political intentions whatsoever.
Restrictions on the movement of Palestinians in the Jordan Valley were imposed at the start of the intifada, and were gradually expanded. But the sweeping prohibition regarding entry into the area by Palestinians was imposed, in fact, after security responsibility in Jericho was given back to the Palestinians on March 16, 2005.
At the time, Palestinian sources say, Palestinian travelers coming across the Allenby Bridge (the West Bank's only direct link overseas) were banned from passing through the Jordan Valley even if they were heading to the northern West Bank and the villages adjacent to the valley's checkpoints. Instead, the travelers are required to go through Jericho, and from there, the road is long and filled with checkpoints and delays.
Furthermore, since then, residents of Jericho and the remainder of the West Bank have been banned from passing through the Ouja checkpoint, north of Jericho, in the direction of the Jordan Valley.
In addition to affecting others, the prohibition also applies to thousands of residents of towns and villages in the northern West Bank, like Tubas and Tamun, most of whose lands are in the Jordan Valley, and some of whose residents have been living there for many years. The residents of the Jordan Valley villages are tied to the northern West Bank villages through family connections, joint land ownership, work, schooling, and medical and social services.
Also affected by the ban are people who for years have earned a living by doing seasonal agricultural work for Palestinians in the Jordan Valley, as well as an unknown number (several thousand apparently) of Bedouin and sheep-herders who live in the area permanently in tents and makeshift structures, but are registered as residents of towns and villages a few kilometers to the east.
Since the start of the intifada, Palestinians have been banned from using Road 90, the Jordan Valley Road, with use of the road restricted to residents of the Jordan Valley, and only north of Jericho.
This picture of such a large Palestinian area being absolutely cut off from the rest of the West Bank has emerged from tours and talks Haaretz has conducted in the area over a period of a number of weeks, from testimonies gathered by the B'Tselem human rights organization and reports from officials from the UN Office for the Coordination of Human Affairs.
Four permanent checkpoints ensure that passage is denied to Palestinians whose identity documents do not list them as residents of the Jordan Valley. Entry is permitted only to a few thousand holders of special permits from the Civil Administration, as well as some 5,000 Palestinians who work in the settlements.
Around 1,500 of those who hold the Civil Administration permits (valid for three months and not always extended) are residents of the area around Tubas who own land and work in the Jordan Valley. Several hundred are teachers and health workers; the remainder are primarily traders and drivers.
Special, one-off entry permits are granted for "humanitarian cases"  weddings, other family affairs, funerals and so on  and have to be coordinated in advance with the Civil Administration and the military.
To enforce the ban, the Israel Defense Forces conducts frequent nighttime raids in the Jordan Valley villages. Palestinians who are not registered as residents of the area are driven beyond the Tayasir checkpoint and dropped off. The soldiers also confiscate the identity documents of Palestinians who have the "incorrect" address.
An IDF source who confirmed the abovementioned restrictions on Palestinian movement in the Jordan Valley said that the only way to protect an area as large as the Jordan Valley was to impose limitations on movement  checkpoints to control and direct the traffic to provide protection for the Jewish communities and Road 90, a strategic thoroughfare.


This photo on a site called www.atlastours.net

_{By Haaretz Editorial}

Obsolete security asset

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/682399.html

In a graduated process determined primarily by security considerations, the Israeli government has, over the last few years, almost totally severed the West Bank from the Jordan Valley, and transformed the Jordan Valley area into a Jewish region. This separation, which stemmed from terror activity in Jordan Valley communities and from gunfire targeting Israeli passengers on the Beit She'an road - incidents that depleted the Jordan Valley communities of their residents - caused thousands of Palestinians from West Bank villages to be cut off from their land and their livelihood.

Those who are permitted to enter have a hard time selling their wares because most of the crossing points where the fruit and vegetable trade used to take place have been blocked. Jericho, the major Palestinian city in the area, has become a city blocked by a trench, part of an effort to keep Palestinian vehicles off the Jordan Valley road - exiting the city to the north is dependent on permission from the Israel Defense Forces.

Four permanent checkpoints stationed between the mountain ridge and the Jordan Valley prevent Palestinians who are not Jordan Valley residents from passing through. Those who manage to change the address on their identity cards are allowed to enter, but are thereby compelled to cut themselves off from their families in the West Bank. Every few days there are nighttime raids aimed at discovering and deporting those considered to be in the area illegally, who are actually located on their own lands. The Jordan Valley road has become a road for Jews only.

Although the explanations for this hard-line policy are security related, it's difficult to avoid connecting the developing reality to Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's declaration that Israel "cannot relinquish control over Israel's eastern border." The Jordan Valley residents feel that in making that statement, Olmert expressed a commitment to Israel's remaining in the Jordan Valley, while others interpret his comments as an evasion of just such a commitment. Control is not sovereignty, and it can be determined by a minimal military presence after withdrawal and evacuation. According to the Geneva Initiative, the Jordan Valley road would remain under Israeli security control although it would be transferred to Palestinian sovereignty.

There is no reason to adopt the 1967 Alon plan, which was never accepted by the Israeli government, Jordan, the Palestinians or the Americans. Even the attempt to construct an eastern security fence was taken off the agenda due to American pressure. The Alon plan was hatched during the pursuit period in the Jordan Valley, when the Jordanian and Iraqi threat was in force, and it would be foolish to hold on to this anachronistic plan today. It's difficult to understand why the Jordan Valley is considered a security asset. It's difficult to expect Iranian missiles to be halted by the Jordan River.

The Jordan Valley settlers are part of an obsolete political worldview that saw obstruction of passage from the east into Israel as an existential security need, and the settlers as those who would defend the border. This is a similar approach to the one that led to the establishment of the Gush Katif communities. Between the eastward expansion of Ma'aleh Adumim, the westward expansion of the Jordan Valley communities and the expansion of the settlement blocs toward the Green Line, the Palestinians are left with no territory on which to establish a state. The imprisonment of the Palestinians in a small area and the increasing depletion of their sources of employment do not serve Israel's security needs, even if for a moment someone thought he succeeded in capturing another dunam and more might.

Jerusalem's Museum Scandal:

PALESTINIAN Muslims are seeking an urgent court injunction to prevent the Simon Wiesenthal Centre building a $US200 million ($270 milllion) "museum of tolerance" on a former Muslim graveyard in Jerusalem.

Israeli media reports say at least 150 skeletons have already been dug up without the involvement or permission of the Islamic Waqf, Jerusalem's principal Muslim religious body.

"We need to support tolerance in Palestine; it's a difficult area for us," said the general director of the Waqf, Adnan Husseini.

"But this museum should be built in some place that respects the feelings of everybody. It is not appropriate for the Jewish people or the Jerusalem municipality to attempt to solve their problems over the bodies of Muslim people.

"We explained to the municipality … that cemeteries are very holy and I think the Jews know, more than any other religion, how important tombs are. They take very good care of their tombs in East Jerusalem, so why do they deny these rights to other religions?"

The museum is being built on a historic site in central West Jerusalem that served as the city's main Christian, then Muslim, cemetery for 1400 years, and which also includes Crusader-era graves.

In 1948, the western half of the city was captured by Zionist forces and most of its non-Jewish population fled fighting and massacres.

The new state of Israel later prevented refugees from returning and passed laws confiscating the property of any non-Jews who had left its territory. This law was used by the Jewish-controlled Jerusalem municipality to seize the cemetery and turn it into Independence Park.

The municipality in turn passed part of the site to the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, originally set up to hunt down Nazi war criminals, for a museum promoting human dignity and tolerance between Jews and other peoples. It is designed by the leading US architect Frank Gehry.

The Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Jerusalem referred questions on the matter to a public relations agency. An agency spokesman, Hagai Elias, said yesterday that the current work on the site was being carried out by the municipality, not the Simon Wiesenthal Centre. He said the site was not a Muslim graveyard.

"This was used as a car park for the last 30 years," Mr Elias said. "The Muslim graves and the Muslim cemetery are not there. It's a few metres from there."

Asked about reports that bodies had been found there, he said: "Jerusalem is an old city, over 3000 years old. Every building you build, somewhere there will be something archaeological".

Asked if the site was appropriate for a museum promoting tolerance, Mr Elias said that was a matter for the Israeli Supreme Court, which is to hear a petition from the Waqf next week. The court has already declined to halt clearing of the site until the matter is decided.

Mr Elias said the Simon Wiesenthal Centre did not know who the site had belonged to before the municipality acquired it.

"I don't know what history books you are reading. According to our history book that land belongs to the municipality … nobody took it by force."

He also rejected criticism from non-Jewish Jerusalemites who complain that Muslims, Christians and Armenians have not been consulted about their own suffering for the tolerance project, which seems to focus mainly on Jewish concerns.

Mr Elias said museum exhibits would deal with "all the people who have lived in Jerusalem in the last 3000 years".

The Muslim point of view would be represented via the municipality.

"In the municipality there are people who know a lot about the history of the Muslim people. They are involved in this project."

UPDATE:10th Feb.Construction was suspended yesterday on the Museum of Tolerance being built over a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, while the authorities ascertain whether a ruling Sunday by the court of Islamic law banning construction near the graves is legally binding.

A lawyer, accompanied by Palestinian press, came to the construction site Sunday and handed the injunction to the workmen, who contacted police. The police informed the museum's administrators and building contractors of the injunction and referred the parties to the courts.