TI: Splitting the atom
AU: Amotz-Asa-El-and-Dan-Williams
NT: Week in review 
SO: THE-JERUSALEM-POST.Friday, January 5, 2001;International. Page: 03.
AT: NEWS
LN: Long
NW: 3122
PY: 2001
2001
KW: Israel-; Palestinian-; Peace-; Diplomacy-; US-; 
Binyamin-ZeÆev-Kahane; Terror-; Murder-; Death-; Violence-; 
CIA-; Report-; Patriarch-Diodoros-I; Christianity-; 
Death-; Effy-Eitam; IDF-; Resignation-; Tel-Aviv; Labor-; 
Community-; Yitzhak-Mordechai; Sex-; Crime-; Trial-; 
History-; Thedore-Katz; Libel-; Judaism-; Youth-
AB: It could hardly be more symbolic, ironic and foreboding. As balconies, fences, and
window sills across JerusalemÆs Jewish neighborhoods were being adorned towards dusk
with Hanukka candles to commemorate the MaccabeesÆ liberation of the Temple Mount
from alien rule, IsraelÆs contemporary leaders contemplated relinquishing that very site,
in the framework of a deal that would hopefully end some 80 years of Israeli-Palestinian
enmity. The deal at stake is not altogether different from the one discussed preliminarily
at Camp David back in July. 
TY: It could hardly be more symbolic, ironic and foreboding. As balconies, fences, and
window sills across JerusalemÆs Jewish neighborhoods were being adorned towards dusk
with Hanukka candles to commemorate the MaccabeesÆ liberation of the Temple Mount
from alien rule, IsraelÆs contemporary leaders contemplated relinquishing that very site,
in the framework of a deal that would hopefully end some 80 years of Israeli-Palestinian
enmity. The deal at stake is not altogether different from the one discussed preliminarily
at Camp David back in July.
Its main facets include an Israeli retreat from 95 percent of the West Bank and a
complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip as well as relinquishment of a patch of land
from the Negev Desert south of Gaza, in turn for the five percent of West Bank land
Israel would retain in order to sustain some of the existing settlements, and also cluster
there the settlers who stand to lose their homes in other settlements. This alone can
suffice to shake Israel to its foundation, considering that too many Israelis who had
personally fought in the areas at stake have become suspicious of the Palestinian
Authority's real aims, in the wake of the last three months' uprising. For most Israelis,
including many who never voted for the Right, the conscious resort to violence as a
negotiation tactic - which the PA not only condoned but also boasted about - was not
part of the manual when they supported the Oslo Accords.
Yet all this pales in comparison with the Jerusalem component of the deal. After 33
years of much babble, bravado, and even legislation (see Professor Shlomo Slonim's
article, p. 17) about Jerusalem being the Jewish people's "eternal and indivisible" capital,
President Bill Clinton last week proposed to Prime Minister Ehud Barak and PA
Chairman Yasser Arafat that the city be split down the middle according to the
nationality of its various neighborhoods' inhabitants.
In the Old City, Clinton suggested that Israel retain the Jewish Quarter, the Western
Wall, and part of the Armenian Quarter. Last, and far from least, the Temple Mount,
too, would be split, but horizontally rather than vertically, meaning that the top, where
the mosques are, would be Palestinian-managed while the inside, where the remains of
the Jewish temples are buried, would be Israeli. In addition, the PA would formally
recognize the Jewish people's "special attachment" to the Temple Mount.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, were asked to abandon their insistence that refugees would
be allowed to return into Israel, and to formally declare an end to their conflict with -
and demands from - the Jewish state. Faced with this momentous opportunity, Arafat
and Barak were scheduled to meet in Sharm el-Sheikh for talks with Egyptian President
Hosni Mubarak, but then canceled that plan. Mubarak himself reportedly told Arafat he
and his people would never get a better deal than this one.
In fact, the deal is so generous that Jordan's King Abdullah is believed to be alarmed by
the specter of the Jordan Valley gradually passing to Arafat, the man who back in 1970
used that very area as a springboard for an attempted overthrow of Abdullah's father, the
late King Hussein. As this issue went to press, it seemed clear that while Barak had
made a grand decision in favor of the proposed deal, some of his colleagues, including
Knesset Speaker Avraham Burg and Jewish Affairs Minister Rabbi Michael Melchior,
were opposed to compromises involving the Temple Mount. Arafat, too, had yet to
indicate he would concur.
Evidently, there is little enthusiasm among Palestinian leaders for the proposed deal,
with figures like Tanzim militia leader Marwan Barghouti, Gaza notable Haidar Abd
el-Shafi, and Hamas leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin rejecting outright the idea of
forfeiting the right of return. Initially, the PA responded to Washington with a letter
asking for further clarifications, a move which only accentuated the PA's apparent sense
of damned if it does and damned if it doesn't. "It does not pass for a reply," State
Department officials said off the record.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Right was bracing for the mother of all political Armageddons. In
Tel Aviv, Likud leader and prime ministerial hopeful Ariel Sharon enlisted the services
of American political consultant Arthur Finkelstein, who is remembered in Israel more
as the man who helped Binyamin Netanyahu defeat Shimon Peres in 1996, and less as
the man who failed to defeat Ehud Barak in 1999. Sharon also recruited Eyal Arad, a
public-relations consultant and a longtime Netanyahu confidant who later fell from
favor with the former premier.
Behind his shoulder Sharon seems to always have his loyal son, Omri. Now this team is
seeking prudent ways to tap into the wild street-energy that is likely to be released by
the US- brokered deal, in order to make it push their Sharon to the throne. The first
sign of the kind of change Sharon's people yearned to see came last Wednesday from
Knesset Defense and Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Dan Meridor, who said that if
Jerusalem stands to be split he would oppose the proposed deal and endorse Sharon's
candidacy for the premiership.
Similar hints came from Health Minister Roni Milo. Sharon, who wants to create an
impression of a migration trend from Left to Right, needs exactly those kind of
defections. Coupled with the endorsement he already got last week from former foreign
minister David Levy, Sharon may soon be able to boast having restored to Likud's fold
three of its most veteran and prominent leaders who abandoned the party bitter,
disillusioned, and humiliated after major fallouts with Binyamin Netanyahu.
On the street, meanwhile, the same activists who led the anti-Oslo demonstrations back
in the mid-1990s were gearing up to return to the highway intersections where they
disrupted traffic as part of the civil disobedience struggle they waged against Yitzhak
Rabin. Whether or not they end up being joined by non- rightist Israelis remains to be
seen. And that, in turn, will depend on the way things develop with the American-
brokered deal.
If Arafat falls short of endorsing it, then the public can be expected to vindicate Sharon
and the rest of the Right for having claimed all these years that Arafat doesn't want
peace. If Arafat accepts but rejects its end- of-conflict clause then most Israelis can be
expected to respond even more angrily, since that would vindicate the old claim that
Arafat's aim ever since Oslo was merely to weaken Israel in order to continue fighting
it. But what if Arafat does, by the end of Clinton's term in office on January 20, accept
the deal as it was described last week? What if it really boils down to Israelis marching
to the ballots while staring Jerusalem in the pupils of its tearful eyes? Which way will
Israel then sway? For more on that, stay tuned for yet another unpredictable, eventful,
and fateful month in the history of the Jewish state.
Splinter actions, or the spread of terror? The violence spiral took a worrying turn for
the worse last week, with the killing of Binyamin Ze'ev Kahane - the US-born son of
militant Rabbi Meir Kahane - and his wife Talia as they drove by Ofra, a settlement 25
minutes' ride north of Jerusalem. Five of the couple's six children were hurt in the gun
attack on the family car, which was claimed by an obscure group calling itself the
Intifada Saints. The ambush came less than 12 hours after Fatah and its Tanzim militia
said they would escalate attacks against soldiers and settlers as the Palestinian Authority
failed to accept the final-status deal proposed by the US.
Binyamin Ze'ev and Talia Kahane, aged 34 and 31, were buried in Jerusalem in the
afternoon. Their five daughters underwent medical treatment at Hadassah-University
Hospital in the capital's Ein Kerem. At press time it was unclear whether the terrorists
had deliberately targeted Kahane, a known right-wing extremist who promoted the
anti-Arab doctrines of his father, himself assassinated 10 years ago by an Egyptian in
New York.
If so, the killing would suggest the Palestinians are adopting Israel's method of
calculated "hits" against selected targets. Indeed, hours after the Kahane killings, a
senior Fatah official was shot dead near his home in the West Bank town of Tulkarm.
The army had no immediate comment on the death of Thabet Thabet, but Palestinians
insisted it was an assassination.
There was another terrorist attack within the Green Line the previous Thursday, with a
bus bombing in Tel Aviv that wounded 14. Had the operation gone as planned there
would have been heavier casualties; as it happened, the first of the two pipe bombs left
on board failed to explode at maximum strength, while the second went off after all the
passengers had been removed. The same day, an explosive booby-trap at the Sufa
crossing in the southern Gaza Strip killed two servicemen, infantry Capt.
Gadi Marsha and Border Police sapper Sgt.- Maj. Yonatan Vermullen, and wounded
another two. The Israeli press went to special efforts to commemorate the two fatalities:
Marsha was the first Ethiopian immigrant to command a tracker platoon while
Vermullen was the son of Christian missionaries from Holland who decided to make his
home in Israel.
Earlier that week, motorist Eli Cohen was shot dead while driving past Givat Ze'ev on
his way home to Modi'in, and three Nahal Brigade soldiers were wounded by a suicide
bomber at the Mehola Junction in the northern Jordan Valley. Both attacks took place at
what might be referred to as the periphery of the West Bank claimed by the Palestinians.
Indeed, Modi'in-resident Cohen, like the bus passegngers in Tel Aviv, were targeted
despite the Palestinian effort to create the impression that their struggle is confined to
the West bank and Gaza.
Not surprisingly, the responsibility for the killing was claimed by a little-known group
calling itself the Palestinian Popular Resistance Forces. No one claimed responsibility
for the suicide bombing at first. Luckily the bomber's head was still intact, and the army
released pictures of his face for publication.
Hamas owned up, saying that the man was a member of its military wing Izzadin
Kassam. The statement calmed fears that the suicide bombing - only the second of the
current uprising - was carried out by yet another splinter group, one that might even
have originated in Jordan. CIA sees 15 more years of conflict Forecasts, as a wise man
once said, are a dangerous thing to do with regards to the future, but the Central
Intelligence Agency still made one, saying the Oslo generation will continue to suffer
strife.
In its new study titled Global Trends 2015, the CIA predicts that in 15 years "Israel will
have attained a cold peace with its neighbors, with only limited social, economic, and
cultural ties. There will be a Palestinian state, but Israeli-Palestinian tensions will persist
and occasionally erupt into crises." The CIA further predicts that "old rivalries among
core states-Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Iran-will reemerge," and that new relationships could
emerge among Israel, Turkey, and India on economic, technical, and (in the case of
Turkey) security considerations. The report notes that the key driver for the future of the
Middle East is demographic pressure in light of the expanding populations.
As for globalization, the CIA believes Israel is the only nation in the region which views
the trend as an opportunity rather than a challenge or threat. However, Israel is
mentioned with other countries of strategic interest to the US (Iran, Nigeria, Saudi
Arabia) as a source of serious concern because of its failure to resolve severe internal
religious and racial disputes. Israel is also cited by the CIA as a focus for international
crime.
Between heaven and real estate Patriarch Diodoros I, chief clergyman the approximately
130,000 Greek Orthodox Christians in Israel, died last week in Jerusalem, at age 77. A
senior bishop of the Greek Orthodox Church for almost 20 years, Diodoros began his
theological vocation in the mail room of the patriarchate in 1943 after immigrating to the
region in 1938. Throughout his term as patriarch, the church was involved in various
disputes over land ownership and control of holy sites with both Israel and the
Palestinian Authority.
At one stage, Arafat adviser Bassam Abu-Sharif reportedly threatened the patriarch's life
if he continued selling church land to Jews. In 1993 Diodoros withstood a petition to the
High Court of Justice against his tenure by Christian Arabs in the Galilee, who claimed
he was unfit to serve as patriarch as he was neither Palestinian nor spoke Arabic, and
treated the community's assets as his own. A replacement for Diodoros has not yet been
appointed and no date has been set for a succession vote, although there are two
contenders.
One is Jerusalem-based Metropolitan Timothy of Vostron, the patriarch's chief secretary,
and the other Metropolitan Eirinaios of Ioropolis, currently serving as the patriarchate's
representative in Greece. An Orthodox general's unorthodox farewell The resignation of
Brig.-Gen. Effy Eitam (Fine) last week came as little surprise given his increasing media
notoriety.
The former Golani Brigade commander had always been noted for his beard, kippa, and
open identification with the settler movement; the rumors that he wanted to quit the
army and enter politics forthwith seemed confirmed by his decision to forgo his
nine-month severance furlough, pay, and perks. He has already been tagged as a
candidate for the National Religious Party, but he may even aim higher, at a major
leadership position. Eitam resigned after Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen.
Shaul Mofaz again refused to promote him to major-general in the latest round of
military appointments, a move recalling then deputy chief of staff Matan Vilna'i's
decision to quit when he was passed over for the top army post. However, Eitam's case is
far more sensitive: The religious Right has long charged that though he was by all
accounts a brilliant and accomplished officer, his advancement was restricted for fear of
his "extreme" religio-political leanings. Yet Eitam has done little to dispel such fears.
During the first intifada he was formally reprimanded after being heard to order his
troops to break the bones of Palestinian rioters and taking part in one such beating.
And the current intifada led him to cross the inviolable line separating the military and
diplomatic worlds: The day before his resignation, he publicly referred to Yasser Arafat
as a "miserable murderer," and blasted the government for "giving Jerusalem" to the
Palestinian leader, "who five years ago didn't have a place to lay his head." Eitam was
speaking at a lecture on Jewish identity at Bar-Ilan University, where he had been on
study leave. "Where did the idea of giving up Jerusalem come from anyway?" he
continued.
"We created the idea by the fact that we are not capable of standing up and saying that
this is our place. The Master of the Universe, He who organized the world and
established that this is an animal, this is a man, this is a Jew and this is a non-Jew,
established that this place is ours, so that we can say this from the stature of a man, and
no bestial person can threaten us." Eitam further averred that "the IDF is capable,
tomorrow, physically and militarily, of capturing all of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza and
expelling the entire population overnight. Doing that is no problem.
We have a problem of wanting to do it. As a nation, we are inhibited." Eitam's critics
were not inhibited, of course. The Left and the Arab parties demanded his immediate
dismissal, while the Right was prudently quiet on the matter.
But now that he has left the army, there is little to bar Eitam from going into politics.
Vilna'i had a ministry shortly after doffing his uniform. Lacking similar partisan
contacts or popular backing, Eitam's transition might not be as smooth.
Should he act, it must be soon, as controversial former officers have short shelf lives. A
Chinatown in Tel Aviv Several neighborhoods south of Tel Aviv's Central Bus Station
are inhabited almost exclusively by some 70,000 foreign workers, as the original Israeli
residents have left. The Tel Aviv Municipality has decided to invest in this de facto
colony, renovating the neighborhoods to turn them into an ethnic quarter much like the
"Chinatowns" of cities like San Francisco, Vancouver, and New York.
Of course, Asians are only part of the racial mix in Tel Aviv's foreign-worker
community, and the municipality plans to have all ethnicities represented in the design.
The plan, introduced by city councilman Yigal Haim, includes the construction of
special building facades and the erection of street signs in the various languages of the
residents. The municipality will also organize parades and similar communal events.
Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai said that the creation of the new quarter is part of the
municipality's efforts to improve the lives of its foreign workers. Sex, power and closed
doors After months of anticipation, Yitzhak Mordechai testified for the first time in his
sexual assault trial in Jerusalem last week. The former defense minister, transportation
minister, Center Party leader and prime- ministerial candidate gave close to 12 hours of
testimony, which was heard behind closed doors.
Though such proceedings are extremely rare in sexual assault cases, the prosecution
accepted that they were necessary given Mordechai's media profile. The charges against
Mordechai include committing an indecent act in aggravated circumstances, committing
an indecent act, and sexual harassment. He is accused of three different assaults, in 1992,
1996, and last February, and the complainants - all women who worked as his
subordinates at the time of each incident - have already testified.
In a brief response submitted at the end of October, Mordechai, while denying the
charges, did acknowledge that he had physical contact with two of the three
complainants. Court martial The veterans of the Alexandroni Brigade had a quick, if not
decisive, victory in the Tel Aviv District Court last week. Their NIS 1.1 million libel suit
against Thedore Katz ended when the Haifa University historian agreed to withdraw a
research paper he had written stating that the brigade had killed 200-250 unarmed and
defenseless residents of Tantura in the battle for the Arab town during the War of
Independence.
In court, Katz had claimed that his research was based on taped interviews with 20
refugees from Tantura, and on the eyewitness accounts of several soldiers who
participated in the battle. The veterans countered that the historian's research paper had
quotes and descriptions attributed to interviewees, despite the fact that they did not
appear on the tapes. For example, in one instance, Katz wrote that the soldiers of the
brigade murdered men from the town after forcing them to bury the bodies of those who
had already been killed.
The veterans' attorney noted that there were no recordings to back this up. Katz said in
response that although it was not a direct quote, it was faithful to what he was told.
After the settling with the veterans, Katz had second thoughts, telling the judge that he
had succumbed to pressure from his family and wanted to resume the trial.
His request was denied. Haifa University, meanwhile, was similarly inconsistent about
its embattled historian. While it said that his research had satisfied all academic
standards and requirements and had been very favorably receives, it also disavowed any
responsibility for its content.
Reconsidering bar mitzvas Chief Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau has voiced rare criticism of
what has become an institution of Israeli bar mitzvas: the honorary Torah reading on the
Sabbath. During the annual convention for bar mitzva initiatives at Bar-Ilan University
last week, Lau said the tradition places undue stress on the pubescent boys, who are
usually struggling with breaking voices. Moreover, it leads to Sabbath desecration among
relatives who drive in for the ceremony.
Lau proposed the bar mitzva boy instead be taught real religious values, or that the
celebration be held on Monday or Thursday rather than Saturday.

IM: 7 photos; Caption: Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben-Ami at the White House, 
(with a Secret Service agent) last week. JordanÆs King 
Abdullah and Yasser Arafat praying in Amman last week. 
Mossad head Ephraim Halevi. Sappers examine the vehicle 
where right-wing militant Binyamin ZeÆev Kahane and his 
wife, Talia, were slain by terroorists last Sunday outside 
the settlement of Ofra. Patriarch Diodoros I, 1923-2000. 
Effy Eitam after his discharge from the army last week in 
Tel Aviv. Mordechai. A 12-hour testimony.; By: AP. Israel Sun. Isaac Harari
AN: 20055072