AxisMundi Jerusalem

“Big Brother” bumbles into West Bank

It’s a reality television show whose contestants are isolated from the outside world, but “Big Brother” in Israel has managed to set off yet another controversy over Palestine policies.

Cameras at the studio-cum-commune outside Jerusalem caught Edna Canetti, a 54-year-old liberal activist, telling fellow residents over the weekend she wanted to see a peaceful popular campaign against Israel’s West Bank occupation.

“It bothers me that you’re silent. What’s needed is a revolt,” she declared after refusing to play along with a challenge in which contestants were divided into two groups — “rich” versus “poor” — with a plexiglass barrier between them.

Shifting to Middle East politics, Canetti said Palestinians should similarly tell Israel: “Shove your laws … We’re not going through that checkpoint and we’re not showing you IDs … This is our land.”

The remarks were in themselves unremarkable for Big Brother, an international franchise whose dramatic formula is based on the premise that very different people, cooped up together for weeks, will grow fractious. Yet while Canetti’s assertions met with bored or exasperated shrugs inside the Big Brother house, they found a far angrier audience on the Israeli far-right.

Michael Ben-Ari, a lawmaker from the National Union party who has himself been the subject of public censure after urging Israeli military conscripts to refuse orders to evacuate Jewish settlers from the West Bank, accused Canetti of sedition.

“Mrs. Canetti is, in effect, encouraging Arabs to rise up against the State of Israel, the violation of Israel Defence Force (IDF) troops’ orders, and even open insurrection,” Ben-Ari wrote in a complaint that his spokesman said had been mailed to the Justice Ministry along with a demand for a criminal investigation.

The Opportunity Cost

(Read the English transcript of Shalit’s video message here.)

It’s been two days since the exchange of the captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit’s proof-of-life video for Israel’s release of 20 Palestinian female prisoners. The final prisoner of the 20 was freed today as the last step to the soldier-video swap.

After being made public, the video has been replayed nonstop on television, radio, and video web-hosting sites. As of Monday, the endless number of video uploads by individual users on Youtube had each been viewed over at least 40,000 times.

Israeli newspapers Yedioth Ahronoth and Maariv dedicated more than half of their pages to the Shalit video. Under the headlines “Broken Smile” and “May I fulfill my dream of going free, at last”, the newspapers’ extensive coverage ranged from an analysis by former prisoners of war, emotional comments by the Shalit family, to piercing commentaries on “how Israel has failed its son, Gilad”.

There have been conflicting reports on the significance of Friday’s exchange and the prospects of Shalit’s release and Israelis and the Hamas reaching a deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was encouraged by the video and President Shimon Peres said, “The tape is an important step, but there is still a long way to go”. Israeli media quoted one Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip said reaching a deal is “a matter of weeks, or at the most – months”. Father of the captive soldier Noam Shalit expressed fear that negotiations might take years.

Looking at the recent swap, Newsweek‘s Adam B. Kushner wondered how much “mere proof of life” is worth. According to Kushner, analysts argue that these swaps could encourage more attempts to capture soldiers because the return or the “exchange rate” is very high as long as they seize “somebody valuable enough” – enough to make Israelis want to trade.

Predicting a Third Intifada

Last week: Sunday – clashes in the Old City of Jerusalem which to some resemble the events that led to the outbreak of the Second Intifada nine years ago; Tuesday – shooting by Palestinians wounds an Israeli motorist in the West Bank; Wednesday – an Israeli Army jeep hitting and killing a 17-year-old Palestinian. (Read more about the September 27th, 2009 clashes here.)

This week: Sunday again – hundreds of Arabs clash again with police in the Old City of Jerusalem. Police briefly block all access to the  al-Aqsa mosque compound.

At the rate things have been going, expecting another act of violence to follow might be the next logical step.

But, looking largely at last week’s Jerusalem clashes, a commentary in the Jerusalem Post, posed an interesting question: Do recent acts of violence portend worse violence? The Jerusalem Post answered No.

Our analysis of the recent violence also shows that talk of a Third Intifada seems premature to most Palestinians. But don’t be too optimistic though, says Zakaria al-Qaq of al-Quds University, as there exists Palestinian discontent with the new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and policies that include settlement growth.

Do you think worse violence is possible in Israel and the Palestinian territories?

Read our FACTBOX on five risks to watch out for in the Middle East.

Aziz Dweik interview

Aziz Dweik was the speaker of the Hamas-led Palestinian parliament until his arrest and imprisonment by Israel 3 years ago. He was one of dozens of Hamas lawmakers rounded up across the occupied West Bank in the summer of 2006 after gunmen from Hamas and other militants from Gaza abducted an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, in a cross-border raid. 

Dweik was released earlier this week after serving nearly the full term of his prison sentence.

Our journalists interviewed Dweik, 60, earlier this week in his hometown of Hebron. Here’s the interview as it appeared on our news wire. And below, a video of excerpts from the interview in English where Dweik holds out hope for a deal that would see Shalit released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and for a unity deal to overcome the deep schism in Palestinian politics between Hamas and the Fatah faction led by President Mahmoud Abbas.

Power Play

If you were an investor in the power plant above and you saw a picture of it engulfed in flames after being bombarded from the air by a fighter jet you might worry about your future ROI, right?

Well – as we explain here in our latest story on fiscal transparency and governance in the Palestinian Territories - it’s not always that simple.

The picture above is of the power plant in Gaza after it was bombed by Israeli jets in June 2006 following the abduction by Palestinian militants of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

But despite the bombing, subsequent fuel shortages and other woes, this power plant keeps generating handsome dividends for investors even if its not generating power for Gaza.

Click here for earlier stories in the transparency and governance series.

Breaking Ranks

Its been two months since Israel ended its 22-day offensive in Gaza – two months during which Israel has been weighing up the costs and the benefits of what was achieved in the fierce fighting.

Strong international condemnation of the offensive – and the slew of boycotts, bans and blunt dioplomacy that have followed – has been met with a mix of incredulity, anger and resignation in Israel.

Much of the condemnation of the offensive has been attributed in Israel to the standard leftist, anti-Israeli, anti-semitic rabble-rousing from the usual quarters along with a failure elsewhere in the world to understand the gravity of the rocket fire from Gaza on southern Israel which Israelis feel forced the army into action.

Within that narrow prism – Israel has, in large part, dismissed the criticism and a large tranche of public opinion is still supportive of the war despite questions about the achievements of a campaign which left Hamas in power, rockets still falling on southern Israel and Sgt Gilad Shalit still a captive somewhere in Gaza, 1,000 days after he was captured in 2006.

But internal criticism, from the very heart of Israel’s most venerated institution, is another matter entirely.

The publication of transcripts of conversations with soldiers who served in Gaza has whipped up a storm of controversy in Israel far beyond anything the international outcry stirred up.

Captured Israeli soldier’s parents take protest to Olmert’s doorstep

Dubbed Israel’s most polite protesters by one Israeli newspaper columnist, the parents of captured soldier Gilad Shalit have set up a protest tent outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s Jerusalem residence to press for his release.

Shalit, 22, has been held since 2006 by militants from Hamas and two other groups who tunnelled into Israel from the Gaza Strip. Hamas has demanded Israel release hundreds of its members held in Israeli prisons in exchange for the soldier.

Some of those Hamas men have been convicted of carrying out attacks that have killed Israelis, and the prospect of their release has set off a heated debate in Israel.

Israeli leaders have agreed to numerically lopsided swaps with Arab enemies in the past in exchange for captured soldiers or their bodies. Those in Israel opposed to a similar deal to get Shalit back argue it would only strengthen Hamas’s resolve in its fight against Israel.

A Palestinian Nelson Mandela?

Wearing brown, prison-issue garb, the Palestinian on trial on murder charges in a Tel Aviv criminal court barely seemed to be paying attention as prosecutors ticked off his alleged crimes. But he was quick to respond whenever his accusers described him as a “michabel”, Hebrew for “terrorist”.

“The occupation is terrorism,” the defendant, Marwan Barghouthi, would shout — in Hebrew — and then go back to ignoring the proceedings in a court which he said had no jurisdiction to try him.

A main voice of a Palestinian uprising after peace talks, which he had supported, collapsed in 2000, Barghouthi was arrested in an Israeli army raid in 2002 in the occupied West Bank and put on trial a year later on charges of orchestrating attacks that killed four Israelis and a Greek monk. Described in the indictment as the commander of Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, he was convicted and given five life sentences.

Now, Barghouthi, 49, could be released by Israel to bolster Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction ahead of any prisoner swap with Hamas, which has been holding Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit since 2006.

Frequently touted as a successor within Fatah to Abbas, Barghouthi, elected to the Palestinian parliament in 1996, would bring a new dynamic to the Palestinian leadership — the ability to talk to Israelis in their own language. He learned his fluent Hebrew the hard way, during previous stints in Israeli prisons.

In 2007, Israel’s left-leaning Haaretz newspaper called for his release, saying Barghouthi had tried for years to persuade Israeli leaders to end occupation through negotiation. He could, the newspaper said, become the Palestinians’ Nelson Mandela.