AxisMundi Jerusalem

from FaithWorld:

Don’t preach to us, Hamas tells secular West

The West is floundering in immorality and has no right to criticise the Islamist movement Hamas over the way it governs the Palestinian territory of Gaza, a veteran leader of the militant group said. Hamas strategist Mahmoud Al-Zahar told Reuters in an interview that Islamic traditions deserved respect and he accused Europe of promoting promiscuity and political hypocrisy.

"We have the right to control our life according to our religion, not according to your religion. You have no religion, You are secular," said Zahar, who is one of the group's most influential and respected voices.

"You do not live like human beings. You do not (even) live like animals. You accept homosexuality. And now you criticise us?" he said, speaking from his apartment building in the densely populated Mediterranean city.

Hamas, which is an acronym for Islamic Resistance Movement and means "zeal" in Arabic, won a fair, 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election and then seized control of Gaza in 2007 after routing rival forces loyal to President Mahmoud Abbas.

Sitting in a cavernous reception room, with an old Mercedes saloon car parked in one corner, Zahar denounced European states, such as France, for recently barring Muslim women from wearing full face veils in public.

"We are the ones who respect women and honour women ... not you," he said. "You use women as an animal. She has one husband and hundreds of thousands of boyfriends. You don't know who is the father of your sons, because of the way you respect women."

Read the full article here.

“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.

O Hamas where art thou?

Hamas has kept a pretty low profile in the West Bank recently–when will that change?

According to recent polls in both Israel and the West Bank, both Israeli and Palestinian populations are looking to see Hamas step up to the plate in negotiations. But that might not be enough to make Hamas willing to resurface in the West Bank just yet.

Two days ago, the Israel Dialogue Institute released a poll saying that over half of the Israeli public wants to see Hamas brought into negotiations if it recognized Israel (See Reuters’ story here).

A Ha’aretz article said, “it turns out that the majority of the public – 57% – supports the view of (Knesset member) Shaul Mofaz of (Israeli centrist party) Kadima, who published a plan earlier this week, in which he called for dialogue with Hamas under certain conditions. Inside Kadima the idea has tremendous support by some 72 percent of the party’s voters.”

Even more surprising is that among supporters of Likud, Israel’s right-wing political party, 53%  of the public approved of negotiating with Hamas.

But according to a recent report in the Carnegie Endowment’s Arab Reform Bulletin, Hamas plans to keep lying low in the midst of the West Bank political storm between Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and American negotiators (original Arabic here).

“Hamas has also gone to ground on the West Bank because it is convinced that the current situation will eventually redound to its benefit,” says Palestinian writer Omran al-Risheq–especially given Abbas’ refusal to restart peace talks with Israel, the US reluctance to demand a total settlement freeze, and Abbas’ recent announcements that he won’t run for re-election. (Read Reuters’ latest story here.)

“Little Palestine”

Palestinian reconciliation efforts suffered another setback when President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree for presidential and parliamentary elections on Jan. 24, a move that was rejected by the Islamist group Hamas. Egypt has been mediating for over a year to heal the split between Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas but the two rivals have continuously failed to reach a unity agreement. (Read our Q&A to understand why the two Palestinian factions fail to reach an agreement on Cairo’s latest proposal.) Most Palestinians believe a unity deal is crucial to achieving Palestinian statehood but don’t think an agreement is likely. However, the rare case of successful Fatah-Hamas partnership in the West Bank village of Beita might convince them otherwise.

Elected leaders of this town come from different backgrounds and political affiliations but all serve on the same council, working in synergy to build a robust independently-funded infrastructure – a rarity in the Palestinian territories.

In the 2004 municipal elections, Beita village produced an 11-member council comprised of 6 Hamas and 5 Fatah members, with Sheikh Arab from Hamas as mayor. Shortly after the elections, Sheikh Arab joined forces with Abu Haitham, a former mayor of 8 years who had headed the Fatah ballot list, and together they worked to start building what they call ‘Little Palestine’.

“We asked ourselves this question, ‘Why did we come to this council?’ and all 11 members answered: ‘We came here for the good of the town,’” Sheikh Arab told Reuters. “We cooperate on what we agree and we pardon one another on issues we do not agree. We try to pretend as if Beita is Little Palestine with all of its problems – political, social, economic, and security issues.”

Like most Hamas leaders in the West Bank, Sheikh Arab was arrested by Palestinian forces loyal to Abbas in 2007, the year Hamas wrested control of the Gaza Strip from Fatah. He was released in 2009 and now serves as deputy to the current mayor, Abu Muhanad, a Fatah member who last held the post while Sheikh Arab was in detention.

“Outside the walls of this municipality, I am still Fatah and defend Fatah, and he is Hamas and defends Hamas. But we defend the right things and what is wrong on what we all agree is wrong,”  Abu Muhanad said about his relationship with his deputy mayor.

Unity and cooperation within the leadership isn’t the town’s only achievement, said Abu Haitham, the former mayor who oversees various investments and development projects. “On top of the slogan to have unity and cooperation, we have adopted another principle and that is how to move from relief to development. In this respect, we concentrated on investments and how to rely on our income,” he said.

Mahmoud Abbas “on trial”

A youth group in the Gaza Strip held a mock trial for the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday. The Youth Parliament, a group under the media department of the Islamist group Hamas, prosecuted Abbas on charge of “betraying the blood of the martyrs and the injured”.

The charge was in reference to Abbas’s agreement to defer the vote on the Goldstone Report at the United Nations Human Rights Council earlier this month. Many human rights groups have been pressing nations to endorse the UN report critical of the Gaza War seeing it as a way to hold both Israel and Hamas accountable for the hundreds of civilian deaths in the devastating war. The vote on the Goldstone Report was delayed to next March, which looked like a victory for Israel, and some Palestinians charged his decision had raised serious questions about Abbas’s leadership. Abbas, doing some damage control, pledged to push for an exceptional UNHCR session, which is being held on Wednesday. (Read more here.)

A panel of three teen judges presided over this trial held at the Hamas media offices in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip. A man with a similar physique as the Palestinian Authority president acted the part of the defendant, wearing a mask with a picture of Abbas’s face, standing handcuffed and chained at the ankles throughout the trial. He also mimicked Abbas’s accent and intonation.

The prosecutor’s opening statement was followed by testimonies from a human rights group representative, an Arab League representative, Abbas’s defense lawyer, and Mahmoud Abbas “himself”. A young girl, representative of “the children of Palestine”, claiming to have come straight from school to testify against the “traitor”, spoke as a “witness to the crimes committed against the children”.

Abbas was unsurprisingly found guilty, and sentenced to life in prison. His personal property is also to be seized for public use, the mock verdict said.

The Parliament is comprised of 50 girls and boys under the age of 18. It has already “tried” several politicians: former U.S. President George W. Bush towards the end of his term and former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon shortly before he fell ill a few years ago.

Gazan zebra, the wild donkey

Palestinian children in Gaza received a very special treat today. They had the opportunity to see a zebra in flesh. Well, a “zebra”.

A small Gaza zoo dyed two female donkeys white and striped the two using women’s hair-dye and a paint brush. It charged $15 for a full busload of children to meet the zebras – a bargain for an animal that would have cost $40,000 to bring to the Israel-blockaded Gaza.

In Arabic the word for zebra literally means ‘a wild donkey’, so maybe these donkeys weren’t too far off.

Click below to judge the dye job for yourself:

Palestinian Non-Alcoholic Beer

The fifth annual Palestinian Oktoberfest was held on October 3rd and 4th, at the mainly Christian town of Taybeh, West Bank. Located several kilometers north of Ramallah, Taybeh, is home to the first and only Palestinian beer – Taybeh Beer. Established in 1995, Taybeh Beer can also be found abroad, being sold and distributed in Germany, the United Kingdom and even Japan.

The two-day beer festival celebrates the town’s now famed beverage and markets other local Palestinian products such as olive oil, honey, and embroidery to international visitors, as an effort to boost the Palestinian economy.

This year’s Oktoberfest boasted a diverse program featuring Brazilian and Greek bands and traditional Japanese dancers. Organizers expected more than 10,000 visitors, a new record.

But what truly marks this Oktoberfest is that this year’s is the first to serve Taybeh beer’s new non-alcoholic line: Taybeh Halal, launched this year.

To beer enthusiasts and/or beer purists, serving the non-alcoholic kind at an Oktoberfest may sound sacrilegious. At an Oktoberfest in the West Bank where Muslims form the majority, however, having Taybeh Halal could address a wider clientele for those banned by religion from drinking alcohol.

Nadim Canaan Khoury, the Christian owner of the Taybeh Brewery, began preparing for the alcohol-free beer immediately after Hamas Islamists’ landslide win in the January 2006 parliamentary election. He changed the trademark gold bottle labels to green, the colour of Islam, for the non-alcoholic version. Khoury has not officially been approached by Hamas, but according to a Hamas official Taybeh Halal is just not enough.

In a heated debate on the BBC Arabic TV channel, aired on the opening night of the Taybeh Oktoberfest, a Hamas legislator Mushir al-Masri called Palestinian Authority Economy Minister Bassem Khoury’s government ”alcoholic”. Masri argued that brewing was illegal in the Palestinian territories, though that is not an interpretation widely understood outside of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Minister Khoury retaliated and spoke of economic benefits that Taybeh Beer, as an important export, offers Palestinians.

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.

Peace Without Hamas?

According to International Peace Institute’s (IPI) new poll conducted in both Hamas-ruled Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank administered by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah movement, Palestinians still offer substantial support for the Islamist Hamas group for being “the party of resistance”.

IPI said 55 percent of Palestinians favor a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which shows a shift in Palestinian public opinion towards greater willingness to accept “the overall package and of provisions for Israeli withdrawal, Palestinian demilitarization, and mutual recognition.”

So, most Palestinians want a state of their own through a peace deal with Israel. But at the same time, a significant percentage back Hamas which refuses to recognise Israel and will only consider a long-term truce, not a peace treaty creating two states.  Elections are due next year and if this poll is right, Fatah will win but hardly by a landslide.

It shows Palestinians are still ambivalent about their choice of leadership. Poll results show Abbas winning a head-to-head election against Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh with 52 percent, which it calls a “narrow margin”.

Click below to see a massive Hamas rally celebrating the Islamist group’s 21st anniversary on December 14, 2008: