Bank And Gaza

The time has come to think seriously about promoting the development of democratic institutions in the occupied West Bank and in Gaza.The very idea of democracy in the Arab world evokes profound doubt, if not guffaws, in some Washington circles. But, doubts notwithstanding, there is a real opportunity to create the underpinnings of a participant political system in the territories through the development of civil society.In the West, we associate free elections with democracy, but the home of democracy is civil society, the melange of groups, parties and associations which buffer the citizen from the naked power of the state.

GAZA CITY - Psychiatrist Eyad el-Sarraj can be as caustic as any Palestinian in condemning Israel's 40-year occupation of the Gaza Strip. But he speaks with admiration approaching awe of Israelis' kindness during his own bone marrow treatment two years ago at Chaim Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, outside Tel Aviv. Other Palestinians there got similar attention, he says, adding, "This is something I will never forget." Business consultant Sami Abdel-Shafi has heard sentiments similar to Mr. el-Sarraj's from older laborers who used to be allowed to work in Israel.

JERUSALEM -- Three suicide bombers struck in the heart of Jerusalem's cafe district yesterday, killing four other people, injuring 192 and littering the stone pedestrian walkway with blood, glass and body parts.The terrorists -- who also died in the 3: 10 p.m. attack -- exploded their bombs within view of each other on Ben Yehuda Street.The injured included several American tourists, and the four Israelis killed were identified in radio reports as two 12-year-old girls, a 14-year-old girl and a 20-year-old man.The streetscape of coffeehouses, flower shops and Middle Eastern eateries has been a target of terrorists in the past; it is a popular shopping thoroughfare for Israelis and tourists.

BENNY GAON, 73 Israeli industrialist Benny Gaon, an Israeli industrialist and advocate of economic ties with Arabs, died Saturday of cancer at a Tel Aviv hospital, his office said. In recent years, he had been chairman and president of B. Gaon Holdings Ltd., a company he founded that promotes investments around the world. He was best known in Israel for rescuing Koor Industries Ltd. from the brink of bankruptcy in 1988. Mr. Gaon was known for his optimism about the prospects for peace.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's army launched its largest military operation in two decades yesterday, sending 150 tanks streaming into the West Bank city of Ramallah and invading the largest refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. As of last night, Israeli troops had killed 32 Palestinians during yesterday's operation, including 18 in the Jabaliya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip and six in Ramallah. Palestinian officials said many civilians were among the dead. "It's absolutely terrible," said Dr. Mustafa Barghouti, head of a medical relief agency in Ramallah.

MA'ALOT, Israel -- Peacemaking always requires forgiving and forgetting, on both sides. But in the case of Nayef Hawatmeh, one of the most notorious Palestinian terrorists of the 1970s, forgiving and forgetting are practically impossible.Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, hoping to bury the hatchet with old rivals within the Palestine Liberation Organization, wants to welcome Hawatmeh into the West Bank and Gaza so he can join the Arab consensus as final negotiations get under way with Israel.

What's in a name? First American is neither.The two biggest business-boosting groups in Maryland merged. The splash was heard from one end of Annapolis.The Palestinians can reject talks from which half their number are barred. Or they can get control of the West Bank and Gaza. It's up to them.Croatia is no match for Yugoslavia. But they knew that.

BENNY GAON, 73 Israeli industrialist Benny Gaon, an Israeli industrialist and advocate of economic ties with Arabs, died Saturday of cancer at a Tel Aviv hospital, his office said. In recent years, he had been chairman and president of B. Gaon Holdings Ltd., a company he founded that promotes investments around the world. He was best known in Israel for rescuing Koor Industries Ltd. from the brink of bankruptcy in 1988. Mr. Gaon was known for his optimism about the prospects for peace.

JERUSALEM -- Accused repeatedly of violations of human rights on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the Israeli military yesterday defended its actions in countering the Palestinian rebellion as fully within international law.Col. David Yahav, the Israel Defense Forces' deputy advocate general, asserted that many of the army's most criticized actions -- detention without trial, deportations, demolition of houses, curfews, censorship and seizure of land -- are permitted under international treaties.

Emmitsburg -- Yasser Arafat's support for Saddam Hussein during the Persian Gulf crisis significantly weakened the PLO as an international player and rendered it irrelevant in the Middle East peace process. The decision-making paralysis of Mr. Arafat and his advisers has become an impediment rather than an impetus to peace.It is time for the Palestine National Council to elect a new leadership. The peace process and the Palestinian cause would be better served if the PLO acquires a new chairman and a new executive committee with more representation from the West Bank and Gaza.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ordered an overhaul of his security apparatus yesterday after an inquiry panel held 60 officers responsible for its collapse in factional fighting that gave Hamas control of the Gaza Strip. The reform aims to make the security forces more professional and strengthen them against any similar challenge by Hamas in the more populous West Bank. U.S. officials have pressed for such changes to advance the prospects for peace talks that Abbas and his secular Fatah movement are seeking with Israel.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Suggestions that Hamas' violent takeover of the Gaza Strip has effectively divorced the Palestinians into two separate states - Gaza, controlled by Hamas, and the West Bank, dominated by Fatah - worry Raed Abu Rouk and his new wife, Hind Whaby. The newlyweds insist that whatever the political divisions, the two halves of the state that Palestinians yearn to create must remain united. If not, it might spell disaster for the Palestinian people as a whole. They should know: He is from Gaza.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Fatah gunmen took aim at Hamas rivals in the West Bank yesterday, storming the Hamas-led parliament and ransacking offices of the Islamist group amid fears that last week's fighting in the Gaza Strip could trigger a wider reprisal campaign here. No deaths were reported during a series of incidents around the West Bank, which came despite Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to rein in militants affiliated with his Fatah party. Fatah still holds sway in the West Bank, but its forces were overpowered in the Gaza fighting, leaving Hamas in sole control of the seaside strip of land.

As she makes another effort to create a "political horizon" for Israelis and Palestinians, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be well advised to take a good look at their states of mind. The picture that Ms. Rice is trying to draw, illustrating ways to resolve the core points of disagreement between the two peoples, cannot be an abstraction. It must be a vision that would reverse the confrontational dynamic. Most Israelis and Palestinians have experienced only a relationship of bloody conflict.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- Seeking an end to the political deadlock that is impoverishing the Palestinian people and pushing them closer to civil war, President Mahmoud Abbas called yesterday for new presidential and legislative elections to be held as soon as possible. The announcement came as a direct challenge to Hamas, which won a landslide victory over Abbas' Fatah Party less than one year ago. Hamas officials immediately rejected the call for early elections as an illegal attempt by Abbas to mount a "coup."

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- To look a cancer patient in the eyes and tell her, `I am out of medicine' - this is the most difficult thing I have ever done as a physician," Dr. Isa Janina, medical director of the Palestinian Government Hospital in Bethlehem, told me. "Because both she and I know that this means she will die." Yet, for more than six months, physicians all over the West Bank and Gaza have been saying these words to their patients. The Palestinian health care system is in a crisis that is deepening daily, a crisis that is undermining not only patients' well-being but also U.S. interests in the region.

WAYNE, Pa. - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has never minced words about his long-term vision for Israel and the future he has in store for his Palestinian neighbors - a greater Israel in control of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Within this greater Israel, Palestinians would be confined to "security zones" dotted by Jewish settlements and Israeli army bases, their movement closely watched and regulated and their economy tightly controlled and subservient to that of Israel. Palestinians would be allowed to "administer" themselves - take care of the daily chores of picking up garbage, sweeping the streets, regulating traffic and chasing common thieves - but would not be allowed to build an independent economy or live free from outside interference as a sovereign nation.

President Bush might be forgiven if he were to look at his advisers and demand to know whose bright idea it was to become re-engaged in trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His pre-Sept. 11 idea that the Israelis and the Palestinians should be left to their own devices must be looking pretty sensible these days. No sooner had Bush gotten Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas to shake hands on the so-called "road map" to peace than the bloodletting between their people had resumed with a vengeance.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has something in common with his two nemeses, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and Bashar Assad of Syria: All three nodded approvingly from the sidelines as their allies launched a fierce war across the Israeli-Lebanese border and in the Palestinian territories that has left hundreds of civilians dead amid scenes of destruction, dislocation and shattered lives. Mr. Bush, backing Israel, ignored the international clamor for a hasty cease-fire, encouraging Israel's two-front assault against Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the West Bank and Gaza.

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- When Ibrahim Alatrash finished his final accounting exam last week at Birzeit University, his friends and family gave him a bouquet of roses, lifted him up on their shoulders and carried him across the campus to the school cafeteria, where they danced on the tables in celebration. "It was the best day of my life," Alatrash said. One week later, Alatrash no longer has much to celebrate. Although he is newly graduated from the most prestigious university in the West Bank, his prospects for finding a job are slim.