-
ISRAEL
- A PEOPLE ADRIFT - IN CHAOS, PALESTINIANS STRUGGLE FOR
A WAY OUT
NEW YORK TIMES, July 15, 2004 by James Bennet - JENIN, West Bank
- Sitting in his office beneath two signs deploring smoking,
Salahaldin Mousa listens all day as his fellow citizens interrupt
his paperwork to complain about their utility bills or to demand
jobs. He wonders whom they may be connected to, and if they have
guns.
For Palestinians, it is a mocking contradiction: President Bush
and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon speak of a state of Palestine
as almost a historical inevitability. But on the ground, after
years of Israeli military raids and blockades and Palestinian
political paralysis, the economy is growing more dependent on
foreign donors, and institutions of statehood are crumbling...
In the West Bank and Gaza, a contest is under way between warlords
and democrats, between Islamists and secular leaders, between
those who would destroy Israel and those who would live beside
it, between enclaves like Jenin and Gaza and the very idea of
a unified national state.
The bulldozers are at work again in Jenin camp. Hundreds of homes
are rising to replace those leveled when soldiers squared off
with gunmen during an Israeli offensive two years ago. Out in
the fields beyond the camp stands another legacy of the conflict,
Israel's barrier against West Bank Palestinians.
For Israel, the barrier is a sign that after 37 years of occupying
the West Bank and Gaza, it is deciding what it wants: to cut
itself off from the Palestinians, to give up Gaza, to hold onto
as much of the West Bank as it can, and to retrain a Jewish majority
in a democratic state.
But for Palestinians, there is no such clarity; they have made
no national decisions, and the mechanisms for making and enforcing
any are breaking down.
For many residents of Jenin, their city of 45,000 has become
an island, relying on itself rather than the Palestinian Authority.
"Over three years, Jenin turned back into a small village
that must depend on itself," said its mayor, Waleed A. Mwais.
"Israel destroyed all forms of authority. Everyone has their
own weapon. This is the problem of Jenin: We have an absolute
state of chaos."
Criticism of the aging Palestinian leadership, and even of Yasir
Arafat, has reached a new pitch. But reform-minded leaders are
struggling to find a way to start over, now that more than 3,200
Palestinians and almost 1,000 Israelis have died violently in
a conflict that has become a way of life.
"You'd like to feel something has a connection to tomorrow,"
said Muhammad Horani, a Palestinian legislator from Hebron who
has been trying for years for democratic change.
Private investment has all but vanished. But donors stepped in,
doubling their contributions, to a billion dollars a year, an
amount equal to one-third the Palestinian gross national product
last year of $3.1 billion. That works out to roughly $310 a person,
more aid per capita than any country has received since World
War II, the World Bank says.
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NEW GROUP HELPS U.S. JEWS MOVE TO ISRAEL
NEW YORK TIMES, July 15, 2004 by Greg Myre
Israel, July 14 - With immigration to Israel down sharply in
recent years, a charter flight delivered nearly 400 new arrivals
from the United States and Canada on Wednesday as part of an
expanding program that has been luring middle-class Jews from
North America.
In a sweltering ceremony that filled a huge hanger at Ben-Gurion
International Airport, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and two of
his cabinet ministers greeted the immigrants moments after they
stepped off an El Al jumbo jet from Kennedy Airport in New York.
"We have to bring hundreds of thousands of Jews from America
to Israel," Mr. Sharon said. "We need them here. It
is important for you. It is important for us."
The immigrants are among 1,500 from the United States and Canada,
almost a third of them from New York State, who are arriving
this summer under the sponsorship of a private group, Nefesh
B'Nefesh, or "soul to soul."
North American Jews, most of whom are comfortably middle-class
at home, have traditionally migrated to Israel in small numbers,
averaging 3,000 to 5,000 annually for the last quarter-century,
according to Israeli government figures.
But Nefesh B'Nefesh is seeking to raise those figures substantially.
In its first try, the group brought in just over 500 immigrants
in the summer of 2002. More than 1,000 came last year, despite
the continuing Middle East violence and an Israel economy that
was just beginning to crawl out of a recession.
Dr. Jonathan Paley, an orthodontist from Cedarhurst, N.Y., on
Long Island, landed with his wife, Sarah, and their five children,
ages 11 years to 4 months.
Dr. Paley, 33, will quickly settle his family in Jerusalem and
then commute to New York for two weeks each month to keep working
at his old practice until he can establish himself in Israel.
"It's not easy, but this is something very important to
all of us," Dr. Paley said. "I first came to Israel
when I was 11, and I've been dreaming about this ever since."
The immigrants said the violence in the Middle East was not a
deterrent to immigrating, and in some cases it motivated them
to show solidarity with Israel during a time of turmoil. Most
of the young men will be required to perform military service.
"At some point I expect to serve in the army, which I'll
do gladly," said Jason Silberman, 25, who was living in
Queens and working at a Manhattan law firm.
While the new arrivals cited personal reasons for coming, the
immigration issue is also linked to the demographic battle between
Israelis and Palestinians.
In the combined areas of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip,
Jews outnumber Arabs by about 5.4 million to 4.9 million, according
to figures from the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.
But the Arab birthrate is significantly higher, and under the
current trends, Arabs will outnumber Jews within the next 10
to 20 years, according to demographers.
Israel's Jewish population rose with a wave of immigration that
began in 1990 as the Soviet Union was collapsing. A year earlier,
Israel had just 24,000 immigrants. In 1990, a record 200,000
came, the vast majority from the Soviet Union.
Immigration has fallen in recent years, because many Jews in
economically distressed countries, like the former Soviet republics
and Ethiopia, have already left. Last year, immigration fell
below 25,000, hitting a 15-year low.
This year's crop of North American immigrants comes from 33 states
and 4 Canadian provinces, and 98 percent of the families have
at least one member with an undergraduate or postgraduate degree.
"We promise we are going to bring many more planes in the
future," said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, one of the leaders of
Nefesh B'Nefesh.
Many will be living in Jerusalem or Beit Shemesh, about 20 miles
to the west. At least a few new immigrants will be moving to
Jewish settlements in the West Bank, a practice that strikes
a nerve among Palestinians.
In recent years, new immigrants from India, Peru and elsewhere
have been placed in West Bank settlements on their arrival. On
Thursday, 50 French families will be arriving and moving to the
West Bank while studying Hebrew, the newspaper Yediot Aharonot
reported.
The Middle East peace plan known as the road map calls for Israel
to suspend "all settlement activity." Israel has interpreted
this to mean that the development of existing settlements is
permissible.
The Palestinians call for the dismantling of all settlements,
which have been built in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip on
land that Israel captured in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967. The
Palestinians want those territories for a future state.
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- JEWS FOR JESUS TRAINS 600 FOR STREET WORK
- The Washington Post (USA), Aug. 16, 2004 - By David Cho -
The ancient debate over Jesus's claim to be the Jewish Messiah
is being renewed in Washington this week as hundreds of evangelists
seeking to convert Jews take to Metro stops, parks and college
campuses -- along with protesters from the Jewish community.
Jews for Jesus, a San Francisco-based group, said it trained
more than 600 local volunteers to evangelize the region's 220,000
Jews as part of a worldwide campaign called "Operation Behold
Your God." The Washington outreach, at an estimated cost
of $200,000, is scheduled to begin tomorrow with three days of
planning. On Saturday, teams clad in "Jews for Jesus"
shirts will begin blanketing Metro stops with religious leaflets,
Washington director Stephen Katz said. The campaign is scheduled
to end Sept. 18, a few days after Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New
Year -- and the timing has infuriated Jewish leaders. They have
planned town hall meetings this week to warn the Jewish community
about what they call the coming "threat," and they
said they will dispatch counter-missionary teams, which will
seek to discredit the group and its conversion effort. "It's
offensive because Judaism is a long-established faith. Nobody
wants to be annoyed by people challenging it," said Ronald
Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Council of
Greater Washington. "The Jewish community is not opposed
to Christians being able to spread their beliefs. But Jews cannot
embrace Jesus and remain Jews.
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