The IDF uses lots of different types of tracked vehicles. Tanks, APC's, Bulldozers, and more. Some people think tracked vehicles can go anywhere, over any terrain, however they want. They can't!
Deep mud, cliffs, other vehicles, can all ruin your ride.
No surprises here. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to offer the Chilean government any aid it may require following the huge earthquake the country has suffered.
In a statement issued by the Prime Minister's Office it was noted that Netanyahu was closely following the events at Chile and is being regularly briefed by the Foreign Ministry.
Okay, I'll translate for the Hebrew-impaired.
Blessed art Thou O Lord our God, King of the universe, who made it possible for Mordechai and Esther to do all that they did without forging passports.
Heh.
Frelichen (Happy) Purim everyone!
From Israeli minister Binyamin (Fuad) Ben Eliezer, who is talking too much. On Sunday, Industry, Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, told Army Radio that while he had no idea who killed al-Mabhouh, the slaying shows Hamas that "none of their people are untouchable, they can all be reached."
The comments from Ben-Eliezer, a former defense minister, were the most direct yet on the by an Israeli official.
He said the results were "immediately translated," claiming that Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah recently disguised himself in a wig on a trip to Syria.
"He understands that eyes are watching him and that is what is important," Ben-Eliezer said.
Ben-Eliezer's claim could not immediately be verified with Hizbullah, but Nasrallah has largely lived in hiding since the 2006 Second Lebanon War.
The Dubai police have issued a toxicology report on Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and if you were hoping for the slow, painful death he so richly deserved, you're going to be disappointed. Dubai police said Sunday forensic tests show a Hamas operative who was killed in his hotel room by an alleged Mossad hit squad was drugged with a fast-acting muscle relaxant and then suffocated with a pillow.
The drug, called succinylcholine, is frequently used by doctors to administer a breathing tube or anesthesia. Dubai police said tests discovered the drug in the bloodstream of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, the Hamas commander whose body was found in his room at a luxury Dubai hotel on Jan. 20.
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On Sunday, Dubai deputy police chief Maj. Gen. Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina told the Gulf News daily that succinylcholine can "cause immediate and temporary paralysis." He added that the forensic report confirms al-Mabhouh died of suffocation "using a pillow."
Hezbullah's al-Manar TV reported on Saturday that five Lebanese citizens have been arrested and charged with spying for Israel. That makes a total of six this week. Lebanese security and military officials contacted by The Associated Press refused to confirm or deny the Lebanese terrorist group's report.
Al-Manar said that two former policemen were among those detained, though it did not say when the arrests took place.
Congressman William Delahunt (D-Mass), who led the J Street delegation to Israel two weeks ago, and then 
The San Jose Mercury News reports on some more problematic campaign donations to Tom Campbell, who is running for the Republican Senate nomination in California (Hat Tip: Jennifer Rubin). The campaign manager for former Hewlett Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina on Thursday criticized past donations to Campbell from four men. One was arrested for spying on Congress for Saddam Hussein. Another pleaded guilty to conspiring to aid a Palestinian terrorist group.
Campaign manager Marty Wilson said the donations reinforce a congressional voting record by Campbell that was decidedly anti-Israel. He noted that Campbell had voted to cut foreign aid to the country while he served in the House.
The donations cited by Fiorina's campaign were from Campbell's unsuccessful 2000 Senate bid.
It is widely known among Jerusalemites that Rabbi Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld, who was the Jerusalem Haredi (ultra-Orthodox) community's Chief Rabbi 80-100 years ago, placed a 'curse' upon our city that we should never have beautiful weather on the holiday of Purim. The reason for his 'curse' was to reign in wild behavior that he felt was getting out of hand even then.Purim's weather is set to be rainy and cool, with thunderstorms accompanied by strong winds. Hail is possible, and the wet weather will spread throughout the day from north to south. Flooding is possible. Rain should weaken in the evening hours. There is still a chance of rain Monday morning, and Tuesday should be pleasant and warmer.
Writing in al-Ayyam (link in Arabic), 'Palestinian' Hani el-Masri asks why a third 'intifada' has not happened yet (the following is from a Google translation). The first reason that prevents this is that the outcome of the previous two uprisings were not encouraging, ended the first Intifada to the Oslo agreement, and the second intifada was very expensive and ended in destruction, death and adoption of Israel's disengagement plan, which began the disengagement plan from the Gaza Strip, and can be completed for a state of ghettos dissected with temporary borders, do not have the ingredients of the States in name only.
The second reason which prevents the outbreak of the uprising is the political and geographical divisions. Dichotomy break the back of the Palestinians and led to a situation of despair, frustration and concern to the Palestinian forces in a destructive internal conflict had sapped its energies, and enabled the occupation to proceed with his plans through the application of occupation more quickly and at lower costs.
The third reason is because the Authority announced on the lips of the president himself over and over again that it was against a third intifada; because the authority is betting on the option of negotiations as the sole solution to the conflict. When it stopped the peace process since more than a year, and negotiations came to a standstill recognition Authority leaders, the leadership encourages the peaceful popular resistance and began to plan for a boycott of settlement, but without regard to the new strategic plan, but as a tactic to pressure primary objective of persuading Israel to resume negotiations on the basis of a settlement freeze and the Agreement reference to clear and binding, and that there are individuals and segments within the authority and the community is in their interest to keep the status quo without an uprising, and thus opposes the authority to lead the popular resistance.
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The fourth reason is due to improving the conditions of the Palestinians economically by taking the occupation number of steps such as removing some barriers and facilitate the movement and more permits to enter Israel and the promotion of economic projects.
A tense calm was reported on the Temple Mount Sunday morning, a couple of hours after Jerusalem police forces entered the compound following a disturbance at the site. Several dozen young Muslim men had holed themselves up in the Aksa Mosque on Saturday night and began hurling stones at visitors early Sunday morning.
The young men fled back into the mosque after security forces stormed into the compound, but some of them continued throwing rocks at police deployed in the plaza outside the building.
After failing to convince the Arab youths to leave the Aksa Mosque the previous night, the Wakf Islamic trust was negotiating with the men on Sunday morning.
In a Friday speech to the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said that he does not believe that Iran will drop a nuclear weapon on Israel. Barak also said he doubts Iran would launch a nuclear attack against Israel, but warned that a nuclear-armed "I don't think the Iranians, even if they got the bomb, are going to drop it in the neighborhood," Barak said.
"They fully understand what might follow. They are radical but not total 'meshugah,'" said Barak, using the Yiddish word for crazy. "They have a quite sophisticated decision-making process and they understand realities."
Barak said Israel appreciates the U.S. push for "effective" sanctions against Iran, within a limited time frame, but said the international community must prepare for "the possibility that in spite of all effort, it will not lead to Iran accepting the international norms." Iran could destabilize the Middle East, disrupt oil supplies and strengthen Hezbollah and Hamas, which Iran sponsors financially and militarily.
In the next couple of weeks, the Obama administration is likely to release a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which will essentially gut the clearly mistaken conclusion of the 2007 estimate and bring the US into line with its allies and with the IAEA report that was released earlier this month. All of the other reports conclude that Iran is developing nuclear weapons. The 2007 NIE concluded that Iran had abandoned nuclear weapons development in 2003. Unfortunately, unlike the 2007 report, which had a declassified version that gave it wide publicity, the new report is likely to have only a classified version, leaving ordinary citizens in the dark. David Albright, a nuclear-weapons expert and president of the Institute of Science and International Security, said that the administration might want to avoid a lengthy and complicated public debate about the new estimate's conclusions, seeking to prevent the fractious debate that followed the release of the older estimate.
He said the nature of the estimate, which seeks to find consensus between all of the various intelligence agencies, makes it tough to give out enough information to make it bulletproof. Regardless, he lamented that the administration might not provide some of the information in a public way.
"They owe it to us to provide clarification of their position publicly," he said. "Speaking just as a citizen, I want my government to be transparent about something that could potentially involve military strikes."
Any clarification would bring the U.S. position more in line with that of with key allies like France and Germany, who have been long arguing for a stronger public position on Iran's nuclear program, according to Albright. A clarification would also help square the U.S. conclusions with the recent IAEA report on Iran that went further than previous reports in expressing concerns about weaponization, he added.
"The 2007 NIE really hurt things politically for getting sanctions and building momentum and they had to relook at this," Albright said. "Who knows if was really a mistake? It may be what they honestly believed at the time."
The New York Times' David Sanger has picked up on a line in the IAEA report that came as as surprise: Iran has moved its entire known supply of low-enriched uranium to an above-ground outdoor facility. It's practically painted a bullseye on it, begging to be attacked. Why did they do it? Here's Sanger. The strangest of the speculations — but the one that is being talked about most — is that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps is inviting an attack to unify the country after eight months of street demonstrations that have pitted millions of Iranians against their government. As one senior European diplomat noted Thursday, an Israeli military strike might be the “best thing” for Iran’s leadership, because it would bring Iranians together against a national enemy.
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Others, including some officials in the White House, say they do not buy that theory. Iran has worked too hard to let its supply be destroyed, they argue. “I really doubt they are taunting the Israelis to hit them,” said Kenneth Pollack, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who recently ran a daylong simulation of what would happen after an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “It would be humiliating for the Iranian regime,” he said. He speculated that Iran would have to retaliate, and “the ensuing confrontation would go in directions no one can really predict.”
Mr. Pollack numbers among those who suspect another explanation: brinkmanship. The Iranians have made clear that they do not like the terms their own negotiators came home with for swapping their nuclear fuel for specialized fuel for the medical reactor. By moving their fuel supply to the enrichment plant, they are essentially threatening to turn it all to near-bomb-grade fuel — and perhaps force the United States to reopen negotiations.
But the simplest explanation, that the Iranians had no choice, has its proponents. The fuel is stored in one big, specialized cask. When someone ordered that the fuel begin being fed into the giant centrifuges for further enrichment, engineers moved it to the only spot available — the exposed plant. Or, as one American intelligence official said, “You can’t dismiss the possibility that this is a screw-up.”
Remember Baghdad Bob? Baghdad Bob was the guy who kept going on television during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to say that Saddam Hussein's government was winning the war. Nothing could have been further from the truth.Authorities in Dubai have found DNA traces of one of the suspects in killing senior Hamas terrorist Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in January, as well as finger prints of several members of the suspected hit squad, Dubai Police Chief Lt. General Dahi Khalfan Tamim told the Al-Arabiya television network on Friday.
Earlier Friday, Khalfan announced that Dubai intends to seek the establishment of an international team to investigate Mabhouh’s death. Such a team could bring to the arrest of 26 suspects identified so far, against whom police in Dubai have “clear cut evidence,” he explained.
In an interview with Al-Bayan, a newspaper published in the United Arab Emirates, Khalfan revealed that a special Dubai police team has already visited in several European states in the framework of the investigation into Mabhouh's killing.
Marty Peretz at New Republic jumped all over this story, but given the sources and the explanations, I would take it with a grain of salt.An Arab political source said Friday that special U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell has requested to resign due to his frustration with the way the Obama administration has been handling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a Nazareth-based daily.
Hadith a-Nass reported that Mitchell's request stemmed partly from to his own failure to advance the resumption of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and also from his perception that certain elements within the State Department hold biased favor toward Israel.
It once was thought that Hillary Clinton, with a relatively friendly attitude towards Israel and a firm understanding of the perils it faces, might put her stamp on the department. But, as it happens, she has turned...
Parroting every false issue that comes her way, she leaps to the front of the diplomatic line to reproach Bibi Netanyahu and his government which, pressed by its hard right, has tried (valiantly, I would say) to accommodate the Palestinians. It is the Obama administration which invented the demand that Israel cease all settlement building, including in Jerusalem. Are they mad? Anyway, Hillary went along, as did groggy old George.
And now the Obami have discovered a new cause célèbre. Bibi has put on “the national heritage list” two sites that are somehow controversial, and the controversy seems to assume that the territorial issues on the West Bank are already settled. Which they are not. Not by a long shot. The sites are “Rachel’s Tomb” and the “Cave of the Patriarchs.” The first is located less than a stone’s throw from the southern lines of Jerusalem. The second is situated in hotly disputed Hebron, an ancient city in which Jews lived freely until the massacre of 1929. I don’t much like most of the present Hebron Jews, as I’ve written before. But they are certain to have a presence there regardless.
In any case, can anyone imagine that a list of national heritage sites of the Jewish people in the Jewish state would not include both the Tomb and the Cave?
So the Obama administration has not tilted towards Israel at all, regardless of what Mitchell says.
I've seen a lot of people asking why Dubai has gotten so excited over the liquidation of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, and over the use of foreign passports to do so, while ignoring the fact that al-Mabhouh himself was a terrorist and entered the country on a false passport. Perhaps this will explain why. Dubai is also considered the most "Western" of the Gulf states - in other words, the most Americanized. But it is there that thousands of Iranian companies operate, exploiting the freedom to conduct business in order to construct commercial "annexes" for the Iranian regime and thus circumvent international sanctions. Iran also received Pakistani nuclear instruction via Dubai, after A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani nuclear program, established a company to "disseminate information" in Dubai.
But Dubai has several masks. It helps Iran, but behind its back it provides the United States with an opportunity to gather intelligence about that country. The U.S. Consulate in Dubai also operates as a station for gathering information and enlisting agents. A few years ago the U.S. State Department wanted to close the consulate, but the CIA succeeded in convincing it to leave it open and even to boost the number of employees so that it could handle the hundreds and perhaps thousands of Iranians who come to request visas.
It's not only the U.S. intelligence services that love Dubai: The tremendous scope of commerce and the large number of companies and foreign agencies there are an excellent cover and an appropriate disguise for any city of spies.
Dubai has now replaced 20th-century Istanbul, Nicosia, Casablanca and Berlin as a hotbed of spying activity. Russians exchange information with Pakistanis, Afghans and Chechens trade tactics, members of Hezbollah convert illegal money and diamonds in bank transactions "for widows and orphans," and all while enjoying car races and performances by international artists.
Dubai is proud of the fact that it is one of the safest cities in the world. It was, at least until Israeli businessman Elhanan Tennenbaum was kidnapped there, or until a famous Lebanese singer, Suzanne Tamim, was murdered there by a senior security guard working for Egypt's most important businessman, Hisham Talaat Moustafa (who is now appealing the death sentence imposed for the murder). Or until Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was assassinated by a group that utilized not only disguises, but also the cover provided by Dubai to anyone who wants it: of living it up in a city of entertainment and big money, of tennis tournaments and freedom. This is a place that is still committed to the Arab boycott of Israel, but has no problem hosting an Israeli tennis player [this year- but not last year. And given that this year she almost won, maybe next year they won't let her back in. CiJ].
A few weeks ago I contacted a Dubai real estate agent to discuss the market there, in the wake of the crisis in the emirate. I asked the agent whether he has any problem selling apartments to Israeli citizens. "You know what our situation is. But we have no problem selling to you if you come with a foreign passport," he replied without hesitation. But on another occasion, when I asked whether a scientific convention in the city was open to Israelis, they told me: "We have no business with Israel. You cannot participate."
For those who haven't figured it out already, please allow me to state the obvious: Sanctions - even 'crippling' sanctions - against Iran are not going to put a stop to its nuclear weapons program. The time for 'crippling' sanctions was a year or two ago; it's far too late now. And yet, last week, we were treated to the spectacle of Prime Minister Netanyahu traveling to Moscow to seek support for 'crippling' sanctions, and being slapped in the face a few days later, when the Russians said nyet yet again. Why is Netanyahu behaving this way? Caroline Glick tries to explain. RECENT REPORTS indicate that IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi - who strangely received a nice medal from Mullen two years ago - is the main opponent of an Israeli military strike against Iran's nuclear installations. If this is true, then Ashkenazi must either be forced to change his position or lose his job. The Iranian threat is too great to place in the hands of a commander the US reportedly views as its "friend" in Israel's decision-making circles.
One of Andrew Sullivan's readers gets it. They have waltzed into Dubai, allowed themselves to be videotaped every which way -- including while putting on costumes and wigs -- killed a man, and waltzed right back out. They did it in plain sight. And they did it using British passports.
What does this say to Hamas, and Arab nation onlookers? It says that wherever you are, whatever you are doing, however many video cameras you may have watching you, we will find you, and we will kill you. And you will know who we are, and yet you will never find us. And MOST importantly: we are going to do it in as brazen a manner as possible.
We are even going to swipe the passports of some innocent British citizens, daring the West to criticize us. But we don't care. We are going to kill you in such a manner that you will immediately be able to track us down - but we'll already be gone. The Israelis didn't use fake passports not because they didn't have the technical expertise or the brains, but because they wanted to pull off their assassination in the most brazen, flagrant manner possible, while still allowing themselves to get away with it.
And just because the British and American pundits didn't pick up on this, doesn't mean Hamas didn't get the point.
The UN General Assembly voted on Friday to give Israel and the 'Palestinians' five more months to conduct probes of their respective actions in Gaza in Operation Cast Lead. The vote was more lopsided than in November. The 'Palestinian' drafted resolution passed 98-7 with 31 abstentions. 56 countries did not vote. General Assembly resolutions are not binding. [Palestinian UN ambassador Riyad] Mansour welcomed the decline in the number of countries opposing the resolution from 18 in November to just seven.
He noted that the European Union, which was deeply divided in November with some countries voting for the resolution, some against and some abstaining, was more supportive in Friday's vote. No EU country voted "no" and more EU members supported the resolution including Britain, France and Spain, he said.
Some EU members had objected to the draft text calling on Switzerland to reconvene a meeting of the parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention "within five months" to enforce the convention, which spells out the obligations of an occupying power. The reference to five months was replaced in the final version with the words "as soon as possible," the same language as the November resolution.
US deputy ambassador Alejandro Wolff, who voted against the resolution, reiterated that the US considers the Goldstone report "deeply flawed" and "unbalanced" in its focus on Israel and "its failure to assign appropriate responsibility to Hamas for deliberately targeting civilians."
Tom Campbell, the front runner in the Republican race for the California Senate nomination, took a campaign contribution for his previous run for the Senate in 2000 from a group that backed the use of armed force by 'Palestinians' against Israel. Campbell also accepted a 'lifetime achievement' award from a Muslim group that called Israel and poverty the root causes of Islamic terrorism a month after 9/11. One month after the September 11 attacks, Tom Campbell accepted a lifetime achievement award from a Muslim group at a conference in which speakers cited poverty and U.S. policy toward Israel as the "root causes" of terrorism.
And in 2000, Campbell, who as now, was running for U.S. Senate in California, raised $35,000 from Muslim groups “grateful for his efforts to cut aid to Israel,” according to a newspaper account at the time.
The American Muslim Alliance held its annual conference in San Jose California on October 14, 2001, and an article from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, recounted: “In light of Sept. 11… the convention’s focus shifted to urging that the U.S. government re-evaluate its foreign policy—specifically its positions on Israel and Iraq.”
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The account says that Dr. Agha Saeed, leader of the AMA, presented Campbell with a lifetime achievement award. Saeed had already been a controversial figure at this time. In her 2000 Senate campaign, Hillary Clinton returned money raised by the group.
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During the conference at which he presented Campbell with an award, Agha Saeed declared, “an Osama bin Laden arises where there is poverty and other social ills.”
Back during his 2000 campaign for Senate, according to a Forward article from the time (registration required), the group also helped raise money for Campbell.
The trauma is mutual and multilayered. The Palestinians have never been able to mourn what they call the Nakba, the expulsion of 750,000 Palestinians from their homes in 1948. Their ethos of national liberation was based on the idea that all refugees would be able to return to their homes in Jaffa, Ramle and Lod. Letting go of this dream, a condition for the two-state solution, requires a process of mourning that has been made almost impossible by the humiliation of the occupation and the force of Israeli retaliation, culminating in the Gaza war last year.
Trauma is not the Palestinians’ alone: Israeli Jews live under a fear of annihilation that overshadows any consideration of compromise. Many critics of Israel believe that such a statement is a cheap ploy to justify colonial ambitions, but right or wrong this is the reality of the country’s collective psyche. Israelis still look back at the attacks by Arab armies in 1948, 1967 and 1973 as moments when they could have been wiped out, and this fear is revived today by the possibility of Iran’s acquiring nuclear weapons.
One Israeli Paper responded most appropriately.
"Of all of the reactions regarding the al-Mabhouh elimination, the most infuriating thing is concealed in the response of Nicolas Sarkozy, who defined the terrorist's elimination as murder."
Indiana Republican Dan Coats, who is trying to win back his old Senate seat, says that the only way left to deal with Iran is to use the 'military option.' Coats said most Americans agree that Iran must not be allowed to have such weapons, even though Iranian leaders continue to press forward with their nuclear program.
"And yet, no one has gone past that point and said 'If it's unacceptable, what are we going to do?,'" Coats said. "And now it seems we're being asked to accept the unacceptable."
"And the only option now is potential military action if we're going to stop this," he continued. "The unknown factor in all of this is the situation the Israelis are in, sitting there looking at the nation that's proclaiming it wants to eliminate that country from the face of the earth. And that's the kind of threat that I think America has not understood."
The 'Palestinians' are complaining that Israel has been confiscating VIP passes from 'Palestinians' who participate in protests against the 'security fence.' Senior Fatah official Tawfik Tirawi claims Israel has confiscated VIP IDs it distributed to half of the members of the organization's central committee.
He says Israel explained its conduct by saying that the members participate in anti-fence protests in the West Bank.
The annual 'Israel apartheid week' begins on Monday. It is a week in which Jew hated on American college campuses reaches its annual peak. This year, they decided that one week of Jew hatred isn't enough - so they're having it for two weeks. It starts Monday, March 1 (Purim here in the Holy City of Jerusalem) and ends on Sunday, March 14.Of all the sponsors of Israeli Apartheid Week, the participation of gay and lesbian groups is most disheartening. Harvard University’s Alan Dershowitz tells an anecdote about the time he gave a speech and spotted an anti-Israel sign in the crowd, held aloft by a gay rights group. Dershowitz reminded the protesters that Israel is the one country in the Middle East where they’d be able to hold a gay rights sign in public and not be lynched.
Israel’s official government website celebrates Eytan Fox, one of the country’s best known filmmakers. Fox’s recent movie The Bubble, about a love affair between two men, Arab and Jew, won an award from the U.S.-based Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, for its sensitive depiction of gay people.
Films like that aren’t being made in Syria or Gaza. Gay Muslims have to flee to democratic countries if they want to come out. Israel itself recently took in a gay Palestinian from the West Bank town of Jenin. The man settled in Tel Aviv, moving in with his partner, an Israeli. Thousands of couples — Arab, Jewish, mixed — show up for the gay pride parade in Tel Aviv.
Yet back in Canada, gay student groups denounce Israel as their enemy. They aren’t protesting against the many Muslim countries where homosexuality is criminalized — where, as Der Spiegel recently reported, men suspected of being gay are found with their genitals amputated and anuses sealed with glue.
(When Israel last year suffered an isolated act of homophobic violence — a gunman shot up a gay nightclub — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly expressed his personal horror.)
The Mossad's alleged role in the liquidation of Hamas terrorist and arms dealer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh hasn't just helped t-shirt sales: It's also helped recruiting efforts. The Mossad website has become extremely popular in recent weeks, particularly its job openings page, through which one can apply for a position with the agency. Global media reports on Mossad's alleged involvement in the assassination of the Hamas commander has led to a soaring number of civilian applicants who wish to join the secret service.The Mossad's website is here. The English website is here. Tell them Carl in Jerusalem sent you.
The agency, which did not post any new job openings for over six months, posted a statement on February 12 – almost a month after the Dubai operation – that read: "You have an opportunity to create a reality in which you play the lead role. If you possess, intelligence and sophistication, you can make a difference and fulfill a national and personal mission. If you can engage, charm and influence people – you may have the qualities we are looking for."
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As for the job requirements listed, the ideal candidate must hold an academic degree, diverse life experience, good communication skills, flexible thinking and creativity, curiosity, and the ability to work individually and in a team as well as good command of second language. A preference, the ad noted, would be given to those with a background abroad and willingness to leave for an immediate mission abroad, right after the training period.
Evelyn Gordon expands on a point I made here regarding the results of the European court ruling that denies the benefits of the Israel - EU free trade agreement from companies that manufacture in Judea and Samaria. Europeans are obviously entitled to put principle above the consequences for Palestinian employment; countries make such decisions all the time. But the fact remains that once again, the biggest victims of efforts to advance the “peace process” will be ordinary Palestinians.
Thousands of Gazans, for instance, used to work for Israeli firms in the Erez industrial zone on the Israel-Gaza border. Today, Erez is a ghost town with no prospect of ever reopening: having withdrawn from Gaza, Israel could no longer protect these firms, and the Palestinians would not.
Moreover, tens of thousands of Palestinians used to work inside Israel; today, almost none do. The second intifada made a massive flow of Palestinians into Israel too risky, and Israelis felt no obligation to employ residents of a state-in-the-making that was waging nonstop physical and diplomatic warfare against them. The Palestinians, after all, cannot simultaneously demand independence from Israel and jobs inside Israel. The result is unemployment that now totals 18 percent in the West Bank and 39 percent in Gaza.
Israel is the region’s strongest economy; it will be years before the Palestinian Authority can match its employment capacity. So unless those who favor Palestinian statehood think that massive unemployment somehow contributes to this goal, they ought to be encouraging Israeli firms to hire Palestinians. Instead, Palestinian terror and international pressure have steadily combined to do the opposite.
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