Hussein intrigue

THE JERUSALEM POST 2/1/99: "A secret flight to the Mayo clinic in Minnesota by Prince Abdullah convinced King Hussein to leave his sickbed and return to Jordan to remove his brother, Hassan, from the line of succession and name his eldest son as heir, The Sunday Times of London reported yesterday.

Abdullah decided to embark on the trip after learning that Hassan, then crown prince, had summoned army Chief of Staff Gen. Mari Kaabna to the palace in Amman and ordered him to prepare for the succession.

"Tell your generals the king is not well and they should be prepared for any possible future development," Hassan reportedly told Kaabna, the newspaper said.

But the general, a personal appointment of Hussein, was shocked at Hassan's order and considered that the implication was close to treason.

He reportedly retorted: "This is not your house, it is the king's," before storming out of the palace. Hearing of the encounter, Abdullah, himself a major-general in the army, flew to Minnesota aboard a royal executive jet to inform his father of the development.

As a result of this, and reports that Hassan's wife, Princess Sarvath, had ordered interior decorators into the palace, Hussein, who had spent six months in the US receiving treatment for non-Hodgkins lymphoma, decided to return to Amman and reorder the succession."

Gore nisht

HA'ARETZ 2/1/99: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided not to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos because U.S. Vice President Al Gore refused to make time to meet with him there, Ha'aretz has learned.

Gore was unwilling to schedule even a short photo session with Netanyahu in front of reporters, apparently to avoid handing him a media victory a few months before the elections, conference organizers said.

"Had the prime minister wished for a meeting with the president or vice president of the United States, this could easily have been arranged in the U.S.," said Netanyahu's spokesman Aviv Bushinsky."

Histadrut conviction

HA'ARETZ 2/1/99: "Former Histadrut treasurer Arthur Yisraelovitz was convicted yesterday of using Histadrut money to finance the election campaigns of two former Histadrut officials, including former MKs Yisrael Kessar and Haim Haberfeld.

The Tel Aviv Magistrate's Court found Yisraelovitz guilty of embezzlement, fraud, breach of trust, falsifying corporate documents and attempted embezzlement.

However, Judge Zecharia Caspi found that the defendant did not take any of the money for his own purposes.

The stolen money was used to help finance the campaigns of former Histadrut Chairman Yisrael Kessar, who unsuccessfully ran for chairmanship of the Labor Party in 1992, and of his replacement, Haim Haberfeld, who unsuccessfully ran for chairmanship of the Histadrut in 1994.

Several former Histadrut officials were also tried for these offenses, but Yisraelovitz was the most senior of them.

For years, Yisraelovitz was the strongman behind the scenes at the trade union federation, controlling the purse strings of the organization.

With regard to Kessar's campaign, Yisraelovitz was convicted of ordering Histadrut official Uzi Fassa, who turned state's evidence, to take money from various Histadrut departments to pay Kessar's campaign expenses...

With regard to Haberfeld's campaign, Yisraelovitz was convicted of using Histadrut funds to hire a private investigator to tail Haberfeld's main rival, Haim Ramon.

The firm was paid NIS 577,922, and the outlays were falsely reported as "organizational and community consulting" expenses...

In his verdict, Caspi also sharply criticized Public Security Minister Avigdor Kahalani, who served as Kessar's campaign manager in 1992, and was a witness in the trial. "His testimony was bewildering," Caspi wrote.

"It can be seen that using the pretext of not remembering, he avoided clear answers regarding his management of the [Association for Yisrael Kessar]'s affairs and his connection with the accused.

An examination of his statements to the police, which were submitted by the defense, reveals gaps between what he said there and what he said in court."...

Not a prayer

ARUTZ7 2/1/99: "International Christian Embassy Jerusalem today joined those criticizing the decision to invite PA Chairman Yasser Arafat to the Congressional Prayer Breakfast this Thursday in Washington, D.C. T

he ICEJ termed the decision to host Arafat as "troubling and ill-advised," and added, "There ought to have been better foresight in making such a questionable decision."

ICEJ media officer David Parsons cited several aspects of Arafat's post-Oslo conduct that "should have disqualified him from a place of honor at a U.S. government-sanctioned prayer function with substantial Christian backing," including:

Arafat's repeated calls for jihad and incitement to violence;

his harboring of terrorists in PA areas who are responsible for murdering hundreds, including 11 Americans, since 1993;

official PA discrimination against Palestinian Christians - and all this amidst "a complete absence of any expression of remorse for the PLO's long record of terrorism."

The ICEJ spokesman said that the group is particularly concerned that Arafat will exploit the occasion to further sanitize himself in the eyes of Christians and others in his campaign to wrest control of the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem.

Parsons said, "No one should be deceived into thinking that Arafat and the Muslim-dominated PA will be a principled and trustworthy guardian of Jewish or Christian sites and places of worship in the Holy Land. Their record so far in Bethlehem, Hebron and Nablus is deplorable."

Congressman Michael Forbes of New York has already announced that he will boycott the Prayer Breakfast.

Mr. Stephen Flatow, whose American-citizen daughter Alisa was murdered in an Islamic Jihad bus bombing in April 1995 in PA-controlled territory, has received an invitation to attend the Breakfast.

This is apparently in response to Flatow's letter of protest against the Arafat invitation.

Rep. Steve Largent, rotating chairman of this year's Breakfast, said that he would not rescind the invitation to Arafat, and that he was not responsible for its issuance."

PA violations

ARUTZ7 2/1/99: "The Israeli Foreign Ministry has just published a report detailing the minimal extent to which the Palestinian Authority has fulfilled its Wye accord obligations.

A contingent of Foreign Ministry representatives is presently meeting with U.S. government officials on the matter.

David Bar-Illan, Director of Communications and Policy Planning in the Prime Minister's Office, told Arutz-7 today that the Palestinians have freed 60 active terrorists in the last several weeks.

"We published a list of five of these prisoners who actively participated in murders of Americans.

This 'revolving door policy' is a blatant violation of the Wye agreement, something the Palestinians took upon themselves to change," Bar-Illan said.

The document shows that the PA is not working seriously to prevent terrorist attacks and disturbances directed against Israelis - citizens and soldiers - in Hevron.

In addition, as has been shown before, the number of Palestinian paramilitary police in Hevron far exceeds the 400 allowed by the agreements.

The amounts of weaponry held by the PA forces also far outweigh the acceptable figures.

In recognition of this, Israel has not released the mini-Ingram submachine guns that had been earmarked for the PA."

Madeleine & Yitzchak

HA'ARETZ 2/1/99 via IMRA: "...In the administration, particularly at the Pentagon and the State Department, they are quietly supporting Labor candidate Ehud Barak - but very quietly indeed, they also like the Mordechai-Shahak pair.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright fondly remembers the hint Mordechai gave her at Wye:

The suitcases Netanyahu ordered put outside to signal an imminent departure were empty.

The former defense minister also earned the trust of Defense Secretary William Cohen and made friends with Martin Indyk, the assistant secretary of state for Middle East affairs..."

Center funds

HA'ARETZ 2/2/99: "Yitzhak Mordechai and Amnon Lipkin-Shahak are scheduled to travel soon to the United States to raise funds for their party, which has yet to be formally established.

Shahak returned from a fundraising trip in the U.S. only three days ago, and sources in the centrist party say that he managed to raise a considerable amount, both in actual contributions and in promises for future contributions.

Shahak and Mordechai's joint trip is intended, according to the sources, both to cash in the promises Shahak collected and to collect additional funds from donors close to Mordechai.