Israel & Hezbollah

HA'ARETZ 12/27/99--Analysis by Ze'ev Schiff: "Israel and Hezbollah are sending each other signals - that is the significance of yesterday's surprise release of five Hezbollah men held in Israel for years as "bargaining chips" in Israel's efforts to secure the return of the missing Air Force navigator Ron Arad.

All the signs suggest that the release of the five from administrative detention (detention without trial) is not just another good-will gesture by Israel but part of extensive mediation efforts that the Germans have been conducting for some time. If Hezbollah is in fact holding indirect negotiations with Israel, there is no doubt that Tehran is also in the picture; the entire move would be impossible without the Iranians' approval.

The Germans have for years been trying to mediate between Israel and the captors of Ron Arad. At one stage, when the German minister for intelligence affairs was engaged in the mediation efforts, he invited his Iranian counterpart to Germany. Subsequently a rumor circulated that the Iranian minister had stated that Ron Arad was no longer alive. Even though the report was not considered reliable, it was conveyed to Arad's family.

Details of those contacts were also made available to the United States. The five prisoners who were released, all of them Hezbollah activists, were never considered principal "bargaining chips" - unlike Sheikh Obeid and Mustafa Dirani, who were abducted from Lebanon by Israeli commandos.

One of them, Ghassan Dirani, is a distant relative of the man who held Ron Arad for some months and then turned him over - according to what he told his Israeli interrogators - to the Iranians for a payment. Two others, Ahmed Obeid and Hashem Fahs, were aides to Sheikh Obeid and were abducted with him in July 1989.

Israel has made various attempts to get some sign of life from Ron Arad and was ready to make prior good will gestures, but all previous efforts led nowhere. In the present case, Hezbollah's willingness to announce first, via its TV station, that five of its people were released by Israel and would be landing in Beirut at 2 A.M., indicates that it is ready to make public the mutual signals, and perhaps also to engage in talks with German mediation."

     

Construction in Yesha

HA'ARETZ 12/27/99: "In the past two months, construction permits have been issued for 2,757 homes in the settlements, with plans to build another 2,139 homes in process and the installation of 85 mobile homes in West Bank "outposts" being approved, the Peace Now movement said yesterday.

The data are inconsistent with the Prime Minister's Bureau's claims that no new construction plans have been approved for building in the settlements since Prime Minister Ehud Barak took office, Peace Now said. The figures provided by Peace Now indicate that many of the authorized construction projects have not been made public, as stipulated by law.

The approved building projects include 780 new homes at Revava, 508 at Givat Ze'ev, 500 at Mitzpeh Shalem, 434 at Nili and 51 at Alfei Menashe. Plans that are in the pipeline include 1,668 homes at Kfar Adumim, 193 at Na'aran and 193 at Yeitav. [The last two settlements are in the Jordan Rift Valley.] The mobile homes will be located at Mitzpeh Dani and Givat Hahish, two outposts that were legalized as part of a compromise between Barak and the Yesha Council of settlements.

Other mobile homes will be located at Mitzpeh Hagit and at Neveh Erez, both of them on the Allon Road that links the Jordan Rift Valley with the Jerusalem-Jericho road. Those two sites were evacuated in the compromise agreement - they were defined as "temporarily suspended outposts" - but it was agreed that they could be re-established once all the authorizations were in place. The construction projects cited by Peace Now are located in the "settlement blocs" which even according to Barak "will remain eternally under Israeli sovereignty."

A statement by the Yesha Council, which in recent weeks has complained about building freezes in various areas, such as in the Etzion Bloc, Ma'aleh Adumim and Revava, said in reaction that "there is nothing new in the 'informers' report' of Peace Now about the scope of construction in Yesha."..

The council said the construction authorizations were granted before the prime minister decided on his policy of a "creeping freeze" in building. The Yesha Council called on Peace Now to desist from the "obsessive and schismatic persecution it is conducting against the outposts."

     

Golan, pollution and bye-bye water supply

GLOBES 12/22/99 via IMRA: "Return of the Golan will create a danger of pollution to the Sea of Galilee, in addition to the loss of a third of Israel's water, geographer Dr. Arnon Sofer warned the Knesset State Audit Committee today. He also warned of international pressure to turn the Sea of Galilee into a main water source for Jordan and the Palestinians.

Dr. Sofer spoke during a discussion of the State Comptroller's request for a professional evaluation of the water crisis. Sofer said that after an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan, a massive settlement of at least half a million Syrian farmers should be expected there.

Streams flowing into the Sea of Galilee will also drain sewage from Golan settlements and rainwater from pastureland. He stated that another possible source of pollution is the Trans Arabian Pipeline Co. (Tapline) oil pipeline, which will renew its activity, becoming a source of leaks and blowouts, with crude oil also pouring into streams.

According to Sofer, Syria needs the Golan primarily as a water source. In addition to use of the Banias spring, Syria will also use water from the Hatzbani river, which flows in Syria for a distance of four km, thereby diminishing most of the sources of the Jordan river.

Sofer advised the government to conduct water negotiations jointly with Jordan and Turkey. He stated that the Syrians had already blocked the sources of the Yarmuch river with 21 dams. If the Syrians return to the southern Golan, Jordan will be subject to water blackmail.

The Yarmuch water distribution agreement allows the Syrians 90 million cbm., but they are already using nearly 200 million cbm. From Hammat Gader in the southern Golan, Syria will completely control the Yarmuch river.

Sofer recommended that Israel persuade Turkey to lay a water pipe from the Euphrates river to the Damascus basin, which has a population of three million and suffers from a severe water shortage."

     

Syrian army upgrade

HA'ARETZ 12/24/99: "Syria's army is upgrading under the direction of a dynamic chief of staff and has ground-to-ground missiles that threaten Israel, defense officials yesterday told a Knesset committee on the defense budget. The officials' statement countered a Jaffee Center report about an erosion in Syrian military capabilities.

The report said Syria has received no modern equipment since the mid-1980s, and some of its forces are in a state of erosion. But the senior defense officials claimed that Syria has been renewing its weapons systems, primarily its ground-to-ground missiles. They said the Syrian chief of staff is an activist backed by a young general staff, and concluded that the Syrian army cannot be ignored.

The joint committee is discussing next year's proposed defense budget of NIS 36.6 billion - a cut of NIS 1 billion compared to 1999. The officials argued that with the projected costs of implementing a peace agreement with Syria, the army needs more money, not less. They estimated the cost of a withdrawal from the Golan Heights and troop redeployment at $15-20 billion. Taking part in the meeting were Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz, Deputy Defense Minister Ephraim Sneh and senior officers.

Members of the committee spoke of the need for additional military aid from the U.S. if an agreement is reached with Syria and Lebanon. Barak also said that peace with Syria and Lebanon could mean shortening compulsory military service for men from three to two-and-a-half years.

Deputy Defense Minister Sneh repeated this statement in an interview yesterday with Israel Radio, but was quick to add, "As for military might, we will not be able to reduce the strength of the army, because this strength is the only true stabilizing factor for any peace treaty. Military strength cannot be touched, it must even be increased. If we are weak, there will be no peace treaty that will be worth anything."

Amos Harel reports: The IDF manpower and planning branches have in recent months been examining the possibility of shortening the period of compulsory military service for men. The emerging conclusion favors cutting service by six months. The law today requires men to serve for two and a half years, but a long-standing legal arrangement, extended once a year, lengthens the term of service to three years."

     

Violence increases in territories

HA'ARETZ 12/24/99: "The number of violent incidents in the territories has risen steeply since the renewal of the Israeli-Syrian talks, military sources said yesterday. The sources noted that a surge was being felt in "popular violence," such as stone throwing and the hurling of firebombs.

These phenomena, the sources said, reflected Palestinian frustration at the revival of the Israeli-Syrian track and the fear that the Palestinian Authority will be left behind as progress is made with Damascus. The incidence of popular violence has almost doubled this month as compared with November, when there was a sharp reduction in such attacks.

Another factor is Palestinian anger at the fact that Israel has yet to withdraw from a further 5 percent of the West Bank, a pullback that was originally scheduled for mid-November. Yesterday four firebombs were thrown at Israeli vehicles in Hebron; no one was hurt. In another incident, an IDF soldier opened fire at a Palestinian whom he claimed was attacking him at Tapuah Junction.

The Palestinian was wounded in the leg and taken in a taxicab to a hospital in Nablus, despite attempts by soldiers to detain him. In another development, a senior army officer said yesterday that Iyad Battat, the wanted Hamas man who was shot and killed on December 13 by the Duvdevan undercover unit, was connected with the Hamas "explosives laboratory" in the West Bank, where an explosion occurred about three months ago."

     

Nimrodi indicted

THE JERUSALEM POST 12/27/99: "Hours after the Tel Aviv District Court indicted Ma'ariv publisher Ofer Nimrodi on eight charges yesterday, it was learned that Nimrodi met at his initiative with Prime Minister Ehud Barak in August and asked him to help secure a pardon for his sentence for wiretapping. The charges against Nimrodi include conspiring to murder state's witness Ya'acov Tsur, paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars to various people to hamper the investigation and receive information, offering bribes to former and serving senior police officers, and tampering with witnesses.

The meeting with Barak came at a time when Nimrodi knew he was under investigation for conspiring to solicit murder, but he did not reveal this to Barak. Barak rejected Nimrodi's request, telling him he does not deal with pardons. Barak told him further that, in his opinion, much more time should pass between the commission of a crime and a request for a pardon. The Justice Ministry confirmed that the contents of the meeting were transmitted to the attorney-general, the state attorney, and the police. Nimrodi also met with President Ezer Weizman hoping to secure a pardon, but this request also was denied.

The 20-page list of charges, many of which were once scoffed at by Nimrodi's lawyer Dan Avi-Yitzhak, could lead to a prison sentence of at least nine years, legal experts said yesterday. The indictment culminated months of an intense police investigation, some of it covert. Avi-Yitzhak called the indictment "dietetic. Already the indictment proves that even before the trial begins, suspicions against Ofer Nimrodi have undergone a serious diet.

Ofer Nimrodi is not accused of the serious allegations police once claimed that led to an uproar throughout the country - and a link to murder the publishers of Yediot Aharonot and Ha'aretz, those charges no longer exist! And they represented the most serious charges."

In general comments listed on the charge sheet, Tel Aviv District Attorney Pnina Gai notes that Nimrodi did everything possible to tamper with witnesses, hamper the investigations of the 1995 wiretapping affair and the present allegations against him. "The suspect sent his long arms to the most senior police officers in attempts to milk information on the ongoing investigation, and at the same time attempted to dilute the most highly classified information in order to hinder and interfere in the investigation," she wrote.

Gai asked the court to remand Nimrodi until the end of his trial. The hearing was adjourned until today, when Judge Arye Even-Ari will announce his decision..."

     

Budget deals

THE JERUSALEM POST 12/27/99: "Finance Minister Avraham Shohat has reached separate agreements with United Torah Judaism (UTJ) and coalition partner NRP - at a cost estimated at roughly NIS 260 million - ensuring their support for the arrangements bill for the state budget. The bill was approved yesterday by the Knesset Finance Committee. The deals with the NRP and UTJ effectively made Shas a luxury vote, and not a necessity, and Shas opposed all the bill's dozens of clauses.

Debate will begin today in the Knesset plenum over the Arrangements Law and is expected to last through Wednesday. Debate over the budget will then begin, with votes on the two bills slated for Thursday night. The NRP and UTJ backed all of the dozens of Arrangement Law bills presented, enabling all of them to pass except for one regarding reimbursement for farmers and another on salaries of deputy mayors.

Although Shas MKs were clearly furious at their temporary loss of leverage, committee chairman Elie Goldschmidt emphasized Shas's important role in the government. "It will only be for the good of the government," to have Shas on board, he said. The lone bone of contention with Shas remains the approximately NIS 100m. sought for its Ma'ayan Hahinuch Hatorani education system.

The NRP received NIS 132m., most of which will be funnelled to hesder yeshivas, development towns, and the national-religious education system. Some NIS 35m. is earmarked for one-parent families. Although no one would reveal the extent of the UTJ deal, the figures are estimated at roughly equal. Treasury officials are claiming otherwise, but only because most of the moneys are in the form of cancelled cutback plans.

MK Mordechai Gafni confirmed that the newfound funds would be used for education, welfare, and the Religious Affairs and Housing and Construction ministries. He added that some would be given as rent write-offs for one-parent and large families. Shohat reiterated that the newfound funds would not come in the form of an expanded budget, but MK Yisrael Katz said that Shohat was merely playing with semantics. "When you take money from the [Treasury's] reserves, which is apparently what's going to happen, that is expanding the budget," he said.

As the voting began, Shas MKs expressed their outrage over the Treasury's bypassing their party even though the costs incurred were greater than their own NIS 100 million demand. Deputy Finance Minister Nissim Dahan said that the government finalized its agreements with UTJ and the NRP before Shas because of "racism. Pure and simple."

He also accused Gafni of "violating an agreement," adding that the battle is not yet over. Some in Shas were not prepared to tar everyone with the same brush. Yair Peretz said Finance Minister Avraham Shohat has "acted very well and has been prepared to talk with Shas and even compromise." However Peretz accused Meretz leader and Education Minister Yossi Sarid of being out to destroy Shas, suggesting Sarid was behind the cynical use of the NRP and UTJ to gain a majority for the budget in the committee.

In response, Sarid said the agreements with UTJ and the NRP were "in the public interest." The argument over its schools left Shas deputy Education Minister Meshulam Nahari bitterly disappointed, but hefell short of the calls to quit the coalition heard from some Deri-loyalists in the party - most notably behind closed doors from National Infrastructure Minister Eli Suissa."

     

Stock market

THE JERUSALEM POST 12/27/99: "The benchmark stock index rose to near its record high, led by banks, on expectations the Bank of Israel will cut interest rates in response to slowing inflation. The TA-25 Index of the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange's largest companies rose 1.9 percent to 472.04, its highest close since reaching a record 472.54 December 14, after adding 1.1% on Thursday..."

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