I Finally Meet My Prince
Karin meets Prince Hassan of Jordan at a water security conference in Switzerland last week.
It was a meeting of minds, water minds. Water consultants, ambassadors who’ve built water treaties, and government specialists and negotiators from around the Middle East and Europe gathered in Montreux, Switzerland for a two-day workshop on Water Security in the Middle East last week. Sure, I am busy writing stories for ISRAEL21c, but an environment blog I run called Green Prophet was invited to attend. The object was to explore sustainable and cooperative solutions to water security, and to use the problem of water and turn it into an instrument of peace.
Organized by the Strategic Foresight Group, the same India-based firm that brought us the Cost of Conflict to the Environment in the Middle East report, the event included a gala supper, and meeting with the Prince of Jordan, sponsored by the Swiss and Swedish governments. Both peace-loving and humanitarian nations are eager to ease future conflicts in the Middle East, with all fingers pointing to water conflict being the fuel for the next big one, many believe. But how can it be done? Read more
IBA’s Close Up feeds news jones
Filed under: A New Reality, Politics, Pop Culture, War
Earlier this week, the relatively new free daily nationalist tabloid Yisrael Hayom (Hebrew-only informational website viewable here) reported that mainstream Israeli news websites have been experiencing around a 30% spike in traffic since the start of the current Gaza conflict – hardly a surprise, and hardly a trend relegated to the video-heavy, Hebrew-language outlets cited in their stats.
With the thirst for Zionist-friendly war-related information peaking even among English speakers, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has been wise to initiate the launch of a new English news program called Close Up. Airing Wednesdays at 5:25 PM on the IBA’s Channel 33, the live in-depth weekly analysis magazine Close Up premiered this week with a half hour’s worth of content headed by IBA talking heads Steve Leibowitz and Leah Zinder.
The program joins the growing stable of English-language IBA news reports, which includes the ten-minute weekday News Bulletin and the 20-minute daily IBA News, all of which streams over the web on-demand at the IBA’s video mini-site (like most Israeli websites, works best in the Explorer browser).
For the inaugural episode, Zinder and Leibowitz were joined at the news desk by panelists Effi Eitam, a controversial MK from the hawkish religious National Union, and left-of-center David Horovitz, the editor-in-chief of The Jerusalem Post. Eitam remarked on the high levels of motivation among IDF, proclaiming that “The spirit of confidence will prevail amongst the soldiers, and, I might add, amongst the citizens.” Horovitz commented on pragmatic goals for ceasefire arrangements.
In other segments, Hebrew University’s Dr. Robbie Sabel, a former legal adviser to the Foreign Ministry, spoke about the ethical issues of the war, reporter Leah Stern gave over a timeline for how diplomacy breakdown led to the current battles, and a visit to opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu’s office yielded a predictably “I told you so”-style statement.
A new front in Lebanon?
I must admit, when I went to buy milk this morning and saw the TV in our tiny village makolet (corner shop), tuned to the news and a picture of the Lebanon and Israeli border, I felt a deep sense of foreboding.
I think it’s what we’ve all been frightened of. That the battle in the south, will lead to a new front in the north. As we are all aware, those four or five Katuysha missiles fired at Nahariya this morning, wounding two people, could be a one-off protest, or they could be the opening salvo of a much worse conflict.
A katyusha attack on Israel.
I’m one of those people living in the center of the country who have managed to be untouched by either the last Lebanon war, when missiles rained down on the north, or the Gaza crisis, when missiles rain down on the south. It doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard, however.
This morning I felt it acutely – a kind of moral and emotional exhaustion at the thought of what has been, and what is still to come – with Hizbullah, if not now (with elections in Lebanon in May), then later; and with Iran, looming.
I’m not alone. This morning Larry Rich, the director of development and PR at Emek Medical Center (EMC) in Afula, sent out one of his periodic postings. Every month or so, Rich sends out a report from his hospital, and I always read them with interest. Sometimes it’s about something he overhead, or witnessed at the hospital, often its heart-warming tales about Israeli Arabs and Jews who find that in the face of illness and sometimes death, they share an awful lot more in common than they thought.
This morning, Rich – like me – was in somber mood.
“Two hours ago four Katyusha missiles slammed into the northern Galilee, having been fired from southern Lebanon. It seems that the Iranian forces of darkness are eager to continue their relentless provocation of little Israel. Nobody knows, as these words are being written, just how far this latest act of unprovoked aggression will escalate.”
He goes on to report that EMC is now on high alert.
“An urgent meeting of our emergency preparedness staff led by CEO Dr. Orna Blondheim (still grieving from the tragic death of her nephew, Dagan Vertman, cut down in Gaza) took place as the debris in the Galilee was being cleared. Having unfortunate knowledge stemming from previous wars, EMC is preparing for the worst while hoping that sanity will prevail.
We have opened our bomb shelters and already designated a large shelter adjacent to several empty rooms that will be used (should we need it) by the children of our staff while they are working.The rooms will be for games & activities while in the event of a missile assault, the children will be only steps away from a large bomb shelter. Our emergency medical supply stores are fully stocked and ready. Our physicians and nurses carry on with their healing, hoping that they will not be, once again, launched into harm’s way.
Adrenalin is rushing, anxiety sets in and we resign ourselves to an indefinite fate.”
A few days ago, the husband of a friend of mine volunteered for the reserves. He’s in his ’40s, and the father of four children. He was sent to the Lebanon border, where troops have been on alert since the start of the conflict with Gaza. “At least he’s miles from the fighting,” she told me then. I saw her briefly this morning. She looked worried.
Reserved revelry of the times
Filed under: coexistence, Crime, General, History and Culture, Israeliness, Life, Travel, War
With a population of around 67,100 and proximity to both Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, Modiin is one of the larger suburbs of Israel. The city is located very close to the Green Line, though, making for some awkward situations for Israeli-Arab relations in the neighborhood – especially along the 443 highway, a major commuter thoroughfare. This isn’t a band of fringe settlers butting heads with nationalist Arab elements. Like the Kfar Saba-Qalqilya juxtaposition, it’s mainstream Israel in close quarters with villages.
Terror-resembling hate crimes have taken place in the area many times over the years (including these four incidents from 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003, during the Second Intifada). This past March, long before the wave of violence that kicked off last month, the high court defended arrangements which basically ban Palestinians from using the 443 in order to minimize its exposure to terror. And since the war in the south has escalated, there have been stoning incidents, Molotov cocktails and even a stabbing.
Anyone reading this blog knows that in times like these, life goes on. In general, incidents like the aforementioned don’t keep Israelis from going about their business, much like the way that regular shootings and muggings in American inner cities don’t keep Americans from going about theirs. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t take precautions. We do.
A friend of mine who lives close to me in Modiin attended a party last night in Jerusalem, and while he didn’t drink, so as to maximize safety on the journey home, his sister did. Quite inebriated, her head was spinning from the drive, which, as we all know, has the potential to cause vomiting. Cruising along the 443, my friend found himself in a bind. He did not want his car to get all vomited out, and he wanted to comply with his sister’s wishes for a break in the motion, but on the other hand, it was the middle of the night and he was within rock-throwing range of more than one Arab village.
So yes, in times like these, we keep working, living and even sometimes partying as if there were no conflict. But that doesn’t mean the conflict doesn’t color our judgment and impact our actions. And in case you were wondering, the way he tells it, my friend’s solution was to pull over for his sister to vomit out the car door for two minutes at a time, and only when she really really needed him to. She used a plastic bag the rest of the time.
Photo of the 443 highway courtesy Michaeli via Wiki Commons.
Finding hope in the Gaza conflict
Filed under: coexistence, General, Life, Politics, War
One of the gifts of working for an organization like ISRAEL21c is that even in the midst of conflict and crisis, we get the rare privilege of seeing another side of the story.
In the last difficult week, when the images on TV and in the newspapers were so negative and heart wrenching, we still heard stories about ordinary Israeli Jews and Palestinians working together in an effort to bring reason, peace and humanity to the Middle East.
One of the most touching stories to emerge during this current terrible war was the tale of a tiny baby boy from Gaza called Jafar.
Born a few weeks ago with serious heart defects, his Palestinian doctors knew that he couldn’t survive without surgery. They phoned Dr. Akiva Tamir, an Israeli doctor they knew from the Israeli charity Save a Child’s Heart, and together the Israeli and Palestinian doctors raced to bring Jafar to Israel.
On Monday of last week, while missiles rained down on Gaza and southern Israel, Israeli doctors from Wolfson Medical Center near Tel Aviv volunteered their time, and performed surgery on the small boy. His grandmother was there waiting for him when he was transferred to intensive care.
Jafar is still at the hospital. He is recovering well. His heart surgery was a success. He joins a growing number of Palestinian children – 1,000 so far – who owe their lives to the volunteers at the wonderful charity Save a Child’s Heart.
Sometimes, like so many people here, I worry that this battle between Israel and Hamas will never end, but it’s stories like these, of individual Israelis and Palestinians working together and thinking far beyond the conflict that give me hope that one day things will be better.
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