In ancient times watchman would mount the city walls in times of stress to survey the scene outside the fortifications. He was situated on a spot from which he could monitor the approaches to the town. If a threat appeared, he would sound a warning and the town would shut its gates and prepare for battle.
The start date for a conclave of cardinals to elect a successor to Pope Benedict XVI may be brought forward to earlier in March.
The reigning Pope may also take the opportunity to change the rules governing the election to clear up uncertainty about when voting can begin.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said: "The Pope is considering a Motu Proprio (decree) in the coming days ... to clarify a few specific aspects of the apostolic constitution on the conclave."
It would be up to the Pope to judge whether it was "necessary and opportune" to intervene on when the meeting to elect his own successor should begin, Father Lombardi said. White smoke rises from the Sistine chapel marks Pope Benedict's election The current law says cardinals must wait 15 days after the papacy becomes vacant before voting, in order to allow all eligible cardinals to arrive in Rome - making March 15 the presumed start date.
That delay, however, assumes a papal death and funeral. In this case, the cardinals already know that the pontificate will end on February 28 and can get to Rome in plenty of time.
Benedict will become only the second Pope to resign of his own free will in the Roman Catholic Church's 2,000-year history.
The current version of the constitution does allow the cardinals some leeway in "interpreting doubtful or controversial points" - except for the election - as long as "a majority of cardinals agrees".
In meetings known as "congregations" starting on March 1, cardinals could therefore themselves agree to bring forward the start of the conclave.
Father Lombardi earlier had said the conclave would probably start on March 15, 16, 17, 18 or 19, stating that there was no reason to alter the current rules.
But on Saturday he signalled that some cardinals had asked for the date to be brought forward, arguing that many of them were already in Rome.
Many cardinals are to attend a final audience with the Pope on February 28, before he retires to a life of quiet contemplation initially at the papal summer residence of Castel Gandolfo and then in a Vatican monastery.
The conclave is expected to bring together most of the world's 117 "cardinal electors" and meets in secret in the Sistine Chapel until a two-thirds majority is found in favour of a candidate to be the Pope.
Bringing forward the date of the start of the conclave would help prevent any overlap with Easter, which this year falls on March 31, and the preceding Holy Week, which begins on March 24.
AMMAN (Petra) -- The Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) has signed a $70-million loan agreement with the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to finance for micro, small and medium enterprises at competitive interest rate and through local banks.
Under the deal, IBRD will lend the loan to the government and will be re-lent to local banks through which target companies with the receive the funding. The central said the deal stems from its keenness to support micro, small and medium enterprises for their vital role in supporting economic growth, slashing unemployment and fighting poverty.
The CBJ said the funding will run through 15 years at an interest rate of 2.5 percent for the fist year.
CAIRO (AP) — Egypt’s powerful military is showing signs of growing impatience with the country’s Islamist leaders, indirectly criticizing their policies and issuing thinly veiled threats that it might seize power again.
The tension is raising the specter of another military intervention much like the one in 2011, when generals replaced longtime authoritarian leader Hosni Mubarak after they sided with anti-regime protesters in their 18-day popular uprising.
The strains come at a time when many Egyptians are despairing of an imminent end to the crippling political impasse between President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood group on one side, and the mostly secular and liberal opposition on the other.
The tug of war between the two camps is being waged against a grim backdrop of spreading unrest, rising crime and a worsening economy.
“In essence, the military will not allow national stability or its own institutional privileges to come under threat from a breakdown in Egypt’s social fabric or a broad-based civil strife,” said Michael W. Hanna, an Egypt expert from the New York-based Century Foundation.
“This is not an ideological army or one that seeks to destabilize civilian governance. … But it is also not an army that will sit by while the country reaches the tipping point on the path to civil strife.”
The latest friction began when a rumor circulated that Morsi planned to replace Lt. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, his defense minister and the army chief, because of his resistance to bringing the military under the sway of the Brotherhood-dominated government.
Egyptian Defense Minister Lt. Gen. Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, left, meets with Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi in Cairo, Egypt, last August (photo credit: AP/Egyptian Presidency/File)
El-Sissi may have angered Morsi last month when he signaled the military’s readiness to step in, warning that the state would collapse if no solution was found to the political crisis. Pointedly, he also spoke of how the military faces a dilemma in marrying the task of protecting state installations in restive locations with its resolve not to harm peaceful protesters.
In another provocative comment earlier this month, el-Sissi was quoted as saying he would never allow the armed forces to be dominated by the Brotherhood, or any other group, stressing the military’s national identity.
A Brotherhood spokesman, Yasser Mehrez, dismissed claims that the group sought to bring the military under its sway. “This is old talk that has been repeated over and over again,” he said.
The rumor about el-Sissi’s dismissal was widely suspected to be a trial balloon floated by the Muslim Brotherhood to gauge military and public reaction.
The military did not officially respond. But widely published comments attributed to an anonymous military source threatened that any attempt to remove the military’s top commanders would be “suicide” for the government and spoke of widespread anger within the armed forces.
The source was quoted as saying the public will not accept any meddling in the military and will close ranks to counter any pressures or challenges.
The military distanced itself from the comments on a statement posted on its official Facebook page. But the situation was deemed serious enough for Morsi’s office to issue a statement late Monday that appeared aimed at calming the military.
It reassured commanders of the administration’s appreciation of the armed forces and said the president had confidence in el-Sissi.
But the statement, which blamed media for spreading “lies and rumors,” may have done little to ease the tension.
“The two sides may be publicly dismissing reports of tension, but the army is making it very clear to the presidency that any attempt to dismiss el-Sissi would backfire,” said military analyst and retired army Gen. Mohammed Qadri Said.
“They claim mutual love and respect, but what is happening is not indicative of this.”
The military also handed Morsi a public humiliation when army commanders chose not to enforce a night curfew he imposed on three restive Suez Canal cities in riots last month.
In a direct challenge to the president, several top field commanders said they would not use force against civilians in the three cities. Residents openly defied Morsi by staging demonstrations during the curfew hours, playing soccer in the streets and setting off fireworks.
El-Sissi’s top lieutenant, Chief of Staff Sedki Sobhi, delivered another implicit warning to Morsi and the Brotherhood this week.
While the military was not currently involved in politics, he said: “It keeps an eye on what goes on in the nation and if the Egyptian people ever needed the armed forces, they will be on the streets in less than a second.”
Significantly, Sobhi made his comments in the United Arab Emirates, whose government accuses Egypt’s Brotherhood of meddling in its affairs and has arrested 11 Egyptian expatriates there for their membership of the group.
Morsi and the Brotherhood have made it clear that they do not want the military to play any political role.
But that did not stop el-Sissi from extending an invitation to the opposition and Islamist leaders loyal to Morsi to sit down informally over lunch to defuse a crisis over presidential decrees issued in November that gave Morsi near absolute powers. The decrees have since been rescinded.
Under pressure from the Brotherhood, el-Sissi withdrew the invitation just hours before the meeting was to start.
Morsi appointed el-Sissi less than two months after taking office as Egypt’s first freely elected president. The Aug. 12 appointment followed Morsi’s bold decision to retire the nation’s two top generals, restoring the full powers of the president’s office and ending a months-long power struggle between the two sides. Before Morsi’s move, the military had the power to legislate since the legislature was dissolved in June by a court ruling. The military also held veto power over a panel that was drafting a new constitution at the time.
Still, few ever took el-Sissi to be the president’s man. And there were doubts that six decades of de facto military rule had come to an end or that the military had been relegated to playing second fiddle to civilians.
Morsi and his Islamist supporters passed up a major opportunity to curb the military’s power — something that would have meant a major confrontation with the generals.
The new constitution drafted by Islamists enshrined the military’s near-complete independence and kept its vast economic interests above oversight, against the wishes of many who participated in the 2011 revolt.
With chaos in the country deepening, chants calling for military intervention during street protests, last heard en masse during the uprising, are making a timid comeback.
“Millions of Egyptians want the army to come back and deliver us from chaos,” Ibrahim Issa, host of a political talk show on television, said this week.
“This is the sentiment on the Egyptian street, and ignoring it is stupid,” said the popular Issa, a harsh critic of Morsi, the Brotherhood and the military when it was in power.
Since taking office in June 2012, Morsi has made little progress in tackling Egypt’s pressing problems — steep price increases, surging crime, deteriorating services and fuel shortages.
The Brotherhood, which dominates parliament and the government after winning every election since Mubarak’s ouster, is accused of monopolizing power. And Morsi has been criticized for failing to deliver on a promise of an inclusive government representing the Christian minority, liberal and secular political factions, and women.
The highly charged political climate and the collapsing economy could make a military takeover seem like a welcome development in some corners of Egypt — or at least a necessary evil that could salvage the nation.
But the military may not be willing to insert itself directly again in politics or governance. Its prestige was badly tarnished by scathing criticism of its handling of the post-Mubarak transition period.
A few days into the uprising, Mubarak ordered the army into the streets to replace a police force that melted away when confronted with massive public outrage over decades of abuse.
With the country in chaos and paralyzed, the military later sided with protesters who demanded that Mubarak leave office. A council of ruling generals took over the reins of power, but the relationship soon turned sour.
Activists and pro-democracy groups accused the generals of widespread human rights violations during their rule, including the torture of detainees and the trial of at least 10,000 civilians before military tribunals.
The military later made good on its promise to hand over power to an elected government, although Morsi and his Brotherhood would clearly not have been the generals’ choice if they had to make one.
With that history in mind, there are serious questions about whether a military intervention can even solve any of Egypt’s problems in a time short enough to satisfy a population seething with anger over the chaos and hardships of the last two years.
The military would be risking more vilification if it does not move the country onto firmer ground quickly.
Nevertheless, there may be enough goodwill toward the military and popular discontent to give it another chance.
VIENNA (AP) — In a disheartening signal to world powers at upcoming Iran talks, Tehran has started installing high-tech machines at its main uranium enrichment site that are capable of accelerating production of reactor fuel and — with further upgrading — the core of nuclear warheads, diplomats said Wednesday.
Iran already announced last week that it had begun mounting the new enriching centrifuges, but one diplomat said at the time that the announcement was premature with only a “small number” on site and not yet installed.
Diplomats told The Associated Press on Wednesday, however, that installation was now well on its way, with inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency seeing close to 100 or more machines mounted when they toured the site a few days ago. Depending on experts’ estimates, the new-generation centrifuges can enrich uranium three to five times faster than Iran’s present working model.
The Islamic Republic insists it is not working on a nuclear weapons program, but rather is enriching uranium only to make reactor fuel and for scientific and medical purposes — as allowed by international law.
But many nations are suspicious because Iran went underground after failing to get international help for its uranium enrichment program in the 1980s, working secretly until its activities were revealed a decade ago. More recent proposals for international shipments of reactor fuel in exchange for Iranian enrichment concessions have foundered, with each side blaming the other.
Shrugging off demands to mothball enrichment — and growing international sanctions — Iran has instead vastly expanded the program to where experts say it already has enough enriched uranium for several weapons if the material is further enriched.
The start of the centrifuge upgrade at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment site southeast of Tehran, flies in the face of world-power efforts to induce Iran to scale back on enrichment. As such, it is likely to hurt chances of progress at Feb. 26 talks in Kazakhstan between the two sides — adding to a string of negotiating failures.
When Iran announced its intentions last month, Western diplomats downplayed the proclamation’s significance, noting Tehran did not say when it would start populating Natanz with the new machines. But any start of an upgrade is sure to increase international concerns, particularly if verified as expected in an IAEA report later this week.
The three diplomats speaking to the AP on Wednesday all are involved in the Vienna-based IAEA’s attempts to monitor Iran’s nuclear program. They demanded anonymity because they were not allowed to discuss confidential information.
Meeting Iran in Kazakhstan are the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany.
Russia and China often are at odds with the West on how harshly Iran’s nuclear activities should be censured, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said recently that Iran was within its legal rights to install new generation centrifuges. At the same time, he called for a suspension of uranium enrichment during negotiations to improve the political atmosphere.
While moving to increase the potency of its enrichment program with the new centrifuges, however, Tehran also has recently resumed converting some of its higher-level enriched uranium at its Fordo enrichment site into reactor fuel plates after suspending the activity last year. That is likely to provide some reassurance to nations concerned about Iran’s nuclear aims because the plates are difficult to reconvert back into weapons usable material.
About 700 of the old machines at Fordo are churning out higher-enriched material that is still below — but just a technical step away — from weapons-grade uranium. Iran says it needs that higher-enriched level to fuel a research reactor
With higher-enriched uranium their immediate concern, the six powers over the past months have inched toward meeting Iranian demands of sanctions relief but say Tehran must first suspend its output at Fordo. Iran, in turn, wants sanctions eased before it commits to even a discussion of an enrichment cutback.
The diplomats said Iran was also upgrading its enrichment capabilities at Fordo but declined to provide further details ahead of the release of the IAEA report.
In first revealing plans to update last month, Iran indicated that It could add more than 3,000 of the new-generation centrifuges to the more than 10,000 older models it has at Natanz turning out enriched uranium at grades lower than at Fordo. The lower the grade, the harder it would be to turn into weapons-grade material.
Olli Heinonen, the former IAEA deputy director general in charge of Iran, told the AP last week that Iran could install 3,000 or more of the high-tech centrifuges at Natanz within six to nine months, assuming that Tehran had the material to make the machines.
Iran, in its dealings both with the six powers and the IAEA, has continually acted as if it were in the position of strength. On Saturday, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, asserted that his country was not seeking nuclear weapons, but that if Tehran intended to build them, “the US could in no way stop the Iranian nation.”
David Albright, whose Institute for Science and International Security is a source for the US government on proliferation issues, said Iran’s hopes that the new centrifuges could strengthen its hand at the Kazakhstan talks could backfire.
“Given the low expectations for negotiations during the next several months, Iran risks giving the impression to the West that it is racing to the bomb rather than strengthening its negotiating position,” he said Wednesday.
But analyst Yousaf Butt, professor and scientist-in-residence at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said that — with Iran legally entitled to enrich —the six powers first “should consider rolling back some sanctions” if they want Iran to respond.
A shallow sea of green wheat rustled in the wind. Up ahead, to the north, the white ridge of Mount Hermon presided over the central Golan Heights, lending the sloped and canyon-cut prairie a foreign benevolence. And to the east, David Khallas’ knee-high saplings, some 2,000 young citrus trees, stood in orderly rows – indifferent to the nearby menace of Syria and the security fence being built some 10 yards from the grove.
Khallas and his wife Michal – they get along far better than their biblical namesakes – settled in the Golan Heights in the summer of 2006. When they arrived there was still talk of land for peace. Both of them moved knowing there was a certain chance they would be uprooted. Since then, they have brought two children into the world and acquired a dog. They have built their house with their own hands. They have helped invigorate a wizened HaShomer HaTzair kibbutz, creating a thriving secular and religious community in its place. And so, when it came time to choose their 30-dunam plot for agriculture, a gift of the government, they considered the virtues of tangerines over olives and of different soil types but never gave any thought at all to Syria.
“I didn’t think about the border at all. There were 40 years of absolute quiet here,” said Khallas. “It was the quietest place in the country.”
The northernmost Jewish village in the Golan, Neve Ativ, beneath Mount Hermon (Photo credit: Moshe Shai/ Flash 90)
Since planting the saplings by hand and laying the irrigation tubes and performing the myriad tasks that a grower must do to keep his or her crop alive and well, a war has broken out across the border. At least 60,000 people — maybe 90,000 — have been killed. Hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees have fled to Turkey and Jordan. Earlier this week seven injured Syrians were taken for treatment at Ziv Hospital in northern Israel. And Al-Qaeda-like elements have seized control of some of the border towns and vowed to restore to Syria the land that President Bashar Assad failed to return.
Israel, in response, has begun building a border fence, a 15-foot-high barrier of finger-width steel bars topped with razor blades that is meant to keep both refugees and, predominantly, terrorists out of the country. The army, in recent months, has increased the number and quality of the troops stationed in the Golan Heights. Commander of the Nahal infantry brigade, Col. Yehuda Fuchs, soon to take up a position on the Golan Heights, told Ynet last week, “I’ve been in the IDF for 25 years and have never done operational duty there with a unit of conscripted soldiers.” Instead, the hilltop observation posts along the eastern flank of the Golan were once the exclusive domain of sleepy reservists, their glances shifting from their binoculars to their books and back again. Now, Fuchs said, a complex terror attack “would not be a surprise.”
A November 2012 view of the Syrian town of Quneitra, where battles raged earlier this week (Photo credit: Flash 90)
The chief of military intelligence, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, warned the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee before the summer recess that the region could become “like Sinai” – an ungoverned terror hotbed.
Others, such as Kochavi’s predecessor, Amos Yadlin, believe that the disintegration of the Syrian regime and its advanced war machine is “good news” for Israel, with the potential threat from Assad, though dormant since 1973, dwarfing the potential impact of the global jihad terror cells that, along with the Free Syrian Army, seized yet another army position near the Israeli border earlier this week.
There is a cold truth in that analysis. During Israel’s 15-year occupation of south Lebanon, from the close of the Lebanon War until the 2000 withdrawal, Israel lost a total of 306 soldiers, including the 73 who were killed in Lebanon-bound helicopters over Israel in 1997. During the three weeks of the 1973 Yom Kippur War (and predominantly during the first three days of the war), Israel lost 783 soldiers on the northern front. Syrian commando troops seized Mount Hermon, and their tanks, early in the war, were stopped a mere seven kilometers from the Sea of Galilee.
But what is absent from the analysis is the psychological toll of terror, the slow drip, the recurring headlines, the demoralization of the civilians – in short, the very elements that pried Israel from the Gaza Strip and south Lebanon. As the shadow of the war in Syria draws near, the Times of Israel spoke with Golan residents about the uncertain future and the flammable present in the 440-square-mile plateau.
Yehuda Harel and Ori Kallner
Today there are roughly 30,000 Israeli civilians living in the Golan Heights. One third of them are Druze residents, who remained in four villages during the war and have, for years, worked their way into Israeli society while publicly proclaiming their desire to return to Syria. The remaining 20,000 residents are Jewish. They live in 32 rural communities and one large town. And over the past year, despite the forbidding forecasts, there has been an overall growth – including births, deaths, departures and arrivals – of 1,000 residents, said Yehuda Harel, the director of strategic planning for the Golan Regional Council.
Harel was one of the first settlers to come up to the Golan Heights. He arrived on September 1, 1967 and joined a group of young, secular kibbutznikim in a eucalyptus grove near a stream in Aalleiqa. Forty-six years later, seated in a spare office adorned with a photocopy of a 1944 train schedule from Haifa to Damascus, he was in a pleasantly philosophical mood. He did not tout the fact that the Golan – first mentioned in the Bible in Deuteronomy and home to several Jewish communities during the Roman era and again during the waning years of Ottoman rule – provides the state of Israel with one third of its water and 10 percent of its milk. Nor was he willing to indulge this reporter on the strategic importance of the sloped plateau and the way the lookout posts along the 40-mile eastern border dominate the Syrian landscape.
“Our political direction right now is to avoid all politics,” he said. “I don’t want to say how important it is from a security perspective that we never left the Golan because that will immediately invite someone else to say the opposite.” Instead, he said, normalization of the Golan means that “it’s like Netanya. No one ever argues about its importance.”
Cutting corn on the lower Golan Heights, near Kibbutz Mevo Hama (Photo credit: Shay Levy/ Flash 90)
Pressed nonetheless to address the likely rupture of the tranquility on the Golan, he thought back to his earliest days here. At the time, the group that founded the Golan’s first settlement, Kibbutz Merom Golan, sought to plant legumes in the Quneitra Valley rather than fruit trees. In October 1973 they believed that any Syrian provocation on the northern front would translate into an Israeli siege of Damascus within 48 hours. “There is an inherent frustration in this exercise,” he said, “because we just cannot know the future.”
He suggested visiting a woman named Eva in old Jaffa who is expert at reading the future in black coffee grinds. “She is not better than (military) intelligence but she is definitely cheaper,” he said, adding, finally, that his impression was that the Syrian army was no longer an offensive threat to the Golan, aside from missiles – “which threaten Tel Aviv, not us” – and that terror, “if it arises, is something we’ll deal with.”
The deputy head of the Golan Regional Council, Ori Kallner, a young religious moshavnik from Keshet in the southern Golan, is in charge of civilian security in the region. He said he was in touch with the division and brigade commanders in the Golan Heights on a daily basis, mostly in order to coordinate the conflicting needs of cattle grazing and army maneuvers, but that “we are not closing our eyes” to the war in Syria.
The “vanishing regime,” he said, would create “a comfortable breeding ground” for terror and that this was something the civilians had to understand and prepare for – but not worry about. The IDF, which is building a 40-mile-long border fence with highly advanced surveillance equipment, “is taking serious actions and changing its lifestyle,” he said, “so that I won’t have to change mine.”
Israel’s easternmost settlement
Katzrin, where the Times of Israel spoke with Kallner, is in the central Golan Heights. Traveling northeast, to the religious communal village of Alonei Habashan, the easternmost settlement in Israel, offers a shift in perspective. “We’re 500 meters from the border,” said Yiska Dekel, a second-grade teacher and mother of one who serves as the head of the community board.
A native of the settlement of Kiryat Arba, near Hebron, and a one-time resident of the more isolated settlement of Pnei Kedem, Dekel described the region as “Switzerland.” During our conversation, a heavy explosion shuddered somewhere in the dark – her husband, Yaron, said it came from the Quneitra region in Syria – but she claimed to have long ago been inured to such background noises. “I don’t hear the muezzin or the sounds of gunfire,” she said.
But she has instituted change in the 56-family village. The gate to the village, once open to all through-hikers on the Golan Trail, is now locked. The same is true of the nursery and the kindergarten. Last month, she established a security squad of former combat soldiers who have weapons and can respond to a breach in security, and she’s planning a village-wide drill this week. Recently she also requested of the army that they provide two soldiers to guard the kindergarten during the day, noting that while the adults all go off to work the children are alone in the village. “Basically,” she said, “although we’ve stepped it up a notch, we’re now acting like every other place in the country.”
When people go to sleep at night, or travel abroad, she said, it was previously unheard of to lock the door. Today, she said, she seeks a balance between those “who are shanti and those who are hysterical.”
Wind farms, like this one near Kibbutz Ein Zivan, may grant the Golan Heights energy independence within five years (Photo credit: Flash 90)
Masade
Farther up the road, at the foot of Mount Hermon, is Masade, a Druze village of 3,700 residents that seems to have undergone an even more significant shift on account of the war. Here, too, some of the residents channeled Switzerland when discussing the Golan Heights but they, members of a stateless ethnicity in the Middle East, were referring to the historical need for neutrality. Murcel Hamed, the secretary of the town, said that the Druze villages, like the mountainous European state, “have always tried to keep good relations with everyone.”
This is why it is “only natural” that some 70-80 percent of the Druze still in Syria, by his estimation, have remained faithful to the Assad regime. At one point this was the case in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized in 1967 and effectively annexed in 1981. Only a small minority of the Druze population accepted Israeli citizenship. That is because over the years Israel has “failed at convincing the Druze” that the Golan would never be returned, and therefore “they’ve acted as I would recommend them to,” Yehuda Harel said.
But that orientation toward Syria, with the demise of the Alawite regime, seems to be shifting. To be sure, each of the four villages and the family clans within them have a different position on the conflict, but in Masade, considered the most middle-of-the-road of the villages, this reporter heard the sort of forthright comments that would have been unimaginable several years ago. “The military boots have trampled every mind and opinion in Syria,” said Nadim Safadi, an employee at a Golan-based alternative energy wind farm.
He described the events next door as “the stench from the neighbor” that could no longer be avoided and said that Syria “was only here for 21 years” and that “there’s not going to be any more talk about giving back the Golan, not for the next 50 years,” and that therefore it was understandable that the young people in the village were turning more toward Israel. “Culturally speaking they are Israeli in almost every way,” he said. “They are growing ponytails and not mustaches.”
Safadi suggested that, just as it took Moses 40 years to rid the Israelites of their “slavery mentality,” so, too, would Syria require a period of rebuilding. But he dismissed all Arab affairs and military intelligence estimates about the birth of an Islamist state to Israel’s northeast. “Propaganda,” he said.
Instead, he argued that Syria, unlike Egypt, has no history of Islamist extremism, and likened the current war in Syria to the Great Syrian Revolt of 1925. “It’s just like the rebellion against the French,” he said. “They waged a jihad and then went on to become a secular state.”
He also predicted that Hezbollah, perched on a branch in Assad’s tree, would be stripped of its arms in the post-Assad future.
Israel’s Alaska
Driving south from Masade on Route 87, through road blocks of basalt that are meant to close the traffic to oncoming tank columns, I weighed his rosy assessment and considered the residents of this windswept frontier, where the fog settles in for the winter months and the summer sun bakes the plateau into a brittle, thistle-ridden surface. In February – Israel’s kindest month – the yellow, lilac and reds of the wildflowers are forced to compete with the bullet-ridden army barracks and the all-too-accessible history of war. And yet, so many of the residents see and hear the massive transformation next door, broadcast with long torrents of fire and the thud of artillery, and seem hardly concerned. Why? How?
David Khallas, who hosted me at his house in Natur with home-made sushi and home-made ice cream, suggested that I speak with David Spellman.
If Israel has an Alaska of its own, which is admittedly a bit of a stretch, then the Golan Heights is a strong contender. Most everyone is from someplace else. They left one lifestyle for another. And few have made as dramatic or impassioned a shift as Spellman.
Spellman’s kibbutz, Ein Zivan, earlier this winter (Photo credit: Hamad Almakt/ Flash 90)
Spellman turned his back on religion at age 14, calling the virgin birth “a lot of nonsense.” He knew Jews only through the teachings of the church and a small neighborhood grocery shop that was open on Sundays. It carried the “strange smells of eastern Europe” and was so foreign as to seem frightening, he said. After university in Leeds he worked for a Jewish-owned textile company and was sent to Germany. He had never learnt about the Holocaust – “not in church or home or school.” He said he witnessed there a stunning lack of contrition, a sort of acceptance that veered from “oh well” to “too bad it wasn’t done better.”
“It drove me crazy that there was no lesson learnt in terms of European culture,” he said. “There should have been a revolution in thought.”
Charmed by “the chutzpah” of the notion that Jews would no longer offer themselves up for persecution, he came to Kibbutz Gonen in the summer of 1967, right after the war, and joined the first group of settlers on the Golan. Four months at the old officers’ barracks in Quneitra left him with jaundice and, after a year on the Golan Heights, he returned to Britain, parted with his family – his father severed their ties – and moved back to Gonen.
Secular and not yet converted to Judaism, Spellman served as the secretary of the kibbutz for many years and, in 1983, went to Ukraine and worked with the then-clandestine Nativ organization, which helped Jews behind the Iron Curtain. Their desire to move from the Soviet Union to Los Angeles was inexplicable to him and slowly, after years working to build the land of Israel, he said he realized he also needed, despite his apprehension about religion, to embrace “the Torah of Israel.”
Observant and fearing for the future of the Golan, he came down to Tel Aviv in 1994 and staged a 13-day hunger strike against a possible withdrawal from the Heights. Then he moved back to the Golan, and helped found the religious settlement of Keshet and later the mixed settlement of Natur. Today, still not entirely at home in the Orthodox world, he lives on the privatized and secular kibbutz Ein Zivan despite his observance, and views with humor his son’s decision to live as a Buddhist on the southwest coast of Ireland. “I can’t say he has strayed from the path of his father.”
He had several theories on the residents’ immunity to fretfulness and suggested that, taken as a whole, they might explain the phenomenon. The first relates to personal safety. “I may have once had a key to my house,” he said, “but I certainly don’t know where it is now.”
The second related to the army and the way it is part of daily life in the Golan. “We live in a large army camp,” said Spellman, noting that the noise of tank shells and rifle fire is no longer noticeable to him and that the robustness of the army’s presence, its training and troop movements, were a comfort.
Vocation also has something to do with it, he suggested. Farmers and agriculturalists, some 20 percent of the residents on the Golan, have to fend off fears of financial ruin every season. One good year does not guarantee another. Frosts, flies and droughts lurk around every corner. In addition, he said, many of those who came to the Golan started on a new career path and have a great deal of faith in their own ability to overcome hardship.
And finally, though all of the communities in the Golan are different, he suggested that they all share a common experience – persevering in the face of personal disaster. Ever since the Israeli government’s June 19, 1967 cabinet decision to leave the Golan Heights in return for full peace, as documented in Gershom Gorenberg’s “The Accidental Empire,” a sword has hung over the settlement endeavor in the Golan Heights.
“All the world is worried and everyone here is just carrying on,” said Spellman, “because it’s in the DNA of the community.”
Hizballah forces went on alert Thursday, Feb. 21, upon the expiry of a
48-hour ultimatum slapped down by Syrian rebels to halt the Lebanese group’s
military support for Bashar Assad - in particular, its artillery and mortar
backing for Syrian troops from bases in Lebanon. debkafile’s military sources report
that relevant to this chain of events is the Syrian claim that its anti-aircraft
missiles downed an Israeli drone Wednesday over the Lebanese village of Deir
al-Aachayer in the Rashaya region. Those events were touched off by the onset
in Moscow of preparations for a political process between Syria’s warring
parties for determining the country’s future. Representatives of Bashar Assad
and the Syrian opposition will be facing each other under the Russian aegis, but
Hizballah and Israel are also involved and the Lebanese group is bidding for a
strong voice in the process on three issues:
1. Will the HIzballah-ruled Lebanese Beqaa Valley continue to serve Assad and
his army as their strategic hinterland?
2. Will the Syria-based Hizballah units, especially those securing the Shiite
villages around Homs, stay there under accords reached between Assad and the
rebels?
3. Will the ceasefire deals on which talks are due to begin soon in Moscow
apply to HIzballah?
The general wisdom in the West and Israeli media is that Assad’s fall is
inevitable and imminent.
The facts on the ground tell a different story. debkafile’s military sources report
that Assad goes into political talks with his army controlling enough of the
country to keep his regime in power for another two years at least, until the
next presidential election expected to take place in 2014.
The Syrian ruler will seek to have Hizballah covered by a Syria ceasefire,
hoping for Moscow’s backing on this point. Inclusion of this ally would
strengthen his standing and boost his army.
It would also keep Tehran in the picture and gain its acquiescence to any
deals struck in the Moscow talks. Assad understands that Iran will want to be
sure Hizballah’s interests are protected and is fully capable of torpedoing any
accords that throw its proxy to the wolves. The downing of the Israeli drone
Wedneday over the Beqaa Valley was a move by the Syrian ruler to push Israel out
of any discussion on the future role of Hizballah and the Beqaa Valley, as well
as putting a stop to Israeli Air Force flights over the Beqaa and the
Lebanese-Syrian border. Israel has not so far responded to this step, but
that doesn’t necessarily mean it will remain passive or stop its Lebanese
overflights. This chain of events could culminate over the weekend in the
Syrian rebels making good on their ultimatum and attacking Hizballah targets.
The Syrian civil war would then be thrust into the byway of a Sunni-Shiite
showdown athwart the Syrian-Lebanese border.
Militarily, the rebels can’t stand up to Hizballah’s far more organized and
professional capabilities. If they do decide to go on the offensive, they are
liable to suffer heavy losses.
Syrian rebels threaten Hezbollah with 48-hour deadline
A Syrian rebel commander has said that if the Lebanese political party Hezbollah does not cease the shelling of the Free Syrian Army-controlled territories in Syria, it will face retaliation.
"We [FSA] are announcing and warning that if Hezbollah will not stop shelling the Syrian lands, villages and civilians from inside the Lebanese territories within 48 hours of issuance of this statement, we will respond to the sources of fire by our hands and eliminate it from inside the Lebanese lands," the Free Syrian Army posted on its Facebook page, according to a CNN translation.
The ultimatum was issued after at least one Hezbollah guerrilla and five Syrian rebels were killed in fighting in Syrian territory near the Lebanon border earlier this week.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels shot down a Syrian fighter jet, following a government airstrike on a provincial town outside Damascus. Rebel commander General Selim Idriss told the AFP that “Hezbollah is abusing Lebanese sovereignty to shell Syrian territory and FSA positions.” He claims the shelling of villages in Syria’s Homs province is originating from the Bekaa valley in Lebanon, which the Syrian rebels will fire upon once the 48 hours are up. He added that his FSA fighters would bombard Hezbollah from different areas, as they are equipped with long-range weapons.
Idriss went on to say that the FSA appealed to the Lebanese President and PM, but their offices denied having any contact with the Syrian militants.
Lebanon remains split over Syria. Its Sunni-led government identifies with the rebel cause, while Shiite Hezbollah pledges support to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, the party has denied sending fighters onto Syrian soil.
Political analyst and Geo-strategic expert Amine Hotait says any news about the participation of Hezbollah fighting alongside the Syrian army is simply untrue.
"It's all fabricated lies.Hezbollah has courage enough to announce its plans and actions. Besides, everybody knows that there are 23 Lebanese villages on the Lebanese- Syrian borders, but they are inside the Syrian territories, and these villages are inhabited by Shiite Lebanese. Those Shiite Lebanese, who support the Resistance of Hezbollah, are being targeted by An-Nusra front fighters and the Free Army. These people are defending themselves; and they cannot allow the free army to invade them and kill their families. This would never happen," he told RT Arabic.
This double opposition is further complicated by Israel’s presence in the region, and its respective campaign against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Earlier on Wednesday, an Israeli drone was reportedly shot down near the Syrian border with Lebanon, according to Syrian news website Damas Post. Syrian forces reportedly shot down the Israeli unmanned aircraft over the Deir al Ashayer village near the Lebanese border. Neither Syrian nor Israeli officials have confirmed the report.
And in addition to this, Syria suspects Israel to be behind a February airstrike on a military facility outside Damascus, which killed two workers and injured five.
The now spilt-over Syrian uprising is reaching its second year, with the UN putting casualties at 70,000 and the number of displaced Syrians at more than 850,000.
