People and Politics / Hold off with the laurel leaves

A group of Israelis and Palestinians who signed the declaration of principles drafted by Sari Nusseibeh and Ami Ayalon was supposed to leave for Athens tomorrow morning. Greece's Foreign Ministry finished the preparations for the first session of the declaration's public council - men and women who support the Palestinian professor and the Israeli general.

Greece's Foreign Minister Jurgos Papandreau has been accompanying the Nusseibeh-Ayalon effort for quite some time. Only a few months ago, he invited the two to a modest signing ceremony.

Bill Clinton, whose proposed framework for a two-state peace with both states using Jerusalem as their capitals and a right of return to Palestine only, was the basis for the Nusseibeh-Ayalon agreement, was also invited.

Yesterday, the Greeks were told they have to cancel the room reservations.

As of last night, the Government Coordinator in the Territories had yet to hand over the travel authorizations the Palestinians asked for two weeks ago.

A spokesman for the coordinator's office, Ophir Hacham, confirmed travel authorizations were not issued and that he had been informed the conference was canceled. Hacham said that if a new request is handed in, it will be considered routinely.

Presumably, the travel ban will be received in Athens with the same level of appreciation that the British expressed over the Israeli government's decision to ban Palestinian Authority representatives from attending the "Reform Conference." The contribution to Israel's relations with Europe will also be similar. Since the beginning of this month, Greece is the president of the European Union. At the end of the month, Papandreau is supposed to head for the Middle East at the head of an EU delegation, to try to rebuff President Bush's assault on Iraq. Next month he'll be coming to Israel as part of a regional swing.

If the ban on the travel to London was a slap to one European cheek, postponement of the Athens meeting will be considered a slap to the other cheek. In Quartet circles, they're saying that Tony Blair has promised to put all his prestige behind the "road map." There were no tears shed in the four-sided forum over the exchange of blows between Blair and Sharon. They expect the British prime minister to settle the accounts at his meeting with Bush at the White House on January 31.

In Brussels, Moscow, UN headquarters and the State Department in Washington, there's talk - half jesting, half serious - that to demonstrate his independence, Blair will pressure Sharon.

A determined British demand to put the road map on Sharon's desk with no further delays will provide the British Labor leader an opportunity to flex his muscles at the Americans, and help him rebuff criticism at home about his pandering to the arch-conservative American leader.

Sharon expects Bush to back fully the Israeli demand that the road map only be presented after a government is formed - and with far-reaching changes dictated by the Israeli prime minister.

Judeo-Nazis

Even hardcore leftists had a problem when the God-fearing Yeshayahu Leibowitz dubbed the settlers "Judeo-Nazis." Less than 30 years later, the professor's words were translated into reality in a graffiti scrawled on a wall in the Jewish enclave in Hebron. A few weeks ago photographer Shabtai Gold's lens caught the phrase "Arabs to the crematoria" beside a Magen David on a wall in the enclave. Since then, someone blurred the shocking inscription. Not far from it, on another wall, someone wrote "Arabs - sub-humans."

That kind of graffiti pops up often in the streets of Jerusalem. Leftists have found that the slurs remain on the walls a long time so to hasten the city's action against them, they've found a chilling, but effective way to get them removed - they paint a swastika beside it.

As in every attempt to tie the Holocaust to local phenomenon, this column's publication on December 31 of selected quotes from a petition by Holocaust survivors and second generation survivors resulted in protests by survivor organizations. But the photo from Hebron only amplifies the the message of the petition, which appears today in full in the Hebrew edition of Ha'aretz. The sentence "the lessons of the Holocaust must be a cultural code for education to humanist values, democracy, human rights, and tolerance and against racism and totalitarian ideologies" receives added meaning in light of the letter sent by Y., a conscript posted for the last five months in Hebron.

"I want to let you know about one of the first experiences I had in Hebron in my second week of service in the city," he writes. "While guarding the sukka on David Hamelekh Street, near Gross Square, during minha services, two Arab children came out of the casbah. Seven worshippers from inside the sukka pounced on them, and I and my buddies had to separate them. The ruckus continued and we all suffered the settlers' fists in our faces and other parts of our bodies, as well as curses and shouting. Those who suffered the most violence, slurs and curses were the Israeli police stationed in the city. Their main target were the Druze and Bedouin as well as the people of The International Presence in Hebron. Innumerable times I have been forced to intervene between the settlers and them. "The attacks, vandalism, and racist slogans are only a drop of what the Arabs of Hebron suffer daily. These actions have turned us, combat fighters, from protectors of Jews from Arab attackers to a force that protects the Arabs from the Jews. Often I've heard settlers complaining that we prevent them from beating up Arabs, breaking into their shops and vandalizing their property. And thus, they say, we do not protect the Jewish interests in the city,. And I innocently thought my job was to preserve the Jewish and Israeli law in the city."

	Hebron graffiti: "Arabs to the crematoria."
	Photo by: Shabtai Gold