Why Reuters would choose to print the rest of the statement in English yet cherry-pick one word to remain in Hebrew is obvious - they don’t want to draw any attention to the fact that Vilnai is threatening the Palestinians with a holocaust.

Vilnai’s spokesman has attempted to diffuse the controversy by claiming Vilnai was speaking in terms of a “disaster” and not a holocaust.

Israeli Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai

But you can’t have your cake and eat it.

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad allegedly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map,” the media blindly repeated the quote ad infinitum, and it became second nature for them to carelessly drop it into any propaganda piece intended to hype Iran’s supposed threat to Israel and the world.

Barely a day goes by that Israeli, American and British warhawks don’t spew the phrase like a broken record in an attempt to create a catchy cliché and brand market the next jaunt of imperial blood-letting.

No matter that, according to numerous different translations, Ahmadinejad never used the word “map,” instead his statement was in the context of time and applied to the Zionist regime occupying Jerusalem. Ahmadinejad was expressing his future hope that the Zionist regime in Israel would fall, not that Iran was going to physically annex the country and its population.

To claim Ahmadinejad has issued a rallying cry to ethnically cleanse Israel is akin to saying that Churchill wanted to murder all Germans when he stated his desire to crush the Nazis. This is about the demise of a corrupt occupying power, not the deaths of millions of innocent people.

On the other hand, even as Reuters is forced to admit, Vilnai’s use of the word “shoah” is intrinsically allied to the context of “Discussions of the Nazi Holocaust of Jews,” adding, “Many Israelis are loath to countenance its use to describe other contemporary events.”

So will the media make reference to one of Israel’s top minister’s expressing his wish to inflict a Palestinian “holocaust” in all future reports about Israel’s geopolitical motives, just as they do with Ahmadinejad’s supposed call to wipe Israel off the map?

There’s more chance of Yasser Arafat and Menachem Begin coming back from the dead to broker a peace settlement.

Ed O’Loughlin

THE Israeli army has decided not to order a disciplinary probe into the killing of 21 Palestinian civilians in November 2006.

The dead men, women and children included at least 13 members of the Athamneh family, among them a one-year-old girl. Another 35 people were injured as 12 155-millimetre heavy artillery shells struck the north Gaza town of Beit Hanoun for several minutes. Israeli rights groups yesterday claimed there was a “culture of impunity” in the Israeli security forces, after the decision was announced.

This week the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) adjutant-general announced that an extremely rare computer malfunction had caused the shells to strike 500 metres from their intended target, a field that had been used by militants to fire missiles at Israel. There was therefore no reason to charge any soldier with negligence or any other offence, Brigadier-General Avihai Mandelblit decided. The announcement did not consider the gunners’ supposed failure to notice their shells going astray.

The Beit Hanoun bombardment followed an incident in June 2006 in which seven members of the picnicking Ghalya family were killed by an explosion on a north Gaza beach. The Israeli human rights group B’tselem yesterday said the Beit Hanoun decision reflected a “culture of impunity” in the forces.

“We have to ask ourselves whether the IDF’s internal investigations meet the basic standards of international law,” said spokeswoman Sarit Michaeli.

By Amira Hass

Not long ago the greengrocer in Ramallah recalled - between weighing locally grown zucchini and stripped hyssop leaves - that his family owns the land on which the gas station at the old entrance to the Jewish settlement of Beit El in the West Bank is located. He would not be surprised by the figure that the Peace Now movement has succeeded in officially extracting from the defense establishment, after more than a year of fighting for the freedom of information: About one-third of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank (44 out of 120) were built on privately owned Palestinian land that was seized, by means of confiscation orders, for “security needs.”

From the data it emerges that at least 19 of the 44 settlements were built on private land, even after prime minister Menachem Begin decided in 1979 that the construction and expansion of settlements would take place only on state-owned land.

Peace Now has revealed here another act of hypocrisy, even though the Supreme Court is no longer impressed even by this: It did, after all, legitimize the construction of the settlement of Matityahu on land owned by inhabitants of Bil’in.

The known fact that settlements are built on private Palestinian lands combines all too well with the general civic and institutional Israeli perception to the effect that Palestinian lands that are not privately owned, or that lack proof of private ownership, belong to the Jewish people in Israel and the Diaspora.

Under the Israeli approach, which has expanded further since the Oslo Accords, any land that is not private was and remains suitable for Israeli development - for the benefit of the Jewish citizens of the state and for those who have the right to immigrate to Israel under the Law of Return. These are exactly the lands that constitute a considerable part of Area C (which is under Israeli military and administrative responsibility, and holds 60 percent of the area of the West Bank) and prohibited for any Palestinian development. It is on these lands, which are denominated “state lands,” that two-thirds of the settlements are built. No less illegally.

The discussion of whether West Bank lands are privately owned or not reverberates far more loudly than the discussion of Israel’s takeover of the Palestinian expanse by means of the closure policy. For example, since February 5, the army has once again severed the towns of the northern West Bank from the rest of the territory by means of roadblocks, and has forbidden males between the ages of 16 and 35 from leaving their towns. The media don’t report on this.

The discussion of private land reverberates well in the Israeli (and American) media because of the exaggerated sanctification of private property. And now, Peace Now must correct its initial report of October 2006, in which it was stated that 86 percent of the area of Ma’aleh Adumim is private Palestinian land. It emerges that only .05 percent of Ma’aleh Adumim is private land.

Nonetheless, this non-ideological Jewish settlement is among the most damaging to the Palestinians, and it reinforces the regime of apartheid roads: It cuts the northern part of the West Bank off from the southern part, and prevents Palestinian territorial contiguity. The road that leads to Ma’aleh Adumim will soon be closed to Palestinians, who will be diverted to a separate, narrow and winding road. This Jewish settlement has caused the banishment of many Bedouin from their lands and their ways of life. Together with the adjacent Jewish settlements and the separation barrier, it has taken over lands that had served the Palestinian towns and villages in the area, their natural reserve for development and expansion.

And so what if this is land that was not registered as private? Because of this robbery, these villages and towns have become crowded, choking neighborhoods that are cut off from the larger expanse.

The extensive work that Peace Now has invested in exposing the private ownership of lands is a mirror image of the extensive and systematic effort of Civil Administration experts to prevent inhabitants of the villages from cultivating their lands beyond the separation barrier. They measure out for each individual his part in an inheritance and in accordance with this, they allot him the hours during which he may pass through the gate to harvest olives or to plow the land. They prevent shared cultivation of the land and calculate which of the siblings in a family is abroad so that, heaven forfend, his share of the land will not be cultivated by others.

All of this is a preliminary step to expropriate land that remains “without owners” and its transformation in the future into state land - that is, Jews’ land.

The exaggerated concentration on private ownership feeds into the Israeli denial of the fact that the Palestinians’ right is to all of the territory that has been occupied. Not as private individuals, but rather because they constitute an indigenous national group in this land.

A searing interview with Avichai Sharon and Noam Chayut, both veterans of the Israeli Defense Forces and members of Breaking the Silence. Sharon and Chayut served during the second intifada, an on-going bloodbath that has claimed the lives of over three thousand Palestinians and nine-hundred-fifty Israelis. After thorough introspection, these young men have chosen to speak out about their experiences as self-described “brutal occupiers of a disputed land.” Producer: Sat Gwin

Alternate Focus is available on the Dish Network, Free Speech TV, Channel 9415, Saturdays at 8:00pm EST and on cable stations near you. Check www.alternatefocus.org for details.

Palestine Red Crescent Society

Some examples of Palestinian civilians killed by illegal settlers:

Salman Yusef Salman a-Safdi
17 year-old resident of ‘Urif, Nablus district, killed on 26.10.2004 next to Yizhar, Nablus district, by gunfire. Additional information: Killed by a settler after he penetrated his house. He was not armed.

Sa’il Mustafa Ahmad Jabarah
46 year-old resident of Salem, Nablus district, killed on 27.09.2004 next to Salem, Nablus district, by gunfire. Additional information: Killed while driving his taxi, by a settler who wanted him to stop.

Hani Bani Maniya
22 year-old resident of ‘Aqraba, Nablus district, killed on 06.10.2002 in ‘Aqraba, Nablus district, by gunfire. Additional information: Shot and killed by settlers while harvesting his olives

Farid Mussa ‘Issa Nesasreh
28 year-old resident of Beit Furik, Nablus district, killed on 17.10.2000 in Beit Furik, Nablus district, by gunfire. Additional information: Killed by a settler from Itamar while harvesting olives near the settlement.

B’tselem

Some examples of Palestinians killed while waiting to cross checkpoints for medical reasons:

Amir Shaher ‘Abdallah al-Yazji
8 year-old resident of Gaza city, died on 19.11.2007 in Gaza city, following a delay in receiving medical care. Additional information: suffered from meningitis, and died after being refused, for more than a week, entry into Israel.

Mahmoud Kamal Kamel Abu Taha
23 year-old resident of Rafah, died on 28.10.2007 in Erez (Industrial Zone), North Gaza district, following a delay in receiving medical care. Additional information: Cancer patient dies after being delayed entry into Israel for 10 days even though he had a permit to pass.

Nimer Muhammad Salim Shuheibar
75 year-old resident of Gaza city, died on 23.10.2007 , North Gaza district, following a delay in receiving medical care. Additional information: He arrrived at the Erez checkpoint after having received a permit to enter Israel, but soldiers fired at the ambulance and ordered it to return to the hospital in Gaza. The following day, he returned to the checkpoint and was allowed to pass after waiting for more than two hours, but died when he got to the Israeli side.

Na’el ‘Abd a-Rahman Khamis al-Kurdi
21 year-old resident of Gaza city, died on 16.10.2007 in Gaza city, following a delay in receiving medical care. Additional information: a cancer patient, Israel refused to let him leave the Gaza Strip to obtain medical treatment

‘Aiseh ‘Ali Hassan ‘Absi
21 year-old resident of Qibya, Ramallah and al-Bira district, died on 22.05.2002 , Ramallah and al-Bira district, following a delay in receiving medical care. Additional information: A kidney patient, she was on her way to dialysis treatment. Soldiers at the checkpoint twice refused to let her cross; the second time, they fired a tear-gas canister at the car she was in. She died in the car.

B’tselem

Causes of Deaths of Israeli Soldiers
2005

http://philistine.wordpress.com/2008/01/19/a-genocide-in-numbers/

Israel has successfully launched a spy satellite which will be used to gather intelligence on Iran’s activities, a new report says.

The TECSAR satellite is particularly important for Israel since it can be used to ‘keep tabs on Iran’s nuclear program’, the report said citing unnamed Israeli officials.

The officials revealed that the TECSAR satellite operates with an enhanced footage technology, allowing it to transmit images regardless of daytime and weather conditions.

TESCAR is considered the Zionist regime’s most advanced satellite in orbit to date.

Israel has been backing the US efforts to isolate Iran and persuade the international community to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic over its nuclear standoff with the West.

Despite a report by US spy agencies last fall which conceded that Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, Washington and Tel Aviv accuse Tehran of pursuing a nuclear arms program.

Iran says its nuclear activities are within the framework of the regulations of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

MD/HGH/RE

By Carolynne Wheeler in Jerusalem

Six-year-old Maria Amin races ahead of her father on the way to school. “Hurry up, papa. The bus will leave without us,” she calls, steering her electric wheelchair with a mouth-stick towards the specially-equipped van.

	Symbol of hope: Maria Amin’s case has captured the hearts of the Israeli public

It’s a journey that, 19 months ago, it was impossible to imagine her making. In May last year, the little Palestinian girl and other family members were in her uncle’s car in Gaza when it was torn apart by shrapnel from an Israeli missile.

Travelling just ahead of them had been Mohammad Dahdouh, a senior Islamic Jihad commander responsible for directing rocket attacks against Israeli towns.

The missile hit its target, but destroyed her uncle’s car as well, killing her mother, grandmother and older brother. She was thrown out of the window - alive, but paralysed from the neck down.

The fact that today she is able to pilot herself around, using her chin to steer, is a testament to the skill of Palestinian and Israeli doctors, to the care of the Jerusalem hospital where she now lives, and to her own indomitable spirit.

It also reflects the media attention her case has drawn in Israel, which added to pressure on the Israeli government to help her.

Transferred first to a Tel Aviv hospital and then to Jerusalem’s private Alyn rehabilitation centre, after Gaza’s hospitals were unable to care for her, Maria captured the hearts of the Israeli public.

Last week she was given the good news that she will be allowed to remain where she is for at least another year - providing a flicker of hope for reconciliation in a part of the world that sorely needs it.

Her endless rounds of medical care, tests and physiotherapy are broken up by lessons at Jerusalem’s only bilingual school, where Jewish and Arab students study together in classes taught jointly by Hebrew and Arabic-speaking teachers.

It is a fitting place for a little girl who began learning Hebrew almost from the moment she arrived at the Alyn centre, and who has drawn people from both sides of this conflict to her cause.

“She is very active and has the character of a leader,” said Dalia Peretz, the Jewish Israeli who heads the Max Rayne Hand-in-Hand School with an Arab colleague. “The children like to be around Maria and to play with her, and I know many of the parents care a lot about her.”

It is one of the many ironies that permeate this conflict that Ms Pertetz’s brother is Amir Peretz, who was the Israeli defence minister when the missile struck.

Teachers say they are astonished by Maria’s ability to compensate for her limitations. Her artwork adorns the classroom’s walls, painted with the help of a paintbrush or crayon attached to a wand which she grasps with her teeth. In music lessons, she sings as loudly as her softly whooshing respirator will allow her.

“She’s marvellous,” said her music teacher, Helen Sabella. “She’s really dominant - she proves herself.”

Maria’s father, Hamdi, who survived the air strike along with her younger brother, is now devoted to looking after the two children in a family suite next to the hospital.

Each morning, he combs Maria’s hair into a neat ponytail and polishes her fingernails before accompanying her to school.

“When I saw first Jews, Christians and Muslims together without any discrimination, I was fascinated. Look at the kids playing together,” marvelled the 30-year-old former driver as he watched in the school’s courtyard.

While Maria studies, a network of Israeli volunteers is fighting to keep her here.

In the summer, the Israeli defence ministry issued an order to move her from the Alyn centre, which has a specialist unit for patients with spinal injuries, to a Palestinian hospital in Ramallah, but her doctors opposed the move, saying it was tantamount to a death sentence.

They argued that no Ramallah hospital could provide the same care, and that the Israeli checkpoints through which travellers must pass on the way to Jerusalem would prevent her from getting prompt medical help in an ­emergency.

Last week, the ministry backed down, agreeing to a one-year freeze on the deportation order while another solution was sought. Meanwhile, it is paying Maria’s tuition fees and other expenses.

However, despite the freeze, it also seems unlikely that she will stay where she is.

“She has finished the treatment in Alyn hospital, so every day that she is staying there is a waste of time and money,” said Shlomo Dror, a defence ministry spokesman.

Maria’s Israeli legal team is preparing to pursue her case in the Supreme Court. A hearing is scheduled for February.

“I’m optimistic,” said Adi Lustigman, a Jerusalem lawyer who is leading the team.

“I don’t see how the court can send Maria to Gaza or the West Bank where it’s clear she could not survive. In order to salvage what’s left, Maria needs stability.”

A former senior US intelligence official says Israel will ultimately attack Iran in order ‘to defend its nuclear monopoly’ in the region.

“I came back from a trip to Israel in November convinced that Israel would attack Iran,” said Bruce Riedel, the former CIA official and senior adviser to three US presidents, including George W. Bush, on Thursday.

Riedel said his conversations with Israeli officials and Mossad proved to him that Tel Aviv is planning to strike Iran’s nuclear sites.

“And that was before the NIE [US National Intelligence Estimate]. This makes it even more likely,” Newsweek quoted Riedel as saying.

Political pundits believe the Israelis consider the recent US intelligence assessment as a signal of Washington’s reluctance to follow the Zionist regime’s hawkish policies towards Iran.

Riedel added that the Bush administration’s failure to discuss the NIE report with Israeli intelligence agencies before its release on Dec. 3 only complicated the problem for Israel.

The prevailing view among Israeli intelligence officials is that the NIE has isolated the Zionist regime in its attempts to portray Tehran’s nuclear program as a threat.

MD/HGH/RE

A former senior CIA analyst says the United States and Israel are planning war against Iran before the next presidential election.

Ray McGovern said Monday despite a recent National Intelligence Estimate conceding that Iran is not conducting a nuclear weapons program, a joint US and Israeli war on the Islamic Republic is likely to happen.

The former analyst expounded that the close American relationship with Israel, which alleges Iran is a threat to its existence and to the international community, is the driving force behind a potential strike.

McGovern called on those wishing to prevent a military conflict with Iran to voice their opposition to President Bush’s headstrong approach towards Tehran and its nuclear program.

Although the report by US intelligence services has meant another embarrassment for the White House over its accusation against Tehran, the US president seems to be indifferent to the assessment.

President Bush, who is scheduled to visit Jerusalem in January, bald-facedly continues his rhetoric against the Islamic Republic, claiming Tehran poses a threat to the international community.

MD/MG

Scott Wilson

GAZA CITY — The batteries are the size of a button on a man’s shirt, small silvery dots that power hearing aids for several hundred Palestinian students taught by the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children in Gaza City.

In the meantime, Gazans improvise. “We’ve bought 20 tons of coffee from every store here we could find,” said Riyadh Haigar, owner of the popular Delice Coffee Shop. “Maybe it’ll last a month. Then we close the doors.”

Gideon Levy

“We have to make you do a little sports,” the Shin Bet interrogator said, launching four successive days of questioning accompanied by brutal physical torture. The result: Luwaii Ashqar can no longer stand on his feet. He sits in his wheelchair, dressed in a fashionable quasi-military suit, super-elegant, new Caterpillar-brand shoes on his paralyzed feet.

“I love this color,” he says about his uniform. “It’s the color of the soldiers who came to arrest me for the interrogation that did all this to me.”

His smile is captivating, his Hebrew rich and incisive. He is a young man whose world fell apart. He entered prison sound of body and mind and emerged a broken man. For four days and four nights nonstop, he says, he was interrogated and subjected to torture of the most brutal kind. The result is the person we see before us in the wheelchair , in the elegant home high in the village of Saida, north of Tul Karm, which was placed at his disposal by a friend after he was released from Israeli prison a month ago.

Was there a judgment by the High Court of Justice? There was. It banned precisely the types of torture he underwent: the “banana posture,” the “shabah” (body stretching with hands tied to a chair), “invisible” blows and the “frog posture” (being forced to stand for hours on the toes in a crouching position) - all the way to a vicious kick to his chest that bent his body backward while he was tied to a chair with his arms and legs, and which was the probable cause of the partial paralysis of his legs.

Throwing up with the vomit entering his nostrils, losing consciousness and being given only saltwater to drink, relieving himself in his pants, not sleeping or resting - all of that for four consecutive days and nights.

What does the interrogator Maimon tell his children when he goes home? What do Eldad and Sagiv tell their wives about their daily labors before they turn in? That they tortured another helpless prisoner until they turned him into a cripple? That they beat this charming young man brutally and that at the end of the interrogation he was tried for only marginal offenses? And where is the Supreme Court, which in 1999 prohibited precisely the chain of torture that Luwaii Sati Ashqar, 30, who was married three years ago, underwent in the Kishon detention facility?

Ashqar is not alone. The Public Committee Against Torture in Israel has just issued a new report containing the testimonies of nine torture victims (English version: www.stoptorture.org.il//eng ). As the authors of the shocking report say, the testimonies “paint a dismal picture in which can be discerned various categories of secret-keeping collaborators, who, in keeping silent, protect the [Shin Bet] system of torture.” …

On the wall is a picture, a fine drawing of a kneeling prisoner, his head between his knees. The caption: “I am in the darkness of the prison, living on your memory. I am far from you, lying in my bed, my spirit cruising your land all night. God will release all the prisoners, the strong will triumph.”

Ashqar is sitting in his wheelchair, his left leg completely enclosed in a cast, his right leg shaking nonstop. When he tries to get up and lean on his crutches, he threatens to topple over. “I was married in 2004, and I started to work in aluminum in the village to provide for my new household. On April 22, 2005, at 2:30 A.M., the soldiers came and started to throw grenades and to shout for everyone in the house to go outside. They blindfolded me with whatever they use and handcuffed me. I was taken in a jeep to prison and I was examined by an army doctor. He looked over my body - no operations, doesn’t take medication, no illnesses. Again I was taken in a military jeep, this time to Kishon. ‘Yehuda, incoming,’ the warder said and transferred me to the interrogation office. They opened my eyes: Good morning. An excellent morning. One of the interrogators, Maimon, told me: I am responsible for your file. What file? The one you were arrested for. This is the major, and this tall guy is the colonel, this is Sagiv and this is Eldad. Eight interrogators.

“They said: We have no time, it will soon be our Passover and you have to finish everything in a short time. Finish what? You have to tell us what you have. I don’t have anything to tell you. I begged. They said: We know all that nonsense. We are talking about security. Plans for terrorist attacks at Passover. I said: I don’t understand what you are talking about. They said: The suicide bomber was at your place. What suicide bomber?

“After two hours of talking they said to me: If you don’t give everything you have, we will have to take it by a different way. What is the different way? Did you hear of a military interrogation? You might leave here with your body battered or crippled. I was taken to a military interrogation. Here you pray to God that you will die, they said, but we won’t give you that. We will let you die only after you spill out what we are looking for. He gave me a prison uniform and I told him that if I was going to die, I preferred my own clothes.

“They sat me down on a square chair without a back, which was attached to the floor and had sharp metal ends [sticking up]. My legs were tied to the legs of the chair with metal cuffs and my hands were tied behind my back with metal cuffs. One interrogator sat behind me and the other in front of me. The interrogator opposite me said: We have to give you a little sports, so you will be able to hold out in the military interrogation. The sports was that they pushed me backward by the chest, a backward somersault, and I would hold myself so my bones would not break. After a minute or two I would automatically fall on the floor, but the interrogator behind me would put his foot on my chest and press, and the interrogator in front would grab my hands and pull and pull behind the chair. They kept on like that until I don’t know what happened to me, heat in every part of my body, puking everything I had in my stomach and it would go into my nostrils. I would wake up when they poured water on my face. When I woke up, we went back to the same situation. It went on like this 15-20 times an hour.

“After that they made me crouch on my toes, not letting me lean on the back of my foot. I was in that position for 40-50 minutes, maybe an hour - that was my estimate - until I felt my soles swelling and they turned blue and there was tremendous pain. After that, stand up, and they tied my hands and pressed as hard as they could on the metal handcuffs until the metal dug into my hand. Here are the signs, you can still see them. Because of the pressure, the key of the handcuffs didn’t always work and they would bring huge metal scissors, like they use in construction, and tear off the handcuffs and then bring new ones, to go on. The color of my hands changed to blue, and when they opened [the handcuffs] my hands shook. The interrogator stood on the table and pulled me with a chain of handcuffs. When I fell, they pulled me by the hair.

“I would cry, beg, shout, and they came back to me with words, that it was impossible to stop, only after you start talking about what we want. I said to them: Tell me what you want. Tell me I am responsible for the attack on the Pentagon, I am ready to confess to everything, just tell me what. I want to end this death.”

“There were always four interrogators and two rotated every four hours, day and night. The new ones would tell me they were stronger than the ones before, that the ones before were a joke, we are the strong ones. And that was true. The new ones tied me and started to beat me all over my body. One interrogator pressed hard on my testicles and on my feet with his shoes. When they slapped me and I tried to pull back, the major would say: What are you doing? If you move back, I will break your nose, and if you move forward I will rip off your ear. Be strong and take it sportingly, because you are a soldier and a fighter. They broke this tooth.”

Ashqar suddenly stops talking. He turns pale and his face is covered with beads of perspiration. His father, Sati, quickly wipes his face with a damp cloth. “Every time I try to remember I get dizzy, even when I am alone.” Quiet descends in the room. It will take Ashqar another few minutes to pull himself together.

“I was taken into detention on Friday morning, and that was the last light of day I saw before the interrogation. I came out for the first time on Monday night or before dawn on Tuesday morning. On those long days I sat in a chair and did not even go to the toilet. So you won’t kill yourself, they said. I urinated in my clothes, and a terrible stench started. For four days I didn’t eat anything. They told me: If we give you something to eat, something will happen to your stomach and your intestines. Maybe they will explode under the pressure of the food when we push you backward. You will drink only half a cup of saltwater. That is what they gave me every time after they bent me and I vomited. Why with salt? I asked. Give me without salt. No, so nothing will happen in your stomach and intestines. I would drink it and vomit.

“On Monday evening, they told me that five witnesses had testified that Luwaii had transported a wanted man. I told them that there was a famous wanted man named Luwaii Sadi, but my name is Luwaii Sati, and maybe they had mixed us up. He said to me: Are you saying the Shin Bet is that stupid? We know exactly what we’re doing, and it is all correct. I said: Put me on trial for whatever you want. He said: Ya’allah, sports again. He pushes me backward in the chair. I will help you become a story in Palestinian history. He is talking to me and my head is down below. He pushes strongly with his leg and presses on my chest. I felt something like an explosion in my body. Like something broke. After that I don’t know what happened. I woke up and they were pouring water on my face. Again they pushed me backward and again I fainted.

“He said to me: Stand on your feet. I felt that my legs were cold, like pins and needles in the legs. I said: I can’t. He said: Now you are paralyzed. I said: I guess I am. He said: That is what we promised you and that is what you want.”

“I discovered I had a wound in the back and it was bleeding - because of the sharp chair - and one of my bones was protruding. Because of the blood and because of the urine of four days there was such a stench that the interrogator could not come close to me. He said: Why do you stink like that? I told him: That is your perfume. A warder took me to the shower and threw me on the floor and said to me: Ya’allah, you have two minutes to shower. I looked at the faucet up above and I could not reach it. I pulled down my pants and the underpants stayed in place. I tried to pull them down - I could do it in front but behind it was stuck to my back. The two minutes went by and the warder started to pound on the door. Time’s up. I told him: Give me another two minutes, I can’t reach the faucet. He came in and asked: What do you have on your back? I said: I don’t know.

“He called the interrogator and said: Come and see the prisoner. The interrogator came and asked: What do you have, Luwaii? I said: I don’t know what I have on my back, I can’t pull the underpants down and I can’t reach the faucet. He said: Ya’allah, we will go up and finish the story and take you to the doctor.

“Two warders took me in a Prisons Service vehicle to Rambam [Medical Center in Haifa]. In emergency, my hands and feet were tied and a Russian doctor asked me: What hurts you? I told him: My whole body hurts from the interrogation. The Druze warder said: Shut up. The doctor turned me on the side and stuck a finger into my ass. I asked him: What are you doing? He said: I am checking whether you have hemorrhoids. Why didn’t you ask me first? I am a professional, he said. I said: What about the wound on the back? He put ointment there and dressed it. After 10 minutes I was taken back to interrogation. Again I was tied to the square chair. The bandage fell off and the wound started to bleed again. After that, they stopped the military interrogation.”

He was interrogated for another two months, but without physical torture. He was told that his wife had been arrested because of him - a complete fabrication - and he was given a lie detector test (”the falsehoods machine,” in his Hebrew). For two weeks he was placed in a cell with stool pigeons. In the end, he was indicted on only two counts, in Prosecution File 2157/05: assisting a wanted person to hide and using a forged document. No ticking and no bomb. Ashqar was sentenced to 26 months in prison and was released a month ago. In the meantime, his younger brother, Osaimar, disappeared. Soldiers came to the house looking for him, but he was not there. His family has not seen him since: He told them that he was not willing to undergo what Luwaii did.

Luwaii is now looking for a way to get medical treatment in Israel or abroad, after his physician told him that he would not be able to get rehabilitation in the West Bank. His lawyer told him that the Shin Bet will almost certainly prevent him from going anywhere.

By Ori Lewis

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday played down expectations for a peace deal with the Palestinians before the end of 2008 as laid out at a U.S.-sponsored peace conference last week.

“We will make an effort to hold speedy negotiations in the hope we may conclude by the end of 2008, but certainly there is no commitment for a firm timetable for their completion,” Olmert said at the start of Sunday’s Israeli cabinet meeting.

U.S. President George W. Bush assured Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the conference in Annapolis, Maryland, that Washington would actively engage in peacemaking, despite deep skepticism over chances for a deal before he leaves office.

Launching the first formal peace talks in seven years at the conference, Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to try and reach a deal on creating a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank by the end of next year.

But skeptics say Bush’s time scale for peacemaking is too ambitious given both leaders are politically weak. Speaking at the first cabinet meeting since Annapolis, Olmert urged caution.

In an apparent hint to right-wing coalition partners he was not planning concessions without a reciprocal move from the Palestinians, Olmert said any progress on peace would depend on adhering to commitments under a stalled U.S. peace “road map”.

“The most important thing in the joint statement is that … any agreement that we reach in the future will be dependent on completion of all road map commitments.

“In other words, Israel will not have to implement any commitment which emanates from the agreement before all the road map commitments have been met,” he said.

The 2003 U.S. road map provides benchmarks that include a freeze of Jewish settlement activity in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, as well as a Palestinian crackdown on militants.

GAZA MILITANTS

Israel will release about 430 Palestinian prisoners on Monday as part of efforts to bolster Abbas against Hamas Islamists, who seized the Gaza Strip in June and have rejected the peace drive, vowing to keep fighting the Jewish state.

Israel regularly launches raids into Gaza to try to stop militants firing rockets onto Israeli towns and said on Sunday it had stepped up attacks in the coastal strip in the past week.

A statement said Defense Minister Ehud Barak told ministers he had authorized more military action in Gaza, including the targeting of “manned military Hamas targets”. Barak said Israel had killed 22 militants in attacks in the past week.

Most Gaza petrol stations have closed and traffic has almost came to a halt since Israel began reducing the amount of fuel allowed into the coastal strip last month in response to the rocket salvoes.

“Cooking gas will run out within days and cars will stop within hours,” said Mahmoud al-Khuzundar, chairman of the society of petrol company owners, on Sunday.

Olmert’s comments playing down hopes of a quick deal came after the United States withdrew a draft United Nations resolution endorsing action agreed at Annapolis — a document Israeli officials said they felt was inappropriate.

Although Israel apparently had no problems with the uncontroversial text, analysts suggested it was worried a formal resolution would get the U.N. too involved in Middle East peace efforts. Israel and the United States often complain of bias in the world body against the Jewish state.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Writing by Ori Lewis and Rebecca Harrison)

By David Ignatius

Efraim Halevy, the former head of the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, titled his memoirs “Man in the Shadows.” But now that he’s out in the sunlight, the 72-year-old retired spy chief has some surprisingly contrarian things to say about Iran and Syria. The gist of his message is that rather than constantly ratcheting up the rhetoric of confrontation, the United States and Israel should be looking for ways to establish a creative dialogue with these adversaries.

Halevy is a legendary figure in Israel because of his nearly 40 years of service as an intelligence officer, culminating in his years as Mossad’s director from 1998 to 2003. He managed Israel’s secret relationship with Jordan for more than a decade, and he became so close to King Hussein that the two personally negotiated the 1994 agreement paving the way for a peace treaty. So when Halevy talks about the utility of secret diplomacy, he knows whereof he speaks.

Of course, Halevy looks like the fictional master spy George Smiley — thinning hair, wise but weary eyes, the rumpled manner of someone who might have been a professor in another life. And Halevy has the gift of anonymity: You would look right past him in a crowded room, never imagining that he was the man who had conducted daring secret missions. After he appeared here with former CIA director George Tenet at a conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center, Halevy agreed to sit down for an interview.

Halevy suggests that Israel should stop its jeremiads that Iran poses an existential threat to the Jewish state. The rhetoric is wrong, he contends, and it gets in the way of finding a peaceful solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.

“I believe that Israel is indestructible,” he insists. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad may boast that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, but Iran’s ability to consummate this threat is “minimal,” he says. “Israel has a whole arsenal of capabilities to make sure the Iranians don’t achieve their result.” Even if the Iranians did obtain a nuclear weapon, says Halevy, “they are deterrable,” because for the mullahs, survival and perpetuation of the regime is a holy obligation.

“We must be much more sophisticated and nuanced in our policies toward Iran,” Halevy contends. He argues for a combination of increased economic pressure and a diplomatic opening that attempts to speak to Iran’s “national aspirations” and its shared interests with America and the West — and even Israel.

“Iranians, including those in government, know that acceptance of Israel is not just something they have to accept but something that might bring their deliverance,” Halevy maintains.

The former spy chief also argues that Ahmadinejad’s fiery rhetoric masks a deep split within Iran over the country’s future. “I believe that behind their bombastic statements there is a desperate fear that they are going down a path that would have dire consequences,” he says. “They don’t know how to extricate themselves. We have to find creative ways to help them escape from their rhetoric.”

Halevy, who made many secret visits to Iran during the days of the shah, argues that rather than rattling sabers the West should be looking for dialogue with Tehran. “A creative and constructive approach to Iran’s concerns — not the dreams of their fanatic president to effect the demise of Israel — might move them to see that their self-interest would be better served by taking alternative paths.”

Halevy takes a similarly contrarian view about Syria. “Damascus is now ripe for peace negotiation,” he says. He argues that the Syrians are signaling their interest in such a negotiation and that the details of an agreement were worked out during extensive talks in the 1990s. The Syrian track might be a breakthrough, he argues, because an accommodation with Damascus might bring along the rest of the Arab world, lead to a settlement in Lebanon and undermine Syria’s current alliance with Iran.

If the Syrians are serious about a dialogue with Israel, they should send a clear signal, Halevy advises. They should urge Hezbollah to release the Israeli prisoners it is holding or limit the activities of Hamas offices in Damascus. “Do a little,” he urges the Syrians. “Start the ball rolling.”

Halevy has battled for decades for Israel’s security, launching hundreds of secret missions over the years to defend the Jewish state. So he has earned the right to offer iconoclastic advice about his country’s strategic interests. At this delicate moment, he suggests, war talk about Iran is a mistake. “Sensible Iranians are not in short supply,” he confides. The challenge is to find them and to begin a serious conversation.

The writer is co-host ofPostGlobal, an online discussion of international issues. His e-mail address isdavidignatius@washpost.com.

Israeli soldiers secure the gate at the Rosh Hanikra border crossing between Israel and Lebanon October 15, 2007.

Gil Cohen Magen / Reuters

Is Israel laying the ground for preemptive air strikes against targets belonging to the militant Shi’ite group Hizballah in Lebanon?

Tensions have been building along the Lebanon-Israel border in recent days. The Israeli army was engaged last week in large-scale military exercises in northern Israel, close to the border with Lebanon, putting into practice the lessons learned from last year’s 34-day war against Hizballah. The exercises took place at the same time as Israeli jets conducted a growing number of mock air raids and overflights in Lebanese airspace. Israeli aircraft fly in Lebanese airspace on a near daily basis, but last week Lebanese army anti-aircraft units fired at the jets for the first time since the end of the war.

Hizballah, too, is reported to have carried out over the weekend its largest ever military maneuvers in south Lebanon. According to a report Monday in Lebanon’s Al-Akhbar newspaper, Hizballah’s three-day exercise was a response to the Israeli army’s own maneuvers and was intended, according to quoted Hizballah sources, to “deter the enemy from undertaking any further Lebanese adventures.”

Accompanying all this heightened activity has been a flurry of reports in the Israeli media about Hizballah’s rearming, with claims that the Shi’ite group today possesses rockets that can strike Tel Aviv. Last week, a United Nations report on Lebanon carried information provided by Israel that alleged Hizballah was more heavily armed than prior to the 2006 war, with hundreds of long-range rockets and three times as many anti-ship cruise missiles. “Israel has stated that the nature and number of weapons in Hizballah’s control constitutes a strategic threat to its security and the safety of its citizens,” the report said. And at a recent panel discussion in Washington, the outgoing deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army openly talked about the need to launch a preemptive strike against Hizballah targets in Lebanon sometime in the future.

Hizballah’s leadership is playing down the prospect of renewed fighting with Israel. Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Hizballah’s secretary-general, said in a speech last week that “these maneuvers and mock air raids and these Israeli drum beats, threats and browbeats which we hear from time to time do not affect us at all.”

“Today, we are stronger [than last year] in terms of will, determination, faith, morals, finances, brains, measures, presence in the field and preparations for the confrontation. Nothing intimidates us,” he said.

Israel has been looking to restore its threat of deterrence, which was damaged by the inconclusive results of the 2006 war. The mysterious Israeli air strike in September against a suspected nuclear facility in northern Syria is seen as part of a renewed assertiveness. But could Hizballah also be in the Israeli military’s sights?

Last month, this reporter sat on a panel to discuss Hizballah at a conference hosted by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. The other panelist was Major General Moshe Kaplinsky, the outgoing deputy chief of staff of the Israeli army. Before discussing Israel’s role, Kaplinsky offered up a series of recommendations that he believed would help neutralize and ultimately disarm Hizballah. They included strengthening the Lebanese army and expanding the mandate of the 13,300-strong United Nations peacekeeping force, known as UNIFIL, to areas beyond the south Lebanon border strip. UNIFIL, he said, should mount patrols in Hizballah’s new stronghold in mountains north of the Litani river, the limit of UNIFIL’s area of operations. He added that UNIFIL must deploy along the border with Syria to check the flow of weapons smuggled into Lebanon by Hizballah.

However, there is little chance of Kaplinsky’s wishes being fulfilled, analysts say. UNIFIL is under threat from groups inspired by Al-Qaeda — six members of the Spanish battalion were killed in June in a car bomb attack — and the peacekeeping force has no wish to make new enemies by deploying along the border with Syria and inside Hizballah’s military areas.

Given those realities, perhaps it shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise that Kaplinsky also declared that Israel should preemptively attack Hizballah targets in Lebanon, such as new positions and arms convoys crossing the border from Syria. “I approve preemptive strikes against Hizballah. We have to find the exact time. This is one of the lessons I learned from before,” he said.

Kaplinsky has many years’ experience fighting Israel’s enemies in Lebanon, from 1982 when the Israeli army invaded to drive out the Palestine Liberation Organization then dominating south Lebanon. In the early 1990s he commanded the elite Golani Brigade at a time when Hizballah was evolving into a formidable guerrilla fighting force dedicated to ousting the Israeli army from its occupation zone in south Lebanon. Hizballah’s resistance campaign led to an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000. Hizballah units moved in to the vacuum and five months later kidnapped three Israeli soldiers from the Shebaa Farms, an Israeli-occupied mountainside running along Lebanon’s southeast border over which Lebanon claims sovereignty. Kaplinsky and other senior Israeli officers urged then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to order a swift and punishing response to deter future attacks. Barak, however, refrained from a heavy retaliation, apparently worried about being sucked back into the Lebanese quagmire just five months after leaving it.

That restraint encouraged Hizballah over the next six years to build up an impressive military infrastructure of secret bunkers and rocket firing positions in the hills and valleys of south Lebanon, which was put to good use in last year’s war.

Kaplinsky and other Israeli commanders say they cannot afford to repeat the same mistake. Although Hizballah appears to have rearmed substantially, Kaplinsky believed the organization is not yet ready for another round with Israel because of its internal political battles with the U.S.-backed Lebanese government. That suggests Israel has a window of opportunity to attack Hizballah’s military assets at little cost.

Whether Israel launches preemptive raids or not, analysts agree that a second round between Israel and Hizballah is inevitable. And Kaplinsky was confident that Israel would prevail against Hizballah in that event. “I believe that the next round will take us less time, [we will] send [into Lebanon] more quickly our ground forces. We will have to take control of the area for some weeks, some months… to [disarm] Hizballah,” he said. Hardly encouraging words for the war-weary residents of south Lebanon.

The original version of this story misstated the month in which an Israeli air strike against a suspected nuclear facility in Syria occurred. It occurred in September.