Coteret

Below is a translation of the communiqué published by Netanyahu in response to the British warrant for former Foreign Minister Livni’s arrest.

Note what it does not assert: That “IDF commanders and soldiers” operated lawfully during the Gaza war. The statement does assert that the initiation of proceedings is tantamount to condemnation, i.e. Israelis cannot get a fair trial outside the country.

The omission and assertion together comprise a radical statement — Israel has removed itself from the international law system. This might seem trivial because it reflects the de facto situation. It does appear, however, to diverge significantly from much of Israeli messaging to date, which argues that the IDF generally acted legally and that internal investigations have addressed incidents where this is in doubt.

Statement from PM Netanyahu’s bureau

Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser, December 15 2009

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views with utmost gravity the attempt to issue an arrest warrant in Great Britain against Opposition Leader MK Tzipi Livni.

The Prime Minister said this morning (Tuesday), 15.12.09: “We will not agree to a situation in which Ehud Olmert, Ehud Barak and Tzipi Livni will be summoned to the defendant’s bench.  We will not agree that IDF commanders and soldiers, who – heroically and in a moral fashion – defended our citizens against a brutal and criminal enemy, will be condemned as war criminals.  We reject this absurdity outright.” Read more…

Ofer Shelah, Maariv’s defense analyst, has become a regular feature on Coteret. On November 17 2009 he told the IDF top brass they should have taken into consideration the consequences of allowing fanatical Rabbis into the combat units during the Gaza war and on November 17 2009 he was very blunt in his analysis of the IDF’s culture of lies.

This morning (December 13 2009,) he takes on the defense establishment’s pathetic attempt to bring into line Rabbi’s of affiliated yeshivas who order soldiers to refuse to move against settlements. Shelah all but says outright that these Rabbis own the IDF. Senior officers are afraid of them because of the power they hold over their future political careers. More importantly, their disciples have become so integral to the IDF’s combat forces, that taking them on might spark major disintegration. Here’s a key excerpt (full text after the jump)

In Gush Katif soldiers were spat at, but for the senior staff it was far more important to say that not only was this in fact rain, but welcome rain.

It’s fairly clear why, and its not merely that in each Israeli general’s backpack can be found the scepter of the future politician. The army’s combat units, and particularly the infantry brigades, are full of religious soldiers and officers, in numbers that far outnumber their part in the general population. Some of the hesder yeshivas today are what the kibbutzim and the military boarding schools were in the past. The military knows well that indeed only a minority among the rabbis speak in the fashion of Levanon and Melamed (an internal document following disengagement mentioned the names of two other yeshivas), but harming them could cause others to align with them, and could thus jeopardize the entire soil in which young officers are cultivated, and so it prefers to ingratiate itself to them, with the enthusiastic encouragement of the political echelon.

Who’s afraid of the Hesder Yeshivas?

Ofer Shelah, Maariv, December 13 2009

The history of the security establishment and the hesder yeshivas over the past decades is one of hypocrisy, deception, and tossing of a hot potato from one hand to another. It’s no wonder that Defense Minister Barak sent his deputy, Matan Vilnai, to a meeting with Rabbi Eliezer Melamed of Har Bracha: Barak knows when to avoid a meeting out of which no good will come. Vilnai is the last innocent who is still willing to hold the potato in his hand, while all the others just roll their eyes. Read more…

UPDATED AT BOTTOM

Last Tuesday (December 1 2009) an investigative report in Haaretz  revealed that Machanaim a US 501c3 tax exempt charity is funding the Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land (aka SOS Israel)

the organization that offered every soldier refusing to evacuate a settlement, and the Kfir Brigade soldiers who publicly demonstrated their opposition to evacuation, NIS 1,000 for every day they spend in military prison

Bounty award ceremony

The report criticized the Government for not taking action against a registered association inciting mutiny, noting also that it might be a good idea to ask the US to cease providing tax-exemptions for the funder.

Perhaps in an attempt to improve its image in the eyes of the Israeli public, SOS Israel has expanded its range of monetary awards to IDF soldiers. Arutz Sheva, a settler news service, reports that

A soldier holding the rank of Corporal, was awarded 1,800 shekels ($475) by the SOS Save the Land of Israel group Sunday for shooting a terrorist who tried to kill two Jews at a gas station 10 days ago.

This was too much even for the IDF leadership, which usually avoids any kind of confrontation with the fundamentalist establishment: Channel Ten TV News reported Monday night that legal action could be expected against SOS Israel.

Still no word on the tax-exempt funding from the US, however.

###

Further info on the “gas station incident”: (1) Haaretz news report; (2) Video of the Palestinian attacker being run-over by a settler after he had been shot and disabled.

UPDATE: December 9 2009 — Israeli attorney general orders investigation of SOS Israel. Better late than never. Will that be enough for the IRS to rescind tax-exempt status for the US charity funding it?

Waste and institutional corruption connected to the bloated defense budget have been on the the Israeli public agenda for some time. However, the defense establishment’s political clout has always helped nip any reform initiative in the bud.

This year (2009), the public debate on the issue has been particularly angry. Defense Minister Barak’s lavish stay in Paris during Aeronautical Salon provoked an already incensed media into a frenzy of muckracking. One result was the exposure, in late November, of the fact that MK Nachman Shai (Kadima) was receiving a full IDF pension, even though he served only three years of regular duty (as IDF spokesperson in the early ’90s.)

Globes columnist Matti Golan, who I have disparaged in the past as grumpy conservative, has proven for the third time in two-weeks (see also here and here) that he is a  hard-nosed independent journalist. Instead of taking the easy path and blasting Shai, he decided to find out who exactly in the IDF made the decision to award the extraordinary pension. Since many Israeli politicians (Barak, for example) held senior IDF positions at the time, this is not a trivial question.

The IDF Spokesperson, unused to questioning of his statements, was caught off guard. Golan’s December 4 2009 column is a blow-by-blow account of how a journalist can sink his teeth into a defense bureaucrat’s calf and hold on like a bulldog. Here’s a choice passage (full text after the jump.)

The spokesman’s office asked what I mean. They are right. They are used to telling journalists “competent authorities” and the journalists repeat it like parrots without unnecessary questions. After I clarified my intention, I received another phone call with an answer contingent on being “off the record.” I asked what I was supposed to do with that answer? They said: write it in the name of “military sources.” I said: “I don’t want to. I sent you a written question, the simplest factual question possible. I demand a written answer.” Apparently they are not used to such obvious demands from journalists either.

Why don’t other journalists display the same kind of tenacity on other pressing issues where the IDF effectively operates free of any civilian oversight, such as Palestinian civilian deaths? To be fair, in Shai’s case, the spokesperson could not credibly hide behind security-related secrecy. But I don’t think that is the entire story. There’s also sheer fatigue and an unhealthy, incestuous relationship. The Israeli journalists who should be doing most of the questioning are defense correspondents. In the Israeli media culture, they are dependent on a constant drip feed of leaks from the IDF, with the Spokesperson does much of the leaking. Hardly a day goes without some leaked security item topping the news agenda. Even a few days beyond the IDF Spokesperson’s pale, as “punishment” for being over inquisitive, could end a career.

International journalists are not trapped in this relationship. They should do better. Read more…

Ofer Shelah, Maariv’s defense analyst, already known for saying what he thinks, has been publishing some remarkable commentary lately. Last week, he was very blunt about the recent signs of sedition among fundamentalist settler-soldiers in the West Bank: The IDF top brass should have taken into consideration the consequences of allowing fanatical Rabbis into the combat units during the Gaza war.

His op-ed today is also remarkable. Bottom line: In the IDF you don’t have to lie because you can do pretty much whatever you want, but if you do lie there won’t be any consequences. Here are the key excerpts, but it’s worth reading the entire article (after the jump.) Note the reference to the Goldstone report.

Would the IDF chief of staff lie?…It is unlikely that anyone here would feel the need to lie, and it is more unlikely that he would have to pay any price for being caught in a lie. The Israeli public accepted the results of Kafr Kana, the Shehade assassination and Operation Cast Lead with a shrug of the shoulders. The other side is always more vicious, it shoots at civilians deliberately, it hides inside a civilian population. We’ve long since stopped judging ourselves by a moral yardstick, and consider this a demand of a hypocritical and hostile world. Had he lied, nobody would have been outraged. Just as no one was outraged by the speed with which the IDF closed the investigations into wrongful acts in Operation Cast Lead—and today Israel is wracking its brain over the serious ramifications of the Goldstone report. In society’s whining self-perception as victims, a lie by the army is considered justified self defense against the criticism of an anti-Semitic world. [In the IDF] you won’t have to lie, and if you do lie, nobody will demand that you go.

Can you imagine the professional future of a mainstream US journalist if he expressed similar sentiments about Israel? We still have at least one thing to be proud of in this country — freedom of expression for Israeli citizens and a vibrant public debate. Not for long though, if the Israeli neoconservatives have their way.

Read more…

Not.

But that’s what Haaretz seems to think. A front-page investigative report in this morning’s edition (December 1 2009) finds that Machanaim a US 501c3 tax exempt charity is funding the Task Force to Save the Nation and the Land (aka SOS Israel)

the organization that offered every soldier refusing to evacuate a settlement, and the Kfir Brigade soldiers who publicly demonstrated their opposition to evacuation, NIS 1,000 for every day they spend in military prison

After asking Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, why he has not asked the US government to desist from indirectly funding sedition in the IDF and questioning why an NGO engaged in blatantly illegal activity enjoys a “clean bill of health” from the Registrar of Associations, the article ends with

The Knesset will hold a discussion on the subject of transparency of contributions that non-profit organizations receive from abroad. The event, which will be hosted by Improvement of Government Services Minister Michael Eitan, is being organized by the NGO Monitor organization, which is based in Jerusalem.

Stunning. Gerald Steinberg is not the partisan hack I claimed he was. The Knesset conference will demand transparency for all NGOs. Perhaps we can also expect that the agenda will also include a discussion of the sovereignty-threatening instance of right-wing NGO “lawfare” reported in this morning’s Jerusalem Post, the Legal Forum for the Land of Israel’s High Court of Justice petition against the settlement “freeze.”

A quick look at the Hebrew version of the report, however, reveals that hell has yet to freeze over. It questions NGO Monitor on what action it has taken on Machanaim/SOS Israel and gets a vague response.

Disappointing but revealing: The night editor at the English edition, forced to abridge the report, actually assumed that the conference would deal with this issue. After all, its organizer is a group calling itself  an “NGO monitor.”

RELATED POSTS: Exposing Gerald Steinberg and NGO Monitor | Israel Harel, Zionist Strategist (on NGO Monitor’s fundamentalist allies) |Globes on the hypocrisy of right-wing “democrats” |

On its front-page, this morning’s (November 17 2009) Maariv runs an analysis piece by Ofer Shelah, a defense commentator at paper and a well known Israeli television personality.  Disturbed by the current settler-soldier rebellion in the West Bank, Shelah tells his readers that it is a product of “long-running processes,” through which the settler movement has infiltrated and co-opted the IDF. Shelah points out that the “army’s officers have learned that it is worth their while to get along with the…settlers” and asserts that the fundamentalist preaching that accompanied combat units during the Gaza war is now boomeranging.

The army is now eating the rotten fruits of long-running processes—for some of which it is to blame and for some of which it isn’t. With the army’s blessing, wholesale and premeditated law-breaking was carried and continues to be carried out with the establishment of outposts; the army’s officers have learned that it is worth their while to get along with the Judea and Samaria settlers, and its soldiers are put in impossible situations every day facing people, some of whom deny the legitimacy of the regime they represent.

[...]

Anyone who goes back and reads about the military rabbis, and the non-military rabbis, who walked around and met with the troops just before Operation Cast Lead and who talked about a holy war and who handed out booklets in which the enemy was described as Amalek [the Hebrews’ biblical nemesis whom they were divinely enjoined to destroy], those who thought that this well of motivation would be relegated only to the war against Hamas, will be given a stinging slap to the face.

Sheleh’s commentary (full text below) comes on the same morning that a recently retired IDF  general warns that the IDF “must not turn into the Phalangists” and a senior military analyst at Yediot asserts that Israeli inaction against settler lawbreaking “is providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the [Israeli Palestinian diplomatic] negotiations.”

This is only the beginning

Analysis, Ofer Shelah, Maariv, November 17 2009 [front-page]

The parents of the soldiers from the Nahshon battalion who held up protest signs against evacuating settlers and who were sentenced yesterday to time in the stockade, insist that their sons had not coordinated the act in advance but, rather, had acted spontaneously in response to the evacuation of the houses in Negohot. That could be, but it no longer makes much difference: after all, they were emulating exactly what the soldiers of another battalion in the same brigade did not long ago. And from the moment the pattern was set—holding up signs, making sure that there is someone around to photograph the event and send it to the media—the IDF has to realize that this is a phenomenon that is not about to go away.

It wasn’t born in a vacuum, of course. The army is now eating the rotten fruits of long-running processes—for some of which it is to blame and for some of which it isn’t. With the army’s blessing, wholesale and premeditated law-breaking was carried and continues to be carried out with the establishment of outposts; the army’s officers have learned that it is worth their while to get along with the Judea and Samaria settlers, and its soldiers are put in impossible situations every day facing people, some of whom deny the legitimacy of the regime they represent. On the other hand, the army was also used by a cynical regime and by the top commanding ranks, which enthusiastically took part in disengagement, in which Ariel Sharon used the army’s prestige as armor. In any case, the army can no longer claim its hands are clean and be horrified by the fact that some of its soldiers do not shrink from committing  political acts while still in uniform. The officers did this before them.

And those whose children don’t serve in infantry brigades that serve in the territories, particularly Kfir, whose soldiers spend nearly their entire service there, have no right to complain about those who do choose to do combat service and to become officers, who feel they have the right to express their views, especially since they are paying a price for them.

The message that the Kfir soldiers are sending is that this is only the beginning. A government that continues to hide its head in the sand, that continues to think that it is doing its job by one-time acts and plays a double and triple game with all the political sides, will get an army in which the political act, either by a lone soldier and then maybe of an entire unit, become more and more legitimate. A command level that continues to say “the army does not choose its assignments,” and does not set a clear red line between what the IDF does and what it does not do, will get units that will be torn apart from within. The chief of staff should remember very well the last time this happened, albeit on a small scale—in the ranks of the reserve corps in the years after the first Lebanon War.

Those who hope that the national-religious public will continue to produce an enormous number of officers and combatants and that this will not have an effect on the units’ functioning, should open their eyes. Anyone who goes back and reads about the military rabbis, and the non-military rabbis, who walked around and met with the troops just before Operation Cast Lead and who talked about a holy war and who handed out booklets in which the enemy was described as Amalek [the Hebrews’ biblical nemesis whom they were divinely enjoined to destroy], those who thought that this well of motivation would be relegated only to the war against Hamas, will be given a stinging slap to the face.

The Kfir soldiers must be punished, and not excessively severely, because that is military practice and law. But clearly this is not a punishment for them. They become heroes and models for emulation among their community. During disengagement, the commanders avoided dealing with the problem by keeping certain soldiers away, sometimes even certain units, from the inner circle of eviction. What was written on the signs held up yesterday, in the space between the lines, is very clear: don’t think that you can manage with this cosmetic act in the future too.

Major General (ret.) Elazar Stern, who served as head of the IDF’s Human Resources Branch, Chief Education Officer and the commander of the Officer’s Academy, is a product of the mainstream Religious-Zionist movement. In an op-ed placed alongside news reporting on the latest chapter of the settler-soldier rebellion in the West Bank, he makes an impassioned call to settler-soldiers to cease and desist from sedition. He minces no words in directly attacking the settler and religious leadership for its silence and in some cases support for the phenomenon.

This public will not lend a hand to turning the IDF into an army of Phalangists in which each soldier obeys only his local leader. They won’t permit a fulminating handful of people to drag them and us to that abyss.

The more important reason for why we need to respond to this provocation is that, regrettably, it enjoys a support system. Regrettably, someone who is already past the age of 18 perceives this action to be a form of Zionism, Judaism and a way of protecting the integrity of the Land of Israel.

[...]

But more disturbing for me is the resounding silence of a preponderance of the religious public’s leaders. Perhaps they are not aware of the gravity of the implications of these precedent-setting actions, not only for democracy in Israel but, first and foremost, for their own community.

Stern’s op-ed is part of a two-page spread on the issue. Facing it is an analysis piece by Yediot’s senior military analyst, Alex Fishman, who angrily asserts that “with our own [Israeli] two hands, are providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the [Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic] negotiations.”

See below for the full text of Stern’s op-ed.

We must not turn into the Phalangists

Op-ed, Elazar Stern, Yediot, November 17 2009 [page 6]

The author is a major general in reserves and served in the past as the director of the IDF’s Human Resources Branch, chief education officer and the commander of the Officer’s Academy

There are many religious soldiers in the army. The absolute majority of them regard actions as these as an extremist phenomenon that threatens them as well. They are the ones who pay the price for it because they are perceived as potentially insubordinate soldiers. And they have already proven in difficult tests that that is not the case. The absolute majority among them has shown a mature and profound understanding of the army’s duties in a democratic society. Just as they did not disobey orders during disengagement, I am confident that they will not disobey orders in the future as well. This public will not lend a hand to turning the IDF into an army of Phalangists in which each soldier obeys only his local leader. They won’t permit a fulminating handful of people to drag them and us to that abyss.

The more important reason for why we need to respond to this provocation is that, regrettably, it enjoys a support system. Regrettably, someone who is already past the age of 18 perceives this action to be a form of Zionism, Judaism and a way of protecting the integrity of the Land of Israel. He is so confident in the justness of his position that he is not ashamed to give financial rewards to future insubordinate soldiers. Only a disgraceful educational and religious failure could prompt a person bearing the title of rabbi to seduce and to remunerate his flock with money. I hope that the law enforcement authorities have been looking into the question of whether the people who pay soldiers to break the law aren’t breaking it themselves.

But more disturbing for me is the resounding silence of a preponderance of the religious public’s leaders. Perhaps they are not aware of the gravity of the implications of these precedent-setting actions, not only for democracy in Israel but, first and foremost, for their own community.

The very fact that kippa-wearers are responsible for these phenomena has contributed to having the army closed to Judaism. These phenomena prompted, and justly so, army commanders to cancel Sabbath hosting for soldiers by religious families. Those very same commanders are afraid that in the course of those weekends the soldiers will be exposed not only to good old Jewish culture, but also will be urged to disobey orders.

If it becomes evident that the soldiers in question are students of a hesder yeshiva, and if they received the support of their rabbis from that yeshiva, the army’s arrangement with those yeshivas needs to be stopped. If their rabbis do not support the action that was taken by the soldiers, it is incumbent upon them to say so out loud and clearly, and to remove those soldiers from the hesder yeshiva program of their own volition, before the IDF does so. If they fail to take that course of action, that too will serve as a clear statement. Clear and dangerous.

This morning’s (November 17, 2009) Israeli media runs a flurry of criticism of the settlers, settlements and government inaction against them.

Yediot’s senior military analyst, Alex Fishman, who is also chairman of the Israeli Military Correspondents Chamber and hardly a bleeding heart, is appalled. In an analysis piece placed alongside news reporting on the latest chapter of the settler-soldier rebellion in West Bank, he rails

What is the greatest chutzpah? To establish, in an illegal settlement, an illegal factory that produces temporary structures for more illegal settlements. And to do so openly, in the light of day, under the nose of the government and with the knowledge of the law enforcement agencies. In fact, this is not just chutzpah. This is anarchy.

[...]

we, with our own two hands, are providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the [Israeli-Palestinian diplomatic] negotiations.

Full text of the article is below, note that also contains a wealth of previously unreported details on the issue.

Stop the anarchy

Analysis, Alex Fishman, Yediot, November 17 2009 [page 7]

What is the greatest chutzpah? To establish, in an illegal settlement, an illegal factory that produces temporary structures for more illegal settlements. And to do so openly, in the light of day, under the nose of the government and with the knowledge of the law enforcement agencies. In fact, this is not just chutzpah. This is anarchy.

Such an illegal factory for trailers exists, for example, in Havat Gilad in the southern Hebron hills. There are two other such anonymous factories in the West Bank, and this is no coincidence. It is much safer and convenient there. The law enforcement agencies are liable to stop trailers that are manufactured inside the Green Line at the crossings, or at least monitor their passage into the West Bank. To drive trailers from inside the Green Line to the West Bank, you need permits, whereas in the West Bank, you don’t need any permission from anyone.

Moreover, the trailers produced have amazing qualities: they are capable of merging into the scenery, and then suddenly popping up, like mushrooms after rain, on these or those hills. In the settlements of Kochav Yaakov and Eli, for example, 12 trailers suddenly popped up to house new immigrants from France. Straight from the plane to the trailer. And how do they get water and electricity? The head of the local authority, who receives a salary from the Interior Ministry, approves it, the regional engineer signs, and everything is legal.

This is what the settlers call “natural growth,” and they expect, that using this argument, the State of Israel will face the Americans with clean hands. The prime minister and defense minister persuaded envoy Mitchell that there is childbirth in the territories, and indeed there is “childbirth.” Including new immigrants from France. Everyone seems to think that the Americans are idiots and that they can be sold a bill of goods forever. Then they’re insulted that Obama makes faces at Netanyahu and doesn’t believe him.

It doesn’t need to be mentioned that the prime minister and the ministers know very well about these tricks, but they prefer to close their eyes. There is no law, no judge, and nobody enforces any law in the territories. So is it any wonder that this anarchy has trickled down into the army as well? Why not, what will they do to them? Nobody should be surprised if the displays of protest in the army against the evacuation of buildings and settlements only continue and gain momentum. After all, these soldiers receive a few days in the stockade—as if they’d committed a traffic violation—and become, automatically, heroes.

Today the protest is by means of signs, tomorrow the protest will be expressed in acts, in disobeying orders, in sedition. The army is paying a price for the fact that there is no law in the territories, that everyone does as they see fit. The chief of staff will have no choice but to come to the defense of the army that is beginning to slide down the steep slope of politicization and put an end to this, even in a brutal fashion. Because there is already a smell of political mutiny in the air.

And what was the soldier’s protest about yesterday? About two illegal buildings that were demolished in the settlement of Negohot. An observer from the side might have thought for a moment that the State of Israel had decided to stop illegal construction in order to create an appropriate atmosphere to make a renewal of the negotiations with the Palestinians possible. But the building demolition in Negohot is a joke. In the last few months there has been a momentum of construction taking place in the territories, of hundreds of buildings in dozens of settlements. Ever since the American demand was raised to completely freeze construction in the settlements, and ever since Netanyahu’s Bar Ilan speech about two states for two peoples, there has been a race taking place on the ground: to squeeze in as much as possible. Along with the illegal construction taking place, old construction permits suddenly show up that have not been implemented for many years. Every concrete base ever poured and then frozen has come back to life and sprouted walls.

The prime minister and defense minister managed to reach a compromise with the Americans making it possible to complete the construction of about 3,000 units already in various stages of construction, all in order to buy industrial quiet with the settlers and appease them and their supporters in the government. 3,000? They’re laughing. Nobody, including in the government, has any idea how many legal and illegal construction starts there are on the ground today.

It’s not that the Palestinians are saints and constantly seeking ways to return to the negotiations. But we, with our own two hands, are providing the rope that will be used as a noose for the negotiations.

A responsible government can stop this anarchy. Even if there are no negotiations with the Palestinians, it must instruct the OC Central Command to issue a military order to freeze all construction in the territories—with or without a permit—until further notice. Every construction will be discussed separately. With no winking. When the army realizes that the political echelon is serious, that will help it instate order in its ranks.

The crossing where the incident occurred was ceremonially opened on November 10 with much fanfare and hailed as an example of ‘economic peace.’

US Diplomats who refused to identify themselves detained for hours at roadblock

Ahikam Moshe David, Maariv, November 15 2009 [page 3]

Tensions between the US and Israeli administrations appear now to have filtered down to the lower-level officials. Passengers in a convoy of cars from the American Consulate in Jerusalem that pulled up to the Gilboa (Jalame) border crossing between the Palestinian Authority and Israel refused to identify themselves. As a result, their entry into Israel was delayed by approximately four hours.

The embarrassing incident began on Friday afternoon when five cars with diplomatic license plates arrived at the new border crossing in the northern West Bank—a border crossing that was officially opened just last week to motor vehicle traffic with American funding to boot. When the passengers were asked to identify themselves by the Israeli personnel, the Americans refused even to roll down their tinted windows and to present their diplomatic passports, which would have exempted them from any further inspection. Given the situation at hand, the Israeli security personnel refused to permit the convoy to pass.

At a certain stage Defense Ministry and police officers were called in to the border crossing, but despite their repeated requests, the Americans refused to roll down their windows and claimed that that was the arrangement with them. “What can I do?” a dismayed Israeli police woman asked her superior officer, “the driver doesn’t want to give his ID.”

The Israeli security personnel, who appeared to be unnerved by the Americans’ arrogant behavior, tried to explain that they were afraid that the drivers were not diplomats but, rather, East Jerusalem Palestinian residents. Those efforts were made in vain. Ultimately, the incident ended only a number of hours later, when two security officials from the American Embassy in Tel Aviv arrived and persuaded the people in the convoy to present their passports as required.

“There are always provocations at the roadblocks with people from the consulate in Jerusalem,” said yesterday a security official who was involved in the incident. “Their cars are driven by drivers from East Jerusalem who insist not to be inspected, despite the fact that they don’t have diplomatic immunity. We need to make sure that the people in question are diplomats, but that can’t be done through opaque black windows.”

The incident resulted in the closure of the border crossing for the entire day, which made many Israeli Arabs who wanted to use the crossing to visit their Palestinian relatives turn back. “They finally opened the border crossing,” said a young man from Turan in the Galilee, “and we thought we’d be able to go easily to Jenin. Are they shutting us in all over again?”

A spokesman for the Defense Ministry said: “We operate in keeping with the procedures that were set by the Foreign Ministry and in keeping with the accepted rules in the world with respect to the bearers of diplomatic passports.”

An American diplomat said last night: “There was a misunderstanding that was resolved in the end.”