Sunday, September 19, 2010 1:55 PM EDT
Hamas member’s killing flies under Israeli public’s radar
TULKARM, West Bank - Israeli forces burst into the home of a senior member of Hamas early Friday morning and killed him with three bullets to the chest, though few Israelis know anything about it.
It appears to have been a “targeted killing,” the first of a Hamas member in the West Bank for more than two years. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad – no friend of Hamas – called it a “dangerous escalation” in tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.
The killing took place just a day after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton left the area following two days of peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.
And it came just hours before Israelis celebrated Yom Kippur, the holiest of Jewish holidays. As a result, there was almost no news of the killing in Israeli media – no newspapers are published Saturday, and almost all Israeli broadcasting goes off the air at midday on Friday.
Hundreds of Palestinians did turn out as the body of Iyad Shilbayeh, 38, was borne through the streets of the Nur Shams refugee camp on the outskirts of this Palestinian town, 10 kilometres east of the Israeli seaside city of Netanya.
The fact that the camp is under the heavy thumb of Palestinian Authority security forces didn’t prevent the people from shouting out slogans supporting their “martyr” and praising the armed struggle against Israel.
“Proceed, Hamas, proceed,” they shouted. “You are the canon and we are the shells.”
PA security forces have rounded up hundreds of suspected Hamas members following the drive-by killing last month of four Israeli settlers outside the southern West Bank City of Hebron, and the wounding of two other settlers in another attack in the north of the West Bank.
Mr. Shilbayeh had been among those detained and interrogated and was released only a week before his killing.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said that Mr. Shilbayeh was a Hamas military commander and that troops had entered his home at 3 am intending only to arrest him. They shot him, she said, when he moved in their direction after they had told him to halt.
A large pool of blood could be seen on the rug at the foot of Mr. and Mrs. Shilbayeh’s double bed, and the bedroom showed little signs of a struggle or any evidence of other bullets having been fired.
Hamas officials in Gaza said Mr. Shilbayeh’s killing will be avenged, and as people in this camp trudged home following the interment, an Islamist member of the Palestinian Legislative Council could be heard telling someone over his cellphone that the funeral had been highly successful, with several hundred mourners in attendance.
Photo: Latify Abu Shelbayeh holds a portrait of her husband Iyad, a Hamas member, in the bedroom of their home during his funeral in the Nur Shams refugee camp near the West Bank town of Tulkarm on Sept. 17, 2010. (Heidi Levine/Sipa Press)
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Thursday, July 29, 2010 5:55 AM EDT
A ‘prison camp’ with a mall
There’s no getting around it: Life in Gaza appears better than it has for years. The major centres, especially Gaza City, are being kept clean, the stores have an abundance of products (and this is before the benefit of Israel’s policy of allowing more goods into the blockaded territory has had much effect) and the coastline is full of makeshift beach cafés and thousands of swimmers.
Topping it all was the opening this month of Gaza’s first mall.
The “Gaza Mall” sounds like an oxymoron. How could one of the world’s great hardship cases, where flotillas of ships are fighting their way to deliver humanitarian supplies, be home to a shopping mall?
First of all, it isn’t much of a mall. The first two floors of an eight-storey office building have been converted to house eight shops, a grocery store and a fried-chicken fast-food restaurant.
People seem happy enough to come inside from the heat – and a group of women said they liked how clean the place is – but apart from the grocery store, there didn’t seem to be many purchases being made.
Women said that stores elsewhere had better selections of clothes than the two clothing shops in the mall, and while people seemed to relish the grocery store’s western style (large display aisles and shopping carts) those big shelves are filled with a small variety of products. One entire side of an aisle showed only three laundry detergents – hundreds of boxes of the same three things.
Second, Gaza has never been the basket case some people make it out to be. A combination of people’s enterprise in constructing hundreds of tunnels to Egypt, food aid from the United Nations Relief Works Agency and the territory’s own farmers has made sure no one starved.
What the place lacks is a vibrant economy and full employment, two things that would flow from an opening of the borders to Israel and Egypt, freedom to use Gaza’s small seaport, and the right to use the airport that once upon a time had been built here.
That’s why people such as British Prime Minister David Cameron call this place a “prison camp.” Though now, it’s a prison camp with a mall.
Sunday, May 30, 2010 11:56 PM EDT
Gaza’s optimism at flotilla tempered by Israel’s watchful ships
“We are at an historical moment,” said Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya, speaking today at the re-opening of the somewhat renovated shallow-water seaport that harbours a few dozen fishing boats and Gaza’s tiny de-commissioned navy.
No matter how you look at it, he said, the international flotilla of human rights activists trying to make its way to Gaza is an opportunity for this territory of 1.7 million Palestinians to break out of the Israeli blockade that has made this place a kind of open-air prison.
“If the ships reach Gaza, it’s a victory for Gaza,” the Prime Minister shouted to the crowd of about 400 cheering officials and party faithful. “If they are intercepted and terrorized by the Zionists, it will be a victory for Gaza, too, and they will move again in new ships to break the siege of Gaza.”
It was a bold statement by a man trying to put on the best face with the hand he has been dealt.
Mr. Haniya’s Hamas party won the January 2006 legislative elections in the West Bank and Gaza, but few in the West would recognize or deal with his government. Efforts at satisfying critics by forming a unity government with members of the Fatah party of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas failed when fighting broke out between the two parties.
Hamas forces won control of Gaza in the summer of 2007, sending Fatah packing for the West Bank, and Israel has imposed an economic blockade on the small seaside territory since then.
Three years later, with some brave words and a modest little port, Mr. Haniya is trying to will an historical change.
But as the ceremonies and fire-fighting exhibition ended, and the crowd walked up the dirt road leading from the harbour, people who looked out at the glistening Mediterranean could see very clearly the shape of two powerful Israeli naval boats moving across the horizon from left to right. The vessels appeared no more than three kilometers away.
“They’re closer than I’ve ever seen them,” said one disillusioned man, shaking his head.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 2:15 AM EDT
Walid Jumblatt’s Epiphany
Call him a survivor.
Walid Jumblatt, godfather of Lebanon’s 300,000 Druze, has an uncanny knack for allying himself with the right people at the right time.
Last week, it was Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with whom he met in order to reconcile after several years of acrimonious estrangement.
In the spring of 2005, following the car-bomb assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri, Mr. Jumblatt, along with Saad Hariri, Rafik’s son, had been instrumental in creating the “March 14” opposition movement that so mobilized Lebanese and the international community that it effectively forced Syria to withdraw its forces from Lebanon.
Two years ago, Mr. Jumblatt called the Syrian President everything from a “snake” to a “monkey” and called for the Assad regime to be overthrown. For good measure, the Druze leader said it was Mr. al-Assad’s father, Hafez, who was responsible for the assassination of Mr. Jumblatt’s own father, Kamal, in 1977.
Despite all this, there was Mr. Jumblatt last week, looking down at the floor in front of the Syrian leader.
In a way, it was the murder of his father 33 years ago that ultimately drove Mr. Jumblatt back to Damascus.
At 60, the wiry, world-weary Mr. Jumblatt already has outlived his father – something that is not lost on the Druze leader.
The senior Mr. Jumblatt had not always been so pliable.
Both of the Jumblatts had supported the Palestine Liberation Organization in the early 1970s when the group sought refuge in Lebanon, and they continued to support it when the Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975. Kamal Jumblatt also opposed Syria when it intervened in 1977, a fact that probably led to his death.
Following the killing – Kamal Jumblatt’s car was ambushed as it rounded a sharp bend on the road outside his home – Walid Jumblatt moved quickly to support Syria, despite deep suspicions it had been behind the slaying.
In the early 1980s, Mr. Jumblatt supported the Christian Phalangists – and even, for a time, the Israelis when they invaded in 1982. A year later, however, he shifted his ties and waged a bitter ethnic battle against the Christians, driving thousands from many of their villages also in the Chouf Mountains.
For a time, Mr. Jumblatt was allied with the Shia Amal group, but he moved on to support the Sunni leaders who opposed the Shiites.
By the end of the war in 1990, and with the formation of the Rafik Hariri government, Mr. Jumblatt was made Minister of Displaced Persons and, ironically, became responsible for resettling the thousands of Christians he had dispersed.
Now, once again, he’s come full circle, back to the arms of Syria.
In this move, he was helped on the road to Damascus by another of his erstwhile enemies, Hezbollah, whose leader, Hassan Nasrallah, orchestrated the Wednesday meeting and had two of his most senior aides accompany Mr. Jumblatt to Syria.
All this leaping from one alliance to another is not unprincipled, Mr. Jumblatt insisted in an interview last year. “I have to be flexible,” he explained. “My true loyalty is to the interests of my people.”
The Druze, like the Ismailis from whom they are descended, are small in number and have always had to worry about their security. That’s why, in every country, they’ve chosen to live in hard-to-get-at, easily defensible, mountain enclaves. And that’s generally why they have opted to support the local leadership whoever that may be.
In Syria, it’s the Assads.
In Israel, it’s the government of whichever party is in power. In fact, Israel’s Druze, who live mostly in the hills outside Haifa and along the border with Lebanon, are so loyal to Israel that Druze soldiers are considered among the hardest fighting of Israel’s forces.
On the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967, the loyalty of the 20,000 Druze appropriately straddles the frontier between Israel and Syria. They can’t chance the possibility that they’ll return, one day, to the control of Syria, where most Druze continue to live.
The prospect of his own Lebanese Druze community falling again under Syrian influence is also what drove Mr. Jumblatt to Damascus.
With the March 14 movement coming apart – Prime Minister Saad Hariri himself made the trip to Damascus in December and plans to return soon – and with Hezbollah enjoying political strength as well as Syrian patronage, Mr. Jumblatt, true to form, was repositioning himself in the interests of his people.
The Druze leader may be back in Damascus’s good graces, but he won’t enjoy much seniority in that position.
The honour of being Syria’s man in Lebanon goes to Michel Aoun, the former head of Lebanon’s army who once battled Syrian troops in the streets of Beirut, leaving thousands dead.
But as Mr. Jumblatt knows, enemies, like allies, can be fleeting things.
Thursday, April 1, 2010 3:41 PM EDT
The singing barber of Mosul
One daily occupant of the International Hotel is Mohammed, a 41-year-old barber -- a most exceptional individual.
Besides providing a careful cut to any daytime visitors in need of one, Mohammed is an artist.
One of his oil paintings hangs on the wall where clients wait. It's one of the main things you look at in the mirror as he cuts your hair.
It's a large gorgeous painting of a woman reclining on a chaise, painted in a classic European style of another century.
Though obviously something he is enormously proud of, the painting had caused Mohammed a lot of grief.
"I love to paint women," he said, looking fondly at the unveiled woman in the picture, her long hair cast over her shoulder. "But it is haram [meaning forbidden] to paint any human being."
Indeed, strict Islam disdains human portraiture, lest it be viewed in an idolatrous way. Hence the fine arts of calligraphy and patterns one finds, instead, in many Islamic countries.
I was surprised to learn that even in Mosul, the most sophisticated and historically European of all Iraqi cities, such art was frowned upon.
"No one will buy any such painting," Mohammed said. "No one will even show my work."
The man's talents are not limited to hair design and painting. For several years he tried to make a go of things in Lebanon, performing as a singer and guitar player.
"It was hard to find engagements," he said. "When people found I was Iraqi, they were not inclined to hire me."
He returned to Iraq and took up barbering (since there wasn't much demand for entertainers in Mosul).
I was a little suspicious of Mohammed's Lebanese experience, thinking that maybe he wasn't all that good a musician.
Until he had finished cutting my hair, that is.
At that point he offered to perform for me and, clutching an acoustic guitar I hadn't noticed on a stand to the side of the barber chair, he sat down and started to play.
He had a deft touch and played softly; then began to sing. His voice was that of a tenor but it was so pure, anyone would have mistaken it for a woman's. Mohammed has feminine-looking eyes and, hearing this, I looked carefully at him to make sure he wasn’t a woman.
He sang in Arabic, but the song sounded almost Spanish, like a tale of lost love.
I was speechless.
What a voice, what a performer, what an artist.
There's not much call for Mohammed's talents in Mosul these days. He cares for the wife he recently married – the couple are expecting their first child this summer – and pines for a return of the arts and a gentler time.
Saturday, March 13, 2010 11:21 AM EST
Lonely in Mosul
Once again I found myself, this time along with my fixer, Salman, the only guest in an Iraqi hotel.
Unlike the bomb-damaged Flowers Land in Baghdad, however, it was the five-star Ninewah International in this northwestern Iraqi city that I landed in. It’s a 10-storey concrete slab with an enormous atrium around which sit all the rooms.
The hotel is mostly void of overnight guests these days, since the city is now the deadliest in all of Iraq. The presence of several radical Sunni groups and festering tension between Arab and Kurd over the division of territory have led to frequent assassinations and kidnappings, and discouraged most people from coming here.
The hotel, built 25 years ago, wouldn't have been my choice for accommodation, situated on the north bank of the Tigris, albeit in a pretty, forested area, but well away from the centre of this historic, if conflicted, city.
However, we had entered Mosul under the protection of the Governor, whose people had insisted we stay at the heavily secured International.
My 6th-floor room looked right across at a string of five palatial homes on the hillside facing the hotel. Four of the ornate buildings were now part of the nearby university, and the fifth, the biggest, was some kind of convention centre. All of them, the hotel manager explained, had belonged to Saddam Hussein and his family.
Salman, who in an earlier life had been an engineer, had stayed in the hotel in the 1980s, when he was managing a project in the area.
At that time, he said, half of the hotel - the half that looks out at the palaces - was closed. No one could stay there.
He was told it was by order of Saddam.
It wasn't clear if the order was given for reasons of security, to ensure privacy, or simply because the president was too embarrassed at living a few days of the year in such opulence when his subjects were waging a lengthy and costly war with Iran.
Monday, March 8, 2010 3:56 PM EST
Al-Qaeda recording warns of violence against Iraqi voters
As Iraqis brace for what they fear may be a violent day Sunday, election day, a CD is making the rounds in Sunni neighbourhoods that warns what might be expected.
The CD is from Omar al-Baghdadi, head of al-Qaeda in Islamic Iraq, and was released some time in the past couple days.
On it, Mr. al-Baghdadi warns Sunnis not to sell their religion for the price of a ballot.
"Democracy says it is 'the will of the people that controls the government'," said Mr. Baghdadi. "That's a lie, like the lie of the Pharoah who told the Jews they could control the goverment, and he went ahead and killed many of their sons."
Refering to the election as a "play" or theatrical production, the al-Qaeda leader, who has claimed responsibility for several massive bombings in the capital since August, said this election "is not according to Islam," and Muslims must not participate.
He suggests that the Americans are responsible for bringing the Shiites (whom he calls "the Persians") to Iraq; that they do not belong here. And he says that Sunnis who participate in the play are weakening their religion.
Mr. Baghdadi criticizes those Sunni political leaders who have supported Ayad Allawi, the Shia head of a joint Shia-Sunni list. "They say they want to safeguard the Sunnis. But these people are like snakes. If you put your hand in their pocket, you better pull it out quickly."
Thousands of Iraqi troops are deployed throughout the capital and a driving ban goes into effect at 9 pm Saturday. The ban is to make it difficult for any suicide car bombers who would be exposed and fired on quickly, as well as to make it easier for Iraqi forces to move about the city quickly.
Will it be enough?
Al-Qaeda leader Mr. al-Baghdadi said that "after discussions with Sunni religious and political leaders," he has "decided to stop this election ... anyway we can."
"Our enemies know of our abilities" to reach any target, he said. "Just ask the ministries [in Baghdad] we destroyed; ask the hands we cut in Anbar ... and the heads of the security police that we cut off with our own hands."
"What we have prepared for the election is greater than all this."
"I am not a liar," he concluded. "You can depend on me."
Friday, March 5, 2010 6:24 AM EST
An election rally by any other name
Baghdad -- It was supposed to be a day without political rallies, as the government strives to reduce violent incidents leading up to Sunday’s crucial parliamentary election.
But Ammar al-Hakim, descendant of the Prophet and head of the country’s largest Shia religious organization, invited some 10,000 of his “friends” to join him this morning in a makeshift amphitheatre, set up between two ramps leading onto and off a bridge over the Tigres River.
They had been summoned for “a talk” and how could authorities deny a religious leader the chance to converse with his congregation on this, the Muslim sabbath.
But make no mistake, this was a political rally pure and simple; the largest by anyone in the entire election campaign.
The people poured from mini buses and cars outside the cordoned off grounds, went through three checkpoints before taking their seats.
Some 10,000 plastic chairs had been set up, each with a bottle of water, a carton of juice and a small bag of candies to greet the guests.
Every seat was taken and hundreds more people crowded down the sides.
When Sayed Ammar (as he’s known) took the simple podium on the raised dais, the multitudes cheered seemingly without end.
He told the crowd: “We are at the midpoint of a great struggle. We can see the end of the road and this election is a crucial point along the way.”
He said: “Don’t listen to those who say ‘we need a strong man to rule Iraq.’ For 30 years we had a strong man [Saddam Hussein] and what did it get us?”
“We need a strong government to build a strong country,” he shouted in his thin reed-like voice.
“We are with you, Hakim,” the crowd responded at this and several other points of his 40-minute speech.
Sayed Ammar emphasized that Iraq was the most important aspect of this campaign, not religious differences. He called for working together with all religious groups, and stood with the crowd for the playing of the national anthem.
But all along the sides of the amphitheatre were posters emphasizing the historic religious nature and goals of the Hakim movement. The music before the speeches emphasized the evil of the Baathists of Saddam Hussein who had ruled the country and killed so many Hakim followers and driven the leadership and militia into exile in Iran and Europe.
When he had finished speaking the crowd filed out quickly, bent on following his wishes.
Thursday, March 4, 2010 1:01 PM EST
Kurdistan, the other Iraq
Suleimaniah, Iraq -- There's no doubt about it, compared to Baghdad and most places in the centre and South of Iraq, Kurdish towns and cities in the North, such as Suleimaniah, are a pleasure.
Where telecommunications is sketchy at best in Baghdad, the phone and Internet lines in Kurdistan are clear and strong.
The landscape of most Iraqi cities is cluttered with the tools of security -- razor-wire, tall concrete barriers and closed-off areas -- and with the detritus of war -- collapsed buildings, debris on rutted streets and twisted metal. In the north, however, there's a building boom under way and little of the ugliness of conflict.
In this city, capital of the province of Suleimaniah and home of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan run by Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, there's a string of tall office and other buildings going up; even a five-star hotel with the cut of a billowing sail reminiscent of Dubai.
My Iraqi colleague, a resident of Baghdad, was visibly stunned by the skyline as we drove through the pass that opened onto this city. He hadn't been here for six years and had no conception of what was transpiring in the north. His own neighbourhood of Adamiyah is a warren of roadblocks and dusty pothole-filled streets.
Such is the benefit of having the headstart Kurds had in building a new post-Saddam community. From 1991, after the war to oust Iraqi forces from Kuwait, the Kurds benefitted from a U.S.-enforced safe zone.
In those days, they struggled mightily from shortages of everything. Their only income was from a tax they levied on vehicles smuggling oil out of Iraq and goods into Iraq in contravention of the UN embargo.
The trucks passed through Kurdistan on their way from Turkey to Mosul in Iraq, and back again. Kurdish Peshmerga stopped each vehicle and took a share.
They erected a parliament building in 1992 and began functioning like a democratic state, years ahead of when most Iraqis could do so.
Since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Kurds have progressed even faster. There was little of the fighting that gripped the South, except around the cities of Kirkuk and Mosul that straddle the Kurdish-Arab divide (and remained disputed territory, claimed by both sides).
And where once they coped with a meagre income, these days they receive 17 per cent of the revenue Iraq derives from oil. That's enough to fund the fancy new buildings (though much work needs to be done on the basics of life such as education).
There's one thing the Kurdish region has in common with the rest of Iraq: traffic jams in the cities. But whereas the bottlenecks in Baghdad are mostly from numerous security checkpoints, in Suleimaniah they're from laying new roads, and resurfacing old ones.
Saturday, February 27, 2010 9:59 AM EST
Baghdad's an acquired taste
My first visit was in 1986 amidst the Iran-Iraq War. The city's modernity surprised me, the high percentage of women in the workforce impressed me, and the heavy-handedness of Saddam and his Baathists appalled me.
I had to slip away from my obligatory minders to have any hope of meeting real people and seeing anything but the inside of the capital's bureaucracy.
Thanks to the good graces and daring nature of Canada's chargé d'affaires, I met communists in hiding, supporters of the banned religious Dawa party and even spent a day in the holy Shia cities of Najaf and Karbala, places my official minders had told me were off limits.
In those days, the regime allowed in only a handful of Western journalists at a time – so as not to report on how badly the drawn-out war with Iran was going.
Of course, I could get nowhere near the front.
I actually thought I was the only journalist in town that time, which is rather how I felt last evening as I returned to my ghostly hotel.
I had never stayed at the Flower Lands hotel though I had walked past it often enough.
It's one of a cluster of four hotels in a compound dominated by the 10-storey Hamra. Those who didn't want to stay with the pack of journalists that inhabited the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels in the centre of town found the Hamra compound a pleasant, smaller scale alternative.
The place had a concrete perimeter and a lot of private security guards, courtesy of NBC, the only large-scale tenant.
A mixture of contractors and journalists, both short- and long-term, stayed there and I had tried out two of the buildings on different visits over the years, before taking a liking to the four-storey Flower Lands. While here last October, I found they had opened a nice dining room (with a real bar) and its rooms were airy, even if furnished with clunky, 1950s Arabic furniture.
I reserved a room for election time (first expected in January, now set for next week).
In the meantime, however, tragedy struck the compound when a carload of gunmen stormed the guards at their checkpoint and another car rammed it's way through, then exploded in the street between the Hamra and Flower Lands.
The blast killed more than a dozen people, demolished three nearby homes, damaged several floors of the Hamra and tore the front off the Flower Lands.
For the past three weeks the management of the little hotel has been keeping me informed of the progress in getting my room “ready” by which they don't mean cleaning the bathroom and turning down the sheets – they mean rebuilding it.
I arrived Wednesday to open arms and soon saw the reality. The street is still a mess of broken brick and twisted metal. The shell of a burned out car has been pushed to the side.
No work has begun on the three homes that were destroyed, though a young man from one of them was using a baby stroller to carry away shards of glass and other small items he picked up in the middle of the road today.
Ours was the only car that was moving.
“OMG, you're the only Westerner in the entire compound,” a surprised colleague e-mailed me when she heard where I was staying. “You're nuts.”
Everyone, I found, had abandoned all four of the hotels.
Being the only guest didn't alarm me so much – after all, I reasoned, no bombers were likely to trouble me. Why would they bother? And while the kitchen wasn't yet cleaned up, the hotel manager assured me he'd get a restaurant half a kilometre away to bring me whatever I wanted to eat.
As for Internet connection, they brought a length of cable, enough to reach my room.
However, the absence of electricity for half the day, was worrisome. The main generator had been damaged beyond repair, and while they bought a small generator to fill in, they weren't quite sure how to hook it up to my room.
Coming “home” last evening at 7:30, I found the place in complete darkness. I walked through the open door (actually, there is no door) stepped over the workers' tools and made my way toward the back of the lobby.
I felt the wall and turned a corner, where, finally, two young people approached in answer to my call.
They shone the light from their cellphones up the stairs as I walked to the first floor and inched toward my room. I felt for the keyhole and opened the door. Enough light from the street illuminated the main living area room and my bedroom.
It was then that I thought maybe I had made a mistake.
As I write this (from the comfort of the restaurant half a kilometre away, filled with the sweet smell of tobacco and the sounds of campaign ads on the TV), I'm delaying returning to the room.
The guys have the generator hooked up by now, and assure me I'll even be able to watch satellite TV.
We'll see.
As I said, Baghdad's an acquired taste.
