Hamas did not possess the military arsenalmany had suggested; neither Iran nor any other regional player was capable of displacing Egypt as the central mediator (between Israel and Hamas, as well as among Palestinians); and, to a degree, Iranian support hurt the Islamist movement as much as it helped, by allowing detractors to paint it as alien to the Sunni Arab body politic.
During the reporting period the Israeli authorities implemented a number of measures, which have eased the flow of Palestinian traffic on some of the access routes into four main cities: Nablus, Hebron, Tulkarm, and Ramallah. These measures included the removal of permit requirements for vehicles entering Nablus city; the opening of two junctions allowing more direct access to Hebron city; the removal of one checkpoint on the southern route into Tulkarm city; and the opening of a "fabric of life" alternative road easing access to Ramallah city from the west.
Hasan Nasrallah devoted his usual Friday televised address to responding head-on to the Egyptian government's dramatic announcement two days earlier of a Hizballah network operating in Egypt to spread Shi'i ideas and prepare hostile operations threatening public security. While forcefully denying the charges asmade, the speech is important for its confirmation, with detail, of Hizballah's involvement in transporting weapons and ammunition across the border into Gaza the month before Operation Cast Lead. Nasrallah's summary of his party's policies with regard to the Arab countries is also noteworthy. (See section "The Regional Cold War" in Doc. A2 above for International Crisis Group's analysis of the Egyptian-Hizballah exchange.) The speech, carried by Hizballah's al-Manar television, was translated in full by BBC Monitoring Middle East and made available by BBC World Monitoring on 12 April 2009.
Political Geography:
Washington, Paris, London, Palestine, and Jerusalem
Khalid Mishal!s interview with the New York Times was his first to a U.S. news organization in more than a year. The excerpts published by the Times on 5 May were taken from a five-hour interview conducted in Arabic over two days at his house in Damascus. Although the excerpts do not cover much ground that was not covered in Mishal's long interview with JPS in March 2008 (see the two-part Mishal interview in JPS 147-48), they are interesting in that they are clearly directed at the new Obama administration. The full excerpts of the Times interview can be found online at www.nytimes.com.
Less than a month after Operation Cast Lead (OCL) ended, an Israeli peace activist who had occasionally served as an unofficial emissary between Israel and Hamas revealed that ten days before the operation's launch the Olmert government had rejected Hamas's back-channel offer to negotiate the renewal of the interrupted cease-fire, as well as a prisoner exchange involving captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Gershon Baskin, co-founder and director of the Jerusalem-based Israel/ Palestine Center for Research and Information, wrote a detailed account of the episode in the Jerusalem Post, concluding that it gave the lie to the government's claim that OCL was a "war of no choice." The full text of this article can be found online at www.jpost.com.
Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the rightwing Yisrael Beitainu ("Israel Is Our Home") party, was appointed foreign minister in March 2009 in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud government coalition, which formed nearly six weeks after the Knesset elections of 10 February 2009. Lieberman, who ran under the slogan "no loyalty, no citizenship"- demanding that Arab citizens of Israel pledge allegiance to the Jewish state or be expelled and calling for the "annihilation" of Hamas-won an unprecedented fifteen seats, beating out Labor to become Israel's third-largest party in the Knesset. Lieberman, a settler and immigrant from the former Soviet Union, caused a stir with his first speech as foreign minister, in which he declared the road map to be the sole document binding Israel to its pledges post-Oslo. The full text of the speech can be found online at www.mfa.gov.il.
The Israel Project (TIP), a pro-Israel media consulting firm "devoted to educating the press and the public about Israel while promoting security, freedom, and peace," commissioned Republican pollster and political language expert Frank Luntz to craft a language strategy for "visionary leaders who are on the front lines of fighting the media war for Israel" to talk to Americans with the aim of "winning the hearts and minds of the public." Luntz's first Global Language Dictionary for TIP was published in 2003; the 2009 Global Language Dictionary is the result of revisions based on research conducted in 2008.
The following are excerpts from a speech by Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, the U.S. security coordinator (USSC) to the Palestinian Authority (PA), whose rare on-therecord address to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) was closely followed by observers of the Palestine- Israel conflict. Dayton has served as USSC since 2005 and recently accepted another two-year term.
This section is part 102 of a chronology begun in JPS 13, no. 3 (Spring 1984). Chronology dates reflect Eastern Standard Time (EST). For a more comprehensive overview of events related to the al-Aqsa intifada and of regional and international developments related to the peace process, see the Quarterly Update on Conflict and Diplomacy in this issue.
This section lists articles and reviews of books relevant to Palestine and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Entries are classified under the following headings: Reference and General; History (through 1948) and Geography; Palestinian Politics and Society; Jerusalem; Israeli Politics, Society, and Zionism; Arab and Middle Eastern Politics; International Relations; Law; Military; Economy, Society, and Education; Literature, Arts, and Culture; Book Reviews; and Reports Received.
Political Geography:
Middle East, Israel, Palestine, Arabia, and Jerusalem