I OPINION
CONTENTS
24
CLOSE-UP
Illusion
Upon Illusion
DAVID HOLZEL
Nothing is quite
what it seems
in the
Palestinian
uprising.
28
MIDEAST
Hitting Bottom
HELEN DAVIS
Yassir Arafat's roller-coaster
career is on a downswing.
34
ISRAEL
Troubled Teens
LEORA FRUCHT
An Israeli hospital shelters youths
before they take drastic action.
38
SPORTS
A United Jewish Appeal mission visits Jerusalem: Israel cannot be understood from Farmington Hills.
Saber Rattling
Reality Of Israel Can Only
Be Understood By Being There
MIKE ROSENBAUM
Yuri Rabinovich
is developing
some of the
best young
U.S. fencers.
DAVID HOLZEL
F
rom where the tour group stood,
Jerusalem was only 15 miles to the
south, but it could have been a world
away. It was lost behind a maze of
mountains.
It was just after 9 a.m., but already the
desert sun was beating down unmerciful-
ly on the tour group. The rays of light were
razor sharp.
On a plateau in the mountains of
Samaria, the northern part of the West
Bank, the tour guide unfolded a map of
Israel and the territories and bade his
listeners to look about them, to see the
reality at which the map could only hint.
Two parallel roads run north and south
through Samaria. One road was to the west
of where the group stood. It travels the high
mountains of Samaria where the bulk of
the area's Palestinians live in Ramallah,
Jenin and Nablus.
The second road passed by the spot
where the tour group stood. It travels along
the spine of a secondary mountain ridge,
uninhabited because it lies at the edge of
the desert where rain will not fall.
lb the east rise the mountains of Moab
in Jordan, shrouded in their mystic haze.
At the foot of the mountains snakes the
Jordan River, and the succession of hills
which builds into a steep incline, leading
David Holzel is a Jewish News staff writer.
nearly unapproachably to the ridge where
the tourists stood.
Three discreet areas of land, so isolated
from one another, yet occupying an area on-
ly 15 miles wide. Three geographical
worlds, but spanning the distance covered
by the Lodge Freeway between downtown
Detroit and Southfield.
It was standing on this mountaintop
that the problems and possibilities of
trading land for peace were revealed to
me. The West Bank is not one unit, but
many. Isolation and approachability in the
territories are determined by the moun-
tains, by the grade of the slope, by whether
the land is capable of sustaining vegeta-
tion. There is not one high ground in the
West Bank; there are several.
And so this Midwesterner con-
templated the topographical and strategic
realities of the Mideast, trying to figure out
how to bring the message to the folks back
home.
But how do you communicate these
things in a place where boundries are
marked by mile roads, not mountains?
What language do you use in a place where
15 miles is just a horizontal dash from
downtown to the suburbs — not a perilous,
mostly vertical ascent?
This is just one example of why
hasbarah (information) on Israel's behalf
will never completely succeed. To the
average Detroiter, even one sympathetic to
Israel, Middle East realities are unreal.
Continued on Page 12
46
MEDIA MONITOR
Hussein Games
ARTHUR J. MAGIDA
Israelis are giving up on
negotiating with Jordan's king.
50
OUTLOOK
A New Song
ELIZABETH KAPLAN
Detroit's newest temple is gaining
membership and making big plans.
53
ENTERTAINMENT
It's A Wrap
JAY ROSS
Problems threaten the survival
of Israel's vigorous film industry.
DEPARTMENTS
78 Engagements
84 Births
32 Synagogues
72 Ann Arbor
76 For Women
114 Obituaries
CANDLELIGHTING
July 22, 1988
8:43 p.m.
THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 7