DIFFERING VIEWS
Mired In The Intifada
Birmingham Temple hosts debate
on Israeli-Palestinian crisis.
For ordinary Palestinians, violence has been economic disaster.
E.
HARRY KIRSBAUM
StaffWriter
N
o minds were changed, but the discussion was
lively.
Speaking at the Birmingham Temple in
A small truck is stuck along the Gaza beach Sunday. Israeli Army bulldozers blocked the main
road in the Gaza Strip after two bombs exploded in the area.
by the dirt bypass roads they've carved out
between the Israeli Army posts. But the recent
heavy rains have made these impassable.
"My sister is dying in a Ramallah hospital — her
Jerusalem
lungs
don't work — and I cannot get there to see
hen U.S. Secretary of State Colin
her,"
Taher
says.
Powell urged Israeli Prime Minister-
Israel
says
the measures are necessary to prevent
elect Ariel Sharon in Jerusalem this
Palestinians from launching terror attacks and to
- I week to "lift the siege" on the
Palestinians, Taher knew first-hand what he meant. pressure the Palestinian Authority to start clamp-
ing down on violence. But critics in the United
A resident of a West Bank village who's worked
States and Europe say Israel is only embittering the
in Israeli plant nurseries for 23 years, Taher says he
Palestinian population and pushing the Palestinian
used to sneak past Israeli soldiers to work when
Authority
to the brink of collapse.
the territories were closed off to Palestinians after
Few laborers from Taher's village are testing the
the start of the intifida (uprising).
closure anymore. Last week, six local construction
But he's stopped trying his luck since Feb. 14, the
workers left for work in the morning and didn't
day Gazan bus driver Khalil Abu Ulbah rammed
come home. Taher spoke to their families, and says
into a crowd of hitchhiking Israeli soldiers, killing
they were all caught and sentenced to three
seven of them and one civilian. After that attack,
months in jail and fined approximately $1,250.
the "closure" went into unprecedented force.
Bus driver Abu Ulbah's profile — that of the
Consequently Taher stays home, doesn't work,
trustworthy" Palestinian who had no security
and is reduced to tearing branches off trees to
record, who'd worked faithfully and peacefully for
make a fire for heating up pita bread that his wife
Israelis for five years — removed the moral con-
prepares from sacks of wheat. "We don't have any
straints on the closure, in the eyes of the Israeli
gas, and electricity is too expensive. My son just
public at large. While it's commonly understood
came home and wanted to wash his hair, so my
that virtually all Palestinian laborers are people
wife had to heat up water for a half-hour on the
who want to feed their families and nothing more,
fire," he says. Taher has 10 children, and also helps
the case of Abu Ulbah started people thinking that
support his parents and grandchildren.
any Palestinian laborer, no matter how innocent
His village, like all other Palestinian cities and
his background, was a potential, sudden terrorist.
villages, has been quarantined by Israeli soldiers, so
Sympathy plummeted for the Palestinian workers
the only way that tens of thousands of residents
stuck
in destitution with their large families, locked
who held jobs in Israel can get out is clandestinely,
LARRY DERFNER
Special to the Jewish News
W
Farmington Hills, two polar opposites in their
thinking on Israel agreed on something — opposi-
tion to the Oslo Peace accords of 1993 as well as
the proposals made at Camp David by former
President Bill Clinton and former Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak.
Jerome S. Kaufman of Bloomfield Hills, immediate
past president of the Zionist Organization of America-
Michigan Region, and Rudy Simons of Southfield, a
member of the Jewish Peace Lobby, expressed their
views during a public forum on Monday.
Showing slides of Mideast maps and offering
anti-Israel quotes from Palestinian leadership,
Kaufman made a case that Israel is a tiny country
surrounded by enemies whose aim is the destruc-
tion of the Jewish state.
He did not offer solutions for peace to the audi-
ence of 50, but he clearly stated that Israel needs
the support of American Jews.
"Every one of the agreements Israel tried to reach
with the Palestinians were based on one thing," he
said. "End the terrorism. Let us live in peace."
The more the Israelis offered, the more the
Palestinians wanted. The end result has been more
violence.
Barak lost the election because Israelis thought
he was giving up too much to the Palestinians at
Camp David, Kaufman said.
Camp David was a failure, agreed Simons, but
for a much different reason. "The Barak-Clinton
offer put on the table in Camp David was too lit-
tle, not too much, and could not possibly have
been accepted by any responsible Palestinian leader
who wishes to keep his head on his shoulders,"
Simons said. "There will never be peace, that is, a
peace with justice, if the Palestinians do not have
whole authority over an integrated national territo-
ry including some reasonable control over Arab
east Jerusalem and the Muslim holy sites."
Simons cited many situations that need to be reme-
"
Related editorial: page 27
INTIFADA on page 22
Jerome S. Kaufman