Aaron Ussishkin, 50, the security officer of Moshav Kfar Hess, was shot dead by an Arab terrorist last night. He was alerted to the presence of a suspicious man at the entrance to the community, within pre-1967 Israel, about six kilometers northwest of PA-controlled Kalkilye and six kilometers northeast of Raanana. He ran to the site, and managed only to ask the Arab what he was doing there before the man shot him. Two other Israelis were wounded in the attack, and the murderer escaped.
The police beefed up security around the area last night and this morning, and also arrested 20 Israeli citizens on under suspicion of having assisted Arab migrant workers cross illegally into pre-1967 Israel.
Areleh Ussishkin, survived by his wife and three children, was a Lt.-Col. in the IDF reserves. He was the 200th victim of the Palestinian war against Israel that began almost 14 months ago. Of these, over one-fifth were soldiers, one-third were residents of Yesha, and almost half were citizens inside pre-1967 Israel.
2. PLO STATE ON THE WAY?
Speculation is rife that Yasser Arafat may soon declare a Palestinian state - without Israeli opposition. US President Bush told the UN this weekend once again of the American vision of a Palestinian Arab state side-by-side with Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who met with Yasser Arafat in the United Nations, also made this point. He emphasized, both before and after his meeting with Arafat, that all violence must stop before the implementation of any diplomatic solution.
One estimation of the behind-the-scenes machinations is that a tacit Bush-Sharon-Arafat agreement will enable Arafat to declare a state without Israeli objections. According to the plan, Israel will follow the international community in recognizing the new state, but will annex settlement areas and other critical zones in Judea and Samaria. A leading Likud government minister, Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, has already expressed his opposition to the idea: \"A Palestinian state is very dangerous, and I am against it. I and other Likud figures have said as much to Sharon, and the party will have to decide. I assume that the party [decision-makers] will remain loyal to the party platform.\"
Arutz-7\'s Haggai Segal asked Yesha Council spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef: \"You guys generally have good sources, what do you know about these rumors?\" Mor-Yosef responded,
\"When we first heard yesterday that there might be a deal regarding a declaration, we rushed to find out directly from the Prime Minister. Sharon denied any involvement, attributing it to Peres to some extent, but emphasizing that he is not bound by what Peres does. But the truth is that despite Sharon\'s denial, we are fairly apprehensive. We know that Omri Sharon (the Prime Minister\'s son) is in New York, and he was even quoted as saying that the Sharon-Peres combination is able to make \'hard decisions\' - a phrase which does not refer to a military action…\"
Regarding public protest, Mor-Yosef said that although the Council sponsored a major demonstration only three weeks ago in Jerusalem, \"it looks like it\'s time for us to start a new protest campaign, but with a different twist. Last time, we specifically refrained from criticizing Sharon, because it was soon after the murder of Gandhi, plus the army had just made its strongest offensive to date with its entry into the six PA-controlled cities. Now, though, we know exactly what that operation did and did not accomplish, and it\'s time for us to deliver a much stronger message to the government: Stop trying to catch mosquitoes - let\'s rather dry up the swamp altogether; as long as Arafat is here, there will be terrorism.\"
He said that the new protest campaign will be similar to a campaign held under the Barak government, whereby the population of one or two Yesha towns arrive en masse, for two or three days at a time, and set up a protest encampment outside the Prime Minister\'s Office. \"Some communities from the Shomron will probably be the first to arrive, later this week,\" Mor-Yosef said.
3. NO LET-UP IN PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE
Late this morning, Arabs shot at an Israeli car near Kiryat Sefer, hitting it with three bullets; no one was hurt... A home in Shavei Shomron was damaged when bullets fired from the direction of Sebastia hit it... In Hevron, the intermittent shooting continued last night with shots towards an IDF position; no one was hurt, and the soldiers returned fire... There was shooting at the Shedmah army base in the Bethlehem region this afternoon; no one was hurt...
IDF forces began an offensive operation in the village of Kafr Tel in the Shechem region this morning. They killed a Hamas terrorist named Hassan Reihan, one of the murderers of Shlomo Libman and Harel Bin-Nun in Yitzhar three years ago. The forces also apparently wounded several others, and arrested about 30 Arabs on suspicion of terrorist activity.
*******************************************************
Luxury Holiday Apartments in Jerusalem: Rechavia + other areas. 972-2-6480305
http://www.jewishuniverse.net/tracking/ariela.asp
*******************************************************
4. BISHARA CHARGED WITH PRO-HIZBULLAH STATEMENTS
The State Prosecution filed an indictment against MK Azmi Bishara in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court today. Bishara is charged with support of the Hizbullah terrorist organization and helping 19 groups of Israeli Arabs travel to Syria. The Knesset stripped Bishara of his parliamentary immunity last week.
Today\'s indictment states that on two separate occasions - once in Um el-Fahm commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the Six-Day War, and once in Syria on the first anniversary of Hafez el-Assad\'s death - Bishara publicly identified with Hizbullah, praised it for its terrorist activities, and called upon the Palestinians to adopt the same methods against Israel.
5. AN ALL-WOMEN NEIGHBORHOOD
The city of Rishon LeTzion, Israel\'s 4th-largest, has decided to embark on a campaign of \"corrective discrimination.\" The town has decided that all streets to be built in the new Jabotinsky neighborhood will be named after women. Those chosen to be thus commemorated will be those who contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel or who are connected with the history of Rishon LeTzion. Among them are pre-state heroine Chanah Senesh, MK Chaike Grossman (Mapam), former Mayor Rachel Levine, and Chanah Rubina, a founder of the HaBimah Theater in Tel Aviv.
6. FAMILY SUES ABU KABIR DIRECTOR
Dr. Chaim and Dina Buzaglo filed a petition in Israel\'s High Court of Justice yesterday, demanding that Abu Kabir Forensic Institute Director Dr. Yehuda Hiss be indicted and suspended for having defiled their son\'s corpse. Their son Ze\'ev was killed in a training accident in a Golan Heights IDF base in April 1997. The petitioners allege that Hiss permitted doctors at Abu Kabir to carry out unauthorized medical procedures and experiments on their son\'s body, and accuse him of unlawfully removing parts of his body.
The petition comes on the heels of an announcement by Atty.-Gen. Rubenstein that he had ordered a police investigation into Hiss\' activities involving body parts that he may have stolen and sold. A Health Ministry investigation of Hiss was concluded seven months ago, leading to the appointment of a senior director for the Institute to oversee Hiss\' activities. Dr. Hiss is also suspected of committing perjury and submitting false documentation to bolster the government\'s evidence in criminal cases.
After Ze\'ev Buzaglo\'s death, his body was brought to Abu Kabir for pathological examination. The family, which had declined to donate their son\'s organs or eyes for medical research, was later horrified to see that that unnecessary operations had been performed on his son\'s body and skin and parts of the eyes had been removed. The subsequent police investigation recommended that Dr. Hiss and other doctors be indicted for their treatment of the young soldier\'s remains. Yet, 2-1/2 years later, no indictment has yet been filed. Atty. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, representing the Buzaglos, said that they \"reasonably fear that the government will stretch the investigation out endlessly and continue to cover-up for the criminals at the Abu Kabir Institute.\"
7. APARTMENT SALES UP
The Central Bureau of Statistics reported today that despite Israel\'s economic slowdown, 10,460 new high-rise apartments were sold in the first eight months of 2001, up 11% from the same period last year.
On the other hand, housing starts under the build-your-own-house plan amounted to only 7,290 during this period, a steep 18% decline. Some 55% of the new apartments sold since the beginning of the year were low-cost four-room apartments. Almost 40% of the new apartments were sold in Israel\'s central region. A surprising 507 new apartments were sold in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, despite the ongoing difficulties in those areas.
SPECIAL INSERT:
A selection of \"questionable\" statements excerpted from Arafat\'s speech in the UN last night:
\"The Palestinian people have expressed their readiness to confront all forms of international terrorism including state organized terror, in order to build a new world that will guarantee justice, peace, security and freedom to all people, a new world based on human rights, international legality...
\"As you all recall, the U.N. General Assembly issued Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into two states: One Jewish and the other Palestinian, but the Palestinian state was not recognized by the U.N….
\"…we signed a number of agreements and memorandum of understandings [with Israel]. After the assassination of my late partner Mr. Itzhaq Rabin, the Israeli Governments that followed took the path of non-compliance and did not implement Israel\'s obligations pertaining form agreements signed, which impeded our sincere efforts to reach a comprehensive, just, lasting peace, the peace of the brave...
\"Then came the Sharon visit to the Noble Sanctuary [Temple Mount] in holy Jerusalem, which I had warned the Israeli Government of its grave consequences on the peace process and on the region. This action sparked the Palestinian Intifada… [ed. note: Fatah head Marwan Bargouti told the Jerusalem Times in June of this year, \"the intifada did not start because of Sharon\'s visit,\" but that the violence \"began because of the desire to put an end to occupation and because the Palestinians did not approve of the peace process in its previous form.\" In addition, PA official Imad Faluji said at a rally in Lebanon on March 3, 2001 that the violence \"had been planned since Chairman Arafat\'s return from Camp David [two months before Sharon\'s visit].\"]
\"The current Israeli Government continues the aggression against the Palestinian people, which began by the previous Government. State terror is being practiced against the Palestinian people…
\"Facing this aggression, escalation, and the bloody war of state terror being waged by the Israel¡ Government against our people, land, holy places, the tanks incursions into our cities, villages and refugee camps, and the massacres committed in various locations in the West-Bank and the Gaza Strip, we call upon the international community represented by all of you and all supporters of peace, freedom, justice through out the world to exert every possible effort to stop this war of aggression, send international observers to protect our people from the occupation, terror and ethnic cleansing practiced by Israel and in order to supervise the implementation of the cease fire declared a number of times by our side and always violated by the Israeli Government…
\"Allow me, to extend my deepest appreciation and sincere wishes to all brotherly, friendly nations and to the Super Powers, which have realized today more than any other time before, that the establishment of a Palestinian State with holy Jerusalem as its capital is the only guarantee for security, peace and stability in the region and the world, and constitute a cornerstone for establishing and sustaining it.
\"We call upon these nations… to exert every possible effort to… enable the Palestinian people to live… within their independent State on their national soil with holy Jerusalem as its capital, and to ensure that Israel, the occupying power, full and comprehensive withdrawal from all Palestinian and Arab territories including holy Jerusalem to the June 4th, 1967 boundaries, to end settlement activities and evacuate settlers from our land and guarantee the right of the Palestinian refugees to return in accordance with resolution \"194\" which specified this right and called for compensating those not wishing to return…
\"We welcome the positive positions declared by President George Bush and other leaders, which have called for the establishment of the Palestinian State…\"
The police beefed up security around the area last night and this morning, and also arrested 20 Israeli citizens on under suspicion of having assisted Arab migrant workers cross illegally into pre-1967 Israel.
Areleh Ussishkin, survived by his wife and three children, was a Lt.-Col. in the IDF reserves. He was the 200th victim of the Palestinian war against Israel that began almost 14 months ago. Of these, over one-fifth were soldiers, one-third were residents of Yesha, and almost half were citizens inside pre-1967 Israel.
2. PLO STATE ON THE WAY?
Speculation is rife that Yasser Arafat may soon declare a Palestinian state - without Israeli opposition. US President Bush told the UN this weekend once again of the American vision of a Palestinian Arab state side-by-side with Israel. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who met with Yasser Arafat in the United Nations, also made this point. He emphasized, both before and after his meeting with Arafat, that all violence must stop before the implementation of any diplomatic solution.
One estimation of the behind-the-scenes machinations is that a tacit Bush-Sharon-Arafat agreement will enable Arafat to declare a state without Israeli objections. According to the plan, Israel will follow the international community in recognizing the new state, but will annex settlement areas and other critical zones in Judea and Samaria. A leading Likud government minister, Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi, has already expressed his opposition to the idea: \"A Palestinian state is very dangerous, and I am against it. I and other Likud figures have said as much to Sharon, and the party will have to decide. I assume that the party [decision-makers] will remain loyal to the party platform.\"
Arutz-7\'s Haggai Segal asked Yesha Council spokesman Yehoshua Mor-Yosef: \"You guys generally have good sources, what do you know about these rumors?\" Mor-Yosef responded,
\"When we first heard yesterday that there might be a deal regarding a declaration, we rushed to find out directly from the Prime Minister. Sharon denied any involvement, attributing it to Peres to some extent, but emphasizing that he is not bound by what Peres does. But the truth is that despite Sharon\'s denial, we are fairly apprehensive. We know that Omri Sharon (the Prime Minister\'s son) is in New York, and he was even quoted as saying that the Sharon-Peres combination is able to make \'hard decisions\' - a phrase which does not refer to a military action…\"
Regarding public protest, Mor-Yosef said that although the Council sponsored a major demonstration only three weeks ago in Jerusalem, \"it looks like it\'s time for us to start a new protest campaign, but with a different twist. Last time, we specifically refrained from criticizing Sharon, because it was soon after the murder of Gandhi, plus the army had just made its strongest offensive to date with its entry into the six PA-controlled cities. Now, though, we know exactly what that operation did and did not accomplish, and it\'s time for us to deliver a much stronger message to the government: Stop trying to catch mosquitoes - let\'s rather dry up the swamp altogether; as long as Arafat is here, there will be terrorism.\"
He said that the new protest campaign will be similar to a campaign held under the Barak government, whereby the population of one or two Yesha towns arrive en masse, for two or three days at a time, and set up a protest encampment outside the Prime Minister\'s Office. \"Some communities from the Shomron will probably be the first to arrive, later this week,\" Mor-Yosef said.
3. NO LET-UP IN PALESTINIAN VIOLENCE
Late this morning, Arabs shot at an Israeli car near Kiryat Sefer, hitting it with three bullets; no one was hurt... A home in Shavei Shomron was damaged when bullets fired from the direction of Sebastia hit it... In Hevron, the intermittent shooting continued last night with shots towards an IDF position; no one was hurt, and the soldiers returned fire... There was shooting at the Shedmah army base in the Bethlehem region this afternoon; no one was hurt...
IDF forces began an offensive operation in the village of Kafr Tel in the Shechem region this morning. They killed a Hamas terrorist named Hassan Reihan, one of the murderers of Shlomo Libman and Harel Bin-Nun in Yitzhar three years ago. The forces also apparently wounded several others, and arrested about 30 Arabs on suspicion of terrorist activity.
*******************************************************
Luxury Holiday Apartments in Jerusalem: Rechavia + other areas. 972-2-6480305
http://www.jewishuniverse.net/tracking/ariela.asp
*******************************************************
4. BISHARA CHARGED WITH PRO-HIZBULLAH STATEMENTS
The State Prosecution filed an indictment against MK Azmi Bishara in the Jerusalem Magistrates Court today. Bishara is charged with support of the Hizbullah terrorist organization and helping 19 groups of Israeli Arabs travel to Syria. The Knesset stripped Bishara of his parliamentary immunity last week.
Today\'s indictment states that on two separate occasions - once in Um el-Fahm commemorating the 33rd anniversary of the Six-Day War, and once in Syria on the first anniversary of Hafez el-Assad\'s death - Bishara publicly identified with Hizbullah, praised it for its terrorist activities, and called upon the Palestinians to adopt the same methods against Israel.
5. AN ALL-WOMEN NEIGHBORHOOD
The city of Rishon LeTzion, Israel\'s 4th-largest, has decided to embark on a campaign of \"corrective discrimination.\" The town has decided that all streets to be built in the new Jabotinsky neighborhood will be named after women. Those chosen to be thus commemorated will be those who contributed to the establishment of the State of Israel or who are connected with the history of Rishon LeTzion. Among them are pre-state heroine Chanah Senesh, MK Chaike Grossman (Mapam), former Mayor Rachel Levine, and Chanah Rubina, a founder of the HaBimah Theater in Tel Aviv.
6. FAMILY SUES ABU KABIR DIRECTOR
Dr. Chaim and Dina Buzaglo filed a petition in Israel\'s High Court of Justice yesterday, demanding that Abu Kabir Forensic Institute Director Dr. Yehuda Hiss be indicted and suspended for having defiled their son\'s corpse. Their son Ze\'ev was killed in a training accident in a Golan Heights IDF base in April 1997. The petitioners allege that Hiss permitted doctors at Abu Kabir to carry out unauthorized medical procedures and experiments on their son\'s body, and accuse him of unlawfully removing parts of his body.
The petition comes on the heels of an announcement by Atty.-Gen. Rubenstein that he had ordered a police investigation into Hiss\' activities involving body parts that he may have stolen and sold. A Health Ministry investigation of Hiss was concluded seven months ago, leading to the appointment of a senior director for the Institute to oversee Hiss\' activities. Dr. Hiss is also suspected of committing perjury and submitting false documentation to bolster the government\'s evidence in criminal cases.
After Ze\'ev Buzaglo\'s death, his body was brought to Abu Kabir for pathological examination. The family, which had declined to donate their son\'s organs or eyes for medical research, was later horrified to see that that unnecessary operations had been performed on his son\'s body and skin and parts of the eyes had been removed. The subsequent police investigation recommended that Dr. Hiss and other doctors be indicted for their treatment of the young soldier\'s remains. Yet, 2-1/2 years later, no indictment has yet been filed. Atty. Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, representing the Buzaglos, said that they \"reasonably fear that the government will stretch the investigation out endlessly and continue to cover-up for the criminals at the Abu Kabir Institute.\"
7. APARTMENT SALES UP
The Central Bureau of Statistics reported today that despite Israel\'s economic slowdown, 10,460 new high-rise apartments were sold in the first eight months of 2001, up 11% from the same period last year.
On the other hand, housing starts under the build-your-own-house plan amounted to only 7,290 during this period, a steep 18% decline. Some 55% of the new apartments sold since the beginning of the year were low-cost four-room apartments. Almost 40% of the new apartments were sold in Israel\'s central region. A surprising 507 new apartments were sold in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, despite the ongoing difficulties in those areas.
SPECIAL INSERT:
A selection of \"questionable\" statements excerpted from Arafat\'s speech in the UN last night:
\"The Palestinian people have expressed their readiness to confront all forms of international terrorism including state organized terror, in order to build a new world that will guarantee justice, peace, security and freedom to all people, a new world based on human rights, international legality...
\"As you all recall, the U.N. General Assembly issued Resolution 181, which called for the partition of Palestine into two states: One Jewish and the other Palestinian, but the Palestinian state was not recognized by the U.N….
\"…we signed a number of agreements and memorandum of understandings [with Israel]. After the assassination of my late partner Mr. Itzhaq Rabin, the Israeli Governments that followed took the path of non-compliance and did not implement Israel\'s obligations pertaining form agreements signed, which impeded our sincere efforts to reach a comprehensive, just, lasting peace, the peace of the brave...
\"Then came the Sharon visit to the Noble Sanctuary [Temple Mount] in holy Jerusalem, which I had warned the Israeli Government of its grave consequences on the peace process and on the region. This action sparked the Palestinian Intifada… [ed. note: Fatah head Marwan Bargouti told the Jerusalem Times in June of this year, \"the intifada did not start because of Sharon\'s visit,\" but that the violence \"began because of the desire to put an end to occupation and because the Palestinians did not approve of the peace process in its previous form.\" In addition, PA official Imad Faluji said at a rally in Lebanon on March 3, 2001 that the violence \"had been planned since Chairman Arafat\'s return from Camp David [two months before Sharon\'s visit].\"]
\"The current Israeli Government continues the aggression against the Palestinian people, which began by the previous Government. State terror is being practiced against the Palestinian people…
\"Facing this aggression, escalation, and the bloody war of state terror being waged by the Israel¡ Government against our people, land, holy places, the tanks incursions into our cities, villages and refugee camps, and the massacres committed in various locations in the West-Bank and the Gaza Strip, we call upon the international community represented by all of you and all supporters of peace, freedom, justice through out the world to exert every possible effort to stop this war of aggression, send international observers to protect our people from the occupation, terror and ethnic cleansing practiced by Israel and in order to supervise the implementation of the cease fire declared a number of times by our side and always violated by the Israeli Government…
\"Allow me, to extend my deepest appreciation and sincere wishes to all brotherly, friendly nations and to the Super Powers, which have realized today more than any other time before, that the establishment of a Palestinian State with holy Jerusalem as its capital is the only guarantee for security, peace and stability in the region and the world, and constitute a cornerstone for establishing and sustaining it.
\"We call upon these nations… to exert every possible effort to… enable the Palestinian people to live… within their independent State on their national soil with holy Jerusalem as its capital, and to ensure that Israel, the occupying power, full and comprehensive withdrawal from all Palestinian and Arab territories including holy Jerusalem to the June 4th, 1967 boundaries, to end settlement activities and evacuate settlers from our land and guarantee the right of the Palestinian refugees to return in accordance with resolution \"194\" which specified this right and called for compensating those not wishing to return…
\"We welcome the positive positions declared by President George Bush and other leaders, which have called for the establishment of the Palestinian State…\"