Tel Aviv, Israel
By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
RISHON LEZION, Israel – By 10 a.m. on a recent morning, the line of people in an underground parking lot in this Tel Aviv suburb, was getting longer and longer. The frustration level was intensifying along with the rising temperature – it was hot and sticky with no fresh air.
But, for many, it was a line worth waiting in. The Pitchon-Lev organization was handing out the basic needs for the upcoming Jewish New Year – Rosh Hashanah – which begins at sundown this Friday, Sept. 18 and will be observed on Saturday.
While there are some signs of hope that the global recession may be receding, for many of the people on line here, hard times are here to stay.
Tal Eisenbaum, manager of the Pitchon-Lev aid center, left a cushy hi-tech career for this grueling job of helping the needy and the poor.
"I was a C.E.O of a software company, I have a third degree in marketing and I came here because of my conscience, I decided to work for a few years for the community, to feel good with myself," said Eisenbaum. "I see that I’m actually helping people and it feels good."
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An Israeli court order police to evict two Palestinian families from their homes, despite having lived there for 50 years, so Jewish settlers could move in. The evictions follow a long legal battle over the disputed ownership of the site. NBC's Martin Fletcher reports.
It's only 60 miles from some West Bank villages to the sea, yet many Palestinian children have never seen the ocean. However, Israel is begining to allow more freedom of movement for Palestinians - removing some roadblocks and loosening restrictions. And Israeli peace activists helped arrange for some Palestinian children to finally enjoy a day at the beach in peace. NBC News Martin Fletcher reports.
By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
JERUSALEM – Benjamin Netanyahu’s remarks concerning Israel's right to build anywhere it wanted in Jerusalem earlier this week have threatened to further complicate Israel’s relations with its strongest ally over the contentious issue of settlement construction.
Netanyahu told his Cabinet on Sunday that there would be no limits on Jewish construction anywhere in "unified Jerusalem."
"We cannot accept the idea that Jews wouldn’t be entitled to live and buy anywhere in Jerusalem," said Netanyahu. "I can only imagine what would happen if someone were to suggest that Jews cannot live in certain neighborhoods in New York, London, Paris or Rome."
The battle over Jerusalem is part of the "give and take" policy that Israel is negotiating with the U.S. President Barack Obama is calling for a full stop to all settlement activity, while Netanyahu is adamant that Israel has the right to build to accommodate natural growth in existing settlements and that Jerusalem is not included in any settlement freeze.
Furthermore, the international community considers the Jewish neighborhoods in east Jerusalem to be settlements and sees them as a major obstacle to Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking because they complicate the possibility of dividing the city in the future.
Israel’s hard line stance has left many Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem in despair. As we visited the area on Wednesday, we met Rima Issa, from the Coalition for Jerusalem. She was in a tent in the neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah speaking to tourists. Issa said she was trying to "educate" the tourists and show them the other side of the settlement story.
"I think we’re facing a heavy attack, from settlers and from Israel. They are taking more homes, taking more lands," said Issa. "It's heavily unbelievable way of ethnic cleansing Palestinians from this land."
Asked how she feels about this, she said, "I'm like Don Quixote, fighting the wind but we will never give up. As an individual I will never give up."
Click on the video above to see more of our interview with Rima Issa about how the settlement issue is affecting residents of East Jerusalem.
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By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
TEL AVIV – The arrest of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish woman accused of starving her 3-year-old son has sparked three days of violent clashes in Jerusalem between religious and secular Jews.
Authorities allege that the mentally ill woman has been starving her son for several years.
On Thursday, a photo on the front page of Yediot Ahronot, a popular daily, showed a horrific photo of the emaciated boy sitting on a hospital bed clearly suffering from malnutrition. Authorities said they have video showing the mother repeatedly disconnecting her son from a feeding tube in the hospital.
But her arrest has outraged members of the ultra-Orthodox community who resent outside interference in their affairs. For the last three days protesters have clashed with police, throwing rocks at them and burning trash cans. At least 28 demonstrators have been arrested.
The incident has laid bare the very delicate relationship between the insular ultra-Orthodox community and the city’s more secular population.
The ultra-Orthodox community views the Israeli authorities with a great deal of mistrust; they think they use brutal tactics (police used water cannons on rioters on Thursday), are uncompromising and oppose any perceived interference from them in their religious life.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV – She sounded subdued on the phone, sad even, and who wouldn’t be? All she had wanted was to give a nice surprise to her mother.
So Anat (not her real name), a Tel Aviv resident, threw out her mother’s ratty old mattress and bought her a lovely new one. After all, as people age, they need a firm mattress, not a lumpy old one.
But those lumps were not clumps of distorted wool or loose springs. They were dollar bills. A million’s worth.
Over the years, Anat’s mother had stashed away American dollars and Israeli shekels in her mattress, and now Anat had thrown away her life savings.
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By Paul Goldman, NBC News Producer
TEL AVIV – Israel is preparing for the possibility of war and it appears to be serious about it.
At 11 a.m. on Tuesday, sirens blasted the air, sending millions of citizens into the nearest bomb shelter in the country’s biggest-ever civil defense exercise. The drill is part of a five-day training code-named Turning Point III. It involves simulated rocket and missile attacks on Israeli cities and also preparations for a nonconventional strike.
Most of the kids from the Elharizi School in Tel Aviv were giggling in class as they waited for the siren. Their teacher was trying to get them to act seriously, but the loud siren did the job for her. You really can't stay too calm when you hear a blaring sound, wailing up and down, representing one thing: war.
The kids, all the way from grade one to seven, made their way in pairs to the neat and clean shelter. They were told beforehand that they could bring games to play with while they waited for the all-clear sign. So the packs of cards came out, and most of the kids seemed happy to miss class and play their favorite game.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV – America has always related to Israel with the carrot, but now Israelis fear the stick will be President Barack Obama’s implement of choice. Maybe not right away, but soon.
As Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (also known as "Bibi") and Obama meet on Monday for the first time since each assumed office, Israel’s media, fed by government sources, are reaching a crescendo of hysteria: Is this the end of Israel’s special relationship with America?
One analyst hoped so – writing that the only American president who really helped Israel was, the now much reviled here, Jimmy Carter.
He helped cobbled together Israel’s peace treaty with Egypt by brow-beating then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin into giving up on his promises not to cede an inch of land. As a result of the Camp David Accords, Begin eventually gave up all of Sinai – winning a peace agreement with Egypt that stands firm today and is in no serious jeopardy.
So there are mixed feelings in Israel. On the one hand, nobody likes or wants to be bullied by America; while on the other many analysts accept that it is only by having its figurative head knocked together with the Palestinians’ that any progress towards peace is likely.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV – Wafaa Younis is a woman whose heart is in the right place; she is an Israeli Arab who has made a real effort to help Palestinian children in the Jenin refugee camp in the northern West Bank.
She started with the boys; she wanted them to put down their stones and learn the violin, in the hope that they would not grow up and pick up a gun. I first met her three years ago when she finally persuaded the Israelis to allow the Palestinian children to leave the West Bank and go to her home in the Israeli town of Ara for violin lessons.
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| Tara Todras-Whitehall / AP file |
| Palestinian children from the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank play a concert for Holocaust survivors in Holon, Israel on March 25. |
She even took them on trips to the coast; even though they grew up 30 miles from the Mediterranean, they had never seen the sea. Her first attempts to teach a few boys the violin grew into a small orchestra of boys and girls. She even rented an apartment in Jenin so that she could teach them there, because it was easier for her to cross into the West Bank than it was for them to leave.
Then Younis had an idea; as part of Israel’s annual Good Deeds Week, she would arrange a little concert in Holon, near Tel Aviv. Her young musicians from the "Strings of Freedom" orchestra would entertain Holocaust survivors. They would play their favorite classics, and also some songs of peace; a way to bridge the divide between Palestinians and Israelis.
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By Martin Fletcher, NBC News Correspondent
TEL AVIV – Think a few hanging chads are a problem? Or the Electoral College, which has at times left the winner of the U.S. popular vote as the loser? Well, consider the
Israeli political system.
Thirty-three parties contested yesterday’s general election. One party emerges with the most seats, two parties claim victory and most analysts agree that the winner has only a slim chance of actually forming the next government.
Huh? How does that work?
No party has ever won an outright victory in Israel’s history, leading to a series of coalitions that rarely see out their full term. It seems that the tougher the problems facing Israel, the less power the government has to deal with them – and most things end up being a mushy compromise.
That’s why it took individuals with particular credibility to power key decisions (Yitzhak Rabin and the Oslo peace accords, Ehud Barak ending Israel’s 22-year long occupation of Southern Lebanon, and Ariel Sharon withdrawing from Gaza).
Without such towering figures, the election process leaves Israel exposed at a time it faces critical challenges: Iran’s alleged race to build a nuclear bomb; increasing international hostility towards Israel’s methods of fighting terrorism (particularly the recent Gaza assault); and America’s expected tilt to a more even-handed approach to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians. And that’s leaving out all the economic and social issues facing this nation.
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