Letter from Jerusalem

THIS WEEK, we've had snow in the north and locusts in the south, which seems like a pretty fitting illustration for the extremes that exist in this small sliver of the globe.

British foreign secretary Jack Straw is in town sharing a stage with Israeli foreign minister Silvan Shalom. Later he'll be laying a wreath at the grave of Yasser Arafat, but we don't expect Mr Shalom to be accompanying him. Indeed, Shalom's mouth creases into a spit should anyone have cause to mention the name of the dead Palestinian.

Straw uttered platitudes about hope for the future now that new elections for a Palestinian president are scheduled. Both he and Shalom said they were willing to help the elections in any which way they can, although Shalom threw in the rider that Israel's efforts might be constrained by "security" issues.

Linguistic difficulties reared their head in the subdued press conference here in the Israeli foreign ministry in Jerusalem. Straw stumbled over the difference between Shalom and Sharon, momentarily elevating the foreign minister to the position as prime minister, delighting his host no-end. Sharon himself had earlier announced that he was unable to meet with Straw because he had lost his voice. Well, perhaps he whispered it to an aide.

Bemused murmurs then permeated the gathering when Shalom said he hoped the new Palestinian leadership would be more moderate and "move its ass towards peace." To be fair, he probably said "move with us towards peace". Apparently his English has improved of late.

Straw banged on about the roadmap, offered British help in facilitating or monitoring the Palestinian elections and mentioned he'd been hanging out with his old mate Co-lin Powell. "Powell was able to de-brief me," he said. Not, we imagine, that he'd have put up much of a struggle.

The settlement word was uttered briefly. Shalom claimed no knowledge of any ongoing settlement activity and, when informed by the BBC's Orla Guerin that she'd witnessed ongoing construction work as recently as yesterday, managed somehow to shut his ears - so, we guess, he can still assert he knows of no such activity.

Straw praised Sharon (the mute Prime Minister) for his courage in pushing through his Gaza disengagement plan. Strangely enough, when we visited Gush Katif, the main settlement block in Gaza just a few weeks ago, they were still building there too. Maybe we should have informed Shalom (the loquacious foreign minister).

Asked about recent utterances from Palestinian presidential candidate Mahmoud Abbas that the Palestinian leadership would take up Arafat's policy of demanding the right of return for Palestinian refugees, Straw displayed the nimble footwork that must have eluded him when meeting Powell. “Each party have their policies and the aspirations of their people and these need to be taken into a count in moving towards the only solution which is sensible that that is a peaceful one,” he said.

Shalom, for his part, held forth on the new move from Sharon that puts new onus on the Palestinians to reduce their hate propaganda. He said: “Arafat poisoned the young generation of Palestinians to hate Israel, hate Jews and hate the west.” He said such mind poisoning should end and end quickly.

News overshadowing this fairly light-weight meeting but certainly helping poison young Palestinian minds this week concerns the tape played on Channel Two news here on Monday night. Excepts from a three-way military conversation linked to an investigation into the shooting of a 13 year-old Palestinian girl go something like this:
"It's a little girl. She's running defensively eastwards, a girl of about 10. She's behind the embankment, scared to death." Four minutes later an observation post reported: "Receive, I think that one of the positions took her out."

The girl was hit in the leg. The army commander under investigation then approached the injured girl and "verified" (or “confirmed”) the kill, by emptying the contents of his automatic weapon into her. To clarify to his men, he reported: "Anyone who's mobile, moving in the zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

The Independent has a fuller report here.

This disturbing story was covered by the Israeli daily Ha'aretz yesterday. The English-language Ha'aretz here comes with a copy of the International Herald Tribune. The Tribune reported the story too, saying the Commander, “R” is charged with “five separate offences”. Sounds pretty serious, till you read elsewhere that the most severe of these is "illegal use of a weapon”.

Ha'aretz' big story today (aside from that concerning the death of a former Israeli Defence Forces chief of staff, Rafael Eitan, over which Straw expressed his condolences) focused on new figures detailing the poverty that many Israelis exist in. Some 22.4 per cent of Israelis live below the poverty line, the paper blasted. And Jerusalem is the poorest city in Israel, the figures suggest.

According to the National Insurance Institute's poverty report for 2003, the poverty line is defined at 1,763 Shekels per month ($403) for an individual.

Spookily, the International Herald Tribune today carried a piece by a Palestinian Mustafa Barghouthi. In this piece Barghoutthi claims that 60 per cent of Palestinian live below the poverty line. For Palestinians, the poverty line is an income of $2 per day, he said. µ