Palestinians

Sometime today, Kifah and Intisar Ajouri are to be deposited on Israel's border with the Gaza Strip to begin a two-year exile in that Palestinian-ruled backwater miles from their home. The brother and sister are the first Palestinians to be deported under a new Israeli Supreme Court ruling that allows the army to "relocate" relatives of militants from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip. In a unanimous decision by a panel expanded to include nine judges, the court, however, limited the army's power by saying there must be proof that the relatives acted as accomplices to the terrorist act and pose a potential security threat.

Re "Is a two-state solution dead?," Editorial, May 9 The Times' editorial advocating a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinians focuses on Israel. The current Israeli government supports a viable two-state solution, which is not the case on the Palestinian side. Hamas in the Gaza Strip has no intention of accepting Israel. The "moderate" Palestinian Authority distributes maps that do not show Israel as a country, instead showing only Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Until the Palestinians are willing to accept Israel as a Jewish state, peace talks are useless.

Did he blunder and give comfort to Israel's enemies or was he candidly expressing what he and many Israelis in their hearts believe? Either way, Labor Party leader Ehud Barak's remark last week that if he had been born a Palestinian, he might have joined one of the groups fighting Israel has erupted into a major political flap for the former army chief who wants Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's job.

It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when a comprehensive rapprochement between Israelis and Palestinians seemed not just possible but inevitable. In the mid-1990s, the two-state solution was gaining support on both sides. Hamas and Islamic Jihad were losing influence. Israel was handing over West Bank cities to Palestinian control. The 50-year-old conflict seemed to be nearing a resolution. Of course, that never came to pass. Peace fizzled in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the terrorist bombs of the Palestinian militants, among other things.

Highlights of the "road map" for Mideast peace, developed by the "quartet" of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia: Goals * A "final and comprehensive settlement" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by 2005. * The settlement will include "an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel."

"Sitting on the bus which is ticking to explode writing my last poem. " --Eliaz Cohen Suicide bombings are not the usual stuff of poetry, but Eliaz Cohen, a leading figure in a religious poetry scene flourishing in Israel, writes about the conflict in language as beautiful as reality can be ugly. Amid the drone of warring words, he offers a different voice, challenging political and religious convention. "Hear O Lord," the recently published bilingual collection translated into English by Larry Barak is Cohen's literary chronicle of the last turbulent decade (it's subtitled "Poems From the Disturbances of 2000-2009")

Re "Real Issue: Israeli, Palestinian Nationalism," Commentary, Oct. 25: It is beyond my understanding how one can profess to support the so-called "Law of Return," which gives Jews all over the world the "right" to return to that part of Palestine which the West made into modern-day Israel, but yet at the same time assert that Palestinians shouldn't have equal opportunity to go back to their own lands and villages. The land now called Israel was inhabited by Palestinians for 2,000 years.

Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, in an interview with the Jewish Channel, called the Israeli-Palestinian peace process “delusional,” and said Palestinians are “an invented” people. Asked if he identifies as a Zionist, Gingrich said: “I believe that the Jewish people have the right to have a state.” Referring back to the early 20 th century, when the British government, in the Balfour Declaration of 1917, declared its support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people,” Gingrich suggested that at the time, the occupants of that territory - the Palestinians - did not have a legitimate claim to the land.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad said Monday that Palestinians can make a stronger case for ending Israel's occupation by building up self-governing institutions that would strengthen global support for a Palestinian state. He set a goal of establishing an independent state within two years. "I call upon our people to unite around the project of establishing a state and to strengthening its institutions . . .

Born in a refugee camp in this restive West Bank city, Ammar Arafat threw his first stone at 13. At 15, he was jailed for scaling the fence at an Israeli military camp with explosives under his shirt. Upon release, he took up arms again and landed back in prison. Freshly out of jail for the second time, Arafat, 20, is mulling his next move. But nowadays, he has traded in his explosives vest for a designer military jacket with shiny Armani buttons. A more mature Arafat said he wants to enroll in college, find work as a Palestinian police officer and build a stable life.

JERUSALEM - The traditional Passover retelling of Exodus was barely underway in 2002 when Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer got a note with news of the latest in a string of Palestinian suicide attacks that had terrorized Israel for two years. He dashed to an emergency meeting of military commanders, all dressed in civilian clothes because they'd left their own Seder dinner tables upon hearing that 30 Israelis had been killed in the attack on the Park Hotel. After an all-night session, they made a decision that would change the face of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Ben-Eliezer persuaded Israel's Cabinet to reoccupy the entire West Bank, even though it meant brushing aside the 1993 Oslo agreements that gave Palestinians control over many cities and their own security force.

JERUSALEM - Israel's government is scrambling to find ways to save some of the unauthorized West Bank settlements it once promised to dismantle, including some that are built partly on private Palestinian land. The new strategy seeks to retroactively legalize some outposts and, in other cases, relocate Jewish settlers to nearby land that is not privately owned, in effect creating what critics say would be the first new West Bank settlements in years. The approach by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's right-wing coalition government appears designed to avoid the need to carry out high-profile military evictions of settlers in order to appease conservative lawmakers, who have accused Netanyahu of betraying the settlers' cause.

  Ayman and Rahma abu Hussein can't help but feel they are moving up in the world. The database engineer and his wife just bought their first home, and it's large enough for both of their children to have their own rooms. There's a Hyundai parked outside and a flat-panel TV hangs in the living room, one of many new appliances decking out the place. But the Abu Husseins are up to their ears in debt. Their upward mobility, like that of thousands of other Palestinians, came tied to something that was once rare in the West Bank: mortgages and consumer credit.

The toll on civilians from violence between the Israeli military and militants based in the Gaza Strip rose Monday as three Palestinians — a 15-year-old boy on his way to school and a father and daughter walking in the street — were killed by Israeli airstrikes, Palestinian officials said. Militants from Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees on Monday fired rockets into southern Israel, hitting an empty kindergarten and damaging a residential structure in the city of Ashdod, injuring an elderly woman and another person with shrapnel.

Palestinian baker and activist Khader Adnan captured headlines recently for a 66-day hunger strike that led him to the brink of death. His ordeal began in the dead of night on Dec. 17, 2011, when Israeli soldiers broke down the door of his West Bank home. Adnan was arrested before his terrified wife and daughters, and was reportedly abused verbally and physically upon detention and later in interrogation. Adnan was never tried but instead faced administrative detention. Israeli prosecutors presented secret evidence to a military judge, who then ordered a four-month detention.

Palestinian leaders voiced outrage Tuesday over a new report that Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank rose 20% last year. The report released by the Peace Now group also says that building on East Jerusalem land seized during the 1967 Middle East War was at the highest level in a decade. The study by the Israeli group, which is opposed to settlement construction, found that Israel began construction on more than 1,850 West Bank units in 2011, up from 1,550 in 2010. During much of 2010, Israel observed a partial moratorium on new West Bank construction, which reduced building starts that year.

Israelis and Palestinians are struggling to respond to the latest international peace initiative, with each side embracing parts they liked and dismissing those they didn't. More than a week after the group known as the Mideast quartet launched its effort to get the two sides back to the bargaining table, neither Israel nor the Palestinian Authority has formally accepted or rejected the initiative as a whole, reflecting an apparent desire to avoid alienating the body, which is composed of the U.S., European Union, United Nations and Russia.

A year after peace talks collapsed, Israelis and Palestinians appear headed back to the negotiating table -- just not the same table. A U.S.-backed proposal to launch so-called proximity talks moved forward Wednesday when the Arab League gave its blessing for Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to join the effort. Under the American plan, U.S. Middle East envoy George J. Mitchell will meet separately with Israelis and Palestinians in hopes of narrowing their differences and getting both sides back in the same room.

A 45-foot-high artificial Christmas tree towers over Manger Square, and downtown Bethlehem is festooned with sparkling decorations. There's even a picture of a saxophone-playing Santa Claus. But Nabil Giacaman, co-owner of a souvenir shop called Christmas House, isn't feeling the holiday spirit. The third-generation woodcarver, who sells handmade likenesses of baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary, sees as many as 200 tour buses arrive every day from Israel to visit the Church of the Nativity, just a few steps from his store.

A water-wise S.F. Re "In S.F., a feud over use of water," Dec. 13 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has her facts muddled. The Tuolumne River is the source of San Francisco's water supply, not the Hetch Hetchy Valley. The reservoir is one of nine that San Francisco uses to store its water. Multiple studies have determined that using the Hetch Hetchy Valley is unnecessary and removing it from the system would result in a 4% loss of water. If San Francisco matched Orange County in developing sustainable local water supplies such as recycling, it could reduce its use of Tuolumne River water by up to 20%, easily offsetting what it would lose from Hetch Hetchy.