TO: Friends (and friends of friends) of Bridges for Peace
FROM: Clarence H. Wagner, Jr., International Director - Jerusalem
DATE: October 9, 2000

Special Update from Israel                
                                Week Ending: October 9, 2000

Notice:  The Bridges for Peace newly designed website is located at
www.bridgesforpeace.com.  Tell your friends to check it out.  We are your
Israel Connection.


THE CLOCK IS TICKING

        "And where do you live?"  the Israeli passport control clerk asked
me as I returned to Israel from London at 4:30 am Sunday, October 8th.
        "Gilo, in Jerusalem," I answered.
        "How are you getting home?  Is someone picking you up," she
inquired.
        "No, " I said, "I am taking a taxi."
        "Well, " she responded matter-of-factly, "you can't go to Gilo
because it has been closed by the Israeli military."
        "Closed," I blurted back with growing concern. "My family is in
Gilo, what do you mean it is closed."
        "Because of the situation, because of, well, you know, the Arab
attacks from Bethlehem and Beit Jalla," she said.
        Not wanting to believe what she was saying, I told her, "Well, it
just can't be closed. I have to get to my family."  I felt helpless and
must have looked like it.
        Then, she said, "Look, I am only telling you what I hear on the
news. Go to the taxi company and if Gilo is still closed, they will know
it."

        I had spoken to my family only six hours earlier, just before
getting on my El Al flight to Israel.  I knew that Gilo apartments had been
shot at on two different nights last week. But what could be going on to
close the whole neighborhood?
        I went out of the terminal to get a taxi home.  By the time we
arrived in Jerusalem, the sun was already up.  All looked normal, and as we
approached the road up the hill to Gilo, it was open.  However, we passed
three army tanks being trucked up to the hilltop lookouts overlooking
Bethlehem and Beit Jalla where more disturbances could break out.  The
tanks were being placed in Gilo to help protect our neighborhood from an
advances of the Palestinians.
        This incident was certainly disturbing and points out just how
fragile the situation is in Israel and the Middle East. Events seem to be
changing hourly and it is hard to keep up with the deteriorating situation.

        Where are we at this moment?
        Within hours, at sundown Monday, October 9, the 48-hour deadline
the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave to Yasser Arafat to stop the
violence will be up. Should the Palestinians not stop the violence, Israel
will consider that it has no partner for peace, and the peace process will
be effectively over. Israel will fortify its forces and "put an end to the
violence."  No one is exactly sure what that means.  Barak may also
institute an emergency cabinet and a unity government, which means his
coalition would include the Likud Party and Ariel Sharon.  That would also
signal the end of the peace process, as it has been known.  Sharon is
against a peace process with the Palestinians who he does not consider
peaceful or willing to make genuine peace.  The key word is "genuine"
because everyone, including Sharon is ready for a genuine peace. But, with
the recent actions of the Palestinians, no one in Israel would believe it
sane to give them all that Barak had offered them just prior to the
outbreak of violence.
        Foreign diplomats are racing to the Middle East to try and
forestall a more calamitous outbreak of war.  Many believe that if further
and more confrontational clashes take place, other Arab countries may feel
forced to enter the battle to aid the Palestinians.  The general cry from
the Moslem world is that this needs to be a holy war (a jihad) against
Israel in defense of the Holy Al-Aksa Mosque and Jerusalem. The Hizbollah
terrorist Army, who now control the S. Lebanon border that Israel left in
May, 2000, broke through the fences and kidnapped three Israeli soldiers
over the weekend, and are now demanding a prisoner exchange for 20 of their
prisoners in Israeli jails.  Israel is holding the Lebanese and Syrian
governments responsible and is now massing troops on the northern border.
The scene is getting more tense.
         Back in Israel, the Palestinian leadership being interviewed on
the various news broadcasts each repeat their current mantra that there
cannot be a ceasefire, because the poor Palestinians have no weapons to
stop firing and it is only poor women and children with rocks and bottles
who are fighting to save their homeland from the mean old Jewish soldiers
who are invading their territory.  In reality, the clashes are all at
border posts or positions where Jewish communities or holy sites are
authorized by the Oslo Agreements.  Israel is not taking PA territory, and
is only defending their positions.  Further, the Palestinians are using
weapons, including automatic weapons.  The film footage of the attacks on
Joseph's Tomb show this clearly.  It is also true that Israel has pulled
back from positions in an effort to distance themselves from the
Palestinians.  However, if the Israelis leave all together, then the
Palestinians will pour out of their PA areas, armed against neighboring
Jewish communities, which Israel can't allow to happen in protection of her
citizens.  I, for one, living in Gilo am comforted that the Israel
government is determined to protect my neighborhood from angry mobs.
        It is odd that the Palestinians are rioting and the PA leadership
is declaring that Israel needs to be more forthcoming, that Israel needs to
pull away from Palestinian population centers and give the Palestinians
more liberties.
        Where were they at Camp David II this summer?  Barak offered them
90% of the West Bank and Gaza territory and much of eastern Jerusalem.
Then, just the day before the rioting, Barak offered them a two-capital
solution with eastern Jerusalem being called El-Kuds (the Moslem name for
the city of Jerusalem), and sovereignty over the Temple Mount.  Many in
Israel are asking what more can be offered, since this is more than any
Israeli leader has ever offered and more than many western powers thought
Israel would give.
        Over the weekend, Israel gave up Joseph's Tomb in Nablus (biblical
Shechem) in an effort to calm the situation, and the Palestinians
immediately went in and destroyed the ancient monument, especially the
prayer books and any Hebrew inscriptions.  The Oslo Agreements guaranteed a
Jewish presence at the tomb, yet the Palestinians want anything they are in
control of to be Judenrein (without Jews).
        Shimon Peres, the arch-dove in Israel, was outraged at the
Palestinian destruction of the tomb and said that this proved that the
Palestinians could not be trusted with the proper care of holy sites.  As
expected, the Palestinians are now calling for control of Rachel's Tomb in
Bethlehem and the Cave of Mechpelah and the ouster of Jews in Hebron.  This
is expected, since their outrageous and violent behavior, including the use
of automatic weapons, was seemingly successful in getting the Jews out of
Joseph's Tomb.  Now, watch Bethlehem and Hebron, where they will try to do
this again.  Then, of course, there is the biggest shrine of them all,
Jerusalem.
        Could this be the setting up of the Battle for Jerusalem mentioned
in the Book of Zechariah?
        In Zechariah 12, God makes it clear that in a prophetic day to
come, He would make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all nations.  However,
He warned that any nation that came against His plans for Jerusalem would
be destroyed.  He even warns the nations who come up against Judah and
Jerusalem.  It IS God's plan that Jerusalem be reunited (Luke 21:24), under
Jewish sovereignty, as a sign of the soon coming of the Lord.  It is not
God's plan that Jerusalem be redivided and placed in Moslem hands, and
called by another name, El Kuds.  That is want the Palestinians and world
leaders want.
        Arafat was part of a plan devised by the Arab League back in the
1970s, called the Phased Program, or Stepped Program.  In this plan, it was
determined by the Arab world that they could not beat Israel if it
controlled all of the territory west of the Jordan River.  So, the plan
called for the Palestinian leader to find a way to make some kind of
"peace" arrangement so that the PLO could get a foothold within the
territory west of the Jordan River.  This they have done.  Then, the plan
called for arming the Palestinians in these enclaves.  This, too, they have
done with over 20,000 troops trained, armed and ready to act within the
West Bank and Gaza.  Thirdly, the plan called for them to trigger a
pan-Arab/ Islamic war from the outside so that the Palestinians could be a
Fifth Column on the inside in hopes of destroying Israel once and for all.

        Is this what they are now doing?  Considering that Barak had
offered Arafat more than Oslo called for and he rejected it, what more
could the man want except for the possibility of getting it all.  Is what
we are seeing today part of the implementation of part three of the Phased
Program? If it is, no matter who comes to the region to bring a ceasefire
and a peaceful solution will fail, and that is because the Palestinian
leadership do not want it to succeed. Is the purpose of the Palestinians
calling on the Moslem world to help them defend the Holy Mosque and El-Kuds
(Jerusalem) part of the plan to get the Moslem world to come and fight with
them?  Will the Arab world join Arafat in another major war against Israel?
If Israel is seen as the aggressor, will the International community then
side with Arafat and come to his aide to wrestle Jerusalem from Jewish
hands in an effort to redivide it again, as is suggested in Zechariah 12? 
We have to wait and see.
        On October 8th, the Supreme Council of the Fatah Movement, the
political party of Yasser Arafat, issued their response to the Israeli
ultimatum of peace.  It was published in Al-Hayyat Al-Jadeedah, the PA-s
newspaper and broadcast on Palestinian television. Of its twelve points,
the most significant are:
        1 - The Fatah movements emphasizes the continuation of the Al Quds
Intifada (Uprising) in all of its activities.  The Fatah movement calls for
its brave sons who stand at the front lines in all the disturbances to
continue their great struggle and even to increase it in the course of the
coming days.
        2 - The Fatah movement gives its blessings and support to our
brothers in the security apparatus, security forces and police, who defend
with their blood the souls of their nation.  Blessings and support also to
the guns of Fatah.
        3 - The Fatah movement calls on our public to boycott Israeli
products.  There are substitutes in the Palestinian markets.  Fatah calls
on businessmen to stop the importation of goods from Israel and calls on
advertising agencies not to advertise them.
        4 - The Fatah movement calls on the masses of our nation to prevent

the activity and movement of the joint patrols in areas of the Palestinian
National Authority.  Likewise the movement calls for an end to security
cooperation.
        5 - The Fatah movement calls for the bypass roads to be closed and
that the movement of settlers to be interfered with.
        6 - The Fatah movement blesses and strengthens all the Arab and
Islamic nations in light of their historical position and their protests
everywhere in the world, something that strengthens the struggle of the
Palestinian people.  The movement calls for them to continue and express
their support in the struggle of the Palestinian people. 
        7 - The Fatah movement calls on our masses to respond to the calls
of the national and Islamic forces and organize Intifada activities.  The
movement calls for the strengthening of Palestinian national unity and to
rise above everything that divides.
        8 - The Fatah movement calls for the negotiations to end and to
dedicate attention and coverage to the goal of strengthening the Intifada.
Likewise, the movement declares that it blesses the decision to hold an
Arab summit.
        12 - The Fatah movement calls on the masses of the Palestinian
public and the Arab and Islamic nation to participate in processions of
rage this coming Friday October 13 after Friday services.
        The Fatah movement blesses our nation on the liberation of Joseph's
Tomb, with the assistance of the Fatah fighter, on the way towards the
liberation of the rest of the strongholds and the liberation of the
homeland from its chains.
        This is a revolution until victory...until victory...until victory
        Signed:  Supreme Fatah Movement Council

        Well, as I finish this analysis, the sun is setting and we are all
waiting to see and hear what is to happen next.  Please pray for us and
pray for the peace of Jerusalem.  I am sure I will be sending you more
updates as the days and event progress.
       
Shalom from Jerusalem,
Clarence H. Wagner, Jr.
International Director
Bridges for Peace

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Co-Editors:  Becky Brimmer and Clarence Wagner
Proofreading:  Martha Farmer