Tel Aviv Rooftop

see titles of pics at the end The Bush visit is now behind us and the local pundits are stressing that following the schmaltzy welcome, the sterile areas, the hugs and kisses and the grand and empty proclamations, it's time to get back to the gritty reality. Israel's guru of journalism Nahum Barnea ( Yedioth Aharonoth ) wrote on Friday that two practical outcomes are likely to emerge from the visit. First, the Israeli leadership received an explicit or implicit message that the US administration would back an Israeli military operation in Gaza (the qassams that fell on the western Negev during the visit also made an impression on Dubbya ). Second, out of the 100 or so unauthorised outposts that need to be evacuated, Olmert will evacuate one that appears at the top of the Americans' list - Migron , near Ramallah . Neither of these actions are likely to help Mahmoud Abbas sufficiently to shake off his image of a weak leader, unable to evince enough concessions ...

To see the film click the link below. While we were enjoying the sacred peace and quiet of Yom Kippur , devoting the day to reading, contemplation and wandering the empty streets, unbeknown to us, a drama was playing itself out just a few hundred metres away from the rooftop. It turns out that the security forces closed in on an apartment in Rehov Piagotto , just up the road, where they discovered a suicide bomb belt that was supposed to be used over the chagim . The apartment was occupied by illegal Palestinian workers who put up a fight and were arrested. The Shin Bet got the intelligence from Hamas militants captured in an operation in a refugee camp near Nablus which too its own toll in lives, including one Israeli soldier and several innocent Palestinians alongside the terrorists. As is often the case, foiled the terrorist attack was a consequence of Palestinian in-fighting. Apparently the Gaza branch is seeking a cease-fire with Israel while the Damascus leadershi...

I've been having some serious technical problems which have kept me off-line for a while. Also been busy with a roller-coaster of family celebrations, and departures. It's good to be back. Being technically obstructed from posting this blog was surprisingly frustrating. Now that the technology is is so simple, I'm as hooked on it as everyone else. Another technological marvel, produced the photo above which I used to illustrate my very first blog. A few months ago I submitted it to a photo contest on theme of tmunot yafo t (beautiful pictures of Yaffo ) and a few days was awarded an honorable mention and dinner for 2 at a fancy Yaffo restaurant! The contest was sponsored by Harova (The Quarter) a company marketing a new residential complex in Yaffo but the judges included some of Israel's leading photographers. You saw it here first! See all the photos here . Click to enlarge. While banished from my small virtual world I wrote something that I'll post here...

Those of you who know me know that I don't normally rant about the bias of foreign media when it comes to reporting the Middle East but there's something about the way the Sderot -Gaza crisis is being reported that is infuriating. This is a photo of a burning car that was hit by a qassam missile today in Sderot . One woman was killed there today and another suffered medium injuries. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/861946.html Sderot , a town of some 20,000 people, has been under intensive rocket attacks from the northern Gaza Strip for 7 days now. The Sderot area has been hit by 150 rockets in the space of a week. It has suffered from sporadic salvos for 7 years. The government has just promised to provide security rooms in all homes but it's too late; the local residents have had enough. Thousands have either fled or have been evacuated for 'rest and recreation' and those who stayed behind live in constant fear. Near Sderot , on kibbutz Nir Am, a group o...

These posters of slightly distorted photos of faces pasted onto a shop window in Herzl St are part of a peace project called face2face. The woman above is a lawyer from Tel Aviv and the man below is a lawyer from Bethlehem. The idea was to take Israelis and Palestinian doing the same job and portray them in sets of two to show how similar we are. This brainwave came after the (French ?) initiators JR and Marco travelled around Israel/Palestine for a whole week(!) and stumbled across a great secret: "After a week, we had a conclusion with the same words: these people look the same; they speak almost the same language, like twin brothers raised in different families.A religious covered woman has her twin sister on the other side. A farmer, a taxi driver, a teacher, has his twin brother in front of him. And he is endlessly fighting with him.It's obvious, but they don't see that.We must put them face to face. They will realize." Oh JR and Marco, if only it were that sim...