JERUSALEM NEWS
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Jerusalem News-754
Jerusalem News-754
Date 7th April 2008, 2 Nissan 5768
Contents:
1. German News Agency Pays Arabs to Riot
2. Water Usage and Israel
3. Evangelist Hagee
pledges $6 million to Israel
1. German News Agency Pays Arabs to Riot
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/125787
by Ezra HaLevi
Extracts:
(IsraelNN.com) The Arab Mukhtar or elder of Silwan, the notoriously Islamist
neighborhood just to the east of the Old City, says a German news agency pays
Arab youths to riot against City of David excavation.
The City of David (Ir David) organization has purchased several properties in
Silwan, also known as Shiloach due to the Temple-era spring located in the
valley. In addition to the vast archeological and tourist sites currently
located there, excavations are ongoing - though they are often disrupted by
groups of Arabs and left-wing Jews who have claimed that they are disturbing the
lives of local Arabs.
Hussein Siyam, the Mukhtar of Silwan, is the tribal leader of the two largest
clans in the valley to the east of Jerusalem?s Old City. He says that he has
been involved in negotiations with Ir David since the beginning. "Anyone who
tells you that there is new digging going on below the houses is lying," he
said. "The dig existed already and they are just cleaning it out."
He blames two entities for the disturbances. "The Committee for the Protection
of Property in Silwan is a group that gets money from Arab states and the
Palestinian Authority," he said. "And so, it is interested in spending that
money on conflict."
The second source is more nefarious. "A German news company recruits activists
here and gives them money to make problems in order to report on them," he
claimed.
A German journalist, also at the Mukhtar's home, told his colleagues that the
claim seemed a bit "Middle Eastern" to him, but he conceded that local Arabs
were hired by foreign agencies - conceivably able to get the news fastest
because they are involved in producing it.
Siyam says that three Islamist groups are active in his village "Hamas,
Islamic Jihad and Hizb a-Tahrir. Fatah is also involved", he said.
All the groups work against the Mukhtar in many ways, saying his ties with
Israel make him a sell-out. They encourage local Arabs to boycott municipal
elections and point out that the Mukhtar receives his salary from the Israeli
government.
Siyam says he stopped getting paid from the Interior Ministry years ago. He also
laments that the police no longer come to him with communal issues. He admits
that he has little control over the youth however. "Born into Intifada, they
feel they have reached a dead end," he says. He says that peace can be brought
about through dialogue, but the Islamist groups threaten anyone who has anything
to do with "the Jews."
2. Water Usage and Israel
Gov't study: Water usage from natural sources down since 1967
by Zafrir Rinat Haaretz 6 April 2008
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/971903.html
Contrary to established opinion, water consumption from natural sources in
Israel has actually decreased since the Six-Day War, even though the
population more than doubled, a recent study found.
The state Water Authority conducted the study, among other reasons, to
refute a claim made by international water experts that Israel launched the
1967 war to increase its water pumping capacity.
The main factor in the study's findings is the major increase in use of
purified wastewater for agricultural irrigation. Half of the consumption in
recent years has been met also through two large desalination plants.
Despite this, Israel is in a severe crisis because several cycles of draught
years over the past two decades created steep drops in the level of Lake
Kinneret and groundwater reservoirs, even though overall water consumption
did not go up.
According to the Water Authority's data, the annual natural water
consumption for 1967 was 1.4 billion cubic meters. In 2006 it was 1.23
billion cubic meters. The rest, some 600,000 cubic meters, were supplied
through purified wastewater and desalination plants.
"That figure refutes the claim that we started the war to utilize more
water," the official in charge of water issues with the Palestinians and
Jordanians, Baruch Nagar, said.
Nagar is referring to a contention made last month in an interview with
Haaretz by the German hydrogeologist Clemens Messerschmid, who serves as a
consultant on water projects for the Palestinians in the territories: "For
Israel to consume all the water it does, it must keep that water away from
its neighbors and from the people it is occupying - and this is evident in
the Golan, Lebanon, Jordan and the occupied territories."
When the total natural water consumption is divided per capita, it yields
another surprising statistic: Annual consumption in Israel decreased from
508 cubic meters per capita in 1967 to 170 cubic meters today. The latter
figure also reflects changes in agriculture, since household water
consumption rose steadily.
Use of treated wastewater for irrigation also influences the existing
thinking on saving water. At an Israeli Water Association conference last
month, the Water Authority's director, Prof. Uri Shani, said that Israeli
household consumption is "perfectly reasonable." Most household water winds
up being recycled for irrigation, Shani claimed, but this is not the case
with water for public parks and gardens, so that is the area where savings
measures are most in need.
3. Evangelist
Hagee
pledges $6 million to Israel
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3528404,00.html
Rally held by group founded by controversial American Christian leader backs
Israeli sovereignty over entire unified capital while donating millions to
public causes. 'Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would
be tantamount to turning it over to the Taliban,' Hagee says
American evangelist John Hagee on Sunday announced donations of $6 million to a
number of Israeli causes and declared that Israel must remain in control of all
of Jerusalem.
Hagee, who has been in the news lately for his endorsement of US Presidential
candidate John McCain and his criticism of the Catholic Church, brought hundreds
of backers on a solidarity trip to Israel.
Hagee's group, Christians United for Israel, held a colorful rally at
Jerusalem's convention center. The mostly American audience waved Israeli flags
and cheered as Hagee joined keynote speaker Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of
Israel's hardline opposition Likud party, to insist Jerusalem remain united and
under Jewish control.
''Turning part or all of Jerusalem over to the Palestinians would be tantamount
to turning it over to the Taliban,'' Hagee said. Palestinians claim the eastern
part of the city, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the capital of
their future state.
Among the 16 causes Hagee supported with the contributions he announced were
divided the Magen David Adom emergency service and a conference center in the
West Bank Jewish settlement of Ariel.
The fate of Jewish settlements like Ariel is one of the issues at the heart of
the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Support of evangelicals for Israel's
maintaining control of all of the West Bank endears them to Israeli hardliners
but troubles more dovish activists.
''If they're giving money to mainstream causes it's hard to object,'' said
political analyst Yossi Alpher, who edits an Israeli-Arab online newsletter.
But he added, ''When they give money to extreme right-wing causes and when they
direct their political support there, they are damaging the peace process.''
Hagee's statements about Catholicism caused McCain to distance himself last
month. The San Antonio pastor suggested that Catholic anti-Semitism shaped
German Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler, among other comments.
See also:
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/972209.html
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