Israeli diplomatic sources said Sunday that the American delegation was very surprised at the extent of Israeli concessions to the Fatah-controlled "Palestinian Authority" (PA) announced by Defense Minister Ehud Barak. However, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was quick to say that they were not enough, and vowed to monitor Israel's execution of its promises.

The latest Israeli concessions to the PA in Judea and Samaria include permission for construction of two new Arab neighborhoods in the Ramallah area, with a total of 5,000 to 8,000 housing units. In addition, about 50 closed roads will be opened in Samaria, thus enabling vehicular traffic between Jenin, Tulkarm, Kalkilya and Ramallah. The permanent IDF checkpoint in the Rimonim area will be removed.

Barak announced the decisions in the meeting he held with PA "Prime Minister" Salam Fayyad and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Sunday.

Rice Talks Tough About Israeli Compliance
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had some tough words for Israel Sunday regarding the "gestures" Israel has undertaken to carry out in Judea and Samaria.

"We will monitor exactly what the Israelis do and the purpose is to improve the Palestinians' freedom of movement," Rice said. "We want to be much more systematic about what is promised and what is
"We want to be much more systematic about what is promised and what is actually carried out," Rice added.
actually carried out," she added.

American special envoy General William Fraser, Rice explained, will be following Israel's implementation of the Road Map closely "and making sure that the road blocks are indeed removed and that this has an impact on the Palestinians' freedom of movement." Before Fraser arrived, she said, "we did not do this, and we received promises that the Israeli steps would be carried out within a short time. I expect this to happen very soon."

25 APCs, 125 more vehicles
The Israeli concessions also included the following:

1. PA para-military police stations will open in some areas under joint Israeli and PA control.

2. 700 PA police personnel will be deployed in the Jenin area, once they return from training in Jordan. Ultimate security responsibility will remain in Israel's hands.

3. Additional roadblocks and checkpoints in Judea and Samaria are to be removed by mid-May.

4. 25 APC's – out of 50 originally requested – and 125 additional vehicles and pieces of logistical equipment will be delivered to PA/Fatah hands.

5. Various restrictions on the movement of public figures will be eased.

6. Various restrictions on the movement of businessmen will be eased.

7. An additional 5,000 permits will be issued for Arab construction workers in Israel (the current quota is approximately 18,500).

8. The Sha'ar Ephraim Crossing for will be opened for commercial activity on Fridays.
Two new Arab neighborhoods in the Ramallah area. In addition, about 50 dirt roadblocks in Samaria will be removed.

9. Israel will allow the passage of businessmen from Arab countries, the United Kingdom, Turkey, the PA and Israel on a VIP footing (without checks) through Ben-Gurion International Airport, for the Bethlehem Economic Conference for Investors in May. Israeli businessmen will be allowed to enter Bethlehem for the conference. Businessmen attending the conference will be allowed to move in organized groups in Judea and Samaria cities, and into Israel (including Jerusalem and Nazareth).

10. Industrial Zones will be established in Jericho, Hevron (Tarkumiyah) and Mukibla. The Tarkumiya Industrial Zone will receive Turkish financing. Another industrial zone will be established in Jericho for the processing and marketing abroad of PA agricultural produce. Japan and Jordan will be involved in this project.

A statement issued after the talks said that "the parties have completed connection of 27 Palestinian villages in [Judea and Samaria] to the Israeli power grid and, in an unprecedented action, have connected Jericho to the Jordan power grid."

PA will 'work' against terror
The agreements reached in the talks between Rice, Barak and Fayyad include only one commitment by the PA. "For its part, the Palestinian Authority will deploy security forces to provide law and order, and work to prevent terror," the statement issued by the American delegation said.

American officials voiced satisfaction with the Israeli "gestures." However, the sources said, Israel needs to do even more to make the Arabs' lives better.

Rice will meet Jordan's King Abdullah Sunday evening and will meet Prime Minister Olmert again Monday. She will then meet the heads of the Israeli and Arab negotiating teams, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Ahmed Qureia ("Abu Ala").

Opposition chairman Binyamin Netanyahu told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Sunday that a permanent status arrangement with the PA that does not leave the IDF in charge of "large areas" of Judea and Samaria would lead to a Hamas takeover and the creation of additional Iranian bases there.

"We cannot transfer responsibility for security to subcontractors. Security needs to stay in the IDF and the security establishment. The practical way is an economic peace with the Palestinians," Netanyahu said after the meeting.

"If we abandon security to the care of others, we will receive rockets," the Likud chairman said. "We are the ones protecting Abu Mazen, he isn't protecting us."

Lilian Vaknin, a Jewish resident of Yafo (Jaffa), was brutally attacked by an Arab neighbor on Friday during the Arab march marking Land Day. Vaknin has been victimized by her neighbors for years, yet the police are unable or unwilling to help her.

As Arab attacks on Jews become commonplace, meanwhile, a century-old Jewish self-defense organisation, HaShomer, is being born again in the Galilee.

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'He started spitting on me'
"The Arab youth from the Ibrahim family came to my house and slammed the door hard. I was frightened, and then he came to me and started spitting on me. Then the beating began, in all parts of my body. I lost consciousness and what I remember is just his hands that caught my hair and slammed my head into the floor," Lilian Vaknin recounted.

Lilian was taken to the hospital after the attack. Her son, Shimshon, called the police, but the policemen who arrived were unable to locate the attacker and left the scene. 

Shimshon said in an interview to Arutz 7 that the attackers belong to an Arab family of criminals that controls large parts of Yafo and that the police do not want any trouble with. He said someone appears to be making sure that all of the complaints filed against the criminal family are closed without an investigation.

Dozens in 'New HaShomer' Meeting in Galilee
The attack on Lilian Vaknin is just one story in a growing number of Arab attacks on Jews and Jewish property in recent years. The number of Arab Israelis involved in the attacks has grown exponentially. Throughout the Negev in the south and the Galilee in the north, and in mixed Arab-Jewish cities like Haifa, Lod and Yafo, Jewish cars are attacked with rocks, Jewish women are molested, Jewish farmers are terrorized, and police and firemen are attacked.

In response to the wave of agricultural theft and violence, the "New HaShomer" – an organization dedicated to fighting off Arab attacks on agricultural land and pastures – held a meeting in the Galilee Sunday with MK Effie Eitam (NU/NRP) and legendary IDF fighter Meir Har-Tzion in attendance. Most of the participants were IDF elite unit reservists and sons of farmers.

Chaim Dayan, the director of Ambal (the organization of cattle growers for beef) told the gathering that "the residents of Israel and the government must wake up, because the red line has already been crossed… While the IDF defends the country's borders from enemies, the country's land is being taken away from us – and no one is doing anything about it, including the government, which rejected the Pasture Law this week and is postponing the discussion of the Dromi Law."

MK Effie Eitam said that 20 MKs have organized a lobby for protection of state lands. "The cattle farmers, who defend the national lands, are not sufficiently protected by the government," he said. He hailed the gathering as a sign of a renewed awakening of the Zionist spirit of the original HaShomer guard group.

The original HaShomer was founded in Kfar Tavor in 1909. It marked the first time that Jews began to guard their communities in an organized fashion. Prior to HaShomer's founding, Arabs were employed as guards. The Jewish HaShomer guards formed the nucleus for the the Hagana.

Large army and police forces and hundreds of youth are facing off in Samaria over an attempt to destroy meter-high supports on which caravans - mobile homes without wheels - are placed.

"A shame and a disgrace for the Nation of Israel," said Gershon Mesika, the mayor of the Samaria Regional Council from the site, in the community of Har Brachah. "You look down over the valley here and see thousands of illegal Arab homes - and yet the police come to this site en masse in order to destroy a few little supports.  It's hard to believe."

The supports for the caravans were placed there five years ago, and no caravans have been placed upon them.  "Despite this," Mesika suggested, "the government has decided that it has to show the Americans, and visiting Condoleeza Rice, that it is doing something against the settlements.  But the fact that hundreds of youths are here - and more are coming up by foot from all around, since the army closed the roads - will show them that our long-time promises to the Land of Israel, take precedence over the government's promises to the Americans."

Nation Must Wake Up
Mesika said that the nation must "wake up" to oppose these "Oslo leaders who have brought upon us problem after problem."  He said that just like in the times of the Maccabees, "when one specific event [the refusal by Mattathias and his sons to the Syrian-Greek demand for idol-worship in the town of Modiin] kicked off an entire national uprising, perhaps this will be the incident that will awaken the nation today."

Hollow Rule of Law
Rabbi Yaakov Idels, a resident of Brachah, told Arutz-7 that today's clash shows the hollowness of Israel's rule of law. "It's not that this property belongs to Arabs or something like that.  This area has the same status of the rest of our community, and of almost all the towns in Yesha when they began, and even of some towns in the rest of Israel - namely, that the plans have simply not yet been formally approved.  This is the same way that much of Israel was built!"

The neighborhood in question is also in between two other built-up neighborhoods in the town of Brachah, Idels noted.

"When the law is selectively enforced," Rabbi Idels said, "as in this case, it voids the rule of law of genuine legitimacy.  The purpose of zoning laws is to prevent totally chaotic construction, which in the end would harm the public interest.  For instance, not far from here in the Arab village of Hawara, they built illegally all along the main road, and now the residents suffer.  But in our case, as in many cases in Israel throughout the years, the towns plan it out, and the Housing Ministry subsidizes and is in on the planning, and things are done in an organized manner.  To destroy something like this is simply an abuse of the law for political means."

In other news regarding the government's policy of opposition to the Yesha settlement enterprise:
The government's Voice of Israel Radio reported today that five unauthorized settlement outpost neighborhoods are to be destroyed by the government in the coming days. 

In addition, the army's plans to destroy the last remaining tent on a hilltop outside Tapuach were rendered irrelevant when arsonists destroyed it instead.  Around 3 AM Monday morning, it is suspected that Arabs threw gas firebombs into the tent, setting it afire.  The tent had previously housed a Torah study-hall, dormitory and dining hall for a unique yeshiva in which the students also trained dogs for security purposes.  The students emptied the tent of its contents over the past few days in preparation for the upcoming eviction.

In what may be yet another concession due to the visit of United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the opening of the E-1 region Jewish police station in the area between Jerusalem and Maaleh Adumim was delayed at the last minute.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter announced the government’s decision to postpone the police station's opening on Sunday. The opening was scheduled for the next day.

Dichter downplayed the decision, claiming it did not stem from Rice’s presence in the region. The US is known to oppose Jewish building that would complete the contiguous Jewish presence around Jerusalem.

E-1, also known as Mevasseret Adumim, is a 4.6 square mile section of state-owned land, east of Jerusalem, connecting the large town of Maaleh Adumim with the capital. It is bordered by the French Hill neighborhood of Jerusalem to the west, Abu Dis to the southwest, Kedar to the south, Ma'ale Adumim to the east, and Almon to the north.

Police will begin using the police station nonetheless, Arutz-7 has learned. “The Judea and Samaria police will for sure operate from the building,” Dichter said. “[The delay] has nothing to do with any diplomatic issues.”

What has been cancelled is a festive celebration of the station’s opening. And although the station will begin to be used, plans to build 3,500 housing units in the E-1 area remain frozen by the Olmert government.

New research shows why the nationalist camp in Israel sometimes acts to topple its own right-wing governments: Because right-wing governments are bad for the right-wing.

The findings are to be presented on Monday at a Tel Aviv University gathering entitled, "40 Years of Israeli Control Over the Territories: The Effect on the State of Israel."

Professors Gideon Doron of Tel Aviv University's Political Science Department and Dr. Maoz Rosental of the Open University will present their findings regarding right-wing governments.  They say that the right-wing parties of the past 25 years - Tchiyah, Kach, Moledet, National Union - have not had a significant influence on national politics.  These parties, they say, have not had great success in shifting government policy towards their own preferences - mainly, the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria (Yesha).

The research notes that the parties were most successful when they actually helped topple right-wing governments - specifically, the Yitzchak Shamir government in 1992, and Binyamin Netanyahu's government in 1999. 

As to why the right-wing toppled its own governments - a question often asked in despair by many in the nationalist camp - Doron and Rosental explain that essentially, right-wing governments are more "dangerous" to the residents of Yesha than left-wing coalitions.  This is because the former have the political capital to actually execute withdrawals, while the left, generally, does not. 

This is why, when Shamir appeared headed for an agreement in Madrid and Netanyahu was headed for one at Wye Plantation, their right-wing coalition partners took active steps to topple them.  In both cases, control was subsequently given over to left-wing governments, which were unable to continue the process begun by their predecessors.
 
The researchers determine that government policy towards Yesha is, in general, not affected by political pressures from the residents.  Instead, they say, policy is rather based on the security conception that a withdrawal is not necessarily good for Israel, and that the status quo is therefore considered an acceptable situation.

Shock waves are rushing through the yeshiva world as the news spreads: a dean of one of the leading Torah institutions of Israel is gone.

Rabbi Elya Boruch Finkel, one of the heads of the Mir Yeshiva, passed away suddenly after suffering a massive heart attack Monday morning in Jerusalem.

The rabbi, age 60, led and taught in one of the most prominent and oldest yeshivas in Israel, Mir Yerushalayim.  “The Mir,” as it is known, is also considered the largest yeshiva in the world, with some 5,000 post-high school students studying Torah, including married rabbinical students.

Rabbi Finkel was known to have always been intimately involved with his students.

“He was a paradigm of care and kindness and truth,” said one woman in the Mir community. “Individuals would come to him for advice and he knew what was going on in their lives – we’re talking about a man who directed a yeshiva with thousands of students, remember,” she added.

Rabbi Finkel held councils in his home on a regular basis for the older boys so they could discuss various personal issues with him as well.

"The loss is incalculable," said a local kollel student at another Jerusalem yeshiva.

The old-fashioned children’s illness measles, not often seen in western nations where immunizations are standard procedure, has somehow managed to make its way back to Israel nevertheless.

An outbreak of the virus has hit the country and is spreading rapidly at a rate of six new cases a day, according to the Health Ministry. It is not an epidemic, but the trend, which began this time with a young passenger on an El Al flight from New York City at the beginning of March, is troubling.

Passengers on an Egged bus from Ramat Beit Shemesh a day later were also exposed. Health Ministry officials immediately asked passengers on either conveyance who had not been vaccinated for measles to visit the nearest ministry office and receive a vaccine.

Infants are generally protected from the virus for six to eight months after birth due to general immunity passed on from the mother. Afterwards, most children in developed nations receive a vaccine known as the MMR – the measles-mumps-rubella immunization, given at 12 to 15 months, and then at 4-to-6 years of age, with certain medical exceptions.

But, many families are refusing to vaccinate their children, fearing neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and Asperger’s Syndrome.

There has been some research linking one of the components in the vaccine to the development of such conditions in a small percent of the population, and many parents don’t want to risk the chance, particularly those with a family history of developmental disorders.
 
The controversy over this issue has raged between parents who argue that a possible chance of developing a passing childhood illness does not outweigh the risk of developing a lifelong crippling development disorder, and public health officials who fear a full-scale epidemic.

An Old Virus Revived in Israel
Doctors reported this past Sunday that a patient admitted to Dana Children’s Hospital in Tel Aviv Saturday night was diagnosed with measles. Those who were in the hospital at the time have been asked to report to the Health Ministry and receive a booster shot if necessary.

A 39-year-old woman from central Israel was diagnosed with measles a week ago at Ichilov Hospital. Doctors have asked anyone who was in Ichilov's emergency room on March 24, 25 or 27 to go to their nearest Health Ministry office to find out whether they need an immunization or booster shot.

A student at Hebrew University in Jerusalem was diagnosed at the beginning of the month, leading campus authorities to warn all students who were not vaccinated to contact Health Ministry officials. The student who was diagnosed learns in the Department of International Relations.

A doctor at Hadassah Ein Kerem Medical Center in Jerusalem and a nurse attending a conference in Eilat were also both diagnosed with the virus. Both are employees of the Health Ministry. A source in the ministry reported that the doctor in question had not been properly vaccinated for measles, despite hospital protocol. He apparently had caught the virus from a patient, said the source.

There were fears that the two carried the virus into the emergency room with them when they returned to work on March 16.  Ministry officials again asked the public to report to their nearest offices if they had been in the hospital’s emergency room on that date and had not been vaccinated for measles.

Two weeks ago, the ministry announced it would speed up a program to vaccinate thousands of its workers against the virus. Officials explained that while all Health Ministry workers had been told that vaccines were recommended, some apparently had chosen not to accept the injections.

According to Health Ministry officials, approximately 900 cases of the illness have been reported since last August, 747 in the Jerusalem region alone.

Not Something to Ignore 
While measles is rarely fatal in healthy children, it is highly contagious and can kill. People living in the same household with someone who is sick with measles, and who have not been immunized, have a 90-percent chance of contracting the illness, according to KidsHealth.org site

In 2006, 242,000 children died of the disease worldwide, according to MedicineNet.

It is a virus that in most people produces fever, a rash lasting more than three days, cough, runny nose and red eyes. Complications can include pneumonia and a brain inflammation known as encephalitis.

Rubella, known as German measles, is rarely fatal but does cause birth defects. It can also cause miscarriage and fetal death.

Measles can cause complications when contracted by adults.  It can also be dangerous for people with weak immune systems, such as the elderly, the very young, those with chronic conditions or who are hospitalized with other illnesses, and people who are taking certain medications.

The World Health Organization reported three years ago that the number of deaths by measles and its close cousin, rubella – also known as German measles – had dropped 40 percent due to a United Nations immunization program in developing countries.

More than 150 million children had been vaccinated against the virus in the prior five years in order to reach that benchmark. Despite the achievement, however, a half-million children still die from the virus each year.

Measles Can Be, and Was Fatal in Jerusalem
In August 2004, a seven-year-old Jerusalem boy died of measles. It was later learned that his parents had not vaccinated him, or his siblings against the virus.

After the little boy was hospitalized with complications of pneumonia, his two sisters developed symptoms of the illness and were quickly given the vaccination. They were treated at home and survived.

During that outbreak, some 53 children in one religious-Hassidic community in Jerusalem fell sick with the virus. The rabbis of the community cooperated fully in calling on its members to vaccinate their children against measles.

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