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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Olmert gives Putin land for peace |
| 2008-09-05 |
| Amusing... Last month it took two tank divisions and a diversion of Olympian proportions for Vladimir Putin to subdue Georgia's fledgling democracy and seize two of its territorial regions. This month we may see Russia's new emperor claiming a prime slice of downtown Jerusalem for the KGB without even firing a shot. I refer to a shady transfer to Putin of what is known as the Russian Compound - a 17-acre site between Jaffa and Hanevi'im roads, close to the Old City walls. According to a Foreign Ministry letter that has come into this writer's possession, the deal was agreed on between the two governments on December 12, 2007. The transaction could not be completed, however, until the land was transferred from Israel's Custodian General of land and property to the government itself. According to the same Ministry letter, this final clearance was ratified by a Jerusalem court on August 27. Like so many other concessions on outposts and the security fence, this is yet another surrender concocted between the executive and the judiciary, without any parliamentary involvement or oversight. According to the Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish state's judiciary is the most activist in the democratic world and dominates the elected branches of government, the legislative and the executive. The ultimate check on the judicial branch of government is the power of appointing judges, which is retained by the elected branches of government in the overwhelming majority of democracies. This enables the people's representatives to ensure that no judges with extreme views (including extreme views of their own political prerogatives) are appointed. In Israel, such a check is nonexistent. Judges in Israel are appointed by a small committee controlled by the judges of the Supreme Court and their close allies in the Israeli bar. The process is secretive and subject to manipulation and abuse. It has led to the domination of the court by judges with strongly liberal views who have succeeded in alienating large segments of Israel's population. Given Russia's close association with Iran and Syria, the prospect of its establishing an enclave in the heart of the Jewish capital is daunting indeed. It conjures up images of Arab terrorists fleeing into the compound and Israeli security personnel unable to pursue them without precipitating an international crisis. In many respects it would be tantamount to inviting a Russian spy ship to permanently dock right in the middle of an Israeli naval base. The Russian Compound's commanding position made it the perfect staging ground for numerous conquests of Jerusalem from the Assyrians to Titus's Roman legions. From a Turkish cavalry parade ground in the Ottoman period it was developed in 1860 by the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society to cater for large numbers of Russian pilgrims to the holy city. Dubbed "New Jerusalem" by the Turks, the compound's early buildings included a church, hostel, hospice and a consulate. In 1890, half of the site was redeveloped by Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich as a palatial guesthouse for visiting Russian aristocrats. Later requisitioned by the British forces during the period of the Mandate, the compound was nicknamed "Bevingrad" by the Jewish underground, after the hated British Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, and was seen as a symbol of British oppression in Palestine. In 1947, two brave fighters, Meir Feinstein and Moshe Barazani, blew themselves up in the compound's jail on the night before their execution, using a hand grenade that had been smuggled into the cell. Israel purchased the compound in 1964 (excluding only some church buildings) from the Russian Orthodox Patriarch for $3.5 million. Due to lack of hard currency, the price was paid in an equal value of citrus exports. Since the date of this so-called Orange Deal, the site has been used to accommodate various government offices and the Sergei Building has been home to the Jerusalem Magistrates Court. During his state visit to Israel in 2005, Vladimir Putin paid a private visit to the compound and the magnificent Sergei Building is said to have "captured his heart." He declared his intention to get it back for Russia. Much has changed in the three years since that backslapping state visit. While Putin has not stopped pushing the legal process for the return of the site, he has said lots of kind words about his concern for Israel, which he insists is a good friend of the Russian people. Sadly, his actions over these past three years have exposed him as an enemy of Israel and, more recently, a threat to the free world. Not content with supplying Iran's mullahs with all they need to accomplish Ahmadinejad's wish to "wipe Israel off the map," Putin is supplying them with his most advanced Iskander missiles, which will make it even more difficult for Israel to neutralize this existential nuclear threat. Closer to hand, Putin has been arming the Syrian dictator with advanced missiles and looks to be creating a base for his nuclear warships in Syrian ports not far north of Haifa. In many ways, Putin's actions are little different from those of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. They both make public claims to be friends of Israel while doing everything possible to weaken and destroy the Jewish state. But Olmert deals with both these men the way he deals with all members of the axis of evil. "Give them some land" is his strategy - without asking for anything in return. This is the prime minister who boldly told fraud investigators that American whistleblower Morris Talansky gave him all that cash without expecting anything in return. The police were incredulous. But to anyone who has seen Olmert handing Israel's enemies land, prisoners, rifles, bullets and jeeps for nothing in return, why should this come as a surprise? It's his tried and trusted business model. Probably the most galling aspect of Olmert's discredited leadership is how he and his colleagues presume to carve up and surrender parts of Eretz Yisrael as if it were theirs to give. To keep Shas in the coalition they continue to deny what every Israeli knows for a fact: that half of Jerusalem has already been offered to Abbas. In Turkey, Olmert's lawyers have put the entire Golan Heights on the table. And then there is the backdrop discussion of 1967 borders and returning refugees, both of which topics seem lately to have changed from red lines to amber lights. The '67 borders issue becomes more significant the more one delves into this new Russian interest in the Holy Land. In a recent article in the Jerusalem Post, Ksenia Svetlova reported that the Russian Accounts Chamber (government audit office) published the following announcement on its website in June: "The PNA [Palestinian National Authority] has passed to Russian authorities three land lots in Jericho during a special ceremony which took place at the premises of the Accounts Chamber of the Russian Federation in Moscow. The head of the Imperator Pravoslav Palestinian Society, Sergei Stepashin, assured that the restored property included three lots: a 12,000 sq.m. one and another two located in the area called al-Moskobiya [Moscow lands] in the city." Svetlova further quoted an earlier Russian news agency report in April 2008 announcing that during Abbas's visit to Moscow, he agreed to transfer to the Russian government land in Bethlehem in addition to 35,000 sq.m. worth of property on the Mount of Olives and in Jericho. It's clear that whatever agreements Olmert and his foreign minister are hiding from their own coalition partners and the citizens of Israel, they are already taken for granted by Abbas, to the extent that he is gifting the Russians territory he has not yet received. One of the few Knesset members wise to what is afoot is Likud's Yuli Edelstein, who has pressed for a meeting of the Defense and Foreign Relations Committee in the coming week on the subject of the compound sale. Born in the Ukraine, Edelstein was a prisoner of conscience and jailed by the Soviets for applying to emigrate to Israel. Together with Natan Sharansky, he formed the Yisrael B'Aliyah party which took seven seats in the 1996 Knesset elections and later merged with Likud. "This deal was first mentioned to me quite casually by a lawyer working in the Knesset," Edelstein said over coffee in Jerusalem last Friday. "It was so absurd that I really didn't take it seriously. But I agreed to submit a sha-ilta (member's question) and was astonished to receive confirmation of the intended transfer." He said the Ministry said nothing about what was expected from the Russian government in return for the property. "We could have asked for a thousand different things," says Edelstein. "We could have said: 'You want a presence in this place? Make it official put up your flag and move your embassy here.' We could have asked for the restoration of pension payments to one million émigrés from Russia." There are countless options, but by the government's silence it seems to Edelstein that Israel is getting absolutely nothing in return. Beyond the loss of this strategic site to the Russian government, he worries about the precedent that would be set. "Next thing we will have the Greeks reclaiming the land on which the Knesset itself and the president's residence are standing. Where will it all end?" In justifying the government's actions, the Foreign Ministry argues that the compound never was Israeli property in the first place and that the Custodian General was, at all times, holding the property in trust for its original Russian owners. But this seems to ignore two important facts: First, the $3.5 million paid out by Israel in the sixties, whether in cash or oranges. Second, that the "original Russian owners" are neither Putin nor the Russian government. The prevailing Ottoman law prevented such property being owned by a foreign state. As Sergei Alexandrovich commissioned the project with private funds, the only relevant beneficiary of the Custodian's trust has to be the duke's family. It can only be hoped that exposure of this disturbing story will cause Jews, both inside and outside Israel, to use whatever communal or logistical influence they can to bring pressure on the government in Jerusalem to cancel this private agreement, or at the very least to submit the proposals to a full vote in the Knesset. Israel is small enough for individuals to make a real difference. |
| Posted by:Zhang Fei |
| #1 TL, gave up on reading this though According to the Israel Policy Forum, the Jewish state's judiciary is the most activist in the democratic world and dominates the elected branches of government, the legislative and the executive. Is not surprising coming from the Jewish Press. In case you dont know, its a solidly Orthodox paper, and very hawkish on anything to do with Israel, and leans toward that element within Orthodoxy that is bitter about the Supreme Court of Israel and its interventions on behalf of human rights and for seperation of synagogue and state. |
| Posted by: liberalhawk 2008-09-05 15:01 |