Starting Points: Palestinians

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Apr 7, 2010

Palestinians Try a Less Violent Path to Resistance - NYTimes.com

By ETHAN BRONNER

RAMALLAH, West Bank — Senior Palestinian leaders — men who once commanded militias — are joining unarmed protest marches against Israeli policies and are being arrested. Goods produced in Israeli settlements have been burned in public demonstrations. The Palestinian prime minister has entered West Bank areas officially off limits to his authority, to plant trees and declare the land part of a future state.

Something is stirring in the West Bank. With both diplomacy and armed struggle out of favor for having failed to end the Israeli occupation, the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, joined by the business community, is trying to forge a third way: to rouse popular passions while avoiding violence. The idea, as Fatah struggles to revitalize its leadership, is to build a virtual state and body politic through acts of popular resistance.

“It is all about self-empowerment,” said Hasan Abu-Libdeh, the Palestinian economy minister, referring to a campaign to end the purchase of settlers’ goods and the employment of Palestinians by settlers and their industries. “We want ordinary people to feel like stockholders in the process of building a state.”

The new approach still remains small scale while American-led efforts to revive peace talks are stalled. But street interviews showed that people were aware and supportive of its potential to bring pressure on Israel but dubious about its ultimate effectiveness.

Billboards have sprung up as part of a campaign against buying settlers’ goods, featuring a pointed finger and the slogan “Your conscience, your choice.” The Palestinian Ministry of Communications has just banned the sale of Israeli cellphone cards because Israeli signals are relayed from towers inside settlements. Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is spending more time out of his business suits and in neglected villages opening projects related to sewage, electricity and education and calling for “sumud,” or steadfastness.

“Steadfastness must be translated from a slogan to acts and facts on the ground,” he told a crowd late last month in a village called Izbet al-Tabib near the city of Qalqilya, an area where Israel’s separation barrier makes access to land extremely difficult for farmers. Before planting trees, Mr. Fayyad told about 1,000 people gathered to hear him, “This is our real project, to establish our presence on our land and keep our people on it.”

Nonviolence has never caught on here, and Israel’s military says the new approach is hardly nonviolent. But the current set of campaigns is trying to incorporate peaceful pressure in limited ways. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of the Indian independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, just visited Bilin, a Palestinian village with a weekly protest march. Next week, Martin Luther King III is scheduled to speak here at a conference on nonviolence.

On Palm Sunday, the Israeli police arrested 15 Palestinians in Bethlehem who were protesting the difficulty of getting to Jerusalem because of a security closing. Abbas Zaki, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Organization, was arrested, prompting demonstrations the next day. Some Palestinians are also rejecting V.I.P. cards handed out by Israelis allowing them to pass quickly through checkpoints.

Palestinian political analysts say it is too early to assess the prospects of the nonviolent approach. Generally, they say, given the division between Hamas, the rulers of Gaza, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority here, nothing is likely to change without a political shakeup and unified leadership. Still, they say, popular resistance, combined with institution-building and international appeals, is gaining notice among Palestinians.

“Fatah is living through a crisis of vision,” said Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs in Jerusalem. “How can they combine being a liberation movement with being a governing party? This is one way. The idea is to awaken national pride and fulfill the people’s anxiety and passion. Of course, Hamas and armed resistance still remain a real option for many.”

Khalil Shikaki, who runs the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah, said: “The society is split. The public believes that Israel responds to suffering, not to nonviolent resistance. But there is also not much interest in violence now. Our surveys show support for armed resistance at 47 percent in March. In essence, the public feels trapped between failed diplomacy and failed armed struggle.”

Israeli military authorities have not decided how to react. They allow Mr. Fayyad some activity in the areas officially off limits to him, but on occasion they have torn down what he has built. They reject the term nonviolent for the recent demonstrations because the marches usually include stone-throwing and attempts to damage the separation barrier. Troops have responded with stun grenades, rubber bullets, tear gas and arrests. And the military has declared that Bilin will be a closed area every Friday for six months to halt the weekly marches there.

“We respect Salam Fayyad,” one military official said, speaking under the army’s rules of anonymity. “But we don’t want him to engage in incitement. Burning goods is incitement. Destroying the fence is incitement and is not nonviolent. They are walking a thin line.”

One reason a violent uprising remains unlikely for now, Palestinian analysts say, is that in the two years that Mr. Fayyad’s security forces and ministries have been functioning, daily life inside West Bank cities and their surroundings has taken on much greater safety and normality.

The police and the courts are functioning again after the intifada of 2000 that led to many deaths on both sides. Traffic tickets are now routinely handed out. Personal checks, long shunned, are increasingly in use.

Of course, the presence of Israeli forces outside the cities and at checkpoints, the existence of the barrier and continued building inside Israeli settlements send most Palestinians into despair and make them doubt that a sovereign state can be built.

One effort to increase a sense of hope is a new push to ban goods made in the settlements, symbols of occupation. A $2 million project called the Karama National Empowerment Fund, jointly financed by Palestinian businesses and the government, aims to spread the message through ads and public events.

Mr. Abu-Libdeh, the economy minister, said a law was likely to go into effect soon barring the purchase of settlers’ goods, a trade worth at least $200 million a year. Efforts to end Palestinian employment in settlements will not carry penalties, he said, because the government does not offer unemployment insurance and it is unclear whether the 30,000 Palestinians who work in settlements could find new jobs.

Palestinian industrialists have financed the settlers’ goods ban partly because they hope to replace the goods with their own. They do not single out other Israeli goods, which are protected under trade agreements between Israel and the Palestinians.

Mr. Fayyad, the prime minister, a political independent, said his notion was to build the makings of a state by 2011.

“It’s about putting facts on the ground,” he said in an interview. “The occupation is not transitional so we need to make sure our people stick around. If we create services, it gives people a sense of possibility. I feel we are on a path that is very appealing both domestically and internationally. The whole world knows this occupation has to end.”

Mar 1, 2010

Israeli-Palestinian West Bank Success Story Offers Hope

By Joe Klein

Sometimes the prosaic can be breathtaking. I am standing in the new showroom of a company that manufactures plumbing supplies in Hebron, in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. Mansour Izgayer, one of three brothers who own the factory, is giving me a tour of his business and his life. He and his brothers were living in the U.S. when peace seemed to break out in the Middle East after the 1993 Oslo accords. They decided to return home, as did many other members of the Palestinian diaspora. They built their company, Royal Industries & Trading, persistently, even after the prospects for peace shattered in the second intifadeh and it became near impossible to do business in the midst of a war zone, near impossible to move their products through Israeli checkpoints. It still isn't very easy, but the past few years have been much better. A new Palestinian government quietly began to restore order and emphasize economic growth. Israel removed many, but not all, checkpoints. Royal now has 360 employees, new product lines — fireplaces, welcome mats — and a new wing, complete with an assembly hall. It has an on-site mosque and a cafeteria. The Izgayer brothers' story is at the heart of the new optimism and old frustrations that mark the West Bank territory of Palestine. (See TIME's Middle East covers.)

A young woman enters the showroom, walking confidently toward us and smiling. "Very nice to meet you," she says. "I'm new here." She does not shake my hand; she is religious, dressed in a hijab and bulky overcoat. Her name is Samiya abu-Rayyan, and she is a bit of a miracle as well — a graduate of a new program, Education for Employment (EFE), that trains young Palestinians in how to get and keep jobs. She is a graduate of Hebron University, but she was entirely unprepared for the workplace. "I had many interviews, but I didn't know how to introduce myself," she says. EFE taught her everything from how to fill out a job application to how to deal with an angry boss — and how to look someone in the eye and smile, even though that ran counter to the tradition in which she was raised. She learned some business English and marketing as well. After several months of training, she interviewed with a bank and the plumbing company and received offers from both. She chose Royal because the Izgayer brothers offered a religiously conservative working environment and because of the company mosque. (See pictures of 60 years of Israel.)

And here is another odd, but inspiring, thing: Samiya would not have her new skills if it were not for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. On that day, a Jewish American real estate magnate named Ronald Bruder was desperately searching for his daughter, who worked in downtown New York City, near ground zero. His daughter turned up safe, but the shock and panic stirred him. "I started reading and thinking about the Middle East," Bruder told me recently. "And what I came to was this: if people were gainfully employed, maybe they wouldn't be so angry at us." Bruder began to travel the region, asking questions. "It was the Minister of Education in Jordan who told me, 'If you really want to help, what we need is soft skills.' I didn't know what soft skills were," Bruder said. "Now they're my life." In fact, they are the sort of skills that Samiya abu-Rayyan has acquired.

Bruder started EFE's first program in Jordan in 2006, but he quickly expanded to Morocco, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, plus Gaza and the West Bank. EFE's graduates number only in the dozens in the West Bank, but more classes are about to begin in Hebron and Ramallah. "We can expand pretty rapidly," he said, "if there are jobs for the people we graduate."

Watch TIME's video about Mike Huckabee's tour of Israel.

See pictures of heartbreak in the Middle East.

The West Bank GDP grew at around 8% in 2009, although that was an improvement on practically no economic activity at all. "We started from utter lawlessness, virtual disintegration in 2007," says Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian Prime Minister — an economist who graduated from the University of Texas and spent much of his career at the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The Palestinian Authority had been sundered by the Hamas coup in Gaza; Fayyad — a technocrat's technocrat — freely admits that governance in the West Bank had long been marked by corruption and ineptitude. "The only way to gain Palestinian statehood," Fayyad says, "was to start building the institutions of a credible state."

The first job was to regain control of the streets, which were in the hands of criminal gangs and radical militias. With the help of U.S. General Keith Dayton, the Palestinians trained five brigades (2,500 troops) of a new national-security force — with two more in the pipeline — and began training local police. "We started with Nablus, the most lawless city," says Fayyad. "Our policy was zero tolerance. Anyone who committed a crime was an outlaw, regardless of party affiliation." It seems to have worked. Nell Derick Debevoise, an American woman who works with an excellent pre- and after-school program in Nablus called Tomorrow's Youth, told me, "When I first got here, you couldn't walk the streets or go to the Old City. Now you can. In fact, there are some good restaurants opening there." (See the top 10 news stories of 2009.)

Security, Fayyad assumed, was one prerequisite of economic development. Another was transparent governance. "We're firing incompetents and thieves in the government. You can't be taken seriously unless you fire people," Fayyad says. As a result, "we're beginning to see some economic growth. Cement consumption is up 30%." Part of the growth has been funded by aid from the U.S., Europe and the Islamic world, which helps pay the salaries of government workers and funds new infrastructure projects. In 2008, Fayyad held a conference in Bethlehem, looking to begin the next phase — private development — and got some takers, including a Palestinian developer named Bashar Masri who is building an entire new city for 50,000 just outside Ramallah. "We could not have done this without Fayyad's reforms," Masri told me. "I mean, you deal with the police or with bureaucrats. They don't ask for a bribe. That never happened in Palestine before."

But the progress is taking place in the context of repression: the West Bank still has many aspects of a low-security prison. Israel controls the borders, the airspace, the water supply and the electricity. As you drive from Ramallah north to Nablus, illegal Israeli settlements and outposts command the tops of many hills — an infestation that most Palestinians, rightly, consider a continuing invasion of their land. Even the most optimistic Palestinians assume that the real Israeli plan is to wait them out, keep building settlements and force as many Palestinians into the diaspora as they can. Benjamin Netanyahu's recent decision to declare sites in the Arab cities of Hebron and Bethlehem Jewish historical landmarks seemed a provocation intended to cause the sort of mass violence that has destroyed the hopes of responsible Palestinians in the past. Fayyad's progress is as fragile as plate glass; the next rock thrown could shatter it. (See TIME's photo-essay "Life in the West Bank Settlements.")

"We are working hard. In fact, we have met every one of the obligations that we were assigned by the road map," says Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President, referring to the peace process instituted by George W. Bush. Many Israelis, including members of the Netanyahu government, privately agree that the West Bank Palestinians, who had famously kicked away every good chance for peace they were offered, have finally gotten their act together. There has been no significant violence directed at Israel from the West Bank. Even the Hamas-controlled border with Gaza has been quiet. "On the other hand, what have the Israelis done to meet their road-map obligations?" Abbas continues. "What have they done with regard to stopping illegal settlement on our land?"

That is a very good question. Abbas and Fayyad plan to have all the components of a functioning Palestinian state in place in the West Bank by the summer of 2011. At that point, a different question arises — not just for Israel but for the U.S.: What obstacles are there to recognizing a legitimate state of Palestine? What excuses do we have left?

Feb 5, 2010

Jordan: Stop Withdrawing Nationality from Palestinian-Origin Citizens

Authorities Arbitrarily Withdraw Nationality From More Than 2,700; Hundreds of Thousands at Risk

February 1, 2010

Other Material:

Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality

"Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens. Officials are denying entire families the ability to lead normal lives with the sense of security that most citizens of a country take for granted."

Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director

(Amman) - Jordan should stop withdrawing nationality arbitrarily from Jordanians of Palestinian origin, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Authorities stripped more than 2,700 of these Jordanians of their nationality between 2004 and 2008, and the practice continued in 2009, Human Rights Watch said.

The 60-page report, "Stateless Again: Palestinian-Origin Jordanians Deprived of their Nationality", details the arbitrary manner, with no clear basis in law, in which Jordan deprives its citizens who were originally from the West Bank of their nationality, thereby denying them basic citizenship rights such as access to education and health care.

"Jordan is playing politics with the basic rights of thousands of its citizens," said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. "Officials are denying entire families the ability to lead normal lives with the sense of security that most citizens of a country take for granted."

Jordanian officials have defended the practice, as a means to counter any future Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan.

Image by michaelramallah via Flickr

Jordan captured the West Bank in 1949 following the first Arab-Israeli war, and in 1950 extended sovereignty there, granting all residents Jordanian nationality. In 1988, however, King Hussein severed Jordan's legal and administrative ties to the West Bank, relinquishing claims to sovereignty there and withdrawing Jordanian nationality from all Palestinians who resided in the West Bank at the time.

Other Jordanians of West Bank origin, but who were not living in the West Bank at the time, were not affected and kept their Jordanian nationality. Over the last decade and more, though, Jordan has arbitrarily withdrawn its nationality from thousands of these citizens of West Bank origin. Those at particular risk include the quarter of a million Jordanians of Palestinian origin who Kuwait expelled in 1991 and returned to Jordan.

Jordanian officials have withdrawn their nationality ostensibly for failing to possess a valid Israeli-issued residency permit for the West Bank. But this condition for citizenship has no clear basis in Jordanian law. Such permits are notoriously difficult - if not impossible - to obtain given Israel's restrictive policies on granting West Bank residency rights to Palestinians.

Jordanians affected by this policy have learned they had been stripped of their nationality not from any official notice, but during routine procedures such as renewing a passport or driver's license, or registering a marriage or the birth of a child at the Civil Status Department. Withdrawal of nationality appears to be as random as it is arbitrary. In four of the cases Human Rights Watch reviewed, one person's nationality was withdrawn involuntarily, while that of a sibling in identical circumstances was not.

Human Rights Watch found that the Interior Ministry provided no clear procedure to appeal these decisions, and that most of those interviewed feared that recourse to the courts would finalize their loss of nationality.

"High-handed officials are withdrawing nationality in a wholly arbitrary manner," Whitson said. "One day you're Jordanian, and the next you've been stripped of your rights as a citizen in your own country."

Without nationality, individuals and families find it difficult to exercise their citizenship rights, including obtaining health care; finding work; owning property; traveling; and sending their children to public schools and universities. With no other country to turn to, these Jordanians have become stateless Palestinians, in many cases for a second time after 1948.

Accounts

Fadi

"I was born in 1951 in Nablus, and came to the East Bank of Jordan with my mother in 1968, after my father had died. Both my father and I had Jordanian passports. I obtained mine in 1969, when I finished school in Zarqa. That year, I went to Basra in Iraq to attend engineering college, graduating in 1974. In 1974 I went to Kuwait for work.

"In 1969, my mother went back to Nablus in the West Bank and applied to the Israelis for a family unification permit granting residency for me, and received it. Once a year, therefore, I went to the West Bank. In August 1984 I went to the West Bank for the last time. In August 1984 the Israelis changed the rules. Before, you had to renew the permit every year in person.

"Now, you could be absent for at most six years to retain a valid family unification permit [granting legal residency] before it would be canceled. You had to renew it once a year, but this could be done remotely. However, once every six years at least, you had to be physically present in the West Bank. By that calculation, August 1990 was the latest that I had to be present in the West bank to retain validity of my Israeli family unification permit.

"Between 1974 and 1984, the Jordanian embassy in Kuwait routinely renewed my passport. Therefore, I applied for leave from work on August 2, 1990, but Saddam [Hussein, Iraq's president] invaded Kuwait that same day and I couldn't leave. In January 1991 I left for Jordan.

"In late April 2007 I went with two of my children, born in 1990 and 1991, to get their identity documents, which are required in Jordan for those over 16 years of age. The older ones, born in 1983 and 1986 already had theirs. The official told me that I had a yellow [bridge crossing] card from my 1984 visit to the West Bank and that I should go to the Follow-up and Inspection Department. There, I was told that in order not to lose my Jordanian nationality, I had to renew my Israeli permit.

"In 1991 I had sent my permit [tasrih] to the Israelis in the West Bank to have it renewed, but the Israelis rejected this. I have tried through lawyers to get it renewed since 2007. Right now, we are all stateless."

Abbas

"In 1980 I graduated high school and moved from the West Bank to Kuwait. I had an Israeli-issued residency permit [tasrih] that I renewed every year. The last time I renewed it, its validity expired in 1986.

"Two weeks before its expiration, I traveled from Kuwait to Amman and from there to the West Bank. At the crossing bridge, I gave the Israeli soldier my permit, and copies of the previous renewals. A while later, she came back and said, "You did not renew your permit." She had lost the last renewal form. She returned the other ones to me, and sent me back to the East Bank. At the Jordanian crossing, I received a yellow card, for the first time.

"I went back to Kuwait, and in 1990, with the Iraqi invasion, I came back to Jordan. In 2005 my wife renewed her passport, and was sent to the Follow-up and Inspection Department, which sent her to the Ministry of Interior's Legal Department. There, they told her that she had to add our six children to my Israeli permit and that we had to renew it. This is despite her being fully Jordanian. They made me sign an undertaking that I would renew my Israeli permit within six months or pay a fine of 500 dinars. Whether I pay or don't pay, that changes nothing. It is simply fraud. I did not pay.

"In 2007 I received a call from an official at the stock market. He told me I had to go to the Civil Status and Passports Department in the Ministry of Interior and renew my Israeli permit. A parliamentarian went on my behalf, and confirmed that our nationality had been withdrawn from all of us, with the exception of my wife.

"At that point I engaged an Israeli lawyer and paid him US$3,000 to retrieve the identity card and permit stored in Beit Il [the settlement in the West Bank that is the seat of the occupation administration]. He did not manage [to] and asked [for] more money. In the end, I have paid $12,000 with no result.

"I have a Jordanian ID, which expires in 2017. I have a passport that expires at the end of June 2009. After that I will be de facto stateless."

Abbas said he quit his job at a bank just before his passport with his national number expired, explaining that he "can access a better severance package and other benefits," by resigning, while he is still a Jordanian. "I do not want them to find out I lost my national number when my passport expires," he told us.

Abbas provided more details about the differences between Jordanians, foreigners, and stateless persons regarding retirement benefits: If you are Jordanian, and have worked 18 years and are over 45 years of age, you can claim social security benefits. If you are a foreigner, you can take the amount you paid in with you when you leave Jordan. But as a stateless person without a foreign passport and without a Jordanian national number, I can do neither.

Zahra

"My father's been here [in Jordan] forever and we were born here. We never even had a yellow card. Then, last year, suddenly, he was informed when we returned on a flight from the United States that his national number had been withdrawn. We, his children, are adults, but our numbers were also withdrawn nonetheless."

"I am a lawyer, and without [Jordanian nationality] I couldn't practice. To practice, you need to be a member of the lawyers' professional association, and for that you need to be Jordanian."

She said that, although she is a lawyer, her family only considered using connections to restore their nationality: "It was shocking to lose the nationality, but my father is well-connected in the palace," she said. "It took two weeks to return the national number to me through connections."

Dec 16, 2009

Palestinian leaders to extend President Mahmoud Abbas's term indefinitely

Image via Wikipedia

Little hope for deal with Hamas that would allow elections

By Howard Schneider
Wednesday, December 16, 2009; A08

RAMALLAH, WEST BANK -- The Palestine Liberation Organization's ruling Central Council gathered here this week to extend the soon-to-expire term of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a session that promised to say as much about the drift and division in Palestinian politics as about the 74-year-old leader's standing.

Delegates to the roughly 120-member body, representing a collection of political parties, labor unions and other organizations, said that with little hope of elections soon, they will authorize Abbas to stay in office indefinitely. The Hamas movement's control of the Gaza Strip has forced the cancellation of an election set for January, when Abbas's term ends, and little progress has been made toward a reconciliation agreement that would allow the vote to be rescheduled.

Delegates said they also plan to endorse Abbas's policy of refusing to start new peace negotiations with Israel without a comprehensive freeze on the expansion of its settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem -- areas that the Palestinians expect to be part of their future state.

"The Israelis are supporting something we cannot accept, and Abbas cannot retreat," said Nabil Amr, a council member and former Palestinian Authority ambassador to Egypt.

The Central Council meeting will resolve the immediate problem of continuing Palestinian governance -- at least in the West Bank, where the Abbas-led Palestinian Authority holds power. But Hamas, a militant Islamist group, is not part of the PLO, an umbrella organization formed in the 1960s that still serves as an important arbiter of Palestinian interests.

Abbas has said he will not run for reelection, but in an opening address Tuesday he gave no indication that he plans to resign or leave the stage anytime soon. To the contrary, he spelled out again what he feels is needed for negotiations to resume: a halt to Israeli settlement construction and a recognition by Israel that the territory it captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war forms the basis for talks about setting a final border.

"When Israel stops settlement activity for a specific period, and when it recognizes the borders we are calling for, there would be nothing to prevent us from going to negotiations," Abbas said.

There was little new substance in Abbas's remarks, and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has said he worries that the Palestinian leader has made the refusal of new negotiations a "strategic choice."

"There is a real concern now that saying no is a deliberate strategy," said Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev. "They have become rejectionists out of a desire to not be forced to make concessions."

The Israelis have said they are ready to start negotiations without preconditions.

Abbas, who negotiated with previous Israeli governments as settlement construction continued, hardened his stance after the Obama administration pushed for a settlement freeze but was rebuffed by Netanyahu, who would agree only to a partial moratorium.

PLO delegates said the experience of the past few months -- the hopes raised by Barack Obama's election and the frustration over the lack of subsequent progress -- has left them groping for a new strategy.

"Negotiate? What for? For the sake of negotiations?" asked Adnan Garib, one of a handful of Central Council members allowed by Israel to travel to Ramallah from Gaza for the meeting. "We have to have a clear frame of reference" before restarting talks.

Dec 15, 2009

The Palestinians' opposite poles

Image via Wikipedia

Divide between Gaza and West Bank may affect thinking on an independent state

By Howard Schneider
Tuesday, December 15, 2009

JABALYA, GAZA STRIP -- Sami and Tayseer Barakat grew up together in the concrete warrens of this refugee camp in Gaza, but the common thread ends there.

As young adults, Tayseer moved to the West Bank while Sami remained in Gaza. The choices have shaped the brothers' lives, values, prosperity and opportunities, and they have placed the two at very different points in what is now a three-way feud among Israelis and Palestinians.

More than ever before, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank represent opposite poles of a future state of Palestine, each increasingly distinct, adding fresh obstacles to the quest for a two-state solution that envisions Israel and Palestine existing side by side. Gaza has become imbued with a narrow Islamist culture that considers Israel's elimination the ultimate goal; the West Bank, in contrast, has become relatively open and secular, with its government trying to resolve disputes with Israel through politics and diplomacy.

In the process, the two Palestinian territories have grown increasingly antagonistic toward each other.

The notion of a single "Palestine" seems to be receding, for the Barakat brothers and all Palestinians, a process accelerated by Israeli policies that restrict travel into and out of the Gaza Strip and limit its economic growth in a bid to undercut support for the area's ruling Islamist Hamas movement. Gaza and the West Bank are not only run by competing governments but also differ in indicators such as birthrates, population growth, cultural and religious attitudes, and prosperity. What is a two-hour car trip seems like a world away, with travel and other restrictions making it difficult for friends to visit and family members to gather.

Where the West Bank is enjoying renewed economic growth and an emerging sense of possibility, Gaza -- dependent on foreign aid even in the best of times, because of its large refugee population -- has become a place of makeshift jobs, handouts and smuggled goods, still not able or allowed to rebuild after a punishing three-week war with Israel that began last December.

Doubts have deepened about how and whether two places so different can be knit back together. As the different lives being lived by the Barakat brothers suggest, the divergence has a momentum of its own.

In one, an aspiring lot

On a Thursday in the West Bank, men and women gather at Ramallah's Ziryab restaurant for the start of the weekend. They sip beer and smoke in a room decorated with original art and sculpture, much of it made by Tayseer Barakat, the owner and the younger of the Barakat brothers.

There's a new burst of activity in Ramallah, the center of cultural and political life for the West Bank's 2.4 million Palestinians. Construction cranes slice the sky, and bulldozers clear large lots for the next project. There are film festivals and investment companies, new shopping centers and planned communities.

Though the West Bank remains occupied by Israel and suffered years of violence during an intifada, or uprising, this decade, Barakat has seen his horizons gradually open. He arrived here in the mid-1980s after attending art school in Egypt, looking for a livelihood that would leave time to paint and sculpt. After teaching for a few years, he pursued a more independent path, opening a restaurant and redecorating it by hand with a modern and elegant collection of artwork.

Ramallah was the ideal spot. It had a professional class that could afford a night out, returning expatriates who might splurge on a painting and the cultural temperament to let him do what he wanted.

"The situation here -- it is like giving someone an aspirin," said Barakat, 50. "It could change at any time. But compared to Gaza, it is good."

The politics of struggle has been replaced by a more aspirational sensibility. On a recent fall afternoon, Barakat prepared to say goodbye to his son, Odai, 18, who is soon leaving to study at Eastern Mediterranean University in Cyprus.

It's a routine family passage, but it is profound in the Palestinian context. Tayseer Barakat is among the few Gazans allowed by Israel to shift his legal address to the West Bank -- a change in status that, among other things, means predictable access to the world beyond.

Odai hopes to study film and then return to make his contribution to Palestinian society. It has nothing to do with reconquering land, he said, but reflects an idea taking root in the West Bank -- to help put a bandage on old wounds so they can heal and give rise to something new and durable.

"The first film I'll make will be about the Palestinian cause. I'll tell the story," he said, likening his vision to the movie "Braveheart" and its tale of Scotland's rise alongside England. The Scottish leader William Wallace was not trying to destroy the English, Odai pointed out, but was attempting to carve out a place for his people on land of their own.

In the other, a grim lot

In Gaza, Sami Barakat gave his children strict instructions as an uprising against Israel raged through the first years of the decade: Stay away from protest sites such as the Erez crossing into Israel. On an October day in 2000, that advice came undone. Yousef Barakat, then 13, boarded a bus headed to a rally at Erez. Later that day, a rubber bullet hit him in the head.

He survived but lost sight in his right eye. A plaque displayed in the family's living room, sent to Yousef by the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, honors "the blessed intifada, that you enflamed, and gave it your blood, which scents the Palestinian sand."

Yousef, now 22, is studying history at al-Quds University and has no clear sense of what will follow his upcoming graduation. Under the strategy that Israel has employed in Gaza, that lack of opportunity should lead the young man to certain conclusions: reject Hamas, reconcile with the rival government in the West Bank and then with Israel, and see Gaza reopened to the world.

But the incident nine years ago left its mark. If the West Bank branch of the Barakat family views coexistence with Israel as important, the Barakat branch in Gaza is not so sanguine. Although hardly radical and not supportive of violence -- the family members here say they are disenchanted with aspects of Hamas's governance -- the children, in particular, do not envision peace.

"There is no chance to coexist," Yousef said. "Israel does not want peace."

Israel's rules have choked off the economy in Gaza, increasing poverty and despair among its 1.5 million people. In addition, since winning elections two years ago, Hamas has shut down much of the cultural and political life.

The seaside nightspots that began to develop here in the 1980s and 1990s, a more open era, are now limited to ragged tea huts and a handful of hotels and clubs that host international visitors and the well-to-do.

There are no cinemas and little nightlife. Even seemingly nationalist events -- the anniversary of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's death or an annual Palestinian independence day -- are shaped to reflect Hamas's aim of building a "resistance society" hunkered down for a long-haul struggle. That means tough going for anyone trying to build a business.

Sami Barakat, 55, ran a small grocery store near Jabalya before learning the money-changing trade and opening an office. It let him pay the bills and buy a house. But of late, being a money-changer is a losing proposition in an economy with little cash and little commerce with the rest of the world. He now depends on whatever Tayseer Barakat and a brother in the United States can contribute each month.

Nor are things much easier for the one member of the family who sees his future in religion -- what might be considered Gaza's growth industry.

Mohammed Barakat, 23, just graduated from Gaza's Islamic University with a degree in Islamic law and hoped for appointment as an imam at a mosque. He sees himself as a sort of bridge, strict in his observance of Islam's social aspects but against the use of violence against Israel.

But he is not a member of Hamas. As a result, his ideas won't be heard from the pulpit at Friday prayers.

"The problem is that people who rely on their emotions are the majority," he said. "I try to convince them that you should react out of logic. They call me a coward."

Nov 5, 2009

Palestinian President Says He Won’t Seek Re-election - NYTimes.com

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By ETHAN BRONNER and MARK LANDLER

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, warned Thursday that he would not seek re-election in the January elections he called, the latest sign that the Obama administration’s drive to broker Middle East peace talks has fallen into disarray.

There is no immediate prospect of Mr. Abbas’ stepping aside, but his announcement, coming immediately after Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s visit to revive talks between Israel and the Palestinians, illustrated the rising tensions over the Obama administration’s failure to produce an Israeli settlement freeze or any concessions from Arab leaders.

Mrs. Clinton’s visit to the region, which she characterized as a success, sowed anger and confusion among Palestinians and other Arabs after she praised as “unprecedented” Israel’s compromise offer to slow down, but not stop, construction of settlements.

In a televised speech from his headquarters in Ramallah, Mr. Abbas, who replaced Yasir Arafat five years ago as president of the Palestinian Authority, said, “I have told my brethren in the P.L.O. that I have no desire to run in the forthcoming election.” He had spoken with the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization earlier in the day.

Mr. Abbas, considered a moderate, pro-Western leader, had called elections for January, but few expect them to take place then, if at all, because they require reconciliation between Mr. Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas, which rules in Gaza. Hamas said it would prohibit the voting from taking place in Gaza without reconciliation. Until such an election, Mr. Abbas remains in office.

It was nonetheless clear that Israeli-Palestinian talks would not resume any time soon despite intensive American diplomacy. A top aide to Mr. Abbas said a large part of the “despondency and frustration” felt by Mr. Abbas and the entire Palestinian leadership was due to President Obama’s unrealized promises to the region. He said he feared that without a stop to settlements, Islamist rivals in Hamas could triumph and violence could break out.

“There was high expectation when he arrived on the scene,” the aide, Nabil Shaath, who heads the Fatah party’s foreign affairs department, said of Mr. Obama at a briefing. “He said he would work to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, that it would play a major role in improving the American and Western relationship with the Muslim world. Now there is a total retreat, which has destroyed trust instead of building trust.”

Mr. Shaath added that if the United States vetoed sending a United Nations report critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza to the Security Council, “It really is like telling the Palestinians to go back to violence.”

The United Nations General Assembly was debating that report on Thursday, and the administration, backed by a House resolution, does not want it sent to the Security Council. The result of a committee headed by the South African jurist Sir Richard Goldstone, the report accuses both Israel and Hamas of possible war crimes in their war last January, which killed some 1,200 people, nearly all of them Palestinians.

The less Mr. Abbas can show he has obtained from Israel and the United States, the likelier it is that Palestinian voters will turn to Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel and enjoys extensive support from Iran.

In his comments, Mr. Abbas said, “This is not to bargain or maneuver.” But some of his aides saw his announcement as a high-stakes gamble to persuade Mr. Obama to announce a full peace plan aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and creating a Palestinian state.

For all the frustration that the Palestinians and others have over the current Israeli government’s policies — continuing settlement building on land the Palestinians want for their state, refusal to discuss the status of Jerusalem or final borders, or the return of Palestinian refugees to their original homes — Israel is facing a deeply divided Palestinian leadership incapable of agreeing to any deal just now.

The Israelis say that the way forward is threefold and that the tracks should occur simultaneously: Palestinian institution building, economic development in the West Bank and political dialogue between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

The Palestinians say they will not start negotiations anew but want to renew them from where they left off with former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel. Mr. Olmert apparently offered more than 90 percent of the West Bank and some international or shared rule over Jerusalem. The current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has made it clear that Israel would wish to hold on to much more land for security purposes and that Jerusalem is off the table.

“I think he’s reached the conclusion that he’s reached a dead end,” said Qaddoura Fares, another Fatah leader, on Israel Radio, speaking of Mr. Abbas.

Saeb Erekat, chief Palestinian negotiator, said Wednesday at a news conference that perhaps Palestinians should abandon the two-state approach and work toward one shared state with the Jews, something a vast majority of Israelis oppose.

He said Mr. Abbas should maybe “tell his people the truth, that with the continuation of settlement activities the two-state solution is no longer an option.”

In his 30-minute speech on Thursday, Mr. Abbas, who has not groomed a successor or young guard, addressed Israelis directly, saying, “Peace is more important than any political achievement or any government party or coalition if the results push the region toward disaster or the unknown.”

He added, “We were surprised by the United States’ closing its eyes to the Israeli position.” He said achieving a peaceful, two-state solution remained possible but that Israel had to change its policies.

Mr. Abbas’s spokesman, Nabil Abu Rdeineh, said after the speech that the “American administration must force Israel to respect international legitimacy.”

Ethan Bronner reported from Ramallah, and Mark Landler from Washington.

Oct 27, 2009

Prospects for Palestinians Fade as Gaza’s Isolation Grows - NYTimes.com

By ETHAN BRONNER

Published: October 26, 2009

GAZA — The bank executive sits in a suit and tie behind his broad empty desk with plenty of time to talk. Almost no loans are being issued or corporate plans made. The Texas-trained engineer closed his firm because nothing is being built. The business student who dreamed of attending an American university — filling a computer file with meticulous hopes and plans — has stopped dreaming. He goes from school to a part-time job to home, where he joins his merchant father who sits unemployed.

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Hamas members in Gaza set fire to a coffin with pictures of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Many professionals in Gaza reject Hamas's ideology.

Ten months after the Israeli military said it invaded this Palestinian coastal strip to stop the daily rocket fire of its Islamist rulers, there are many ways to measure the misery of Gaza.

Bits of rubble are being cleared, but nothing is going up. Several thousand homes remain destroyed. Several dozen families still live in United Nations tents strung amid their ruined houses. A three-year-old embargo on Hamas imposed by Israel and Egypt keeps nearly all factories shut and supplies away. Eighty percent of the population gets some form of assistance.

But the misery of the educated and professional class has a particular poignancy. Many abroad view Gaza as a large slum, yet there is near universal literacy here and infant mortality is low by regional standards. Midsize glass towers gleam. Many thousands have advanced degrees. Half a dozen stylish restaurants fill each day with young women — a few with heads uncovered — carrying laptop computers, and with the underemployed, who smoke hookahs and lament their future.

“We are entering very dark years,” remarked Slama Bissiso, vice chairman of the Palestinian Bar Association, slowly exhaling scented tobacco smoke on the balcony of the Deira Hotel overlooking the Mediterranean. He said that the embargo on Gaza and the divide between the Hamas government here and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority in the West Bank were driving Gaza into deeper isolation every month.

Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, announced on Friday that elections would be held in January. But it was effectively an announcement that Fatah and Hamas had failed to reconcile their differences despite Egyptian mediation. There will be no election here without the agreement of Hamas, and it has no intention of granting it now. If that means a vote will be held in the West Bank only, the horizons of Gaza will retreat even further.

Hamas’s control of Gaza feels solidly unchallenged. Its security forces patrol the streets. Pictures of President Abbas with big X’s across his face line the main avenue, sadly known as Unity Street. A new sign on the Gaza side of the Israeli border bars even foreigners from bringing in alcohol.

Left out of the banking system, Hamas affiliates opened their own bank recently. In keeping with Muslim strictures, it does not charge interest or offer loans, making money by buying cars or homes the customer wants, then reselling them at a higher price.

Israel allows about 100 trucks a day to pass into Gaza bearing food, medicine and other humanitarian goods. But it has closed off commerce in the hope of alienating the population here from their rulers. That seems to be happening. Yet if no election occurs, it is hard to see how the alienation can be expressed or government changed.

Israel wants to isolate Hamas because the group rejects Israel’s existence. As Ayman Taha, a Hamas movement spokesman, said in an interview, “Our long-term strategy is the liberation of all of Palestine, but we would agree to a temporary solution involving a state in the 1967 borders with a truce of about 10 years, depending on the conditions of the truce.”

Egypt rejects Hamas because of its affiliation with the Cairo-based Muslim Brotherhood. Both Egypt and Israel worry about Iranian arming of the group as well.

The increasing isolation of Gaza is taking its toll. Opportunities for training and education abroad or for outsiders to come here, for example, are scarce. The children’s library in the center of the city could not persuade either Israeli or Egyptian officials to let anyone in to help set up new programs or carry out quality control.

Executives at Jawwal, the Palestinian cellphone company, sat last week at their work stations in blue jeans — as at the end of every work week it was Casual Thursday — and said their jobs were getting harder because spare parts and training were unavailable. Their senior managers, who used to travel abroad once a month, now cannot travel at all.

While 1,100 students admitted to programs abroad did get through the crossing into Egypt over the past few months — and another 50 were granted permission through Israel — more than 800 others who had spots waiting for them were unable to leave, according to Gisha, an Israeli human rights group.

Many of the professionals here reject Hamas’s ideology, although some voted for the party in 2006 out of rage over the corruption in Fatah.

“Hamas won by a slim margin, and it was because of people like me,” said Mohamed, who comes from a Fatah family and works for a charity. “I regret voting for them. I wanted to punish Fatah.”

Like nearly all in Gaza who spoke about politics, he asked that his identity be hidden for fear of what the government might do. The rules of political dissent remain fuzzy.

The Texas-trained engineer also voted for Hamas in 2006 and wishes he had not.

“Israel is saying, ‘Because you elected Hamas, you should have no life,’ ” he said. “Yet people elected Hamas because of Fatah corruption. I believe in peace with Israel, but I wanted desperately to get away from the corruption. I didn’t expect Hamas to win. Next time, I won’t vote at all.”

While the legitimate economy here depends on foreign aid that provides salaries for tens of thousands to do little, the black market for high-priced goods smuggled in from Egypt through hundreds of tunnels is thriving, leading to the growth of a tunnel mafia.

Professionals here are frustrated that their political options are Fatah, which they still consider corrupt, and Hamas, whose ideology poses problems for them and for many foreign governments.

Some said the rejection of Hamas by the world meant it made no sense for it to stay in power, but they had no idea how to effect a change.

“I’d like to see the creation of a political alternative with businesspeople instead of Hamas and Fatah,” said Rami Alagha, 39, manager of the Jawwal cellphone company. “The United States and the Europeans could get behind such a program. Otherwise we have no future.”

Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting.

Oct 15, 2009

Palestinians, in Reversal, Press U.N. Gaza Report - NYTimes.com

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By SHARON OTTERMAN and NEIL MacFARQUHAR

The Palestinian leadership tried to regain lost credibility by pressing forward Wednesday on a United Nations report on the Gaza war at a specially scheduled debate at the United Nations Security Council, saying it would call for a formal endorsement of the report this week in Geneva.

The Security Council debate represented the first major step in the Palestinian effort to reverse its surprise decision two weeks ago to delay action on the report, which found evidence of Israeli war crimes, at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The decision, made under American pressure after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel threatened that advancing the report would end any chance of peace talks, prompted a strong reaction against the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas.

Mr. Abbas is a relatively moderate leader whom the United States and Israel have tried to bolster in the face of popular gains by Hamas, and there was a sense that the pressure on him had backfired.

Riyad al-Maliki, the foreign affairs minister for the Palestinian Authority, told delegates gathered at the Security Council that the Palestinians would seek to “rectify the malfunction that occurred” in Geneva when the Human Rights Council met on Thursday and Friday. He added that Palestinian leaders were hopeful that the 47-member council would “endorse and formally convey the report to the appropriate United Nations agencies, in accordance with the report’s recommendations.”

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Gabriela Shalev, responded by reiterating Israel’s stance that the report was one-sided and biased against Israel. The report, she said, “favors and legitimizes terrorism” and was “destructive to the peace process.” She added: “If Israel is asked to take further risks for peace, the international community must recognize our right to self-defense.” But there was no Israeli comment as harsh as Mr. Netanyahu’s earlier warnings.

The 575-page report, created by a four-member panel led by the South African jurist Richard Goldstone, details evidence of war crimes committed by both the Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in connection with last winter’s fighting, though it reserves its harshest language for Israeli actions. Foremost among its recommendations is that allegations of war crimes by both sides should be referred to the Security Council for possible prosecution at the International Criminal Court in The Hague if credible investigations are not undertaken within six months.

Israeli officials have engaged in extensive diplomatic efforts to discredit the Goldstone report since its release in mid-September. Their efforts intensified this week as it became clear that the Human Rights Council was no longer going to delay until March a decision on whether to formally endorse the report. Facing a furor at home, particularly from Hamas — the militant Islamic group that is the Palestinian Authority’s main rival — Mr. Abbas backtracked on his support for the delay, instructing his ambassador in Geneva to gather enough signatures to have the council reconvene. The council announced the special session on Tuesday.

To shore up support for Israel before the Geneva meeting, Defense Minister Ehud Barak spoke Tuesday night with the foreign minister of France, Bernard Kouchner; the British foreign secretary, David Miliband; and the foreign ministers of Spain and Norway, among other foreign officials. According to a statement released by Mr. Barak’s office on Wednesday, the Israeli minister told the foreign officials that the Goldstone report was “false, distorted, tendentious and encouraged terrorism.”

In Geneva, although the Palestinians mustered the 16 votes needed to call a special session, it was unclear just how strong a majority they could get on a new resolution. An endorsement of the report with a less than significant majority of the Human Rights Council would be considered weak.

Given the record of the Human Rights Council, the chance of a no vote on a resolution appeared slim. But an official in Jerusalem said privately, because of the delicate nature of the diplomacy, that Israel hoped to see “at least a moral victory — to get all the reasonable countries on the right side of the vote.”

Other countries expressed reservations about a resolution for a number of reasons, namely that the Palestinians were reversing course in such a short time span, and that a draft in circulation complicated the issue by adding demands, including that Israel cease excavations around Al Aksa Mosque in Jerusalem and ensure access to the holy site for Palestinian worshipers.

In compromise negotiations that were expected to continue into Thursday at least, the Brazilians offered alternative wording for a potential resolution that would basically keep the Goldstone report within the Human Rights Council for the time being. Under the Brazilian language, the resolution would endorse the findings of the report and the call for both Israel and the Palestinians to conduct investigations into any possible war crimes. But it would stop short of endorsing the recommendation that the matter be referred to the Security Council or even the International Criminal Court if such investigations did not take place.

“We feel that if we escalate this issue it might not be productive for the peace talks,” said Maria N. Farani Azevedo, the Brazilian ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva.

So far, the Palestinians have been reluctant to make changes, which diplomats and human rights organizations attributed in part to their intensive effort to quell the domestic fallout after the previous postponement. As part of that effort, the Security Council agreed last week to move up its monthly debate on the Middle East to Wednesday, from next week, to discuss the report’s findings.

Human Rights Watch said that internal investigations into the accusations were crucial and that the prospect of some international action was most likely needed to spur them.

“We are convinced that without addressing the issues contained in this report there is no solid basis for a peace process,” said Julie de Rivero, the Geneva advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “For us, it would be important that there is a strong endorsement of the findings.”

Official Says Peace Effort Stalled

RAMALLAH, West Bank — The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, said Wednesday that the Obama administration’s efforts to restart an Israeli-Palestinian peace process seemed to be at an impasse and that he feared the Israelis intended to offer the Palestinians “a Mickey Mouse state, if that.”

By that, he meant a state that is “not serious,” according to an aide — one that fell short territorially and in other ways.

Mr. Fayyad said the Palestinians aspired to an “independent, sovereign, viable Palestinian state” in the West Bank and Gaza, with East Jerusalem as its capital. Mr. Fayyad, a respected economist, was speaking to foreign reporters at a news conference in Ramallah.

Sharon Otterman reported from New York, and Neil MacFarquhar from Rome. Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from Jerusalem.

Oct 9, 2009

Israeli Foreign Minister Pours Cold Water on Palestinian Peace Prospects - WSJ.com

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By JOSHUA MITNICK

TEL AVIV -- Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said not to expect a comprehensive peace pact with the Palestinians anytime soon, comments that coincided with a visit by U.S. Mideast envoy George Mitchell, who is pushing for just such a deal.

Mr. Mitchell started a new round of shuttle diplomacy in the region Thursday, aimed at restarting Israeli-Palestinian negotiations toward a permanent peace treaty, a goal that has remained elusive despite months of active U.S. mediation.

Mr. Lieberman is the leader of the ultranationalist Yisrael Beitenu party, the largest partner in the government coalition of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That secured for him the foreign ministry post, but he isn't directly involved in talks with the U.S. to renew peace efforts with the Palestinians.

"Why have [previous Israeli administrations] never achieved a comprehensive agreement? Because apparently it is impossible to achieve," the foreign minister said in an interview with Israel Radio.

A representative for Mr. Netanyahu declined to comment on Mr. Lieberman's remarks.

A Palestinian representative said the foreign minister's comments mean that prospects for peace are "very limited."

"What he said is more consistent with what Israel does, rather than what other [officials] are saying," said Ghassan Khatib, the head of the Palestinian Government Media Center. Mr. Netanyahu has said he is ready to enter negotiations without preconditions.

The comments also coincided with reports of a leaked foreign ministry position paper, commissioned by Mr. Lieberman, that recommends refocusing Israeli efforts away from the Palestinian conflict and reducing the Jewish state's dependence on the U.S.

Yigal Palmor, a ministry spokesman, said Mr. Lieberman commissioned the position paper ahead of a ministrywide re-examination of "the conventional wisdom of Israel's foreign policy."

The position paper, however, "doesn't represent anything except a basis for internal debate," he said. Mr. Palmor declined to discuss the substance of the position paper.

Mr. Lieberman, who has a reputation for blunt diplomacy, argued during the interview that like the ethnically divided island of Cyprus, Israelis and Arabs could learn to live alongside one another without a comprehensive solution to their conflict.

That runs counter to U.S. policy. During a three-way summit with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last month, U.S. President Barack Obama called on the two sides to act with urgency and said a resolution to the decades-long conflict is "absolutely critical" for U.S. interests, as well as the peoples of the region.

Speaking to reporters at a meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres Thursday, Mr. Mitchell said the Obama administration remains "firmly committed" to achieving a regional peace between Israel, the Palestinians and its Arab neighbors that includes a full normalization of ties.