Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Howard Dean is smarting from e-mails that distort his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and he has suggested that President Bush’s right-hand man is behind the e-mail campaign.

Speaking Monday to the Pacific Council on International Policy, a leadership forum in Los Angeles, Dean said he believed Karl Rove, the White House’s senior political adviser, is behind an e-mail campaign that has flooded inboxes of American Jews across the country.

The White House referred calls about Rove’s alleged involvement in the e-mail campaign to the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign. Scott Stanzel, a campaign spokesman, said the campaign does not respond to comments by the Democratic contenders.

The message in the e-mails is that Dean wants an “even-handed” policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Many Jews consider that a way of saying that the United States should be less supportive of Israel.

“I’ve discovered that ‘even-handedly’ is a code word to certain people who think that is being unfair, and I don’t want to ever repeat that word again,” Dean said in the question-and-answer session after the speech in which he outlined his vision for foreign affairs and national security. “It is now making its way around the Internet in an unsigned piece of literature, undoubtedly from one of my worthy opponents, perhaps Karl Rove.”

The campaign later said Dean made the comments in a light-hearted exchange with a questioner, who wanted to know how he would deal more even-handedly with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Matthew Dorf, Dean’s liaison to the Jewish community, noted that the audience broke into laughter after Dean said it. However, Dorf reiterated Dean’s comment that the e-mails are politically motivated.

“It’s clearly the work of political opponents and not true friends of Israel,” he said.

The comments came as Dean announced a slew of foreign policy advisers, including one who has drawn some criticism from the American Jewish community.

Claude Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, will advise Dean on globalization and international economics.

Prestowitz is the author of “Rogue Nation: American Unilateralism and the Failure of Good Intentions,” in which he says that U.S. aid to Israel should be made conditional on Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a freeze on settlement development and the uprooting of most settlements.

Prestowitz told JTA on Tuesday that he has not discussed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or U.S. support for Israel with the Dean campaign, and that he has assisted several campaigns, though he refused to say which ones.

He said he would not offer his views on Israel “unless I’m asked.”

Steve Grossman, national co-chairman of Dean for America and a former president of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, said Prestowitz is one of a number of advisers with whom Dean has consulted, and that Dean does not believe aid to Israel should be conditional on Israeli action.

Prestowitz’s views on Israel are “180 degrees opposite Howard Dean’s own beliefs,” Grossman said.

But, he added, “If we dismissed any potential adviser because their writing did not conform 100 percent to the candidate’s views, we wouldn’t have many advisers.”

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said people will be looking at the advisers Dean surrounds himself with since the candidate himself lacks foreign policy experience — and people are concerned about Prestowitz.

“His views certainly seem to be problematic,” Hoenlein said. “It certainly doesn’t send a positive signal.”

Meanwhile, the e-mails, which have been widely circulated in the past few weeks, highlight comments Dean made in September, when he said it was not in America’s interest to “take sides” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“Howard Dean promised that if he is elected president, the United States will no longer support Israel the way it has in the past under both Democratic and Republican presidents,” one of the e-mails says. “In his own words, he will insist that the United States be ‘even handed.’ ”

The e-mail also makes reference to other Dean comments and says, “I urge you that if you have any love for America and Israel you should not and cannot vote for Howard Dean for the office of president.”

Dean has since spent a great deal of time and energy clarifying his views. He has said that he meant that Bush, by downgrading U.S. involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict early on in his administration, had abandoned the role of honest broker.

Dean also has emphasized his support for Israel. He said in his speech Monday that he believed the U.S. alliance with Israel “will always be and must remain unshakeable, and so will be my commitment, every day of my administration, to work with the parties for a solution that ends decades of blood and tears.”

Other Democratic candidates have chastised Dean for being insensitive, at the very least, for using a term like “taking sides.”

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who has been heavily courting the American Jewish community for support, has been especially critical.

The Internet campaign against Dean has made waves in the American Jewish community, and it remains unclear how prominently the e-mails and Dean’s initial comments about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will affect Jewish support for the former Vermont governor.

On its Web site, the Anti-Defamation League called the e-mail campaign against Dean “malicious, misleading and factually inaccurate.”

“In response to concerns about his September speech, Gov. Dean has assured the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish organizations of his support for the State of Israel and his belief in the importance of strong U.S.-Israeli relations,” the Web site reads. It includes a letter to Dean from the ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, and Dean’s reply.

The Dean campaign says it has been responding aggressively to the e-mail campaign. People who contact Dean about the e-mails receive an e-mail from Dorf providing information on Dean’s positions on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The jab at Rove was not the first time Dean has put out unsubstantiated rumor and then insisted he was speaking facetiously.

Earlier this month, Dean suggested that the Bush administration had advance notice from Saudi Arabia of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Conspiracy charges against Rove play well to Dean’s base in the Democratic Party, which regards Rove as unscrupulous.

Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said the charge against Rove was ridiculous and that he was sure the e-mail was not coming from Republicans.

“If it makes Howard Dean feel better to blame others for holding him accountable to his own on-the-record statement and views, then so be it,” Brooks said. “However, to blame the Bush campaign, and specifically Karl Rove, is both untrue and unfair.”

Source: Jewish Telegraphic Agency

As the United States begins rebuilding Iraq, pro-Israel activists are watching closely, seeing an opportunity for the Jewish state to improve ties with another Arab neighbor.

Much of that hope has been placed in the hands of Ahmed Chalabi, a leader of the Iraqi National Congress opposition group who has forged strong ties with the White House and Pentagon in recent years - and has built a strong following in the American Jewish community. "There's no track record of anyone else in Iraqi leadership having a relationship with the Jewish community," said Tom Neumann, executive irector of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs.

Chalabi's group has been assigned to help U.S. troops impose order in Baghdad - a sign, some argue, that the congress is favored to play a large role in any interim government the United States forms in Iraq.

The Iraqi National Congress is not universally liked within the Bush administration. Reports stress that the State Department and the CIA are concerned about the congress' lack of popular support in Iraq.

JINSA and other Jewish organizations met with Chalabi and other congress leaders in the run up to the war last fall, part of the Jewish community's effort to strengthen Israel's relations with the Arab world.

With the Bush administration preparing at the time to overthrow the regime in Baghdad, both the congress and Jewish groups said they had something to gain from a strong bond.

The congress saw a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause.

For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq if and when the congress is involved in replacing dictator Saddam Hussein's regime. "Because Saddam was so anti-Israel, the hope is that all of Saddam's policies will be revisited, including his relationship with Israel and the United States," Neumann said. "There's no reason for the Iraqi people to have a problem with Israel." The congress' relationship with JINSA also is significant because Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, who has been assigned to lead the U.S. reconstruction of Iraq, has traveled with JINSA and supported the organization's agenda.

While JINSA has had a relationship with Chalabi for 10 years, according to Neumann, other Jewish groups are supporting him publicly for the first time.

Yet some observers worry that a public relationship could work against the interests of Jewish groups and the Iraqi opposition.

Michael Amitay, executive director of the Washington Kurdish Institute, said Jewish groups might run into problems by working only with Chalabi and Entifadh Qanbar, director of the congress' Washington office, because the congress does not have strong support in Iraq, where there are numerous opposition groups.

Perceived Jewish support for Chalabi could "drive a wedge between Chalabi and other forces in the Iraqi opposition," said Amitay, whose father, Morris, is vice chairman of JINSA's board of directors.

Calling the Jewish approach "short-sighted," he said it would be "much more helpful if Jewish groups reached out to other groups, such as the Kurds," as well.

Qanbar disputes that claim. He says Jewish groups have been among the first to form an alliance with the congress because they realize support for the organization is growing within the Bush administration. "Jewish groups have a strong understanding of American politics," he said. "It's an indication that there is a new phase of policy." Some also worry that Chalabi's good words won't translate into a pro-Israel foreign policy. Pressure to garner support from inside Iraq and the rest of the Arab world could force the Iraqi National Congress to abandon its pro-Israel position.

In addition, the Bush administration's appointment of a military leader and encouragement of a dissident group with ties to Israel has played into conspiracy theories in the Arab world that the United States went to war in Iraq for Israel's benefit - perhaps constraining the next Iraqi government's latitude to approach Israel. "It's far too early to even speculate where any of them will be and what their positions will be," said Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chair of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. "It never works out the way people think it is going to work out." The congress was founded shortly after the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf War, combining several smaller opposition forces within Iraq.

It operates a newspaper, a television station, regional offices and a center for humanitarian relief. It is based in Salahuddin in northern Iraq and has its external base in London.

The United States has given the congress more than $26 million during the past three years. U.S. aid to the group was suspended in January because of the congress' alleged mismanagement of funds, but resumed a month later.

The United States also has given a smaller amount, $315,000, to another opposition group, the Iraqi National Movement, and $1.5 million to the Future of Iraq Project, which brings together numerous opposition groups, including the congress.

Qanbar says the congress reached out to the Jewish community because it is the best avenue to get to the Israeli government. Israel, he believes, should reciprocate by reaching out to the congress and getting more involved in creating political change in Iraq. "The Jewish groups in Washington have some influence in Israel," he told JTA in an interview last fall.

Qanbar said he believes good relations with Israel are possible under a new regime because Saddam is the one who had a problem with Israel, not the Iraqi people.

His analysis is contradicted by history, however: Iraqi antagonism toward Israel predates Saddam by several decades, as Iraqi army units invaded Israel during its 1948 War of Independence.

In addition, popular attitudes toward the Jewish state surely have been influenced by decades of fiercely anti-Israel propaganda.

Qanbar also said the congress urges the resolution of all regional conflicts without violence.

Chalabi told the JINSA audience in October that Saddam is the source of all terrorism in the Middle East and that governmental change in Iraq would affect the regional dynamics to the benefit of the United States and Israel.

Rep. Tom DeLay is a perplexing figure for the American Jewish community.

The Republican lawmaker from Sugar Land, Texas - who last week was unanimously chosen majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives - has for years been a lightning rod for liberal Jews who sharply disagree with his conservative stances on abortion and other domestic policy issues.

And DeLay's comments about Christianity - he has suggested it is the only religion that answers life's big questions, and has called on Christians to elect Christian lawmakers - have come close to anti-Semitism, some say.

In the last two years, however, DeLay has emerged as a leading pro-Israel advocate, working to get legislation passed that would bring U.S. aid and support to the Jewish state.

While some question DeLay's motives, many Jewish leaders have chosen to embrace his support. After his election as House majority leader last week, most pro-Israel activists were celebrating. "Tom DeLay is a true leader and has a time-tested record of being a dear and valued friend of the pro-Israel community," said Melvin Dow, a fellow Texan and former president and chairman of the pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.

DeLay is one of several prominent Christian leaders who have vocally aligned themselves with Israel since the Palestinian intifada began two years ago - and have been welcomed by Jewish leaders who have been able to put aside other disagreements with the evangelical Christian community.

Understanding that Israel is in a precarious situation, they believe now is not the time to choose which allies to support and which to discard.

But because DeLay is a legislator - and a very powerful one at that - Jewish leaders say they still hear concerns about relations with a man known as "The Hammer." "There is discomfort in some segments of the Jewish community," said Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "The Jewish community is uncomfortable with the domestic agenda that Tom DeLay represents." As part of its "Strange Bedfellows" campaign, the group Jewish Women Watching plans to distribute condoms at the United Jewish Communities' General Assembly this week. The move is a protest about the links between Jewish leaders and Christian conservatives.

One member of the group said she is concerned about DeLay's support within the Jewish world. "This is a kind of selling out of the values of the American Jewish community," said the member, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Noting that a vast majority of Jews are pro-choice and believe in separation of church and state, she said Jewish leaders who support DeLay seem to feel that his stances on domestic issues are less important than his stance on Israel.

It also earns him more kudos than others who take a less hawkish view of the Middle East situation. "Tom DeLay becomes a better Jew than someone who wants to say something critical about Israel," she said.

DeLay's bona fides on Israel have been solidified in the past year.

He was the architect of a pro-Israel resolution that passed Congress last spring, a month after the Passover suicide bombing attack in Netanya. The resolution called on the United States to provide additional aid to Israel, and "condemns the ongoing support of terror" by Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and other Palestinian leaders.

DeLay also helped Israel garner $200 million in emergency anti-terrorism aid, sponsoring an amendment to the White House's emergency supplemental aid package.

President Bush rejected the spending package in which the Israeli aid was included, but voiced strong support for the aid. The money is expected to be in the next foreign aid appropriations bill, which Congress will tackle early next year.

In a speech at AIPAC's policy conference in April, DeLay consistently referred to the West Bank and Gaza as "Judea and Samaria" - their biblical Hebrew names - saying he had grown tired of the media calling the land "occupied territories." "As long as I'm in Congress, I'll use every tool at my disposal to ensure the Republican Conference, and the House of Representatives, continues to preserve and strengthen America's alliance with the State of Israel," DeLay said April 23.

Less than two weeks earlier, however, DeLay had called on Christians to send their children only to colleges where they could get a "godly education," and said Christianity was the only religion that answers questions about the purpose of life. "Only Christianity offers a comprehensive worldview that covers all areas of life and thought, every aspect of creation," DeLay told 300 people at the First Baptist Church of Pearland, Texas, on April 12. "Only Christianity offers a way to live in response to the realities that we find in this world." Foxman has criticized those comments, as well as remarks DeLay made last month at a Christian Coalition rally in which he called on people to elect lawmakers "who stand for everything we believe in and stand unashamedly with Jesus Christ." But Foxman said Jews must keep their perceptions of DeLay's stance on Israel and other issues separate.

DeLay's staff did not respond to requests for comment.

DeLay, who currently serves as House majority whip, is a common target for Democrats. The National Jewish Democratic Council, for example, has criticized DeLay's record in the past few years, specifically for voting against a resolution commending Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon. DeLay remarked at the time that he did not feel the withdrawal was in Israel's best interest. "Tom DeLay is wildly unpopular in the Jewish community," said Ira Forman, NJDC's executive director. "Pro-Israel activists will say he is popular, but they are not in the majority." One Jewish leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said some Jewish leaders have criticized organizations that speak out against DeLay's domestic policy, arguing that his support is important for Israel.

DeLay's views on Israel have been consistent for most of his 17 years in Congress, but they haven't received much attention until now because DeLay was not such a key player and Israel was not facing the type of life-and-death situation it now confronts.

In Sugar Land, a suburb of Houston, the Jewish community has become quite accustomed to DeLay's stance on Israel and other issues. "We have tried to encourage our community, to the degree possible, to compartmentalize our relationship with him," said Lee Wunsch, the executive vice president of the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston. "We separate the issues, so those who have different views on domestic issues can still acknowledge the terrific support on behalf of Israel." Wunsch and others in Houston's Jewish community dismiss DeLay's Christian-focused comments, noting that in personal conversations he expresses a strong understanding of Judaism. "There's no malice," said Esther Polland, the federation's president. "When he talks about a Christian nation, he could be just as happy saying Judeo-Christian." Houston Jewish leaders also dismiss the argument that DeLay and other leading Christians support Israel because they believe Israel will be the place for Jesus' second coming, or because Christians would like to convert Jews to Christianity to expedite the second coming.

Matthew Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said it would be wrong to chastise DeLay and other Christians if their support for Israel is born of their religious beliefs. "We take our friends where we can find them," said Brooks, who said Christian support of Israel for faith reasons shouldn't be less acceptable than lawmakers who woo the Jewish community for political gain. "If Tom DeLay or others view Israel through the context of their own spiritual background, we should welcome it." Conservative and Republican Jews seem to have done so. Speaking to a group of Republican Jews last week in California, Republican pollster Frank Luntz mentioned names of key figures in the next Congress.

Only DeLay's name elicited instantaneous applause. He is no longer the demon they once thought," Luntz said.