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.”

Severe tension has developed between Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi - Barak is furious over what he sees as Ashkenazi's efforts to get his term extended for an exceptional fifth year. This issue prompted senior ministry officials to lash out at IDF Spokesman Avi Benayahu on Tuesday.

Ashkenazi is slated to finish his four-year term in February 2011. Three weeks ago, however, Haaretz reported that he is angling for a fifth year, claiming the sensitive security situation and the lack of a suitable replacement make this necessary.

Publicly, Ashkenazi vehemently denies this. Nevertheless, people who support the idea, including some retired senior officers, have been quietly exploring it with various politicians.

Tuesday night, Channel 1 television reported that several senior ministers are pushing the idea, and therefore, a fifth year seems likely. That sparked a furious reaction from the Defense Ministry.

"The defense establishment and the cabinet have great esteem for the chief of staff, but the question of extending his term for another year never has been discussed in any forum," one senior official said. "The publication of tonight's [i.e. last night's] report, a product of Avi Benayahu's school, generates contempt for the chief of staff and the institution of the chief of staff."

In response, the IDF Spokesman's Office said, "An extension of the chief of staff's term is irrelevant at this stage and is not something the IDF is dealing with. The army was not involved in this report. Beyond that, we will not be dragged into baseless personal smears.

Relations between Barak and Ashkenazi have been tense for several months, but this is the first time tension has boiled over in such a public fashion. Barak is apparently unhappy about both Ashkenazi's public popularity - which has generated speculation about his political future - and certain aspects of his conduct toward the government.

The tension worsened with the recent appointment of Yoni Koren as Barak's chief of staff, since he has brought a more aggressive style to the Defense Ministry, resulting both in clashes within the defense establishment and strident comments in the media. There is also personal tension between Koren and Benayahu, who is one of Ashkenazi's closest advisors. Ministry sources who are not close to Barak said the tension between Barak's office and Ashkenazi's has been very apparent recently.

Though Barak's office did not say so explicitly Tuesday night, the defense minister is apparently not interested in keeping Ashkenazi on for a fifth year. And while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will also be involved, Barak will be the key player in determining who the next chief of staff is.

Four people are currently being bruited as possible successors to Ashkenazi: Deputy Chief of Staff Benny Gantz, GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot, GOC Southern Command Yoav Gallant and Maj. Gen. (res.) Moshe Kaplinsky, who served as deputy chief of staff until 2007 and is now CEO of the Israeli division of Shai Agassi's electric car company, Better Place. Ashkenazi would like the job to go to either Kaplinsky or Eizenkot. Barak has yet to express an opinion, but is thought to prefer one of the three candidates who are still in active service.

On February 5, more than a year after Operation Cast Lead ended, the UN General Assembly will hold a follow-up discussion of it, in light of the Goldstone report. Israel will submit in advance to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon a detailed document containing its responses to the report's allegations. Meanwhile, a consensus is emerging in Israel regarding the appointment of a limited commission of inquiry to investigate the events in Gaza, in the hopes of rebuffing the calls to try government leaders and Israel Defense Forces officers for alleged "war crimes."

The Gaza operation - which at the time was considered to be an effective remedy to the failures of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, and was declared a smooth military victory immediately upon its conclusion (and intensively marketed as such even beforehand) - refuses to fade from the public agenda. This is not what the decision-makers envisioned when they launched Cast Lead. There is no question that the operation brought about an extended period of relative quiet to the country's south, but the damage done in the international realm continues to reverberate. Israel is waging a battle to minimize this damage, which in essence means beating a gradual retreat.

As the investigations of the operation continue (the IDF finished its inquiry into the much more intensive Second Lebanon War in just six months), the question of appointing a commission drags on. The idea was considered well before the publication of the Goldstone report last September. Only now, with a gun to its head, is Israel liable to implement it.

Although the defense minister and chief of staff are amenable to the idea of an inquest, the army is still wary.

"If the intention is for field commanders to find themselves in Courtroom C [i.e., before a commission of inquiry - A.H.] with a lawyer by their side, then the implications could be ruinous," says a senior officer in the General Staff. "It can't be a 'buy one get one free' kind of thing - you went to war, now get a commission of inquiry."

The fear in the army is that surrendering to UN pressure will lead to the establishment of a commission with vast authority, with the almost inevitable result that heads will roll. For his part, Ehud Barak is convinced that this trap can be circumvented if the authority of the panel is restricted to examining the quality of the IDF's own investigations and the decision-making process in the cabinet and the military leadership.

It's not clear whether this will be enough to satisfy the international community. In frequent conversations with officers in Western armies, IDF officials hear total understanding of the difficulties inherent in the kind of combat required in the mine field that is Gaza. The qualified U.S. support that Israel has received following the Goldstone report, despite the Obama administration's anger over the stalemate in the peace process, derives from this understanding - and from the fact that America and other Western countries are stuck in the same kind of mud in their own war on terror and guerrilla warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Internal debate

In the wake of the report - and with many officers canceling trips to European countries for fear of being arrested - an internal debate has been going on within the IDF concerning the role of the jurist in asymmetric combat. The military advocate general, Major General Avichai Mandelblit, with the support of Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, is pushing for greater legal involvement. Indeed, since Cast Lead, legal advisers have been regularly assigned to the command headquarters of the combat divisions, even while fighting is occurring. The main justification for this is that combat that takes place amid a civilian population, generating countless real-time dilemmas, requires commanders to have recourse to legal advice.

However, Mandelblit goes one step beyond the American army, where lawyers have also been included at the brigade level (in the Marines, a lawyer is included in every battalion, but he must also have completed Marine combat training). The military advocate general's approach has been coolly received by the Winograd Committee, whose members felt that legal consultation should end with the preparatory stage of an operation and not extend into combat itself.

One senior commander insists that the military advocate general and the chief of staff have gone too far, saying: "The roles have become confused. Instead of the commanders deciding how the force will be used, and taking care to restrain their men when necessary, they're certain that the lawyer will do the work for them. I'm already hearing division commanders talking that way. It's very disturbing. And it creates another problem: The law's involvement during battles makes it hard for it to thoroughly investigate things afterward."

The Dahiya doctrine

The speakers at a conference last Sunday at Tel Aviv University's Institute for National Security Studies agreed that in recent years, Israel has faced adversaries that employ a three-part strategy: rockets and missiles aimed at the home front; deployment amid a civilian population to achieve immunity from attack; and a growing dependence on international law.

The day before, Minister Yossi Peled had caused a small uproar when he said that Israel and Hezbollah were heading for another confrontation in the north. Peled's remarks at a Saturday afternoon gathering in Be'er Sheva immediately made top headlines. The Prime Minister's Office was so upset that it took the unusual step of issuing a quick clarification that very day, saying that Israel had no intention of launching any aggressive action against Lebanon.

The timing of Peled's off-the-cuff remarks was highly sensitive. Iran, fearing that the international push for sanctions spearheaded by the United States is about to be ratcheted up a notch, is urging its collaborators in the region to be more on guard than ever against potential Israeli schemes. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah frequently summons teams with cameras and microphones to his bunker to warn that his organization is prepared for any assault. By the summer, Hezbollah will likely have completed its recovery from the last war, and will be ready for a new round.

The main speaker at the conference, GOC Northern Command Gadi Eisenkot, called the tension in the north "virtual" and attributed it to the Arab media. But the remainder of his remarks was less reassuring. He described the close cooperation between the Syrians and Hezbollah, and the IDF's expectation that every sophisticated weapons system in Syria will eventually make its way to Lebanon. He also said that, since the assassination of Imad Mughniyeh two years ago, Iran has increased its control over what goes on inside Hezbollah. And on top of that, Major General (res.) Yaakov Amidror said that there are hundreds of Iranian missiles capable of striking Israel (until now, local officials estimated the number of such missiles in the dozens). The current security situation may be relatively comfortable and the deterrence level may be high, but the potential threat is steadily intensifying.

Eisenkot, quite deliberately it seems, spoke of the response the IDF is preparing in rather general terms. It appears to comprise both a massive aerial attack and a ground maneuver that would breach the enemy's defenses. The Achilles' heel of such a plan is that it would require a lot of time and patience: from civilians on the home front, who would have to remain in shelters until the fighting subsides; from the political echelon, which would have to back up the generals even in the face of potentially heavy losses; and also from the international community, which would have to resist its impulse to intervene.

All of this relates directly to the Goldstone report, of course. A year and a half ago, Eisenkot came up with the "Dahiya doctrine." Israel, he threatened, would consider responding to any Hezbollah attack on its civilian population by destroying Shi'ite villages in South Lebanon, just as it destroyed Dahiya, the Shi'ite district of south Beirut in 2006. This would be a legitimate move, he said, since after the war Hezbollah moved its activity to the villages and built bunkers and command centers there. The Goldstone report, in its rather distorted fashion, linked Eisenkot's remarks to the conduct of the war in Gaza, citing them as proof that Israel perpetrated a deliberate punitive campaign against the civilians there.

Arab commentators and leaders say they hope the report will paralyze the IDF in the next round. Asked about it this week, a senior officer in the General Staff replied without hesitation: "When missiles fly at Tel Aviv in the next war, and we presume that they will, we will respond with all the necessary force. Don't delude yourselves that anyone's going to wait for the lawyers."

The Israeli reactions to the conclusions reached by the Goldstone Commission about Operation Cast Lead are characterized by large doses of affront and anger. But the issue of the next war is no less important. Justice Richard Goldstone, who conducted his investigation on the basis of a clearly ideological approach, effectively operated as an "unknowing agent" of Tehran. The practical significance of his report is that Israel is liable to wage its next war, against a more serious threat than the one posed by Hamas, with its arms and legs shackled.

Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi this week told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that Hezbollah is in possession of missiles with a range of 300-325 kilometers. He then reiterated the IDF's rejection of the accusations concerning its behavior in the Gaza operation. "I am not the commander of an army of murderers, looters and rapists," Ashkenazi asserted. The two statements are connected.

Backing the soldiers and thwarting the establishment of a state inquiry commission in the wake of the Goldstone report is the army's declared stance, according to the chief of staff, but this far from reflects a consensus. Ashkenazi and Brig. Gen. Avichai Mendelblit, the military advocate general, were cautioned already toward the end of Operation Cast Lead that a delay in carrying out operational debriefings and criminal investigations would work against Israel. Academic experts conveyed a similar opinion to Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, who supported Mendelblit's approach. The need for an additional Israeli examination of the events in Gaza did not dissipate after the publication of the Goldstone report, and it goes beyond the growing danger that suits will be filed against IDF officers abroad.

The report, which is being quoted everywhere and already almost constitutes a binding document, does not change the essence of the threat that Israel will confront in another round of fighting, in Gaza and especially in Lebanon. The next round will likely be more intense than previous campaigns - more rockets of higher accuracy and greater range, "from Dimona northward," as Military Intelligence puts it. To put a stop to the firing, the IDF will have to use considerable force, combining massive firepower with the deployment of ground forces.

On the first day of the Second Lebanon War in 2006, the U.S. secretary of state at the time, Condoleezza Rice, presented then-prime minister Ehud Olmert with two red lines: Israel must not attack strategic infrastructures, or targets identified with the Washington-backed government of Fuad Siniora. But with the exception of these two constraints (and despite the fact that Dan Halutz, who was chief of staff at the time, claims that they were why Israel did not win), the United States barely intervened. During Operation Cast Lead the Bush administration was in its final days and Olmert decided to end the operation just before the inauguration of Barack Obama.

It's true that Obama is employing methods similar to those of Israel, notably airborne "targeted assassinations" in Afghanistan, but the administration's liberal stance, along with the somewhat problematic interaction between the president and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will in large measure dictate Washington's response to the Goldstone report. It is not enough that Western leaders, generals and legal experts visiting Israel decry the incompatibility of the old laws of war with the asymmetric warfare waged by states against terrorist organizations. In any case, the Israeli demand for a change in the rules of war has as much chance of succeeding as a defendant in traffic court who demands that the judge change the speed limit.

In practice, Operation Cast Lead - without ignoring its key achievement in bringing an extended period of relative quiet to the south of the country - indirectly created improved conditions for the enemy in any future confrontation.

Short wars

The calm on the Lebanese border is deceptive. All that's needed to spark a war is one significant terror incident, such as the kidnapping of a soldier in the north or a Hezbollah attack on Israeli tourists abroad. Hardly a week goes by without Defense Minister Ehud Barak issuing a threat to the effect that Israel will hold the government of Lebanon directly responsible for any aggression from its territory. But the limitations Rice imposed on Olmert could become valid again under Obama and after Goldstone.

According to a report by Nahum Barnea in the Yedioth Ahronoth daily, Netanyahu has already drawn his conclusions from the Goldstone report: Israel must fight only short wars, which will end before the international community wakes up. This is a systematic doctrine whose chief advocate in the General Staff is the head of the Planning Branch (and a former fighter pilot), Maj. Gen. Amir Eshel. "Short" is almost code for "aerial." It takes far longer to mount a meaningful ground maneuver than to bomb Beirut from the air. At the moment of truth, Israel will face a serious dilemma: Should it initiate a massive blow to remove the danger, despite the major international damage this would cause?

Top Defense Ministry officials admit today about the Gaza campaign what was publicly denied 10 months ago. The assumption was that a large number of IDF dead would bring about public pressure to stop the fighting and would make it difficult to present it as an achievement, on the eve of last February's general election. Thus the General Staff decided to use massive force and wreak major destruction on the ground in order to preserve the lives of Israeli soldiers.

The unwritten doctrine stipulated that only minimal risk would be taken with soldiers' lives, with the other side of the coin being avoiding enemy civilian casualties. Ashkenazi, however blunt and forceful he is in his relations with his subordinates, is cautious and restrained when it comes to the use of military force. But the oversight of the General Staff was far from perfect and much was left to the discretion of commanders on the ground.

Independent investigation

The IDF was not especially quick to investigate deviations from the norm in the operation or to act against those responsible for them. Testimonies that conflicted with the official line were warded off aggressively (such as with the allegations collected by the organization Breaking the Silence) or hidden in accelerated investigations by the Military Police (the testimonies given after the operation by graduates of the Rabin Pre-Military Academy in Kiryat Tivon).

The Goldstone report is a crude affair and steeped in slander, but Israel is finding it difficult to rebuff one of its principal contentions: that the IDF did not investigate the operation properly. Mendelblit told Haaretz this week that he has ordered additional Military Police probes, in response to specific accusations made by Goldstone.

At the moment, the Ashkenazi-Barak axis is preventing other, more extensive moves. The key word in the responses of the chief of staff and the defense minister is "backing." Backing is indeed deserved by the 90-something percent of the commanding officers and soldiers who fought in Gaza and emerged with clean hands, having operated according to professional standards and in good faith. But there is no justification for giving backing to those who are suspected of destroying dozens of homes in the final days of the campaign, if this turns out to have been a punitive action and not related to maintaining the forces' security.

Prof. Moshe Halbertal, a philosopher and coauthor of "The Spirit of the IDF," the army's binding code of ethics, published a reasoned article in the November 6 issue of The New Republic. In it, he states that the Goldstone commission showed a lack of understanding about the nature of the confrontation that took place in Gaza. He rejects the allegations regarding the bombing of the Hamas police officers' graduation ceremony at the start of the operation, justifies the IDF's retaliatory firing of mortar shells in some cases, and accuses the Goldstone commission of seeking "to prepare a general indictment of Israel as a predatory state."

At the same time, he notes, it is important for Israel to respond to the report by presenting the principles according to which it operated in Gaza, as this will expose the prejudices that guided the Goldstone commission.

"A mere denunciation of the report will not suffice," Halbertal writes. "Israel must establish an independent investigation into the concrete allegations that the report makes. [Thus] Israel can establish the legitimacy of its self-defense in the next round."

The defense establishment confirmed that in recent weeks West Bank settlers have been making a noticeable effort to expedite construction, in an attempt to maximize the "facts on the ground" before the United States and Israel reach an agreement on a settlement freeze.

A senior security source said this week that the defense establishment's view on the situation was reflected in reports published in Haaretz last Friday, which stated that extensive construction is currently being carried out in at least 11 settlements.

"The settlers are very much in tune with the ticking political clock," the senior defense source said. "You can sense it on the ground, with the infrastructure work that is being done, but also in more minor things. They are acting without any legal authorization and are ignoring the state.

"The approach at this time is that whoever can, goes ahead and builds," the source continued. "It begins with the official leadership of the Yesha Council [of settlements] and ends with the hilltop youth."

He pointed out that the phenomenon of unbridled construction is evident in both the more established settlements and in the illegal outposts.

"Whoever can, lays the floor in preparation for constructing a building; and in factories they add extensions to roofs. In some settlements, they've built factories for rapid construction of caravans on site, so that they can bypass the ban - on transporting caravans - which was issued by the Civil Administration. Everything was done with the intent of creating a critical mass in many different locations at once, which will make evacuation in the future [more] difficult," he said.

"They are well aware of the historical precedent: after all, all sides - the Americans, the Israelis, the Palestinians - are now talking of a permanent settlement that will include the settlement blocs in Israeli territory. This is happening because of previous construction in those locations," the source added.

The senior defense source acknowledged that the measures that have been adopted by the defense establishment to counter the new construction are limited in their scope. "Wherever it involves limited housing, they are evacuated. In other places, where they manage to [get there before] us, the IDF secures warrants - but this does not necessarily result in evacuation," he said.