A few days ago, the Justice Ministry's Police Investigation Department (PID) decided to indict the cop who shot Milham for manslaughter.

Surprisingly, the data published here, and not for the first time, is news to the police: An investigation by Haaretz several months ago found that police do not maintain statistical data on police shootings at civilians, or about more grievous incidents in which civilians are killed in encounters with the police. Senior officials at police headquarters admitted at the time that they tried to obtain such data from police sources, but failed because "the police do not perform a breakdown of police shooting casualties by population, and address each case separately."

In six of the deaths in question, PID ruled the shootings were justified under the circumstances. The police were quick to accept these conclusions and prefered not to examine the considerations that had led cops to open fire on an Arab car thief, but to take a "softer" approach toward a Jewish thief.

Internal probes were held in every shooting incident, and the cops were brought up on charges when necessary. However, there was never any examination of the prevailing thinking among cops who deal with the Arab populace, compared to the thinking among cops trained to deal with the Jewish populace.

Senior officials in the police and Public Security Ministry recently rejected any need to look into this matter, claiming that trust had developed since 2000 between Israeli Arabs and the police. Mossawa Center for Arab Citizens of Israel, which gathered the data on Arab Israelis killed since 2000, accused the police several months ago of whitewashing attempts and "questionable" decisions to close investigations into police shootings of Arab civilians.

"They are confronted with regular military operations, shelling, house demolitions, checkpoints on their way to schools," UNICEF Child Protection Officer Anne Grandjean said. "As a result we find high prevalence of signs of stress such as anxiety, eating and sleeping disorders, and difficulties concentrating in school.

"All of these signs need to be tackled as soon as possible to avoid a long-lasting impact on the child's development," she added.

UNICEF and the Humanitarian Aid Department of the European Commission have established teams of social workers and psychologists to respond to the children's needs. Every month they reach some 3,000 children and their families, offering support and counselling after violent incidents.

The counselling sessions end every month with a festival and beach party organized by UNICEF and its partners, where thousands of children are given the chance to play and interact with each other away from the conflict.

"These festivals are important because they are about protecting childhood," UNICEF Special Representative for Gaza and the West Bank Dan Rohrmann said. "It's an opportunity for children to be children, which is rare here in Gaza, because they live in an environment of extraordinary fear and violence and insecurity."

United Nations officials estimate that southern Lebanon is littered with one million unexploded bomblets, far outnumbering the 650,000 people living in the region. They are stuck in the branches of olive trees and the broad leaves of banana trees. They are on rooftops, mixed in with rubble and littered across fields, farms, driveways, roads and outside schools.

As of Sept. 28, officials here said cluster bombs had severely wounded 109 people - and killed 18 others.

Muhammad Hassan Sultan, a slender brown-haired 12-year-old, became a postwar casualty when the shrapnel from a cluster bomb cut into his head and neck. He was from Sawane, a hillside village with a panoramic view of terraced olive farms and rolling hills. Muhammad was sitting on a hip-high wall, watching a bulldozer clear rubble, when the machine bumped into a tree.

A flash of a second later he was fatally injured when a cluster bomblet dropped from the branches. "I took Muhammad to the hospital in my car, but he was already dead," said Yousef Ftouni, a resident of the village.

The entire village was littered with the bomblets, and as Mr. Ftouni recounted Muhammad's death, the Lebanese Army worked its way through an olive grove, blowing up unexploded munitions in a painfully slow process of clearance.

Cluster bombs are legal if aimed at military targets and are very effective, military experts say. Nonetheless, Israel has been heavily criticized by United Nations officials, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for using cluster bombs, because they are difficult to focus exclusively on military targets. Israel was also criticized because it fired most of its cluster bombs in the last days of the war, when the United Nations Security Council was negotiating a resolution to end the conflict.

Officials calculate that if they are lucky, and money from international donors does not run out, it will take 15 months to clear the area. There are now about 300 Lebanese Army soldiers and 30 other clearance teams, each of up to 30 experts, working on the problem of unexploded bomblets.

The United Nations Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon recorded 745 locations across the south where unexploded bombs had been found. Of the million estimated to be scattered around, so far 4,500 have been disposed of, according to the center.

"Our priority at the moment is to clean houses, main roads and gardens so that the displaced people can return to their villages," said Col. Mohammad Fahmy, head of the national mine clearing office. "The next stage will be cleaning agricultural lands."

In Lebanon there are two explanations of why Israel unleashed cluster bombs at the end of the war: to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before withdrawing, or to litter the south with unexploded cluster bombs as a strategy to keep people from returning right away.

The United States has sold cluster bombs to Israel in the past and says it is investigating whether Israel's use of cluster bombs in its war with Hezbollah violated a secret agreement that restricted when they could be used.

The final days of the war - a conflict that began when Hezbollah launched rockets from Lebanon into northern Israel and sent militiamen across the border to capture Israeli soldiers - were marked by a huge Israeli offensive. Israel hoped its final push would, in part, help force the Security Council to adopt a tougher resolution on Hezbollah than appeared to be taking shape.

Israel has said it leafleted areas before bombing and provided Lebanon with maps of potential cluster bomb locations to help with the clearing process. United Nations officials in Lebanon say the maps are useless.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz published an article on Sept. 12 anonymously quoting the head of a rocket unit in Lebanon who was critical of the decision to use cluster bombs. "What we did was insane and monstrous; we covered entire towns in cluster bombs," Haaretz quoted the commander as saying.

Repeated efforts to get Israeli officials to explain the rationale behind the use of the bombs have proved fruitless, with spokesmen referring all queries to short official statements arguing that everything done conformed with international law.

In Lebanon the problem of the unexploded munitions is magnified by the desire to return to villages and lives in a region that is effectively booby-trapped. People want to begin rebuilding and harvest their crops. In some cases they have tried to clear the bomblets themselves, and some people have begun charging a small fee to clear away bombs - a practice that officials have discouraged as dangerous.

But the people are desperate.

"If I lost the season for olives and the wheat, I have no money for the winter,"' said Rida Noureddine, 54, who farms a small patch of land on the main road in the village of Kherbet Salem. There was a small black object at the entrance to his farm, and he thought it was a cluster bomb.

"I feel as if someone has tied my arms, or is holding me by my neck, suffocating me because this land is my soul," he said.

The bomblets, about the size of a D battery, can be packed into bombs, missiles or artillery shells. When the delivery system detonates, the bomblets spread like buckshot across a large area, making them difficult to aim with precision. A fact sheet issued by the Mine Action Coordination Center says cluster bombs have an official failure rate of 15 percent.

That means that 15 percent of the bomblets remain as hazards. According to the fact sheet, the failure rate in this war is estimated to be around 40 percent. "We estimate there are one million," said Dalya Farran, the community liaison officer of the mine action center.

Ms. Farran has worked at the center for nearly three years. It was set up in 2000 to help deal with the mines and unexploded ordnance left behind after the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon and from other wars.

After this war, Ms. Farran said, there are two types of cluster bomb fragments across the south. The most commonly found type is known as M42, a deceptively small device resembling a light socket.

She said a large percentage of the unexploded bomblets were made in America, while some were produced in Israel. Each one has a white tail dangling off the back, like the tail of a kite. As they fall to the ground, the tail spins and unscrews the firing pin.

When the device hits, the front end fires a huge slug while the casing blasts apart into a spray of deadly metal fragments. When they fail to detonate they cling to the ground, and with their white tails look deceptively like toys, so children are often those who are injured.

"This is what they are living with every day," said Simon Lovell, a supervisor with one of the clearance teams as he looked at five unexploded bomblets poking out of the soft, rocky soil of the Hussein family farm.

Across the street, Hussein Muhammad, 48, at home with his wife and four children, waited for the clearance team. His olive trees were heavy with fruit, but he could not tend to the harvest.

"I feel that the land has become my enemy," he said. "It represents a danger to my life and my kids' lives."

Brian Whitaker

According to the Wall Street Journal (subscribers only), "leaders across the political spectrum" in Israel "now agree that Israel must find ways to work with other Middle Eastern states, even if that means dealing with governments that have been hostile to Israel in the past".

The idea is to form a "moderate" alliance in which Israel and some of the Arab countries (principally Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states) would join forces to combat Iranian influence, and Shia influence more generally.

This is partly motivated by American/Israeli desires to "get" Iran but also an attempt to repair damage from the 34-day war in which Israel accidentally bolstered the regional standing of Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hizbullah.

The bones of the emerging package are that Arab support for the US and Israel against Iran would be rewarded by progress - or at least the prospect of progress - on the Israeli-Palestinian front. So now, for example, we have the Israeli justice minister, Meir Sheetrit, testing the water with a hint that Israel might finally be prepared to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative after ignoring it for the last four years.

"We are talking about a full peace," he said encouragingly. "We want a full peace. We do not necessarily have to accept every detail of the initiative - withdrawal to the 1967 borders. But let's talk."

A spokeswoman for prime minister Ehud Olmert said later: "These are not the Israeli government's ideas. These are his [Mr Sheetrit's] ideas." Nevertheless, the move is seen as significant because Mr Sheetrit is one of Mr Olmert's close allies. Similarly, there have been reports (subsequently but not very convincingly denied by both sides) of secret high-level contact between Israel and Saudi Arabia. All this is meant to indicate, rightly or wrongly, that after a long period of stagnation movement is afoot.

On the Arab side, it is certainly true that the Sunni-ruled Gulf states are apprehensive about Iran, as they have been for many years. They are, after all, a good deal closer to Tehran geographically than either Tel Aviv or Washington.

The Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s was widely viewed as a proxy war in which Saddam Hussein (also classified as a "moderate" in those days) fought on behalf of the rich Gulf states - and partly with their funding - to keep Iran at bay. Their alleged ingratitude afterwards was one factor behind Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990.

The Sunni Gulf rulers are nervous, too, because most have Shia communities of varying sizes in their midst which are marginalised at present but could stir up trouble under Iranian influence.

Well away from the Gulf, Jordan, whose indigenous Shia population is negligible, has suddenly (perhaps a little too conveniently) discovered a Shia "threat" of its own - apparently coming from Iraqis who have taken refuge there. In a press briefing on October 1, Ms Rice stated that Jordan "is making really great strides in its political evolution". If anyone has the foggiest idea what she was referring to, please let me know, but it's easy to see the beginnings of a claim that Jordan's giant strides under the unpopular King Abdullah are being sabotaged by militant Iranian-backed Shias.

Whether any of this will be enough to draw some of the Arab states into an alliance with the US and Israel against Iran remains to be seen - though I think it's very unlikely. A similar idea was tried in the early 1980s under president Ronald Reagan but failed for the same reasons that it is likely to fail this time.

The problem is differences in priorities. The US is misreading the signals if it thinks the Gulf Arab leaders share its Iranophobia. They are uneasy, yes, but not hysterical.

"They know they have to live with Iran; it's not going to go away," said Robert Hunter, a Middle East expert at the RAND Corporation. "It's not like the early 1980s when the mullahs tried and failed to spread their revolution ... Aside from [their backing of] Hizbullah and a few minor scrapes here and there, Iran has not been particularly assertive toward these countries."

As far as the Gulf states are concerned, the priority issue is not Iran but the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which in their eyes lies at the root of the Middle East's problems. Washington - especially under President Bush - does not share that view, so it's not surprising if the Gulf states conclude that talk of Israeli-Palestinian peace is merely a ruse to get them on board for a showdown with Iran.

"The holy grail of US policy in the region has always been to get the Arabs to forget about the Arab-Israeli conflict and to focus instead on some other threat," said Gary Sick, an expert on Iran at Columbia University. "If you don't think you can or are not prepared to deal with the Arab-Israel dispute, then trying to convince the Arabs that they should subordinate it to other strategic concerns is really a very attractive thought."

Attractive as it may seem from Washington, it's essentially a non-starter. In the words of Michael Hudson, a Middle East specialist at Georgetown University:

There's no doubt that there are people in the Gulf, especially, who are very worried about Iran, but the idea that they would be enlisted in an alliance with the US and Israel is just not a politically inviting prospect.

Until the US starts getting actively and even-handedly involved in bringing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to an end, it's really politically impossible for the so-called moderate Arab leaders to sign on to the [anti-Iran] project.

During the 40-minute talks, Livni stressed that the weapons embargo on Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah must be enforced.

Rice later met with Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz.

On Wednesday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert also met Rice and informed her that Israel would not agree to release Palestinian prisoners before the return of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

"With all my desire to help, I will not agree to release Palestinian prisoners before Gilad Shalit is returned to Israel," Olmert told Rice.

Release of Palestinian prisoners without return of Shalit first would bring about heightened demands from Hamas, asserted Olmert.

He, however, told Rice that Israel would help Palestinian National Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to "create a better environment" and return to peacemaking.

Rice met with Olermt after she finished the talks with Abbas in Ramallah on Wednesday.

Abbas and Rice discussed the crises facing the Palestinians and the way in which the U.S. could bolster the chairman's position.

Throughout her visit in the Middle East this week, Rice has emphasized her intention to rally moderate elements in the region to bolster the embattled Abbas in his power struggles with the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas.

It has been closed for all but 12 days since June 25 when Gazan gunmen seized an Israeli soldier and killed two others in a cross-border raid.

In a letter to Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz, a copy of which was obtained by Reuters, the officials said Rafah's continued closure could well prompt EU member states to "seriously question the desirability of maintaining" their monitoring mission there.

The monitors are required for the crossing to function under a deal brokered last year by U.S. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice, who was in the region again on Wednesday for talks with Palestinian and Israeli leaders.

The withdrawal of the monitors would amount to a diplomatic slap for Israel as well as the United States.

The September 29 letter -- signed by U.S. security coordinator Lieutenant-General Keith W. Dayton and EU monitoring mission chief Pietro Pistolese -- warned Israel that Rafah's frequent closure would also "make it very hard to convince the EU to send monitors to Karni," Gaza's main commercial crossing, as Washington has proposed.

After meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Wednesday, Rice said she would try "to make sure that some of those crossings are indeed open longer and more frequently so that economic activity can return," although she offered no details.

Rafah was opened for some travelers on Wednesday and Thursday, but the European monitors said it was unclear when it would open thereafter and for how long.

RICE CHAMPIONED RAFAH'S OPENING

Rice personally brokered the deal last year to boost the flow of people and goods into and out of Gaza after Israel's withdrawal from the impoverished coastal strip.

"The fact that the members of the (monitoring) mission have been prevented from performing their duties for three months is not in accordance with the spirit of the agreement," Dayton and Pistolese wrote. "The Rafah crossing is not a security risk."

Senior officials in the Hamas-led Palestinian government have used the crossing to bring millions of dollars in cash into Gaza to get around a Western aid embargo.

A U.S. plan for Karni envisages bolstering security at the crossing, deploying 90 foreign monitors there and expanding Abbas's presidential guard.

Israeli security officials have welcomed the Karni proposal but said it would remain on hold until the soldier captured by Palestinian militants was freed.

Israel has shut Karni frequently this year because of what it says are threats from Palestinian militants.

Aid groups say the closures at Karni have worsened humanitarian conditions in densely populated Gaza, home to 1.4 million people.

A European official said pulling the monitors out of Rafah was one option being looked at ahead of the current agreement for the crossing expiring in November. Other options include relocating the monitors, now based in Israel, to Egypt.

Yousef denied reports of Syrian involvement in the prisoner exchange negotiation process. "This is a matter within the Gaza Strip, and all of the sources handling the negotiations are there as well," he said.

He said the majority of negotiations with Hamas was taking place in the Palestinian territories and with officials jailed in Israel, with the considerations of Damascus-based exiled Hamas leaders.

In his interview, Yousef also reiterated Hamas' refusal to recognize Israel. "Hamas' point of view with regard to peace agreements is based on the principle of hudna [cease-fire]," Yousef said, adding that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was long from finished.

Report: Exiled Hamas chiefs condition Shalit release on their return

Exiled Hamas leaders based in Damascus have said they are willing to release captive IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Gaza if they were allowed to return to the Strip, Israel Radio reported Friday morning.

The radio report was based on an article released Thursday in the Nazareth-based daily Al-Sinara.

The report added that the Hamas leadership in Gaza is willing to release Shalit in exchange for ten Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, but senior members in Damascus rejected the plan.

The Damascus-based leadership reportedly support the plan only if Khaled Meshal, exiled leader of the group's political wing, was returned to Gaza along with other senior officials.

Hamas turned down an Israeli offer to free between 900 and 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for captured Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit, Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Abul Gheit said Monday.

"Egypt succeeded in securing a swap deal with Israel to free [Palestinian] women, children, elders and those who have been serving long prison terms in exchange for the soldier," Abul Gheit told Al Arabiya television. "A deal that could have guaranteed freeing 900-1,000 prisoners- but sadly they have decided to keep holding him [Shalit]," said Abul Gheit.

The negotiations between Israel and Hamas on a potential prisoner exchange have so far failed to make progress on any of the major issues.

"It is obvious to both sides that there will be a prisoner exchange," sources close to the negotiations told Haaretz, "But there is no concrete understanding on how many prisoners will be released in exchange for Shalit, who they will be, and when.

"We have not even begun the real negotiations on implementing the deal, on the mechanism which will bring about the release of Shalit and the Palestinian prisoners," said the sources. "We are still at the stage [of discussing] principles."

Egypt is continuing its mediation efforts despite reports that it was no longer involved in the negotiations due to tensions between Hamas and the Egyptian government.

Haneya is observing fasting, like all other Muslims during the holy month of Ramadan. The speech was delivered on a hot autumn day.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians rallied in a sports stadium in the Gaza Strip Friday to show their supports for the embattled Hamas-led government.

The protestors, wearing green baseball hats and waving green Hamas banners, gathered in the crowded stadium in support of the six-month-old Hamas cabinet which took office in late March.

Magistrate Uaatjo Uanivi ruled that Alexander could be granted bail while a formal request from the US government for his extradition was awaited by Namibia.

The Magistrate ruled that Alexander (54) could be released if he paid bail of N$10 million.

He further ordered Alexander to surrender his Israeli passport to a Namibian Police officer attached to the local branch of Interpol, Inspector Rudolph Mbumba, who was involved in the arrest of Alexander at the Windhoek Country Club Estate last week, and also ordered Alexander to report to Mbumba each Monday and Friday between 08h00 and 20h00.

The Magistrate told Alexander that he would not be allowed to leave the Windhoek district without Mbumba's permission.

He warned him that if he broke any of the set bail conditions, his bail would be cancelled and he would be rearrested and kept in custody.

Alexander's wife, Hana Alexander, was present to hear that her husband would regain his freedom after spending six nights in Namibia's largest prison - an accommodation establishment that is a far cry from the sort of standards that Alexander would have become accustomed to at the upmarket house that he bought for N$3,8 million after his arrival in Namibia in late July.

Alexander and his wife kissed and embraced immediately after the court adjourned following the bail ruling.

They declined giving comment to journalists - from Namibia, Israel and also from South Africa - present in court.

As Alexander left the court building in the company of one of his team of lawyers, Rudi Cohrssen, about two hours after the bail ruling, his only comment was that the first thing he was going to do when he got home would be to hug his children.

Alexander, who was born in Israel but has been living and working in New York for about 20 years, was until May this year the Chief Executive Officer of Comverse Technology Inc, a Nasdaq-listed company that he helped found and steered to become a leading maker of telecommunications software.

While he was in charge of the company, though, the US authorities charge, he became involved in an allegedly fraudulent scheme in which he helped manipulate the sale of shares in the company in order to pocket extra earnings of tens of millions of US dollars.

Between January 1998 and March 2006, it is charged in an indictment filed against Alexander in a New York court, Alexander's own wealth ballooned through him making a profit of US$138 million (about N$1,05 billion) through his selling of shares in Comverse.

Out of this profit, however, about US$6,4 million (N$49,9 million) was ill-gotten fruits from the illegal manipulating of the timing and pricing of shares that he received in the company, it is claimed.

In his bail ruling, Magistrate Uanivi said the court had heard evidence that Alexander had transferred a substantial amount of money from Israel to Namibia after he came to the country in late July.

His family - his wife and three children - had joined him in Namibia, and his children had been enrolled in a school in Windhoek, the court heard during the bail application.

It also heard that Alexander was granted a two-year work permit for Namibia on August 29, and that the Chairman of the Immigration Selection Board, Samuel /Gôagoseb, at the same time informed Alexander in a letter that his application for permanent residence in Namibia would be considered, provided that he submitted an investment plan for the transfer of amount of N$300 million over the same period.

According to an affidavit by Alexander that was filed with the court on Monday, he had already transferred N$120 million to Namibia, and had invested N$11 million in various business ventures since he took up residence in the country - mostly focusing on property and housing projects at Walvis Bay, but also, curiously, including a panel-beating business, in which he stated he has invested N$5,9 million.

The Magistrate noted that the court had heard that Alexander had embarked on various business ventures in Namibia, and that he had bought a house in the country at a price of N$3,8 million.

Claims that Alexander had manipulated the American criminal justice system in an effort to prevent being prosecuted in the US, or that he was likely to interfere with the process of justice if he was released on bail, had not been substantiated by evidence given under oath during the bail application, the Magistrate added.

He commented that the court had also not been provided with evidence supporting the prosecution's argument that there was a likelihood that Alexander would flee from Namibia if he was released on bail.

Alexander's arrest on Wednesday last week was requested by the US Embassy in Namibia, which asked for him to be detained while the US Government prepared a request to the Namibian Government for Alexander's extradition to the US.

Such a formal extradition request has to be filed within 30 days after arrest, meaning that the extradition request will have to be filed by October 27.