3,000 sinkholes have appeared in the banks of the Dead Sea and an estimated 3,000 more are ready to burst open. Mike Tobin goes inside the sinkholes in the Dead Sea. Watch video below!

Click here for more from Mike in Israel!

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A stout wind was blowing across the high ground in the West Bank as we watched a group of teenagers attempt to give birth to another Israeli settlement.  They had a few pieces of particle board, studs, a finishing hammer and nails that didn’t look long enough to hold a shack together in this wind.  These are the kids often referred to as the ‘hilltop youth.’  Dedicated young Jews who call the West Bank Judea and Sumaria and believe that God promised the land to them and therefore they are obligated to claim every inch of it. This, despite the fact that the international community considers them part of the problem and their own government considers their actions illegal.

They got two sides of the shack propped up. Young settlers made a futile effort to hold them steady in the wind. Without a ladder, one of the settlers climbed on the shoulders of another and thumped haphazardly with the finishing hammer at nails trying to get the structure solid enough that it would stand on its own. Watching this, my crew and I wondered how long it would be until someone got hurt. It wasn’t long.  A big gust of wind toppled the shack on the settlers and one TV crew.  No one was hurt badly and the settlers went back to work. Realizing they could not build with hammers, nails and wood in this weather, they started stacking rocks to build a structure. That very basic act speaks volumes to the determination of the people involved in the settler movement.

The hilltoppers had coordinated an effort to scramble to the top of 11 mountains from the North to the South of the West Bank and start building settlements on the high ground.  The effort was timed to coincide with the diplomatic blitz the US is executing in Israel. US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell is here, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Advisor James Jones and Presidential Advisor Dennis Ross are all in Israel or coming soon. They have two issues to address: The Iranian Nuclear threat and freezing the construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Since all of the construction takes place in the West Bank, it all takes place on land that the Palestinians want or need for a future state.  More construction, means more obstacles in front of the establishment of a Palestinian homeland and a peace deal.  Even Israel’s hard line Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not in favor of new land grabs and new settlements.  He and his government are arguing in favor of continued construction but only on land already designated as a legal settlement.  The hilltoppers don’t care about legal or illegal.  They believe they are doing the work of God and therefore they don’t answer to the Prime Minister and certainly not the US.  As far as a permanent solution or where the Palestinians will go once Jews have settled all the high ground, a dedicated settler will usually tell you that God will solve that problem.

So, the border police and soldiers showed up and ran the hilltoppers off the mountain.  As soon as the military jeeps disappeared down the road, the teenagers climbed back up the hills and started stacking rocks again.

On the next hilltop over, I could see Neve Erez. It’s an ‘illegal’ settlement outpost. It looks just like a trailer park.  There is a paved road in the center of it.  Power lines, from Israel’s national power grid run to the center of the outpost and provide comfortable living to those residents Israel considers illegal.  Neve Erez started as a pile of rocks just like the kids were making on the hill where I was standing.  Off in the distance I could see Maale Michmash. This is a settlement considered ‘legal’ by Israel. It looks like a large American subdivision or a little town. It also started as bunch of rocks and shacks, piled up by young people determined to put as many Jews as possible on land Palestinians want for a state.  There are now more than 300,000 of them living in the West Bank with numbers increasing.  To understand how large an obstacle that is to the establishment of a Palestinian state and the most widely accepted solution to the conflict, you need to realize that many settlements legal and illegal will need to be evacuated before Palestine becomes realistic.  Then you need to remember how painful the evacuation of the Gaza strip settlements was for Israel.  There were only 7500 settlers there.

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As Israeli president Shimon Peres makes the first substantive contact between the Netanyahu government and the administration of US President Barack Obama, nothing is more important to him than to begin the relationship with Israel’s most loyal ally on a friendly footing.

That was evident in the comments Peres made Monday to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) “For 60 years, America has been and still is more than just an ally – it is an unusual partner and brave friend.”

The Netanyahu government has been tamping down all discussion of a collision course between Netanyahu even though Obama favors the creation of a Palestinian State and Netanyahu is reluctant to acknowledge the notion of one.

Israel’s deputy foreign Minister, Danny Ayalon, told me Netanyahu is not about to dig in his heels and pick a fight with an American President:

Ayalon: “I believe this will not be an issue, certainly not with our American Friends.”
Tobin: “So, ultimately (we will see) a compromise that agrees with the Obama administration.”
Ayalon: “This is what I would suspect.”

But it’s not going to be as easy as a simple compromise. First of all,  Netanyahu is just not a compromise kind of guy.  His hubris and lecturing of President Clinton caused US envoy Dennis Ross to describe Netanyahu as “immature” and “insufferable.”  Once Netanyahu left the room, according to Ross, Clinton said of Netanyahu, “He thinks he is the superpower and we’re here to do whatever he wants.”  Their relation ship was famously contentious.

It’s likely that Netanyahu ‘matured’ since his first go around as the leader of Israel. He knows Israel gets billions of dollars in aid from the US and he needs US support to discourage Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But Netanyahu still has to answer to the voters of Israel and they didn’t vote for Obama.

They certainly did not vote for the US President’s support of the Arab Peace initiative, which calls for comprehensive peace with all Arab nations in exchange for Israel withdrawing to the borders that existed before the 1967 war.  That means Israel gives the Golan Heights back to Syria and gives most of the West Bank to the Palestinian state (with some land swaps in exchange for land on which the largest Israeli settlements sit).

If you could describe the platform that brought Netanyahu to power for a second time, it is the ‘I told you so’ platform.  Netanyahu left Ariel Sharon’s government as Sharon was preparing to pull out of the Gaza strip.  Netanyahu predicted that if Israel pulled out, Gaza would fall to Islamic radicals and rockets would reach as far as the Israeli port city,  Ashdod.  Sure enough, Hamas took over Gaza and this winter I stood in Ashdod with the rockets raining down.

Combined with the kidnappings and Hezbollah rockets in the North, Israeli voters demonstrated their impatience with the Arab world and voted against concessions to the Arabs, certainly territorial concessions. They cast ballots for bellicose right-wingers who refused to give up and inch of land.  64 out of 120 seats went to right wing parties and Netanyahu was their champion.

***Let me make a quick detour to highlight the irony that Netanyahu, through ordering the blundered assassination of Khaled Meshall in 1997, sparked the popularity and ultimately the empowerment of Hamas. Meshall, now the leader of Hamas, drove Netanyahu to power by firing rockets out of Gaza. (There has to be a life lesson in there somewhere.  If you figure it out, chirp me a tweet @miketobinfox.)***

So, getting back to the issue. If Netanyahu starts looking like he will bend to US wishes and give up land, politicians will bolt from his government like cats out of a bathtub when you turn on the water. The likely outcome would be that he’ll lose his majority in the Knesset and his government will be toppled. It’s possible he could pull off some Sharon-like political wizardry and keep his ship afloat, but an inch of territorial concessions will bring Netanyahu to the brink of joining the long list of Prime Ministers thrown out before serving a full term. Heck, He’s already been down that road once.

So, what’s an experienced Prime Minister to do? Make nice with President Obama, and then delay as long as possible.  Netanyahu is laying the groundwork for that already with his insistence that moderate Palestinians go a step beyond recognizing Israel and recognize it as a ‘Jewish’ state.  That prompted a tirade from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who said, “It is not my job to give a description of the state. Name yourself the Hebrew Socialist republic – it is none of my business.”  Abbas’ chief negotiator, Saeb Erekat, dug out a letter signed by President Truman in 1948. The letter recognizes Israel but the typed words ‘Jewish state’ were crossed out and replaced with the handwritten words ‘State of Israel’.

The demand bought time and backed up the starting point for negotiations. While the public and press chew on that, Israel keeps building settlements in the West Bank, putting a Palestinian state further out of reach.

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Benjamin Netanyahu

It’s election day here in Israel and the only guess that anyone can lob out there is that Benjamin Netanyahu will probably end up Prime Minister, but that doesn’t mean he will win the election.

There are a number of forces here at work, which create a very unpredictable dynamic in a multi-party coalition government.

First, let’s talk about Hamas. Back when Ariel Sharon initiated the pullout from the Gaza strip, Netanyahu spoke against it (after initially voting for it).  His Likud party defected from Sharon saying Gaza would become a radical Islamic sub-state and the rockets fired at the Gaza settlements would one day reach towns like Ashkelon.  Netanyahu doesn’t often campaign on the “I told you so” platform. He lets other people say it for him.  However, Israeli voters are so tired of Palestinians and the rocket fire they have gone even farther right than Netanyahu and Likud. Avigdor Lieberman and his Yisrael Betenu (Israel is our Home) party have grown from a far right fringe party to a major player in Israeli politics. They have passed Ehud Barak and the Labor party to poll as the 3rd highest vote getters in Israel.

Tzippi Livni

Here’s where its gets spooky for Netanyahu.  Tzippi Livni and the Kadima party are closely trailing Netanyahu and Likud. Lieberman and Yisrael Betenu could very well split the vote leaving Kadima with more seats in the Israeli Parliament (Knesset) than any single party. Livni would be at the top of the party.

But that doesn’t guarantee she’ll be Prime Minister.

Israeli law says the President, Shimon Peres, appoints a Knesset Member to form a governing coalition based on who will be most able to put together a majority of votes.  That person becomes Prime Minister.  Livni already failed to assemble a majority once and there isn’t much to indicate she would be more successful now.

Avigdor Lieberman

Kadima and Labor, favor ceding more land to make a Palestinian state and a two state peace deal possible.  In light of the continued rocket fire from Hamas, Israeli voters don’t feel like ceding much of anything to the Palestinians.  So, even if Likud doesn’t win, the right could still end up with the most seats in the Knesset.  Therefore, the top right wing politician would be the most able to assemble a majority.  The burden would fall on Peres to appoint Netanyahu, even if he’s not the top vote getter.

Ehud Barak

Still, Netanyahu could end up the clear winner.  The moderate Israeli voting public is remarkably undecided and uninspired by the menu of potential leaders presented to it. Those voters may not show up to vote.  Given the recent conflict in Gaza, The recent war with Hizbollah and the Israeli soldier still held hostage in the Gaza strip, right wingers who favor a hard stance against Palestinians are motivated and they’re arriving at the ballot boxes.

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Just when I thought I’d seen every surprise the Middle East had to offer, I showed up on the Gaza/Egypt border.  To understand why this is such a surprise you need to remember that Israel said the war in Gaza had two goals: 1) To stop the rocket fire and 2) To stop the smuggling of rockets into the Gaza strip and close the tunnels through which they are smuggled from the Egyptian side.

So, I arrive at the border and find an entire community digging away like prospectors during the gold rush.  It was all out in the open. They were pulling broken wood out of the opening of tunnels. Diggers, most of them kids, were covered from head-to-toe with sand having done the labor of re-opening the tunnels Israel had just closed with 22 days of a withering air campaign.

One of the first I visited needed just a little patch up work and was back in the business of running goods underground from Egypt. I asked the owner of the tunnel if I could have a look at it he said, “Ahlan wa Sahlan,” welcome to everything.

The problem is that the entrance of the tunnel had been hit. It was about 90 feet down and the ladder was broken away in the middle. One of the little diggers offered to haul my camera and shoot pictures himself but I had a couple of problems with that: 1) He didn’t know how to shoot for TV and 2) I can’t keep a clear conscience and send some kid down to do the dangerous work while I sit up top and wait for the video.  So, down I went. It was really treacherous.  None of the steps on the ladder seemed like they were nailed in and secured very well.  When I got to the broken part, I shot my foot out to little nubs of wood on the opposite site of the chute and climbed like spider man keeping enough pressure to keep from falling.  The fall would have been accented by the exposed nails and broken wood on the way down with a final compliment of digging tools lying at the bottom.

I got down and there was the corridor in the sand. The only thing separating me from Egypt was the darkness of the tunnel and the knowledge that the ground above it had been softened for the past 3 weeks by Israeli air strikes.

The owners of the tunnels never admit they smuggle weapons. They will only tell you they smuggle food and basic necessities like fuel and clothes. But they are capitalists.  When a load shows up on the Egyptian side of the border, they don’t ask what’s in it.  They ask how much they can get to pull it through to Gaza.

For all of Israel’s effort and bloodshed, the smugglers are back in business.   I asked one of them what would it take to stop them from digging. He said, “We’ll stop when the borders open.”

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The acrid smell of spent machine gun rounds was floating up through the load master’s porthole on the turret of the Merkava Tank. It burned my nostrils and made my eyes water. The sun had gone down and the little DV camera I had was not getting a good picture of the big cannon on the front of the tank in low light. So, I fished in the pocket of my flack vest and pulled out a little l.e.d. flashlight. I held the camera in my right hand, cause my left one is broken. I used the broken hand to hold the flashlight and tried to illuminate the cannon on the front of the tank.

Adam, the load master, tapped on my leg from the inside of the tank. He told me I needed to get my feet over to a rail that ran along the edge of the cabin inside the tank because the 120 mm cannon was about to fire and if the recoil hit my legs, it would be bad.

So, I had my feet pitched off to one side, both hands extended out like a crossing guard, one recording, one lighting.  I balanced by wedging my flack jacket in the porthole. My head was sticking up out of a Merkava tank, in combat. I was scared.

Did I have my legs out of the way enough? Was I going to lose my hearing? Was I going to get knocked silly and fall into this tank when it fired?

   I got my answer soon enough.

From a distance tank fire always sounds like trucks crashing head-on, without the screeching of tires. When you are balanced above the cannon, it sounds like a big pop. I was wearing one of the Israeli tank crew helmets complete with ear protection. But the headset wasn’t a good fit. There was a gap by my right ear. As I write this, my ear is still ringing.  There was a tremendous flash of light. I was knocked off balance but saved because my Kevlar-wrapped girth kept me wedged tight in the small porthole. The cannon fired a total of 3 times. That followed all of the small arms fire that was directed at a Palestinian Mortar team in the Gaza strip.

Colonel Yigal, who was the commander, told me the mortar team had been firing at infantry soldiers with Israel’s Givati brigades. There were 5 people on the mortar team, 3 of them, he said, had been killed.

That’s the part that struck me. The machinery of war kept me very distant from the human impact. We were roughly 300 yards from the mortar team, but I never saw them. I never heard one of their rounds.  From my perspective, we could have been blasting away at a shooting range.  But as I watched the number of Palestinian dead increased by 3 and with combat still raging as I write, the death toll has crossed 900 and edges ever closer to 1000.

Keep checking back for the latest EXCLUSIVE coverage from Gaza!

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I want to tell you about one of the unsung heroes of FOX News: Ibrahim Hazboun.  He is one of the producers out of our Jerusalem Bureau.

It’s trite to say we couldn’t do the job without him, because we could. We just couldn’t do it as well.  Forget the fact that, together, we have been tear gassed and pummeled with stones together in the West Bank, stranded in Gaza for weeks at a time. That’s the stuff that makes Ibrahim a friend.  What serves you back in the states is that he is a solid newsman.  When I present a story to you, often times that story got its start from Ibrahim.  Most of the time, he has given the story input in one way, shape or form. Now, as he did during the Lebanon War, Ibrahim is performing a thankless, yet indispensable role.

While I’m running around the border, Ibrahim is back in the Jerusalem office keeping an eye on all of the information that comes in through the wires as well as the video and interviews that come into our grasp.  When an Israeli or Palestinian leader walks into our studio, Ibrahim and I try to decide what information that newsmaker could provide to benefit you at home, and Ibrahim will badger him/her to get it on tape.  Then he stacks up a description of the day’s best video and sound and e-mails it to my blackberry. Because of his effort, when I sit down to write, I’m confident we’re delivering the best to the viewers.  I’m well aware of how much Ibrahim would prefer to be out of that office when a big story comes our way.

Our working relationship is not all sunshine, roses and Qassams.  If you take two guys who are both passionate about the final product, they will ultimately disagree. Add the pressure of TV news in conflict zones and they will disagree with passion. One of our most memorable fights came in the Gaza strip a few years ago.  We were doing a story about the growing chaos in Gaza. Rafa, a city in the Southern end, melted down into riots.  I said “let’s go.” Ibrahim and another guy, Nael Ghaboun (I’ll write about him later) both decided it was too dangerous and refused.  As our disagreement became more heated, Ibrahim called me a Kharouf: Arabic for sheep.  He and Nael argued that in their culture the sheep walks into trouble and needs the Shepard to protect him.  Now, I was really angry and argued that in my culture the sheep is scared and stays with the safety of the flock. After the argument gave way to good-natured ribbing, we began to refer to each other as Kharouf or the plural: Khurfan. (The other nickname is Sadiki: my friend)

Now, the most common greeting or parting sentiment spoken between Ibrahim, Nael and myself is: Yaish il Kataeb il Khurfan: Long live the sheep brigades.

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Update 4:17 pm in Gaza: I moved to a hotel in Ashkelon. I got to the room at 7am my time after hitting the “Geraldo at Large” show last night. By 11 the sirens and rocket strikes got me out of bed. I have my little handicam in the room. Producer Ian Rafferty and I chased after some of the grad strikes earlier.

It took us a while to get back to the hotel because the sirens kept wailing warning of new inbound rockets. We had to keep jumping out of the car and taking cover. The car doesn’t protect you from a rocket strike. The shrapnel can cut right through the doors and break the windows.

I got back and tried to sleep. No luck.  I read the wires and watched other newscasts. Now, I’m starting to feel a little tired.

Keep checking back for updates from Gaza – There’s more to come!

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3:00- drove back down to Gaza border.

4:20 – arrived to find art and air strikes “softening” the ground. A strange new smoke bomb was fired laying out fog by Gaza border.

5:30 – Eli fastman and I drive to see tank unit that had been staging near Erez crossing.

5:39 – Tanks are moving. We shoot with my little handheld video camera.

6:00 – We’re back at LIVE location. Air strikes and Artillery shake the night sky.

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UPDATES LIVE FROM THE GAZA BORDER

6:00 – We changed the location of our live shot. The hilltop spot doesn’t show anything in the dark. It was also dangerous. Lots of rocket fire today. We moved to Sderot. It is the town most frequently targeted and we’ll see something in the background.

4:45 – I’m driving to catch a few minutes of the Livni briefing. The red alert sounds warning of an incoming rocket. I’m close to a bomb shelter. I leave the car running and take cover.

2:46 – Israel’s security cabinet adjourns. The 48 hour cease fire has been rejected.  I get an e-mail from the foreign press association that the border crossing into Gaza is still closed. There may be an opportunity for pool reporters to go in. I want to get into Gaza. I don’t feel like I’m close enough to this story.
My right thumb hurts. With a cast on my broken left hand, I write everything on my BB with my right thumb. That’s a lot of thumb work.

2:15 - Arrive in Sderot. FM Tzippi Livni is having a press conference. I was told at 3:00. Now I learn it’s at 5:00. I won’t be able to make it. I run into my buddy Avi Issakarov, a respected reporter for Haaretz newspaper. We have coffee and discuss how this reminds us of the 2nd Lebanon war. “Same S—” says Avi. Only more rain this time.

12:30 – I drive for sderot and call my mother. She doesn’t answer. I call an advisor to the PA, Diana Bhuttu. She says Hamas is winning the PR game amongst their Gaza constituents. I call ahead to my favorite little Yemeni restaurant on the way and get a spicy Yemenite chicken sandwich to go.

11:45 – I have time for a haircut. Call Nael in Gaza on the way. He tells me Hamas gunmen are really feeling their hubris.  The Gaza public does not blame them for inviting the offensive, they support Hamas.

11:00 – It’s raining. I check with bureau chief Eli Fastman. The military operations are slow. The rocket teams are having a field day. The clouds provide them cover. Planes can’t see them very well. They let wave after wave of rockets fly. The Israeli tanks sit Idle. The rain turns desert dirt into soup. They could get stuck and become sitting ducks for RPGs or anti-tank missiles.  If the ground offensive was planned for today, it will wait.  Eli + I predict the 48 hour cease fire proposal will be rejected.

10:20 – I made coffee and checked the papers on line. The tone of the Israeli columnists has changed. They have all taken a critical tone of the Government and the Gaza operation.

10:00 am – I hit Greta’s show last night at 5:49 am my time. I intended to sleep longer but my phone was jumping off the nightstand.

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We all knew this was coming. What only Israelʼs leaders knew was exactly when and how ferocious that attacks would be.  The cease-fire had really fallen apart before it expired. In mid-November, the Israeli Army went into the Gaza strip and attacked what they claimed was an effort to dig another tunnel under the Gaza/Israel border with the intention of penetrating Israel, mirroring the attack that resulted in the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit. From Israelʼs standpoint, that was a violation of the cease-fire and needed to be stopped. From the standpoint of Hamas, Israelʼs response was a violation of the cease fire. Six Palestinians were killed.

So, the cease-fire degraded. Rockets flew out of Gaza. Air strikes went back in.  As the deadline for the cease-fire approached, Hamas leaders promised it would not be extended.  What Hamas overlooked was the degree of frustration building in the Israeli public due to the insatiable rocket fire, the amount of pressure the public was putting on its embarrassed leaders.  Most importantly,  Hamas overlooked Israelʼs might and that during the calm, even before that, Israeli intelligence had been scanning Gaza, outlining Hamas related targets: Weapons depots, communications infrastructure, headquarters and smuggling tunnels.

Reluctantly, I went on my holiday vacation and, playing winter sports, managed to break a knuckle on my left hand. (Iʼm typing with one hand right now.) My plane got me back to Jerusalem at 4am. A few hours later, our bureau manager, Mark Abrahms lit up my telephone.  Israel had unleashed an unprecedented, punishing air campaign on Gaza.  We didnʼt know how many people would be killed, we just knew there would be many.  It was difficult to get dressed and get out the door, but a day of rest was not an option.

The Erez crossing into Gaza is closed. As of this writing there is no option of going in.  Mark and the rest of the crew had set up on a hill near the Gaza border, which gives us a look into the northern end of the Gaza strip.  It is a location where militants had made several attempts to attack inside Israel. It gives us the advantage of being able to see into the northern Gaza towns. The disadvantage is that anyone who wanted to shoot into Israel could see our camera lights.  So, we operated with a low light setting on the camera and little LED lights.  I think it kept us safe.

All night long, helicopters, war planes, and Israeli drones roared overhead.  About every 20 minutes, the night sky would light up. The flash would be followed by the great thunderclap of another air strike. Israelʼs leaders promised to continue with the campaign and were making good on the campaign.

As of this writing, the death toll in Gaza is climbing to the 300 mark.  Israeli armor is amassing along the Gaza strip, threatening to roll into the densely populated non-country.  A senior military official told a group of us journalists today that it is impossible to stop all the rocket fire.  All the army can do is stem the tide by making certain Gaza pays a severe price if Hamas does not stop the rocket teams.

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Keep checking back for updates from the Gaza border!

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Some of my good buddies are firefighters.  All of them say their least favorite thing to handle is a high-rise fire.  They have to come up the building from the inside.  They could get trapped.

We saw on September 11, victims were stuck above the fires.  They could not come down inside the building. Ladders were not tall enough to reach them from the outside.
In the recent attacks in Mumbai, people were trapped in their rooms. Just a handful of gunmen in the hotels were able to stand between them and salvation.

This is a problem recuers have grappled with for years: How do you get people out of a building, when the threat is inside the building, and they’re too high up for the rescue ladders?  Proposals have gone as far as to suggest emergency parachutes in high rise buildings.

An Israeli company has designed what could be a more practical and, frankly simple, solution.  The Escape Rescue System amounts to an emergency elevator on the outside of the building. It, of course, is a bit more complicated than just that. For starters it won’t be in use all the time.  So the system collapses and is stored on the roof of the high rise, out of sight and out of mind.  In the event of an emergency, a massive crane lifts the ERS to the side of the building where it meets tracks which run all the way to the ground.
A controller lowers the collapsed ERS all the way to the ground. Once on the ground it is unlocked, as the controller pulls up and the system is expanded into 5 cabins.  Designers boast each of the cabins is capable of carrying 30 people down to safety.  That means 150 people could be rescued in a single trip.  The cabins are made of heat resistant material. Therefore, designers say, victims could be moved past the burning floor without being burned in the cabin.

The system has to stay on a single track on the side of the building.  So, there are designated windows, which line up with the escape cabin.  At those windows, a collapsible ramp is installed.  Unfolded, the ramp creates wheelchair access and makes it easy to just step right into the cabin.

Like an elevator, the ERS can also haul people up.  In the event of a hostage taking, not only can it help with flight, getting hostages out of the building, but it can help with fight by getting counter-terrorist forces to the attackers.  One of Israel’s most celebrated Generals, Amiram Levin, says the system “can provide tactical advantage and surprise, while making feasible an otherwise impossible assault on a building held by terrorists.”

Yoni Shimshoni, The CEO of Escape Rescue Systems says his product has been examined by US Homeland Security and met US safety standards.  It won’t be a solution to every emergency.  It will only be effective if it is installed ahead of a crisis, and used so universally that rescue crews will know how to operate it when they arrive on the scene.  It’s the kind of thing building owners will spend money on, then store it and hope it never gets used.

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There was still tear gas in the air when we arrived in Hebron. My eyes burned. My producer, Yonat Friling, offered me her scarf to cover my face, but I figured it would make me look like one of the masked settlers who had been throwing rocks at Police and Palestinians.  Besides, my experience with tear gas has been that a dry scarf doesn’t help.  There were burning tires off in the distance.  Jewish settlers were calling Jewish police officers Nazis. All of it, the result of the lightning raid conducted by Israeli police which had cleared the disputed “Peace House” in 20 minutes.

Peace House is a name the settlers gave to an old stone building in Hebron, a flashpoint town in the West Bank. Both Jews and Muslims claim to have a religious stake in the town where several hundred Jews live surrounded by about 160 thousand Palestinians.  Settlers claim that they purchased the building from Palestinians for a million dollars. Palestinians claim they never sold to the settlers. More than a year ago, dozens of Jewish settlers moved in, dug in and refused to leave.

Israel’s Supreme Court never decided who was right.  2 weeks ago, the judges only decided that the building needed to be evacuated within 30 days so the dispute could be resolved.  The settlers defied the ruling and Israel’s leaders declared that the law would be upheld.

So, there’s a degree to which none of were surprised. In the community of foreign journalists living in Israel, this was a primary topic of discussion for the past two weeks.  Each of us asking the other, when they planned to head to Hebron, hoping to gain some knowledge about when exactly the evacuation was coming down.  I saw most of my competitors mulling around Jerusalem this morning.  The settler leaders met this morning with Ehud Barak.  That should have let some steam off the pressure cooker and delayed the inevitable.  But apparently after the meeting Barak determined that the settlers were not going to be talked out. So, he moved quickly when most were not expecting it.  Many of the settlers had wandered outside of the barricade and gone about their own lives when the police made their move.

Dozens of officers stormed into the building with stun grenades and tear gas leading the way.  Israeli soldiers backed them up building rings of security around Hebron, preventing any more settlers from joining their resistance.  The settlers kicked and screamed, they threw rocks and eggs on the police officers.  At least one officer was splashed with some chemical believed to be acid.  At least 20 people were injured as the officers hauled 250 people by their arms and legs out of the building.

We got in the building after it had been evacuated. Yonat located a store of crude weapons the settlers had apparently been unable to access because the police stormed the building so quickly.  Some were paint bombs.  We had seen those before. But a new weapon got my attention.  The settlers had taken potatoes and driven nails through them. These were now lethal weapons intended to be thrown by Jews at their fellow Jews in the police force.  That made it clear that the settlers were ready to take the violence up a notch from past evacuations.  They were ready to cause serious injury.

Outside, they took their anger to the street.  As my cameraman, Dudi Gamlieli, and I tried to shoot their scuffles with police, the settlers grabbed at the camera and pushed Dudi around shouting “No pictures.”  There was no being gentle with these bullies.  The only option was to keep shoving them away from my cameraman so he could get some pictures. Even my on camera “stand up” ended up a shoving match as they wouldn’t quit grabbing at the camera and the lens.

As the sun went down the settlers’ anger grew.  The local TV station caught one on camera as he pulled out a gun and shot 2 unarmed Palestinians.  Palestinians cars and homes were set on fire. The Governor of Nablus, a West Bank town further North, promised if Israeli police did not restrain the rampaging settlers, he would call on Palestinians to take to the streets and respond with violence of their own.  As of this writing; More than 500 Israeli Police and Border Patrol officers are on standby to respond to fresh outbreaks of violence.  The Settler who shot the unarmed Palestinians hasn’t been caught.

Here are exclusive photos from Hebron:

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Tzippi Livni - Israel Foreign Affairs Minister

Tzippi Livni is starting to remind me of Ariel Sharon, just a bit. They don’t have much in common beyond membership in Kadima, the party Sharon founded. But love him or hate him, Sharon made for great spectatorship here in the cheap seats.  Now, Livni has made one of these Sharon-like political moves that seemed at first to spell political suicide but she is stepping out of the grave stronger than when she went in.
You see, on Sunday Livni went to Israeli President Shimon Perez to report to him that she was unable to form a governing coalition, therefore sending Israel into new elections.  For months, it has been projected that new elections would mean Benjamin Netanyahu and his right wing Likud party would ride the wave of resentment that grew following the Gaza strip pullout and glide into power.

Newspaper columnists rushed to their keyboards to write that Livni had failed in her first task as Prime Minister designate:  She failed to put together a majority of Knesset seats.  The Israeli public should lose confidence in her.  They overlooked WHY she failed to put together a coalition.

Livni’s failure to assemble a government became apparent when she could not come to terms with the Ultra-Orthodox, Shas party.  Their 12 seats in the Knesset would have given her the majority. But, as the religious parties in Israel always do, Shas wanted money.  They wanted to create a new child welfare program for religious families.  Party leaders were betting that Livni would never go to new elections. So, they demanded lots of money.  Beyond that, they demanded that Livni promise to never divide Jerusalem; a centerpiece in negotiations she started with the Palestinians.  Shas overplayed that hand.

Livni went public and said, “I didn’t yield to extortion.”  She played to the resentment boiling in the secular Israeli public.  The religious Jews don’t have to do compulsory army service and they don’t work.  They live on public funds, study the Torah and have more children than the average Israeli family.  Benjamin Netanyahu once described to me the tax burden created by the Ultra-Orthodox as a little Yemenite soldier carrying a great big paratrooper on his back.  The average Israeli taxpayer, who gave up two years of his or her life to the IDF is tired of carrying the load.  Livni reaped that reward.
Suddenly, two different polls show the Kadima party, with Livni as chair, is beating Netanyahu’s Likud party by a small margin.  The party, which has suffered, is Ehud Barak’s Center-left Labor party.  The centrist vote is going over to Kadima and Labor falls to a distant 3rd tied with Shas and some of the smaller parties.

So, the race here is now sizing up to be a scrappy one between Livni and Netanyahu.  He will present himself as the champion of national security and a master of economics; his opponent; inexperienced. It’s hard to say where Livni will go. But she’s proven now that she’s got some fight in her.

The Israeli election is now scheduled for February 10. Keep an eye on the blogs here. Even when the inside-baseball gets too convoluted for the brevity of TV, I’ll try to keep you up to speed on the web. I love covering this stuff.

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Yigal Avitay Shows Burned House

It doesn’t matter how fierce the campaign gets or how low the market sinks, the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is always on the burner. It doesn’t slow if the world stops paying attention. In fact, sometimes, it behaves more aggressively when no one is looking.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve reported on Palestinians making violent attacks on Israelis. In recent weeks, the agencies have been sending video of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians. There was a particularly disturbing clip of 4 settlers who tied t-shirts over their faces and beat a Palestinian shepherd with broomstick handles. Another showed settlers en-mass pelting Palestinian homes with rocks. A pipe bomb was left at the home of a University professor who spoke out against the settler movement. The outgoing Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, said there is “an evil wind of extremism” blowing through the West Bank. It became clear that the settler violence is not a collection of isolated incidents. It doesn’t represent all Israelis, but it’s a disturbing trend.

Rivka & Avigail over Palestinian Vilage

Cameraman Yaniv Turgemen, Soundman Yoav Shamir, producer Ibrahim Hazboun and I arrived at the Yitzahar settlement on a hilltop near Nablus in the West Bank. As the crow flies we were a short trip to Tel Aviv; many hours and checkpoints away by car. This is one of the hardcore small West Bank settlements. The settlers here have committed their whole lives and families to the idea of expanding Zionism. They are often labeled with the nickname ‘hill toppers’ because they build the settlements on high ground for the defensive advantages. When you show up on one of these remote hilltops and think how American families choose a home based on school districts, property taxes or proximity to work, you realize the level of commitment.

A soldier in the guard shack at the entrance to the settlement didn’t want to let us in. Yaniv and Yoav are usually very efficient at smoothing over soldiers and guards. But not this guy, he was defensive and paranoid. He didn’t let us budge until we got Yigal Amitay, a spokesman for the settlement, on the phone. Ibrahim kept his mouth shut lest his Arab accent be detected and we took to calling him by the Hebrew version of his name ‘Avi.’

Rivka & Avigail

Finally, I met up with Yigal. His look was typical of West Bank settlers: simple clothing, kippa on his head, long beard and the tsi tsim, strings that remind faithful Jews of the ten commandments, hanging from his waist.

The first place he took me was a burned out house. People always want to show me the damage first. It bolsters their argument. The house gave me the creeps because the roof was heavy with ceramic tile and a big water heater. The frame of the house was metal and it sagged in the heat of the fire. I didn’t trust that roof with all the weight on top of it. But I felt obligated to have a look at the damage inside. Yigal claimed that a Palestinian had climbed up from one of the villages and torched the house. He was probably telling the truth, but no one had caught the arsonist. For all the proof I had, bad wiring could have sparked the fire.

Nahla Mahmoud & Crew

Then he took me to meet Rivka Ben Yakkov. She looked much different than what I expected from a woman competing for land and raising a family in the last frontier. She wore a headscarf, as some committed Jewish women do, but it was colorful. Her eyes were blue and striking. She was from the states but had been away so long that her English was choppy. She could tell me that she was born in NY but couldn’t give specifics as to where she lived. She spoke softly almost meek in her tone of voice. However, as she talked with baby Avigail on her hip, it became apparent there was nothing meek about Rivka.

She said she, her family and neighbors were chosen by God to settle the land. The troubles she said were “Because We’re not strong enough.” Peace, she said, “Was achieved by strength.” She made no bones about the idea that West Bank settlers will take it upon themselves to get violent with their Palestinian neighbors. She felt the Israeli soldiers didn’t do their job well enough and said, “Sometimes, we need to help a little.” As for the Palestinians; “We have to make them afraid of us,” She said.

Burned Holy Books

Down the hill, in a Palestinian Village called Asyera el Qiblyieh. I met Nahla Mahmoud, the matriarch of one of the homes on the edge of the edge of the village, closest to the Yitzahar settlement. As protocol goes, she took me on a tour of vandalism she says came from rampaging settlers. There were bullet scars in the stone on her house and the Star of David had been spray painted on the walls.

They had white washed over the graffiti, but someone had returned and painted the Star of David again. Her sons were in the process of digging a new well because she says someone had put something in the old one and the water was no longer fit to drink. She told me that her children now sleep in a room with no windows and one son can’t make it through the night without wetting the bed. “They want us to hate the land,” She said. “Hate the land then leave.”

Rivka said the goal is to make Palestinians afraid of the settlers. In the case of Nahla and her family, it was working.

Rivka Ben Yakkov, Crew & baby

Then I thought about the big picture: The two state solution, which is the centerpiece of the Annapolis plan, the only peace plan on the table now. It requires evacuating the small hilltop settlements like Yitzahar. There are tens of thousands of settlers just like Rivka all over the West Bank. I remember how painful it was to get 8,000 settlers out of the Gaza strip. Achieving two states, without terribly divisive violence, may be a hilltop too high to reach from this vantage point.

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Anonymity was his weapon as much as the big tractor.

Israeli police knew the name of Hassam Taiseer Dwyatt only because of his criminal past.  He lived in East Jerusalem, came and went as he pleased, crossed no checkpoints and carried an Israeli ID.  No one had any reason to stop him and there is no point where he would have been stopped.  Since he worked at the construction site adjacent to my office, I may very well have passed him on the street and paid him no mind.

That’s why no one had their guard up when he climbed behind the controls of the massive caterpillar front-end loader, started crushing cars and ending lives. We still don’t know what set him off. He may have just been a disgruntled employee.  He may have been dispatched by one of the deadly Palestinian organizations.  He may have acted purely on his own personal hatred. It may be a combination. But because no one was prepared to defend against rampaging heavy equipment, he was able to cut a path of destruction about a quarter mile long before Israeli police officers climbed up to the cockpit of the big rig and wrestled him to a temporary stop.

Moshe Plesser, an 18 year old, off duty soldier hung on the side of the cockpit behind the police officers.  Again unexpectedly, Dwyatt hit the gas.  As the bloodshed and destruction started again, Plesser, with the calm and professionalism of a seasoned combat veteran, took a gun from one of the police officers, reached over their heads and fired the fatal shots that ended the rampage.

There hasn’t been an attack in Jerusalem since March.  The combination of advanced intelligence work and the wall/fence surrounding the West Bank have stopped all but one bomber, who attacked last February in the town of Dimona. It is not for a lack of effort. Israeli security forces intercept bombs and bomb plots on a near daily basis.  They have the Palestinian groups and the general population infiltrated with collaborators. When the plots hatch, they stop them, either in the headquarters, or attempting to cross out of the West Bank.  Dwiyat was able to kill and injure so many, simply because no one would have paid any attention to him. No one saw an attack like this coming.

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This wasn’t my first time in the Gaza smuggling tunnels. Back when the Fatah led Palestinian Authority still controlled the Gaza strip, the police (controlled by Fatah) made an effort to combat the smuggling. So, I had a chance to explore a tunnel after it had been discovered and shut down.

That was more than a year ago. This time, I got into a tunnel that was still active. Smuggling has become a cottage industry on the Gaza/Egypt border. Two factors are causing the business to boom: 1) Hamas benefits from the smuggling and therefore does not stop it. 2) Since Israel has sealed the borders around the Gaza strip, people there need everything from bullets to bandages and boots and the smugglers deliver.

Contacts led me into what looked like a tent city in the no-man’s land on the border with Egypt. Once, inside I realized that each of the tents concealed the entrance to a tunnel. The top of the tunnel looked like a water well. Sandbags at the top kept the sand from eroding and collapsing the entrance to the tunnel. A metal structure held a pulley over the center of the hole. A thin steel cable ran through the pulley. One end was attached to an electric winch. The other hooked to a makeshift boson’s chair in which I sat then swung out over the tunnel. There was a light at the bottom allowing me to see 90 feet down into the desert. The splintered steel cable didn’t give me much confidence but I was committed at that point. A man with a Palestinian kafiyeh wrapped around his face hit the button on the electric winch, and down I went into the smugglers’ workspace. I sent the chair back up and cameraman Chris Jackson joined me.

With no one stopping the smuggling efforts, the tunnels have improved. They are big enough now that you can walk in them crouched over. They have electricity and lighting. There is a telephone and electric winch at each end of the tunnel. Instead of hauling goods across by hand, the smugglers just phone their collegues on the Egyptian side. They hook plastic barrels to the cables load the goods in them, hit the switch and the winches pull the goods under the border. This eliminates the risk of losing people in a tunnel collapse and speeds up the operation.

The smugglers themselves had a very mater-of-fact attitude. They didn’t see themselves as soldiers in the fight against Israel. They are just freelancers making a buck. Someone wants weapons, they’ll haul weapons. Someone wants diesel they’ll haul that as long as someone is paying. The way one of the smugglers put it to me, “There are no jobs on the ground. We have one choice; working in the tunnel to provide people with their needs and to make money.”

They are a complicating factor in the brutal politics of the Gaza strip. Israeli intelligence told Fox News, the smugglers haul tons of weapons, hundreds of thousands of bullets, thousands of guns, rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank rockets. Remember when President Bush was in

Israel a couple of weeks ago and the Popular Resistance Commitee fired a rocket out of Gaza that reached all the way to the Israeli town of Ashkelon? That was a medium-range rocket smuggled through these tunnels.

While Egypt attempts to mediate a cease-fire for the Gaza strip, Israel is demanding that something be done to combat the smugglers. But the smugglers don’t care. I asked one of them what he would do if his tunnel was discovered and destroyed. He said, “I’d dig another.” He then hooked a plastic barrel to the winch cable; ready to be hauled under the border. 

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Check out my blog from yesterday for more photos!

On those mornings when I’ve only been afforded two hours of sleep, the first thing I attempt, when the alarm goes off, is problem solving; there must be some way I can accomplish everything I need to accomplish, yet stay in this bed for at least another hour. Therefore, on a morning like this, I fail at my first task of the day.

On this particular morning, I needed to meet my cameraman, Chris Jackson, at our office in Jerusalem, load up the gear, get through the stringent security at Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv and fly to Amman, Jordan to begin the ground trek to Beirut. The difficulty in making the trip points out the cantankerous folly of man. As the missile flies, the trip from Jerusalem to Beirut would take about 5 hours by car. With Rafiq Hariri international airport in Beirut shut down by Hezbollah, a long series of border crossings and paranoid customs inspectors ahead of me, I was ambitiously betting on 18 hours.

So, we hooked up with a driver in Amman and headed for the Syrian border. At the crossing I found many of my contemporaries in the foreign press, the BBC, Canadian Broadcast Company, Swedish radio and a handful of newspaper reporters. Since I was the only one in the bunch who speaks Arabic, I ended up the translator. It still took hours to get visas and get through customs. It’s Ironic that the Syrians made the border so time-consuming; none of us had any interest in Syria. All we wanted was to cross over Syrian land and get to Lebanon where Hezbollah was making swift work of dominating the forces loyal to the government of Prime Minister Fuad Siniora.

Word was out that a roadblock of burning tires had severed the road, connecting Damascus to Beirut. So, our plan was to drive all the way around to the North of Lebanon, cross the border there and drive down through Tripoli. But the drivers, through their remarkable cell-phone, buddy network, passed word that the road through Tripoli had been blocked as well. We changed our plan and crossed into Lebanon between Damascus and Beirut.

Before we got to the Lebanese passport control, we could see the black smoke of burning tires rising up from the roadblock. Our driver could not take us any further, so Chris and I had to hand carry the gear. The job was made easier by the eager hands of young Lebanese boys who were more than happy to snatch up our gear and carry it around the roadblock in exchange for a buck or two. The gear was snatched up so quickly (and without us asking for help) my immediate concern was that gear would walk away in the chaos. Chris and I ran alongside trying to keep track of each piece. In the end the kids were honest. They were happy to get a dollar and all our gear arrived at the car.

On the other side of the road block there was a man dispatching Taxis. I haggled a deal and for $100 US, his driver would take our gear and us from the border to Beirut.

Our driver was a man who looked more like a bull than any I’d ever seen. He was far too big to be comfortable in the little Mercedes taxi we had overloaded with TV gear. At one point, I handed him my blackberry so he could speak with a contact in Beirut to get directions to our hotel. His meaty hands and fingers that looked like bratwurst with calluses swallowed up the phone. I sat in the back seat and I could sea a lump of flesh balled up just below his baldhead that looked like a serving of haggis with razor stubble on it. Calluses on his forehead perfected his bull-like appearance. Some of the Muslim faithful develop a single dark spot where their foreheads touch the ground during prayer. Our driver however, had two. They were heavy they stuck out like little horns from his thick forehead.

We reached a little mountain town on the edge of the Bekaa valley and our driver pulled into a parking lot where another cab was waiting. Without explaining what he was doing, he just started unloading our gear from the cab. I asked him what was up and he explained that we were switching cabs. He doesn’t go all the way to Beirut. “Fine,” I told him in Arabic. “But we agreed $100. So, you’ll each get $50.”

He responded, “Then, You’ll stay here.”

It was the perfect scam. Beating him up wasn’t an option and I’m sure he could spot the journos in a hurry. We wanted to get to the story, and didn’t have time to argue. As far as getting ripped-off goes, it was a kinder gentler sort of robbery.

I said something nasty to him, but I said it in English then paid the $200.

We made it to Beirut with all our gear and had a pretty successful week. The story is fascinating there. There are a multitude of forces at work in Lebanon. The tension could grind on for a while; it could flare up. I’m betting that I’ll be back on the air reporting from Lebanon soon enough.

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