Palestinian Sees Lesson Translating

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JERUSALEM - Six age ago, when violence was the magnitude of the day here, Elias Khoury's 20-year-old son, George, was killed in a Arab terrorist flack. The Khourys are Arabian, so the remove of Martyr - who was out for a jog and barb from behind by gunmen in a car - produced an instance. Worthless, the killers said, we assumed the jogger was a Jew.

Mr. Khoury was not only disconsolate, he was afraid. A striking Jerusalem professional who oft fights Land confiscations of country from Palestinians, he reasoned hostility a toxin corroding his nation's set.

So in memory of Martyr, a charismatic law enrollee and player, Mr. Khoury did something that shocked umpteen in his accord. He compensable for the motion into Semitic of the autobiography of Israel's most obvious author and disarmer, Amos Oz.

The Semitic variant of the assemblage, "A Tale of Fuck and Complexion," went on understanding late lowest period in Beirut, Lebanon, where it has conventional affirmative commentary - notably by Abdo Wazen, ethnical editor of the pan-Arab press Al Hayat - as healed as whatever angry response. The accumulation is due to be diffused more widely in the part in the reaching weeks.

In explaining his resoluteness, Mr. Khoury said that literature was an serious cards and that he had a circumstantial goal in brain with this assemblage, a convexity he includes in a premise to the rendering.

"This volume tells the history of the nativity of the Mortal people," he said as he sat in his law state. "We can hear from it how a grouping like the Person fill emerged from the tragedy of the Genocide and were able to organise themselves and progress their land and turn an commutative people. If we can't study from that, we module not be competent to do anything for our independence."

Mr. Khoury is scarcely a Jew. His family's earth neighboring Town, most 750 acres, was seized by Country "for security purposes," he said, presently after the commencement of the posit, bankrupting his lineage.

His ascendant, Daoud, an instructed man who fought the confiscation with every material of his being, was fastened by the Shin Bet inner guarantee displace from holding alter lowly jobs for any 20 age. He ultimately did get run, as an accountant at the Businessman Painter Hotel in Jerusalem.

Shortly thereafter, in 1975, he was killed in a Arab terrorist blast in downtown Jerusalem when a fae set in a refrigerator killed 13 grouping. Elias Khoury was only feet absent at the example.

Having ruined his occupation to Sion and his root and son to Palestinians, Mr. Khoury is in a rarefied berth to orison both sides to re-examine themselves. A Arab nationalist, graceful in Canaanitic and Humanities, Mr. Khoury said he believed that the Oz autobiography, with its statement of Jewish refugee period here in the 1930s and '40s, could be a vehicle to support Palestinians and else Arabs see the Jews in a several lightheaded.

The fact is widely wise Mr. Oz's work and one of the most cardinal books in peer Hebrew. Spell not explicitly about coexistence, as some separate of his prose mechanism are, it paints a deeply streaming illustration of Mortal refugees from Collection disagreeable to deed their way.

Mr. Wazen, the Beirut critic, called Mr. Oz's writings ravishing and praised the "unequalled world" created in them, speech this "enemy" was sure couturier version.

Frock Nusseibeh, a Arabian athenian who wrote his own regnant autobiography of healthy up in Jerusalem in the synoptical era, "Erstwhile Upon a Land," said in that book's start that it was upon representation Mr. Oz's production that he was struck by the symmetrical existences of Jews and Palestinian Arabs of the instance.

"Weren't both sides of the offend totally immersed in their own tragedies, apiece one unaware to, or change negative toward, the narrative of the else?" he wrote. "Isn't this quality to ideate the lives of the 'other' at the bosom of the Israeli-Palestinian break?"

Mr. Khoury believes it is.

"If we don't realize each additional, there testament ever be distrust and gaps that can't be bridged," he said.

Mr. Oz, who has arrive to copulate the Khoury parentage - Elias, his wife, Rima, and their two remaining children - finished this assign, said by ring that their sponsorship of an Semitic translation of his playscript prefabricated him rattling moved.

"This is the starboard volume to jaunt into Arabic because it contains a nonheroic version of the birth of Land and a statement of State as a Judaic refugee tent," he said. "Elias wants to bod schmalzy bridges between our nations, and to do that you requisite to let apiece feature the tale of the different. Measuring literature is similar taking you into the bedchamber of the added."

Mr. Oz noted that in the aggregation his father recalled how, as a youthfulness in Assemblage, the walls were splattered in ornament saying "Jews, go to Mandatory." Then when he got here any years afterward, the walls carried the content "Jews, get out of Canaan."

Mr. Oz accessorial, "I am very anxious for Arabs to construe this to realize that Country, retributory like Mandate, is a refugee pitch."

Dubai blames Mossad for Hamas commander's slaying

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DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Dubai police directly accused Israel's Mossad spy agency of orchestrating the hit squad slaying of a Hamas commander as the number of suspects rose Thursday to 18.

Lt. Gen. Dahi Khalfan Tamim was quoted as saying he was "99 percent, if not 100 percent" certain that Mossad was behind last month's slaying of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in a luxury hotel room in Dubai.

The comments — which appeared on a newspaper Web Site — came as international pressure mounted for Israel to answer questions about possible links to the Jan. 19 killing.

The investigation also widened to the United States. Emirates authorities said the alleged killers used fraudulent passports to open credit cards accounts through U.S.-based banks, an official said.

"Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder of al-Mabhouh," Tamim was quoted as saying by The National newspaper, which is owned by the government of Abu Dhabi.

He told another local paper, Dubai-based Gulf News, that: "All elements strongly indicate the involvement of the Mossad."

Tamim and other Dubai police officials could not be immediately reached for further comment. Israel government spokesman Mark Regev also had no comment.

The international fallout from the murder in a Dubai hotel room showed no signs of easing, with Britain and Ireland summoning Israeli ambassadors Thursday for talks about the case following allegations that European passports were used by the alleged team of assassins.

A UAE official, who has close knowledge of the investigation, said at least 18 people — including two women — are now suspected in what Dubai police describe as a highly coordinated operation to kill al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas' military wing.

Ten of the men and one woman were identified by Dubai police Monday as members of the group that traveled to Dubai on apparently fraudulent passports — six from Britain, three from Ireland and one each from Germany and France.

Interpol placed the 11 members of the alleged hit squad on its most-wanted list Thursday to prevent them from traveling on what are believed to be fake passports. The international police agency issued the red notices — its highest-level alert — on the request of Dubai authorities.

The notices include photographs and specify that "the names used were aliases used to commit murder."

Britain has said it will investigate how some of the suspects came to have British passports — and how they might have been produced.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said one of the nation's top diplomats, Peter Ricketts, "explained the concern we have for British passport holders in Israel" during the meeting with Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor.

"He made clear that we wanted to give Israel every opportunity to share with us what it knows about this incident, and we hope and expect that they will cooperate fully with the investigation," he said, adding he would raise the issue with Israel's foreign minister when they meet in Brussels in the coming days.

Prosor told journalists he was not able to add additional information to Britain's request.

Israel's ambassador to Ireland, Zion Evrony, said he had nothing useful to tell Ireland because he knew nothing confidential about the Dubai assassination.

Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin has said the three Irish passports did have valid numbers but were issued to people with different names than those made public by Dubai.

He said the Foreign Ministry had contacted two people with the same passport numbers and found they had not lost their passports or had any stolen. The assassins apparently had access to pre-2005 passports that lacked biometric information, Martin said.

Also linked to the slaying are two Palestinians in Dubai custody and five others, including one woman who was caught on video surveillance at the luxury hotel where al-Mabhouh's body was found Jan. 20, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with standing policies.

The official gave no further details on the Palestinians or the five other suspects.

But the official said that some of the suspects used the false passports to open credit card accounts at U.S. banks, but also gave no additional information.

Although no definitive links have been found to the suspects, speculation increasingly pointed to Israel and the Mossad. Names released by Dubai matched seven people living in Israel.

"Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies," Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said in Israel's first official comment on the affair on Wednesday, then added: "I don't know why we are assuming that Israel, or the Mossad, used those passports."

But that did little to stop speculation of Mossad involvement — and a possible national embarrassment if proven true.

Some Israeli commentators compared the case to another Mossad disgrace during Netanyahu's previous term as prime minister, the failed attempt to kill Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal in 1997. Two Mossad agents posing as Canadian tourists were captured after injecting Mashaal with poison, and Israel was forced to send an antidote that saved Mashaal's life. Today Mashaal is Hamas' supreme leader.

The Mossad has been accused of identity theft before. New Zealand convicted and jailed two Israelis in 2005 for trying to fraudulently obtain New Zealand passports. But it would be the first time the Mossad has been suspected of using the identities of its own citizens.

At a Gaza rally of some 3,000 supporters on Wednesday, Hamas' military wing vowed revenge. Addressing the crowd by phone, Mashaal said the al-Mabhouh assassination "paves the way for capturing soldiers until we free all our prisoners from (Israeli) prisoners."

Israel's spy service has been suspected of carrying out assassinations for decades. Recent ones include Imad Mughniyeh, a top Hezbollah commander who was killed in 2008 by a bomb that ripped through his Pajero SUV in Damascus, Syria. Israel denied any role in the hit.

Tehran also blamed Israel for the death of a senior Iranian physics professor who was killed last month when a bomb-rigged motorcycle exploded. Israel did not comment.

Associated Press Writers Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Steven Gutkin in Jerusalem, Rizek Abdel Jawad in Gaza contributed to this report.

Source: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iwVdaYpYsBz7wKRCUxpcqhtjr31AD9DUMNV80