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Category: Simon McGregor-Wood | Main

SIMON McGREGOR-WOOD

Correspondent and Middle East Bureau Chief

Simon McGregor-Wood is ABC News' Middle East Correspondent, as well as the news division's Middle East Bureau Chief; he is based in Jerusalem. He has overseen a number of major events during his tenure, including the second Palestinian Intifada, Israel's disengagement from Gaza and the Israeli-Hezbollah war during the summer of 2006. McGregor-Wood has travelled widely throughout the Middle East, with frequent reporting trips to Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Egypt.

View the latest blogs from Simon McGregor-Wood below:

Gazans Fed Up With Fighting

February 24, 2009 12:08 PM

By SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD, Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

At the Erez Crossing, I spotted two smartly dressed Englishmen -- both members of the British parliament on their way in to fact find and to “see for themselves” the damage from January’s conflict.

Gaza is busy with such delegations. The Al Deira Hotel was fully booked by commissions of enquiry from both the Arab League and The European Union.

Last week it was Sen. John Kerry and his wife, plus Reps. Brian Baird and Keith Ellison. Kerry’s wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry (of the Heinz fortune), apparently made a personal pledge to rebuild the American school. The United Nations served her Heinz Ketchup in the canteen with her lunch. Smart move. Both the Kerrys were shocked by the extent of the destruction, according to the U.N. people I spoke with.

At the end of last week another congressman, this time from New Jersey, made a last-minute diversion from a trip in Israel to come to Gaza, according to Karen Abu Zeyd, commissioner general of the U.N. in Gaza, adding that he’d ditched a meeting with Netanyahu to do so.

Speaking to lots of the people made homeless by the conflict, I noticed several things. No one is really living in tents. It’s a sham. Some hang around during the daytime and then stay with friends or in rented accommodations at night.

Each family who has lost a home confirms receiving 4,000 euros from Hamas for rent and furniture.

Everyone wants a united government and realizes that the Fatah-Hamas division is a major disaster for Palestinians.

Everyone asked, “How can we guarantee our next home isn’t destroyed by Israel?”

People won’t tell you this on camera, but they think the rockets are stupid.

The smell in these destroyed neighbourhoods is overpowering, and there are flies everywhere. People say there are countless animals rotting under the rubble.

In addition to the nearly 5,000 homes destroyed, many businesses were also smashed. I saw the Hadad Ceramic warehouse smashed by Israeli bulldozers -- $2 million of stock gone and 25 years of building the business.

Hadad’s facilities in Khan Yunis and Zeitun got the same treatment. Our guide suggested he had sympathy for Hamas, but Hadad violently denied helping them in any way.

The news of money being pledged ($900 million from the United States) is being treated with skepticism by everyone. The money is meaningless unless the border crossings open and raw materials start coming in.

Since Hamas took over in 2007, no building materials have been allowed in. No cement, steel or glass, and no paper, which the U.N. finds perplexing.

Last week the U.N.’s request for pasta and more people was also turned down.

There will be no rebuilding here without serious pressure on the Israelis to open the crossings. And they will ask with some justification, “Why should we supply Hamas-controlled Gaza with material with which they can make bunkers and new missiles?” It’s a good question.

One answer is to give the raw materials to the U.N. and other NGOs directly. But that hasn’t been happening either. There are more than 200 U.N.-administered development projects that have been frozen due to lack of supplies and equipment. Something has to give.

Returning to Gaza After Israel's Assault

February 20, 2009 12:31 PM

By SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD, ABC News GAZA

I’m in Gaza again after an absence of three weeks and there are some interesting things to report.

Sen. John Kerry arrived on a surprise two-hour visit on Thursday. At a meeting in the U.N. compound he was handed a letter from Hamas addressed to President Barack Obama. Kerry said during his visit that the new U.S. administration hasn't changed the fundamental U.S. position on dealings with Hamas – no talks until Hamas recognizes Israel and gives up violence.

No one down here is prepared to say what's in the letter. Some of the Hamas people we spoke to last night wouldn't "confirm or deny the existence of the letter" – code for, yes, there is a letter, but no, I don't want to talk about it.

Most people I spoke to thought Kerry’s visit was a breakthrough of some kind. But they all want action on opening the borders and getting reconstruction started. The visit makes me think maybe the Obama team really does want to start doing things differently down here.

The smuggling tunnels play a much more important part in ordinary people's lives than I had thought. I spotted a new motorcycle shop in Gaza yesterday and stopped to take a look. Several very nice models, all secondhand but in good shape. They had been smuggled through a tunnel from Egypt. I asked about prices and then wondered where they get spare parts. "Everything through the tunnels sir," said the young man in the shop.

Later on we went to our cameraman's house to have coffee. After seven years I finally met Khaled's wife and his charming younger son, Youssef. He was dressed in the latest AC Milan replica soccer shirt. "Where did you get that?" I asked. "Through the tunnels," came the reply.

With our coffee we had delicious chocolate cookies, and Mrs. Abu Qweik apologized that so many were broken. Why? Because cookies have to be smuggled through the tunnels as well! Same for her shoes, made in Spain, and her jeans. Everything she was wearing had come through smuggling tunnels from Egypt!

The truth is that almost everything other than the most basic food, fuel and medical supplies has to come in underground from Egypt. It makes things very expensive.

I had no idea, for example, that things I consider pretty basic items like toothpaste and shampoo all have to be smuggled. I'm sure the tunnels are used by Hamas and others to bring in weapons, but I didn't realize how important they are for normal supplies as well.

Several more were bombed by Israeli planes yesterday. According to my producer, Sammi, at least 30 tunnels are still working, but every time one gets destroyed the prices on all the merchandise that comes through increase.

I stayed at the Al Deria Hotel last night. It is Gaza's best and continues to survive despite the terrible problems. It's still chilly down here but the beachside terrace is now open for dinner. It was packed with Gaza's smart set -- laptop computers on the tables, smartly dressed kids running around, young people smoking shisha pipes. It was quite a scene. And to think during the war no one stayed here because of the Israeli shelling. The wireless Internet is back up and running as well.

It made me see what a yearning for normality there is here. Despite the fact that no one can get out of Gaza unless they're seriously ill or they have very good Israeli contacts, people still manage a life of some kind.

Their kids still need to go out and play. They still need to see their friends. There is still gossip to catch up on, and people still do their best to look good even if they have to smuggle their clothes.

Israeli Voters Indicate Shift to the Right

January 23, 2009 12:15 PM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Bureau chief ABC News Jerusalem

President Obama's commitment to engage in Middle East peacemaking from the start has been welcomed by many in the region.

But today's Israeli political opinion polls will send a warning signal back to his new envoy George Mitchell and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The president's Israeli political partner after the country's Feb. 10 elections may not be so enthusiastic about making peace with the Palestinians.

Both popular dailies Yedioth and Maariv have Benyamin Netanyahu's Likud a clear three to four seats ahead of the more moderate Kadima Party, which is now headed by Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. Defense Minister Ehud Barak’s Labor Party is in third or fourth place.

But the real surprise is the steady rise of the extreme right wing Yisrael Beiteinu Party led by Avigdor Lieberman. He is a controversial politician with notoriously extreme views on how to deal with the Palestinians and with Israel's Arab minority. He has said that Israel should have carried on its recent campaign in Gaza until Hamas was toppled and has advocated the forcible transfer of Israeli Arabs to the occupied Palestinian territories.

His support has traditionally been rooted in the Russian immigrant community. But today's polling suggests his party's appeal is spreading to different Israeli constituencies. Political analysts responding to this morning's polls are now talking up the prospect of a right wing victory in the elections. Based on the poll numbers we should expect Netanyahu in the prime minister's office heading a right wing coalition that would include Lieberman. According to some, Netanyahu would invite Barak to remain as defense minister, securing the Labor Party as a third coalition partner.

Netanyahu is no fan of the "two state solution" that has been the basis of U.S. policy for the last eight years and is sure to be the central plank of Obama's policy. Netanyahu believes in concentrating instead on economic empowerment by developing the Palestinian economy with only very limited political autonomy.

One of the major stumbling blocks to advancing the peace process has been the huge rift in Palestinian politics between Mahmoud Abbas' moderate West Bank regime and a Gaza Strip ruled by the Islamists from Hamas.

If Israel's voters deliver the predicted political shift to the right, the new president's task of promoting peace in the Middle East will be even harder.

Hitchhiking With a Holocaust Survivor

December 17, 2008 10:33 AM

By SIMON MCGREGOR-WOOD, Bureau Chief & Correspondent, ABC News Jerusalem

In Israel hitchhiking is still popular and part of the Israeli way of life. It is quite normal for people to pull over and pick up complete strangers. My wife does it all the time. "It's what we do," she said.

And so it was no great surprise when she told me this week that she had given an elderly woman a lift home from her workplace at Yad Vashem, Israel's Holocaust museum.

But this lady had an interesting story.

She was born in Yugoslavia in the years before the rise of the Nazis. Like millions of other Jews she was then caught up in the horrors of the Holocaust.

At the age of 14 she was sent to Auschwitz.

During the notorious selection process after her train arrived she was sent to a waiting area beside the dreaded gas chambers. Her fate appeared to have been sealed. But waiting in the group with her was a German woman, a non-Jew, with two children. She began to complain that she shouldn't be there and that it was all a big mistake; she soon became hysterical.

Eventually two German officers came over to the group and demanded to know what was going on. One of them was Dr. Joseph Mengele, the infamous SS doctor responsible for horrific experiments on camp inmates.

He saw the young 14-year-old girl and a number of other teenagers and demanded that they be spared the gas chambers as they were fit enough for work. That young girl survived her years of incarceration and moved to Israel after the war. She told my wife that her life had been saved by Joseph Mengele!

The elderly lady explained that ever since she had come to develop a strange ambivalence for one of the Holocaust's worst criminals.

She also recounted that during one of the daily roll calls in Auschwitz Mengele had addressed a group of inmates standing nearby -- it wasn't clear whom he was talking to -- so she looked straight back at him and said, "Are you talking to me?"

She told my wife that there was a feeling in the camp that if you showed courage and sometimes stood up to the Germans you gained a little of their respect.

An amazing story from a complete stranger during a 10-minute car ride.

Tzipi Livni Under Fire for Soldier Comment

December 12, 2008 9:56 AM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

Tzipi Livni, the Israeli foreign minister and prime ministerial hopeful, has landed herself in hot water. It might have been an off-the-cuff remark but it concerned an issue close to the hearts of every Israeli -- what to do about missing and kidnapped soldiers.

During a forum with Israeli high school students in Tel Aviv Thursday, Livni said it may not be possible to secure the freedom of Cpl. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli soldier held by Hamas in Gaza for more than 900 days.

For Shalit’s safe release Hamas is demanding Israel set free more than 1,400 Palestinian prisoners, many of them with blood on their hands, a price that the government so far has been unwilling to pay.

Shalit's family has been campaigning for the government to do more to win his release. His relatives have established a tented vigil outside Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's residence in Jerusalem.

Because every Israeli teenager must serve in the armed forces the fate of the kidnapped soldier is followed closely by every Israeli mother and father. Livni's son was recently enlisted.

Her comments were quickly seized upon and some accused her of abandoning Shalit's cause although the enormous price tag set by Hamas has led to a wider debate about how far Israel should go to return missing soldiers.

Today she sought to clarify her remarks but she did not retract her basic message.

"I will never negotiate his release in the media," she told Israel Radio. "I consistently refused and continue to refuse to politicize the issue by saying that some want him back more than others. … We all want him back. … But we cannot bring every soldier back home."

It is an emotive issue in Israel and her comments are likely to linger through what is now an election season. Israelis go to the polls in February. Recent polling shows Livni and her centrist Kadima party trailing Binyamin Netnayhu's right wing Likud party.

Her latest comments may cause further damage to her political prospects.

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Was Jesus Was Born in June?

December 10, 2008 8:12 AM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

Christmas should be in June, June 17 to be exact, according to Australian astronomer Dave Reneke.

He believes the famous Christmas star of the Nativity story was in fact a spectacular conjunction of the planets Venus and Jupiter. They came together forming an unusually bright beacon of light that may easily have looked like a newly formed star….Using a computer program to track the planets’ movements through the centuries, he arrived at the date June 17 in the year 2 B.C.

“Venus and Jupiter became very close in the year 2 B.C. and they would have appeared to be one bright beacon of light….We’re not saying this was definitely the Christmas star but it is the strongest explanation for it of any I have seen so far,” Reneke said. Widely accepted research into the birth date of Jesus places it somewhere between 3 B.C. and 1 A.D.

There have been other theories to explain the appearance of the star, including a supernova -- an exploding star, or a comet. But Reneke has absolute faith in the technology used to come up with the new date. “Astronomy is such a precise science. We can plot exactly where the planets were, and it certainly seems this is the fabled star,” he said.

Reneke is quick to deny he is trying to undermine Christian tradition, claiming that his research only serves to support the whole story of the Nativity and the journey of the three wise men mentioned in the Gospels.

If his theory is ever accepted, Christmas in the Northern Hemisphere will never be the same. No more wintry scenes on Christmas cards and presumably a change in the Christmas menu.

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Egyptian Uproar Over Israeli Handshake

December 09, 2008 8:35 AM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

The Muslim Sheik and the Israeli President

It started with a handshake but has developed into a major political and religious row.

At a United Nations sponsored multifaith summit in New York last month, Egypt’s most senior Muslim cleric, Mohammed Tantawi met Israel’s President Shimon Peres. The two shook hands, smiling. A photograph was taken.

But back home there was outrage that the country’s most senior religious leader agreed to shake the hand of an Israeli leader. Israel and Egypt are at peace, but the story has shown how much mistrust and animosity most Egyptians still hold for their old enemy.

One newspaper ran an editorial describing Peres as a murderer tainted with the blood of thousands of Palestinians. It called on Tantawi to ritually purify his hands. Similar levels of hysteria have been reached by the country’s intellectuals and countless politicians.

Tantawi was appointed by the Egyptian government to head Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Sunni Islam’s most respected Islamic institution. As its head he provides religious leadership and issues fatwas based on his intimate knowledge of the Koran and other Islamic scholarship. The institution has been back peddling fast saying it was all the fault of Tantawi’s media handlers, who should have prevented the meeting.

Tantawi himself initially issued a rather unconvincing statement saying he didn’t know who Peres was when he was introduced. Later on, however, he defended the handshake, saying it was perfectly justified. In an earlier religious summit he was similarly criticized for meeting one of Israel’s top rabbis.

Peres’ office in Jerusalem has since declined to comment on what it is calling an internal Egyptian matter. But shortly after the meeting, his office went to some lengths to describe the encounter with Tantawi as warm, and say that the two men sat next to each other during dinner.

It is 30 years since Prime Minister Manachem Begin and President Anwar Sadat signed their historic peace treaty. An act the Egyptian leader was to die for at the hands of Muslim extremists.

The peace between Israel and Egypt is often referred to as a cold one. Few Israelis travel to Cairo, Egypt has withdrawn its ambassador from Tel Aviv in protest at the plight of the Palestinians.

For many, the handshake uproar is a sign of how the Palestinian issue continues to poison Israel’s relations with its neighbors. Israeli columnists have pointed out that no one from the Egyptian government has sprung to the defense of Tantawi.

When it comes to the Palestinian issue, even Arab leaders at peace with Israel know they are on shaky political ground. President Hosni Mubarak’s regular contacts with Israeli leaders have never been popular with the Egyptian masses.

King Abdullah of Jordan is under similar domestic pressure. He recently invited Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Defence Minister Ehud Barak to Amman at short notice to urge greater progress in the peace process and an easing of the blockade of Gaza.

He knows full well how incendiary the Palestinian issue is for his own people, two thirds of whom are Palestinian refugees.

Tantawi has so far refused to bow to calls for his resignation. But I suspect he won’t be going to another multifaith summit for a while.

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Hebron Settlers Clash With Police, Palestinians

December 04, 2008 9:40 AM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

After three weeks of tense standoff, Israeli security forces finally started today to evacuate Jewish settlers from a contested building in the heart of the Palestinian city of Hebron.

Israel’s Supreme Court had ordered the evacuation of the building while the contested details of its ownership were determined. A Palestinian family says it still owns the building. Jewish settlers insist they bought it legally.

The settlers have refused to leave and the area has since been flooded with Jewish volunteers who have been clashing with soldiers and Palestinian residents on a daily basis.

Earlier in the day, Defense Minister Ehud Barak held a last-ditch meeting with settler leaders to try and defuse the crisis. He insisted the building had to be evacuated while the legal process unfolded.

The standoff has sparked a debate inside Israel about the rule of law in the occupied territories and about the government’s resolve in standing up to an increasingly violent minority of settlers.

Their behavior has shocked Israelis who have been appalled at the numerous assaults on soldiers and the desecration with graffiti of nearby Muslim graveyards and mosques.

Soldiers and police wearing riot gear dragged each protester from the building one by one. There were reports of some injuries but the violent resistance promised by the settlers failed to materialize.

Photographers and TV crews wandered freely around the building as the evacuation proceeded.

Most of the settlers are teenagers from other illegal West Bank settlements. They were drawn to Hebron by their ideological commitment to resist the evacuation of Jews from what they consider to be one of Judaism’s holiest places.

The current fragile peace process has been dogged by Israel’s failure to evacuate dozens of so-called illegal settlements and by several highly contentious announcements of settlement expansions.

Under the terms of the Mideast Road Map, Israel has to clear out illegal West Bank settlements while the Palestinians have to dismantle terrorist groups.

Neither side has been judged to have effectively fulfilled its obligations.

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The Bible and The Koran On Your Cell Phone

November 25, 2008 8:45 AM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

One of Israel’s biggest cell phone companies is offering users full text access to both the Bible and the Koran.

For a fee of $1.40 a month people who use Pelephone cell phones can access any passage of either holy book at the flick of a few keys.

“A year and a half ago we decided to move closer to the world of texts because technology allowed us to create a unique reading experience,” said Pelephone’s Motti Cohen in an interview with Israel’s Haaretz newspaper.

“We have thousands of users who enter and read the Bible and now the Koran too,” he added.

Dr Mordechai Kedar a member of Bar Ilan University’s Arabic Department, welcomes the new service.

“I’m not a subscriber yet” he told Haaretz, “but I think it’s a very practical idea. As a researcher I can see myself going into the Koran via a 3G phone and urgently retrieving a specific verse…the integration of Muslim ideas that were born in the seventh century with 21st century gadgets is a welcome phenomenon.”

Downloading the sound of special Muslim calls to prayer on a cell phone is already very popular in the Middle East. It is not unusual to hear ring tones in the form of a chanting muezzin in Jerusalem’s streets.

Every morning I take my son to kindergarten on the back of my bicycle, and every morning we pass the same young Palestinian man listening to Islamic verses on his cell phone. I wonder if he’s a Pelephone subscriber?

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Israel's Elite Negev Squadron

November 21, 2008 10:49 AM

By Simon McGregor-Wood, Correspondent & Bureau Chief, ABC News Jerusalem

At the Ramon air base in the desert of southern Israel, the Negev Squadron trains with its F-161s.

This week ABC News gained rare access to this elite unit.

As fears over Iran’s nuclear threat grow, the focus of the world’s attention has turned to the possibility of an Israeli airstrike.

The Hebrew name for the newest version of the F-161 is sufa, which means "storm." Delivered in 2004, the F161 is the latest generation of strike aircraft in the Israeli arsenal, ideal for hitting targets on or under the ground.

It carries a complex array of high-tech weaponry, including American-made bunker busting bombs. These will be needed to effectively deal with Iran’s well-protected nuclear facilities.

Deep in the heart of the Negev desert the Ramon air base is a dusty sprawl of hangars, fuel dumps, office buildings and barracks. It is one of the biggest bases in Israel.

Following a short briefing by the squadron commander, we were allowed to talk to a pilot, his identity protected by his flying helmet.

He was introduced to us simply as Capt. Uri, a Russian-born Israeli immigrant, now a member of Israeli's fighting elite.

I wanted to know if his training was,specifically geared to a possible Iranian mission. He had been well-briefed in evasion tactics.

“We are part of the armed forces of this country, and whatever our government asks us to do, we will do, and so we will train for any mission we are given,” he said.

I tried a follow -up question, which was equally well side-stepped, and the woman from the army’s press department hissed “that’s enough!”

Israel’s leaders have made it clear they will never accept an Iran with nuclear weapons.

Once before faced with such a threat, Israel took matters into its own hands. In June 1981, eight much-older F16s destroyed Iraq’s nuclear reactor.

Any operation to destroy Iran’s scattered and well-protected nuclear program will be much harder, the global reaction much more complicated.

But the question of Iran’s race to nuclear capability won’t go away. It is likely to be one the president-elect’s sternest and earliest foreign policy tests. Barack Obama favors dialogue and diplomacy.

Out on the dusty tarmac of the Ramon air base, Israel’s pilots aren’t taking any chances. They are training every day for every eventuality, and despite their reluctance to talk, you can bet that includes a strike on Iran.

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November 21, 2008 in Simon McGregor-Wood | Permalink | User Comments (25) | TrackBack (0)

RECENT POSTS

MONTHLY ARCHIVES

SIMON McGREGOR-WOOD

Correspondent and Middle East Bureau Chief

Gazans Fed Up With Fighting

Returning to Gaza After Israel's Assault

Israeli Voters Indicate Shift to the Right

Hitchhiking With a Holocaust Survivor

Tzipi Livni Under Fire for Soldier Comment

Was Jesus Was Born in June?

Egyptian Uproar Over Israeli Handshake

Hebron Settlers Clash With Police, Palestinians

The Bible and The Koran On Your Cell Phone

Israel's Elite Negev Squadron