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prépositions > amid
Amid
Statehood Bid, Tensions Simmer in West Bank
September
23, 2011
The New York Times
By ETHAN BRONNER
QUSRA, West
Bank — In this Palestinian village where a mosque was defaced and cars were
burned, young men now patrol nightly against settler intruders. Nearby, Jewish
settlers worry that Palestinian militants buoyed by international support of
their statehood will step up attacks. Settler rapid response teams are
practicing with M-16s; women are learning to shoot handguns.
As the Palestinians seek United Nations membership in New York, the situation on
the ground remains calm. But tensions lie just below the surface. Israel has
stationed thousands more police officers in the West Bank armed with tear gas,
noise machines and putrid liquid to stop possible marches on settlements.
The settlers themselves have no training in such crowd-control techniques, and
they fear for their communities, some of which reject fences for ideological
reasons, arguing that they live in their homeland and will not fence themselves
in. So the risk of their using live fire against Palestinians who might try to
march on their communities is quite real. In more remote outposts, wooden clubs
have been distributed.
“They feel the world is with them, so why not make an innocent march?” asked
Shimon Shomron, a former undercover commando who heads the rapid response team
of Bat Ayin, a fenceless settlement near Bethlehem known for its radicalism. He
stood on a ridge looking at the Palestinian town of Tzurif across the valley, an
M-16 across his shoulder. “But they know we will not meet them with flowers.”
For much of the world, the very presence of more than 300,000 Israeli settlers
in the West Bank amounts to a kind of violent crime. They are holding land
widely considered Palestinian by right, obstructing a two-state solution. And
they are armed and protected by one of the world’s most powerful militaries.
But geopolitics aside, the question facing security forces — both Palestinian
and Israeli — in the coming weeks and months is whether the relative quiet of
the past few years is coming to an end. And a wild card in their calculations,
they say, is the small group of radical, frightened settlers who have recently
attacked both Palestinian villages and an Israeli military base.
“I consider this a major threat,” Police Chief Yohanan Danino, Israel’s national
police chief, said recently of settler violence in announcing a new team of
police officers aimed at tracking radical Jews. “Those events are liable to
produce an escalation, and that is the last thing we need right now.”
The scale of the threat is a matter of controversy. The radicals, who probably
number in the hundreds, promote a policy they call “price tag,” in which they
attack Palestinian property — and occasionally the Israeli military — in
response to army curbs on their building or other activity. The security forces
recently dismantled three of their houses, causing an increase in retaliations.
The settler leadership has fiercely condemned “price tag,” saying it does not
represent the vast majority of their community. In addition, Israelis say that
there are few such episodes, but Palestinians say that they suffer constantly
from such settler violence and that lately it has gotten worse.
“Several times a week they break in and we don’t want them on our land,” said
Abdul Hakim Ahmed, a psychology teacher who lives here in Qusra, a village of
about 5,000 people near Nablus, and who is one of the organizers of the nightly
patrols. He spoke as a dozen young villagers with huge flashlights and
cellphones walked Qusra’s perimeter. “They uproot trees, torch cars, steal
sheep. We are threatened. They want to drag us into violence as an excuse to
take more land.”
Qusra is unusual because it lies outside the jurisdiction of the Palestinian
Authority and relies exclusively on the Israeli military for protection. Its men
have no weapons, and Mr. Ahmed says he wants to keep it that way.
“Any violence coming from the Palestinian side will benefit the government and
the settlers,” Mr. Ahmed said. “We lost thousands of martyrs in the second
intifada and we lost land too. They labeled us terrorists and they benefited. So
now we use different tools — media and diplomacy. We learned this from them.”
Whether things will stay so benign going forward is unclear. Mr. Ahmed added
that the Israeli Army response to the complaints of the villagers has produced
few results: “They come, they take notes, they leave. Nothing ever happens.”
The Israeli authorities acknowledge that few violent settlers have been caught
or prosecuted. They say they, too, are frustrated by that.
“In the government, we are all very worried about this,” said Benny Begin, a
minister in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government who is on the right
of the Likud party. “These people are scoundrels, but we have not been terribly
successful in catching them.”
The army says it is cracking down on radicals, barring some them from the West
Bank for the coming months.
The settlers contend that they, too, are insufficiently protected by their
military. It is the rising mistrust on both sides and the possibility of their
taking the law into their own hands that seems most perilous.
West of Hebron is the 70-family settlement of Adora, where in 2002 attackers
killed four people, including a 5-year-old girl in her bed. In a recent letter
to a volunteer group that supplies and trains defense teams, the settlement said
it was worried about what would happen “with the Arabs declaring statehood.”
(Settlers rarely use the word “Palestinian,” considering it a term of
propaganda.)
The appeal said: “Adora is exposed to many threats, including murderous
terrorist infiltrations, shootings on the nearby road from Arab houses and
passing vehicles and the organized and coordinated obstruction of the road by
the residents of neighboring Arab villages.”
Palestinians call that description a wild exaggeration. But other settlers take
it very seriously.
“We have to urgently resupply the security needs of 140 communities,” said
Yisrael Danziger, director of operations at Mishmeret Yesha, which trains and
supplies the settler response teams beyond what the Israeli military provides.
“But we have a long way to go. Once they are told they have a state, the Arabs
will feel they have been given the keys to the inn and that we are usurpers. The
future is here. What was once terror will now be policy.”
Mr. Danziger is shunned by the settler establishment as a dangerous firebrand,
but the response teams praise him. He raises money abroad, mostly in the United
States, to buy protective vests, helmets, plastic stocks to stabilize handguns
and other equipment that some of the teams say they need because the army has
not provided what it should. His group also hires security men to do additional
training for rapid response teams in anti-terror actions.
At a recent practice on a military training site in central Israel, Mr. Shomron
and the other members of the Bat Ayin security team were taking live target
practice and learning to inspect around corners for intruders.
The dozen young men, some bearded, with large skullcaps on their heads and
prayer fringes hanging from their sides, said they needed to be prepared for
potentially big changes ahead, starting with mass marches by Palestinians.
“If they march, I’m sure they will come with knives or rocks, not with candies,”
said Avraham Levine, a 28-year-old member of the team. “This government lets the
Arabs do whatever they want. But when a man feels unprotected, he takes the law
into his own hands.”
Amid Statehood Bid, Tensions Simmer in West Bank, NYT,
23.9.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/24/world/middleeast/
west-bank-tensions-simmer-amid-palestinian-united-nations-statehood-bid.html
Amid Cuts, Public Colleges Step Up Appeals
to Alumni
January 15,
2011
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO
As state
legislatures cut back support for higher education, public colleges and
universities across the country are turning to their alumni, hat in hand, as
never before — hiring consultants, hunting down graduates and mobilizing student
phone banks to raise private money in amounts they once thought impossible.
But many find themselves arriving late to the game, particularly in the
Northeast, where state governments have traditionally been generous and a host
of private colleges have dominated the quest for donations.
The rush to catch up has placed public campuses in an awkward stance: cutting
academic programs and instructors at the same time they are expanding
development staffs and investing in a fund-raising infrastructure. And for some,
the challenges run far deeper than honing their sales pitches.
A culture of class reunions and identification with one’s graduating class — the
ethos of belonging and giving back that has been ingrained at many private
colleges for generations — is less developed at most public universities. While
there are exceptions, alumni networks at public universities are not quite as
deep-pocketed as those in the private sphere.
“Rutgers is not a rich kid’s school,” said Richard L. McCormick, the president
of the New Jersey university, which kicked off a $1 billion fund-raising
campaign in October. “Many of our students do very well, don’t get me wrong. But
we don’t have the advantage of as many multimillionaires among our alumni as the
private colleges do.”
Perhaps the biggest task, administrators say, is simply making alumni and other
potential donors aware that public campuses can no longer get by on public
money.
When the State University of New York at Geneseo surveyed its alumni three years
ago as part of a plan to increase fund-raising, the initial response was
heartening. Former students described their time there with words like “love”
and “the best four years.” Then came what one administrator, Michael J.
Catillaz, called “the cold shower.” Asked if they would donate, almost all said
they thought the university was financed entirely by the state. The state’s
contribution was actually 25 percent, and it has been dropping ever since.
“Inviting alumni in large numbers to actively support the college is a foreign
notion,” said Mr. Catillaz, the vice president for college advancement.
Yet there is danger in emphasizing the loss of state support. Fund-raising
experts estimate that at most colleges, more than 90 percent of private
donations come from a small segment of wealthy alumni, in large gifts that are
almost always earmarked for a lofty purpose, like a new academic building or
endowed chair.
“Donors do not want to be seen as there to make up a state budget shortfall,”
said John Lippincott, president of the Council for Advancement and Support of
Education. “They want to know that their contributions will make a difference,
and making a difference is not lighting the lights and heating the buildings.”
Despite those hurdles, officials of public institutions say that tapping
philanthropy has become a chief priority. At SUNY, where the state has cut $674
million, or 30 percent, from the system’s operating budget in three years, the
chancellor, Nancy L. Zimpher, recently held what she called a “summit meeting”
in Manhattan for fund-raising officials from the 64 campuses.
The meeting was meant, in part, to celebrate the conclusion of a $3 billion
campaign, actually a collection of individual campus efforts. But it was also a
rallying cry to put some serious muscle into the next drive, yet to be
announced. “Was SUNY late coming to the table? Absolutely,” Dr. Zimpher said.
“But our ambitions are now equal to those of other public universities.”
SUNY, in fact, was prohibited from mounting fund-raising campaigns when it was
created in the early 1960s, to allay fears that the new system would compete
with private colleges, she said. “That is unlike anything I understand about
public education where I come from,” said Dr. Zimpher, who was previously
president of the University of Cincinnati.
Indeed, in parts of the country where public colleges dominate higher education,
large institutions like the University of California at Berkeley, the University
of Washington and the University of Michigan have for decades run big, ambitious
fund drives.
But now smaller public institutions are joining in. Donald M. Fellows, president
of Marts & Lundy, a national firm that advises nonprofit institutions like
hospitals and museums on raising money, said public higher education was the
only field in which his company had not lost business during the recession. “You
have this whole other tier coming on,” Mr. Fellows said. “It’s hard to make the
decision to invest in something like this when you’re cutting your core, but you
do have to invest in that to get the payback.”
San Diego State University has made the gamble. While placing staff members on
furlough and increasing student fees, it is halfway through its first
fund-raising campaign, with a goal of $500 million, and raised $11 million to
open an alumni center a year ago.
“Alumni now have a place to come home to,” said Mary Ruth Carleton, vice
president for university relations and development. “It was a catalyst and
convinced a lot of our alums and board members that we could be successful with
a campaign.”
A decade ago, the 23 colleges and professional schools in the City University of
New York were raising $50 million a year collectively. Today, that figure is
$200 million, and officials have set a goal of $3 billion by 2015.
Matthew Goldstein, CUNY’s chancellor, said he had made the presidents’ track
records at gathering money an important part of their annual performance
reviews. “Everybody has gotten the directive that fund-raising needs to be a
fundamental activity,” he said.
In many places, that mission filters down to undergraduates, who cold-call
potential donors. At Stony Brook University, one of SUNY’s four research
universities, alumni meet often with students on the Long Island campus to build
a feeling of community.
“It’s a cultural change,” said Samuel L. Stanley Jr., president of Stony Brook,
which just wrapped up a $360 million campaign. “We’re trying to build a
tradition among our students. Even if they just give $5 or $10, it’s the concept
that we really rely on giving, even though we’re a state university.”
To that end, institutions are tracking affluent alumni and trumpeting athletic
victories.
SUNY Geneseo, the system’s most selective college, held 67 alumni events last
year, up from a few the year before, as part of an effort to raise $25 million.
The college has redesigned its alumni magazine and started five quarterly
newsletters, each with a different focus, like athletics or business education.
Rutgers has hired Marts & Lundy to help gauge the potential donating power of
its 390,000 alumni and has consolidated 19 alumni groups into one. “We decided
that was crazy,” Dr. McCormick said. “And we abolished the dues structure so
that any alumnus gets the magazine.”
Even the University of Connecticut, whose sports prowess has won it a national
profile, began its first big fund-raising campaign only about a decade ago. And
a bruised economy has hurt. A $600 million campaign begun four years ago has so
far raised $250 million rather than a projected $325 million, said John K.
Martin, president of the University of Connecticut Foundation.
Some warn that there is such a thing as too much private money.
“If there is a risk in it, it’s that it will take legislatures off the hook,”
said Patrick M. Callan, president of the National Center for Public Policy and
Higher Education. “They might get the impression that we can make up for the
cuts through philanthropy, and that could make us vulnerable to further cuts.”
Still, Mr. Callan said, fund-raising has become a fact of life, adding,
“Everybody has to do it.”
Amid Cuts, Public Colleges Step Up Appeals to Alumni, NYT,
15.1.2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/16/education/16college.html
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