Shock and Awe in 2007 News Biz

by Vivian Salama

 PostGlobal – WashingtonPost.com

As we begin 2008 and look back on the biggest stories that made headlines over the past year, I cannot help but ask a question that I, as a journalist, have recently come to dread: what qualifies as news, nowadays?

Stories that make news these days are not necessarily newsworthy, and vice versa. One of the factors which traditionally drove newsworthiness was significance. The number of people whom a story affects is important. Celebrities are easy targets and, dare I say it, they usually make for easy headlines. The fiasco surrounding Paris Hilton’s 23-day “traumatic” lock-up is just one painful example. For readers living overseas who did not have the pleasure of experiencing this media frenzy, many networks deployed their helicopters to film an aerial play-by-play of Hilton’s trip [in the back of a police cruiser] from her California mansion to the courthouse. Of course, there are other examples, including the meltdown of pop singer Britney Spears and the untimely death of former Playmate Anna Nicole Smith. Also, the Internet has complicated the question not only of what constitutes news, but also of who should legitimately and credibly deliver it. Viral videos have become such a sensation that their profound popularity often makes for headlines.

As for news – that is, the old fashioned kind – it is difficult to choose just one story that tops the list. Certainly the war in Iraq still rages on; however, death tolls have grown mind-numbing to the average reader/viewer, and the stories that make big headlines usually relate to war funding or government ineptitude. Also, similar to the December holidays, political campaigns begin earlier and earlier each year. The high stakes surrounding the 2008 presidential race dominated headlines early on in 2007. As for stories that made a significant impact domestically, I would include the tragic collapse of the I-35W Mississippi River Bridge in Minnesota last August and the brutal Virginia Tech shooting in April (I was in North Korea the day this happened, a country notorious for being a “Hermit Kingdom.” My group knew nothing about the shooting spree until we returned to South Korea the next day. Incidentally, the gunman was an American of South Korean descent. The outpour of sympathy which we, as Americans, received from the Korean people was profound).

We live in a 24-hour news culture, where sometimes – I’m sorry to say – quantity often trumps quality with regard to coverage. This cultural shift first occurred in the days following the September 11th attacks, when the public was understandably hungry for every bit of information it could get. However, just as this country grew used to positioning itself in attack mode, so, too, have the news media – at the expense of in-depth, investigative journalism. The old expression, “if it bleeds, it leads” has taken on a whole new meaning. Nowadays, if it bleeds, gasps, heals, chokes, laughs, cries, sneezes or quivers, it’s on YouTube.

C’est la vie, I guess. Happy New Year, everyone.

Call for new inquiry into Sudanese protest assaults

Thanks to the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights for sending this along.  This story only continues to get sadder.  I photographed this protest extensively in the days leading up to its violent breakup exactly two years ago.  To view the photos, click here.

CAIRO — Five Egyptian and international human rights organizations today called on President Hosni Mubarak to authorize an independent judicial inquiry into the December 30, 2005 police assault on Sudanese protestors – refugees, asylum seekers and migrants – in Cairo that resulted in the deaths of 27 persons and injured scores more.
 
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Hisham Mubarak Law Center and the Nadim Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence said that an independent judicial inquiry should also examine the conduct of  the initial investigation into the incident by the Dokki Prosecution Office, which found no evidence of police or official misconduct. The groups reviewed a copy of that initial investigation and found a concerted effort to absolve the police of any wrongdoing.   
 
“President Mubarak should use the second anniversary of the police action against Sudanese protestors to initiate a complete and transparent investigation of what really took place,” said Joe Stork, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division. “The public prosecutor’s total exoneration of the police lacks any semblance of credibility.”
 
In the early hours of December 30, 2005, a force of nearly 4,000 Egyptian police and security officers surrounded a makeshift camp in Mustafa Mahmoud Square in Cairo’s Mohandisin neighborhood, near the offices of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, where for three months hundreds of Sudanese refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants had engaged in a peaceful sit-in protest. According to media accounts at the time, police fired from water cannons into the crowd and then entered in force, beating people indiscriminately. The episode resulted in the deaths of at least 27 of the Sudanese, including 11 children and eight women. An investigation by the public prosecutor’s office in Dokki concluded in May 2006 that all the deaths “resulted from a stampede,” and found no wrongdoing on the part of the police.
 
The government never made public the written decision to close the investigation, but the five groups recently obtained a copy of the decision ( http://hrw.org/pub/2007/mena/dokkiNyabaDecisionMustafaMahmud.pdf ). 
 
The government’s initial “no fault” conclusion appears in a 16-page memorandum dated May 20, 2006 and signed by Wael Hussein, chief of the Dokki Prosecution Office. The memorandum reveals serious failures in the official investigation into the killings, and shows how the public prosecutors and state forensic doctors collaborated to absolve the police from any responsibility for the 27 deaths.

For example, the memorandum states that none of the police officers and security officials interviewed by public prosecutors was able to name the official who issued the order to launch the operation or the security official who led the anti-riot force responsible for carrying it out. Among the 127 police and security officers interviewed, the public prosecutors directly asked 28 police officers, two State Security Intelligence officers, the district chief of criminal investigations, and the top security official for the northern Giza district if they could identify the officers in charge. According to the memorandum, all 28 claimed they did not know the names of the officers, with one of them citing “the presence of numerous police leaders representing different sectors at the site of the incident.” The memorandum shows that public prosecutors made no serious effort to investigate this apparent attempt to protect those responsible for ordering the attack on the protestors.
 
Prosecutors also interviewed four eyewitnesses who all claimed that the protestors initiated the violence by attacking the police. The government put the total number of protestors at 1,107, and at least 650 protestors were in state custody for several weeks following the assault, but prosecutors managed to interview only one Sudanese woman who was injured in the attacks.
 
“Prosecutors were clearly more interested in protecting the police and vilifying the victims than in establishing the truth of what really happened on December 30,” said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa program.
 
The memorandum also shows how Justice Ministry forensic experts endeavored to obscure any criminal responsibility for the deaths. The autopsy reports cite marks of “injuries resulting from crashing against solid, rough-surfaced objects,” a death resulting from “bruises in the head and neck leading to a brain concussion and a failure of higher vital brain centers,” and another death “resulting from a head injury leading to nerve fiber injuries.” The forensic experts nonetheless concluded that all the deaths resulted from a “stampede” leading to asphyxia, and claimed there was “a lack of any signs indicating the use of excessive force in assaulting them.”
 
Chief Prosecutor Wael Hussein relied on these forensic reports and on the statements of police officers to conclude that there was “absolutely no relation between the deaths and the conduct of police forces in dispersing the protestors.” Citing “lack of evidence,” Hussein decided to exclude the charge of premeditated murder. No one has alleged that the killings were premeditated, but the prosecutor failed to indict any police officer with manslaughter or unintended injury, or even with the misdemeanor offense of carrying out his duties with cruelty or brutality, as per article 129 of the Penal Code.
 
Instead, the chief prosecutor charged the protestors en masse with committing crimes of manslaughter, unintended injury, resisting authorities, and the deliberate destruction of property. Citing the inability to identify the perpetrators of these crimes, the Public Prosecutor’s Office then decided to suspend the investigations into possible police misconduct and instructed the police to continue the search for perpetrators.  
 
“Charging the protestors with serious crimes and exonerating the police of any wrongdoing is the absurd but inevitable outcome of a sham investigation,” said Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights. “Two years after their deaths, the victims of police brutality in Mustafa Mahmoud Square still await justice.”
 
The five organizations called on the Egyptian government to open an independent judicial inquiry into the killings in order to identify those who ordered, led, and implemented the attacks, and to hold them responsible for any unnecessary or excessive use of force that resulted in the large number of deaths. In April 2007, the UN Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers requested that the investigation into the killings “be reopened in order to clarify the circumstances leading to the deaths of the Sudanese migrants. Whatever those circumstances, [the committee] also recommends that measures be adopted to prevent the occurrence of similar events in the future.” The inquiry should also look into the serious, and apparently deliberate, failures of the earlier investigation into the killings, and make the results of this inquiry public.  

Pakistani Government Must do more to Quell Fanatacism

As always, I am interested to hear your thoughts. 

by Vivian Salama

PostGlobal – WashingtonPost.com

                   When Benazir Bhutto spoke to the Council of Foreign Relations last August before returning from exile to Pakistan, she said, “The West’s close association with a military dictatorship, in my humble view, is alienating Pakistan’s people and is playing into the hands of those hardliners who blame the West for the ills of the region.”
                    Those hardliners to whom she referred, while safely in New York, are likely the same people who took her life in Pakistan on Thursday evening. The news of Bhutto’s assassination is a grim reminder that of religious extremists are attempting to reverse the moderating influences of globalization.

                    Meanwhile, Pakistani politicians have moved quickly to exploit her death as grounds for political gain rather than for productive partnership and dialogue. Nawaz Sharif vowed to boycott the January elections upon news of Bhutto’s death – after all, he had only agreed to participate in the election on the coattails of Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP). However with no Bhutto, it is unlikely that the PPP will participate in the January election either, seeing as there is no obvious successor to its assassinated leader.
                  President Pervez Musharraf only recently lifted the controversial Emergency Law, implemented shortly after Bhutto’s return. If he decides that this situation legitimates the reimplementation of martial law, it will not quell the imminent backlash his government will see on the Pakistani street. Bhutto was an immensely popular leader, her death will not blow over quickly.
                  Conspiracy theories will likely emerge, particularly from Bhutto’s supporters, many of whom felt that Musharraf never sincerely wanted to engage in any semblance of power sharing with Bhutto. Just as there was no serious investigation following the October attacks against Bhutto hours after her arrival to Pakistan, it is unlikely there will be a serious investigation into the attack that killed her.
                  If anything, this latest tragedy will reinforce the idea that Pakistan is a dangerous place. Lawmakers in Washington have expressed skepticism about the use of US military aid to Pakistan – a key ally in the war on terrorism – particularly after Musharraf imposed emergency rule. Lawmakers moved to put limits on the USD$300 million the US sends to Pakistan each year. A bill passed by Congress last week now reserves USD$250 million of those funds for counter-terrorism operations. Above all else, the world is now holding its breath as its watches Pakistan – a nuclear power – on the verge of collapse.
                One thing is certain: Bhutto’s assassination will trigger civil unrest for months to come. It is important not to let this tragedy divert attention from the issue at hand: there is a growing radical movement in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Suicide bombings now average one in every five days in Pakistan. While there are numerous political parties pitted against one another, it is unlikely they would have used suicide tactics to settle the score. More needs to be done by the Pakistani government to quash the spread of fanaticism before it engulfs the whole of the region.

Bhutto Assassinated

The Muslim world’s first female leader has been assassinated, probably by the same radical elements who threatened her life even while she lived in exile.  I will be writing something on what this means for Pakistan, but in the meantime, the BBC has a great obituary.  Click here to read it.

Egypt ‘to copyright antiquities’

this is SIMPLY AMAZING!!!!

FROM THE BBC:  Egypt’s MPs are expected to pass a law requiring royalties be paid whenever copies are made of museum pieces or ancient monuments such as the pyramids.

Zahi Hawass, who chairs Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, told the BBC the law would apply in all countries.

The money was needed to maintain thousands of pharaonic sites, he said.

Correspondents say the law will deal a blow to themed resorts across the world where large-scale copies of Egyptian artefacts are a crowd-puller.

Mr Hawass said the law would apply to full-scale replicas of any object in any museum in Egypt.

“Commercial use” of ancient monuments like the pyramids or the sphinx would also be controlled, he said.”Even if it is for private use, they must have permission from the Egyptian government,” he added.

But he said the law would not stop local and international artists reproducing monuments as long as they were not exact replicas.

The Luxor hotel in the US city of Las Vegas would also not be affected because it was not an exact copy of a pyramid and its interior was completely different, Mr Hawass told AFP news agency.

But he said claims by the hotel that it was “the only pyramid-shaped building in the world” could no longer be made.

The announcement came two days after an Egyptian newspaper called on the hotel to pay a share of its profits to the central Egyptian city of Luxor, which administers the ancient Valley of the Kings burial site.

Christmas in Egypt

Merry Christmas to all those who celebrate the holiday today.  Here’s a short, light piece I posted on Washingtonpost.com today regarding the question of whether non-Christian countries are encorporating Christmas traditions into mainstream culture.  Naturally, I focused on Egypt. 

by Vivian Salama

PostGlobal, WashingtonPost.com

            The first year I lived in Egypt, Ramadan fell in November.  Journalists are often invited to company iftars (the meal to break fast) as a way of networking and exchanging in the holiday spirit.   You can imagine my surprise when, at one of these iftars, Santa Claus marched in to spread …Ramadan cheer(!?) 
            While this is an absolutely comical (and unusual) incident, Christmas is by no means a laughing matter in the Arab world’s most populous nation.   Of the 75 million people crammed mostly along the banks of the Nile River, approximately 15 percent are Christians – mostly Coptic Orthodox.  Along the streets of Cairo, holiday lights and decorations commemorate Christmas and the Muslim majority goes out of its way to share in the holiday spirit just as many Christians do during the month-long celebration of Ramadan.   Unlike the West, where the consumer craze has obliterated all logic, and “celebrations” (read: shopping season) start in October, Coptic Christmas is not synonymous for parties, eggnog and mistletoe.   Rather, it is the end of a 40-day fast where families often flock to midnight mass and eat various traditional dishes.  In fact, traditions such as the Christmas tree and Father Christmas ( “Baba Noel”) have only recently been incorporated into the culture.  

            That said, Christmas 2003 was one to remember in Egypt as President Hosni Mubarak – for the first time – marked it as a national holiday.   The usually congested streets of Cairo are now ghost towns on the Eastern Orthodox Christmas (January 7) as Christians and Muslims alike stay home from school and work.   While Egypt still maintains the practice of listing religion on national identification cards, Christians are very much a part of mainstream society and incidents of marginalization have been isolated.  Many Christians in Egypt hold public offices.   Even Egypt’s richest man, Naguib Sawiris, CEO of Orascom Telecom is a Copt and is responsible for building a number of churches in Egypt’s upper class resort towns.  Most Christians welcomed the move to declare Christmas a national holiday, particularly given domestic fears by Christians and moderate Muslims that the country may be headed in the same direction of some of the more conservative, less secular Arab states.   
            While Christmas may not be the best example, Western customs have seeped into Egyptian culture in other ways.   Valentine’s Day is an absolute obsession in this ancient nation where young lovers shower each other with material sentiments since physical sentiments (at least pre-marital) are frowned upon.   However Egypt still maintains some of its ancient traditions as well.  The day after Easter Sunday is a national holiday commemorating Sham el Naseem, a celebration which dates back to Pharonic times commemorating the start of Spring.  Ancient Egyptians used to offer salted fish and onions, as well as a young woman, to the Gods of the Nile River.  Today, no woman is sacrificed, but families do maintain the tradition of eating salted fish and onions, and several production companies even reenact the Pharonic offerings to commemorate this ancient festival.  

Valentine’s Day in Cairo

Terrorists and the Media

This quote by Jack Straw – Britain’s former Foreign Secretary – I find to be extremely fascinating, and a sign of the times.  It directly correlates with my Newsweek article from earlier this week entitled ASK A TERRORIST (on my blog, it is listed as the post immediately preceding this one). 

“The advent of new technologies, advanced means of communication and evermore sophisticated ways of moving money around have already influenced the way terrorists operate and will continue to do so.  Terrorist organizers and fundraisers no longer have to be in the same country as their target or indeed as each other.  Their communications to each other can be encrypted.  And there is the potential, if the right targets are hit (such as strategic computer systems running banking or air traffic control operations), to affect thoughts of even millions of people.”

–Jack Straw, UK Home Secretary

(quoted from O’Brien, Kevin A. “Information Age Terrorism and Warfare.” Globalisation and the New Terror: the Asia Pacific dimension. Aldershot, England: Edward Elgar. 2004, 127.)

Ask a Terrorist

A 9/11 mastermind invites journalists for an online chat? Behind Al Qaeda’s latest publicity tactic.
By Vivian Salama | Newsweek Web Exclusive
Dec 20, 2007

Behold the latest phase in Al Qaeda’s media strategy. The shadowy terror network is offering up Ayman al-Zawahiri, to any journalists with questions for its No. 2 man. The invitation, issued by the group’s media arm, As-Sahaab (The Cloud), came at the end of a 90-minute video message from Zawahiri, posted on one of the group’s various militant Web pages.

In the statement, released Dec. 16, Zawahiri invites “individuals, agencies and all media” to submit written questions via one of As-Sahaab’s Web forums. He calls upon the “brothers” who supervise the site “to collect the questions and transmit them without alteration, whether it is coming from someone who agrees or disagrees.”

This is the first time Al Qaeda has made a formal call to journalists, although it will not be the first time the radical Islamic group has granted interviews to Western media. Counterterrorism experts believe that the posting is genuine and that it is part of Al Qaeda’s evolving tactics to use the Web as part of its propaganda arsenal. “This is a continuation of the efforts by Al Qaeda’s senior leadership to push themselves forward in the public viewpoint,” says Maj. Reid Sawyer, editor of “Terrorism and Counterterrorism” and a lecturer of terrorism studies at Columbia University.

Recent messages from both Osama bin Laden and Zawahiri have specifically called on Americans to embrace Islam and turn against the governments they deem to be enemies of Islam. Counterterrorism analysts say the offer of an online exchange with Zawahiri is part of its broader emphasis on connecting with new audiences. “While Al Qaeda has its own media institutions, it well understands that Western audiences don’t necessarily tune into those sources of information,” says Sawyer. “Because of that, this allows them to reach Western audiences and it gives them some degree of legitimacy in terms of who the interviews are conducted with.”

From Hizbullah to Al Qaeda, Islamic terrorist groups have commonly embraced the newest forms of communications technology to boost their access to potential recruits and spread their message to the largest possible constituency. In October 2005, Al Qaeda even used one of its Web sites to post a help-wanted ad for a job as a communications specialist. The job vacancy called for someone with exceptional English and Arabic skills able to collect and disseminate news on Iraq, including audio and video clips.

The strategy guiding jihadist Internet use was demonstrated when Al Qaeda’s Saudi Arabian network, Muaskar al-Battar (Camp of the Sword), launched its Web site in January 2004. Its introductory message read: “In order to join the greatest training camps, you don’t have to travel to other lands. Alone, in your home or with a group of your brothers, you too can begin to execute the training program. You can all join the Al-Battar Training Camps.” Jarret Brachman, a former CIA analyst now in the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point describes this as playing to the YouTube generation. “It completely fits Al Qaeda’s communications strategy over the past two years, which is how to get people more invested in the movement.”

Experts like Brachman say that the group’s media blitz has been effective in drawing new recruits to the jihadi cause. Nonetheless, he is somewhat skeptical about whether Zawahiri–one of the masterminds of the 9/11 attacks–will engage in a genuine online exchange or whether he will just answer planted questions from Al Qaeda propagandists. “If they do go with real questions, they’ll definitely be very selective about which ones they answer,” he says.

Rita Katz, director of the SITE Institute for terrorism analysis, believes, however, that Al Qaeda is making a real effort to reach journalists. “This will be an authentic interview,” she says. “If anything, I think there will be such a huge volume of questions [that] I don’t think Zawahiri will be able to answer all of them.”

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/81196

© 2007 Newsweek.com

Absence of Courage

A Palestinian official argues that international donors are pledging millions to Gaza and the West Bank because they hope their generosity will compensate for their lack of political will.

Aid package: A Palestinian woman receives food handouts in Jenin

By Vivian Salama | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Dec 18, 2007

Amid international skepticism and ongoing regional tensions, 87 countries and international organizations have pledged $7.4 billion in aid to help build a Palestinian state. Monday’s Paris meeting of the donors comes on the heels of last month’s Annapolis talks, a White House effort to revitalize Israeli-Palestinian negotiations before the Bush administration leaves office. The money, which is expected to pass through various channels, including international aid organizations and the Palestinian government—that is, the government of Mahmoud Abbas and not the now-defunct Hamas-led government in Gaza—was donated in response to this week’s World Bank report, which noted that “even under the most optimistic scenarios significant aid will continue to be required” to ensure the economic stability of the West Bank and Gaza. Afif Safieh, a Palestinian diplomat who heads the Palestine Liberation Organization Mission in Washington, spoke to Vivian Salama about the likely impact of the aid package and the latest political developments in the Palestinian territories. Excerpts:
 
Vivian Salama: What is your reaction to the news of the aid package?
Afif Safieh: Since the international community did not show the political courage needed in Annapolis or in the pre-Annapolis period, which necessitated some confrontation with the Israeli territorial appetite, they are now showing financial generosity because of the absence of political audacity and political courage. They feel the collapse of the Palestinian society and the Palestinian economy will generate additional chaos to a region already plagued with it, so this is the result.
 
What is the alternative and/or the lacking initiative, in your opinion?
I would have preferred the political courage and the diplomatic courage which is needed to support the Palestinian state, but this would have meant a political confrontation with the Israeli political leadership. This is what countries in the international system want to avert. They compensate the lack of political courage with financial generosity. Now, the report made by the World Bank says that if the roadblocks and strangulation of [Palestinian] society and the economy of society continues, even with external financial help, our economy will continue to shrink and decline by 2 percent every year. We have the potential of going back to levels of growth which will be double digit if you give [us] the capability.
 
Do you see Israel as a partner?
The Israelis are until now reluctant to reduce the number of roadblocks, most of which have no security value except to plunge us into economic decline. Here I invite you to explore the expression that was originally coined by Sarah Roy, a Jewish-American writer, the daughter of survivors, a Harvard scholar, who invented the concept of de-development of Palestine—meaning that the deliberate Israeli policy [was] to plunge us into economic decline, and that’s what’s happening.
 
The Bush administration—namely [Secretary of State] Condoleezza Rice—has pledged its devotion to the creation of a Palestinian state before the end of its term. Are you optimistic, and is this new aid package what is needed to get this process off the ground?
I believe in the sincerity of President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I find the statement made by Secretary Rice that the creation of a Palestinian state is an American national interest [is] an important political statement which reflects the reality of the analysis by a growing body. I believe Bush when he told President Mahmoud Abbas in New York in September [that Bush] is growing increasingly impatient by the absence of progress. Since we have been unreasonably reasonable, I don’t think his impatience is addressed to my side of the argument. The question is will [Bush and Rice] vent their annoyance with the obstacle towards advance. Unfortunately so far there is no indication. Not only did the Israelis invest all their genius to lower expectations in the weeks that preceded Annapolis, but immediately after Annapolis they invested all their brilliance into torpedoing the modest results that emerged. Annapolis was supposed to retrigger a credible diplomatic avenue.
 
Does the aid package at least make you optimistic?
We are often asked, “Are you optimistic or pessimistic?” Even though I don’t feel we Palestinians have the luxury of pessimism, even though I believe that it’s only optimists who make history, I am often reminded that the definition of a pessimist is an informed optimist.
 
The World Bank has just released a detailed account on the dire economic conditions in Gaza and the West Bank. How would you describe the situation in [Hamas-controlled] Gaza?
A stain on the conscience of mankind. I read [the World Bank] report on Gaza: the inadmissible, the inconceivable is perpetrated on a daily basis. The Israelis withdrew out of Gaza yet besieged Gaza immediately, turning it into an open-air prison. They withdrew out of Gaza in order to improve their grip on the West Bank. [Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon never concealed that aim.
 
Some see this aid package as a victory for the Palestinian cause.
It shows the reservoir of goodwill and the diplomatic and universal unanimity the birth of a Palestinian state enjoys. Yet I am today more worried by the political impotence that we have witnessed throughout the decades. I believe peace is desirable, possible, doable yesterday already! As is frequently said, every possible scenario alternative and their opposite have been explored ad nauseam. I always tell Israelis that a territory that was occupied in six days can also be evacuated in six days, so that they can rest on the seventh and we can engage in the fascinating journey of economic development and reconstruction. It’s the absence of the political will that is disturbing.

Click here for the Newsweek.com link.

Palestinian Donors’ Conference – World Bank report

Today I interviewed Afif Safieh, head of the PLO Mission to Washington, DC regarding news out of Paris of a $7 billion pledge to support a viable Palestinian state.  The conference was the first step toward finding a solution to the on-going Palestinian-Israeli crisis following the conference in Annapolis last month. I will publish and then post the interview tomorrow.  In the meantime, I encourage all of you to read the World Bank Report, entitled Investing in Palestinian Economic Reform and Development.