Compiled by Parker L. Payson

From the Jewish Press:

OFEK 2 in Space:

Israel, which became the eighth country in the world to deploy an observational satellite in 1988, launched its second surveillance satellite, the OFEK 2, in April, reportedly to monitor troop movements and other military developments, according to the New York Jewish Week. Israeli military officials told The Washington Post that fears of a preemptive strike, coupled with launch preparations, most likely prompted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, one day before the launch, to threaten Israel with chemical weapons.

Sri Lanka Closes Israeli Offices:

Sri Lankan President Ranasinghe Premadasa ordered Israel to close its diplomatic mission in Colombo in March. According to reports from the World Jewish Congress, the decision fulfills an earlier campaign promise and will not be overturned until Israel recognizes the PLO and "withdraws from all occupied Palestinian territory." In the past, Israel reportedly supplied military assistance to Sri Lanka in its fight against Tamil separatists.

Corruption in US Embassy:

Some 12 Israeli workers in the consular section of the US embassy were indicted in March for issuing hundreds of illegal US tourist visas to Israelis who often paid them thousands of dollars in bribes. According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, the employees allegedly smuggled passports into the US embassy at night, where they were secretly stamped and added to stacks of documents awaiting official signatures.

IDF Colonel Pleads Following Orders:

Israeli Defense Forces Colonel Yehuda Meir pleaded not guilty in March to charges that he ordered soldiers to break the limbs of 12 Palestinians while they were bound and gagged following their arrest in January 1988. Meir, who allegedly ordered his men to club Palestinian residents of Beita and Hwara because "the prisons were full," told the court that he was acting under orders from his superiors in "the military and political echelon," according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Nathan Threatens to Expose Others:

Former Israeli Air Force pilot, peace activist and radio broadcaster Abie Nathan said that if he is arrested again for meeting with the PLO he will announce the names of "dozens" of Likud, Labor and religious party officials who have met with members of the organization. Nathan, who spent four months in prison for previous contacts with the PLO, met PLO leader Yasser Arafat in Tunisia in March. Nathan said that he has planned to visit other Arab leaders to ask them "to sign a declaration that, if the Palestinian problem is solved, they will make peace with Israel." According to the New York Jewish News, Likud lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi asked Israel's Attorney General to arrest Nathan on his return.

Jordan to Join Egypt in Talks:

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak expects Jordan's King Hussein to participate in any Israeli-Palestinian talks in Cairo, according to Egyptian ambassador Mohammed Basiouny, the Hebrew daily Haaretz reported in March.

No End To South African Connection in Sight:

Israeli officials, meeting with members of Congress in March, were unable to present a timetable for ending Israel's military contracts with South Africa. Representative Alan Wheat (D-MO) told the Washington Jewish Week that the group "recognized that a period of years or months would be too long." "We won't allow this to languish," he added. The congressmen rejected calls to cut aid to Israel, although US law calls on the president to consider cutting off US funds to countries that violate the UN arms embargo against the apartheid state.

Meeting Causes Rift:

PLO advisor Khalid al-Hassan met with Jewish leaders in several parts of the US and touched off a controversy within the Los Angeles Jewish community which led to the resignation of Rabbi Abraham Cooper from the Jewish Federation Council. Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center for Holocaust Studies, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that "Federation leaders can't meet with the PLO one day and the next day tell us that the whole community has to work together to raise huge dollars to help settle Soviet Jews in Israel. This can be incredibly damning to Israel—it's a great chutzpah." Since the meetings, the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory Council, an umbrella group of 13 national Jewish organizations and 117 local community councils, prohibited members from meeting with the PLO.

Pollard Withdraws Guilty Plea:

Lawyers for Jonathan Jay Pollard, a former US Navy intelligence analyst convicted of spying for Israel in 1987, changed his plea from guilty to not guilty in March in order to face a full-scale trial, the Cleveland Jewish News reported. Under a plea-bargaining agreement, Pollard did not go to trial because he pleaded guilty in exchange for assurances that prosecutors would not press for a maximum life imprisonment sentence. Nevertheless, Judge Aubrey Robinson III sentenced Pollard, who is eligible for parole in six years, to life in prison for espionage.

EC Rebuffs Israel:

The European Community refused in March to rescind its decision to postpone all joint scientific projects between Israel and member nations. The EC announced it will double its aid to the West Bank and Gaza over the next two years to $13.2 million, a measure aimed at "preserving the collective future of the Palestinian people by supporting their economic and social development," the Detroit Jewish News reported.

Extraditions Sought:

Israel has asked Egypt to extradite a Palestinian prisoner who escaped into the Sinai after breaking out of a detention camp holding Palestinian activists. The prisoner turned himself into an international peacekeeping force on the Gaza/Sinai border in March and is believed to be in Egyptian custody. In other news, Israel decided not to extradite two Israelis wanted to stand trial in the US for a 1987 murder of a prominent couple in Santa Barbara, California, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

Censors' Hands Heavy:

The Israeli government's decision to censor all reports on Soviet immigration has raised protests from numerous political groups and members of the media. According to an Israel-Diaspora Institute poll, however, 63 percent of all Israelis agree with media censorship, especially of "reports or pictures depicting soldiers mistreating residents of the territories [that] should be banned because they harm Israel's image." According to the Israeli human rights group B'tselem, censors have deleted more than one-third of the material submitted by two East Jerusalem Arabic dailies, A-Sha'ab and Al-Biader ASiasi, as well as dozens of stories translated verbatim from the Hebrew press by Israeli politicians and human rights organizations. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that material deleted from other papers included an interview in the Hebrew daily Al-Hamishinarwith Amir Abramson, a severely injured passenger on the bus that was attacked by a Palestinian nationalist last year, who urged Israelis to "talk to the Palestinians," and a Jerusalem Post cartoon that showed Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir removing an Arab from a bench to make room for a Russian immigrant.

From the Middle East Press:

Jordanian Activist Acquitted:

A religious appeals court in Amman found Jordanian feminist Toujan al-Faisal not guilty of blasphemy when she campaigned for women's rights during her unsuccessful bid for parliament last November. Faisal told Al-Fajr that the charges levied against her by two Muslim fundamentalists in February were politically motivated and had nothing to do with religion.

No More US Aid to Sudan:

The US cut off aid to Sudan in March enacting a law that bans assistance to governments that have come to power by coup d'etat and have not restored democracy within eight months. Sudanese Finance Minister Sayed Ali Zaki shrugged off the decision, telling the Saudi Gazette that the US aid was less than $20 million in 1989, and the "American decision will not have any impact on Sudan because the aid represents a small part of Sudan's resources.

Azerbaijan Samples Perestroika:

The border between Soviet Azerbaijan and northwestern Iran was opened for three days in March in accordance with an agreement signed in February between Tehran and Moscow designed to diffuse unrest in the region. According to the Iranian News Agency, IRNA, over 8,000 Soviet and Iranian Azeris visited their counter-parts on the otherside of the border.

Christian Civil War Costly:

The first six weeks of this year's inter-Christian fighting between Lebanese Militia Forces and the army of General Michel Aoun damaged every building in East Beirut, cost more than $1 billion in damages, killed over 810 and wounded more than 2,650 people, according to estimates by Lebanese Militia leader Samir Geagea in the Saudi Gazette in March.

Iran Unveils Plan to Raise Revenues:

An International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation met Iranian officials in Tehran in March, marking the first such full-scale talks since 1978, to discuss Iranian plans to finance increased industrial production, currently running at 30 percent capacity.

The Iranian government plans to borrow $5.4 billion from foreign sources this year and over $27.6 billion from abroad in the next five years, according to a development plan announced by Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, according to the Iranian News Agency, IRNA. The plan also calls for a 41 percent tax increase and a 21 percent increase in oil and gas revenues, which for the first time include exports to the Soviet Union.

PFLP In Jordan:

Jordan's Prime Minister Mudar Badran met with officials from the Marxist-influenced Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) in Amman in March. The PFLP has not been welcome in Jordan since it was expelled for aircraft hijackings that set off Palestinian-Jordanian fighting in 1970. in March, Jordan also closed Al-Quds, a weekly newspaper supported by dissident Fatah leader Atallah Atallah (Abu al-Zaim), a critic of Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian newspaper Al-Fajr reported.

Bulgarian Turks Allowed to Restore Names:

The Bulgarian parliament in March overturned laws requiring over one million ethnic Turks to adopt Bulgarian- sounding names, according to the Anatolian News Service. The law, enacted under now deposed Communist leader Todor Zhivkov, was part of a campaign that sent thousands of Bulgarian Turks across the Turkish border requesting asylum last spring. Following the new legislation, thousands of ethnic Turks demonstrated in Sophia against a provision requiring court approval of all name restorations. "The law is a positive step, but we are not sure about implementation," a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman told the Associated Press.

Egyptian Prisoners Released:

Iran released 20 Egyptians in March held captive since the Iran-Iraq War. It also freed 15 Syrians, 12 Lebanese and 6 Somalis. Twelve of the Egyptians were fishermen taken off Kuwaiti boats in the Gulf, and eight worked for an Iraqi petroleum company. According to Egypt's Al Ahram, the release followed intensive negotiations by Lebanese Sunni religious leader Saeed Shaaban, who hopes that the decision is a precursor for the release of additional noncombatant prisoners. Some 40 other Egyptians remain in Iranian custody.

Sudanese-Libyan Union Proposed:

Sudanese leader General Omar Hassan Al Basheer signed a pact with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in March calling for the complete political, economic, and military integration of the two countries within four years, according to the Sudan News Agency. Libya has been supporting the Sudanese government against Christian and animist separatists in southern Sudan, which contains an estimated 25 to 30 percent of Sudan's 25 million inhabitants. Southern rebel leader Colonel John Garang, who objects to the Sudanese government's plan to impose Islamic law over the country, called the unification plan "preposterous." He told the Middle East Times in Cairo, where he was meeting with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Egyptian-brokered peace talks, that the pact with Libya was predicated solely on economic pressures in Khartoum.

Pollution Problem in Gulf:

United Nations pollution experts told representatives of Gulf nations meeting in Bahrain that they must spend some $100 million to ensure that pollution in Gulf waters does not spread to an unmanageable level. Environmental experts called on Gulf states to build facilities to treat dirty tanker ballast, which is routinely pumped out into the waterway, and which accounts for nearly one-half of the world's marine oil pollution, the Middle East Times reported.

Morocco Expels Amnesty Workers:

Two Amnesty International officers were expelled from Morocco in March after meeting with non-government human-rights groups. The ouster came one day after Polisario guerillas fighting Moroccan soldiers in Western Sahara claimed that 39 Saharans had died in a secret camp near Quarzazat, which allegedly holds over 450 political prisoners, the Middle East Times reported.

Aqaba Bridge Studied:

Saudi Arabia and Egypt are studying plans to build a bridge across the Gulf of Aqaba. the Saudi Press Agency reported in March. Egyptian officials, quoted in Asharq Al Awsat last year, estimated that a 3.5-mile bridge across the Red Sea entrance of the Gulf would take three to five years to build and cost about $500 million.

Turkish Journalists Want Action:

Over 1,000 Turkish journalists demonstrated in Ankara demanding a crackdown against resurgent terrorism following the March shooting of Cetin Emec, an outspoken defender of secularism and a columnist for Turkey's largest newspaper, Hurriyet, the Cyprus Weekly reported. In his last column, Emec expressed alarm over the resurgence of terrorism in Turkey after the assassination of a well known Turkish jurist in February by a Muslim fundamentalist group with alleged ties to Syria.

UNICEF Calls for Truce:

As Lebanon braced for its 15th year of civil war, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) called for a three-day cease fire to mobilize some 1,000 health workers to immunize tens of thousands of children who have missed necessary vaccinations against tetanus, measles, polio and diphtheria. "Because of malnutrition and poor hygiene—there is a tremendous shortage of clean water—the children are more vulnerable to killers like measles and crippling diseases like polio," UNICEF's Lebanon director Andre Robertfroid told the Middle East Times.