Bush's Concluding Words

And, to end the insanity of Bush’s visit to Jerusalem:

President Bush said the establishment of a Palestinian state was “long overdue” and called for an agreement within a year.

Bush delivered a summary statement Thursday after spending two days in Israel and the Palestinian areas meeting with Israeli and Palestinian Authority leaders.

“The establishment of the state of Palestine is long overdue,” the U.S. leader said at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. “A peace agreement should happen and can happen by the end of this year.”

Bush reiterated calls for the parties to adhere to the “road map” peace process he launched in 2003, calling on the Palestinians to stop terrorist attacks and create a secure environment for Israel and Israel to end settlement expansion and remove illegal outposts.

He said the parties must address all the core issues. On borders he reiterated one of the principles of his 2004 letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, saying “any peace agreement will require mutual adjustment to the 1949 line.” Bush also said the Palestinian refugee issue should be addressed by “new international mechanisms, including compensation.”

Bush said that the agreement “must establish Palestine as a homeland to the Palestinian people just as Israel is a homeland to the Jewish people.” He said a Palestinian state must be contiguous.

He spoke just before departing a final dinner at Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s residence. The president leaves Friday for Kuwait after visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and touring Christian holy sites in the north of Israel.

Clearly some people aren’t happy with this stance, as they want Israel to remain “whole” (how exactly is it currently “whole” when Gaza and the West Bank are under Palestinian control?) and, more specifically, don’t want to see Jerusalem divided (um, isn’t it already?). These posters went up Friday.

Linkage

I haven’t done a post like this in a while, but here we go again:

• Breaking News: Hartman to Ordain Women [Orthodox] Rabbis in Jerusalem
• Albertan Kiley Granberg’s neat wedding band design
• VentureBeat’s list of 27 electric cars, new to the market (or to a market in the fuure, if their startups get off the ground)
• It’s nice to see that some cities are still offering (and encouraging) free wifi, like Meraki in San Fran, when Dublin and Jerusalem (can’t find the story now, but Unwired Jerusalem is no more) had to cancel theirs.
• 10 years ago, Montreal suffered under record-setting ice storms. This week? record highs (10.6°C yesterday), winds, and flooding.

Avenue Q -b'Ivrit!

Yesterday, the posse battled 10,000 police officers, road closures, and a drunken pot dealer to get to Tel Aviv. Once there, we headed to the beach to watch the incoming planes, the setting sun… and to play in the water! Ok, so I was the only one who went in, but it was lovely. I frolicked, and they had an impromptu dance party. (”All we need is music.” - “There’s always music in my head!”) After dinner at an Indian restaurant, we headed to the theatre.

Avenue Q. In Hebrew. Amazing. Before hand, those of us who had seen the original version in New York had speculated about how the cultural references would translate. The first is that Gary Coleman was replaced with Michal Yannai. Michal was a child star in Israel who was riddled with gossip and rumours as a young adult (actually, even fairly recently) including a sextape (à la Paris Hilton). She poked fun at herself during the play, referencing nudity, her floundering career, and more that I didn’t catch. Christmas Eve, a Japanese character in the NY version, was replaced with Latina (name and ethnicity). Rod’s song about his fictional girlfriend in Canada has the cities changed - assuming that Israelis wouldn’t know Alberta and Vancouver, the cities were changed to Toronto (where she’s from) and Sydney (her name; I’m guessing the lyrics refer to Sydney, Australia, to make it obvious that he’s confused, and probably not to Sydney, BC). Some of the races and jokes in “Everyone’s a Little Bit Racist” were changed. The wedding was changed; BZ and I burst out laughing when the characters came out wearing kippot and the wedding was under a chuppah.

But it was pretty much the same play. And it will be playing in Jerusalem next weekend, January 17 and 19. If you want to go, and pay a reduced fare of 130NIS, let me know. I can give you a code that gets you that fare.

ETA: You can also read BZ’s review over at Jewschool.

[Photoset from the day, with commentary.]