|
|
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Kit Menkin's Leasing News www.leasingnews.org Tuesday, July 9, 2002 Accurate, fair and unbiased news for the equipment Leasing Industry ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Headlines---- Vacation Survey---First Results EBay to Buy PayPal in $1.5 Billion Deal Ex-Tyco Counsel Changes Lawyers Equipment Leasing Association: 817 Members 41st ELA Annual Conference-San Francisco UAEL ACE Conference-San Diego eLNA Conference-Atlanta Report: heavy-duty truck orders continue to slide Ted Williams on a Stick???? Special: Intel chip plant located on disputed Israeli land ### Denotes Press Release ________________________________________________________________________ Vacation Survey---First Results Leasing News asked readers on July 3 to comment on the supposition that many would be staying closer to home this year, rather than going a distance---for financial and security reasons: here at Viader, we will be helping the economy and as a small business will celebrate the old way: working. in terms of number of tourists this is the biggest 4th and 5th we've ever seen but I am sure payment will be by credit card rather than the old hard cash have a good one! kind regards, delia viader :-) --- We are vacationing so close to home that we are renting a beach house for a week which is a quick 45 minute drive from our home! Can't get much closer then that!!! That plus the cabin by Yosemite over the four day 4th of July weekend, is about it. Both very close to home. I was in Hawaii during 9-11, with a girlfriend (she had won an all expense at Four Seasons Maui, and her husband couldn't go, so she convinced me that the two of us, both mother's of three, deserved a break. Well we flew on 9-10, what a mistake that was. To be away from your family during such a crisis moment, and feel trapped on a small island, but still be on American soil, was too terrifying for me to want to willingly be that far away from home. There are too many great spots close to home to explore for a family vacation! Kathleen Wiest ---- Vacation close to home is the plan. We will leave town four or five times this summer for week long vacations or weekend getaways, but we will not leave Northern California. With the beaches, lakes and mountains we have, no need to go elsewhere. Brendan Cross HarcroSale@aol.com (Let’s hear from other readers. Let us know your plans. ) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- EBay to Buy PayPal in $1.5 Billion Deal Two of Rare Breed -- Thriving Dot-Coms -- to Merge (Leasing News has written several stories and recommending PayPal to those in the equipment leasing business for collection, prompt payment, and convenience in purchasing) By Ariana Eunjung Cha Washington Post Staff Writer Internet auction house eBay Inc. announced yesterday that it will buy online payment service PayPal Inc. for $1.5 billion, merging two of the most successful -- and two of the few -- survivors of the dot-com implosion. The all-stock deal was reminiscent of the spectacular acquisitions that took place in the late 1990s, when young upstarts would buy each other with their bloated shares of stock. EBay is one of the only Internet companies with earnings -- let alone with a trading price that is significant multiples of its earnings -- more than 100 times in its case. EBay said the purchase should make financial transactions on the Internet more seamless -- easier, quicker and more secure. PayPal, based in Mountain View, Calif., makes money by transferring money around the Internet. Its customers include online powerhouses as well as sites maintained by teenagers who use the service to get electronic gifts of money from Grandma and Grandpa. The money comes from bank accounts or credit cards. PayPal takes a cut off of every transaction. The company's technology has become popular with consumers who worry about their credit card numbers residing on insecure servers and with e-commerce companies that are more interested in sales than in the tech wizardry required to thwart hackers. Some industry analysts had been worried that regulators might force PayPal to register as a bank, but that issue seems to have faded in recent months with the government occupied by accusations of financial misdeeds at other high-tech companies including Computer Associates International Inc. and WorldCom Inc. Earlier this year, PayPal became the first Internet company in months to have an initial public offering -- with its shares soaring more than 50 percent the first day. It posted a small profit for the most recent quarter on $1.6 billion in money transfers. Online research company ComScore Media Metrix also reported yesterday that PayPal was the payment method used for approximately 10 percent of all e-commerce dollars spent in the first quarter of 2002. San Jose-based eBay offers a service called Billpoint that competes with PayPal. But the company said in a conference call with analysts yesterday before the market opened that a growing number of eBay's own users were turning to PayPal instead. In fact, about 60 percent of PayPal's business comes from eBay users. EBay said it will shutter its Billpoint service after the acquisition closes. EBay chief executive Meg Whitman described the two companies as having "complementary missions." "We both empower people to sell online," Whitman said. The two companies have enjoyed a close relationship for years and were rumored to be suitors long before yesterday's acquisition was announced. Under the deal, PayPal would become a unit of eBay, with co-founder Peter A. Thiel remaining as chief executive of the 750-person company. Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Baldauf called PayPal the "gorilla" in the online payment market and eBay the "gorilla" in the online auction market, saying that the deal would help eBay boost its earnings. Merrill Lynch was a manager of PayPal's secondary offering of stock in late June. EBay has offered 0.39 shares for each PayPal share -- a premium of roughly 18 percent valued at Friday's closing price. please send to a colleague as we are trying to build our readership. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ex-Tyco Counsel Changes Lawyers (Is he a criminal attorney?---Yes, very!!!) By THE NEW YORK TIMES Mark A. Belnick, the former chief counsel for Tyco International, has switched lawyers as inquiries continue into whether he improperly took millions of dollars from the company. Mr. Belnick, who was fired and sued last month by Tyco, has replaced Stanley S. Arkin, a prominent New York criminal lawyer, with Reid Weingarten, a top criminal lawyer in Washington, Mr. Arkin said last night. An internal inquiry at Tyco and a criminal investigation by the Manhattan district attorney are examining whether Mr. Belnick used company money to pay personal expenses and hid his pay from the company's board. Mr. Arkin has said that Mr. Belnick did nothing wrong and that his compensation was properly disclosed. Mr. Weingarten also represents Franklin Brown, the former chief counsel of Rite Aid who faces charges of criminal accounting-fraud, and Bernard J. Ebbers, the former WorldCom chief executive who has been under investigation since WorldCom disclosed that it had improperly hidden $3.9 billion in expenses. Mr. Weingarten could not be reached for comment last night. ________________________________________________________________ Equipment Leasing Association: 817 Members ELA has 817 members. -Amy Amy J. Miller Vice President, Communications Equipment Leasing Association 4301 N. Fairfax Drive, Suite 550 Arlington, VA 22203 703.516.8367; Fax: 703.527.2649 amiller@elamail.com; http://www.elaonline.com/ Visit http://www.leaseassistant.org to find a leasing partner today (June, 2001, ELA reported 731 members, a 6 ˝ percent increase from the previous time period; however, December,2002, the year-end was 873, a 6 ˝ decrease to this half-year time period. It is not uncommon for this to occur mid-year, especially in lieu of this unique economic time, specifically meaning less larger leasing companies in business. (The United Association of Equipment Leasing June count was 310 and year-end, 379, compared to the June, 2002 figure of 341; a similar situation. (The only one up from year-end so far is the National Association of Equipment Leasing Brokers from 415 to 460. The June,2001 figure was reported to Leasing News as 598, but at the end of last year, NAELB stated the 598 membership number was complied by their previous management company and contained “prospects.” They never had 598 members. They further stated they do not know if the 475 count for December,2000, is accurate, but the June,2002, 460 count is correct, according to NAELB President Gerry Egan. (It should be noted that the NAELB broker dues are $295 per year, with UAEL broker/lessor fees ranging from $445 to $1225, and ELA: $1200 to $12,000. Funder fees are much higher, a flat fee of $750 for NAEL B and $1725 for UAEL. ELA starts at $1,200 and goes to $12,000. (When comparing the membership count, the cost of membership should be considered to give the numbers another viewpoint (Leasing News hopes to have all the figures from the associations this week . All we have missing is the Eastern Association of Equipment Leasing figures. Editor ) For a dues comparsion, please go here: http://www.leasingnews.org/DuesComparison.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 41st Equipment Leasing Association Annual Conference San Francisco, California October 13-15th Sunday, Monday, Tuesday San Francisco Marriott "Leadership
in Difficult Times" Speaker: Rudolph Giuliani http://www.elaonline.com/events/2002/AnnConv/ http://www.elaonline.com/events/2002/AnnConv/Registration.cfm http://www.elaonline.com/events/2002/AnnConv/schedule.cfm http://www.elaonline.com/events/2002/AnnConv/SpouseComp.cfm The ELA Lease PAC is holding its 13th Annual PAC Shoot-out, with all individual player contributions to benefit the ELA Political Action Fund. Various member companies and vendors are hosting this event, including green fees, refreshments and prizes. The tournament takes place at The Presidio Golf Course ELA
Member: $1,395.00 additional
members from the same company: $1,195 (The convention is only available
to ELA members) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- United Association of Equipment Leasing Conference Annual Conference and Exposition (ACE) San Diego, California October 3-6 (Thursday-Sunday)
On March 3, 1969 the
United States Navy established an elite school for the top one percent
of its pilots. Its purpose was to teach the lost art of aerial combat
and to insure that the handful of men who graduated were the best fighter
pilots in the world. They succeeded. Today the Navy calls it Fighter Weapons
School. The flyers call it: TOP GUN On October 3–6, 2002,
the United Association of Equipment Leasing will host an elite conference
for all of its members in San Diego, CA. Its purpose is to teach the art
of education, networking and involvement within the leasing industry and
to insure that everyone who attends this conference, to be the best in
the world. We will succeed. Not sure what the Navy calls it but the UAEL
calls it the http://www.uael.org/indexlow.asp For more information on the 2002 UAEL Annual Fall Conference, please contact Azin at the UAEL office, (510) 444-9235, ext. 22. Early Registration $695 first employee Additional Company Member $595 (First Timer and non-member or potential member rates will be available ) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- eLNA Annual Conference August 28-30 Atlanta, GA ( full agenda at: http://www.elessors.com/Events/f2.html ) ________________________________________________________________________ Report: heavy-duty truck orders continue to slide Land Line Magazine <daily_news@landlinemag.com Figures released by Bear Stearns, a banking, trading and brokerage firm, indicate net new orders of Class 8 heavy-duty trucks continue to fall sharply as slots for pre-Oct. 1 trucks fill. At the current build rate, the company says it will take five to six months for a new order to be converted into a completed tractor. In June, net new orders fell 37 percent to 10,400 after falling about 35 percent in May. The company says the continued sequential decline in net new orders reflects the fact that, as of early May, there are no longer available slots left for pre-October trucks. The firm reports that most of the truckers they have spoken to since new orders began to decline significantly in May, were not surprised at this phenomenon and added that if someone wanted a truck before October they would no longer be able to reserve one if they have not already secured a slot with the manufacturer. Bear Stearns said it expects net new orders "will stay in the 8,000 to 10,000 range as most large carriers have already ordered and/or received the trucks they will use until the issues surrounding the low-emissions engines have been resolved." The company said that during the coming months, it expects the majority of orders will come from dealers who will take on post-October trucks, but probably be forced to sell them at a discount. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Ted Williams on a Stick???? No articles in LeasingNews about the Ted Williams sacrilege. Being in Boston, the coverage has been enormous. What an indignity for someone we all looked up to as children. By the way, did you ever hear him called "Teddy Baseball." The Boston stations were calling him that, and growing up I always heard him referred to as The Kid or the Splendid Splinter. The Marines should go to Florida and take out John Henry Williams! Regards, Barbara Low President BIBLIO.TECH P.O. Box 657 Lincoln, MA 01773 781-259-0524 ----- Open question - Why? By Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe Columnist Ted on ice. Freeze-dried Ted. Ted on a Frozen Splinter? Could this be any worse? Stripped of any chance for a dignified burial or cremation, the body of the greatest hitter who ever lived rests in a cryonic warehouse in Scottsdale, Ariz. There will be no funeral, no memorial service. And his children soon will be fighting one another in court. Rhere will be no funeral or memorial service to bring traditional closure to one of the most fascinating American lives of the 20th century. Instead, Williams's remains will be housed in very cold storage, with the wacky hope that someday he'll be back among the living. If this is what Ted wanted, he never told anyone, at least not anybody who's talking these days. The bizarre plan is the work of Ted's only son, John Henry Williams. Those who loved Williams most, and knew him best, are shocked that his son opted to deep-freeze his father's corpse. ''It's just terrible,'' Johnny Pesky said yesterday. ''Death is terrible enough, but you've got to have a little compassion. That's a goddamn shame. I hope [John Henry Williams] thinks twice about this. It's just not a good thing.'' George Carter, a certified nursing assistant who cared for Williams for 10 years and was with him as recently as 2001, said, ''I know Ted like a book. He wanted to be cremated and have his ashes spread over the Florida Keys. He told me that many times. I would bet my life he wouldn't approve of this [cryonics].'' ''I thought they were kidding when I heard that,'' said Carl Yastrzemski, who succeeded Williams in left field for the Sox in 1961. ''I know I wouldn't want it for me.'' ''Ted wanted to be cremated,'' said Pesky. ''He was an atheist. He didn't believe in religion.'' Pesky knows John Henry Williams better than most. ''He stayed in my house when he was around 12 or 14 years old,'' said Pesky. ''Those were the years when he was trying to connect with Ted.'' John Henry was badly burned about the arms and chest when he was a young man. While he was at Shriner's Hospital in Boston for treatment, Pesky visited the young man every other day. Later, when he was a college student in Maine, young Williams stopped by Pesky's Swampscott home on a snowy evening. ''He was on his way to see some young college girl in Boston,'' remembered Pesky. ''I was worried about the snow that was falling and tried to talk him into staying over at our house. But he wanted to keep driving. So he did. We had a plan that he would call me when he got there. Well, it got to midnight and there was no call. He had given a number, so I called and the girl answered and put him on the phone. He said, `I was gonna call you in the morning,' and I said, `Like hell, that was not the agreement!''' By the early 1990s, John Henry Williams was fully immersed in his father's world. After Ted Williams suffered his first stroke, John Henry ran everything. Why would Ted Williams turn everything over to his son when he had a daughter 20 years older (Bobby-Jo Williams Ferrell) than his only son? ''Because John Henry's a man,'' said Sherri Mosley, Bobby-Jo's daughter. No one can pretend to know the intricate dynamics of another family, but Ted Williams was a man's man, never particularly smooth with the other gender. He could be downright crude. It is entirely believable he would favor an only son over any daughter. And so John Henry became the guardian at the gate. All access to Ted went through his only son. Williams's friends wondered if the father knew what the son was up to. In the last few years, there was little doubt that Ted was unable to distinguish friends from foes and put all of his trust in one person. Critics of John Henry Williams are legion. He's left a trail of bad checks, bankrupt businesses, and disgruntled associates. He's alienated many of those who were close to Ted. Two weeks ago, he began his bizarre tryout with the Sox' Rookie League team at the age of 33. Now he's put his father on ice for reasons he won't explain. There are only two ways to think of this: Best case - The son is in denial and thinks he can bring his father back to life. Worst case - John Henry hopes to profit from prospective cloning or DNA distribution. ---- Williams' body is already frozen by Michael Lasalandra and Laurel J. Sweet Boston Herald HERNANDO, Fla. - Red Sox legend Ted Williams already has been frozen in a cryogenic state, a source told the Herald. But Williams' eldest daughter vowed yesterday to head to court as early as today to try to have her father's body returned to Florida from Arizona, where it has been prepared for possible regeneration. Barbara Joyce ``Bobby Jo'' Williams Ferrell, his daughter from his first marriage, wants to halt the cryogenics plan allegedly being orchestrated by her controversial half-brother, John Henry Williams. But the source said Ted Williams may have agreed to being frozen. ``It wouldn't surprise me if Ted was deep into this. Ted loved science. Ted Williams was not a stupid man. If he made up his mind about something he did it and (expletive) everyone else. ``To blame it all on John Henry is not fair. Ted loved John Henry.'' Ferrell said she was told by sources within Hooper's Funeral Home in Inverness that her father's body was shipped out last Friday - the day he died at 83. The body was sent to the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Ariz., where it will be stored at minus-320 degrees until scientists figure out how to bring Williams back to life. Meanwhile, other friends and associates of the Splendid Splinter yesterday joined with Ferrell in insisting the Hall of Fame slugger wanted to be cremated. ``I'm 100 percent sure Ted wanted to be cremated,'' said Haywood Sullivan, a former owner and general manager of the Red Sox, who was a catcher for the club when Williams retired. ``Where he wanted his ashes spread, I don't know. Whether it was Fenway Park or the Keys he wanted his final resting place to be, I don't think Arizona was one of them.'' Sullivan called the left-field cryogenics scheme ``absurd. You might say, crap.'' Kay Munday, who served as a caretaker for Williams at his Citrus Hills home for six years until she retired in 1995, confirmed Teddy Ballgame ``wanted to be cremated. He talked about it on more than one occasion.'' However, Munday said she didn't know if Williams' stated wish was formalized in a will. ``I don't know if it was in writing,'' she said. Albert Cassidy, 44, executor of Williams' estate, would neither confirm nor deny that Williams' remains had been frozen, nor would he comment on what the Hall of Famer's last wishes were. ``This is a family matter,'' said Cassidy, who spent the weekend with John Henry Williams and his sister, Claudia, both from Williams' second marriage. ``Ted was very specific that he did not want to make public what his wishes were. Ted was very, very adamant about that. ``I know the other side of the story,'' he said. ``John Henry is not the beast that people are making him out to be. Ted left a very, very happy man.'' Cassidy grew up at the former Ted Williams Baseball Camp in Lakeville, which Williams started with Cassidy's late father in 1957. The partnership lasted three decades - the friendship, even longer. ``I never knew Ted as a ballplayer,'' Cassidy said. ``I knew Ted's heart and that's what would be broken now to see how his kids are being treated. He loved those children. Nobody ever controlled Ted.'' Bill Churchman, who instructed Williams at flight school prior to both World War II and Korea and who remained a lifelong friend, agreed the cryogenics plan is off-base. ``I think it's goddamn crazy,'' he said. ``I'm completely against it.'' John Henry Williams was at the family home in Citrus Hills yesterday, but was unavailable for comment. A source close to the family said he and his sister, Claudia, will attend tomorrow's Major League Baseball All-Star Game in Milwaukee. Ferrell's husband, Mark Ferrell, said his wife was not ``estranged'' from her famous father, as some have reported, but that John Henry Williams would not allow her to contact Williams in the past year or so because she opposed the cryogenics idea. ``Ted was here three days a week when we were building this house two years ago,'' Mark Ferrell said. ``He wanted to know everything. Even what kind of grass we were planting. He wanted to buy us things. He showered her with Christmas presents.'' But when she spoke out against having their father frozen, access to him was cut off by John Henry Williams, Mark Ferrell said. ``She was here 25 years before this creep came along and now he tells her she can't see her father,'' he said. And she wasn't the only one cut off from The Kid, friends said. ``I couldn't get through any more,'' Churchman said. ``I called and called. Finally, I gave up.'' Sullivan said he, too, tried to check in with Williams on numerous occasions, to no avail. ``He was more or less isolated,'' Sullivan said. ``I tried to see him several times, but people were not invited. I was always given the excuse that he was wasn't feeling well or he was sleeping.'' Asked if he was talking about John Henry Williams, Sullivan said, ``I think it's obvious where it was coming from.'' Sullivan said he didn't push the access issue out of respect for Williams, but said the apparent controls being put on Williams generated much talk among his concerned friends. ``It was quite evident to us what was going on,'' he said. (How about freezing some executives at Enron, Worldcom, to name just a few? Editor) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Intel chip plant located on disputed Israeli land Intel could face political, legal problems with chip plant in Israel by Henry Norr San Francisco Chronicle
Just how diligent was Intel's due diligence when it chose to build a multibillion-dollar chip plant in Qiryat Gat, Israel? Will choosing that location eventually come back to haunt the company, or at least drag it into some pesky, embarrassing and costly legal entanglements? These questions are on my mind after checking out the history of the site -- not only on several Web sites dedicated to the Palestinian cause, but also in Israeli government and United Nations documents collected by a prominent Israeli historian. Whatever your views on the Middle East crisis, the issue deserves some scrutiny -- even though it involves a detour into what many now consider ancient history. Intel calls the plant Fab 18 ("fab" being chip- industry jargon for a facility where the silicon wafers that are eventually turned into working chips are fabricated). The fab, which went into production in 1999, was the fruit of a $1 billion investment by the Santa Clara company, supplemented by a $600 million grant from the Israeli government. Just a year after opening, its output had reached up to $3 million a day, and it accounted for $1.3 billion of Intel's $2 billion in exports from Israel. According to the company's annual report, it's Intel's second-largest facility outside the United States, after one in County Kildare, Ireland. Qiryat (sometimes spelled Kiryat) Gat is close to the geographical center of Israel, along a major north-south rail line and the route of the planned Trans-Israel Highway. It's on land that would have been part of Arab Palestine under the partition plan adopted by the United Nations in 1947, but within the larger Israel that emerged from the 1948 war between that country and its neighbors. In other words, it's on land the United States and most of the world's governments consider a legitimate part of Israel, not in the territories Israel conquered in the 1967 war, from which the United Nations has demanded its withdrawal. But from a legal and historical point of view, Qiryat Gat happens to be an unusual location: It was not taken over by the Israeli military in 1948. Instead, it was part of a small enclave, known as the Faluja pocket, that the Egyptian army and local Palestinian forces had managed to hold through the end of the war. (Among the Egyptian officers was Gamal Abdel Nasser, who became his country's president six years later.) The area was surrounded by Israeli forces, however. When Israel and Egypt signed an armistice agreement in February 1949, the latter agreed to withdraw its soldiers, but it insisted that the agreement explicitly guarantee the safety and property of the 3,100 or so Arab civilians in the area. Israel accepted that demand. In an exchange of letters that were filed with the United Nations and became an annex to the main armistice agreement, the two countries agreed that "those of the civilian population who may wish to remain in Al-Faluja and Iraq al Manshiya (the two villages within the enclave covered by the letters) are to be permitted to do so. . . . All of these civilians shall be fully secure in their persons, abodes, property and personal effects." (The fullest account of this episode I've found is "The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem, 1947-1949," a scholarly treatise by Benny Morris, a prominent Israeli historian, published by Cambridge University Press. Born and reared in Israel and now a professor at Ben Gurion University in Beersheba, Morris can hardly be called pro-Palestinian, to judge by articles of his published in the June 13 and June 27, 2002, issues of the New York Review of Books. Other Israeli historians have produced similar accounts.) Within days, the security the agreement had promised residents of the Al- Faluja pocket proved an illusion. Within weeks, the entire local population had fled to refugee camps outside of Israel. (Photos of them on the road are posted at www.palestineremembered.com/Gaza/al-faluja -- a site dedicated to preserving the memories and experiences of Palestinian refugees.) Morris presents ample evidence that the people of the Al-Faluja area left in response to a campaign of intimidation conducted by the Israeli military. He quotes, among other sources, reports filed by Ralph Bunche, the distinguished black American educator and diplomat who was serving as chief U. N. mediator in the region. Bunche's reports include complaints from U.N. observers on the scene that "Arab civilians . . . at Al-Faluja have been beaten and robbed by Israeli soldiers," that there were attempted rapes and that the Israelis were "firing promiscuously" on the Arab population. Even though Bunche won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his efforts, some might be inclined to doubt that he understood the whole story of what was happening in the area. But even the staunchest supporter of Israel would have a hard time impugning Morris' other main source on this episode: Moshe Sharett, Israel's foreign minister at the time. Sharett, it turns out, was acutely embarrassed by the behavior of his country's military in the area. In a sharply worded memo to the army chief of staff, he noted both overt acts of violence by soldiers in the area and "a 'whispering propaganda campaign among the Arabs, threatening them with attacks and acts of vengeance by the army." "There is no doubt," Sharett wrote, "that there is a calculated action aimed at increasing the number of those (Arab civilians) going to the Hebron Hills (in the West Bank, then controlled by Jordan) as if of their own free will, and, if possible, to bring about the evacuation of the whole civilian population" of the pocket. Sharett's main concern, it appears, was that the campaign in Al-Faluja called into question "our sincerity as a party to an international agreement." Whether he had any moral scruples about the situation isn't clear. A few months later, when Arab civilians in other parts of Israel's newly conquered territory resisted similar pressures, he wrote, with what sounds like regret, "It is not possible in every place to arrange what some of our boys engineered in Faluja (where) they chased away the Arabs after we signed an . . . international commitment." Nowadays we'd call the Al-Faluja events ethnic cleansing. LEGAL RECOURSE? In substance, what happened to the people of Al- Faluja and Iraq al Manshiya isn't very different from what happened to the residents of hundreds of other Palestinian villages. Only a few things make this case unique: the legal agreement that was supposed to guarantee the residents' security, the Sharett memos recording what happened to that guarantee -- and the fact that 40 years later their land, having been converted by the Israelis into an industrial park, became the site of an Intel fab. Now Palestinians in the United States and elsewhere are starting to organize around this case. A Connecticut organization called the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (www.Al-Awda.org) is encouraging Palestinians and their supporters to write to the media about the case. (A version of the story appeared earlier, in somewhat garbled form, in The Register, a British Web site covering technology). The group is calling on Intel to, among other things, divest from Israel. It's also tracking down the original Arab villagers and their descendants -- now almost 15,000 people in all, including people living in Texas, Louisiana and New York. While the group hasn't announced any plans for legal action, some Palestinian lawyers are looking for ways to pursue their cause in the courts. At least some experts think the residents of Al-Faluja and Iraq al Manshiya could make a strong case. For example, Francis Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, said he wasn't familiar with the details of the situation. But based on my summary of the history, he said that the original inhabitants and their heirs could take Intel to a U.S. court in a type of suit known as an in rem proceeding or under similar doctrines in many other countries and seek to attach Fab 18's assets. "Intel and its lawyers and bankers had better be very careful here," he said, noting that a similar legal strategy was used in cases involving the former British colony of Rhodesia -- and by Jewish survivors of the Holocaust. Boyle is a longtime supporter of the Palestinian cause, so I talked to a lawyer at the opposite end of the political spectrum: Abraham Sofaer, George P. Shultz Distinguished Scholar and Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, a former federal judge who served as legal adviser to the State Department from 1985 to 1990. Not surprisingly, Sofaer was less sanguine about the prospects for any such lawsuit, but he also said he wasn't familiar with the facts of the case. The main obstacle, he said, is the absence of a treaty resolving the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians and legal structures for settling property claims. "Without that," Sofaer said, "the courts are going to be very reluctant to get involved" in such cases. But if peace ever comes, he said, "I'd be very happy to represent the Palestinians." Noting that native Americans won compensation in several major cases once Congress adopted procedures for dealing with such claims, he said, "It sounds as if there's potential in the long run for recovery here." LAND OWNERSHIP Several weeks ago, I asked Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy about the history of the land where Fab 18 sits. He said the company had acquired rights to it in a deal that was legal under the laws of a recognized sovereign state. "We don't think it's appropriate for us now to question the Israeli government. "We cannot insert ourselves into the middle of what is really a political issue" between Israel and the Palestinians, he said. Those arguments are understandable, though I'm sure they won't placate the Palestinians, and I wonder how they'll stand up if the case ever gets to court. Mulloy also said the fab is not actually in the area that made up the Al- Faluja pocket in 1948. "These claims didn't come up until after we built the fab -- there were no Web sites and no campaigns about it when we did our due diligence" in the mid-1990s, he said. When I went back to my sources, those arguments didn't check out. The maps I examined seem to confirm the Palestinians' claim that Fab 18 is on land that was part of the village of Iraq al Manshiya. As for when the issue arose, I checked and found that Morris' book was first published in 1987 and widely debated in Israel. I left Mulloy several follow-up messages reporting what I'd found, but he didn't respond. I also called the Israeli consulate in San Francisco to get its perspective, but the first official I spoke to there said he didn't believe the story, and the press spokesman he referred me to hasn't called back. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Policy Statement Policy Statement---Nothing is sent out that is not "fair." Always unbiased reporting. Fairness always. If it is questionable, we will ask the writer's permission to quote them. We will print information without attribution, but feel as long as we do not name the person who sent it, we can use the information. Any information we think is suspicious, we try to have if substantiated first by at least two reliable people. We will not purposely send out "negative" news. We prefer "positive" news. We have no "axe" to grind or are not paid or seek or accept any remuneration for product or promotion. We do not Spam anyone. To be added to the mailing list, you must request it. We do not send anything about our company or personal e-mail or jokes to the leasing news list. We do not share our mailing list with anyone. We try not to send more than one report a day, if at that, unless an "alert." We follow Internet Netiquette at all times. Our sole purpose is to provide communication to improve our profession. We reserve the right to deny sending the newsletter when requested. We reserve the right to edit or delete an opinion that is not in good taste or is outright derogatory. Leasingnews.org |
|
