Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 2000, pages 43-46

Other People’s Mail

Some letters by or to other people are as informative for our readers as anything we might write ourselves.

 

Out of Favor

To The Foreign Service Journal, May 24, 2000 (as submitted).

Congratulations on your May cover article “Arab-American Connections: A Growing Community Makes Its Voice Heard” and the Curtiss, Fernea and Zogby contributions. Ironically, these three have all been out of favor in the political establishment for some time, as have the foreign service “Arabists.”

Many of your readers may be surprised to learn that when I, a foreign service Arabist, retired to Minnesota, I was regarded with great suspicion by the local Arab-American community. The pervasive belief was that our pro-Israel government policy was State Department-propelled. Which could hardly be further from the truth, of course. Since then “Arabists” have been supplanted by the “Israelists” in [the Department of] State and the White House. And Curtiss, Fernea and Zogby have helped the Arab-American community become a forceful lobby.

C. Patrick Quinlan, Edina, MN

 

Stifling Free Speech

To The Secaucus (NJ) Reporter, Aug. 13, 2000 (as published).

Ross London says I’m a “Nazi sympathizer” who ought to apologize to the “Holocaust survivors” whom I “deeply offended” (July 16). Nazi? He’s the one who cheered the library’s banning a book about Goebbels that Ross, the librarian and the Anti-Defamation League didn’t like. What next? A bonfire of books, such as in Berlin of 1933? And London’s the one who a few years ago tried to get the Reporter to silence my voice which he hated; hated because I wouldn’t shut up about Israel’s crimes against humanity and monstrous rip off of American taxpayers. I, on the other hand, have never tried to stifle any voice, or ban any book, so don’t go Naziing me.

Speaking of the Holocaust: According to a book just out, The Holocaust Industry: Reflection on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (Verso, $24), a great many people who claim to have survived the concentration camps exaggerated their experiences through vanity or greed and are fakes. The “Industry,” says Norman Finkelstein, a professor at CUNY, is “an outright extortion racket” which will “result in an increase of anti-Semitism in Europe and America.” The Holocaust was “re-invented” after the 1967 war to become the Industry. “The worst thing that ever happened to the Nazi Holocaust was [that] the American Jewry discovered it.” “The Holocaust proved to be the perfect weapon for deflecting criticism of Israel.” Finkelstein, who has been denounced as “poison” and a “self-hating Jew” by the Jewish establishment, calls for a halt to building Holocaust memorials and museums.

Worse yet, charges Finkelstein, the authentic survivors of the camps (his mother and father are two of them) received only a pittance of the extorted billions. So where does all that money go? To the usual Jewish organizations, to lawyers, to sleazy politicians such as Al D’Amato, to “pet projects.” To Elie Weisel, the saintly Holocaust Knight of Sad Countenance, who doesn’t get a skinny old nag to ride off on every time he tilts at an anti-Semite’s windmill, but a limo and $25,000. The rest of the loot, says Finkelstein, gets plowed back, opening more museums and setting up more Departments of Holocaust Studies at universities and schools (there’s even a class of [for?] kids here in Hoboken); where they impart such “schlock” as Partings, by Benjamin Wilkomirski, a big best-seller and a vital text in the Industry. The author claimed to have survived Auschwitz, when in fact he spent the war “quietly growing up” in Switzerland and isn’t even Jewish.

If Ross London has his way, you won’t find this book in the library either.

T. Weed, Hoboken, NJ

 

Sharing Jerusalem Is the Only Solution

To The Washington Post , Sept. 11, 2000 (as submitted).

Why hasn’t someone in our political establishment, the president, for example, accepted and articulated and then supported the essential facts about the problem that is preventing completion of a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians? Here are the facts:

1. There will be no comprehensive peace settlement in the absence of an agreement acceptable to both sides on the final status of Jerusalem.

2. In the context of what is being negotiated the only area in dispute is what is termed in the press “East Jerusalem.” But what really concerns the Palestinians is “Arab Jerusalem,” the portion of East Jerusalem inhabited almost exclusively by Arab Palestinians.

3. It is futile to blame Chairman Arafat for the impasse and to pressure him to “compromise” on Jerusalem by abandoning the Palestinian insistence on confirming their sovereignty over Arab Jerusalem. For him to sign such an agreement would be suicidal for Arafat, would result in permanent conflict in Israel-Palestine and the region as a whole, and would never be accepted by the Palestinians, by the Arabs, and by the billion Muslims around the world. Nor would it be accepted by the major Christian sects: the Roman Catholics, the Greek and Armenian Orthodox, the other Eastern Orthodox churches, and most Protestant denominations. The latter would much prefer sovereignty over the Muslim and Christian holy places of Jerusalem by a secular state of Muslims and Christians than by a state defined by its religion, the Jewish state of Israel.

4. It is also futile to try to convince the leaders of the Arab states friendly to the United States to put pressure on Arafat to “compromise” on Jerusalem by giving up the Palestinian claim to sovereignty over Arab Jerusalem. They will not do so, for it is their claim as well.

5. It is wholly illegitimate and illogical for Israel to claim exclusive sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem, especially the enlarged city that Israel has unilaterally expanded, including the illegal annexation of Arab Jerusalem that no one recognizes. There is no justification for Israel to claim exclusive possession of this city as a uniquely Jewish habitation. No doubt the Jewish people have a very strong emotional, even spiritual, attachment to that city, but so do many other peoples. It is the exclusivity and totality of possession that is not legitimate. Jerusalem has had a long and checkered history. Originally a Canaanite city, Jerusalem has been occupied and held by Jews, but also by Babylonians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, and Arabs, and for nearly a century by Western Christians, as well as by colonial powers such as the Mamelukes, the Ottoman Turks, and the British. It has had a mixed ethnic population throughout most of its history. The Jewish people have no legitimate claim to exclusivity based on history, politics, culture, economics, or religion. The “City of David” to which Jews have such a strong attachment is a fraction of 1 percent of the territory of modern Jerusalem.

6. The press always refers to East Jerusalem (including the portion that is Arab Jerusalem) as having been “captured” by Israel in the 1967 war, as if that “capture” now gives Israel rights of possession that it declines to give up. No, the Arab Jerusalem that the Palestinians wish to make their capital is “occupied” territory. The preamble to U.N. Security Council Resolution 242—the basis of all recent efforts to establish peace in the region—reaffirms the principle of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” and the body of the resolution established the “land-for-peace” formula for resolving the conflict. The Fourth Geneva Convention forbids an occupying power from changing the demographics of occupied territory, a prohibition that Israel has repeatedly and widely violated in and around Jerusalem. The original U.N. Partition Plan for Palestine—U.N. General Assembly Resolution 181—called for Jerusalem and some nearby territory to be established as a “corpus separatum,” an international enclave under neither Israeli nor Palestinian sovereignty.

7. This problem can be solved by the simple application of the rule of reason. While Arabs comprise roughly 30 percent of the population of modern Jerusalem, the Arab Jerusalem that the Palestinians wish to have as their capital is only about 10 percent of the city as enlarged by Israel after 1967. The division proposed here would give Israel exclusive sovereignty over the other 90 percent of the city, including all Jewish holy sites in and around the city. Isn’t that enough?

8. Even if the Palestinian state-to-be comes into existence in the West Bank and Gaza, the Palestinians will acquire only 22 percent of Mandate Palestine, as the Israelis have already taken 78 percent, not counting the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. That is a great deal less territory than the roughly 50 percent of Mandate Palestine that was allotted to the Arab state under the U.N. partition plan. An “agreement” that awarded all of Jerusalem to Israel would only compound this gross inequity.

9. Rather than putting pressure on Arafat to agree to Israel’s total sovereignty over all of Jerusalem, we should be pressuring Israel to do the reasonable, decent, humane, and judicious thing by agreeing to let their Arab Palestinian neighbors-to-be have sovereignty over the Arab-inhabited portions of Jerusalem, along with the Muslim and Christian holy sites in and around that city. Ninety percent Israeli as against 10 percent Arab. Is it fair that one side to this conflict should obtain 100 percent from a peace agreement? Regardless of fairness, the claimants to the 10 percent cannot willingly agree to surrender it, now or ever.

Robert V. Keeley, Washington, DC

The author is a retired foreign service officer and former president of the Middle East Institute

 

Revisit Iraqi Sanctions

To President Bill Clinton, June 22, 2000

As you are aware, the continued sanctions regime against Iraq is a source of growing discontent in Congress. While I believe Iraq is obligated to comply with the terms of inspection it agreed to following the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war, I do not believe the mass suffering in Iraq will compel Saddam Hussain to observe these terms.

There is little doubt Saddam Hussain is a ruthless dictator and seeks to rearm Iraq in order to exert influence over his neighbors. Nor is there any doubt he has cunningly exploited the suffering of the Iraqi people—particularly children—to erode support for international sanctions. Unfortunately, barring Saddam’s removal from power, which is highly unlikely, there is little chance Iraq will ever fully satisfy the requirements needed to lift sanctions. I fear the continuing stalemate will result in the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent people who have no other choice than to live (and die) under Saddam.

Given the inevitability of the protracted agony of the current situation, would it not be prudent for the United States to reverse course and take action to undermine Saddam’s ability to inflict suffering on the Iraqi people?

After all, the original goal of the 1991 Persian Gulf war—to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait—was easily achieved by U.S. and coalition forces.

Given our deployment of U.S. troops throughout the Persian Gulf region—which we lacked in 1990—and our proven ability to ravage Iraq’s military, Saddam’s inevitable boasts of besting U.S. policy-makers would have little or no effect outside of his borders.

However, the United States would generate an enormous amount of goodwill both at home and throughout the international community by revisiting the impact of the sanctions against Iraq. While I realize this is far easier said than done, I believe there would be great support in Congress for a candid assessment of the effectiveness of the sanctions against Iraq and the humanitarian impact of those sanctions. I look forward to hearing your response, and am willing to work with your administration on this matter.

Darlene Hooley (D-OR, Member of Congress

 

Why Assume Innocence?

To The Globe and Mail (Toronto), July 12, 2000 (as published).

Statements by Ed Morgan of the Canadian Jewish Congress (“Where Love for Israel is a Crime”—July 10), Leo Adler of the Simon Wiesenthal Center (letter—July 6) and others make interesting reading.

I do not have any substantive evidence to judge how fair or otherwise was the recent trial of 10 Iranian Jews. However, I doubt if your other correspondents do, either. Mr. Morgan states that the Jews were tried for “love of Israel,” as if Israeli agents would never engage in spying. We do not have to look very far from our borders to see the evidence. Jonathan Pollard, an American Jew, is still serving a sentence for spying for Israel against his own country. This week, an Israeli agent has been convicted of spying in Switzerland, and there have been many others.

What astonishes me is that all those calling this trial flawed are speaking of violations of human rights and proper legal process. Yet, I do not recall hearing any of them raising a whisper about the thousands of Palestinians who have been held for years and tortured in Israeli prisons in “administrative detention,” without trial or charge. Nor do I recall any expressions of concern about the thousands of Palestinian prisoners sentenced in Israeli military courts to lengthy imprisonments on the basis of confessions obtained under torture and written in Hebrew, a language the prisoners do not know.

The question that continues to puzzle us is why, in the eyes of our government and Washington, Israel remains above international law and has this unique immunity from criticism, unlike the other nations of the world.

Ismail Zayid, MD, President, Canada Palestine Association, Halifax, Nova Scotia

 

Mushahid Still in Detention

To General Pervez Musharraf, Chief Executive, Pakistan, Aug. 1, 2000

On behalf of the Muslim community in America, which is now over 6 million, the Washington, DC-headquartered American Muslim Council (AMC) is pleased to learn that Senator Mushahid Hussain has been completely cleared by the National Accountability Bureau, the principal investigative body of the government of Pakistan.

Mr. Hussain is a long-standing friend of American Muslims and of the AMC since its founding in 1990 in the nation’s capital.

Mushahid has been a source of inspiration with his uprightness of character and superb leadership and articulation of Muslim causes. We are distressed that at a time when it is most needed, a vibrant presence has been under confinement for nearly a year.

Nonetheless, it is a tribute that a judicial arm of the administration would show sufficient rectitude to absolve a key figure of the deposed government.

Mushahid has endured enough. We do not see how his continued detention would serve the best interests of Pakistan.

We conclude by recalling a teaching of the Holy Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him): “Free the captive who is unjustly confined.”

Best wishes for you and the people of Pakistan.

Aly R. Abuzaakouk, Executive Director, American Muslim Council (AMC)

 

Friendly Specter

To The New York Times, Aug. 2, 2000 (as published).

Re “The Specter of Saladin,” by Amos Oz (Op-Ed, July 28): Yasser Arafat is greeted in Gaza as a new Saladin, and Israelis, including Mr. Oz, worry that he may indeed be so.

But surely we should be celebrating this turn of events.

Saladin was a noble (Kurdish) Islamic leader who issued a manifesto in 1190 inviting Jewish resettlement of Jerusalem, from which Jews had been expelled during the rule of the Crusaders. Jews everywhere have held Saladin in high esteem for his respect for the holy places of our religion and for his encouragement of a resurgence of Jewish life in the area.

David H. Lincoln, Senior Rabbi, Park Avenue Synagogue, New York, NY.

 

“Only They Are Dying”

To “All Things Considered,” NPR News, Aug. 3, 2000

I listened with interest to Robert Siegel’s coverage of the Republican convention on “All Things Considered” this afternoon. Speaking with a delegate about what the delegate wanted to hear from George W. Bush, Siegel asserted that the United States is enjoying “peace and prosperity.”

I wonder what Mr. Siegel means by this? In fact, the United States is fighting a vicious and nearly invisible war in Iraq, a war that claims thousands of casualties every month.

Nearly every day, U.S. warplanes bombard Iraq, killing civilians and further degrading its ravaged infrastructure. More deadly, U.S.-backed sanctions continue to deny the Iraqi people their basic needs, and Iraqis continue to die of easily preventable illnesses because the country is not allowed to repair its water and sewage treatment plants, electricity plants, or to import needed medical equipment. The embargo has devastated the economy, casting millions of formerly middle class people into such abject poverty that they must sell their household goods to buy food.

The United States is also getting deeper and deeper into Colombia’s civil war, on the side of an army which has one of the worst documented human rights records in the world.

This, Mr. Siegel, cannot be called “peace,” unless “peace” is defined as “only they are dying.”

As for prosperity, there is no doubt that America is teeming with it. But we have little to be proud or complacent about when, with the United Kingdom, we have the highest rate of child poverty of all the highly industrialized economies (one in five American children lives in poverty), and nearly 50 million people without health insurance.

I don’t expect the gawking Republican delegates on the convention floor to bring up these issues, but it would be nice if Mr. Siegel could act as a reality check on their fantasy 1950s America.

Ali Abunimah, Chicago, IL

 

Let Palestinians Go Home

To The Globe and Mail (Toronto), July 18, 2000 (as published).

Whether Mark Heller agrees or not (“Palestinians, You Can’t Go Home Again”—July 14), the right of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes is enshrined in international law and United Nations resolutions and cannot be taken away from them. In classic blame-the-victim fashion, Mr. Heller holds the Palestinians responsible for their exile. Fortunately, as many Israelis realize, his contention is false. In the words of Nathan Chofshi, one of the pioneer Jewish settlers in Palestine: “We came and turned the native Arabs into refugees. And still we dare to slander and malign them, to besmirch their name instead of being deeply ashamed of what we did and trying to undo some of the evil committed.”

Peace will only come to that tortured land if we stop looking at people as Jews, Muslims, Christians, and respect the basic human rights of everyone. It is time that Palestinian Muslims and Christians are allowed home.

Rafeh Hulays, Vancouver, BC, Canada

 

Work at the Temple Mount

To The Washington Post , July 25, 2000 (as published).

Hershel Shanks’s July 18 op-ed column, “Protect the Temple Mount,” grossly misrepresented the activities of the Muslim Waqf on the Haram al-Sharif.

Muslim officials have been responsible for the maintenance of the Muslim religious sites in Jerusalem since the 7th century.

The Waqf’s work on the Haram al-Sharif is being done in anticipation of the thousands of Muslim pilgrims who will be able to visit the Haram after Palestinian-Israeli peace.

As there is little room on the Haram, the Waqf decided to restore and rehabilitate the al-Marwani prayer room below, a site that first provided Muslims sanctuary in the 8th century.

In order to rehabilitate the al-Marwani, we carefully have removed dirt from the entrance. This has been done under the supervision of Palestinian archeologists including the chairman of the department of Islamic architecture at Al-Quds University and the chairman of the department of antiquities at the Waqf.

They have examined samples of the excavated dirt and found no structures, artifacts, or archeological remains from any era.

The Haram is a living place of worship for Muslims. Mr. Shanks’s accusation that we are damaging this holy site is ludicrous. By contrast, since occupying the Old City in 1967, Israeli authorities have taken numerous unilateral actions in disregard of Muslim sensibilities (such as destroying the 12th century Maghrebi Quarter to make the “Western Wall Plaza,” and using bulldozers to excavate the Umayyad Palaces adjacent to the Haram).

Mr. Shanks’s unfounded accusations, combined with Israel’s record of heavy-handed unilateralism in Jerusalem, demonstrate why Palestinian negotiators have insisted that Israel end its occupation of this sacred city.

Adnan Husseini, Director, Muslim Waqf, Jerusalem

 

EU Should Call for Two-State Solution

To The Guardian, July 28, 2000 (as published).

You ask (“Leader,” July 26) what lessons can be learned to relaunch the peace talks. President Arafat should not be castigated for insisting on basic rights backed by international law and U.N. resolutions. Unless these are insisted upon, the international community may continue to back an unequal negotiating process. A nuclear regional power such as Israel, fully supported by a non-neutral U.S., can hardly be compared with the fledgling Palestinian Authority. Israel has attempted peace by coercion, in the guise of diplomacy. If Arafat had caved in to the pressure, a people with little to lose would not have forgiven him and any peace would have been both temporary and an illusion.

The European Union must step into the vacuum created by the U.S. presidential elections and insist on a two-state solution, with a viable and sovereign Palestinian state in the entirety of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Jerusalem a shared capital for two peoples.

John Austin, MP, Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding

 

Misinformation and Bias

To The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, July 29, 2000 (as submitted?).

We write to express our deep indignation at the attitude reflected in the editorial “Arabs’ Jerusalem Fantasies Block Realistic Peace Plan” (July 28) and our shock at the misinformation and propaganda that the AJC editorial board again displays in “reporting on” (we use the term loosely) the Arab-Israeli conflict. As educators who are interested in representation of various points of view we find ourselves shocked by the one-sided, propaganda-ridden approach you constantly adopt in approaching Middle Eastern affairs.

Your editorial reflects a strong bias to the Israeli government’s official line in portraying the Israeli side as the one who is making all the sacrifices and concessions required for peace, ignoring all the concessions the Palestinians have made since the signing of the Oslo agreement (not to mention the house demolitions, land confiscations, arrests without charges, and other repressive measures Palestinians suffer on a daily basis, all of which you decline to report on). Even a cursory glance at the history of negotiations over the past seven years can show any true observer that the Palestinian side has made tremendous concessions to Israel, despite all the U.N. resolutions and international opinion that have affirmed the Palestinian claim to all the lands illegally occupied by Israel (including East Jerusalem) after the 1967 war.

East Jerusalem is believed by the Palestinians, Arabs, Muslims and the international community represented by the U.N., which issued Resolution 242 in accordance with international law, to be an occupied territory which should be returned to the Palestinians. Jerusalem is a religious and ethnic symbol for Jews, Christians and Muslims around the world, a fact not lost on the Vatican, which last week called for international status for this multifaceted city. We cannot fathom what gives you the right to declare the Palestinian desire to continue their several-thousand-year-old presence in Jerusalem as a “fantasy” and Israeli insistence on an undivided Israeli Jerusalem as an undisputed “fact.” Would you dare use the word “fantasy” in describing the Israelis’ insistence on maintaining military control over occupied East Jerusalem, against the wishes of the Christian and Muslim population that constitutes the majority there? Did you even stop to ask who indeed does live in East Jerusalem?

The Palestinian people have the right to adhere to whatever they believe is part of their national identity despite what any election-beleaguered American president declares. No one has the right to tell any people that what they aspire to is a “fantasy.” If the Palestinians find what Israel is offering them in terms of limited concessions (and they are quite limited) unacceptable, then it is their right to refuse these concessions. You may recall that the occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem occurred 30-some years ago as a violation of international law, and remains so today.

During the Gulf war, the United States did not tell the Kuwaiti people that their desire to regain their occupied land was a “fantasy,” nor did it ask them to make concessions to Saddam Hussain. Instead, it led the international community in a campaign to liberate Kuwait.

We can understand that President Clinton is playing a familiar, dirty form of pre-election party politics at the expense of the interests of the United States in laying the blame on the “inflexible” Palestinian side in order to drum up support for Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, but we cannot fathom why a newspaper such as AJC stoops to this level of simplification and misinformation in dealing with such a complex issue. Since when does the media serve as a mouthpiece for the government and regurgitate its political rhetoric? We thought that only countries with repressive regimes suffered under such a state of affairs; sadly, it appears that the AJC has completely lost its ability to think for itself.

It’s time to restore impartiality and objectivity to the vocabulary of AJC.

Mahmoud Al-Batal and Kristen Brustad, Emory University, Atlanta, GA

 

Salute to James Ron

To The Chicago Tribune , Aug. 8, 2000 (aspublished).

Professor Ron’s commentary, “Preparing Israel for Peace” (Aug. 4) was like a bright shaft of sunlight illuminating the real reason for the failure of the Camp David talks: neither side had prepared its constituents for peace.

Having long ago conceded Israel’s sovereignty over the land captured in 1948, additional Palestinian “concessions” demanded by Israel and the American team can only come from their rights—the right to the land they have always lived on, and the right of return for the refugees.

Longtime Middle East watchers like myself have been struck by the fact that, over the past half-century, no Israeli government has suggested to its citizenry that some day they would have to come to terms with the Palestinians.

Israelis, Palestinians and Americans all should salute Professor Ron for a clear-sighted description of the basis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by a man of principle and conscience.

Laverne Kuhnke (U.S. Foreign Service, Ret.), Chicago, IL

Editor’s note: James Ron’s article is reprinted on p. 31 of this issue

 

Israel and the U.N.

To the AustinAmerican-Statesman, June 11, 2000 (as published).

A June 1 article says that Israel has become a temporary member of a United Nations regional group that decides who fills the 10 rotating seats on the Security Council as well as other key U.N. committee assignments. The article states that: “The United States has lobbied for years to get Israel accepted into the Western European group, saying it was unfair that Israel had been banned from participating fully in the United Nations.”

It seems to me that the United States’ lobbying for Israel in the U.N. has little to do with the American public’s welfare and security, but much to do with U.S. politicians’ campaign funding and fear of the consequences of offending pro-Israel groups in this country.

For refusing to act in a civilized manner toward its neighbors, I see less reason to reward Israel in the U.N. than to keep it out.

William V. Kelly, Austin, TX

 

Does Barak Speak for All Jews?

To The Jerusalem Post, July 6, 2000 (as submitted).

A news item in Ha’aretz quoted Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak as saying that next week’s summit meeting with Yasser Arafat and President Clinton would find him leading the Israeli delegation “with a heavy sense of responsibility for the future of the Jewish people.”

Who appointed the Israeli prime minister to be the spokesperson for all Jews living on planet Earth? Shouldn’t the Israeli prime minister be the spokesperson only for the citizens of the State of Israel, whether those citizens are Jewish or not?

Barak’s pretension to speak for “the Jewish people” is reminiscent of Adolf Hitler’s claim to speak for all Germans whether they lived in Germany or not. It would appear that Barak presumes to speak for Jews living in Milwaukee or anywhere else in the world just as Hitler presumed to represent Milwaukee’s Germans and those living elsewhere.

Should Mexico’s newly elected president, Vicente Fox, announce in the future that he and the Mexican government spoke for all Mexicans regardless of where they lived, I suspect that this arrogant claim would be rebutted by all thinking patriotic American citizens—including those of Mexican heritage.

Why should the Israeli prime minister be allowed to make an extra-territorial claim to represent people living beyond his country when this claim would not be tolerated from any other country’s leader?

Robert E. Nordlander, Menasha, WI

< Prev		Next >