The US must now redraw Israel's 'road map' to peace
By Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, November 1, 2002
It is an indication of how weirdly oblique Israeli politics can be that the Labour party could only raise the profoundly moral issue of the settlements by staging a row about what they are costing the government. That the settlements are the cause of a war which takes lives every day of the week somehow takes second place to the fact that they are burning a hole in the pockets of taxpayers. To break up the ruling coalition on the grounds that pensioners are not getting enough while settlers are getting too much is akin to divorcing a violent husband on the grounds that he has been pinching the housekeeping money. And it is an indication of how much the world has to dance attendance on the chaotic ups and downs of democracy in Israel that the manoeuvres of the country's present set of pretty dismal leaders could be of especially critical importance in the next few months.

Hanging by a thread
By Graham Usher, Al-Ahram Weekly, 31 Oct. - 6 Nov. 2002
At Al-Ahram Weekly press time it was still not clear whether Ariel Sharon's National Unity government would survive the gravest threat yet to its 19-month tenure. It was clear, though, that Yasser Arafat had faced down the gravest challenge to his authority since he was elected Palestinian Authority president in 1996. But in the perception of the two peoples they lead both governments are now hanging by the slenderest of threads. If they don't fall today or tomorrow, they will fall soon, either by elections, in Israel's case, or by irrelevance, in the Palestinian. Israel's most serious governmental crisis in three years is a wholly artificial one, driven less by the real issues raised by the Palestinian Intifada than by the party political considerations of its two main protagonists: Sharon and Labour Party leader and Defence Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer. It was brought to a head last Sunday when Ben- Eliezer vowed that Labour would vote against the first reading of this year's state budget unless $147 million was cut from the settlements and transferred to Israel's "weaker strata", especially pensioners, students and poor development towns.

The paradoxes of Israel
By John Chuckman, YellowTimes, May 6, 2002
"Will Israel pass through the twenty first century, with all the revolutionary forces of globalization and a close attachment to the world's biggest globalizer, the United States, remaining a small state defined by religious identity? Strictly from a theoretical point of view, this does not seem likely and may even prove impossible." - (YellowTimes.org) – The creation of Israel marked the application of a peculiarly nineteenth century solution, the founding of a state based on ethnic or religious identity, to an ancient problem. The problem was, of course, anti-Semitism, something that has dogged the Jewish people for centuries and which reached its full, nightmarish expression in the Holocaust.

That was the weak that was
By Hannah Kim, Ha'aretz, November 1, 2002
In the week when the unity government disintegrated, the gap between image and reality once again became apparent. Ariel Sharon, a gifted politician, shot himself in the foot and made a series of mistakes that recalled the blunders of his predecessor, Ehud Barak. On Sunday of this week, in a meeting with Labor Party leader and Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Labor cabinet ministers, Sharon was offered a compromise proposal formulated by two Ben-Eliezer confidants, Agriculture Minister Shalom Simhon and Deputy Defense Minister Weizman Shiri. Ben-Eliezer wanted to flaunt the achievement at the meeting of the Labor Party's Central Committee later that day, in order to persuade the party stalwarts that it was essential to remain in the government.

Just a Song
By Ramzy Baroud, Palestine Chronicle, October 31, 2002
"Umm Ali, a courageous neighbor of ours, mostly known for rescuing boys from the hands of Israeli soldiers, dared to open her door to see who was being buried. The moment she learned it was my mother, she let out an agonizing scream .." - SEATTLE (PC) - It started with a song. Then it all came back. Her voice still fills my memory. Her sweet, motherly smile, her mere existence that gave me a good reason to believe that things would be okay for us, someday. My mother’s death was more than a loss for me. It was an end of some sort, and yet it was also a beginning. I remember the day I was woken up from deep sleep to be told, “your mother and father are back from Egypt.” Yet I did not realize that my mother was returning home in a coffin.

Gaza: No Way In, No Way Out
By Kristen Ess, Palestine Chronicle, October 31, 2002
KHAN YUNIS, Gaza Strip (PC) - In this prison it matters less every day whether or not Israel drops another bomb on Rafah or Khan Yunis. Israel has military control of 42% of the Gaza Strip in order to "protect" its 6,000 illegal Israeli settlers. Many of the settlers are armed. 1.25 million Palestinians are dying on less than 60% of the land. Many Palestinians are without water, are not allowed to dig to new wells, are without jobs, and without money to obtain medical service or food. Much of the transportation is by donkey and cart. Cars are crushed or unaffordable. Palestinians are not allowed in. There is no way out.