Will you just stand on the sidelines?
By Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, November 6, 2002
After the elections the preachers of the "transfer solution" will be strengthened, the surveys say. It doesn't matter right now exactly how much stronger they'll become. The important thing is that every day that goes by, the preachers of transfer feel ever more confident about raising their "permanent solution" in the Israeli public. No law stops them from posting thousands of leaflets and placards calling for the expulsion of Arabs, or as they put it rather more bluntly, "Them there, us here." Nobody in the law enforcement agencies shows any enthusiasm for fighting them. No attorney general has forbidden them to raise their "ideas" in various media interviews, when the more appropriate titles, "fascists" or "racists" and even "neo-Nazis" are used to describe people like them in Europe. The Transferists hide little and show off much; with smooth talk they speak of "willing and agreed transfer" without going into explanations that there is no such thing.

Our Hearts Are Breaking From The Loss of Paul Wellstone
By Rabbi Michael Lerner, Tikkun, October 27, 2002
The death of U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone in a plane crash is a tragedy and a deep personal loss for us at TIKKUN. Paul was a beautiful human being and a principled Jewish progressive. He was a frequent contributor to TIKKUN Magazine and a person who stood with us in our commitment to Middle East peace. In 1991 Senator Wellstone was the keynote speaker at the TIKKUN Conference in Jerusalem in support of the Israeli peace movement. He came despite the fact that many of his Jewish advisors warned him that it would be a mistake to get too closely identified with Tikkun. Instead, he consistently wrote for us, and he often sought out our advice and discussed important issues in his life and political life.

There is a way out
By Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, November 6, 2002
Israel's elections need not be a disaster for peace if the left can turn the right's onslaught to its advantage
Israeli governments are developing an unnatural lifespan. Like a breed of frail butterfly, they see out two summers and then die. Yesterday Ariel Sharon's administration joined those of predecessors Ehud Barak and Binyamin Netanyahu in failing to survive its full term. Less than two years after winning the premiership by the largest landslide in the country's history, Sharon has called elections for next February. Israel is about to endure three months of intense domestic politicking while the rest of the Middle East watches and waits. A peace process that was already in the deep freeze is now officially on hold.

Likud-Labour Split Offers Opportunities
By Amir Taheri, Palestine Chronicle, November 5, 2002
WASHINGTON - With the collapse of the Likud-Labour coalition, Israel will now have its first fully right-wing government in almost generation. Should this matter to the Palestinians? There are those who say: Not a bit! All Israelis are the same! Well, they are wrong. The coalition led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fell apart because the Labour Party insisted that some limits be imposed against the settlers who have acted as a state within the Israeli state for at least two decades. The issue is crucial for several reasons. The Palestinians could never make peace with the settlers who represent nothing but classical-style “colons”. The Jewish settlers represent the Israeli version of the French “pieds-noirs” (black-foots) colons that fought against Algerian independence to the bitter end. They also recall the white supremacists in South Africa who tried to prolong the apartheid system for as long as possible. Algeria achieved independence when a majority of the French realized that they had been duped by the “black-foots”. And apartheid collapsed when a majority of the white minority distanced itself from the racist land-grabbers who were convinced that blacks were created to be slaves.

The binational option 
By Meron Benvenisti, Alternative Information Center, November 7, 2002 
A growing number of articles and analyses by Palestinians and their supporters are warning that the "two states for two peoples" option is fading, and the goal of a Palestinian state should be exchanged for the establishment of a binational state. At the same time, polls among Israeli Jews show there is a majority, albeit slim, in favor of a Palestinian state: Palestinian Authority representatives recently presented a document suggesting the surge of settlement and infrastructure development in the West Bank has eliminated the possibility of establishing a viable state in the shrunken, diced-up territories, so they have to reconsider the two-states option. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon meanwhile declares he is sticking to President Bush's "vision of a Palestinian state" - obviously under conditions dictated by Israel. When a Palestinian representative thinks out loud about a change of policy - from a demand for national independence to a struggle for civil rights in a binational state - an Israeli diplomat responds furiously, "That's more proof of Palestinian unwillingness to reach peace, because a binational state obviously means the destruction of the state of Israel."

Settlers and Trash
By Mayor Walid Hamad, The Electronic Intifada, November 5, 2002
While the Israeli military strangulation of the West Bank tightens by the day, the Israeli settler community of Psagot, a settlement illegally erected near my city of Al-Bireh, is taking advantage of the Israeli government’s determination to militarily crush Palestinian society to pursue their three decade old policy of illegal land confiscation. Just as the Israeli occupation of the entire Palestinian civilian population has taken on new shapes and forms in the absence of any international intervention, Israeli settlers are camouflaging this latest round of land confiscation behind a facade of environmental issues, namely a solid waste landfill site on the eastern front of the City of Al-Bireh.

A smaller space each day
By Kristen Ess, The Electronic Intifada, November 5, 2002
(29 October-2 November 2002) -- In the southern most part of the Gaza Strip a Palestinian man sits near his young daughter and tells me that the Israeli military gave him no notice before demolishing his home. His neighbor pounded on his door shouting that the soldiers were coming. The man says all he had time to do was gather his children and run out of the house. It was one o'clock in the morning. He stood on the street with 75 other newly homeless until 5 am, not knowing where to go. He says that all of his family's belongings are under the rubble. They are left with nothing.