Interview With Tanya Reinhart - Israel/Palestine: How To End The War Of 1948
By Tanya Reinhart, ZNet, November 08, 2002 
1) Can you tell ZNet, please, what your new book,"Israel/Palestine- How to End the War of 1948," is about? What is it trying to communicate?:
"Israel  backed by mainstream Western media - describes its war against the Palestinians as a war of defence, a necessary response to Palestinian terror, a noble instance of the global war against terrorism.  It is amazing how still now, after two years of massive Israeli destruction of the Palestinian society, so little is known about the real facts of how this war developed, and what Israel's role in it is.  The first aim of this book is to bring these facts to light. The book follows Israel's policies over the three years since Ehud Barak became prime minister, until the summer of 2002the darkest period in the history of Israel so far.  Based on information available in abundance in the Israeli media, we can track a shift of policy right at the start of this period - a shift away from the  Oslo conception, which dominated since 1993.  This is, of course, a long story, documented in detail in the book, but let me give you the gist of it."

Yemen attack shows U.S. following Israel’s reckless lead
Editorial, National Catholic Reporter, November 15, 2002
The CIA strike that killed six alleged al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen Nov. 3 shows the United States widening the war on terrorism to beyond Afghanistan. The lethal missile strike from an unmanned aircraft is one more alarming sign that the United States is following in Israel’s footsteps when it comes to foreign policy. Like Israel, the United States is now arrogating to itself the right to attack whomever it wants wherever it wants regardless of the rule of law. Putting aside issues of morality for the moment, an open question is whether Israel’s policy of assassinating suspected terrorists has made Israel safer or has exacerbated rage and resistance, not only from those committing violence but also from the wider Palestinian population. The new Bush doctrine on preemptive strikes, which also copies a page from Israeli history, is similarly problematic. If Israel’s resort to preemptive strikes has yielded stunning military successes in some instances, it has also manifestly failed to move the region toward peace.

Labour leader
Editorial, Arab News, November 20, 2002
Would the election of Haifa’s Mayor Amram Mitzna as Israel’s Labour party leader make any difference to the conflict in the Middle East? The answer has to be “no”, even though most Palestinian factions see in him a “partner” with whom they can jumpstart negotiations. His policy statements and promises before the election made him their best hope for a breakthrough. The other two candidates, one characterized as a hawk and the other a moderate, promised only more of what they are suffering now. If the “moderate”, Haim Ramon, had won, the Labour party would have supported many of the measures taken by the fallen right-wing Likud-Labour coalition government of Ariel Sharon, including most particularly the security fence dividing the Palestinian and Israeli communities. And if the “hawk”, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the tough defense minister in the outgoing coalition had won, it would have been hard to slip a cigarette paper between the oppressive policies of Likud and a right-wing Labour party.

Update from Jenin
By Annie Higgins, The Electronic Intifada, November 19, 2002
The city and the Refugee Camp breathed more easily when the Israeli Army withdrew from its two-week invasion about a week ago, but everyone knew that the Army would maintain its presence, if slightly less visibly. During this most recent invasion, the Army left a trail of demolished houses and many houses which were violently invaded and searched, stolen from, and left in disrepair with dispirited residents. The Army occupied more than thirty-five homes as they moved their local house-camps from day to day. Some families were not allowed into their homes while the Army was occupying them, but more often families were imprisoned in one room, relying on food they had stored, or on the few internationals who visited them bringing supplies.

Israel needs this voice calling for peace and negotiation
Editorial, The Independent, November 20, 2002
He may not be the man to beat Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud in February's election, but the newly elected leader of the Israeli Labour Party, Amram Mitzna, will start to form a coherent opposition case to present to the Israeli people. Electing the dove-ish Mr Mitzna at a time when Israeli public opinion is swinging sharply to the right in the face of suicide bombings may not seem the smartest move, but sooner or later the Israeli people will have to face up to the failure of the Sharon approach of brutal retaliation. In any case, it would be impossible for Labour to outflank Likud on the security issue, and Benjamin Ben-Elezier, the hawkish former Labour leader and defence minister in the Likud-Labour Unity coalition, was a relatively uncharismatic proponent of a hard-line approach. Mr Mitzna was brave enough, as a young brigadier in the Israeli army in 1982, to criticise the conduct of the invasion of Lebanon ordered by Ariel Sharon, then the minister of defence. He has been similarly outspoken in his remarks about Jewish settlements in the West Bank. We may expect him to be similarly honest in his new role.

In the City of Hebron
By MIFTAH, MIFTAH, November 18, 2002
Three settlers patrol the site of Friday's ambush. Netanyahu's innocent settlers are trained in combat and heavily armed by the Israeli military. In Hebron 450 settlers live illegally, according to international law, in the midst of more than 130,000 Palestinians. Why? Because they believe Abraham bought a cave to entomb himself and his family here 4,000 years ago. Apparently, their religious beliefs entitle them to make life unbearable for Palestinians with continued looting, harassment, indiscriminate violence, torture, home demolition and confiscation of land, cutting water supplies and imposing strict curfews. When three Palestinians ambushed and killed four soldiers, including the commander of forces in Hebron, five border police and three security guards from Kiryat Arba, the world was quick to condemn the incident as a "despicable terrorist attack".

Abba Eban: His Legacy to the Palestinians
By Eddie Taylor, Palestine Chronicle, November 19, 2002 
“Eban’s interpretation of UN Resolution 242 has become the mantra for the current anti-Arab consensus in Washington..” - WASHINGTON (PC) - As Israel’s Foreign Minister between 1966 and 1974, Abba Eban’s oratory eloquence enabled him to offer a statesmanlike sheen to a conflict so characterized by the short fuse. A quiet, composed and fiercely intelligent man, his clear vocalization of Israeli policy towards its neighbors was devoured by Western governments and media eager to have the complex issues of competing national aspirations explained in language they could understand. Or, more to the point, would want to understand. Abba Eban was a gifted and loyal servant of Israel, a country of which he was a principal architect. And, like all devoted public servants, lying, distorting and misinterpreting situations to the benefit of government became his stock in trade. For instance, his assertions that Egypt’s planes were airborne in June 1967 and poised to unleash their deadly cargo — thus explaining the mobilization of Israel’s airforce and subsequent “defensive action” — were repeated long after the official versions had repudiated them.

Obituary: Abba Eban
By John Calder, The Guardian, November 18, 2002
Israeli foreign minister who put his country on the map but was later confined to the wilderness: The Israeli statesman Abba Eban, who has died aged 87, used words, with fluency and accuracy, as his most potent weapons. It was Eban who, in 1978, said of the Palestine Liberation Organisation's Yasser Arafat that he "never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity". Eban first came to global attention three decades earlier, when he rose to address the General Assembly of the United Nations on May 5 1949. He was already a familiar figure to many of the delegates, having given an effective speech to the Security Council the previous July. On this occasion his widely reported two hour appeal for the provisional government of the new state of Israel to be recognised by the UN, and accepted as a member, was given major coverage, and his delivery had journalists and commentators reaching for superlatives. In the United States he became a world figure overnight, and during subsequent years it was in that country that he continued to evoke the greatest admiration.