The Emperor’s New Clothing
By Edna Yaghi, Palestine Chronicle, November 24, 2002
WASHINGTON (PC) - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is portrayed as a great leader who is dedicated to the war against terrorism and as a person who is surrounded by hostile Palestinians. What we see in the news is only one side of the picture. The media does quite an effective job of misrepresenting the facts and not telling what is actually going on. For one thing, we, the Americans, are not told that Israel was illegally built on Palestinian land at the expense of the Palestinian nation and Palestinian people. We fail to see how every day, Israel takes more and more of what is left of Palestine and that it is an occupying power and that the Palestinians are an occupied people.

Rightward shift
Editorial, Arab News, November 25, 2002
The latest explosion of Palestinian rage against Israelis has been dramatic both in scale and scope. This month alone has been witness to a deadly raid on a kibbutz family, the shooting down of 12 settlers in Hebron, a bus bombing in Jerusalem which killed almost a dozen people and the wounding of three Israeli sailors when a suspected Palestinian fishing boat blew up near a naval patrol boat off the coast of Gaza in a rare seaborne assault. Logic suggests that the surge of attacks, just the latest after over two years of the intifada, would prompt Israelis to start negotiating with the Palestinians once again and would help elect the new leader of the Labor Party, Amram Mitzna, in preparation for this new chapter. Mitzna is pursuing a platform of disengagement from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, saying that if he became prime minister he would unilaterally pull troops and Jewish settlers out of the Gaza Strip and resume negotiations on a far-reaching peace settlement in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

The bill will come
By Avi Temkin, Globes, November 25, 2002
Bush junior may grant Israel aid more easily than Bush senior, but a free lunch? Forget it:   For the second time in little more than a decade, Israel has been forced to submit a request for special US aid to cope with the effect of an external event on its economy. The first time, in 1991, Israel asked for $10 billion in loan guarantees, spread over five years, to absorb immigration from the former Soviet Union. This time the cause is the conflict with the Palestinians and Israel’s increasing difficulties in raising money overseas. Judging by what the official spokesmen are saying, both in open comments and in intentional leaks, President George W. Bush’s administration will prove far more sympathetic than that of George Bush senior, who conditioned the guarantees on a freeze of Jewish settlement in the territories.

Where is Israel's Daniel Ellsberg?
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, November 25, 2002
"In off-the-record talks, senior sources in the defense establishment say that the chances "of wiping out the terror infrastructure" are tantamount to those of drying out the Mediterranean Sea. Occupying ourselves with the terrorists and those who send them out on their missions, explosives laboratories and the deportation of Yasser Arafat is diverting attention from the real danger: Hundreds of gangs of armed young men who answer to no one are threatening to turn the territories into a second Vietnam. They do not need an organization and it is almost impossible to garner intelligence ("warnings") about their plans. Defense Ministry officials are whispering that the political echelon (with the help of the media) is selling the public the delusion that the separation fence is about to become a reality; these officials know that in the coming years, the state coffers will be unable to bear the burden of the ongoing war for the safety of the settlements together with the investment of billions of shekels in the seam-line area."

Interview with Ami Ayalon: An unconditional withdrawal from the Territories is urgently needed
Palestine Chronicle, January 1, 2002
Ami Ayalon, 55, headed Israeli interior security (Shin Bet) from February 1996 until May 2000: Q: How do you see the state of political debate in Israel? Ayalon: Israeli society, top to bottom, is sinking into confusion. There are no reference points. People mask this reality with swaggering slogans: "We will vanquish terrorism!". At a colloquium, the army chief of staff declares: "We are winning"; he evokes the "superiority of Tsahal" -- the Israeli army -- and his "feeling that the nation is finding its strength." Then he adds "there are today more Palestinian terrorists than a year ago" and says there will be even more tomorrow! If we are winning, how come terrorists are multiplying? In Israel, no one is in touch with reality. This is a consequence of a misperception of the peace process. "We have been generous and they refused!" is ridiculous, and everything that follows from this misperception is skewed. Moreover, our obsession with the Palestinians makes us forget to ask questions about ourselves. What do we want to be? Where are we going? No leader addresses these questions. Thus the confusion and general anxiety.

Letters to mutually disappointed peace camp leaders
By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz, November 26, 2002
The upcoming Knesset elections remind Palestinian leaders of the 1999 elections. They say that at the time, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat called on Israeli Arabs to vote en masse for Ehud Barak, "a man of the peace camp." The day after his victory over Benjamin Netanyahu, Barak turned his back on the Palestinians and started to woo the Syrians. The end is known. The disappointment with the peace camp did not disappear even with the election of Amram Mitzna as Labor's candidate for prime minister. As is true of most Israelis, for whom the terror has blurred the difference between Ahmed Yassin [spiritual leader of the terrorist Hamas organization] and Abu Ala [Chairman of the Palestinian Legislative Council], and between the Tanzim and the Islamic Jihad, for Palestinians too, the deepening of the occupation and the unity government have shrunk the difference between the Likud and Labor, between hawkish Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and Labor dove Avraham Burg.

Jerusalem looks to Spain for a `miracle'
By Esther Zandberg, Ha'aretz, November 26, 2002 
The Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles is planning to invest NIS 1 billion - $200 million - in the construction of the Center of Human Dignity-Museum of Tolerance, designed by world-famous architect Frank Gehry, that will be built in Jerusalem. This unfathomable investment in an institution whose content is vague and whose facade looks like a pile of stones - the immediate association is of a disaster area - and which stems only from a desire to astonish, arouses serious doubts as to its justification, in particular due to the current period of economic and political crisis. The thought of what could be done with NIS 1 billion for tolerance and for other purposes is mind-boggling.

The Aim: Victory
By Uri Avnery, Palestine Chronicle, November 25, 2002
It seems that a new wind is blowing in the country. This week I flew to Europe. On the way to the Airport, the taxi-driver told me: That’s it, there is no hope left. We shall never have peace with the Palestinians. There is no one to talk with. No compromise is possible. The war will go on and on. Therefore he will vote for Sharon. I remarked that if this is so, his grandchildren would certainly leave the country. "What grandchildren," he replied with sorrow, mingled with pride, "My son is an architect in Los Angeles!" I returned after five days. The taxi driver who took me home from the airport surprised me. "All my life I have voted Likud," he said, "But the Likud has failed. There is