More International Protection for Palestinian Refugees?
BADIL Resource Center, November 24, 2002
A Critical Analysis of the Revised UNHCR Interpretation of the Status of Palestinian Refugees under International Refugee Law -  Since 1948 Palestinian refugees have called for international protection to enable them to exercise their right of return to homes and lands illegally expropriated by Israel. From places of exile in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere they have called for protection of their right to freedom of movement, family unity, access to education, work and adequate housing. Too often, Palestinian refugees have raised desperate calls to the international community for protection from renewed forced displacement, collective punishment, arbitrary destruction of their properties, and war crimes. The 1982 massacre at Sabra and Shatila (Beirut); Israeli human rights violations during the first Palestinian intifada in the occupied West Bank, eastern Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip (1987-1991); and mass expulsion from Kuwait and Libya in the early 1990s – all gave raise to new UN resolutions and initiatives aimed at upgrading international protection for Palestinian refugees. These efforts, however, have not brought about substantial improvements. Confronted with massive Israeli military assaults against the civilian camp population in the current (second) intifada, Palestinian refugees from all areas of exile continue to call for international protection.

Don't blame religion for the killings done in God's name
By Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, November 29, 2002
Political failure often paves the way for resurgent fundamentalism  - It has always been true that many things done in the name of God would be abhorrent to a benign deity. But, with terrorists attacking Israelis in Kenya, Muslims and Christians killing each other in Nigeria, a mission nurse murdered in Lebanon and Hindu worshippers and Muslim assailants shot down in Kashmir, this seems like an especially bad period for the abuse of religion. Religion continues to be a vehicle for political expression and change, whether peaceful or violent, in a way surprising to those who once expected a progressive secularisation to ultimately reach every part of the globe. What is really going on during religious revivals or in the growth of political movements based on religion, or of terrorist groups claiming religious justification, are vexed issues, but between, say, the Iranian revolution and the emergence of al-Qaida, there have been some clues. Those are both dates of developments within the Islamic world, but this is a period which also encompasses the growth of the Christian right in the US, an increase in religious influence in Israel, a war in the Balkans in which religiously derived identities played a baleful part, the emergence of a more extreme form of Hinduism in India and the sometimes intolerant reassertiveness of the Orthodox churches in former communist states.

A truly historic decision
By Ze'ev Sternhell, Ha'aretz, November 30, 2002
In any other society where the ruling party had bankrupted itself as happened here, the opposition would win the elections in a landslide. Here a tremendous amount of effort and energy is needed simply to score the smallest achievement. Indeed, for there to be a prospect of pitting a credible alternative against the right, the left must marshal all its intellectual resources. Everyone knows that ideology has never been the Labor Party's strong point. Since it was founded, immediately after the 1967 Six-Day War, it has carefully shied away from thinking about the basic principles of a well-ordered society. Nothing substantial changed even after the first Likud victory in May 1977; since then, the prevailing view in Labor has been that to hone its positions and adhere to a clear social-democratic ideology is a luxury that a party aspiring to rule cannot afford. A ruling party, this outlook holds, needs to be one in which everyone finds something to their taste. For a quarter of a century, with short breaks - usually random and chance occasions - the Labor Party followed this path, until it sank in the national-unity morass of Peres and Ben- Eliezer.

Bush and Cheney: Who said mud sticks?
By Rupert Cornwell, Arab News, December 1, 2002
It is one of the smaller but most telling mysteries of the past convulsive year for corporate and political America. How is it both George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney have escaped serious damage from revelations about their business past and their links with the oil and energy industry, not least Enron? Doubters of that proposition have only to cast their minds back to the previous occupant of the White House. For four years, Bill Clinton was on the rack over the Whitewater affair. No matter that it was an obscure failed land deal in rural Arkansas in which the 42nd president lost money. The press, and Clinton’s Republican opponents, would not let go. Consider now Messrs Bush and Cheney. In 1990 (a comparatively more recent episode in Bush’s career than the 1978 Whitewater deal was in Clinton’s when he ran for president in 1992), George W, Bush, the president’s son, sold shares in the Harken oil company, of which he was a director, for $848,000 (£547,000). The circumstances reeked of insider trading, coming just before Harken released some dismal figures that sent its shares reeling.

Palestinian citizens of Israel: the cleansing of Israeli politics
By Sergio Yahni, Alternative Information Center, November 26, 2002 
Palestinian citizens of Israel comprise 20% of Israel’s population and live a reality of discrimination that encompasses things such as constitutional status, rights to landed property, the existence of unrecognized villages and discriminatory budgetary allocations. Yitzhak Rabin's government did not change this reality, but did require the support of the Palestinian political parties to maintain a government majority. The resulting policy challenged a