An opportunity for Israel's Arabs
By Ray Hanania, Ha'aretz, December 2, 2002
When 85 percent of Israel's Arabs boycotted the 2001 elections, Arabs mistakenly asserted the boycott had been responsible for Ehud Barak's defeat, while Jews insisted the Arabs had proved their voter weaknesses. They're both wrong. Barak, who enjoyed Israeli Arab support in 1999, lost in a landslide to Ariel Sharon that reflected more the high emotions in Israel than the reality of the issues the election addressed. Even if Israel's Arabs had voted 100 percent for Barak, he still would have lost. Yet that doesn't mean Israel's Arabs, 18 percent of the population, can't make a significant difference in helping Israeli society return to a more moderate political direction by restoring the Labor Party to power.

A view from the ruins
By Joseph Algazy, Ha'aretz, December 2, 2002  
A watchtower manned by snipers, long lines of residents waiting at a roadblock, bulldozed homes and empty hotels - life in the Gaza Strip -- The El-Tufah crossing point in southern Khan Yunis divides the city from Mawasi, an area that stretches toward Rafah. To the right is a desolate field, which until two years ago was a lush green. To the left stands a wall that surrounds the settlement of Neve Dekalim and territory around it. Visible in the rear are the remains of two high-rise buildings ravaged by IDF shelling, with bits of concrete and steel reinforcing rods suspended in air. Last Tuesday, dozens of men, women and children - residents of the area of Mawasi, near Rafah, were lined up at this IDF roadblock, along with a long column of cars and trucks loaded with food and produce. Noticing the UN and UNRWA officials and the reporters, they gathered around and bitterly reported how they had been detained at the gate for several days. Left without a choice, some were spending their nights there, while others slept in nearby mosques or with relatives.

The Making of Iraq
The Making of Iraq - Acrobat version
By Geoff Simons, The Link, December, 2002
"Geoff Simons has written four books on Iraq, his most recent being “Targeting Iraq: Sanctions and Bombing in US Policy,” published this year. Denis Halliday, former U.N. Assistant Secretary-General and head of the U.N. Humanitarian Program in Iraq, says of this work, “There is no doubt this is an important book.” And The Times of London added: “Books either written or edited by Simons can be bought with confidence.”...Surely, if ever Americans had a need to know the history of Iraq — “from Sumer to Saddam,” as the title of one of Geoff’s books puts its — that time is at hand. " -- The geographical region that the ancient Greeks called Mesopotamia (“land between the rivers”) and that we know today as Iraq was a fount of civilization. Historians search for original metaphors — a womb, cradle, crucible — as they try to convey the scale of the contribution that the people of the region made to the development of human society. The ancient Iraqis built the first cities on earth, created writing, and devised the first codified legal systems. Here — through such ancient lands as Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria — the cultural brew was stirred from which Western civilization would emerge.

If Saddam is such a monster, why did we arm him and trade with him?
Editorial, The Independent, December 3, 2002
According to the Foreign Office dossier, Saddam Hussein: crimes and human rights abuses, "Iraq is a terrifying place to live". It certainly is, and even the most vociferous anti-war campaigner would have to agree that Saddam heads a brutal, cruel, murderous regime. There is something vaguely pornographic about the Government's little compendium of sadism, with its graphic, stomach-turning descriptions of eye gouging, acid baths and electric drills. But there is no reason to doubt that these things are commonplace in Baathist Iraq, and that the Iraqi people, the Middle East and the world generally would be happier and safer without Saddam. Why then, one is forced to ask, did the British and American governments show such enthusiasm for supporting and arming this monster during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s?

Arab Peace Initiative: Economic implications
By Hisham Awartani, Arab News, December 3, 2002
Viewed against the deep-rooted rejection of recognizing the state of Israel ever since it was established on what was Palestine, the Arab initiative of March 2002, which offered establishing normal relations, constitutes a historical breakthrough. But as is typical in political jargon, translating a broadly-phrased framework into tangible policy measures may prove to be far more difficult and unpredictable than getting adversaries to sign something which they may interpret differently. The economic implications of a probable settlement of the Arab-Israeli conflict, as based on the recent Arab initiative, may provide a stark example. The key word in the Arab initiative, as far as depicting the type of future relations with Israel, is “normal.” Obviously, this word has profound and fairly well-defined political connotations, but it says nothing in regard to the scope and depth of economic relations between concerned sides. There are too many examples of countries with “normal,” and certainly non-belligerent, relations, which nonetheless seem to have failed to establish substantive bilateral economic relations. Many Arab countries provide clear examples on the paradoxical relations between economics and the fine intricacies of politics.