Labor has pulled out of Sharon's government and Sharon is scrambling to put together a coalition to avoid new elections. Any coalition will move the Israeli government even more to the right.

Analysis / No Labor, no checks and balances

If a narrow right-wing government is formed, the most important change will apparently be the absence of the internal checks and balances that existed in the unity government's inner security cabinet, where the major security decisions were made with the participation of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres.
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Where wild weeds flourish

It's a nation where wild weeds bloom, and at the lecture, my friend asked some of the heckling soldiers: "Tell me, do you believe blacks and whites in America should have equal rights?" There was a near-unanimous chorus of "yes." And, she asked: "Do you believe Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland should have equal rights? "Of course."

And Arabs and Jews in Israel? Silences. Cries of "that's different," "they don't accept us," here and there a "no!" She said later: "This is what frightens me. They think it's easy to be tolerant when it's far away - that even Arabs and Jews in America should have equal rights - but not here. I wasn't even talking about Palestinians; I was talking about Arab citizens. They do not understand that it's the same. We still want to be the victims - we can't see another people as victims."
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