People and Politics / The road map has no room
for haggling

Last Wednesday, when the eyes of the world were on the clock for the ultimatum given by President Bush to Saddam Hussein, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, took time out to listen to a report to the Security Council by the secretary-general's envoy to the Middle East, Terje Larsen.

After Larsen folded up his papers, the ambassador asked for the floor. Negroponte's statement, which was prepared in advance and read aloud in the behind-closed-doors session, puts an end to the efforts of Prime Minister Sharon to lower a curtain between the U.S. and other Quartet members.
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Sharon has been ignoring the road map. Maybe the US is serious about the Israelis actually changing their ways.

Horror scenarios coming true
By Amira Hass

Vaguely, people in Israel are hearing about the chronic unemployment and the extreme poverty that would have unraveled the social fabric of any society with less solidarity than the Palestinian one. Only internal Palestinian solidarity and European and Arab philanthropy are preventing situations of mass starvation. Every day between 10 and 20 "wanted men" are arrested, according to reports from the IDF, which does not report how many of them were released a day later, or how many were arrested so they would become collaborators, how many were beaten, what their conditions of detention were in tents exposed to the rain and wind and how much time goes by before they are allowed to see a lawyer or their family.

The many dead have been mainly an opportunity to show more pictures of funerals accompanied by cries for revenge. The Palestinian wounded, among them many children - a huge burden on impoverished families - are an opportunity to point out the Iraqi money going to the terrorists. The limitations on Palestinians' freedom of movement are an opportunity to film wadis where Palestinians are trying to break the strict internal closure to get to work, to school and to their families. An opportunity to show how the security authorities have stretched their limits to the breaking point.
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This is what the founder of Zionism envisioned. Very different from today's reality. Very different.

Zionism according to Theodor Herzl

According to a myth that is prevalent in Israel - and all the more so in the Arab world - the founders of Zionism totally ignored the existence of Arabs in Palestine. Those who think so apparently never read Theodor Herzl's "Altneuland" ("Old-New Land"). "Altneuland" is, as is well known, a utopian novel written by Zionism's founder, Theodor Herzl, in 1902; it describes how the Land of Israel would look in 1923 if the Zionist vision would be realized there.
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