Jews settle in Palestinian Jerusalem
Sharon tests Bush, Blair and the road map by letting families occupy contested district

Ariel Sharon has brushed aside an appeal by the White House to stop an unprecedented move by Jewish settlers into a Palestinian district of Jersualem which his critics say will further hinder a political settlement.

After more than two years of legal and political wrangling, Mr Sharon's office approved the plan last week and the first Jewish families have moved into new flats in the Ma'aleh Ha'zeitim settlement, beside the densely populated Arab district of Ras al-Amoud.

It is the first time a Jewish settlement has been built in a Palestinian area of Jerusalem since Israel seized control of the entire city in 1967.
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When are people going to realize that Sharon has zero interst in a political settlement?

Was Einstein Right?
Israel's Bloody Excesses

But even in a cause so dear to his heart, Einstein never stopped thinking for himself. He not only opposed the establishment of a formal Israeli state--he was after all a great internationalist--but he always advocated treating the Arabic people of Palestine with generosity and understanding.

Clearly Einstein's Zionist path was not the one followed. The actual path chosen by Israel has been pretty much that of "the iron wall," a phrase put forward by Ze'ev Jabotinsky in the 1920s as the appropriate posture for Zionists to adopt towards Arabs in Palestine.
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WAS THIS HOUSE WORTH HER LIFE?
ELI SANDERS reports from the Gaza Strip on the death of Olympia's Rachel Corrie--Evergreen student, anarchist, activist, and accidental martyr.

RAFAH, GAZA STRIP--At first, the doctor did not want to see me. I had come by dirt road to his small pharmacy in this dingy town along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt because I wanted to ask about the young woman from America--the one who died defending his house. He did not want to talk about her. He was tired of talking to journalists. He now required appointments to be made in advance.

I didn't know about the new policy, I said. I apologized. Our guide gave him a cigarette. I said I was from Seattle, near the city where Rachel Corrie grew up. I told him I wanted to learn more about what happened. "Okay," he said. "Come."

The doctor, Samir Masri, is known to all as simply Dr. Samir, and he is now famous in this city because it was his house Rachel was defending when she was killed by one of the giant armored Israeli bulldozers that people here say terrorize them.
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