Jump in - or stop making waves
By Akiva Eldar

The negotiations over the corrections to the road map enables the prime minister to put the National Union's disciples of transfer to his right in the government and Shinui's supporters of Peace Now to his left. Justice Minister Yosef Lapid said over the weekend to Yedioth Ahronoth that if the government rejects the road map, his party will return to the opposition. But the government won't reject the road map - nor accept it. What's the hurry? If the president himself is ready to continue negotiating Sharon's corrections, who are we to push the government? Meanwhile, the Hamas will kill more Israelis, the settlers will put up more outposts, and the politicians will say that Abu Mazen is no partner.

Nations that bleed each other for decades are not allowed to complain about others who don't do more than they themselves do for the sake of peace. Yes, one can regret that the leader of the most powerful country in the world doesn't keep his promise to exploit the momentum of victory in Iraq to make a new order for the region. A politician has the right to decide which interests are more important to his country than others. He can even prefer narrow electoral interests over broad strategic ones. But no leader, especially not a president who proudly claims the title "the American president most loyal to the state of Israel," has the right to deceive us. If he refuses to jump into the water, Bush should stop making waves.
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US concession draws Israel into road map vote

Ariel Sharon took immediate advantage yesterday of an offer by Washington which will let Israel accept the US road map for peace in the Middle East without intending to implement it fully.
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More double talk from Sharon/Bush. The Palestinians accept one road map and then Bush says Sharon can accept another road map.

Hamas 'ready to offer new ceasefire'
Militants rekindle hopes for Middle East peace process

The Apartheid Wall
by Ran HaCohen

The UN Resolution of 1947 allocated 45% of British Mandate Palestine to a Palestinian State. In 1948, Israel occupied 78% of the land, leaving just 22% – the West Bank and Gaza – to the Palestinians. This is all they have been demanding since 1993. Now, Israel is robbing more than the better half of these 22% left. Six million Israelis are to have about 90% of the land (and water), whereas three-and-a-half million Palestinians, many of them refugees, are pushed to starve into what is left, locked behind gigantic walls in open-air prisons, with no land, no water and no hope. The moral way to peace, love and security, no doubt.

The Apartheid Wall will be 8m high and probably 1.000km long. For comparison, China's Great Wall – the only human-made object seen from outer space – is 6.700km long, whereas the Berlin Wall was a dwarf, just 155km long and 3,6m high. Keeping silent on this gigantic project and its genocidal implications, meant to prevent any fair future settlement (not to mention the Road Map), is a moral crime, of which almost the entire Western media is guilty.
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The Dean, the President, and the Historiography of 1948 Palestine
Academic Freedom Under Assault in Israel

3. My colleagues who still find it difficult to support or show solidarity, for some reasons, fail to learn the historical lessons of the past. Today it is me, tomorrow it is them. Many of them come from families who experienced the same incremental process of silencing in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Spain and the military regimes of Latin America. They still live in self-denial, believing it will never happen to them.

As in the past, I ask you to express your indignation and protest and react in any way you deem appropriate, not for my sake, but for the sake of all those who are victimized by the present trends and ideologies in the state of Israel: the Palestinians under occupation, the minority within the country, and the few dissenting voices inside the Jewish society. Such a voice, in the end of the day, will be a valuable contribution to peace and reconciliation in the Middle East.
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