UN official reports on 206 Palestinian, 13 Israeli deaths in month of violence

Israel's military operations in the Gaza Strip and Palestinian attacks on Israelis have cost more than 200 lives and created a sense of ``drift and foreboding'' in the Middle East, a senior U.N. official said Friday. Kieran Prendergast, undersecretary-general for political affairs, said ``even to speak in terms of a peace process seems to put one at a distance from the present reality'' in the region. Prendergast said that 206 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed in the month since his previous report to the Security Council. He said the latest deaths raised the toll since the start of the Palestinian uprising in September 2000 to 3,839 Palestinians and 979 Israelis.

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The injustice of the new formula

In recent weeks, the discussion of the chances of the struggle for the establishment of a Palestinian state as a way to resolve the conflict has become sharper and more profound, and alternatives to the formula "two states for two peoples" have been raised; despair over implementing this solution is reinforcing the idea of "one binational state." As long as there were only "a few more or less naive Israelis, who were caught up in the foolish idea of a binational state" (Avraham Tal, Haaretz, October 14), the issue could be treated with condescending dismissiveness. But when the matter is starting to be discussed by groups and people who belong to the heart of the political and military establishment in both the Israeli and the Palestinian camps, and the attention being devoted to it by pundits and journalists the world over is reaching new heights, the sense heightens that a process of a paradigm change has begun, and that it won't be long before a contest erupts as to who owns the patent for the new formula. After all, the slogan "two states" is less than 20 years old, and many of those who are rejecting the binational formula scornfully and aggressively had the same hostile attitude toward the two-state formula, until it gained legitimacy - after being emptied of meaning.

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  thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog

A unilateral danger

If the disengagement plan is the illusion of a political solution, the real danger lies in its unilateral character. We have learned how to get along with political illusions, but when we are told that it's possible to withdraw from Gaza, leaving behind chaos and destruction, without proposing a political plan, without examining how a million and a half people will earn a living, and without conducting negotiations with someone who will be able to assume responsibility and ensure that the only thing that's launched from the alleys of Gaza will be a silent song of praise, that is not only an insulting lieu, it's also dangerous to our health. To disengage from Gaza peacefully requires disengaging from the slogan according to which there is no Palestinian partner. In its place we have to adopt the approach holding that Israel is not looking for a partner but for someone who will run things - someone who in a year's time, or less, will be ready to accept the keys. And without prior conditions, without empty discussions, without checking whether he's as pretty as Mohammed Dahlan or as charming as Yasser Arafat. After all, we're going for a unilateral plan, aren't we?

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