Arafat is sick, maybe dying, in Paris. I doubt that he will ever return to Palestine, even if he recovers. Israel said they would let him return but I think they said that only because they don't expect him to live. With Arafat gone, Israel won't have a scapegoat to cover for their atrocities against the Palestinians. This will be a time of instability with the Palestinians and the Israelis. I just can't imagine the Israelis giving up the settlements, thought.

Doctor: Arafat has blood platelet deficiency
Palestinian leader headed for a Paris hospital, aide says

  thanks to The Agonist

End of an era? End of an aura?

Yasser Arafat stole the show again. This was supposed to be Ariel Sharon's week, after the disengagement plan was passed in the Knesset on Tuesday. But on Wednesday evening, the prime minister discovered that his veteran adversary, a man whom he occasionally considered assassinating for more than 20 years, was one step ahead of him again.

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Analysis: Few Palestinians show support for Arafat
By Amira Hass

The Palestinian public's disappointment with Yasser Arafat was expressed Wednesday in the streets of Ramallah. Very few people gathered outside the Palestinian Authority chairman's headquarters to express their concern for their leader's health. The fact that more could be learned about the situation by watching Al Jazeera was not the only reason for the small crowds. Despite the fact that during his public appearances on television Arafat is surrounded by cheering supporters in his headquarters, it appears that large segments of the Palestinian public felt remote from their leader, even though they do not blame him directly for the deteriorated state of affairs.

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Analysis: Without Arafat, it grows harder to justify pullout

Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's departure from the scene would bring about a significant transformation in both the Israeli and Palestinian political scene. The claim that "there is no partner," which has formed the basis of Israeli foreign policy over the past four years and justified the refusal to negotiate with the Palestinian Authority, would depart together with him. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan would lose the central justification for its existence - the lack of a Palestinian partner. Only one day after the Knesset approved the disengagement plan and the dramatic schism took place in the Likud leadership, all the circumstances appear to be suddenly changing.

[more]

  thanks to thoughts on the eve of the apocalypse

Harassment As Military Duty
by Amira Hass

Every day soldiers confiscate the identity cards of West Bank Palestinians even though this is prohibited by the law - even by military orders, except under very specific conditions. It looks like a concentrated mass violation of army instructions. Every day soldiers confiscate the identity cards of West Bank Palestinians even though this is prohibited by the law - even by military orders, except under very specific conditions. In the best cases, people are delayed for five, six, or seven hours - far more than any reasonable security check - and then they get their cards back at the end of the day. In the worst cases the ID cards get lost in the shuffle between soldiers' shifts. Often, the soldiers tell people "come tomorrow" to some place where they will get their ID card back - the district coordination office, another checkpoint. The West Bankers show up the next day and are greeted by apathetic shrugs.

[more]

  thanks to Aron's Israel Peace Weblog

Israel's Coming Civil War
by Uri Avnery

Everybody in Israel is talking about the Next War. The most popular TV channel is running a whole series about it. Not another war with the Arabs. Not the nuclear threat from Iran. Not the ongoing bloody confrontation with the Palestinians. The talk is about the coming civil war. Only a few months ago, that would have sounded preposterous. Now, suddenly, is has become a possibility, and a very real one. Not another blown-up media sensation. Not yet another of Sharon's political manipulations. Not just a new blackmail attempt by the settlers. But the real thing on the ground.

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Peace with Jordan: Another opportunity missed by Israel

It is logical in the light of all the above to deduce that Israel sought its treaty with Jordan also as a means, rather than an end; a means to tighten its stranglehold on Palestine and the Palestinians, to facilitate the ongoing process of colonisation and Judaisation. How could it be possible, otherwise, to understand why Israel has, for over ten years now, blocked any positive functioning of the treaty, leaving the worst disappointments to flourish and to render the historic achievement a dead letter? It is hard to comprehend how Israel fails to see that it can never enjoy warm peace with one Arab country while it continues to occupy and butcher people in others, or that any peace agreement imposed from the top, without engaging the people and offering them justice and dignity, without rightly resolving the components of the conflict, can ever work. Israel's behaviour is not consistent with a desire for peace, but with an unquenched appetite for land acquisition and expansion. Ten years after the Jordanian-Israeli treaty provided such hope, the Zionist experiment in Palestine is in more trouble than it has ever been, and Israel is running into a dead end of its own making. On this sombre anniversary, the Israelis should ask their leaders why they never missed an opportunity to miss all the opportunities for peace that their neighbours have repeatedly offered them.

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On Anti-Semitism
Gilad Atzmon

In the light of the growing discussion initiated by Israeli politicians and Zionist enthusiasts regarding the eruption of new anti-Semitism I am here to announce as loudly as I can: there is no anti-Semitism any more. In the devastating reality created by the Jewish state, anti-Semitism has been replaced by political reaction. I am not suggesting that Jewish interests are not being mutilated and vandalized. I am not saying that synagogues aren'tOn Anti-Semitism being attacked, that Jewish graves are not brutally smashed up. I am saying that these acts, that are in no way legitimate, should be seen as political responses rather than racially motivated acts or 'irrational' hate crimes. If Israel is the state of the Jewish people and the Jewish people themselves do not stand up collectively against the crimes that are committed on their behalf, then every Jewish person, Jewish symbol and Jewish object becomes an Israeli interest and a potential terrorist target. It is up to the Jewish people to take a stand against their Jewish state and to disassociate themselves from their zealous national movement.

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