Israel shocked by image of soldiers forcing violinist to play at roadblock

Of all the revelations that have rocked the Israeli army over the past week, perhaps none disturbed the public so much as the video footage of soldiers forcing a Palestinian man to play his violin. The incident was not as shocking as the recording of an Israeli officer pumping the body of a 13-year-old girl full of bullets and then saying he would have shot her even if she had been three years old. Nor was it as nauseating as the pictures in an Israeli newspaper of ultra-orthodox soldiers mocking Palestinian corpses by impaling a man's head on a pole and sticking a cigarette in his mouth. But the matter of the violin touched on something deeper about the way Israelis see themselves, and their conflict with the Palestinians.

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  thanks to Steve Gilliard's News Blog

Henry Siegman in the New York Review of Books

Amid the unwarranted outbreak of optimism about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in the wake of Yasser Arafat's death, Henry Siegman's essay in the New York Review of Books on Ariel Sharon's true plans comes as a breath of fresh air. Sharon is giving lip service to things like the road map and the eventual goal of a Palestinian state, but his real goal is to permanently forestall such a state. The end game for him is the division of the West Bank Palestinians into three Bantustans completely surrounded by Israeli forces or settlements, and the maintainance of Gaza as a permanent slum that advertises Palestinians as wretched and dangerous. Sharon is dedicated to annexing probably 45% of the West Bank, which would not leave enough territory for a viable Palestinian state, anyway. The horrible implications for the state of Israel is its descent into a permanent Apartheid state. If the Palestinians don't have a state, they will remain stateless. The rump "Palestinian Authority" will not be able to keep internal order any better in the future than it has recently. The Israeli army will inevitably keep being drawn into re-occupying Palestinians.

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Middle East upheaval as Sharon provokes crisis
Jailed Palestinian reverses decision not to challenge for Arafat succession

The Israeli and Palestinian leaderships were in upheaval last night as Ariel Sharon's government faced collapse after the prime minister broke with his main coalition partner, and a popular Palestinian military commander launched a strong challenge from his jail cell to succeed Yasser Arafat in next month's election. The unexpected decision by Marwan Barghouti, who is serving five life terms in an Israeli prison, to break with the dominant Fatah movement and register as a presidential candidate in the Palestinian election appeared to complicate Mr Sharon's coalition problems.

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  thanks to Politics in the Zeros