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Eric Silver

Eric Silver

Reconquer, Negotiate or Separate?

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres is set to meet with Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat in Berlin next week under the aegis of the German government. Peres has proposed a \”gradual\” or phased cease-fire. In a plan presented to U.S. envoy to the Middle East, David Satterfield, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Daniel Kurtzer, Peres called for a staggered cease-fire in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, according to Ha\’aretz. The plan would divide the West Bank and Gaza , and the Palestinians and Israelis would restore calm separately in each area until a total cease-fire is reached.

Wagner Soap Opera

It was meant to be the \”not Wagner\” concert: Daniel Barenboim, the pride of Israeli music-lovers, conducting his Berlin orchestra, the Staatskapelle, on the last night of this year\’s Israel Festival. Little did we know.

Entebbe Teaches Israel to Dare

Ephraim Sneh, a stocky, taciturn soldier-turned-politician, doesn\’t scare easily. Entebbe, the most daring rescue operation in Israel\’s military history, wasn\’t his first taste of combat. The Yom Kippur War, he shrugged, was worse. But he shudders at how easily it could have gone disastrously wrong.

As the giant Hercules transport plane lumbered through the night sky out of the Ugandan airport on July 4, 1976, one of the 98 hostages beckoned to Col. Sneh, who headed the medical team. \”Excuse me, sir,\” the plump woman said, \”I\’m afraid I\’m sitting on something military.\”

Heeding a Tenuous Cease-Fire

The suicide bombing last Friday night that killed 20 young Israelis outside a beach-front disco in Tel Aviv trans-formed Israel\’s international image from bully boy to victim.

Straws in the Wind

Israelis have learned the hard way not to invest too many hopes in Yasser Arafat. Yet this week, despite the suicide bombing in Kfar Saba, the booby-trapped car in Or Yehuda, the renewed sniping at the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo, straws are wafting in the diplomatic wind.

Palestinians Escalate Conflict

The Palestinian intifada, which began as a civil uprising against the Israeli occupation, is rapidly becoming a low-intensity war between armed forces. And the low intensity is getting higher and higher by the day.

Changes in Attitude

There were more police than customers in Jerusalem\’s Mahane Yehuda market last Friday morning, when Jewish families would normally stock up for the weekend. Downtown, the strolling, shopping and coffee-bar crowds had deserted the Ben-Yehuda pedestrian mall for the fashionable German Colony.

Increased Insecurity

The attacks plumbed new depths In Hebron on Monday, when a Palestinian sniper shot dead a 10-month-old baby, Shalhevet Pass, as she was being wheeled by her parents through the West Bank city\’s Jewish neighborhood.

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