Ten years ago this week, in the midst of a desert storm in the Arava Valley, the late King Hussein of Jordan and the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel signed a peace accord ushering in an era of hope that relations between the neighbors would become a model for a new Middle East.
On the eve of the Jewish New Year, Israel\’s national discourse was dominated by talk of potential civil war, but few of those talking dared define the possible dimensions of such a conflict.
Would it mean confrontations between soldiers and civilians? Would it be limited to the extreme margins of the settler movement? Could it really present a threat to the very existence of the State of Israel, as Knesset member Yossi Sarid suggested?
Sharon hopes to create sufficient motivation among settlers to evacuate their homes willingly in exchange for generous compensation packages, avoiding violent confrontations like those in Yamit.
When Israeli authorities chose to put Fatah leader Marwan Barghouti on trial in a criminal court, rather than a military court, prosecutors may have set the stage for an even bigger prize: Yasser Arafat.
That possibility was given a boost last week with Barghouti\’s conviction on five counts of murder for Israelis killed in three separate shooting ambushes conducted by the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade in 2001 and 2002.
As a journalist, I met Sheik Ahmed Yassin twice during my visits to the Gaza Strip. The first time was when I attended a military court hearing in 1984, when Yassin was sentenced to 13 years in prison for anti-Israel activities.
Only a year later Yassin was released in a prisoner-exchange deal, and a few years after that I visited him at his home in Gaza.
On both occasions I was left with the impression that this seemingly vulnerable quadriplegic was as strong as a rock, outwardly unmoved by the course of events.
Ten years ago, if the Palestinians had been told that Ariel Sharon, father of the Israeli settlement movement, would be offering a near-complete withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, most probably would have rejoiced at the prospect.
However, when the Israeli prime minister dropped that political bombshell last week by signaling that he intended to uproot almost every Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip — something the Arabs have demanded for years — Palestinians greeted the announcement with a mixture of caution and skepticism.
Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Ahmed Qurei welcomed the idea, saying, \”In our view, every evacuation of a settlement is welcome.\”
Israel is skeptical about the Palestinian Authority\’s tentative measures against terrorism — and is following up by conducting anti-terror operations of its own.
Apparently dressed as an Orthodox Jew, the terrorist shoved his way among the many passengers — mostly ultra-Orthodox families returning from the Western Wall — to the center of the elongated bus, where he detonated the bomb he was carrying.
The suicide bombings that hit Israel this week shattered the relative calm that had taken hold in Israel and the West Bank this summer. How they will affect the cease-fire declared by Palestinian terrorist groups and implementation of the "road map" peace plan is anybody\’s guess.
Within a 48-hour span beginning March 17, 12 Israelis were murdered in three suicide attacks, and dozens were wounded. Terrorism was back on the scene, a sad reminder that its apparent absence in recent months was only an illusion born of the army\’s success in preventing attacks.
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