Standing with the crowd in Netanya where, hours before, a Palestinian suicide bomber had killed three Israelis and himself, local carpenter Ya\’acov Ohayon was asked if he thought the public — the home front — was ready for more of the same, or worse.
After Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, ruler of the Shas (Sephardi ultra-Orthodox) party, caused an uproar this week by pronouncing a kind of Jewish fatwa on liberal Education Minister Yossi Sarid, one of Yosef\’s minions tried to jump into the fray.
At first blush it seemed like a done deal. If Syria and Israel were returning to the negotiating table, and President Bill Clinton was leading them, then it was surely just a matter of time until the two sides reached agreement and declared peace. American, Syrian and Israeli officials sounded confident to a fault, saying a deal might be just a short distance away.
For all the recent hubbub over the worsening lot of Israel\’s poor, and the growing criticism of Prime Minister Ehud Barak\’s born-again Reaganite economic policies, it should be understood that in many key misery indices, Israel isn\’t doing too badly.
The peace process isn\’t the news in Israel anymore; it\’s poverty, unemployment and hunger. The domestic agenda, the one that Prime Minister Ehud Barak focused his election campaign on, has jumped up and bitten him.
About 1,000 people crammed into Jerusalem\’s Kol Haneshama Reform synagogue for Yom Kippur services, while another 500 or so listened in the courtyard outside.
The New York Times dubbed it \”a quiet revolution in the teaching of Israeli history.\”
Now that Yasser Arafat has called Ehud Barak his \”friend and partner,\” and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has pronounced himself pleased and encouraged with the new Israeli prime minister, and President Clinton is just waiting to welcome him to Washington, the old euphoria seems to have arisen again.
There was a time when news of the high school massacre in Littleton, Colo., would have struck Israelis as incomprehensible, evidence of some strange, alien disease floating around America, to which Israel was certainly immune.
Not anymore.
This week, when freshman Member of Knesset Dr. Ahmed Tibi declared his first preference for committee assignments — Defense and Foreign Affairs, which is briefed regularly by the Shin Bet and Mossad — right-wing MKs laughed it off. This would be like inviting Saddam Hussein into the Israeli Security Cabinet, they said. No Israeli Arab has ever sat on this Knesset committee — certainly no Arab with a resume such as Tibi\’s.
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