With Palestinian terror groups generally committed to a lull in the fighting with Israel and Arab countries debating normalizing ties with the Jewish state, some in Israel see signs that the 57-year-old Arab-Israeli conflict finally may be winding down.
Israeli officials are expecting such massive resistance to the disengagement that they have developed a detailed plan of operation to carry it out.
The late February suicide bombing in Tel Aviv shattered a three-month lull in terror and brought key Israeli-Palestinian peacemaking issues into sharp relief.
The terror attack, which came just three weeks after Israeli and Palestinian leaders declared an end to more than four years of hostilities, forced both sides to define their new relationship more clearly.
It enabled Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to clarify his policy toward the Palestinians, finger Syria and the Hezbollah as potential spoilers, and re-emphasize his view that there can be no real peacemaking until the Palestinians dismantle their armed terrorists.
The dust is still settling after last week\’s summit at the Egyptian resort town of Sharm el-Sheik, but early signs on the ground are highly contradictory.
Last week, just 48 hours after the summit, Palestinian terrorist groups fired more than 50 mortar shells at Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip — yet now Hamas, the largest and most important of the terrorist groups, says it\’s committed to the cease-fire announced at the summit.
A projected billion-dollar arms sale to Syria is the latest sign of a major shift in Russia\’s Middle East policy — and analysts are asking how dangerous it might be for regional stability and for Israel.
After Mahmoud Abbas\’ convincing victory this week in the election for Palestinian Authority president
As the scheduled start of Israel\’s Gaza withdrawal approaches, settler leaders are raising the specter of mass refusal by religious soldiers to carry out orders, and are warning of disastrous consequences for the Israeli army and society as a whole.
But high-ranking Israel Defense Forces (IDF) officers said settler leaders are exaggerating in an attempt to scare the government and to encourage soldiers to refuse to evacuate settlers from their homes.
In a keynote speech last week at the Herzliya Conference on Israel\’s National Security, Sharon declared that \”2005 will be the year of great opportunity,\” with \”a chance for an historic breakthrough in our relations with the Palestinians, a breakthrough we have been waiting for years.\”
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon says the IDF remains the most moral army he knows, but critics suggest that the relentless terrorist war has brutalized young soldiers who frequently vent their frustrations on Palestinian civilians.
Convinced that 2005 will be a year of great peace opportunities, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is throwing his considerable political weight behind a coalition with the Labor Party.
Sharon sees a Likud-Labor partnership, bolstered by at least one ultra Orthodox party, as the ideal tool for carrying through his disengagement plan and beyond. To that end, Sharon is following a two-stage strategy: first, ensuring that the centrist, secular Shinui Party, which has refused to sit in the government with ultra Orthodox parties, leaves the coalition, and then breaking resistance in Sharon\’s own Likud Party to a partnership with Labor.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.