Despite two years of relentless Palestinian terrorism that has claimed nearly 700 Israeli lives, last week\’s coordinated attacks on Israeli targets in Kenya are being seen as a watershed: They herald Israel\’s full-blown entry into the global war against terrorism, according to defense sources.
The smart money says Israelis won\’t have to wait until next January\’s general election to know who their next prime minister will be: Nearly all the pundits agree it will be the winner of the Nov. 28 Likud Party leadership primary between Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.
On the key political and socioeconomic issues facing Israel, all three candidates have similar positions: A readiness to talk with the Palestinians and, if that proves impossible, to withdraw unilaterally from most of the West Bank to more defensible lines; on the economy, less spending on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and more on retirees, students and poor development towns.
Early elections may not have been Ariel Sharon\’s first choice, but his decision to go to the polls as soon as possible enables the savvy Israeli prime minister to make a number of political and diplomatic gains.
By calling the shots, Sharon comes across as a powerful leader still setting the national agenda. By calling elections for late January, he makes it difficult for the Labor Party, which left his government only last week, to establish itself as a credible opposition force.
For a year and a half it was predicted, and this week it finally came: The Labor Party handed the Likud a bill of divorce, ending Israel\’s national unity government.
What the divorce will mean for the country amid the ongoing conflict with the Palestinians, the prospect of an American-led war against Iraq and a staggering economy is far from clear.
On the face of it, the struggle between Israeli troops and a group of unruly young settlers for control of a windswept West Bank hilltop does not seem all that important.
The first shot has yet to be fired in the anticipated American-led war against Iraq, but diplomats are already preparing the ground for a concerted effort to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as soon as it\’s over.
The scenes from Yasser Arafat\’s headquarters in Ramallah this week played tricks on the mind.
On the face of it, sending in tanks and bulldozers to demolish most of Yasser Arafat\’s Ramallah headquarters doesn\’t seem to make a whole lot of sense for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Israeli society has been bruised and brutalized by two years of Palestinian terror and violence, but as the intifada enters its third year, it has brought the Palestinians no political gain whatsoever.
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