Charges that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority are running a corrupt, brutal police state are no longer being voiced only by the Israeli right wing; they are now coming from Palestinian nationalists who, before the Oslo Accord, fought the Israeli occupation.<
What the Israeli right likes to call \”the battle for the Land of Israel\” is in danger of turning into a war of the ultras, Arab extremists vs. Jewish extremists.
Properly run, supporters say, the court could serve as a deterrent to the kinds of horrifying atrocities seen in Bosnia and Rwanda.
For Arafat, it was an admission of unmitigated weakness, a move that was clearly borne out of dire necessity.
The prime minister also seems to have underestimated the degree to which the United States, the European Union and other interested bystanders are watching every move in his contorted quest for \”peace with security\” — and increasingly concluding that the Palestinians are right to suspect him.
The government is now trying to pass an updated version of the conversion law, which, it claims, gives consideration to Conservative and Reform Jewry
Regarding the domestic political pressures thatBinyamin Netanyahu faces in his decision-making on the peace process,the prime minister himself probably summed it up best in the \”Israelat 50\” interview he gave to Newsweek: \”I am a coalition ofone.\”
On Salah a-Din Street, the main street on the Arab side of thecapital, the spirit was very different. People kept their heads down,aware that they were being watched, aware that the Jews weren\’t toofond of them these days.
Austria\’s IsraelitischeKultusgemeinde (Israelite ReligiousCommunity) today numbers 8,000 dues-paying members, with another8,000 unaffiliated Jews, Grosz estimates, living in thecountry.
After being caught up in a wave of initial panic,the Israeli public seems to be calming down a bit over the possibility of an Iraqi missile attack.
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