Madeleine Albright left behind a Middle East that\’s more fearful than when she arrived on Sept. 10 to salvage the peace process. In her first official visit, the secretary of state failed to restore even a modicum of trust between Israelis and Palestinians, or to coax the Syrians back to the negotiating table.
As Israel nears its 50th birthday, events have shifted attentionaway from the stalled peace talks. What dominates the headlines nowis the warlike rhetoric among Jewish factions — both within Israeland in the Diaspora — as they clash over the issue of religiouspluralism.
The conversion bill compromise was based on a position paper presented to the prime minister and his colleagues by a Reform and Conservative delegation.
During the yearlong tenure of the Netanyahu government, Syria has become the forgotten front in the Israeli-Arab peace process. The two sides aren\’t negotiating, and Warren Christopher\’s frequent-flier shuttles between Jerusalem and Damascus are already a relic of Middle East diplomacy.
Here we go again. For the third time in four years, Californians are about to be treated to another racially tinged slugfest, this time over bilingual education.
After a year of licking the wounds of electoral defeat, the Israeli left has crowned a new leader who radiates an aura of victory and an appetite for power. The campaign of the year 2000 has begun.
As the first anniversary of Binyamin Netanyahu\’s election as prime minister approached this week, Israel looked back on a tumultuous year in which the public was more sharply divided and over a wider span of issues — political, social, and religious — than ever before.
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