Israel News

Annexation Anxiety

Washington — He won’t be here for the summit, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be all but unavoidable in Washington this week on a quite different mission: taking his case to the American public for bucking President Clinton’s proposals to rekindle a gasping Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Jerusalem — North American delegates to the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, meeting here this week, got a preview of the substance and styles of the three main candidates for prime minister in Israel’s upcoming elections. And the candidates had a chance to see how their appearances were received by the leaders of diaspora Jewry.

Jerusalem — Shared worries and crises have a way of bringing people closer together.
That’s a positive way of assessing this year’s General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities, held here this week at a time of critical transition for America and Israel.

No alternate text on picture! - define alternate text in image propertiesSeveral Israeli social service and humanitarian organizations that incurred additional expenses during the country’s month-long war in Lebanon this summer have recently started fundraising campaigns. Among them are:

It’s been a week of death and foreboding. Israel is on the verge of a three-front war: against the Palestinians, against Iraq and against itself.
While 13 Israelis are sitting shiva after Monday’s bus bombing, the rest of the country is debating the violent settler resistance against soldiers closing down the illegal settlement of Havat Gilad — illegal not only by international standards but by Israel’s.

This week Israel enters its third year of a war with no name, with nary an ally, and with no objective more glorious than a lull.
It’s been a war plagued by indecision and misdirection. The enemy’s leader is harassed and reviled but not erased. The country is said to be safe for tourism yet the danger is compared to the 1930s. Israel claims impending victory but has surrendered the messianic dreams and borders that thrilled us in 1967.

Israeli political arguments can be crude but are they criminal?
After the Rabin assassination, conventional wisdom insisted that Yigal Amir was the “Manchurian Candidate” of Israel’s right. Rallies in the weeks before the murder would sometimes feature photos of Rabin dressed like a Nazi, while fringe rabbis cast spells amounting to a death sentence in retaliation for Rabin’s refusal to slow the peace process even as Israeli busses were exploding with regularity.

With two terrorist bombings within 24 hours in Jerusalem, including a massive explosion in a crowded cafeteria at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem that killed at least seven and injured at least 86, Israelis braced for Palestinians terrorists to unleash a new wave of attacks.
Avi Dichter, the chief of Israel's internal security, the Shin Bet, told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday that although a dozen attacks had been foiled in the last week, the Shin Bet had warnings of another 60 pending suicide bombings.