Best withel, toe a happy, healthy Weal (Year Rosh HaShana HERSHEL & EVELYN MYERS Bell while& tor a happy, healthy ()few (Year ROBERT & PAULA MARQUART nann 1131\1 i1ltiV7 to- all oar trim& and relatiocu• SAM & MICKIE ORECHKIN DELRAY BEACH, FL ESTHER, FRANK, JEREMY & ARIELLE ROSNER Happy N ew 'Vacua- May the covning Year be filled with health and happiness for all °Lite family and friends. ABE & SHERI SLAIM, DANNY, MELISSA, RENEE & KEVIN ' 5759 Reflect Did A 'hum Toward Peace? DAVID LANDAU Jewish Telegraphic Agency Jerusalem ill 5759 be re- membered as a year of radical change in the course and direction of Israel's history, or merely as a year when the government changed hands after an election and life went on much as it did before? The answer, as 5760 begins, is that the jury is still out. But if history and Israel's recent elec- tion are any guide, the radical change scenario is more likely. While there have been many different governments in Israel's 50-year history, only three times gence of new power blocs. Is- rael's Sephardi communities, in particular the large Moroccan community, were solidly identi- fied with Likud. For them, Begin's success meant they had finally "arrived" after years of alienation and dis- crimination. Begin, moreover, created what was to be a stable and lasting alliance between his Likud and the Orthodox par- ties: the National Religious Par- ty, Agudat Yisrael and, later, the Sephardi, and fervently Ortho- dox, Shas Party. That alliance was the pivotal axis of Israeli po- litical life through the late 1970s and the 1980s. In foreign affairs, of course, Begin's advent, far from trigger- Happy Ne w War May the cowing yecte be filled with kectlth and happiness ancl peospeeity fot4 all OIAN Fcaletily ancl ntie.ncis Mcty the covning year be filled with health and happiness foe all our family and friends. LEON & FAY SIEGEL Happy N ew Year. 9/10 MADELON & LOU & MELISSA SELIGMAN 1999 '44 Detroit Jewish News May the coming yea r be filled with health and happiness for all 0141A family and friends. THE SHUSTERS - JEFF, RHONDA, DANNY & AMANDA Ehud Barak: A sea change for peace or more of the same? has there been a change in the party that controls the country. While this is a regular enough event in most parliamentary democracies, in Israel's case each of these changes ushered in a veritable cataclysm in the do- mestic and diplomatic directions in which the country was head- ed. In 1977, after nearly three decades of uninterrupted rule by the Labor Party or its predeces- sors, Menachem Begin won an election, at last, as the head of the Likud bloc. Begin's victory signaled not only a sharp turn to the ideolog- ical right, but also the emer- ing tension and war as the left had feared, brought about the first breakthrough to peace: the Camp David conference and the peace treaty with Egypt. But the Likud and its allies, determined to perpetuate Israel's rule over the West Bank, held on tenaciously to the Greater Land of Israel. It took the return to power of the Labor Party under Yitzhak Rabin in 1992 for the second great cataclysm in Israel's diplo- matic saga: the Oslo accords with the Palestinians. On the domestic front, Ra- bin's victory seemed to signal the beginning of a turnabout in the