6 MONTH CD COMMUNITY VIEWS A General Appraisal 111 MON -EY MARKET 0/** WITH RATES THIS BIG WHO NEEDS A GIMMICKY HEADLINE? Visit our brand new headquarters and branch in Farmington Hills, or call 1 800 421 Bank to discover the bank where personal service and BIG RATES are Paramount. - - - BRANCH 1732 West Maple Road Birmingham, MI 48009 -(248) 7234800 FAX (248) 7234848 HOURS: MON.-FRI. 9-6, SAT. 9-12 MAIN OFFICE / BRANCH 31000 Northwestern Hwy. Farmington Hills, MI 48334 (248) 538-8600 FAX (248) 538-8410 HOURS: MON.-FRI. 9-6, SAT. 9-12 PARAMOUNT BANK Your Hometown Bank FDIC INSURED *Annual Percentage Yield for balances of $500 minimum. **Annual Percentage Yield for balances of $2,500 minimum. TATE FLOWERS (248) 559-5424 GIFTS OF NATURE WEDDING & PARTY SPECIALISTS FLOWERS FOR ALL OCCASIONS VA 29115 GREENFIELD SOUTHFIELD, MI 48076 4/21 2000 38 V any of us had the opportunity to hear Maj. Gen. Shlomo Gazit on his March tour as local scholar-in-residence sponsored by the Jewish Community Council, the Labor Zionist Alliance and Na'a- mat USA ("Gen- eral Says: Seize The Day," March 31). As reported in the Jewish News, the general was very much inter- ested in "seizing JEROME S. the day" to make KAUFMAN peace with the Special to Arabs. Gazit made the Jewish News very clear his con- cept of peace. He did not mind if the 144 communities of Judea and Samaria with 200,000 Israeli citizens, and all the Arab villages that now com- pletely surround Jerusalem, along with those Arab communities within Jerusalem, were.turned over to Yasser Arafat to become part of his Palestinian state. He did not conclude that such an approach would strangle Jerusalem or extinguish any opportunity for Israel itself to grow as a sovereign nation. _ His concept was to keep that popu- lation in the confined area along the Mediterranean Coast overwhelmingly Jewish and, therefore, immune from invasion by the Arabs totally sur- rounding it. Evidently, he was not aware of the fact that the Arabs have already made claim to 80 percent of western Jerusalem along with large portions of Haifa, the northern corn- munities of Israel and where ever else they conjecture a previous Arab pres- ence. He even went so far as to say, "So what if there is no Jewish people in a few hundred years"! His statements did not surprise those of us who know something of Gazit's past history. This is the man who, two years ago, at a conference at Tel Aviv University, compared the kippot worn by some IDF soldiers to the swastika on the armbands of Nazi soldiers! He also, according to the Jerusalem Post, expressed fears over the appointment of kippa-wearing officers to senior posi- tions. He later withdrew the remarks amid public outcry. The rest of his conclusions, as listed Jerome S. Kaufman is a Bloomfield Hills resident and national secretary of the Zionist Organization of America. in the Jewish News, were equally mind-boggling. He concluded that Israel must hasten into these nation- threatening decisions before: • Arafat dies • Islamic rule is adopted in bordering areas • An Arab nuclear weapon is devel- oped • The U.S. loses its status as a world power • Fatigue in Israel Does he really believe that giving up the few miles of territory and the Jerusalem that Israel has left will appease the Arabs or have any effect on the major projected world changes he has listed? By happenstance, we experienced the proof of the pudding, as to the essence of Gazit's philosophy. The Jew- ish News related how Gazit appreciat- ed the welcome he just received from the Arab students at the University of Michigan-Dearborn — as opposed to their greeting in 1988. The Arabs, unlike many Jews and many of their organizations, once again proved that they labor under no surreal illusions. They have no difficulty distinguishing friend from foe. ❑ from page 36 Like an Orthodox Jewish dance and because it is in their respective national interests, both sides will occasionally touch the opposite ends of the negotiating handkerchief when it is held by the United States. Only furtively do their hands touch; a pub- lic embrace or hand shake are rare and usually off the record. Washing- ton provides the manpower to pre- vent a major confrontation and regu- larly provides new batches of glue to keep yesterday's agreement from unraveling and new sets of handcuffs to keep negotiating occupants in close but certainly not loving proximity. And because this is a negotiating process and not a peace process, the questions of trust abound. Can Assad, Arafat or their respective successors be trusted to keep an agree- ment? Will a future Israeli government of different political inclination imple- ment or freeze a previous understanding or one not yet negotiated? Let's be realists. For decades, the present state of imprecise Arab-Israeli negotiations, with its diverging inter- ests, uncertainty and continued peri- odic loss of life, may be as good as it gets. Lower the bar of expectations. ❑ PEACE