People To People

In Honor of:

Kathleen S. Blair

Sunday, November 26, 2000
A Dance Concert
at
The Southfield Centre for the Arts
24350 Southfield Road
Southfield, Michigan 48075
8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
Johnny Trudell's Dance Band
and
Naima Shamborguer, Singer
All proceeds for tickets go to:

Kathleen S. Blair, Lung Cancer Detection

Rose Center Beaumont Hospital
Tickets $ 50.00
Phone No. 248-559-6589
Dress Optional
Donations to honor Kathleen can be made to:

Kathleen S. Blair, Lung Cancer Detection

Rose Center Beaumont Foundation
100 East Big Beaver, Suite 800
Troy, Michigan 48083 248-526-0270

Walk & Squawk Performance Project presents:

If you think Palm Beach

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2000

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Fighting Off War

Barak is under great pressure to
intensify response to violence.

DAVID LANDAU

Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Jerusalem
sraeli Prime Minister Ehud
Barak is resisting pressure to
step up Israel's military
response to the violence and
terror in the Palestinian territories.
Back from the United States on
Tuesday, Barak plunged into consulta-
tions with top ministers and army gen-
erals following the deaths on Monday of
four Israelis — two soldiers and two
civilians — in a series of attacks on road
traffic in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Informed sources claim the pressures
on Barak are coming not only from the
Jewish settlers and from the right of the
political spectrum, but from within the
Israel Defense Force's senior officer corps.
The sources said the premier was deter-
mined to stick with his policy of relative
restraint. They said he would not order
the IDF to change its basic strategy,
despite the mounting Israeli casualties.
Some observers link Barak's position
to reports out of Washington that U.S.
President Bill Clinton still hopes to host
another three-way summit before he
relinquishes the presidency on Jan. 20.
According to these reports, Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat
voiced his readiness to attend such a
summit, together with Barak and
Clinton, when he met with the U.S.
president in Washington on Nov. 9.
Barak, it appears, has signaled his
consent, too, even though his public
position is that no diplomacy can go
ahead as long as the level of violence is
not significantly reduced.
Clinton's meetings with the two
Middle East protagonists drew scant
attention because of the ongoing saga
of the presidential election, which
continues to rivet the media and
minds of America and the world. The
participants, for their part, preferred
to divulge little of substance, either in
their public comments or in off-the-
record briefings by their aides.
For domestic political reasons, nei-
ther Barak nor Arafat was prepared to
project publicly any deviation from the
tough positions each took with him
into the Oval Office. Arafat demands
an international force to "protect" the

I

Palestinians from the IDF.
Barak insists on a serious and sus-
tained reduction of the violence in
accordance with understandings
reached at the Sharm el-Sheikh sum-
mit last month and subsequently con-
firmed — but not implemented — at
a meeting between Arafat and Israeli
Cabinet member Shimon Peres.

Statement At GA

Barak's determination to eschew mili-
tary escalation against the Palestinians,
at least for the moment, was evident in
his carefully crafted address to the
General Assembly of the United Jewish
Communities in Chicago on Monday.
"In the current round of unrest we
have until now taken a path of great
restraint despite constant provoca-
tions," he said. "We are trying to min-
imize bloodshed and prevent a widen-
ing of the confrontation, but we will
know how to respond."
But Likud opposition leader Ariel
Sharon rejected the prime minister's
approach.
Sharon told the U.S. Jewish leaders,
as he has repeatedly told Israeli audi-
ences, that he believes the IDF can
defeat the "Al-Aksa intifada" without
triggering a major escalation in the
territories and without sparking a gen-
eral conflagration in the reaion.
"Jews are under siege and under
fire," Sharon said in his address. "I
fought 52 years ago in the War for
Independence to defend Jerusalem. I
did not think the day would come,
after 50 years, that it would happen
again that Jerusalem is under siege."
His sentiments were echoed Tuesday
night in downtown Jerusalem, where
West Bank Jewish settlers demonstrat-
ed under the slogan, "Allow the IDF
to Win."
By the same token, Sharon made it
clear in Chicago that he is no longer
interested in serving under Barak in a
national unity government, but rather
is focusing all his energies and those of
his Likud Parry on bringing the Barak
government down.
Those energies are being thwarted,
for the moment, by a tenuous "safety
net" extended to the prime minister

FIGHTING OFF WAR on page 18

