MIDEAST PARADIGM from page 25,
1160 Gam," Lake Poacl
West Bloomfield, MI 48323
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Licensed Nurses Si Resident
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Game Room
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Transportation
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• Are you battling with your
child over food?
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• Is your child gaining too
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• Do weight problems
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CC W M
Center
for Childhood
Weight Management
rti
7/ 5
2002
26
The Center for
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For more information about
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(248) 855-5112
"Healthy Kids Are Happy Kids" .„
indignantly around Arafat and offered
plans to reform the Palestinian
Authority while still taking no action
against terrorist groups.
Israel, meanwhile, both intensified
its military operations in the West
Bank and talked of offering the
Palestinians a "political horizon."
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told
reporters Monday that after the Bush -
speech, Israel faced an "opportunity of the
first order" to make progress toward peace.
Sharon gave no details of the diplo-
matic progress he had in mind, but later
told members of his Likud Party that dis-
cussions were being held in the Foreign
Ministry and defense establishment on
guidelines for a political horizon.
In the meantime, though, Sharon is
exploiting the diplomatic hiatus and
Bush's delegitimization of Arafat to take
the fight to the Palestinian terrorists.
By occupying Palestinian cities in the
West Bank, Sharon hopes to pre-empt
suicide bombings, smash terrorist net-
works and seize war material, aides say.
The Israel Defense Forces dealt par-
ticularly severe blows to Hamas, assas-
sinating both leading operatives in the
Gaza Strip and Mohaned Taher, the
organization's operational leader in the
northern West Bank, who was said to
be behind a string of suicide bombings
that killed more than 120 Israelis.
But as long as Israel remains in the
Palestinian cities — and Sharon says it
could be for months —
difficult to
imagine the Palestinians making the
necessary moves for renewed dialogue.
Israeli left-wingers fear the occupa-
tion of Palestinian cities could, over
time, lead to a full-scale re-occupation
of the West Bank.
With Bush criticized for demanding
steps from the Palestinians before Israel
is asked to respond with its own conces-
sions, the White House clarified that it
considered the processes to be parallel.
It was perhaps in this spirit that
Sharon made his recent remarks, as he
has come under pressure within Israel
to add a diplomatic outlook to his
security policy.
Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-
Eliezer criticized Sharon July 1 for
turning down Foreign Minister Shimon
Peres' request to renew contacts with
senior Palestinian Authority officials.
"The sense is that we can now go
and let loose everything we've got in
order to exercise our right to defend
ourselves," Ben-Eliezer, who also is
head of the Labor Party, told Israel
Radio. "But this can happen only at a
time when Israel every minute contin-
ues to seek and move toward any pos-
sibility of a diplomatic breakthrough."
Israel Insig'ht
THE ISSUE
Israel's military operations in the
territories have had significant suc-
cess in smashing terrorist cells and
destroying their bomb-making
capabilities, and the new security
border fence will provide further
safeguards. Yet Israel's proximity to
a hostile population will continue
to threaten its civilian population.
BEHIND THE ISSUE
Israel's focus has been on stopping
suicide bombers, but Palestinian ter-
rorists continue to test the Israeli
defenses in new and more danger-
ous ways. Just this past week, Israel
has had to contend with sabotage
on its north-south rail line, sniper
attacks on the roads, and forest and
brush fires set by arsonists. Along
with the attempted sabotage at a
major fuel depot several weeks ago,
these new methods of terror will tax
Israel's military and security services
to the maximum.
— Allan Gale, Jewish Community
Council of Metropolitan Detroit
Internal Politics
Yet Labor seems to have little real
leverage to force Sharon into a bold
diplomatic gambit. The bottom line,
Israeli pundits say, is that Labor won't
pull out of the unity government any
time soon, at least not until the leader-
ship race between Ben-Eliezer and leg-
islator Haim Ramon is decided some-
time between October and January.
On the Palestinian side, the carrot
in the Bush vision is viable statehood
backed and funded by the internation-
al community, with the United States
in the vanguard.
Despite his ostensible aspiration for
Palestinian statehood, however, Arafat
repeatedly has spurned this in practice.
Whereas the Zionist movement in the
first half of the 20th century was will-
ing to compromise to obtain a state,
the Palestinians have been obsessed
less with statehood than With the
notion of absolute "justice."
For Arafat, a state that closes the file
on refugee claims and ends the conflict
with Israel is not a prize but a trap. The
question is how his successors will see
this, and whether Palestinian society as a
whole will be ready to pay the price of
statehood: removal of Arafat, recogni-
tion of Israel's right to exist and readi-
ness to live alongside it in peace.
❑