Ofer Shelah
By Ofer Shelah
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Culture Security Cooperation Leaves Israelis, Palestinians Hopeful
TEL AVIV — In a slowly unfolding scenario reminiscent of the nearly forgotten peace process of the early 1990s, Israelis and Palestinians began feeling their way cautiously toward agreement this week on something resembling coexistence. Armed Palestinian police moved into position, with Israeli consent, to stop terrorists from firing rockets at Israeli targets — first…
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News Violence Ends P.A. Chief’s Honeymoon
TEL AVIV — Israel’s military chief of staff, Lieutenant General Moshe Ya’alon, has made no secret in the last year of his high regard for the newly installed chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. A little more than a year ago, Ya’alon went so far as to criticize his own government openly for failing…
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News Sharon, Symbol of Right, Stays In Office With Help of Leftists
TEL AVIV — Even if Ariel Sharon’s new government doesn’t last long, it already has made Israeli political history. In a bizarre turn of events, Sharon — for decades the most visible and most vilified symbol of the Israeli right — managed this week to survive as prime minister only because the left and several…
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News Abbas Speech Echoes Arafat’s Rhetoric
TEL AVIV — Delivering his first-ever election speech last week, the leading candidate to replace Yasser Arafat as chairman of the Palestinian Authority sounded very much like his predecessor. Speaking before a crowd in Ramallah, the authority’s former prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, promised Palestinians that he will “fulfill their dream of an independent state.” Though…
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News Peres’s Perks Prove Decisive In Israel Unity Coalition Deal
TEL AVIV — For months, Shimon Peres had been assuring anyone who would listen that this time, the coalition talks between his Labor Party and Ariel Sharon’s ruling Likud were not about anybody’s ego or job title but were focused, laser-like, on principle. “The only thing we’re interested in is the disengagement plan,” Peres repeated…
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News Private Confab Setting Israel’s Future
HERZLIYA, Israel — To its boosters, this seaside suburb north of Tel Aviv is Israel’s own West-chester County, a bedroom community for the affluent and a growing world center in its own right. To its detractors, that’s the problem. Their complaint tends to be quite specific: the expanding role of the Herzliya Conference. The conference,…
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News Peace Process Comes to Life With a Flurry of Diplomacy
TEL AVIV — As suddenly as it fell apart four years ago, the Middle East peace process sprang back to life this week in a rapid-fire series of dramatic developments that left Israelis rubbing their eyes in disbelief. The net result was optimism on both sides not seen since the outbreak of the intifada in…
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News With Eye on Labor, Sharon Fires Last Coalition Partner
TEL AVIV — Prime Minister Sharon, his right-wing base decimated by opposition to his Gaza disengagement plan, lost his last coalition partner and moved perilously close to losing his government this week, bringing him to the brink of early elections. And yet, through a week of white-knuckle political brinksmanship that was riotous even by Israeli…
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