Yossi Alpher
By Yossi Alpher
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Opinion Know Thine Enemy
Because Israel and Palestine are more than neighbors — because they are almost Siamese twins, difficult and dangerous to separate — it seems inevitable that, despite the barriers of ideology and antisemitism, despite Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel and Israel’s refusal to talk to bigots who don’t recognize it, eventually the two will simply have…
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News Through the Eyes of Ariel Sharon
In 1994 I sat with Ariel Sharon for two hours in an attempt, one-on-one, to understand his views on settlements, Palestinians and the territories. At the time he was a mere member of the opposition in the Knesset, busy criticizing Yitzhak Rabin’s government, Oslo, even peace with Jordan. Sharon unfolded a detailed map of the…
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Opinion The Danger of Arab Democracy
This week, Iraqis were set to go to the polls to elect a new parliament. At least two of the radical Islamist parties on the ballot, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Sadr Organization, maintain large and active militias. In Lebanon, elections a few months ago returned Hezbollah to parliament….
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Opinion The Way We War
Three months ago this column was devoted to a comparison between the Israeli military and the American armed forces, focusing on the differing public attitudes associated with a conscription-based army as opposed to a volunteer force. In particular, the relative absence in the United States of organized mass protest concerning the war in Iraq, seemingly…
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Opinion The One-and-a-half-state Solution
Anyone who has followed the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in recent decades knows that mainstream thinking on both sides has evolved considerably, to a point where Jerusalem and Ramallah (and Washington, too) endorse a two-state solution. The advocates of Greater Israel or Greater Palestine — a single Israeli or Palestinian state between the Jordan River and the…
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Opinion Downloading Democracy In the Middle East (With Some Help From America)
Anyone who followed media coverage of the Gaza disengagement last month had to be struck by the presence of Arab satellite television networks in and among the settlements. Tens of millions of viewers of Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya could watch live broadcasts in which reporters, usually Israeli-Arab journalists, stuck their microphones in the faces…
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Opinion The Conscription Prescription
The Israeli military draws its manpower from universal conscription. Actually, conscription in Israel is no longer truly universal — large numbers of ultra-Orthodox are exempted, along with any woman declaring herself religious and a percentage of youth judged unfit for service — but it probably comes as close to universality as any army. In stark…
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Opinion Bringing Jerusalem Back Down to Size
Last week the government of Israel made a historic decision to leave a portion of Jerusalem outside the security barrier, thereby officially beginning the process of undoing the anachronistic post-Six-Day War annexation that has turned Israel’s capital into a bi-national nightmare. Ariel Sharon, of all people, has undertaken to allow the fence protecting Jerusalem to…
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