An editorial from the Israeli paper Ha'aretz.

A lethal stalemate

The current government has no tactics, no strategy, no leadership and no horizon on which to cling. So what does it have? Well, it has the strong will of both Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres to survive politically and a total lack of mutual trust between the two politicians.

This mutual suspicion has reached such an intensity that, when the leaders of the Likud party expressed fears over meetings between Peres and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Sharon made the following promise to his senior colleagues in the party: "Israeli intelligence is capable of pinpointing any attempt on Peres' part to conduct clandestine negotiations with Arafat behind the prime minister's back." You have to read that statement a number of times to fully comprehend its meaning. Can Peres be considered, figuratively speaking, a walking time bomb? Has Sharon ordered the Shin Bet internal security service to keep the movements of the foreign minister, who is also Sharon's senior partner in the coalition government, under tight surveillance? Are undercover agents on Peres' trail? Have his office and car been padded with listening devices so that his conversations can be rigorously monitored?
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An editorial published in the Jordan Times by Ali Abunimah who lives in the US.

Israel's prime minister and foreign minister are intensely engaged in negotiations over the future of the occupied territories and the creation of a Palestinian state, according to the Israeli media. Unfortunately, they are not negotiating with the Palestinians but rather with each other. In typical Israeli fashion, the two see the future of the region not as something to be determined among its peoples, according to the principles of international law and justice, but rather as a purely internal matter to be bargained over and carved up by Israel's quarrelling political factions.

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