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  Saturday  January 4  2003    02: 52 PM

This is a must read.

Travels with Mohammed
A trip with lawyer Mohammed Dahla to his childhood stomping grounds in Galilee takes us to the two major shapers of his identity - Sheikh Raad Salah and MK Azmi Bishara - and raises some serious questions about the common future of the Jewish and Palestinian peoples. His message is clear: The Jews have already lost their battle for control of this land

As dusk approaches, Mohammed's brown eyes will look straight into my eyes and he'll say: You have to understand that it's not going to work. Your Jewish mind came up with this Jewish-democratic invention, but the invention won't work. So instead of talking and talking the whole day long, through this whole long trip, what we should have done was to sit down together quietly and try to formulate some sort of new, joint constitution. Because you have no other ally: I am your only ally. And instead of going to the Haredim (ultra-Orthodox Jews), you should have come to me. And instead of trying to scrape up half-Jews and quarter-Jews and eighth-Jews from every corner of the world, you should talk to me. Because I am here, in your backyard. I am here and I am not going anywhere.
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Five rules set by the Kingdom of the Settlements
By Amira Hass

Rule Number 1: Jewish Arabists always know what Arabs mean and what they want, even if the Arabs say the opposite. Therefore Jews don't have to listen to what the Arabs say. The Arabists of Israel know that Azmi Bishara issued a call in Damascus for armed resistance against Israel. Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein decided there's no need to wait until the matter is determined by the courts, which will hear Bishara's clarification (of the very unclear statement he made there), which says he called for an Arab political initiative as a way to help the Palestinian resistance to the occupation. It's interesting that the Arab states not only didn't obey his supposed call for armed resistance, but also accepted the Saudi Initiative, which is based on the two-state solution. Most of the Israeli Arab public was among the first to struggle for that solution. If they had been listened to in time, a lot of lives could have been saved.
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Inching toward an apartheid state

The assault on the political activity of Palestinians in Israel over the past few days is unprecedented, even compared to the assailment on the Al- Arad movement in the 1960s. Most of the Palestinian public in Israel and all of its prominent leaders express a position in favor of acknowledgment of the State of Israel; but, at the same time, oppose the discriminatory regime that the Jews have established over the last 50 years.

The Israeli regime has firmly established its position as one that first and foremost serves the Jews in Israel and the Diaspora; and in order to do so, it is willing to take harsh measures against the Palestinian public in Israel. Land expropriation, citizenship laws, immigration laws, orientation of capital, and the development and division of the geographic space are all basic components of the structure of the Jewish-Israel regime. All these means constitute tools to strengthen the Jewish majority and exclude the Palestinian minority. In many cases, they even serve as tools to harm the minority.
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