[(Continued from p.11)]
mayor of Istanbul, is banned from the post of prime minister, having served a prison sentence for reading an Islamist poem in public (a reminder of the heavy hand that has been Ataturk's legacy). The outcome is widely credited to understandable dissatisfaction with the preceding corrupt and incompetent government, but the public could have voted for other parties to express that dissatisfaction.If most Iranians have never known life under anything but Islamic fundamentalists (Shi'ite style), all Turks have never experienced life under anything but Ataturk-imposed democracy with its limitations on Islamic expression. Will Turkey cling to Ataturk's legacy? Or will it be tempted by a yoke it has not endured? The answer is not clear but the very possibility of Turkey turning toward fundamentalist Islam has to be viewed with the greatest alarm.
For those who believe the "settlers" in communities beyond the old 1949 Green Line are all that separate Israel from peace:
The Jerusalem Post quotes Ayman Abu Harb, a Bethlehem taxi driver: "The Jews have to understand one thing, that this is our land and they have no place here. They should take all their settlers and Russian immigrants and go back to where they came from. It's either us or them here."
The Wall Street Journal of November 18 ran a front page article about internet use in Irbid, Jordan in which 24 year old medical student Bahaa Faisal was interviewed. Born and raised in Jordan, he considers himself a "Palestinian" and comes to the internet shop several times a week to make a "cyber visit" to Haifa. He explained that his family was driven from Haifa by Israeli "settlers" in the 1940s and the internet offers him his own way to "never forget."
Between September 29, 2000 and November 17, 2002, the Israeli Army reports that there were 15,298 attacks on Israel. This was the response of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to Prime Minister Barak's offer essentially to return to the old Green Line borders.
Note that these do not include attacks with rocks or firebombs. During the first intifada, which Israel found so intolerable it launched Oslo, the vast majority of the attacks were with rocks or firebombs. Post Oslo, the army no longer even counts them.
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Outpost - 12 - December 2002