Israel in Limbo

...It never got off the ground, however, because Arafat ultimately refused to publicly call off his attackers...

...Their children, who attend the same school as mine, were absent when classes resumed after the weeklong Sukkot holiday in October...

...They ended up in the hands of Palestinian police, who should have sent them back into Israel...

...Pictures have become the visual equivalent of sound bites, and often serve to inform an individual's whole understanding of the conflict...

...He emerged holding a kaff iyeh and a toy Uzi...

...But later, when I mentioned to him that the following week I would be taking Avishai to a memorial event at the Jerusalem Theater to mark the fifth anniversary of Yitzchak Rabin's assassination, Itai responded matter-of-factly that a bomb might go off while we were there...

...Nightly gunfire directed at Israeli settlements and Army posts around the territories apparently was not included either...

...But my passengers seemed to find the brief interview amusing...

...Israeli withdrawal from all the territory conquered in 1967, the dismantling of the settlements that are home to some 200,000 Jews, the right of return for Palestinians who want to repossess their former homes within Israel...

...The two men were severely beaten and killed...

...Now those beliefs seem to have been wishful thinking...

...The photograph of one of their Palestinian attackers standing with his hands held up at the open window, dripping blood, is now an icon of the war (much as the picture of a 12-year-old Palestinian boy, killed in the crossfire of a battle at the Netzarim junction in the Gaza Strip, has become for many a symbol of what is purported to be Israel's excessive force in responding to the uprising...

...He said he needed them for a performance he and some classmates were planning...

...Unfortunately, viewers do not usually know the circumstances under which a photo or tape was made...

...Meanwhile, it has become a truism that the current war between Israelis and Palestinians is being played out as much on camera as on the battlefields where the bullets are flying...

...Then he mumbled that he didn't want to talk about it, because I wouldn't approve...

...Is he scared by the news he hears constantly at home and in the car...

...The half-dozen messages I left on their home number and various cell phones went unanswered...

...The speaker couldn't reconcile what happened to her optimistic, openminded and peaceful friend with the police claim that the rioters' actions made the use of live ammunition in self-defense unavoidable...

...The Israel correspondent of Italy's RAI state TV subsequently published an apology for the Ramallah police station pictures in a West Bank paper, using the opportunity to remind readers that it was not his network that had recorded and disseminated the tape of the incident, but rather Mediaset, the Silvio Berlusconi-owned company S. works for...

...The intervening two months exposed Israelis to a level of Palestinian violence that a majority had naively thought was no longer possible, leaving them depressed and shell-shocked...

...They meant every word all along, and if this remains the case it is hard to see how any agreement can be reached...

...But they're keeping mum...

...The incident, you will probably recall, occurred when the soldiers...

...The Irony of the Intifada Israel in Limbo By David B. Green Jerusalem Prime Minister Ehud Barak's decision to mount a make-or-break peace effort at Camp David last July marked the beginning of the end of his government...

...The news he is incessantly exposed to reports every hour on gunshots, stone throwing, bomb threats, and actual explosions...

...These are part of their "peaceful uprising," they said, and will continue until they "reach Jerusalem...

...Despite his repeated declarations since the start of the crisis that Arafatwasnolonger a "partner"forpeace, it is clear that the Prime Minister believes the Palestinian Authority chairman is still the only game in town...

...When the intifada began at the end of September, violent sympathy demonstrations erupted in a number of Israeli Arab towns and the police response was sharp, leaving 13 Arab citizens dead, including Asil...

...If we are honest with ourselves, we Left-leaning Israelis have to recognize, first, that the Palestinians have never unequivocally renounced violence—not in the public statements of their leaders, not in their internal media, not in their textbooks...

...Itai's rathermorbid comment suggested that he does indeed pay attention to the news...

...No one was seriously hurt and neither of our boys reacted to the report, though my wife and I gave each other a look that said something like, "That's getting a little close to home...

...The Palestinian leadership and people consider their dead combatants martyrs, to be celebrated as much as mourned for their role in advancing the national cause...

...A teacher at my children's school showed up one day with her car full of bullet holes...

...It seemed a standard wire service shot of a Palestinian youth in profile trying out a slingshot, except that it was photographed directly opposite the equipment set up by a dozen photojournalists gathered to "capture the moment...

...Not until mid-November did the government give in to public pressure and establish a judicial commission to investigate the matter...

...Three parties pulled out of his briefly promising broad coalition, and he returnedhome two weeks later having secured nothing more than a pat on the back from President Bill Clinton, who blamed Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat for the failure of the marathon Maryland negotiations...

...When 1 asked his teacher about this, she told me they have talked about the "situation" at length...

...Both the Israeli media and police showed minimal interest in examining the circumstances that led to these deaths...

...At our synagogue on the Friday night between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, a teenage girl got up and talked about 17-year-old Asil Asalah, who had been killed a few days earlier during a riot in the Galilee town of Araba...

...A more subtle example than the Ramallah affair is a photo a colleague received by e-mail...

...Friends who live in Efrat and Har Gilo, West Bank communities that are virtually suburbs of Jerusalem, have to check with an Army office each morning to find out whether it is considered safe to travel on the newish Tunnel Road that connects them to the city, but is often subjected to Palestinian sniper fire...

...On the day of the Jerusalem bombing, I drove Itai and a friend home from a tennis lesson (yes, life goes on) and had the radio tuned to a station that ran a bizarre interview with a child who had been slightly injured in the explosion...

...that they are willing to compromise on what we consider to be their more unrealistic demands (e.g...

...Where did such an idea come from...

...Nevertheless, that is precisely what Ehud Barak thinks he and Yasir Arafat can do between now and the upcoming Israeli election...

...End of discussion...

...David B. Green, a previous contributor, is an editor of the Jerusalem Report...

...Should Barak fail to hammer out an agreement, even a partial one, with Arafat, Netanyahu will almost certainly win the rematch...

...I only heard about the teacher with the gunshot-pocked car indirectly, from my mother in the U.S., who learned about it in a phone conversation with Avishai...

...The Palestinians are known for the unsubtle ways they sometimes let foreign journalists know that their reporting has hurt the cause...

...Dovish Israelis like myself have wanted to believe that most Palestinians are finally ready to accept the idea of living side-byside with a Jewish state...

...when they do, that can provide rare insight into how the combatants operate...

...I know now that they have gone into hiding in their native Italy...

...S., the wife, is a reporter for the Italian TV network that filmed and distributed the tape of the October 12 murder in Ramallah of two Israeli reserve soldiers (referred to as "the lynching...

...The great and tragic irony of this intifada is that it has shattered the logic of the peace process at the same time that it has proved there is no alternative to peace...

...And there is the story of Ayelet Hashachar Levy, 28-year-old daughter of National Religious Party head Yitzchak Levy...

...on the other hand, fatigue and frustration have made them susceptible to those slogans touting quick and forceful solutions that Netanyahu is so masterful at coining...

...Slowly, I began to coax more information out of Itai...

...Pressed for more information, he pleaded ignorance, saying that another kid was the brains behind the show...

...The body of one was then tossed out the station window, hitched to the rear of a car, and dragged through the streets...

...By and large we Israelis, too, have experienced the conflict through our TVs, radios and newspapers...

...that had been detonated outside the theater, a short walk from our house...

...That is not a lesson he learned at home, yet why should I be surprised he has come to such a conclusion...

...Just the previous night, former Prime Minister Shimon Peres had completed negotiations with Arafat for a cease-fire both sides were supposed to announce at 2 p.m...

...No, not scared, and not interested, was his curt reply...

...This set the stage for the Palestinian uprising that ignited at the end of September, which in turn led to the late-November Knesset vote calling for new elections...

...She lives in Gilo, Jerusalem's largest and southernmost neighborhood, which has been the frequent target of evening gunfire from Beit Jalla, a Palestinian town just beyond it...

...At present there is not a single Israeli I know, be he a professional political commentator or the proverbial man in the street, who is not convinced former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will displace Sharon as Likud's head and stand as its candidate for Prime Minister...

...Instead, they were brought to the Ramallah police station...

...S. and her husband lived in Israel many years—their children were born here—but it is unclear when, if ever, it will be safe for them to return...

...He said, although not in so many words, that it was natural for him to associate Arabs and guns, and even added that he thought Arabs were "bad...

...One wonders how Thoreau would have reacted to such forms of civil disobedience...

...The next morning, as I waited by the door to take the boys to school, Itai disappeared into his room...

...He also claimed he does not talk about the conflict with his friends...

...The mother of a three-year-old and the oldest of five children adopted by the Levys over the years, she was one of two people killed by a bomb in central Jerusalem on the afternoon of November 2. The very same day she had moved from a West Bank settlement to the street near the popular Machaneh Yehuda Market where a car filled with explosives blew up minutes after it was ticketed for being illegally parked...

...Coming near the start of the second intifada, the Ramallah murders dealt a devastating blow to the image of the "popular uprising...

...But we also have a more direct connection: There are only one or two or three degrees of separation between us and its civilian or military victims...

...In the light of his state of disgrace when he left politics a mere year and a half ago, this may be hard for some to understand, but the return of Bibi, as he is called here, reflects a kind of national schizophrenia: On the one hand, Israelis have a high level of patience and an apparent appreciation that peace with the Palestinians will require significant concessions...

...In this case, though, the presence of a bank of cameras behind the young warrior strips the brave-looking act of much of its spontaneity and urgency...

...The two had become friends in Seeds of Peace, a program that brings together Jewish and Arab teens, from Israel, the Palestinian territories, Jordan, and several other countries...

...That does not (necessarily) mean the photograph was posed, but it is a reminder that the Palestinians (and of course the Israelis no less) are extremely conscious that the Whole World Is Watching—at least for the time being...

...and that they understand Jerusalem is also holy to the Jews...

...Third, when we saw the Palestinian demands for a complete withdrawal to the 1967 lines and for the right of return as mere tactical negotiating positions, because they were so patently unrealistic, we were doing both ourselves and the Palestinians a disservice...

...No, he said, they haven't discussed it in class...

...in uniform, made a wrong turn as they were going to their base from a leave...

...I keep doing exploratory interrogations of my two boys—Itai, who is seven, and Avishai, 11—to find out what they make of all that is going on...

...The evening before we had heard a brief TV report about a small explosive device (how easily we take up these antiseptic terms...

...Walking by their house, I saw their SUV standing in its parking space, a few dried-up leaves that spell autumn in Israel gathered at the base of its windshield...

...Looking at a picture in the paper or a tape on television or even a quote in a magazine, you don't generally ponder how the journalist gained access to what is before you...

...The boy was very young, maybe six, and as might be expected was not able to shed much light on the incident...

...The behavior of the RAI reporter became slightly more comprehensible when it was learned that a short time before the lynching he had been beaten up for a story he had filed from the West Bank...

...Indeed, it appears that the more bloodshed there was, the more eager we Israelis were to strike a deal, whereas our adversaries, with each loss, only became more steadfast in their struggle...

...A short time afterward, I asked Itai how he feels about what is happening, and whether it has been discussed in school...

...Mediaset, concerned that its entire reporting team in Israel was now at risk of Palestinian reprisals, decided to bring everyone back to Italy...

...Early on, some good friends disappeared...

...Second, the most sophisticated and well-educated Palestinians not only reject the notion of shared sovereignty over the Temple Mount and Western Wall, they don't even acknowledge that these sites have religious or historical significance to the Jews...

...The Palestinians declared, moreover, that the agreement did not cover throwing stones or Molotov cocktails...

...If the answer is no, they are forced to take a much longer alternate route to work...

...His refusal to shut the door on Arafat, or even to declare null and void the far-reaching proposals he made to the Palestinians at Camp David in July, are what prevented Likud Party Chairman Ariel Sharon from joining in a "unity government" with Barak's One Israel Party, and will be the principal, if not exclusive, issue in the election campaign...

...Far from serving as a refuge, the station was quickly overrun by an enraged crowd...