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INTIFADHA
Middle East in Crisis

Bitter words and bloody clashes are once again threatening the tentative Middle East peace process. Palestinians and Israelis are each blaming the other for a new round of violence following a September 28 visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to a contested religious site in east Jerusalem.What may seem like a small matter to an outsider represents much more to many in the volatile region. As they struggle to find a way for their people to coexist, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak must contend not only with the political pressures of the moment but also with a lengthy history of conflict.

NABLUS (October 8) - Scores of Palestinians stormed into the Joseph's Tomb compound in Nablus and destroyed the site.

FULL STORY

The path to peace runs through a history of tumult

What may seem like a small matter to an outsider represents much more to many in the volatile region. As they struggle to find a way for their people to coexist, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak must contend not only with the political pressures of the moment but also with a lengthy history of conflict.The protracted dispute has its origins in events long before Zionist leader David Ben-Gurion declared Israel a state on May 14, 1948, following a U.N. partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states.The region -- bounded on the east by the Jordan River, on the west by the Mediterranean, on the north by Lebanon, and on the south by the Sinai Peninsula -- has been the scene of bitter struggles for millenniaThough the region has been known informally as Palestine for 2,000 years, none of its several rulers after the Romans regarded it as a separate administrative entity in its own right.In Jewish tradition, the people of Israel are the descendants of the Old Testament patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But the roots of the present dispute can be traced to the Zionist movement in the late 19th century to colonize a Jewish homeland in Palestine, which at that time had been part of the Ottoman Empire since 1516.During the years before World War I, Zionists established dozens of colonies in Palestine amidst a population that was largely Arab and Muslim. At the same time, Arab nationalism was beginning to surface in opposition to Ottoman rule, and many Arab leaders wanted to end Jewish immigration and land acquisitions.

The British legacy

The struggle intensified at the end of the war when Britain's occupation of Palestine became a mandate ultimately sanctioned by the League of Nations.

Incorporated into the mandate was the Balfour Declaration, issued in late 1917 by British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, who endorsed the idea of a Jewish homeland in Palestine (but not, the declaration stipulated, at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs).

The British also had promised to help Arab leaders create their own independent states in return for their support against the Ottoman Empire.

But a misunderstanding arose that would have longstanding implications: The Arabs thought Palestine would be among the newly independent Arab states. The British said that was not what they intended, but neither did they intend for Palestine to be exclusively a Jewish state. Rather, they said, a Jewish state would exist within Palestine.

The British did lay the foundation of a separate Arab state in 1921. It reserved lands east of the Jordan River -- or Transjordan, three-quarters of the Palestine mandate -- exclusively for Arabs and transferred control to the Hashemite family. Now called Jordan, the region gained full independence from Britain in 1946.

By the 1930s, tensions in the remainder of the Palestine mandate continued to test British resolve, and in 1937 they declared martial law. That same year a British commission recommended that the rest of Palestine be partitioned into Jewish and Arab states, with the British controlling Jerusalem.

The Zionists accepted the idea, albeit reluctantly. The Arabs, enraged that they might be forcibly removed from the proposed Jewish state, rejected it. And with World War II on the horizon, the British government realized it would need Arab support in the Middle East and thus put the idea aside.

After the war, as Holocaust survivors and other Jewish displaced persons streamed toward Palestine, the partition idea was revived, this time in the United Nations.

In November 1947 the United Nations voted to end the British Mandate by May 15, 1948, and to partition Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, with Jerusalem an international city.

Against the odds

Jews in Palestine and elsewhere readily accepted the partition. The response by Palestine's neighbors was overwhelmingly negative.

Intent on preventing any Jewish entity in the region, they rejected the plan, and in what was to be precursor to many more wars, the armies of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Iraq invaded the new country with the declared intent of destroying it.

Against the odds, the Israelis held their ground. By July 1949 Israel had repulsed the invasion, joined the United Nations, and been recognized by more than 50 governments around the world.

In a series of armistices with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon in 1949, Israel established borders similar to those of Palestine during the British Mandate. Jordan retained the West Bank of the Jordan River, and Jerusalem was divided under Israeli and Jordanian rule.

Subsequent wars were launched by both sides over the next 35 years -- in 1973 by Israel's Arab neighbors and by Israel in 1956 and in 1982's invasion of Lebanon.

The most dramatic of all was the Six-Day War, June 5-10, 1967.

Responding to what it perceived as imminent attack by Egypt, Syria and Jordan, Israel launched a preemptive strike against all three. Israel won stunning victories on all fronts, taking the Sinai and Gaza from Egypt, the Golan Heights from Syria, and the West Bank from Jordan (including the Old City of Jerusalem).

The peace process
. US President Jimmy Carter is flanked by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin (left) and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat at the signing of the 1978 Camp David Accords.

In 1979, Israel returned the Sinai to Egypt in a peace treaty that formally ended the 30-year state of war between the two countries. Egypt, in return, recognized Israel's right to exist.
In 1993, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to mutual recognition and limited self-rule for Palestinians in Jericho and Gaza. They also agreed to conclude a permanent treaty that would resolve the status of Gaza and the West Bank. Arafat, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts
Negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians today are based on the principles set down in the 1993 accords.
In 1994, Israel and Jordan signed a peace treaty in which Jordan won control of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. Jordan's King Hussein had previously renounced claims to the West Bank in favor of the Palestinians.
In addition to the Palestinians, only Syria remains among the neighbors with which Israel has not yet come to terms. The sticking points are the status of the Golan Heights and access to the adjacent Sea of Galilee.

Rabin's legacy

A sobering thought for Israel's current prime minister, Ehud Barak, as he attempts to find peace with the Palestinians is that Rabin's policy of reconciliation led to his assassination by a right-wing extremist.

It was Rabin, prime minister from 1974-1977 and 1992-1995, who initiated the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, signed a treaty with Jordan and showed a willingness to engage in dialogue with Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization.

A series of Palestinian uprisings in 1985 also convinced Rabin that the continued occupation of Gaza and the West Bank was not in Israel's long-term interest.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin at a meeting in Casablanca in 1994.

Despite the pressure on Barak to make few concessions to the Palestinians, his moderate stance is in direct contrast to that of his predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu, a hard-liner, was Israeli prime minister from 1996 until last year, when he was voted out of office. His unwavering stance did little to further the peace process and even prompted the late Syrian president Hafez Assad to halt talks with Israel in 1996.

Despite this display of cordiality, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak could not agree on the primary issue of control and sovereignty of Jerusalem once they began their talks at Camp David in July 2000.

Two years later came talks in Wye, Maryland, between Netanyahu and Arafat, with U.S. President Bill Clinton and an ailing King Hussein of Jordan acting as mediators. In the accord that followed, the Palestinians agreed to remove language from their founding charter that called for the dismantling of the Jewish state, and the Israelis agreed to cede an additional 13 percent of the West Bank. At the same time they set a deadline of September 13, 2000, to reach a final peace accord.

By mid-year 2000, with the deadline approaching and no agreement in sight, Clinton invited Barak and Arafat to a three-way summit at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland.

The talks began July 11 and ended 15 days later with no agreement in sight, the two sides at an impasse largely over the sovereignty and control of Jerusalem

Bible Code Matrix

The Matrix starts at GenesisChapter 6 V21 and ends at Exodus Chapter 27:21

Central Term"INTIFADHA" at ELS -3675

Matrix 1a

Encoded Words :

INTIFADHA

KIPPUR (Jewish Fest)

NABLUS

JOSEPH

RAMALAH

NABLUS (October 8) - Scores of Palestinians stormed into the Joseph's Tomb compound in Nablus and destroyed the site

Yom Kippur Yom Kippur begins Sunday evening, Oct. 8, and continues until Monday evening, Oct. 9, 2000

For many, the very mention of Yom

Kippur arouses unpleasant feelings of guilt. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the Jewish year and we know we should feel something special. Unfortunately, many times all that we really feel is intense hunger and a longing for the synagogue services to end.