Opinion

Poll: Decrease in Palestinian support of terror, The death of Yasser Arafat has left most Palestinians optimistic regarding the future and opposed to the continuation of terror attacks on Israel, according to a public opinion poll published Wednesday by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center A majority of 51.8 percent of the Palestinians polled said that they were opposed to "military operations" against Israeli targets and consider them harmful to Palestinian national interests, compared with 26.9% last June. Only 41.1% of the Palestinians believe that terrorist attacks should continue compared with 65.4% last June. (Link Requires free registration and cookies enabled)
09-Dec-04, Ira Sharkansky, Shark Blog (US), Letter from Jerusalem, Marwan Barghouti has entered himself as a candidate, and he has considerable support on the street. It is more accurate to say that his wife and some supporters entered his name, insofar as he is in an Israeli prison, sentenced to four consecutive life terms for involvement in murder. Hard to imagine that Israel will release him. Palestinians are pressuring him to withdraw, and many of their leading voices are endorsing Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazzan). He is supposed to be a moderate, willing to deal with Israel. So far he has indicated that he will insist on the right of return for Palestinian refugees (a sure deal breaker), and denied that he said that. Spokesmen for Hamas indicated that they support the Palestinian political process and will boycott the election. If Abbas is elected, he will enjoy international support and something between Israeli support and sympathy. But he will have to find a way to deal with the Israelis, not inclined to be overly generous after four years of Palestinian violence, and Palestinians demanding more than the Israelis offered before the violence began.
09-Dec-04, Judy Lash Balint, Israel Insider, A Brit who gets it about Islam, Don't let the upper class British accent or title fool you. Baroness Caroline Cox, 67, Deputy Speaker of the House of Lords, does not hold by the politics or the worldview of many of her fellow upper class Brits. The modest demeanor and strong convictions of this Christian human rights campaigner were much in evidence at the Jerusalem Summit last week, as Baroness Cox stepped up to receive the Scoop Jackson Award for Vision and Values awarded annually by Summit organizers.
08-Dec-04, David Warren, Ottawa Citizen (Canada), The Shia party, We now know not only that there will be an election in Iraq on Jan. 30th, but who is going to win it. This is because a single party slate has been assembled out of the various Shia factions to contest it; and the Shia are three-fifths of Iraq's population. In defiance of any advice I might have given, the electoral system cuts several Gordian knots by making the whole of Iraq into a single constituency. It is thus a radical system of proportional representation, in which each party will be assigned seats according to its share of the overall vote.