Amir Oren

The common denominator to all the criminal suspicions about the Sharon family is that the state of Israel, through its police and prosectors, is trying to enforce the law, and the head of government is trying to foil those very efforts.

A senior Israeli defense official, who knows the Palestinian leadership well from much contact with it, yesterday listed Abbas' headaches by their rank: First of all Arafat, then Hamas, and only third, Israel, as a result of its lack of political generosity before there was any improvement in security.

By the time Barak's "time-out" from politics ends, the Or Commission's report will have been filed on the same shelf where all its predecessors are yellowing, among them the report issued by Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein and State Prosecutor Edna Arbel on then-prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (in the Bar-On affair) and their reasons for not indicting Ariel Sharon in the Russian gas affair.

When the investigation of Prime Minster Sharon and his sons began, the son suddenly moved from his separate quarters into his father's house. A protected tenant in a city of refuge, like in Biblical times, or in the new era, the wanted militants hiding in the the Muqata.

Were a NIS 5 coin to serve as prime minister, and be tossed in the air to choose between possible future scenarios, it would have a greater chance of hitting the mark than Sharon. If you want a reasonable forecast of things to come, you ought to clarify what Sharon says about it, and then choose the opposite scenario.

For the first time in the country's history, the prime minister will be in a most problematic position: present-absent in someone else's trial, not yet accused himself of accepting a bribe but nonetheless the subject of a bribery indictment, as will be his deputy prime minister, Ehud Olmert.

On June 5, 1967, Washington woke up to a new reality: The IAF had struck the Egyptian air force at its bases. The U.S. sent an urgent message to the National Reconnaissance Office, which used satellites and spy planes to collect intelligence, asking for the only satellite in operation at the time to pass over Cairo's airport.

Moshe Ya'alon, outside of the army a nearly anonymous brigadier general, was one of the last officers Yitzhak Rabin managed to promote to major general and give an important posting - Military Intelligence.

In 1998, the Nimrodi family controversially lobbied to get Shaul Mofaz named chief of staff. Mofaz has not been ungrateful.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's decision to appoint retired Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker as army chief of staff and to to skip over officers on active duty was viewed as a vote of no-confidence in the most senior levels of the U.S. Army.

One of the permanent distortions, which the law allowed until May 31 and which Mofaz and Ya'alon insist on perpetuating, is soldiers serving in Haredi schools. It's difficult to believe: The Haredi educational networks, The Independent Education Center and The Ma'ayan Center for Torah education, whose alumni don't exactly fill the army's ranks, get cheap labor in the form of soldiers who provide counseling services. And it's their compulsory service.

An attorney general who hides such an inquiry from the public on the eve of elections is betraying his duty to the state, which is not subservient to the prime minister.

Since Thursday, September 28, 2000, when the then fading Knesset member Ariel Sharon set foot on Temple Mount, a lethal 32-month war has been raging. Another week, another month, and if indeed a lengthy lull is achieved, this war could also finally have a name - the thousand-day war.

Only an overall agreement between Israel and the Arab and Muslim states that refuse to accept it, can consolidate a solution to the dispute over the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River and thus heal the deeply rooted hostility between Israelis and Palestinians.

Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz won a rare honor last week when a prestigious ensemble rallied around him. This was the 12 justices of the High Court and, for a politician, Mofaz's success in achieving such a unanimous consensus is impressive.

The story of the new American attitude to the French is instructive because of the dramatic change. Every American schoolchild learns about the founding father's gratitude to the French for their response to the call for help against the British in their War of Independence.

Independence Day is an appropriate time for remembering forgotten matters, as simple as it sounds - anonymous heroes, small print in the footnotes of history that at a decisive moment did more for Israel than many others. They did not fight at the Chinese Farm in Sinai or put themselves in physical danger; their battlefields were Paris, Washington and New York.

The Kishon River killed, Mofaz ruled Sunday, in a characteristic decision meant to please the public. The outposts in the territories are Mofaz's Kishon, and belatedly cleaning them up does not cleanse him of his responsibility.

There is a club card in the army that could be called the "Bye-bye and Bonus." The card allows colonels, for example, to wait until they reach the age of retirement, not much after 40, to get out of the career army and start receiving a respectable pension, more than NIS 10,000 a month, and then to continue in their previous army jobs as civilians with a colonel's salary.

The closest Israeli to George Bush is Mossad agent Gavriel Alon. His professional cover - art restorer - provides Alon with a good front as he travels the world and explains his interest in Nazi loot.

If the danger of occupation would hover over Washington, London, or Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, their leaders would consider using even radical measures. If such weaponry could have provided U.S. President George W. Bush with a way to prevent the September 11 attacks, he would not have passed it up.

If the danger of occupation would hover over Washington, London, or Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, their leaders would consider using even radical measures. If such weaponry could have provided U.S. President George W. Bush with a way to prevent the September 11 attacks, he would not have passed it up.

"After the war," sighed a senior officer at the Kirya Defense Ministry compound, "Israel should reconsider the issue of the protective kits. There's no justification for continuing to leave the matter in the hands of the army and the treasury."

"After the war," sighed a senior officer at the Kirya Defense Ministry compound, "Israel should reconsider the issue of the protective kits. There's no justification for continuing to leave the matter in the hands of the army and the treasury."