Uzi Benziman

According to long-standing Israel Defense Forces assessments, the dramatic U.S. move in Iraq will prompt President Bush to dedicate his efforts to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The cabinet ministers are exhibiting a tendency to disregard this possibility. Reality is about to slap them in the face.

The Jews had light and joy the night before last: President Bush announced his intention to implement the "road map" - and the city of Jerusalem was not bewildered nor confused. On the contrary, its official spokespeople were filled with felicity.

Israelis and Palestinians have in recent days gone to great and sophisticated lengths to kill one another. This rampant bloodletting, the product of the minds and capabilities of the two sides, eventually brings the same questions to the fore: Till when? What's the purpose?

Sharon's regard for words is different from that of the man in the street; for Sharon words are weapons - purposeful means of achieving an objective; they have no internal truth and their accepted meaning is utterly insignificant.

At a cabinet meeting in 1982 ministers asked Defense Minister Ariel Sharon how the IDF reached Beirut, when the cabinet had not decided on it. Amram Mitzna was witness to Sharon's devious explanations in the war in Lebanon.

From the point of view of the head of MI five years ago, there was no direct Iraqi threat hovering over Israel's head, and there was no need for any special preparations, but the political echelon decided to boost the country's defensive measures - and in doing so, it upped the fears, too.

The term "unity" is loaded: it connotes closeness, intimacy, solidarity. The upshot is that anyone who opposes a unity government is alienated, someone who separates himself from the community, almost a traitor. The proper term to describe the goal of negotiations is "coalition."

If small right-wing coalition partners make it difficult for Sharon to implement the necessary painful concessions, Labor can back him up from the opposition benches. Shimon Peres would therefore be well advised to sit back and let Amram Mitzna steer the party as he sees fit.

For the first time in the history of the state, the man about to be elected prime minister will most probably be called in for police investigation a short time after taking office.

Question on a psychometric test: Tommy doesn't want to sit next to Eli; and Amram doesn't want to sit alongside Arik. Tommy wants to sit next to Amram provided the latter agrees to sit alongside Arik. Tommy wants to sit next to Arik, too, on condition Arik doesn't sit beside Eli.

Ariel Sharon has in recent days delivered a conclusive answer to those who had been wondering whether he had changed his stripes since his election as prime minister. The answer is this: once a bully, always a bully.

Mysterious are the ways of politics: while MK Naomi Blumenthal finds herself on moral trial in public for exercising her right to remain silent, her Likud colleague Environment Minister Tzachi Hanegbi struts arrogantly on center stage, enjoying full legitimacy because he chose to speak openly.

Sharon has a policy plan, one which has been disclosed repeatedly in the past. Speaking just two weeks ago at the Herzliya conference, he sketched the plan again, and stressed its main element: adoption, in principle, of Bush's peace framework, as Israelis interpret it.

In the name of glorious Italian democracy - or perhaps for other, less lofty, reasons - the Italian parliament found a place for Cicciolina. The 16th Knesset will include some Likud representatives whose candidacy is as legitimate as that of the Italian stripper.

As the Likud determines its Knesset list in elections to be held today, one might appraise the party's likely presence in the next parliament by looking closely at Shas' 17 MKs in the outgoing Knesset. Shas is the vanguard of a political culture that has converted the Knesset into a marketplace of hucksters.

The result of Sharon's effort has not altered circumstances: though the public believes that somebody has finally stood up and dished out to Arafat what the Palestinians have delivered to us, the fact is that the state's security situation has not improved, and its citizens have become yet more vulnerable.

The establishment of direct prime ministerial elections changed the rules of the game by which Knesset candidates were selected by their parties. Now that the direct prime ministerial elections system has been nixed, the time has come to assess how internal party elections can be improved.

The myth of Israel's national struggle will now include the Friday night massacre. Friday's event joined the long list of flags waved by both sides in the bloody conflict waged by the two peoples, by peoples utterly devoid of the ability to stop and ask questions about the purpose and duration of the killing.

Leaving the territories is the way to take the country out of the mire. Willingness to take this step is the only way to extricate Israel from its muddle. Instead of grasping this truth, Israel's governments have turned the West Bank and Gaza Strip into large playing fields on which to sow messianic delusions.

To grasp the extent to which Shaul Mofaz's appointment as defense minister is misbegotten, one might consider Ariel Sharon's own words. After he was elected prime minister, Sharon said on more than one occasion that he sees things differently in his new post.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who had a reputation in his youth as someone who could read maps from the day he was born is now busy searching for stratagems with which to foil the American "road map" for a settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The behavior of those among the settlers dubbed "the hill youth" is reminiscent of the skinheads in Europe and the United States: They are loutish, violent and uninhibited brawl-mongers. The various groups of skinheads have all kinds of excuses for unloading their aggression and in Israel of 2002, hundreds of knitted-skullcap-wearing punks do it for the love of the motherland.

On March 12, 1978, the president of the United States, Jimmy Carter, stood before the cabinet in Jerusalem and demanded it accept the American positions in the Israeli-Egyptian peace talks.

When he was still a young man, Ariel Sharon learned how to defy Israel's governments. As a commander of the army's Unit 101, at the age of 25, he would sit down with his soldiers and ceaselessly criticize Israel's civilian authorities.

Israeli latest military action in Yasser Arafat's Ramallah compound appears to be more of a furious reflex reaction than any considered policy.