Uzi Benziman

Two nights ago, after the protests at Havat Gilad subsided, people in the Yesha Council were saying that the outpost was dismantled on the basis of confidential understandings reached with the Defense Ministry.

At the cabinet meeting two days ago, Shin Bet chief Avi Dichter presented a pessimistic assessment of the situation: He said that the conspicuous decline in the number of terror attacks should not be attributed to a strategic shift by the Palestinian terror organizations, but to the success of Israeli interception efforts.

A week after Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon was criticized for mixing political views with his professional opinions, the prime minister was looking to the Israel Defense Forces to explain his decision to permit the Palestinian Legislative Council to convene.

There was something desperate, even if it was cloaked in humor and good spirits, about the way in which Prime Minister Ariel Sharon spoke with soldiers and officers of the Yosh (acronym for Judea and Samaria) Division this week.

Ariel Sharon is saying that we now have a window of opportunity and that he is not going to let the opportunity slip by. Benjamin Ben-Eliezer describes the present period as propitious and vows to take proper advantage of it.

Last weekend, Minister Natan Sharansky was in the resort town of Beaver Creek, Colorado taking part in an international seminar sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute. Sharansky was asked to give the conference's opening speech, and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney gave the event's closing address. Inbetween, the two had more than one private conversation.

Ariel Sharon's expression was quite grim at the meeting of the coalition faction leaders on Tuesday evening. He described to those present how he'd felt a few hours earlier at the sight of the carnage surrounding the bus that was blown up on the way from Gilo to downtown Jerusalem, how overwhelming it was to witness the trampled human dignity and helplessness of the mangled bodies.

One topic on the agenda at Sunday's cabinet meeting will be the economic situation. At the Bank of Israel, they expect it to be a serious discussion that will lead to practical decisions.

"Hara-kiri," by Raviv Drucker, Yedioth Ahronoth, 416 pages, NIS 88.

In consultations two days ago following the terror attack at the Megiddo Junction, the bitter truth surfaced: The country's leadership is incapable of providing its citizens with security.

Spirits were pretty high at the meeting of the security cabinet on Wednesday. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon reminisced about an order he received as a young officer in the early 1950s to capture two members of the Jordanian Legion in order to exchange them for two Israeli prisoners.

When the clock struck midnight on Wednesday and Ariel Sharon did not withdraw the letters of dismissal he'd issued to the Shas ministers, he brought home the lesson he wished to impart to the rebellious faction and justly earned himself great public acclaim.

When Ariel Sharon led his division in the Yom Kippur War, in the difficult conditions created by the Egyptian surprise attack, he said that the question of who was caught in a trap - the Israeli or the Egyptian forces - was more a matter of psychology and morale than of facts.

Like a drowning man at sea clinging to the edge of an oar extended to him by a lifeguard, Ariel Sharon is leaving for Washington two days from now for talks with President George W. Bush.

In 1982, Ariel Sharon, then the defense minister, thought he had obtained the consent of the U.S. administration for a military operation that was designed to eradicate the nests of PLO terrorists in southern Lebanon.

Sharon and Arafat are locked in a battle over time: Arafat wants to put off the declaration of a cease-fire; Sharon wants to make it happen as soon as possible. Arafat wants a cease-fire announcement to coincide with the Arab League summit in Beirut; Sharon would like to foil his plans.

On Tuesday, it almost happened: a major flare-up on the northern border with the potential for a confrontation with the Syrian army and a threat to the Israeli home front as far back as Haifa.

Two nights ago, after the prime minister's decision to significantly intensify military action against the Palestinians, one cabinet member explained that this move was made possible by the Bush administration's total backing for Sharon's policy.

On October 30, 2000, prime minister Ehud Barak and public security minister Shlomo Ben-Ami visited the northern district police headquarters. All around, things were aflame.

Leaks to the press of a U.S. peace initiative bespeak an extremely serious political failure for Israel, writes Uzi Benziman. After a year of incessant terror attacks, the possibility looms that the White House will turn away from Israel and thus reward Palestinian terrorism.

Peres chalked up a victory: his position influenced Sharon - regarding both a dialogue with Arafat as well as the brake on the planned IDF operation in the Bethlehem area. It was, perhaps, a short-term victory, writes Uzi Benziman.