Land Of Israel

KIBBUTZ HANITA, Israel - On a wooded hill overlooking the Lebanese border, Yona Ben Ezer staked his claim to Palestine a decade before the state of Israel was born.There, on a night in March 1938, he and 400 Jews pitched tents, built a fence around their hastily erected camp and signaled to their Zionist comrades down the Mediterranean coast: "We are here."Two died in clashes with Arabs that first evening, but the pioneers were undaunted. Today, their socialist experiment in collective living chugs on. Ben Ezer need only gaze at that curling sweep of shoreline to see how far the country has come.

After 2,000 years of indignity and ignominy, Herod the Great has finally gotten his revenge. During their revolt against Roman rule over Judea between 66 and 72 A.D., Jews who remembered King Herod as a Roman puppet smashed his sarcophagus, which had been interred with royal pomp about 70 years before. Christians have identified him as a baby killer who forced Jesus' family to flee Bethlehem. And Herod's habit of having his rivals and relatives killed has hardly burnished his image. True, he built monumental projects - not only Masada and Caesarea but also the grand expansion of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, the best-known remnant of which is the Western Wall.

JERUSALEM -- Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, rejecting past Israeli claims to the West Bank and other occupied Arab territories, is calling on his countrymen to abandon the concept of a "Greater Land of Israel" and to give up that land for peace with their Arab neighbors.In one of his strongest appeals for withdrawing from occupied Arab territory, Mr. Rabin told Israelis that they simply could not hope to control all of biblical Israel and that trying to do so would put the Jewish state at risk.

JERUSALEM -- Ehud Olmert, in his first major policy address since becoming Israel's acting prime minister, said yesterday that he backs the creation of a Palestinian state and that Israel will have to relinquish parts of the West Bank to maintain its Jewish majority. "We support the establishment of a modern, democratic Palestinian state," Olmert said at the annual Herzliya Conference near Tel Aviv, which has become a forum for important speeches by Israeli leaders. "The existence of two nations, one Jewish and one Palestinian, is the full solution to the national aspirations and problems of each of the peoples."

Like the first rain on the parched land of Israel after a hot, arid summer, a collection of poems leads the reader into a season of soul-searching, transformation and promise.Poets have always been interpreters of dreams and harbingers, says leading Israeli poet Moshe Dor, co-editor of "After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace." Readings from the compilation of works by Israeli poets will be presented Sunday in Columbia."I think it's the first book of its kind because of the range of people involved," Dor said.

JERUSALEM -- Ehud Olmert, in his first major policy address since becoming Israel's acting prime minister, said yesterday that he backs the creation of a Palestinian state and that Israel will have to relinquish parts of the West Bank to maintain its Jewish majority. "We support the establishment of a modern, democratic Palestinian state," Olmert said at the annual Herzliya Conference near Tel Aviv, which has become a forum for important speeches by Israeli leaders. "The existence of two nations, one Jewish and one Palestinian, is the full solution to the national aspirations and problems of each of the peoples."

JERUSALEM -- If they had never met, the U.S. secretary of state could have learned the essentials about the short, stocky man who is Israel's prime minister by listening to him at the dedication of a new town recently.Yitzhak Shamir, standing on an outdoor stage lined with Israeli flags, had come to eulogize the person for whom the town was named."He was a determined fighter for settlement of Israel," Mr. Shamir began, offering what he would consider the highest possible praise. "He was obsessed by settlement.

PAINFUL NEGOTIATIONS between Israelis and Palestinians have finally produced a breakthrough agreement that largely restates an earlier accord. The PLO had reached an accommodation in 1993 with the Labor government of a divided Israel. Now it has extended that to a divided Likud government of a more united Israel.Americans can take satisfaction that the Clinton administration brokered this deal and guarantees it in continuity with Bush administration policy. U.S. mediator Dennis Ross spent the past month preventing it from breaking down.

After 2,000 years of indignity and ignominy, Herod the Great has finally gotten his revenge. During their revolt against Roman rule over Judea between 66 and 72 A.D., Jews who remembered King Herod as a Roman puppet smashed his sarcophagus, which had been interred with royal pomp about 70 years before. Christians have identified him as a baby killer who forced Jesus' family to flee Bethlehem. And Herod's habit of having his rivals and relatives killed has hardly burnished his image. True, he built monumental projects - not only Masada and Caesarea but also the grand expansion of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem, the best-known remnant of which is the Western Wall.

JERUSALEM -- The interim peace deal hadn't been signed and the Israeli and Palestinian leaders had not yet departed from the Maryland summit before the carping began back home.No Israeli or Palestinian leader offered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat an unequivocal compliment on negotiating an agreement that breaks a 19-month stalemate in the peace process, gives Palestinians additional West Bank land and Israelis more security guarantees.There were no thumbs up and only a few encouraging words as details of the agreement reached Israel late yesterday.

Dozens of children pounded piles of dough that would soon become baked lafah, a Middle Eastern flatbread. Nearby, mother Nurit Avneri rolled homemade falafel into balls, then dropped the ground chickpea, humus and onion mixture into a pot of boiling oil. The exotic fixings would soon be lunch for the campers of Camp Gan Israel at the Lubavitch Center for Jewish Education in Columbia. "It's not that it's just fun to hit the dough, we got to make the dough flat," said 6-year-old Phoebe Heiligman of Columbia.

A LOT OF people were appalled last week when Israel's Likud party declared there should never be a Palestinian state. Likud, which is the largest coalition of Israel's right-wing, ultranationalist factions, made this declaration following the exhortations of Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu, a former prime minister and one of the slipperiest characters ever to occupy that office. The party acted against the stated wishes of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has said he accepts the inevitability of a Palestinian state.

Like the first rain on the parched land of Israel after a hot, arid summer, a collection of poems leads the reader into a season of soul-searching, transformation and promise.Poets have always been interpreters of dreams and harbingers, says leading Israeli poet Moshe Dor, co-editor of "After the First Rain: Israeli Poems on War and Peace." Readings from the compilation of works by Israeli poets will be presented Sunday in Columbia."I think it's the first book of its kind because of the range of people involved," Dor said.

JERUSALEM -- The interim peace deal hadn't been signed and the Israeli and Palestinian leaders had not yet departed from the Maryland summit before the carping began back home.No Israeli or Palestinian leader offered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat an unequivocal compliment on negotiating an agreement that breaks a 19-month stalemate in the peace process, gives Palestinians additional West Bank land and Israelis more security guarantees.There were no thumbs up and only a few encouraging words as details of the agreement reached Israel late yesterday.

KIBBUTZ HANITA, Israel - On a wooded hill overlooking the Lebanese border, Yona Ben Ezer staked his claim to Palestine a decade before the state of Israel was born.There, on a night in March 1938, he and 400 Jews pitched tents, built a fence around their hastily erected camp and signaled to their Zionist comrades down the Mediterranean coast: "We are here."Two died in clashes with Arabs that first evening, but the pioneers were undaunted. Today, their socialist experiment in collective living chugs on. Ben Ezer need only gaze at that curling sweep of shoreline to see how far the country has come.

BEIT HAGGAI, Occupied West Bank -- When the day-care center at this tiny settlement of Orthodox Jews needed repairs, the community sought help from a group of Americans.But not Jewish Americans.This help came from Evangelical Christians whose historic ties to the most determined Jewish settlers of the ancient land of Israel are driven by the belief that the Messiah will not come until Jews reclaim the land God gave them.The $5,000 raised by Judy Campbell and members of the New Life Church of Colorado Springs, Colo.

BEIT HAGGAI, Occupied West Bank -- When the day-care center at this tiny settlement of Orthodox Jews needed repairs, the community sought help from a group of Americans.But not Jewish Americans.This help came from Evangelical Christians whose historic ties to the most determined Jewish settlers of the ancient land of Israel are driven by the belief that the Messiah will not come until Jews reclaim the land God gave them.The $5,000 raised by Judy Campbell and members of the New Life Church of Colorado Springs, Colo.

KFAR CHABAD, Israel -- From 6,000 miles away in Brooklyn, followers of a partly paralyzed rabbi who has never been to Israel are financing Jewish opposition to the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement.The Lubavitcher ultra-Orthodox sect is dedicating "big millions" of dollars to the campaign against the agreement providing limited autonomy to Palestinians, according to the head of the group here.They are raising money for the effort partly through full-page advertisements in the New York Times soliciting "tax deductible contributions" to help "thwart this suicidal withdrawal."

WASHINGTON -- Israel's critics, who are legion and live in safe neighborhoods, say Israel is being provocative. Actually, Israel's being is provocative.On one day Palestinian violence is said to have been provoked by the opening of a tunnel. On another day the provocation is said to be the beginning of construction of apartments.But the real reasons for the violence are: Violence has always been part of the warp and woof of Yasser Arafat's politics (remember, he once wore a pistol to the U.N. podium)