Arafat Leaves Ramallah After 6 Months. His travel ban lifted, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat toured West Bank towns Monday but skipped the devastated Jenin refugee camp, apparently to avoid possible heckling. Also, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered defeat when his party voted overwhelmingly to oppose Palestinian statehood. [AP World News]
Netanyahu Launches Comeback Bid. It was Benjamin Netanyahu's night. [AP World News]
This is a worrying development. As if it weren't enough to have to put up with Sharon's hard-line tendencies and his constant knee-jerk resorting to tit-for-tat, military response, now we may face the prospect of an even more intolerant regime in Israel. Mind you, two things worry me about the second of these reports: (1) that it took a reference to him in the article for me to remember the name of Ehud Barak, Sharon's predecessor, and (2) the reference to Barak's concessionary proposals being rejected by the Palestinians back in late 2000. Maybe I need to do some further research into recent Middle East history.
4:02:15 PM 
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