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Prepared for the
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in association with the Fairness Project by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
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To contact the Presidents Conference: [email protected]
In-Depth Issue:
How Knesset Seats are Decided
The electoral threshold for a party to enter the Knesset is 1.5% of the national vote, estimated at 51,000.
What Next?
Election results will be published in the official gazette on Feb. 5, 2003, eight days after the elections.
What It Means
This is the first time since 1981 that a prime minister who called for early elections will actually win them.
56 Female Candidates Up for Election in Israel - Peroshni Govender (Women's News)
Of the 17 women currently in government, six representatives are in the Labor party. Meretz follows with four. Likud has three, and Hadash, Shinui, Center, and Yisrael b'Aliyah each have one woman Knesset member.
Useful Reference:
The New Members of the Knesset
Hunt for 1,200 Britons Who Trained with al Qaeda - David Bamber (Telegraph-UK)
3/4 of Israelis Killed in 2002 were Civilians - Felix Frisch (Yediot Ahronot)
Palestinian Killed by Homemade Grenade at Funeral - Jamie Tarabay (AP/Miami Herald)
Israel at the Polls - 2003:
The 16 Tribes of Israel (Reuters)
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Israeli Election Update - First Exit Polls
According to exit polls announced by Israel TV Channel 1 for elections to the 16th Knesset, the leading parties are Likud - 36 seats, Labor - 18, and Shinui - 14. The Center-Right camp parties will receive 47 seats, the Center-Left Camp 23, the religious parties 23, other centrist parties 17, and Arab parties 10. According to exit polls announced by Israel TV Channel 2, the results are Likud - 32 seats, Labor - 19, and Shinui - 17. The Center-Right camp parties will receive 45 seats, the Center-Left Camp 26, the religious parties 19, other centrist parties 20, and Arab parties 10.
Election Commentary:
The elections embody all that Israel stands for - an active participation in the democratic process, transparency in political affairs, equality of its citizens, and freedom of speech. These elections illustrate Israel's will to continue to thrive as a democracy, even in the face of such haunting terror. (Boston Globe) Sharon is the consummate survivor. Asked about the times when he was written off as a spent force in Israel's political life, he replied, "They buried me too soon, or maybe not deep enough!" Heading into Tuesday's parliamentary elections, he has marshaled the solid support of the electorate, including many people who never thought they would cast a ballot for him. The prevailing sentiment is that without him, things would have been worse. (Los Angeles Times) Labor Party chairman Amram Mitzna is expected to refuse his critics' calls to quit the Labor chairmanship and unequivocally rule out bringing Labor into the coalition. Without support from Labor, Sharon intends to form a narrow government at first, and then hope Labor will join the coalition later on, when the Iraq war is under way. Sharon's advisers said the prime minister intends to shun his natural allies, Shas and the National Union, and turn first to Labor and Shinui. Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert, talking on Sharon's behalf, reportedly told Shinui leader Yosef (Tommy) Lapid that if Shinui receives the double-digit mandates predicted for the party, it will have a new responsibility as a large party to enter the government and impact its policies. Lapid is said to be interested in the Justice portfolio. (Jerusalem Post) The leader of Israel's Shinui Party, Tommy Lapid, predicted Monday that Labor would renege on its promise to stay out of a coalition with the ruling party, Likud, after Tuesday's elections, which would pave the way for him to assume a ministerial role in the coalition. (Independent-UK)
News Resources - North America and Europe:
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix gave a broadly negative report Monday on Iraq's cooperation with two months of inspections, providing support to the Bush administration's campaign to disarm Iraq by force if necessary. "Iraq appears not to have come to genuine acceptance - not even today - of the disarmament which was demanded of it and which it needs to carry out to win the confidence of the world and live in peace," Mr. Blix said. (New York Times) Full text of Blix Report to UN (Washington Post) No More Last Chances - Editorial Mr. Blix went on to present, in a deliberately understated way, a devastating catalogue of lies, omissions and obfuscations by Iraq in the 2 1/2 months since the council passed Resolution 1441. Rather than offer Iraq yet another last chance, the council would do better to simply obey the resolution it approved unanimously just 11 weeks ago. The terms of 1441 said that if Iraq submitted a false declaration of its weapons - as all agree it did on Dec. 8 - and failed "at any time" to "cooperate fully" - Mr. Blix detailed a number of instances - Baghdad would be in "material breach" of the resolution. (Washington Post) Britain Says Iraq in "Material Breach" of UN Speaking one day after chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix's report to the Security Council, Britain's Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Tuesday Iraq was in "material breach" of UN disarmament demands. (Reuters/Washington Post) The Bush administration has assembled what it believes to be significant intelligence showing that Iraq has been actively moving and concealing banned weapons systems and related equipment from UN inspectors, according to informed sources. President Bush and his national security advisers have decided to declassify some of the information and make it public, perhaps as early as next week. (Washington Post) U.S. and coalition forces are fighting a pitched battle against a group of 80 rebel forces aligned to renegade leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in the largest-scale fighting since Operation Anaconda nine months ago, the U.S. military said Tuesday. At least 18 rebel fighters were killed, and there were no coalition casualties, the military said. U.S. military spokesman Roger King said from Bagram Air Base that American war planes attacked enemy positions, some entrenched in deep caves, with B-1 bombers, F-16s, and AC-130 gunships. (AP/New York Times) The U.S. will provide Jordan with a Patriot anti-missile defense system and U.S. troops to operate it in the event of war in the region, an American government official said. "A number of Patriot missiles missed their targets in 1991 and caused significant damage in Israeli urban areas," said Mouin Rabbani, a Middle East analyst in Jordan. "It would therefore technically make sense to locate them in the relatively unpopulated deserts of eastern Jordan instead." (Financial Times-UK) Palestinian factions wound up their talks in Cairo without agreeing to a cease-fire. Reports said the representatives were working on a joint formula for their continued activities. (Ha'aretz) Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef announced Monday that he has changed his mind on trading land for peace, declaring that the Oslo Accords are null and void and transferring territory to the Arabs is forbidden, because it would endanger Israeli lives. Yosef's dictate reversed an earlier halachic ruling allowing territorial compromise if it would save lives. He said the earlier ruling was outdated, given the current violence. (Jerusalem Post) Two senior Hamas militants and a 15-year-old girl were killed and 9 were wounded in an explosion in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza Monday night. Palestinian security sources reported that the explosion was due to a "work accident" in the preparation of explosives. The IDF denied reports that it had attacked the building with missiles. In an unusual step, Palestinian police and armed Hamas activists kept people away from the destroyed house, and prevented reporters from entering the hospital where the casualties were taken. (Maariv) The Israeli Embassy in London has sent a strongly worded letter of protest to The Independent, following an editorial cartoon Monday by Dave Brown, depicting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon biting the flesh of a Palestinian baby. The background shows Apache attack helicopters sending missiles with the message "Vote Likud." Shuli Davidovich, the embassy's press secretary, responded: "The blood-thirsty imagery not only misrepresents the real reason for the IDF's operations in Gaza, but also feeds the hostility toward Israel and the Jewish people which lies at the very core of the Arab-Israeli conflict." (Ha'aretz)
Global Commentary and Think-Tank Analysis
(Best of U.S., UK, and Israel):
"Mossad" stands for the Israeli Institution for Intelligence and Special Assignments. Dagan has said the most important issues for the organization are: 1) the gathering of information about the efforts being made by Arab countries to attain unconventional weapons and missile capability; 2) intensified cooperation with parallel intelligence organizations worldwide; 3) a fight against international terrorism, which the research division of Military Intelligence began calling "worldwide Jihad" years ago, even before the attacks of 9/11. (Ha'aretz) Saudi Arabia sits atop one of the world's smallest reserves of water. Yet Saudi Arabia wastes plenty of its scarcest resource: fountains spew, swimming pools slop over, and irrigation sprinklers seem to spray everywhere, letting water evaporate into the dry desert air. Muhammad al-Qunaibet, a hydrologist and government adviser, estimates that the country uses 6.34 trillion gallons of water a year for agriculture, but says that only a third of that is replaced through rainfall. The rest simply disappears. "I've had to lower my pumps 100 meters in the past 10 years," said a local wheat farmer who taps into subterranean reservoirs. In some places, a quart of potable water costs more to produce than a quart of oil. (New York Times)
Palestinian Terrorists Hiding Within the Civilian Population
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