Abir Dandis, the mother of the two girls who were murdered in the Negev town of Al-Fura’a last week, couldn't find a police officer to listen to her warnings, neither in Arad nor in Ma’ale Adumim. Both police stations operate in areas where Israel wants to gather the Bedouin into permanent communities, against their will, in order to clear more land for Jewish communities. The dismissive treatment Dandis received shows how the Bedouin are considered simply to be lawbreakers by their very nature. But as a resident of the West Bank asking for help for her daughters, whose father was Israeli, Dandis faced the legal-bureaucratic maze created by the Oslo Accords.

The Palestinian police is not allowed to arrest Israeli civilians. It must hand suspects over to the Israel Police. The Palestinian police complain that in cases of Israelis suspected of committing crimes against Palestinian residents, the Israel Police tend not to investigate or prosecute them.

In addition, the town of Al-Azaria, where Dandis lives, is in Area B, under Palestinian civilian authority and Israeli security authority. According to the testimony of Palestinian residents, neither the IDF nor the Israel Police has any interest in internal Palestinian crime even though they have both the authority and the obligation to act in Area B.

The Palestinian police are limited in what it can do in Area B. Bringing in reinforcements or carrying weapons in emergency situations requires coordination with, and obtaining permission from, the IDF. If Dandis fears that the man who murdered her daughters is going to attack her as well, she has plenty of reason to fear that she will not receive appropriate, immediate police protection from either the Israelis or the Palestinians.

Dandis told Jack Khoury of Haaretz that the Ma’ale Adumim police referred her to the Palestinian Civil Affairs Coordination and Liaison Committee. Theoretically, this committee (which is subordinate to the Civil Affairs Ministry) is the logical place to go for such matters. Its parallel agency in Israel is the Civilian Liaison Committee (which is part of the Coordination and Liaison Administration - a part of the Civil Administration under the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories).

In their meetings, they are supposed to discuss matters such as settlers’ complaints about the high volume of the loudspeakers at mosques or Palestinians’ complaints about attacks by settlers. But the Palestinians see the Liaison Committee as a place to submit requests for permission to travel to Israel, and get the impression that its clerks do not have much power when faced with their Israeli counterparts. In any case, the coordination process is cumbersome and long.

The Palestinian police has a family welfare unit, and activists in Palestinian women’s organizations say that in recent years, its performance has improved. But, as stated, it has no authority over Israeli civilians and residents. Several non-governmental women’s groups also operate in the West Bank and in East Jerusalem, and women in similar situations approach them for help. The manager of one such organization told Haaretz that Dandis also fell victim to this confusing duplication of procedures and laws. Had Dandis approached her, she said, she would have referred her to Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has expertise in navigating Israel’s laws and authorities.

John Kerry revealed his long-awaited plan for peace in the Middle East on Sunday, hinging on a $4bn (£2.6bn) investment in the Palestinian private sector.

The US secretary of state, speaking at the World Economic Forum on the Jordanian shores of the Dead Sea, told an audience including Israeli president Shimon Peres and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that an independent Palestinian economy is essential to achieving a sustainable peace.

Speaking under the conference banner "Breaking the Impasse", Kerry announced a plan that he promised would be "bigger, bolder and more ambitious" than anything since the Oslo accords, more than 20 years ago.

Tony Blair is to lead a group of private sector leaders in devising a plan to release the Palestinian economy from its dependence on international donors. The initial findings of Blair's taskforce, Kerry boasted, were "stunning", predicting a 50% increase in Palestinian GDP over three years, a cut of two-thirds in unemployment rates and almost double the Palestinian median wage. Currently, 40% of the Palestinian economy is supplied by donor aid.

Kerry assured Abbas that the economic plan was not a substitute for a political solution, which remains the US's "top priority".

Peres, who had taken the stage just minutes before, also issued a personal plea to his Palestinian counterpart to return to the negotiations.

"Let me say to my dear friend President Abbas," Peres said, "Should we really dance around the table? Lets sit together. You'll be surprised how much can be achieved in open, direct and organised meetings."

Thick locks hug the front gates of shuttered shops, now covered in graffiti and dust from lack of use. Only a handful of customers pass along the dimly lit road, sometimes stopping to check the ripeness of fruits and vegetables, or ordering meat in near-empty butcher shops.

“All the shops are closed. I’m the only one open. This used to be the best place,” said 64-year-old Mustafa Sunocret, selling vegetables out of a small storefront in the marketplace near his family’s home in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City.

Amidst the brightly coloured scarves, clothes and carpets, ceramic pottery and religious souvenirs filling the shops of Jerusalem’s historic Old City, Palestinian merchants are struggling to keep their businesses alive.

Faced with worsening health problems, Sunocret told IPS that he cannot work outside of the Old City, even as the cost of maintaining his shop, with high electricity, water and municipal tax bills to pay, weighs on him.

“I only have this shop,” he said. “There is no other work. I’m tired.”

Abed Ajloni, the owner of an antiques shop in the Old City, owes the Jerusalem municipality 250,000 Israeli shekels (68,300 U.S. dollars) in taxes. He told IPS that almost every day, the city’s tax collectors come into the Old City, accompanied by Israeli police and soldiers, to pressure people there to pay.

“It feels like they’re coming again to occupy the city, with the soldiers and police,” Ajloni, who has owned the same shop for 35 years, told IPS. “But where can I go? What can I do? All my life I was in this place.”

He added, “Does Jerusalem belong to us, or to someone else? Who’s responsible for Jerusalem? Who?”

Illegal annexation

Israel occupied East Jerusalem, including the Old City, in 1967. In July 1980, it passed a law stating that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel”. But Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem and subsequent application of Israeli laws over the entire city remain unrecognised by the international community.

Under international law, East Jerusalem is considered occupied territory – along with the West Bank, Gaza Strip and Syrian Golan Heights – and Palestinian residents of the city are protected under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

Jerusalem has historically been the economic, political and cultural centre of life for the entire Palestinian population. But after decades languishing under destructive Israeli policies meant to isolate the city from the rest of the Occupied Territories and a lack of municipal services and investment, East Jerusalem has slipped into a state of poverty and neglect.

“After some 45 years of occupation, Arab Jerusalemites suffer from political and cultural schizophrenia, simultaneously connected with and isolated from their two hinterlands: Ramallah and the West Bank to their east, West Jerusalem and Israel to the west,” the International Crisis Group recently wrote.

Israeli restrictions on planning and building, home demolitions, lack of investment in education and jobs, construction of an eight-foot-high separation barrier between and around Palestinian neighbourhoods and the creation of a permit system to enter Jerusalem have all contributed to the city’s isolation.

Formal Palestinian political groups have also been banned from the city, and between 2001-2009, Israel closed an estimated 26 organisations, including the former Palestinian Liberation Organisation headquarters in Jerusalem, the Orient House and the Jerusalem Chamber of Commerce.

Extreme poverty

Israel’s policies have also led to higher prices for basic goods and services and forced many Palestinian business owners to close shop and move to Ramallah or other Palestinian neighbourhoods on the other side of the wall. Many Palestinian Jerusalemites also prefer to do their shopping in the West Bank, or in West Jerusalem, where prices are lower.

While Palestinians constitute 39 percent of the city’s population today, almost 80 percent of East Jerusalem residents, including 85 percent of children, live below the poverty line.

“How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t control your resources? How could you develop [an] economy if you don’t have any control of your borders?” said Zakaria Odeh, director of the Civic Coalition for Palestinian Rights in Jerusalem, of “this kind of fragmentation, checkpoints, closure”.

“Without freedom of movement of goods and human beings, how could you develop an economy?” he asked.

“You can’t talk about independent economy in Jerusalem or the West Bank or in all of Palestine without a political solution. We don’t have a Palestinian economy; we have economic activities. That’s all we have,” Odeh told IPS.

Israel’s separation barrier alone, according to a new report by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTD), has caused a direct loss of over one billion dollars to Palestinians in Jerusalem, and continues to incur 200 million dollars per year in lost opportunities.

Israel’s severing and control over the Jerusalem-Jericho road – the historical trade route that connected Jerusalem to the rest of the West Bank and Middle East – has also contributed to the city’s economic downturn.

Separation of Jerusalem from West Bank

Before the First Intifada (Arabic for “uprising”) began in the late 1980s, East Jerusalem contributed approximately 14 to 15 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the Occupied Palestinian territories (OPT). By 2000, that number had dropped to less than eight percent; in 2010, the East Jerusalem economy, compared to the rest of the OPT, was estimated at only seven percent.

“Economic separation resulted in the contraction in the relative size of the East Jerusalem economy, its detachment from the remaining OPT and the gradual redirection of East Jerusalem employment towards the Israeli labour market,” the U.N. report found.

Decades ago, Israel adopted a policy to maintain a so-called “demographic balance” in Jerusalem and attempt to limit Palestinian residents of the city to 26.5 percent or less of the total population.

To maintain this composition, Israel built numerous Jewish-Israeli settlements inside and in a ring around Jerusalem and changed the municipal boundaries to encompass Jewish neighbourhoods while excluding Palestinian ones.

It is now estimated that 90,000 Palestinians holding Jerusalem residency rights live on the other side of the separation barrier and must cross through Israeli checkpoints in order to reach Jerusalem for school, medical treatment, work, and other services.

“Israel is using all kinds of tools to push the Palestinians to leave; sometimes they are visible, and sometimes invisible tools,” explained Ziad al-Hammouri, director of the Jerusalem Centre for Social and Economic Rights (JCSER).

Al-Hammouri told IPS that at least 25 percent of the 1,000 Palestinian shops in the Old City were closed in recent years as a result of high municipal taxes and a lack of customers. “Taxation is an invisible tool…as dangerous as revoking ID cards and demolishing houses,” he said. “Israel will use this as pressure and as a tool in the future to confiscate these shops and properties.”

Haim Ramon has been going around for some time with a proposal for power sharing in Jerusalem, and the sky has not fallen. Ostensibly this is quite an amazing phenomenon; there was a time when the vice premier's idea was heard only among the radical left, somewhere between Yesh Gvul and Gush Shalom. This seems to be a turning point of historic proportions.

The great debate over the future of the territories occupied in the Six-Day War always has been based on agreement that Jerusalem should not be divided. "The city that is compact together" has served the religious-national myth considered to be one of the foundation stones of Zionist existence. Ehud Barak broke the sacred taboo when he secretly agreed to power sharing in Jerusalem, but at the last minute lost his nerve and did not dare give the Palestinians sovereignty over the Temple Mount. A vice premier calling openly for the division of the city - this has never happened.

And it was as if he had not spoken. No one quit the cabinet, the coalition did not even crack, no one went out to demonstrate, nary a bumper sticker was printed. That phenomenon requires an explanation.

Israeli rule in East Jerusalem is visible mainly in a wave of construction for Jews, not in the granting of equal rights to the Arab inhabitants, not in providing equal services to the two parts of the city. Former mayor Ehud Olmert initiated the physical division of the city using a giant concrete wall that leaves some 50,000 Arabs on the other side.

Ramon is quite the cynic. But in the saga of Israelis' attitude on Jerusalem, he deserves at least a footnote: It is not important what political calculation he is making - speaking as vice premier he legitimizes the fact that recognition of the fiction called "the unification of Jerusalem" is not worth it and should disappear into the history books, just like apartheid in South Africa, the bloody conflict in Ireland and the Berlin Wall.

The indifference that greeted Ramon's proposal may stem from the fact that in the 30 years he has been in politics, he has not attained the reputation of a statesman leaving his stamp on Jewish history. He will not be the one to determine Jerusalem's future. Of course, Ramon could be doing for Olmert what Olmert did for Ariel Sharon when he spoke about the withdrawal from Gaza as if it were his idea. Either way, how nice it would be if it were possible to know for certain that the Israeli public had learned to relate to East Jerusalem as it related to the settlements in the Gaza Strip.

Unfortunately, the vice premier's proposal most likely passed without a scandal because most Israelis do not believe the Olmert government can make history. Summer passed, then the holidays, and Ramon spoke. So what. There may be nothing that illustrates more the public's disengagement from the government than the apathy with which his proposal was greeted.

This is also the case regarding the apathy surrounding the talks with Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Partition Plan they are theoretically working on the end of the conflict; this is a great thing. But the president of the Palestinians appears to be only a courteous collaborator. Everyone knows that the agreement must be made with Hamas in Gaza. The current move seems like a false display by three lame ducks: George W. Bush, Abbas and Olmert.

Olmert needs the November summit because after November comes December. According to a report not officially confirmed, the Winograd Committee has overcome all legal obstacles and is getting ready to publish its report in December. Real life will begin again, and we will recall what a wonderful summer we had.

FORTY years ago today, on the morning of June 5, 1967, Jordan launched an artillery attack on the Israeli part of Jerusalem. In reaction Israel conquered the Arab sections of the city as well as the West Bank.

History is full of “what ifs,” and responsible historians should not indulge in such speculation. But journalists may. What if Israel hadn’t taken East Jerusalem and the West Bank in the Six-Day War? Would the Palestinian situation have found some solution and Israel be living at least in relative peace with its neighbors? Would Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism have been avoided?

Perhaps. But the alternate history is not as outrageous or inconceivable as one might think. Leading Israeli policy planners had determined six months before the Six-Day War that capturing the West Bank would be bad for the country. Recently declassified Israeli government documents show that according to these policy planners, taking over the West Bank would weaken the relative strength of Israel’s Jewish majority, encourage Palestinian nationalism and ultimately lead to violent resistance.

These comprehensive political and strategic discussions began in November 1966 and concluded in January 1967. The participants were representatives of the Mossad, the Israel Defense Forces’ intelligence branch and the Foreign Ministry. The documents they prepared were approved by Prime Minister Levi Eshkol and the army’s chief of staff, Yitzhak Rabin, and therefore reflect Israel’s strategic thinking six months before the war.

There was general agreement that it would be to Israel’s advantage for King Hussein of Jordan, whose country controlled the West Bank, to remain in power: he had, in effect, accepted Israel’s existence, so Israel naturally had an interest in strengthening his regime.

Hussein was also endeavoring to unify the West Bank with the East Bank and was encouraging West Bank Palestinians to migrate to the east. Over the preceding 15 years, the number of Palestinians who had left the West Bank for the east had reached 200,000. Moreover, approximately 100,000 Palestinians had left Jordan altogether. Hussein’s effort to integrate Palestinians was “a positive phenomenon from Israel’s point of view,” concluded the final position paper that emerged from that winter’s discussions. Hussein was acting to eradicate the Palestinian question, and this was an excellent reason not to take the West Bank away from him.

But when Jordan attacked the Israeli part of Jerusalem on the first day of the conflict, all reason was forgotten. Jordan’s attack obviously called for some kind of retaliation — but striking back at the Jordanian Army did not require the conquest of the West Bank or East Jerusalem.

Records of the Israeli cabinet meeting where the scope of the retaliation was determined are now available. Amazingly they show that not one of the cabinet ministers ever asked why it was in the interest of Israel to control the Arab parts of Jerusalem. Israel was about to take over some of the holiest places in the Christian and the Muslim world, but no analysts were called in to offer the cabinet alternative ideas. No experts on international law were asked to brief the ministers on the legal implications of their pending decision.

The ministers obviously felt there was no need to raise these questions: the answer was as clear as only fantasy can be. Acting under the influence of the age-old dream of return to Zion as well as Israel’s spectacular victory over Egypt’s forces a few hours previously, the ministers decided with their hearts, not their heads, to take East Jerusalem.

Their emotions propelled the Israelis to act against their national interest. It may have been a series of threatening moves taken by Egypt, or it may have been the intoxication of victory, but in view of the results of the war there was indeed no justification for the panic that had preceded it, nor for the euphoria that took hold after it, which is what makes the story of Israel in 1967 so difficult to comprehend.

And of course once taken, East Jerusalem could not be given back. To the present day it remains the major obstacle for a settlement.

I belong to a generation of Israelis who slowly but surely came to believe in peace. We needed to believe in it. The years since the 1967 conflict led us from war to war, and from one mistake to another. When new hopes emerged, they were overcome by disappointments, and then forgotten. Still, we regarded the conquests of 1967 as temporary and were encouraged by the 1979 peace agreement between Israel and Egypt, under which Israel withdrew from Egyptian territory captured in 1967. We believed that peace with the Palestinians would follow.

But peace with the Palestinians has not come one inch closer. As a result more and more Israelis realize today that Israel gained absolutely nothing from the conquest of the Palestinian territories. Speculating again in hindsight — Israel may have been better off giving up the West Bank and East Jerusalem without peace than signing the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan while keeping these territories. Forty years of oppression and Palestinian terrorism, both extremely cruel, have undermined Israel’s Jewish and democratic foundations. With about 400,000 Israelis living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and with extreme Islamism as a driving force among the Palestinians, the conflict has become infinitely more difficult to solve.

Hence young Israelis have good reason to look at my generation and say, “You blew it.” I suppose we did. In contrast to my generation, these young people no longer presume to know what should be done to solve the conflict; indeed they often no longer believe in peace. Many resort to cynical skepticism and fatalistic pessimism.

And yet — less idealistic and more pragmatic than people of my generation — young Israelis may also be more realistic than us. Their immediate challenge is conflict management, rather than futile efforts to formulate grand schemes of ultimate solutions to the conflict. With fewer hopes and lower expectations they just may be able to make life at least somewhat more livable for both Israelis and Palestinians. Given the present circumstances, that would be no small accomplishment.

Tom Segev, a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, is the author, most recently, of “1967: Israel, the War and the Year That Transformed the Middle East.”

One day, MK Gilad Erdan (Likud) came up with an idea for how to punish Arab Knesset members who travel to Beirut and Damascus: declaring that they have "broken faith" with the state and stripping them of their citizenship. The initiative added a patriotic headline to Erdan's collection of press clippings.

Living from headline to headline is obviously not unique to him: That is also the lifestyle of, among others, the Arab MKs who make anti-Zionist declarations in Damascus and Beirut. But some gimmicks are dangerous: Before anyone realizes it, they develop a life of their own and threaten to become reality. That is what happened with Erdan's silly idea: The Ministerial Committee on Legislation adopted it this week.

Currently, the interior minister is authorized to remove someone's citizenship if, inter alia, he "broke faith" with the state. Let it be said to Ophir Pines-Paz's credit that during his tenure as interior minister, he proposed abolishing this ministerial authority. But instead of eliminating it entirely, the ministerial committee is now proposing to transfer it to the courts.

"Breach of faith" will presumably not include, for example, a decision to send the nation into an unnecessary and failed war, or expanding the corrosive occupation of the territories, or governmental corruption in general. Rather, this bill belongs among the plethora of initiatives aimed at effecting a "transfer" of Arabs.

The idea of overt transfer, fruit of the nationalist thought of David Ben-Gurion and the religious racism of Meir Kahane and others, has in recent years given way to pseudo-legitimate initiatives such as Avigdor Lieberman's proposal to draw new borders that would leave many Arab Israelis outside the country. Similarly, there are currently people writing learned working papers that ostensibly deal with ways to change the system of government. But in practice, more than a few of these proposals are aimed at crushing Arab Israelis' electoral strength and their Knesset representatives.

The State of Israel grants citizenship with intolerable ease to anyone whom it defines as a Jew. But in recent years, it has become one of the most benighted countries in the world when it comes to granting citizenship, or even mere residency rights, to people who are not Jewish. In this context, it developed a mechanism for the mass deportation of foreign workers. Not many are aware of this, and few object to it. The withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantlement of the Gush Katif settlements also failed to create a real trauma, and to some degree, it even bolstered the option of a mass expulsion. Similarly, one cannot rule out the possibility that an expulsion of Arab Israelis would pass without widespread opposition - for instance, on the pretext that they had "broken faith" with their country.

Ostensibly, the goal is to deter Arab MKs from political activity in Arab states in violation of the law. The excuse is primarily "security," just as the intifada served as a security excuse for the "temporary order" that prevents citizens of the state from bringing their Palestinian spouses here to live. In practice, the proposed law is liable to turn all Arabs into conditional citizens, after they have already become, in many respects, second-class citizens. Any attempt to formulate an alternative to the Zionist reality is liable to be interpreted as a "breach of faith" and a pretext for stripping them of their citizenship - something that, in the best case, would make them the equivalent of refugees, and in many cases, would be almost like depriving them of life.

Citizenship is a basic human right that should not be taken away, whether it was due to place of birth, inherited or granted by law. It should not be conditional on any kind of ideological loyalty, or even on obeying the law: Murderers and serial rapists, spies and traitors, and terrorists, both Jewish and Arab, should all be punished, but they should not lose their citizenship.

The Justice Ministry is not enthusiastic about Erdan's initiative, but the fact that the ministerial committee is willing to send the matter on to the Knesset for discussion ought to arouse concern. If basic democratic decency does not block this initiative, one can still hope that the ultra-Orthodox will do so: Many of them also do not "keep faith" with Zionist ideology, so the proposed law is liable to turn them into conditional citizens as well.

He embroiled Israel in a superfluous and failed war, and this week threatened to join up with the most Kahanist politician active in Israel since the death of Rehavam Ze'evi. What is happening to us, to our Ehud Olmert? Nothing. Olmert is coming back to himself.

A year and a half ago, it seemed that he stood behind Ariel Sharon's decision to dismantle the settlements in the Gaza Strip. Olmert grew up, they said then; he realized that the territories that Israel captured in the Six-Day War have caused it nothing but damage, and that the continued occupation endangers Israel's future as a Jewish and democratic state. It was not unreasonable; after all, people really do grow up. A lot of good people embraced and welcomed him.

Olmert seemed at the time like a man who could be prime minister. Precisely because he's a professional politician in a business suit, not one of the giants of the founding generation, it appeared that he would be able to manage the conflict with the Palestinians. He promised to dismantle most of the settlements in the West Bank. Many people believed that it was the most daring and promising peace plan since the Six-Day War.

Less than six months after he became prime minister, it has become clear that Olmert was not new, but just a political mirage. Ultimately, Olmert is Olmert is Olmert. Someone will have to explain some time how it was that so many Israelis got caught up in the belief that Olmert offers a new hope. The interim answer is that many Israelis apparently needed the man he pretended to be, and primarily the promise he made: if not an agreement, then at least a unilateral withdrawal to the fence. So much naivete and hypocrisy and self-deception went into this belief, so little readiness and ability to recognize the truth: There is no unilateral agreement.

What has happened since then places the "new Olmert" somewhere alongside the forgotten image of the late Yigael Yadin, perhaps the father of all political disappointments. Yadin taught the public an important lesson, but he, too, has been forgotten for now. "Why didn't you take an interest in knowing who the real Yadin is before you elected me?" he once asked in an interview with Haaretz.

The real Olmert disappeared from sight for only a limited time, but is now returning and being revealed as the person he was since going into politics some 40 years ago. He prefers land to peace, because he doesn't believe in peace with either the Palestinians or the Syrians. He is completely closed off to the terrible humanitarian disaster underway in Gaza, and the horrors of the occupation in the West Bank are continuing as before. There is no basis for expecting Olmert to dismantle the settlements in the West Bank; the more he returns to himself, the more dubious it is that he ever planned to dismantle them. All the signs indicate that he has no intention of dismantling even those settlements classified as illegal outposts.

Olmert is not the first prime minister to miss a chance to make peace with Syria, in exchange for the Golan Heights, but Bashar Assad appears to be the first Syrian president since 1949 to be practically begging for peace. Olmert could have gone down in history as a Menachem Begin, who gave Sinai back to Egypt. Instead, he is reacting to Syria's offers of peace with contempt, loathing and threats: As long as he is prime minister, Israel will not give up the Golan Heights, he declared, and for a moment, it was possible to think that the results of the war in Lebanon assured a glorious victory over Syria. This is the familiar Olmert, the real one.

And the real Olmert is also the man now making nice to Avigdor Lieberman. Lieberman is talking about changing the government, about an inquiry committee, about civil unions; these are respectable issues. But Lieberman is also suggesting that several communities populated by Arabs be left out of the borders of the state, to leave the Jews a "solid majority." He suggests giving up Wadi Ara as part of an agreement to swap land with the Palestinians. Such a deal would revoke the Israeli citizenship of hundreds of thousands of Arabs and force them to become citizens of Palestine. It's taken for granted that their agreement won't be sought. This platform places Lieberman alongside the worst of the extremist right-wing parties active in Europe today.

It is said that talk of Lieberman's joining the government is meant only to frighten the Labor Party and Shas. But what this move shows about the ethical aspect of Olmert's worldview should frighten every decent person. Yes, Lieberman has already served as transportation minister and Rehavam Ze'evi was also part of the government, and in general, who's looking for ethics in politics anyway? But even in politics, there are moments that require society to take a break from its cynicism and recall the basic principles of democracy and human rights. A decent person should not even think about bringing into the government a man who wants to remove from the state one out of every five citizens, just because they are not Jewish. The real Olmert sees in this man a desirable partner.