Today's Stories

October 7, 2008

Patrick Cockburn
Obama and McCain's Goofy Afghan Bluster

Gary Leupp
Seven Years in Afghanistan:
From "War on Terror" to
"War of Terror"

Uri Avnery
Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

P. Sainath
Of Banker Bailouts, Public Sells Outs and Media Cop Outs

Peter Morici
The Dow Tanks as Bank Bailout Fails to Restore Confidence

Conn Hallinan
The Great Game in the Caucasus:
Bad Moves by Uncle Sam

Martha Rosenberg
Training America's Youth
Today a Pheasant, Tomorrow Osama

Binoy Kampmark
Let's Talk About Extinction:
CERN and Halo

October 6, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
A Futile Bailout as Darkness Falls on America

Mike Whitney
Still on the Edge of the Abyss

Tariq Ali
Goodbye to Grosvenor Square

Emily Horowitz
How People Tell Cops They're Guilty Even When They Aren't

Michael Hudson
What Did Jesus Say?
A Christian Perspective on the Paulson Bank Bailout

Ron Jacobs
Winter Soldiers and Washington's Wars

October 3 - 5, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
CounterPunch Diary
Creatures of Capital

Paul Craig Roberts
Why Paulson's Plan is a Fraud

Dave Lindorff
The Rebellion That Failed

Saul Landau
The Chutzpah of Hank Paulson

Jonathan Cook
The Souring of a West Bank Romance: Israel's Army and Settlers Fall Out

Andy Worthington
The Dark Heart of the Guantánamo Trials

Dave Marsh
Bono (Himself) Challenges Me to a Debate

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Using the IAEA to Spy on Iran

John Ross
Massacre in Morelia

Brian Cloughley
The Unacceptable Face of Capitalism

Wajahat Ali
Dueling Partners: an Interview with Tariq Ali on Pakistan

Robert Schwartz
A Serious Blow to the Rights of U.S. Workers: NLRB Limits Political Strikes

Alan Nasser
FDR's Response to the Plot to Overthrow Him: a Paradigm for Today's Democrats?

David Ker Thomson
The Case for Drunk Driving

David Yearsley
The Musical Patriot
Organ Transplants: An Odyssey to Ithaca

Peter Morici
Gone in 30 Days: U.S. Loses 159,000 Jobs in September

William Blum
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?

William S. Lind
War on Two Fronts: Without Railroads

Michael Donnelly
The Ghost of Gen. McClellan

Thom Rutledge
On Presidential "Rule"

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Science and the 2008 Presidential Elections: a Survey of the Candidates

Dave Lindorff
Calling the Problem Early

Cindy Ellen Hill
Waging a Sustainable Peace?

Paul Krassner
Dying to Get High: the Side Effects of Medical Marijuana

Daniel White
Vietnam's Masterspy

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Absher, Gibbons and Jenkins

Website of the Weekend
How We Lost Glen Canyon: a Legal Chronology

October 2, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
Can a Bailout Succeed?

Joe Bageant
Speaking in the Tongues of Brokers: the Bailout in Plain English

Ralph Nader
Soulmates in Deregulation

Mike Whitney
Why the Bailout Stinks

Madis Senner
When Push Comes to Pull: How a Foreign Banker Invasion Sent the Markets Reeling

Winslow T. Wheeler
Congress as Usual:the Crisis Will Pass, But This Bunch Will Remain the Same

William Blum
A Boy's Game: the Origins of the Financial Crisis

P. Sainath
Wall Street Transforms Presidential Race

Website of the Day
McCain's Meltdown in Des Moines

October 1 , 2008

Glen Ford
The Last Hold Up

Steven Conn
Trashing Sarah Palin: the Boomerang Effect

Alan Maass / Lee Sustar
Why Not a Bailout for the Rest of Us?

Kenneth Couesbouc
The Blame Game: When Wall Street Pigs Sprout Wings

Stan Goff
How the Republicans Can Win (And Deserve It)

Adolfo Gilly
Racism, Domination and Bolivia

Rannie Amiri
Bombs in the Levant

Ismael Hossein-Zadeh
The Recurring Myth of Peak Oil

Adam W. Parsons
Food and Markets

Dave Lindorff
Bums' Rush to the Bailout: Where are the Hearings?

Douglas Valentine
The Bush Continuity Plan?

Adrien Rain Burke
The Party's Over: an Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

Website of the Day
Sarah Palin's Beauty Pageant

September 30, 2008

Pam Martens
What Wall Street Hoped to Win

Chris Floyd
The Shadow of the Pitchfork: Elite Panic on Wall Street

Stephen Martin
A Biological Walk Down Wall Street

Deepak Tripathi
A Bitter Harvest in Afghanistan

Mark Engler
Bad Money

Jonathan Cook
The Attack on Zeev Sternhell: Has Israel Become a Breeding Ground for Jewish Settler Terrorism?

Dave Lindorff
The Power of No

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Time for a General Strike?

Ahmad Faruqui
In Cold Blood: Buried Alive in Pakistan

John Chuckman
Will the Bride Wear White? As Rome Burns, Bristol Palin Prepares to Tie the Knot with Mr. "Sex on Skates"

David Macaray
Blaming the Labor Unions

Fatemeh Keshavarz
What Obama Could Have Said

Website of the Day
538: a Cognitive Map of American Politics

September 29, 2008

Mike Whitney
Black Monday

Jeff Gibbs
"Just Say No!" to Reverse Robin Hood

Paul Craig Roberts
Why America Should Listen to Ahmadinejad

Peter Morici
The Bailout and the Economy

Tim Wise
Racism as Reflex

John Walsh
Sarah Palin is a Rotten Mom

Uri Avnery
Israeli Fascism: Yes, It Can Happen Here

Alan Farago
Hell to Pay: the Financial Collapse and the Housing Market

Andy Worthington
Is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Running the 9/11 Trials?

David Michael Green
Where's the Repudiation?

Carl Finamore
Capitalism on Steroids; Labor on Tranquilizers

Iris Keltz
Postcards from the DNC

Bill Hatch
Take This Shrimp Slayer!

Website of the Day
Tina Fey as Palin, Round Two

September 27 / 28, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
How McCain Blew It

Linn Washington, Jr.
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship

Christopher Ketcham
An Israeli Trojan Horse

Mike Whitney
The People vs. the Banksters

Kevin Alexander Gray Race in the Race: Is Obama Shining Us On?

Anthony DiMaggio
The Unspoken War: Pakistan, the Media and Nuclear Weapons

Mary Lynn Cramer
Their Assets; Our Debts: How Economic Crises Are Overcome

Marc Levy /
Susan Erony
War Jokes Wanted: No Laughing Matter

Stan Cox
Livestock of Mass Destruction: Germ Labs in the Heartland

Saul Landau
Election Drizzle

Ali Khan
Meltdown in American Markets: an Islamic Perspective

David Rosen
The Great Fear: the Sexual Politics of Sarah Palin

Todd Alan Price
Bailing Out the Foes of Public Eduction

Matts Svensson
The Red and White Bird in Gaza

Ron Jacobs
Pakistan Through the Eyes of a Native Son

Robert Fantina
McCain and the Economy

Richard Rhames
Hank-ering for a Bailout

David Krieger
The U.S.-India Nuclear Proliferation Deal

Seth Sandronsky
Rethinking Charter Schools

Charles R. Larson
Dear Mrs. Abacha: a Nigerian Email Romance

Kim Nicolini
Sadism in the Desert

Poets' Basement
La Morticella, Holt, Moser and Buknatski

Website of the Day
The Great Schlep

September 26, 2008

Moshe Adler
Bailing Out Wall Street Won't Save Main Street

Bill Quigley
The U.S. War on Unarmed Working Mothers

Jonathan Cook
When Archaeology Becomes a Curse

Manuel Garcia, Jr.
Visions of Pinpoint Control: the Romance of Laser Weapons

Madis Senner
Why the Bailout will Fail

Brian Cloughley
US Raids in Pakistan: Violations of Sovereignty

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Oh, Henry!

Joanne Mariner
Passport Fraud and Torture

Dan La Botz
The Financial Crisis: a View from the Left

David Macaray
Ralph's Management Indicted by Federal Grand Jury

Website of the Day
Nader and Obama Girl at the Office

September 25, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Insanity of the $700 Billion Giveaway

Sharon Smith
Democrats and Corporate Bailouts

Ralph Nader
Who Will Show Some Backbone Against the Bailout?

Christopher Ketcham
The Economy of Dead Sperm (or What I Learned From My Race-Car Grandpa Who Had No Bankers)

Eric Toussaint
Is Another Third World Debt Crisis in the Offing?

Robert Weissman
Getting Wall Street Pay Reform Right

David Estabrook
A Better Bailout Plan

Nikolas Kozloff
The Voyage of the SS Peter the Great

Steve Early
The High Price of Purple Dissent

Judith Scherr
Blue Helmets in Haiti

Laray Polk
South Ossetia and Abkhazia: Notes from the Inside

Website of the Day
Letterman Spanks McCain

September 24, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
The Bitter Fruits of Deregulation

Nikolas Kozloff
Palin at the UN: a Tutorial from Uribe

Robert Weissman
The Financial Crisis: How and Why Congress Should Play for Time

Andy Worthington
The Guantánamo Trials: Govt. Says Six Years Not Long Enough to Prepare Evidence

Steve Conn
Will Nader's Warning be Acknowledged in the Presidential Debates?

Karyn Strickler
The $700,000,000,000 Power Punch

Diane Farsetta
Stealth Marketers Gone Wild

Dennis Loo
Poisoned Legacy

John Halle
Wealth Tax Now!

Khalil Nakhleh
Palestinians Under the Occupation

Website of the Day
Nader: Debate Crasher

September 23, 2008

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr.
Bail Out on This Bailout

Michael Hudson
Henry Paulson and the New Yazoo Land Scandal

Tariq Ali
Why was the Marriott Targeted?

Patrick Dyer
A Death Row Visit with Troy A. Davis

Franklin Lamb
Hezbollah and the Palestinians

Joshua Frank
Oppose Barack Obama? How Dare Thee!

Alan Farago
Pushing the Referees: How the Financial Crisis Occurred

Dave Lindorff
The Bailout Will Kill the Dollar

Tanya M. Kerssen /
Roger Burbach
Bolivia's Popular Upheaval

Harvey Wasserman
Nuclear Power Liabilities Dwarf Bush's Wall Street Bailout

Website of the Day
Hammered by the Irish: the Video

September 22, 2008

Michael Hudson
The Paulson-Bernanke Bank Bailout Plan: Will the Cure be Worse Than the Crisis?

Mike Whitney
Mushroom Clouds Over Wall Street

Christopher Ketcham
Let It Collapse!

Ron Jacobs
The Predators' Bailout

Anne-Marie McManus
Lost in the Rhetoric of Crisis

Robert Weitzel
The Twin Terrors of the Holy Land: a Sexy Fundamentalist and a White-Haired Zionist

Wajahat Ali
An Interview with Howard Dean

John Ross
A New Cold War Comes to Latin America

Steve Breyman
Does the U.S. Really Need Cluster Bombs?

Patrick Bond
On the Bellies of the Filth

Uri Avnery
Fly, Tzipora, Fly

Carl J. Mayer
An Open Letter to Michael Moore (AKA God's Pen Pal): Whatever Happened to Voting Your Conscience?

Website of the Day
Stop the Execution of Troy Anthony Davis

September 20 / 21, 2008

Alexander Cockburn
Is This the Stake Through Neoliberalism's Heart?

Michael Hudson
America's Own Kleptocracy

Pam Martens
The Wall Street Model: Unintelligent Design

Lila Rajiva
Putting Lipstick on an AIG

Mike Whitney
Full-Spectrum Breakdown

Richard Rhames
A Bailout to Nowhere

Bill Moyers /
Michael Winship
The NY Yankees and the U.S. Economy

Bill and Kathleen Christison
The Making of Recent U.S. Middle East Policies: a New Study of Neocon Influence

Susan Block
Palin as Venus in Furs: the Dominatrix Politics of Drilling and Killing

Robert Fantina
Republicans and Subpoenas: Never the Twain Shall Meet

Heidi Walters
Hung Up on Route 36: an 18-Wheeler and a Nuclear Cask

David Yearsley
Germany's Lost Organs: When Bigger Was Better

Raymond J. Lawrence
The Politics of Tribulation: Sarah Palin and the Rapture

David Rosen
One Billion Pills Later: Viagra at 10

David Michael Green
Living in Sarah Palin's America

Anthony Papa
Imprisoned Voters and the Elections

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Freddie, Fannie, Daddy, Nanny

Howard Lisnoff
When We Notice the Homeless

John Goekler
Leaving Every Child Behind

Missy Beattie
Impalement

Dave Zirin
Leave Josh Howard Alone

Charles R. Larson
Holden Caulfield, Rest in Peace

Tim Matson
Too Big for His Birches: Woodlot Economics

Susie Day
Attack of the Angry Fetus

Poets' Basement
Corseri, Gibbons, Jenkins and Ford

Website of the Weekend
Dylan & Baez: Deportees

September 19, 2008

Steven T. Banko
McCain's Passion Play

Mike Whitney
The Point of No Return

Michael Hudson
The Dow Jones' Wonderfully Cheesy Addition

William Kaufman
Shattering the Glass-Steagall Act: the Bi-Partisan Origins of the Financial Crisis

Brenda Norrell
The Fall of Lehman Bros.: Blowback for Black Mesa?

Keeanga-Yamatta Taylor
The New Rhetoric of Racism: Why Won't Obama Call It Out?

Clifton Ross
Bolivia: Cleaning Up the Bull Ring

Dave Lindorff
Hang On to Your Wallets: the Government's About to Rescue Us!

Cynthia McKinney
Seize the Time!

Susan Hurlich
Storm Survivors: a Dispatch from Cuba

Michael Donnelly
Let's Hand It All Over to the Democrats (They Helped Create This Mess)

Website of the Day
The Crisis Explained

September 18, 2008

Benjamin Dangl
The Machine Gun and the Meeting Table

Harvey Wasserman
The Senate's Drill, Drill, Drill Scam

Susan Abulhawa
The Lobby Has Spoken: Biden and Israel

Robert Weissman
After the Fall: the Financial Re-Regulatory Agenda

Anne-Marie McManus
McCain's Cinderella: the Fetishization of Sarah Palin

Corey D. B. Walker
The Poverty of 21st Century Progressivism

William S. Lind
Senator O'Bush: Why Obama is Wrong on Iran and Afghanistan

Ron Jacobs
Washington's False Logic of Torture

Dave Lindorff
American and China: Joined at the Hip

Binoy Kampmark
How Damien Hirst Got Away With It

Website of the Day
An Invisible Army

September 17, 2008

Stephen Conn
Palin and the Politics of Big Oil

Forrest Hylton
Reactionary Rampage in Bolivia

Patrick Cockburn
Petraeus Leaves Iraq

Gregory Elich
Inside North Korea

Ralph Nader
How the U.S. Auto Industry Wrecked Itself

Franklin Lamb
The Palestinians of Shabra-Shatila

Pam Martens
The Gang's All Here: Bush, McCain and the Old Iran/Contra Team

Dave Lindorff
The End of the Blue Chip Economy

Peter Morici
The Damage Deepens

Stanley Heller
The Killing of Count Folke Bernadotte

Douglas Valentine
Rambling David Foster Wallace

Website of the Day
Free Cindy McCain!

September 16, 2008

Paul Craig Roberts
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling from Direct Hits

Tiphaine Dickson
Citizen Palin: Why Sarah Palin Quoted Westbrook Pegler

Stan Goff
America is Now Rome: an Open Letter to Christian Troops in Iraq and Afghanistan

Uri Avnery
Tzipi's Choice

Michael Winship
Lipstick on Polar Bears

Jeff Halper
Warehousing Palestinians

Patrick Irelan
Bolivia Versus the Empire

Oscar Gonzalez
Who's Dumber? Ike's Refugees or Wall Street's?

Binoy Kampmark
Cheney and His Records

Fatemeh Keshavarz
Muslims are at Peace with You

Sen. Russ Feingold
Restoring the Rule of Law

Website of the Day
The Next Great Rock Band?

September 15, 2008

Mike Whitney
The Tumbrils Roll at Dawn

Peter Morici
Toxic Lehman

Patrick Cockburn
Take Another Look at the Surge

Charles R. Larson
The Maverick Has No Clothes

Jonathan Cook
The Expulsion of Palestinians from Jaffa

Nikolas Kozloff
Racist Rhetoric in Bolivia

Roger Burbach
Morales Confronts the Insurrection: Bolivia and the Echoes of Allende

Helen Redmond
Where's the Health Care Bailout?

David Michael Green
The Democrats Do Poland

David Macaray
The Boeing Strike

Ralph Nader
Remembering Peter Camejo

Website of the Day
The Ballad of Sarah Palin

October 7, 2008

Olmert's Final Divorce
From "All of Eretz Israel"

By URI AVNERY

In colloquial Israeli Hebrew, when someone discovers something that everybody else already knows, we say: "Good morning, Elijahu!"

Why Elijahu? I don't know. Now one could say: "Good morning, Ehud!"

That's what I said to myself when I read the sensational interview that Ehud Olmert gave this week, on the eve of the Jewish New Year, to the newspaper "Yediot Aharonot".

AT THE end of his political career, after resigning from the prime ministership, while waiting for Tzipi Livni to set up a new government, he said some astounding things - not astounding in themselves, but certainly when they come from his mouth.

For those who missed it, here is what he said:

*  "We must reach an agreement with the Palestinians, the essence of which is that we shall actually withdraw from almost all the territories, if not from all the territories. We shall keep in our hands a percentage of these territories, but we shall be compelled to give the Palestinians a similar percentage, because without that there will be no peace."

*  "… including Jerusalem. With special solutions, that I can visualize, for the Temple Mount and the historical holy places  … Anyone who wants to keep all the territory of the city will have to put 270 thousand Arabs behind fences within sovereign Israel. That won't work."

*  "I was the first who wanted to impose Israeli sovereignty on all the city. I admit … I was not ready to look into all the depths of reality."

*  "Concerning Syria, what we need first of all is a decision. I wonder if there is one single serious person in Israel who believes it is possible to make peace with Syria without giving up the Golan Heights in the end."

*  "The aim is to try and fix for the first time a precise border between us and the Palestinians, a border that all the world [will recognize]."

*  "Let's assume that in the next year or two a regional war will break out and we shall have a military confrontation with Syria. I have no doubt that we shall smite them hip and thigh [an allusion to Judges 15:8] … [But] what will happen when we win? … Why go to war with the Syrians in order to achieve what we can get anyway without paying such a high price?"

*  "What was the greatness of Menachem Begin? [He] sent Dayan to meet with Tohami [Sadat's emissary] in Morocco, before he even met Sadat … and Dayan told Tohami, on behalf of Begin, that we were prepared to withdraw from all of Sinai."

*  "Arik Sharon, Bibi Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and Rabin, his memory be blessed …each one of them took a step that led us in the right direction, but at some point in time, at some crossroads, when a decision was needed, the decision did not come."

*  "A few days ago I sat in a discussion with the key people in the decision-making process. At the end [I told them]: listening to you, I understand why we have not made peace with the Palestinians and the Syrians during the last 40 years."

*  " We can perhaps take a historic step in our relations with the Palestinians, and a historic step in our relations with the Syrians. In both cases the decision we must make is the decision we have refused to face with open eyes for 40 years."

*  " When you sit on this chair you must ask yourself: where do you direct the effort? To make peace or just to be stronger and stronger and stronger in order to win the war … Our power is great enough to face any danger. Now we must try and see how to use this infrastructure of power in order to make peace and not to win wars."

*  "Iran is a very great power … The assumption that America and Russia and China and Britain and Germany do not know how to handle the Iranians, and we Israelis know and we shall do so, is an example of the loss of all sense of proportion."

*  "I read the statements of our ex-generals and I say: how can it be that they have learned nothing and forgotten nothing?"

My first reaction, as I said, was: Good morning, Ehud.

I am reminded of my late friend, the poet who went by the name of Yebi. Some 32 years ago, after dozens of Arab Israeli citizens were killed demonstrating against the expropriation of their lands, he came to me in utter turmoil and exclaimed: we must do something. So we decided to lay wreaths on the graves of the killed. There were three of us: Yebi, I and the painter Dan Kedar, who died last week. The gesture aroused a storm of hatred against us, the like of which I have not experienced before or since.

Since then, whenever someone in Israel said something in favor of peace, Yebi would burst out: "Where was he when we laid the wreaths?"

That is a natural question, but really quite irrelevant. Olmert, who fought all his life against our views, is apparently adopting them now. That is the main thing. Not "Good morning, Ehud" but "Welcome, Ehud".

True, we said this 40 years ago. But we were not an incumbent Prime Minister.

True, too, that these things were said and spelled out in detail by many good people, like those who wrote the Gush Shalom Draft Peace Treaty, the Nusseibeh-Ayalon document or the Geneva initiative. But none of them was an incumbent Prime Minister.

And that is the main thing.

IT SHOULD not be forgotten: In the period in which these ideas were crystallizing in Olmert's mind, he was allowing the settlements to expand, especially in East Jerusalem.

That gives rise to an unavoidable question: Does he really mean what he says? Isn't he cheating, as is his wont? Isn't this some sort of manipulation, as usual?

This time I tend to believe him. One can say: the words sound truthful. Not only the words themselves are important, but also the music. The whole thing sounds like the political testament of a person who is resigned to the end of his political career. It has a philosophical ring - the confession of a person who has spent two and a half years in the highest decision-making office in the land, has absorbed the lessons and drawn conclusions.

One can ask: Why do such people reach their conclusions only on finishing their term of office, when they can no longer do much about the wise things they are proposing? Why did Bill Clinton come to formulate his proposals for Israeli-Palestinian peace during his last days in office, after wasting eight years on irresponsible games in this arena? And why, for that matter, did Lyndon Johnson admit that the Vietnam War has been a terrible mistake right from the beginning only after he himself had brought about the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans and millions of Vietnamese?

The superficial answer lies in the character of political life. A Prime Minister rushes from problem to problem, from crisis to crisis. He is exposed to temptations and pressures from the outside and stress from the inside, coalition squabbling and inner-party intrigues. He has neither the time nor the detachment to draw conclusions.

The two and a half years of Olmert's term were full of crises, from the Second Lebanon War, for which he was responsible, to the corruption investigations which dogged him throughout. Only now has he got the time, and perhaps the philosophical composure, to draw conclusions.

That is the importance of this interview: the speaker is a person who stood for two and a half years at the center of national and international decision making, a person who was exposed to the pressures and the calculations, who had personal contact with the leaders of the world and of the Palestinians. A normal person, not brilliant, not a profound thinker by any means, a man of political practice, who "saw things from there that cannot be seen from here".

He has delivered a kind of State of the Nation report to the public, a summary of the reality of Israel after 60 years of the state and 120 years of the Zionist enterprise.

ONE CAN point out the huge gaps in this summary. There is no criticism of Zionist policy over five generations - but that is something that one cannot really expect from him. There is no empathy with the feelings, the aspirations and the traumas of the Palestinian people. There is no mention of the refugee problem (it is known that he is ready to take back just a few thousand in the framework of "family reunion"). There is no admission of guilt for the disastrous enlargement of the settlements. And the list is long.

The primitive basis of his world view has not changed. That is made clear by the following amazing statement: "Every grain of the area from the Jordan to the sea that we will give up will burn our hearts … When we dig in these areas, what do we find? Speeches by Arafat's grandfather, or Arafat's great great great grandfather? We find there the historical memories of the people of Israel!"

That is utter nonsense. It is totally unsupported by historical and archeological research. The man is just repeating things he picked up in his early youth, he is simply expressing his gut feelings. Anyone sticking to this ideology will find it hard to dismantle settlements and make peace.

All the same, what is in this testament?

It is an unequivocal and final divorce from "All of Eretz Israel" from a person who grew up in a home over which hovered the Irgun emblem: the map of Eretz Israel on both sides of the Jordan. For him, the Irgun slogan "Only Thus" has turned into "Anything But Thus".

It gives unequivocal support to the partition of the country. This time, his adherence to the principle of "Two States for Two Peoples" appears much more genuine, not lip service or sleight of hand. His demand for "fixing the final borders of the State of Israel" represents a revolution in Zionist thought.

Olmert has already said in the past that the State of Israel is "finished" if it does not agree to partition, because of the "demographic danger". This time he does not invoke that demon. Now he speaks as an Israeli who is thinking about the future of Israel as a progressive, constructive, peaceful state.

All this is put forward not as a vision for the remote future, but as a plan for the present. He demands that a decision be taken now. It almost sounds like: Let me continue for another few months, and I shall do it. The unstated assumption is that the Palestinians are ready for this historic turning point.

And he has fixed an Israeli position from which there can be no going back in any future negotiations.

This is the testament of the Prime Minister, and it is obviously intended for the next Prime Minister.

We don't know whether Tzipi Livni is ready to implement such a plan, or what she thinks about this testament. True, she has lately voiced rather similar ideas, but she is now entering the cauldron of the Prime Minister's office. One cannot know what she will do.

I wish her one thing above all: that at the end of her days as Prime Minister she will not have to sit down and give an interview, in which she, too, will apologize for missing the historic opportunity for making peace.  

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He is a contributor to CounterPunch's book The Politics of Anti-Semitism.

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