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...reverse order, the leaders of Israel's top three political parties appeared on television the night of the Feb. 10 elections and declared victory. This was clever, since none of them had really won. Avigdor Lieberman, whose extreme anti-Arab Yisrael Beitenu party finished third, went on first. His party had surged in the final weeks and would now, he boasted, be "the key" to forming a majority coalition in the 120-seat Knesset. Maybe. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose Likud party finished second, appeared next. He had won, he said, because Likud was the leading right-wing party and conservatives...
...none of the winners really won, the loser - the Israeli left - clearly lost. The traditional liberal parties, Labor and Meretz, were decimated. Their supporters fled to the moderate Livni in the hope of thwarting a Netanyahu victory. After the war in Gaza, the peace movement seemed pointless: the Palestinians were shattered, unable to govern themselves, much less negotiate a peace. It was telling that the best-known figure on the Israeli left was Labor's Ehud Barak, the man who had planned and executed...
...kleptocracy and plunder. In the past 10 years alone, millions have died here, and more die each day as a result of the conflict. Most die not from war wounds but from starvation or disease. A lack of infrastructure means there is little medical care in the cities and none in rural communities, so any infection can be a death sentence. The most vulnerable suffer the worst. One in five children in Congo will die before reaching the age of 5 - and will do so out of sight of the world, in places that camera crews cannot reach, deep...
...choices remain. Will Nkunda, for example, be extradited from Rwanda? Kabila has promised that Rwandan troops will be out of Congo by March, but every day that they stay - and the thrill of Nkunda's capture recedes - it becomes more difficult politically for him to sustain his bold initiative. None of this will be easy...
...series of photo opportunities, summits and declarations culminated in talks between Olmert and Abbas over what Washington termed a "shelf" agreement - that is, something that would be concluded and then shelved for a better day, when the Palestinian security situation would have been resolved to Israel's satisfaction. But none of this substantially altered the realities of the West Bank occupation, leaving Abbas with little to show for his counseling negotiation over confrontation. Abbas was further weakened and marginalized when reality forced Israel to negotiate truces and prisoner swaps with Hamas - precisely because it was Hamas creating the security challenges...