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Newsletter : 0fax0327.txt
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>JN March 27, 2000, Vol. 8, No. 57
Clinton-Assad Talk is Fruitless
By David Gollust (VOA-Geneva)
President Clinton and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad have completed a day of meetings in Geneva that U.S. officials said produced no narrowing of differences barring the way to a resumption of Israel-Syrian peace talks. But the Clinton administration will continue pressing for a peace accord.
Clinton spent a total of three hours in meetings with Assad at a luxury hotel here and had two telephone conversations during the day with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said the president found the exercise useful in clarifying the positions of the two sides. But he made clear it brought them no closer to a resumption of the U.S. brokered peace talks that broke down in January.
Israel Plans Nuclear Shield to Offset Syrian Invasion Threat
By IsraelWire
According to the March 26th Sunday Times (UK), the Israeli government is considering the placement of nuclear landmines near the Golan Heights following a withdrawal in a peace treaty with Syria.
The Times referred to a secretive plan called "David's Sling," detailing a plan to deploy neutron landmines at the new border following a withdrawal to prevent Syrian tanks from advancing into Israel.
"The military sources say that although the Israeli government will not acknowledge it - Israel does not admit it is a nuclear power - portable, low-yield neutron bombs have been perfected over the past two decades at a factory in the west of the country," states the Times.
Under David's Sling, any Syrian invasion of Israel would be met with neutron weapons that emit an intense burst of radiation, penetrating tanks and killing the soldiers inside.
Neutron bombs differ from conventional nuclear weapons in the greater amount of radiation they emit and lesser damage they cause to buildings and other enemy infrastructure. Experts question the wisdom of a country using nuclear weapons, no matter how small, so close to its own borders, given the risk of contamination.
In a Sunday morning interview on Israel Radio, Deputy Minister of Defense Ephraim Sneh rejected the report calling is "absurd."
Pope Leaves Israel for the Vatican
By Jenny Badner (VOA-Jerusalem)
The visit by Pope John Paul to the Holy Land is being seen by some Israelis as a monumental trip that signifies a new era in Jewish-Christian relations. At the outset, Pope John Paul's pilgrimage was described as a purely religious journey, with spiritual aims for the 79-year-old pontiff.
Israeli cabinet minister, Haim Ramon, who was in charge of the visit, says it remained religious in nature. He says the pope's trip has permanently altered the relationship between Christians and Jews.
"No doubt it was an historical visit to the Holy Land and I believe that this visit brings to an end the era of conflict, the era of dispute and the era of war between Christianity and Judaism. After 2,000 years that these two great monotheistic religions fought against each other and in the Christian case even discriminated, deported, murdered, tortured -- that era is coming to an end and this visit by the pope to the Holy Land is marking the end to this era of conflict."
Some Jewish critics of the Church say they were awaiting an apology from the pope for the behavior of wartime pontiff, Pius XII, who they say remained publicly silent during the Holocaust.
But Ramon says John Paul made great gestures towards reconciliation with Jews during his six-days in Israel and the Palestinian-controlled territories. The pope visited Israel's Holocaust memorial and spoke with great sadness about the 6 million Jews who were murdered during World War 2.
Then, the pontiff visited the holiest site for Jews, the Western Wall of the second temple in Jerusalem. There, he prayed silently, and did as many Jews do when he placed a note to God in a crevice of the wall. The note requested forgiveness for the sins against the Jewish people.
The head of the Government Press Office, Moshe Fogel, took the note placed in the wall by the pontiff, explaining it would be taken to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. The pope himself signed the note, written in English.
Ramon says such an act can only be viewed as positive by Jews in Israel. "When the pope went to the Western Wall, prayed in the holiest place in Judaism in Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel, and he has asked forgiveness from Abraham and his descendants, I think that the Jewish people can not ask more from this great leader John Paul II.
Ramon said he hopes the success of the papal pilgrimage showed critics of Israel that everyone in the Holy Land is free to practice their religion according to their beliefs.
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