The escalating death toll and violence in the Middle East monopolizes the attention of the international dailies, intent on analyzing the causes of the deterioration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and predicting its future outcome. “Ariel Sharon wants the end of Yasser Arafat”, is the blunt headline in Le Monde of 5/12, which in its inside pages dedicates ample coverage to the question of the Holy Land. “The root cause of the conflict in the Middle East writes Arno Klarsfeld in the French daily is neither Jerusalem nor the extension of the territories destined for the future Palestinian State. The root cause is the refusal of the Arab leaders and Palestinian leaders to accept the State of Israel as a Jewish State”. For peace “to be established between the two nations”, argues the author of the article , “hatred and terrorism need first of all to be renounced as political methods. But do the Arab leaders and the Palestinian Authority have an interest in any such renunciation? A peace with Israel would signify, more or less in the long term, the democratization of the Arab regimes and hence the fall of the dictatorships. It is better, therefore, for the dictators to maintain their populations in the hatred of the Jews and of Israel”. “The demon of hatred”: that’s the title of the editorial signed by Bruno Frappat in La Croix (3/12), which in analyzing the position adopted by the two parties in the conflict comments : “The threat is failure. The blindness of the local players, their eyes fixed on their puny tactics, could be corrected by a wider vision of the powers on whom they depend. How many further deaths will be needed before the American authorities first, and immediately after the Europeans, agree that now is the time to implement an effective mediation? At this point of crystallized hatred, the least delay reveals the non-assistance to peoples in peril”. The “retaliation” of Israel after the stepping up of the Palestinian attacks is discussed by the Herald Tribune (5/12), according to which the offensive taking place in the occupied territories and in the Gaza Strip has seen an intensification of the Israeli military presence and has increased the degree of violence “that now divides the two populations more deeply than ever”. The Bonn Conference on the future of Afghanistan is analyzed in an article by Hartmuth Palmer “ Face saving” in the Spiegel (3/12). The author of the article recalls that Joschka Fischer, German Foreign Minister, in his welcoming address to the delegates, “ had embellished the crude reality; the country could now count on financial support if the conditions dictated by the United Nations were met: money as a quid pro quo for peace“. Indeed, the “ objective of the Conference was precisely that of keeping the rival groups tied to this brutal formula”. In discussing more particularly the role of women at the Conference, Sabine Muscat writing in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) of 30/11 notes that several women participated in the work. What they had in common are “ three points that they would like to see guaranteed in a new constitution; equality of rights in education, on the workplace and in public posts“. “ Question of time” is the comment that the FAZ (4/12) dedicates to the problem of the importation of embryonal stem cells, in favour of which Germany’s national ethical Council has expressed itself: The paper predicts that research on stem cells will, under the pressure of the scientific organizations, “ open the doors to therapeutic cloning.” Now that Maas, SPD politician, has “ broken the taboo by declaring that the law on the protection of the embryo must be changed and therapeutic cloning permitted“, other politicians too continues the author of the article “ can no longer conceal their real ideas. The citizens must know on whom they depend“. “ Discreet as German bankers” is the title of the article by Peter Wensierski that the Spiegel of 3/12 devoted to the assets of Christian institutions in Germany. The findings are the result of a meticulous three-year investigation conducted by the politologist Carsten Frerk (who is about to publish the results in a book: “ Finances and Assets of the Churches in Germany”). The result of this investigation is that “ the overall assets of the Churches are estimated at 981 billion marks: and this makes the Churches the wealthiest enterprises in Germany today“, maintains the author.
