They also pointed out that these practices affect Palestinians' life as well as all their accommodation, health, education, and employment rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Furthermore, it called for ending all these measures at once, calling on Israel not to impose punitive measures against the Palestinian people as a reply to Hamas victory in the latest parliamentary elections, pointing out that the international law prevents Israel, as an occupation authority, from using collective punishment against Palestinians.

Moreover, the Amnesty asserted that peace and security both for Palestinians and Israelis cannot be achieved unless by respecting human rights, pointing out that violence escalated during the last five years that resulted in the loss of many Palestinians and Israelis as well as huge destruction and suffering which require a genuine and just peace as an urgent need.

The Amnesty called on all Israeli candidates to respect human rights and international law and to work against operations of extra-judicial executions against Palestinians by the IOF as well as the settlers' aggressions against Palestinians and their own properties by bringing perpetrators to justice.

The Amnesty recalled the necessity to put an end to all kinds of punitive measures against Palestinians in the occupied territories that affected the Palestinian economy and forced the Palestinians to depend on international support.

The letter urged the Israeli candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections to be committed to reinforcing protection of basic human rights in their future policies and to carry out the pre-mentioned recommendations if they win in the next elections.

Furthermore, the letter called on them to propose tangible measures to face the past issues of tension and reinforce the possibility of economic, social, and cultural rights, especially in the health, employment, and education sectors concerning the ignored minorities living in Israel such as the Arabs and immigrants who still suffer from the racial discrimination policies against them.

Finally, the Amnesty asserted that Israel must be committed to the internationally recognized rights including important conventions. Therefore, the Israeli candidates should take into consideration these rights in their future economic policy by increasing efforts to prevent all kinds of violence against women.

Step one is to confiscate the land owned by African-Americans, evict them from it and use the land to build massive new subdivisions. Only white Protestant Christians may live in these subdivisions.

Step two is to connect these all-white Protestant Christian settlements to each other by a highway on which African-Americans are forbidden to drive. To facilitate control, the automobile tags for African-Americans will be a different color from the tags issued to white motorists. Checkpoints would be set up all around the state capitol to search and harass African-Americans trying to enter.

Would you support such a plan? Would you hail that mythical governor as a man of peace? Would you go to your church congregation and ask the members to send money to the occupants of these white settlements? Would you lobby the federal government to subsidize this new apartheid state in our midst?

I don't think so. I think most Americans would consider such acts an abomination, un-American and a mockery of everything both Christianity and the United States stand for.

Well, if you would condemn such acts here directed against African-Americans, why won't you condemn identical acts committed against the Palestinians by the state of Israel?

Those settlements you hear about are built on Palestinian land, and they are for Jews only. New roads that Palestinians are forbidden to use connect them. The entire West Bank is riddled with Israeli checkpoints, where innocent Palestinians are daily humiliated and harassed. A trip to a nearby village can mean waiting in line at checkpoints for hours. Palestinians have died in these lines.

After all of these humiliations, abuses, the houses destroyed, the children killed, the olive trees uprooted, how do you think Palestinians feel about Americans who support the Israelis no matter what they do to the Palestinians? Don't take my word about these abuses. Check out the Israeli human-rights organization at www.btselem.org/English.

If you cannot condemn the flagrant abuses of Palestinians by the Israeli government, then you are undoubtedly a bigot, the worst kind of racist pig who believes that Palestinians are some kind of subspecies of the human race. If you do condemn in your heart these terrible abuses, but are afraid to speak out about them, then you are a damned coward.

I listened in disgust to a congressional committee hearing on the Palestinian elections. It was all about what the Palestinians have to do. It was as if the cops, interviewing a child who had been raped by an adult, lectured the child on dressing provocatively and of being in places she should not have been in.

The Palestinians are the victims here. It is their land that is occupied. They have no army. They are at the mercy of the Israeli government. They don't have a superpower protecting them from international sanctions and supplying them with billions of dollars. The United States should be telling Israel to get out of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to dismantle its settlements and checkpoints, and to allow Palestinian refugees to return to or be compensated for the land the Israelis stole.

You want to know why we have a problem with terrorism? It's not Islamic fundamentalists or hatred of freedom. It's our support of Israel's unspeakable abuse of Palestinians. Don't blame Osama bin Laden. Blame the president, Congress, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and all the cowardly Americans who practice hypocrisy by claiming to be moral while supporting gross immorality committed against their fellow human beings in Palestine.

© 2006 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Fatah, which lost elections in January, had wanted Hamas to recognise previous Palestinian agreements with Israel.

Hamas leaders said this would mean accepting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land.

Hamas is expected to present its list of ministers to Mr Abbas on Saturday.

The militant group won 74 seats of the 132 contested in the Palestinian Legislative Council elections in January.

'Greater challenge'

Fatah is the party founded by Yasser Arafat and has dominated Palestinian politics for decades.

BBC Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston says a Hamas-led government without Fatah may make the task of governing an even tougher challenge for the militant group.

Fatah ministers might have taken on responsibilities for dealing with Israel and the West.

The Israelis, the Europeans and the Americans all regard Hamas as a terrorist organisation, and the EU and the US are talking of cutting crucial flows of aid funding if a Hamas-led government refuses to lay down its arms and pursue peace with Israel.

At the same time, our correspondent says, there are many areas of Palestinian life that Hamas regards as being in desperate need of reform.

Carrying out some of that restructuring process might have been a little easier if Fatah were inside the government and co-operating with its programme.

My case provides one small example, thousands of which are repeated every day, of how the Israeli government has exploited the cover of real security concerns to continue to control Gaza, denying Palestinians freedom and trapping them in poverty. Opportunities for progress through Israel's Gaza withdrawal were squandered, and American promises on the Middle East were again shown to be empty.

In November, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice announced an agreement on Gaza's borders that she brokered between the Israeli government and Palestinian Authority by saying, "this agreement is intended to give the Palestinian people freedom to move, to trade, to live ordinary lives." But, as usual, the US government didn't follow up after the press conference.

The agreement specified that bus and truck links between Gaza and the West Bank would open in December and January under Israeli supervision, but in December Israel suspended these plans indefinitely. Bus links or no, Israel denies permission for "security reasons" to Gazans -- like my friend Laila, a journalist, mother, and fellow graduate of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government -- to travel to the West Bank.

Israel also agreed to "permit export of agricultural produce from Gaza and... facilitate its speedy exit and onward movement." Instead, in January during peak harvest, Israel closed Karni, the primary commercial crossing, claiming militants were digging a tunnel in the area. After three weeks and millions of dollars of Palestinian losses, Israel re-opened Karni. No tunnel was ever found. Israel continues to close Karni regularly for "security reasons".

The agreement promised steps towards establishing a seaport and re-opening Gaza's airport. Israel has blocked progress on these fronts.

The single improvement is in movement through the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. Palestinians possessing both passports and ID cards are eligible to cross through the Palestinian and Egyptian managed border. However, Israeli agents watching by video camera can raise "security reservations" about Palestinians or foreigners crossing, as they did in my case. If the PA overrides Israeli reservations, as is their right under the November agreements, Israel attacks them in the media for allowing "terrorists" into Gaza.

Some 50,000 Gaza residents who lack Israeli-approved ID cards cannot travel through Rafah, and Palestinian refugees from around the world must apply to enter Gaza. My friend Laila's husband Yassin grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon and is now completing his medical internship in the United States. Israel could deny his application to visit his wife and two- year-old son in Gaza. A senior Palestinian civil servant says that the assertion that the Palestinians control Rafah crossing is "an illusion".

Israel's Gaza withdrawal provided opportunity to improve Palestinian lives and bolster Palestinian moderates, well before Hamas's elections victory. Instead, the Israeli government maintained Gaza as a prison, and exploited the positive media surrounding the withdrawal to accelerate seizure of Palestinian West Bank land, rendering the creation of a viable Palestinian state impossible.

The failures surrounding the Gaza withdrawal exemplify why Hamas won the recent Palestinians elections. During the 12-year "peace process" illegal Israeli settlements doubled, Israeli military occupation continued and poverty deepened. So Palestinians voted out Fatah, the party that managed the failed peace process.

I stayed in Al-Arish, Egypt, while waiting for the decision on my entry to Gaza. It is 30 miles from Al-Arish to the border with Gaza -- the same distance as the length of the entire Gaza Strip. Looking across the border a few weeks back, the contrast was dramatic. Around 1.4 million Palestinians are trapped in Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated places. Just across the border here in Egypt in the same sized landmass, 230,000 people, some of them Palestinians with family in Gaza, live in relative peace and prosperity.

The conflict here is driven by the imprisonment of a people -- the theft of their land and the denial of their basic rights. Israeli policies, and US complicity, are feeding desperation, and dimming hopes for achieving peace any time soon.

* The author managed humanitarian aid programmes in Gaza, 1995-98, and supported Palestinian non-violent resistance in the West Bank, 2002-05, with the International Solidarity Movement. He was imprisoned and deported from Israel after a peaceful West Bank protest in January 2005.

Instead, the thrust of US policy in the region derives almost entirely from domestic politics, and especially the activities of the 'Israel Lobby'. Other special-interest groups have managed to skew foreign policy, but no lobby has managed to divert it as far from what the national interest would suggest, while simultaneously convincing Americans that US interests and those of the other country – in this case, Israel – are essentially identical.

Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing that given to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct economic and military assistance since 1976, and is the largest recipient in total since World War Two, to the tune of well over $140 billion (in 2004 dollars). Israel receives about $3 billion in direct assistance each year, roughly one-fifth of the foreign aid budget, and worth about $500 a year for every Israeli. This largesse is especially striking since Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to that of South Korea or Spain.

Other recipients get their money in quarterly installments, but Israel receives its entire appropriation at the beginning of each fiscal year and can thus earn interest on it. Most recipients of aid given for military purposes are required to spend all of it in the US, but Israel is allowed to use roughly 25 per cent of its allocation to subsidise its own defence industry. It is the only recipient that does not have to account for how the aid is spent, which makes it virtually impossible to prevent the money from being used for purposes the US opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, the US has provided Israel with nearly $3 billion to develop weapons systems, and given it access to such top-drawer weaponry as Blackhawk helicopters and F-16 jets. Finally, the US gives Israel access to intelligence it denies to its Nato allies and has turned a blind eye to Israel's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Washington also provides Israel with consistent diplomatic support. Since 1982, the US has vetoed 32 Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, more than the total number of vetoes cast by all the other Security Council members. It blocks the efforts of Arab states to put Israel's nuclear arsenal on the IAEA's agenda. The US comes to the rescue in wartime and takes Israel's side when negotiating peace. The Nixon administration protected it from the threat of Soviet intervention and resupplied it during the October War. Washington was deeply involved in the negotiations that ended that war, as well as in the lengthy 'step-by-step' process that followed, just as it played a key role in the negotiations that preceded and followed the 1993 Oslo Accords. In each case there was occasional friction between US and Israeli officials, but the US consistently supported the Israeli position. One American participant at Camp David in 2000 later said: 'Far too often, we functioned . . . as Israel's lawyer.' Finally, the Bush administration's ambition to transform the Middle East is at least partly aimed at improving Israel's strategic situation.

This extraordinary generosity might be understandable if Israel were a vital strategic asset or if there were a compelling moral case for US backing. But neither explanation is convincing. One might argue that Israel was an asset during the Cold War. By serving as America's proxy after 1967, it helped contain Soviet expansion in the region and inflicted humiliating defeats on Soviet clients like Egypt and Syria. It occasionally helped protect other US allies (like King Hussein of Jordan) and its military prowess forced Moscow to spend more on backing its own client states. It also provided useful intelligence about Soviet capabilities.

Backing Israel was not cheap, however, and it complicated America's relations with the Arab world. For example, the decision to give $2.2 billion in emergency military aid during the October War triggered an Opec oil embargo that inflicted considerable damage on Western economies. For all that, Israel's armed forces were not in a position to protect US interests in the region. The US could not, for example, rely on Israel when the Iranian Revolution in 1979 raised concerns about the security of oil supplies, and had to create its own Rapid Deployment Force instead.

The first Gulf War revealed the extent to which Israel was becoming a strategic burden. The US could not use Israeli bases without rupturing the anti-Iraq coalition, and had to divert resources (e.g. Patriot missile batteries) to prevent Tel Aviv doing anything that might harm the alliance against Saddam Hussein. History repeated itself in 2003: although Israel was eager for the US to attack Iraq, Bush could not ask it to help without triggering Arab opposition. So Israel stayed on the sidelines once again.

Beginning in the 1990s, and even more after 9/11, US support has been justified by the claim that both states are threatened by terrorist groups originating in the Arab and Muslim world, and by 'rogue states' that back these groups and seek weapons of mass destruction. This is taken to mean not only that Washington should give Israel a free hand in dealing with the Palestinians and not press it to make concessions until all Palestinian terrorists are imprisoned or dead, but that the US should go after countries like Iran and Syria. Israel is thus seen as a crucial ally in the war on terror, because its enemies are America's enemies. In fact, Israel is a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states.

'Terrorism' is not a single adversary, but a tactic employed by a wide array of political groups. The terrorist organisations that threaten Israel do not threaten the United States, except when it intervenes against them (as in Lebanon in 1982). Moreover, Palestinian terrorism is not random violence directed against Israel or 'the West'; it is largely a response to Israel's prolonged campaign to colonise the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

More important, saying that Israel and the US are united by a shared terrorist threat has the causal relationship backwards: the US has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around. Support for Israel is not the only source of anti-American terrorism, but it is an important one, and it makes winning the war on terror more difficult. There is no question that many al-Qaida leaders, including Osama bin Laden, are motivated by Israel's presence in Jerusalem and the plight of the Palestinians. Unconditional support for Israel makes it easier for extremists to rally popular support and to attract recruits.

As for so-called rogue states in the Middle East, they are not a dire threat to vital US interests, except inasmuch as they are a threat to Israel. Even if these states acquire nuclear weapons – which is obviously undesirable – neither America nor Israel could be blackmailed, because the blackmailer could not carry out the threat without suffering overwhelming retaliation. The danger of a nuclear handover to terrorists is equally remote, because a rogue state could not be sure the transfer would go undetected or that it would not be blamed and punished afterwards. The relationship with Israel actually makes it harder for the US to deal with these states. Israel's nuclear arsenal is one reason some of its neighbours want nuclear weapons, and threatening them with regime change merely increases that desire.

A final reason to question Israel's strategic value is that it does not behave like a loyal ally. Israeli officials frequently ignore US requests and renege on promises (including pledges to stop building settlements and to refrain from 'targeted assassinations' of Palestinian leaders). Israel has provided sensitive military technology to potential rivals like China, in what the State Department inspector-general called 'a systematic and growing pattern of unauthorised transfers'. According to the General Accounting Office, Israel also 'conducts the most aggressive espionage operations against the US of any ally'. In addition to the case of Jonathan Pollard, who gave Israel large quantities of classified material in the early 1980s (which it reportedly passed on to the Soviet Union in return for more exit visas for Soviet Jews), a new controversy erupted in 2004 when it was revealed that a key Pentagon official called Larry Franklin had passed classified information to an Israeli diplomat. Israel is hardly the only country that spies on the US, but its willingness to spy on its principal patron casts further doubt on its strategic value.

Israel's strategic value isn't the only issue. Its backers also argue that it deserves unqualified support because it is weak and surrounded by enemies; it is a democracy; the Jewish people have suffered from past crimes and therefore deserve special treatment; and Israel's conduct has been morally superior to that of its adversaries. On close inspection, none of these arguments is persuasive. There is a strong moral case for supporting Israel's existence, but that is not in jeopardy. Viewed objectively, its past and present conduct offers no moral basis for privileging it over the Palestinians.

Israel is often portrayed as David confronted by Goliath, but the converse is closer to the truth. Contrary to popular belief, the Zionists had larger, better equipped and better led forces during the 1947-49 War of Independence, and the Israel Defence Forces won quick and easy victories against Egypt in 1956 and against Egypt, Jordan and Syria in 1967 – all of this before large-scale US aid began flowing. Today, Israel is the strongest military power in the Middle East. Its conventional forces are far superior to those of its neighbours and it is the only state in the region with nuclear weapons. Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties with it, and Saudi Arabia has offered to do so. Syria has lost its Soviet patron, Iraq has been devastated by three disastrous wars and Iran is hundreds of miles away. The Palestinians barely have an effective police force, let alone an army that could pose a threat to Israel. According to a 2005 assessment by Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Centre for Strategic Studies, 'the strategic balance decidedly favours Israel, which has continued to widen the qualitative gap between its own military capability and deterrence powers and those of its neighbours.' If backing the underdog were a compelling motive, the United States would be supporting Israel's opponents.

That Israel is a fellow democracy surrounded by hostile dictatorships cannot account for the current level of aid: there are many democracies around the world, but none receives the same lavish support. The US has overthrown democratic governments in the past and supported dictators when this was thought to advance its interests – it has good relations with a number of dictatorships today.

Some aspects of Israeli democracy are at odds with core American values. Unlike the US, where people are supposed to enjoy equal rights irrespective of race, religion or ethnicity, Israel was explicitly founded as a Jewish state and citizenship is based on the principle of blood kinship. Given this, it is not surprising that its 1.3 million Arabs are treated as second-class citizens, or that a recent Israeli government commission found that Israel behaves in a 'neglectful and discriminatory' manner towards them. Its democratic status is also undermined by its refusal to grant the Palestinians a viable state of their own or full political rights.

A third justification is the history of Jewish suffering in the Christian West, especially during the Holocaust. Because Jews were persecuted for centuries and could feel safe only in a Jewish homeland, many people now believe that Israel deserves special treatment from the United States. The country's creation was undoubtedly an appropriate response to the long record of crimes against Jews, but it also brought about fresh crimes against a largely innocent third party: the Palestinians.

This was well understood by Israel's early leaders. David Ben-Gurion told Nahum Goldmann, the president of the World Jewish Congress:

If I were an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have taken their country . . . We come from Israel, but two thousand years ago, and what is that to them? There has been anti-semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that?

Since then, Israeli leaders have repeatedly sought to deny the Palestinians' national ambitions. When she was prime minister, Golda Meir famously remarked that 'there is no such thing as a Palestinian.' Pressure from extremist violence and Palestinian population growth has forced subsequent Israeli leaders to disengage from the Gaza Strip and consider other territorial compromises, but not even Yitzhak Rabin was willing to offer the Palestinians a viable state. Ehud Barak's purportedly generous offer at Camp David would have given them only a disarmed set of Bantustans under de facto Israeli control. The tragic history of the Jewish people does not obligate the US to help Israel today no matter what it does.

Israel's backers also portray it as a country that has sought peace at every turn and shown great restraint even when provoked. The Arabs, by contrast, are said to have acted with great wickedness. Yet on the ground, Israel's record is not distinguishable from that of its opponents. Ben-Gurion acknowledged that the early Zionists were far from benevolent towards the Palestinian Arabs, who resisted their encroachments – which is hardly surprising, given that the Zionists were trying to create their own state on Arab land. In the same way, the creation of Israel in 1947-48 involved acts of ethnic cleansing, including executions, massacres and rapes by Jews, and Israel's subsequent conduct has often been brutal, belying any claim to moral superiority. Between 1949 and 1956, for example, Israeli security forces killed between 2700 and 5000 Arab infiltrators, the overwhelming majority of them unarmed. The IDF murdered hundreds of Egyptian prisoners of war in both the 1956 and 1967 wars, while in 1967, it expelled between 100,000 and 260,000 Palestinians from the newly conquered West Bank, and drove 80,000 Syrians from the Golan Heights.

During the first intifada, the IDF distributed truncheons to its troops and encouraged them to break the bones of Palestinian protesters. The Swedish branch of Save the Children estimated that '23,600 to 29,900 children required medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the intifada.' Nearly a third of them were aged ten or under. The response to the second intifada has been even more violent, leading Ha'aretz to declare that 'the IDF . . . is turning into a killing machine whose efficiency is awe-inspiring, yet shocking.' The IDF fired one million bullets in the first days of the uprising. Since then, for every Israeli lost, Israel has killed 3.4 Palestinians, the majority of whom have been innocent bystanders; the ratio of Palestinian to Israeli children killed is even higher (5.7:1). It is also worth bearing in mind that the Zionists relied on terrorist bombs to drive the British from Palestine, and that Yitzhak Shamir, once a terrorist and later prime minister, declared that 'neither Jewish ethics nor Jewish tradition can disqualify terrorism as a means of combat.'

The Palestinian resort to terrorism is wrong but it isn't surprising. The Palestinians believe they have no other way to force Israeli concessions. As Ehud Barak once admitted, had he been born a Palestinian, he 'would have joined a terrorist organisation'.

So if neither strategic nor moral arguments can account for America's support for Israel, how are we to explain it?

The explanation is the unmatched power of the Israel Lobby. We use 'the Lobby' as shorthand for the loose coalition of individuals and organisations who actively work to steer US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. This is not meant to suggest that 'the Lobby' is a unified movement with a central leadership, or that individuals within it do not disagree on certain issues. Not all Jewish Americans are part of the Lobby, because Israel is not a salient issue for many of them. In a 2004 survey, for example, roughly 36 per cent of American Jews said they were either 'not very' or 'not at all' emotionally attached to Israel.

Jewish Americans also differ on specific Israeli policies. Many of the key organisations in the Lobby, such as the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organisations, are run by hardliners who generally support the Likud Party's expansionist policies, including its hostility to the Oslo peace process. The bulk of US Jewry, meanwhile, is more inclined to make concessions to the Palestinians, and a few groups – such as Jewish Voice for Peace – strongly advocate such steps. Despite these differences, moderates and hardliners both favour giving steadfast support to Israel.

Not surprisingly, American Jewish leaders often consult Israeli officials, to make sure that their actions advance Israeli goals. As one activist from a major Jewish organisation wrote, 'it is routine for us to say: "This is our policy on a certain issue, but we must check what the Israelis think." We as a community do it all the time.' There is a strong prejudice against criticising Israeli policy, and putting pressure on Israel is considered out of order. Edgar Bronfman Sr, the president of the World Jewish Congress, was accused of 'perfidy' when he wrote a letter to President Bush in mid-2003 urging him to persuade Israel to curb construction of its controversial 'security fence'. His critics said that 'it would be obscene at any time for the president of the World Jewish Congress to lobby the president of the United States to resist policies being promoted by the government of Israel.'

Similarly, when the president of the Israel Policy Forum, Seymour Reich, advised Condoleezza Rice in November 2005 to ask Israel to reopen a critical border crossing in the Gaza Strip, his action was denounced as 'irresponsible': 'There is,' his critics said, 'absolutely no room in the Jewish mainstream for actively canvassing against the security-related policies . . . of Israel.' Recoiling from these attacks, Reich announced that 'the word "pressure" is not in my vocabulary when it comes to Israel.'

Jewish Americans have set up an impressive array of organisations to influence American foreign policy, of which AIPAC is the most powerful and best known. In 1997, Fortune magazine asked members of Congress and their staffs to list the most powerful lobbies in Washington. AIPAC was ranked second behind the American Association of Retired People, but ahead of the AFL-CIO and the National Rifle Association. A National Journal study in March 2005 reached a similar conclusion, placing AIPAC in second place (tied with AARP) in the Washington 'muscle rankings'.

The Lobby also includes prominent Christian evangelicals like Gary Bauer, Jerry Falwell, Ralph Reed and Pat Robertson, as well as Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, former majority leaders in the House of Representatives, all of whom believe Israel's rebirth is the fulfilment of biblical prophecy and support its expansionist agenda; to do otherwise, they believe, would be contrary to God's will. Neo-conservative gentiles such as John Bolton; Robert Bartley, the former Wall Street Journal editor; William Bennett, the former secretary of education; Jeane Kirkpatrick, the former UN ambassador; and the influential columnist George Will are also steadfast supporters.

The US form of government offers activists many ways of influencing the policy process. Interest groups can lobby elected representatives and members of the executive branch, make campaign contributions, vote in elections, try to mould public opinion etc. They enjoy a disproportionate amount of influence when they are committed to an issue to which the bulk of the population is indifferent. Policymakers will tend to accommodate those who care about the issue, even if their numbers are small, confident that the rest of the population will not penalise them for doing so.

In its basic operations, the Israel Lobby is no different from the farm lobby, steel or textile workers' unions, or other ethnic lobbies. There is nothing improper about American Jews and their Christian allies attempting to sway US policy: the Lobby's activities are not a conspiracy of the sort depicted in tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. For the most part, the individuals and groups that comprise it are only doing what other special interest groups do, but doing it very much better. By contrast, pro-Arab interest groups, in so far as they exist at all, are weak, which makes the Israel Lobby's task even easier.

The Lobby pursues two broad strategies. First, it wields its significant influence in Washington, pressuring both Congress and the executive branch. Whatever an individual lawmaker or policymaker's own views may be, the Lobby tries to make supporting Israel the 'smart' choice. Second, it strives to ensure that public discourse portrays Israel in a positive light, by repeating myths about its founding and by promoting its point of view in policy debates. The goal is to prevent critical comments from getting a fair hearing in the political arena. Controlling the debate is essential to guaranteeing US support, because a candid discussion of US-Israeli relations might lead Americans to favour a different policy.

A key pillar of the Lobby's effectiveness is its influence in Congress, where Israel is virtually immune from criticism. This in itself is remarkable, because Congress rarely shies away from contentious issues. Where Israel is concerned, however, potential critics fall silent. One reason is that some key members are Christian Zionists like Dick Armey, who said in September 2002: 'My No. 1 priority in foreign policy is to protect Israel.' One might think that the No. 1 priority for any congressman would be to protect America. There are also Jewish senators and congressmen who work to ensure that US foreign policy supports Israel's interests.

Another source of the Lobby's power is its use of pro-Israel congressional staffers. As Morris Amitay, a former head of AIPAC, once admitted, 'there are a lot of guys at the working level up here' – on Capitol Hill – 'who happen to be Jewish, who are willing . . . to look at certain issues in terms of their Jewishness . . . These are all guys who are in a position to make the decision in these areas for those senators . . . You can get an awful lot done just at the staff level.'

AIPAC itself, however, forms the core of the Lobby's influence in Congress. Its success is due to its ability to reward legislators and congressional candidates who support its agenda, and to punish those who challenge it. Money is critical to US elections (as the scandal over the lobbyist Jack Abramoff's shady dealings reminds us), and AIPAC makes sure that its friends get strong financial support from the many pro-Israel political action committees. Anyone who is seen as hostile to Israel can be sure that AIPAC will direct campaign contributions to his or her political opponents. AIPAC also organises letter-writing campaigns and encourages newspaper editors to endorse pro-Israel candidates.

There is no doubt about the efficacy of these tactics. Here is one example: in the 1984 elections, AIPAC helped defeat Senator Charles Percy from Illinois, who, according to a prominent Lobby figure, had 'displayed insensitivity and even hostility to our concerns'. Thomas Dine, the head of AIPAC at the time, explained what happened: 'All the Jews in America, from coast to coast, gathered to oust Percy. And the American politicians – those who hold public positions now, and those who aspire – got the message.'

AIPAC's influence on Capitol Hill goes even further. According to Douglas Bloomfield, a former AIPAC staff member, 'it is common for members of Congress and their staffs to turn to AIPAC first when they need information, before calling the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service, committee staff or administration experts.' More important, he notes that AIPAC is 'often called on to draft speeches, work on legislation, advise on tactics, perform research, collect co-sponsors and marshal votes'.

The bottom line is that AIPAC, a de facto agent for a foreign government, has a stranglehold on Congress, with the result that US policy towards Israel is not debated there, even though that policy has important consequences for the entire world. In other words, one of the three main branches of the government is firmly committed to supporting Israel. As one former Democratic senator, Ernest Hollings, noted on leaving office, 'you can't have an Israeli policy other than what AIPAC gives you around here.' Or as Ariel Sharon once told an American audience, 'when people ask me how they can help Israel, I tell them: "Help AIPAC."'

Thanks in part to the influence Jewish voters have on presidential elections, the Lobby also has significant leverage over the executive branch. Although they make up fewer than 3 per cent of the population, they make large campaign donations to candidates from both parties. The Washington Post once estimated that Democratic presidential candidates 'depend on Jewish supporters to supply as much as 60 per cent of the money'. And because Jewish voters have high turn-out rates and are concentrated in key states like California, Florida, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania, presidential candidates go to great lengths not to antagonise them.

Key organisations in the Lobby make it their business to ensure that critics of Israel do not get important foreign policy jobs. Jimmy Carter wanted to make George Ball his first secretary of state, but knew that Ball was seen as critical of Israel and that the Lobby would oppose the appointment. In this way any aspiring policymaker is encouraged to become an overt supporter of Israel, which is why public critics of Israeli policy have become an endangered species in the foreign policy establishment.

When Howard Dean called for the United States to take a more 'even-handed role' in the Arab-Israeli conflict, Senator Joseph Lieberman accused him of selling Israel down the river and said his statement was 'irresponsible'. Virtually all the top Democrats in the House signed a letter criticising Dean's remarks, and the Chicago Jewish Star reported that 'anonymous attackers . . . are clogging the email inboxes of Jewish leaders around the country, warning – without much evidence – that Dean would somehow be bad for Israel.'

This worry was absurd; Dean is in fact quite hawkish on Israel: his campaign co-chair was a former AIPAC president, and Dean said his own views on the Middle East more closely reflected those of AIPAC than those of the more moderate Americans for Peace Now. He had merely suggested that to 'bring the sides together', Washington should act as an honest broker. This is hardly a radical idea, but the Lobby doesn't tolerate even-handedness.

During the Clinton administration, Middle Eastern policy was largely shaped by officials with close ties to Israel or to prominent pro-Israel organisations; among them, Martin Indyk, the former deputy director of research at AIPAC and co-founder of the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP); Dennis Ross, who joined WINEP after leaving government in 2001; and Aaron Miller, who has lived in Israel and often visits the country. These men were among Clinton's closest advisers at the Camp David summit in July 2000. Although all three supported the Oslo peace process and favoured the creation of a Palestinian state, they did so only within the limits of what would be acceptable to Israel. The American delegation took its cues from Ehud Barak, co-ordinated its negotiating positions with Israel in advance, and did not offer independent proposals. Not surprisingly, Palestinian negotiators complained that they were 'negotiating with two Israeli teams – one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag'.

The situation is even more pronounced in the Bush administration, whose ranks have included such fervent advocates of the Israeli cause as Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, I. Lewis ('Scooter') Libby, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and David Wurmser. As we shall see, these officials have consistently pushed for policies favoured by Israel and backed by organisations in the Lobby.

The Lobby doesn't want an open debate, of course, because that might lead Americans to question the level of support they provide. Accordingly, pro-Israel organisations work hard to influence the institutions that do most to shape popular opinion.

The Lobby's perspective prevails in the mainstream media: the debate among Middle East pundits, the journalist Eric Alterman writes, is 'dominated by people who cannot imagine criticising Israel'. He lists 61 'columnists and commentators who can be counted on to support Israel reflexively and without qualification'. Conversely, he found just five pundits who consistently criticise Israeli actions or endorse Arab positions. Newspapers occasionally publish guest op-eds challenging Israeli policy, but the balance of opinion clearly favours the other side. It is hard to imagine any mainstream media outlet in the United States publishing a piece like this one.

'Shamir, Sharon, Bibi – whatever those guys want is pretty much fine by me,' Robert Bartley once remarked. Not surprisingly, his newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, along with other prominent papers like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Times, regularly runs editorials that strongly support Israel. Magazines like Commentary, the New Republic and the Weekly Standard defend Israel at every turn.

Editorial bias is also found in papers like the New York Times, which occasionally criticises Israeli policies and sometimes concedes that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances, but is not even-handed. In his memoirs the paper's former executive editor Max Frankel acknowledges the impact his own attitude had on his editorial decisions: 'I was much more deeply devoted to Israel than I dared to assert . . . Fortified by my knowledge of Israel and my friendships there, I myself wrote most of our Middle East commentaries. As more Arab than Jewish readers recognised, I wrote them from a pro-Israel perspective.'

News reports are more even-handed, in part because reporters strive to be objective, but also because it is difficult to cover events in the Occupied Territories without acknowledging Israel's actions on the ground. To discourage unfavourable reporting, the Lobby organises letter-writing campaigns, demonstrations and boycotts of news outlets whose content it considers anti-Israel. One CNN executive has said that he sometimes gets 6000 email messages in a single day complaining about a story. In May 2003, the pro-Israel Committee for Accurate Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) organised demonstrations outside National Public Radio stations in 33 cities; it also tried to persuade contributors to withhold support from NPR until its Middle East coverage becomes more sympathetic to Israel. Boston's NPR station, WBUR, reportedly lost more than $1 million in contributions as a result of these efforts. Further pressure on NPR has come from Israel's friends in Congress, who have asked for an internal audit of its Middle East coverage as well as more oversight.

The Israeli side also dominates the think tanks which play an important role in shaping public debate as well as actual policy. The Lobby created its own think tank in 1985, when Martin Indyk helped to found WINEP. Although WINEP plays down its links to Israel, claiming instead to provide a 'balanced and realistic' perspective on Middle East issues, it is funded and run by individuals deeply committed to advancing Israel's agenda.

The Lobby's influence extends well beyond WINEP, however. Over the past 25 years, pro-Israel forces have established a commanding presence at the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Security Policy, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the Hudson Institute, the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA). These think tanks employ few, if any, critics of US support for Israel.

Take the Brookings Institution. For many years, its senior expert on the Middle East was William Quandt, a former NSC official with a well-deserved reputation for even-handedness. Today, Brookings's coverage is conducted through the Saban Center for Middle East Studies, which is financed by Haim Saban, an Israeli-American businessman and ardent Zionist. The centre's director is the ubiquitous Martin Indyk. What was once a non-partisan policy institute is now part of the pro-Israel chorus.

Where the Lobby has had the most difficulty is in stifling debate on university campuses. In the 1990s, when the Oslo peace process was underway, there was only mild criticism of Israel, but it grew stronger with Oslo's collapse and Sharon's access to power, becoming quite vociferous when the IDF reoccupied the West Bank in spring 2002 and employed massive force to subdue the second intifada.

The Lobby moved immediately to 'take back the campuses'. New groups sprang up, like the Caravan for Democracy, which brought Israeli speakers to US colleges. Established groups like the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Hillel joined in, and a new group, the Israel on Campus Coalition, was formed to co-ordinate the many bodies that now sought to put Israel's case. Finally, AIPAC more than tripled its spending on programmes to monitor university activities and to train young advocates, in order to 'vastly expand the number of students involved on campus . . . in the national pro-Israel effort'.

The Lobby also monitors what professors write and teach. In September 2002, Martin Kramer and Daniel Pipes, two passionately pro-Israel neo-conservatives, established a website (Campus Watch) that posted dossiers on suspect academics and encouraged students to report remarks or behaviour that might be considered hostile to Israel. This transparent attempt to blacklist and intimidate scholars provoked a harsh reaction and Pipes and Kramer later removed the dossiers, but the website still invites students to report 'anti-Israel' activity.

Groups within the Lobby put pressure on particular academics and universities. Columbia has been a frequent target, no doubt because of the presence of the late Edward Said on its faculty. 'One can be sure that any public statement in support of the Palestinian people by the pre-eminent literary critic Edward Said will elicit hundreds of emails, letters and journalistic accounts that call on us to denounce Said and to either sanction or fire him,' Jonathan Cole, its former provost, reported. When Columbia recruited the historian Rashid Khalidi from Chicago, the same thing happened. It was a problem Princeton also faced a few years later when it considered wooing Khalidi away from Columbia.

A classic illustration of the effort to police academia occurred towards the end of 2004, when the David Project produced a film alleging that faculty members of Columbia's Middle East Studies programme were anti-semitic and were intimidating Jewish students who stood up for Israel. Columbia was hauled over the coals, but a faculty committee which was assigned to investigate the charges found no evidence of anti-semitism and the only incident possibly worth noting was that one professor had 'responded heatedly' to a student's question. The committee also discovered that the academics in question had themselves been the target of an overt campaign of intimidation.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the efforts Jewish groups have made to push Congress into establishing mechanisms to monitor what professors say. If they manage to get this passed, universities judged to have an anti-Israel bias would be denied federal funding. Their efforts have not yet succeeded, but they are an indication of the importance placed on controlling debate.

A number of Jewish philanthropists have recently established Israel Studies programmes (in addition to the roughly 130 Jewish Studies programmes already in existence) so as to increase the number of Israel-friendly scholars on campus. In May 2003, NYU announced the establishment of the Taub Center for Israel Studies; similar programmes have been set up at Berkeley, Brandeis and Emory. Academic administrators emphasise their pedagogical value, but the truth is that they are intended in large part to promote Israel's image. Fred Laffer, the head of the Taub Foundation, makes it clear that his foundation funded the NYU centre to help counter the 'Arabic [sic] point of view' that he thinks is prevalent in NYU's Middle East programmes.

No discussion of the Lobby would be complete without an examination of one of its most powerful weapons: the charge of anti-semitism. Anyone who criticises Israel's actions or argues that pro-Israel groups have significant influence over US Middle Eastern policy – an influence AIPAC celebrates – stands a good chance of being labelled an anti-semite. Indeed, anyone who merely claims that there is an Israel Lobby runs the risk of being charged with anti-semitism, even though the Israeli media refer to America's 'Jewish Lobby'. In other words, the Lobby first boasts of its influence and then attacks anyone who calls attention to it. It's a very effective tactic: anti-semitism is something no one wants to be accused of.

Europeans have been more willing than Americans to criticise Israeli policy, which some people attribute to a resurgence of anti-semitism in Europe. We are 'getting to a point', the US ambassador to the EU said in early 2004, 'where it is as bad as it was in the 1930s'. Measuring anti-semitism is a complicated matter, but the weight of evidence points in the opposite direction. In the spring of 2004, when accusations of European anti-semitism filled the air in America, separate surveys of European public opinion conducted by the US-based Anti-Defamation League and the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press found that it was in fact declining. In the 1930s, by contrast, anti-semitism was not only widespread among Europeans of all classes but considered quite acceptable.

The Lobby and its friends often portray France as the most anti-semitic country in Europe. But in 2003, the head of the French Jewish community said that 'France is not more anti-semitic than America.' According to a recent article in Ha'aretz, the French police have reported that anti-semitic incidents declined by almost 50 per cent in 2005; and this even though France has the largest Muslim population of any European country. Finally, when a French Jew was murdered in Paris last month by a Muslim gang, tens of thousands of demonstrators poured into the streets to condemn anti-semitism. Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin both attended the victim's memorial service to show their solidarity.

No one would deny that there is anti-semitism among European Muslims, some of it provoked by Israel's conduct towards the Palestinians and some of it straightforwardly racist. But this is a separate matter with little bearing on whether or not Europe today is like Europe in the 1930s. Nor would anyone deny that there are still some virulent autochthonous anti-semites in Europe (as there are in the United States) but their numbers are small and their views are rejected by the vast majority of Europeans.

Israel's advocates, when pressed to go beyond mere assertion, claim that there is a 'new anti-semitism', which they equate with criticism of Israel. In other words, criticise Israeli policy and you are by definition an anti-semite. When the synod of the Church of England recently voted to divest from Caterpillar Inc on the grounds that it manufactures the bulldozers used by the Israelis to demolish Palestinian homes, the Chief Rabbi complained that this would 'have the most adverse repercussions on . . . Jewish-Christian relations in Britain', while Rabbi Tony Bayfield, the head of the Reform movement, said: 'There is a clear problem of anti-Zionist – verging on anti-semitic – attitudes emerging in the grass-roots, and even in the middle ranks of the Church.' But the Church was guilty merely of protesting against Israeli government policy.

Critics are also accused of holding Israel to an unfair standard or questioning its right to exist. But these are bogus charges too. Western critics of Israel hardly ever question its right to exist: they question its behaviour towards the Palestinians, as do Israelis themselves. Nor is Israel being judged unfairly. Israeli treatment of the Palestinians elicits criticism because it is contrary to widely accepted notions of human rights, to international law and to the principle of national self-determination. And it is hardly the only state that has faced sharp criticism on these grounds.

In the autumn of 2001, and especially in the spring of 2002, the Bush administration tried to reduce anti-American sentiment in the Arab world and undermine support for terrorist groups like al-Qaida by halting Israel's expansionist policies in the Occupied Territories and advocating the creation of a Palestinian state. Bush had very significant means of persuasion at his disposal. He could have threatened to reduce economic and diplomatic support for Israel, and the American people would almost certainly have supported him. A May 2003 poll reported that more than 60 per cent of Americans were willing to withhold aid if Israel resisted US pressure to settle the conflict, and that number rose to 70 per cent among the 'politically active'. Indeed, 73 per cent said that the United States should not favour either side.

Yet the administration failed to change Israeli policy, and Washington ended up backing it. Over time, the administration also adopted Israel's own justifications of its position, so that US rhetoric began to mimic Israeli rhetoric. By February 2003, a Washington Post headline summarised the situation: 'Bush and Sharon Nearly Identical on Mideast Policy.' The main reason for this switch was the Lobby.

The story begins in late September 2001, when Bush began urging Sharon to show restraint in the Occupied Territories. He also pressed him to allow Israel's foreign minister, Shimon Peres, to meet with Yasser Arafat, even though he (Bush) was highly critical of Arafat's leadership. Bush even said publicly that he supported the creation of a Palestinian state. Alarmed, Sharon accused him of trying 'to appease the Arabs at our expense', warning that Israel 'will not be Czechoslovakia'.

Bush was reportedly furious at being compared to Chamberlain, and the White House press secretary called Sharon's remarks 'unacceptable'. Sharon offered a pro forma apology, but quickly joined forces with the Lobby to persuade the administration and the American people that the United States and Israel faced a common threat from terrorism. Israeli officials and Lobby representatives insisted that there was no real difference between Arafat and Osama bin Laden: the United States and Israel, they said, should isolate the Palestinians' elected leader and have nothing to do with him.

The Lobby also went to work in Congress. On 16 November, 89 senators sent Bush a letter praising him for refusing to meet with Arafat, but also demanding that the US not restrain Israel from retaliating against the Palestinians; the administration, they wrote, must state publicly that it stood behind Israel. According to the New York Times, the letter 'stemmed' from a meeting two weeks before between 'leaders of the American Jewish community and key senators', adding that AIPAC was 'particularly active in providing advice on the letter'.

By late November, relations between Tel Aviv and Washington had improved considerably. This was thanks in part to the Lobby's efforts, but also to America's initial victory in Afghanistan, which reduced the perceived need for Arab support in dealing with al-Qaida. Sharon visited the White House in early December and had a friendly meeting with Bush.

In April 2002 trouble erupted again, after the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield and resumed control of virtually all the major Palestinian areas on the West Bank. Bush knew that Israel's actions would damage America's image in the Islamic world and undermine the war on terrorism, so he demanded that Sharon 'halt the incursions and begin withdrawal'. He underscored this message two days later, saying he wanted Israel to 'withdraw without delay'. On 7 April, Condoleezza Rice, then Bush's national security adviser, told reporters: '"Without delay" means without delay. It means now.' That same day Colin Powell set out for the Middle East to persuade all sides to stop fighting and start negotiating.

Israel and the Lobby swung into action. Pro-Israel officials in the vice-president's office and the Pentagon, as well as neo-conservative pundits like Robert Kagan and William Kristol, put the heat on Powell. They even accused him of having 'virtually obliterated the distinction between terrorists and those fighting terrorists'. Bush himself was being pressed by Jewish leaders and Christian evangelicals. Tom DeLay and Dick Armey were especially outspoken about the need to support Israel, and DeLay and the Senate minority leader, Trent Lott, visited the White House and warned Bush to back off.

The first sign that Bush was caving in came on 11 April – a week after he told Sharon to withdraw his forces – when the White House press secretary said that the president believed Sharon was 'a man of peace'. Bush repeated this statement publicly on Powell's return from his abortive mission, and told reporters that Sharon had responded satisfactorily to his call for a full and immediate withdrawal. Sharon had done no such thing, but Bush was no longer willing to make an issue of it.

Meanwhile, Congress was also moving to back Sharon. On 2 May, it overrode the administration's objections and passed two resolutions reaffirming support for Israel. (The Senate vote was 94 to 2; the House of Representatives version passed 352 to 21.) Both resolutions held that the United States 'stands in solidarity with Israel' and that the two countries were, to quote the House resolution, 'now engaged in a common struggle against terrorism'. The House version also condemned 'the ongoing support and co-ordination of terror by Yasser Arafat', who was portrayed as a central part of the terrorism problem. Both resolutions were drawn up with the help of the Lobby. A few days later, a bipartisan congressional delegation on a fact-finding mission to Israel stated that Sharon should resist US pressure to negotiate with Arafat. On 9 May, a House appropriations subcommittee met to consider giving Israel an extra $200 million to fight terrorism. Powell opposed the package, but the Lobby backed it and Powell lost.

In short, Sharon and the Lobby took on the president of the United States and triumphed. Hemi Shalev, a journalist on the Israeli newspaper Ma'ariv, reported that Sharon's aides 'could not hide their satisfaction in view of Powell's failure. Sharon saw the whites of President Bush's eyes, they bragged, and the president blinked first.' But it was Israel's champions in the United States, not Sharon or Israel, that played the key role in defeating Bush.

The situation has changed little since then. The Bush administration refused ever again to have dealings with Arafat. After his death, it embraced the new Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, but has done little to help him. Sharon continued to develop his plan to impose a unilateral settlement on the Palestinians, based on 'disengagement' from Gaza coupled with continued expansion on the West Bank. By refusing to negotiate with Abbas and making it impossible for him to deliver tangible benefits to the Palestinian people, Sharon's strategy contributed directly to Hamas's electoral victory. With Hamas in power, however, Israel has another excuse not to negotiate. The US administration has supported Sharon's actions (and those of his successor, Ehud Olmert). Bush has even endorsed unilateral Israeli annexations in the Occupied Territories, reversing the stated policy of every president since Lyndon Johnson.

US officials have offered mild criticisms of a few Israeli actions, but have done little to help create a viable Palestinian state. Sharon has Bush 'wrapped around his little finger', the former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft said in October 2004. If Bush tries to distance the US from Israel, or even criticises Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories, he is certain to face the wrath of the Lobby and its supporters in Congress. Democratic presidential candidates understand that these are facts of life, which is the reason John Kerry went to great lengths to display unalloyed support for Israel in 2004, and why Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing today.

Maintaining US support for Israel's policies against the Palestinians is essential as far as the Lobby is concerned, but its ambitions do not stop there. It also wants America to help Israel remain the dominant regional power. The Israeli government and pro-Israel groups in the United States have worked together to shape the administration's policy towards Iraq, Syria and Iran, as well as its grand scheme for reordering the Middle East.

Pressure from Israel and the Lobby was not the only factor behind the decision to attack Iraq in March 2003, but it was critical. Some Americans believe that this was a war for oil, but there is hardly any direct evidence to support this claim. Instead, the war was motivated in good part by a desire to make Israel more secure. According to Philip Zelikow, a former member of the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, and now a counsellor to Condoleezza Rice, the 'real threat' from Iraq was not a threat to the United States. The 'unstated threat' was the 'threat against Israel', Zelikow told an audience at the University of Virginia in September 2002. 'The American government,' he added, 'doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell.'

On 16 August 2002, 11 days before Dick Cheney kicked off the campaign for war with a hardline speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Washington Post reported that 'Israel is urging US officials not to delay a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein.' By this point, according to Sharon, strategic co-ordination between Israel and the US had reached 'unprecedented dimensions', and Israeli intelligence officials had given Washington a variety of alarming reports about Iraq's WMD programmes. As one retired Israeli general later put it, 'Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities.'

Israeli leaders were deeply distressed when Bush decided to seek Security Council authorisation for war, and even more worried when Saddam agreed to let UN inspectors back in. 'The campaign against Saddam Hussein is a must,' Shimon Peres told reporters in September 2002. 'Inspections and inspectors are good for decent people, but dishonest people can overcome easily inspections and inspectors.'

At the same time, Ehud Barak wrote a New York Times op-ed warning that 'the greatest risk now lies in inaction.' His predecessor as prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, published a similar piece in the Wall Street Journal, entitled: 'The Case for Toppling Saddam'. 'Today nothing less than dismantling his regime will do,' he declared. 'I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of Israelis in supporting a pre-emptive strike against Saddam's regime.' Or as Ha'aretz reported in February 2003, 'the military and political leadership yearns for war in Iraq.'

As Netanyahu suggested, however, the desire for war was not confined to Israel's leaders. Apart from Kuwait, which Saddam invaded in 1990, Israel was the only country in the world where both politicians and public favoured war. As the journalist Gideon Levy observed at the time, 'Israel is the only country in the West whose leaders support the war unreservedly and where no alternative opinion is voiced.' In fact, Israelis were so gung-ho that their allies in America told them to damp down their rhetoric, or it would look as if the war would be fought on Israel's behalf.

Within the US, the main driving force behind the war was a small band of neo-conservatives, many with ties to Likud. But leaders of the Lobby's major organisations lent their voices to the campaign. 'As President Bush attempted to sell the . . . war in Iraq,' the Forward reported, 'America's most important Jewish organisations rallied as one to his defence. In statement after statement community leaders stressed the need to rid the world of Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.' The editorial goes on to say that 'concern for Israel's safety rightfully factored into the deliberations of the main Jewish groups.'

Although neo-conservatives and other Lobby leaders were eager to invade Iraq, the broader American Jewish community was not. Just after the war started, Samuel Freedman reported that 'a compilation of nationwide opinion polls by the Pew Research Center shows that Jews are less supportive of the Iraq war than the population at large, 52 per cent to 62 per cent.' Clearly, it would be wrong to blame the war in Iraq on 'Jewish influence'. Rather, it was due in large part to the Lobby's influence, especially that of the neo-conservatives within it.

The neo-conservatives had been determined to topple Saddam even before Bush became president. They caused a stir early in 1998 by publishing two open letters to Clinton, calling for Saddam's removal from power. The signatories, many of whom had close ties to pro-Israel groups like JINSA or WINEP, and who included Elliot Abrams, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, Bernard Lewis, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz, had little trouble persuading the Clinton administration to adopt the general goal of ousting Saddam. But they were unable to sell a war to achieve that objective. They were no more able to generate enthusiasm for invading Iraq in the early months of the Bush administration. They needed help to achieve their aim. That help arrived with 9/11. Specifically, the events of that day led Bush and Cheney to reverse course and become strong proponents of a preventive war.

At a key meeting with Bush at Camp David on 15 September, Wolfowitz advocated attacking Iraq before Afghanistan, even though there was no evidence that Saddam was involved in the attacks on the US and bin Laden was known to be in Afghanistan. Bush rejected his advice and chose to go after Afghanistan instead, but war with Iraq was now regarded as a serious possibility and on 21 November the president charged military planners with developing concrete plans for an invasion.

Other neo-conservatives were meanwhile at work in the corridors of power. We don't have the full story yet, but scholars like Bernard Lewis of Princeton and Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins reportedly played important roles in persuading Cheney that war was the best option, though neo-conservatives on his staff – Eric Edelman, John Hannah and Scooter Libby, Cheney's chief of staff and one of the most powerful individuals in the administration – also played their part. By early 2002 Cheney had persuaded Bush; and with Bush and Cheney on board, war was inevitable.

Outside the administration, neo-conservative pundits lost no time in making the case that invading Iraq was essential to winning the war on terrorism. Their efforts were designed partly to keep up the pressure on Bush, and partly to overcome opposition to the war inside and outside the government. On 20 September, a group of prominent neo-conservatives and their allies published another open letter: 'Even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack,' it read, 'any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.' The letter also reminded Bush that 'Israel has been and remains America's staunchest ally against international terrorism.' In the 1 October issue of the Weekly Standard, Robert Kagan and William Kristol called for regime change in Iraq as soon as the Taliban was defeated. That same day, Charles Krauthammer argued in the Washington Post that after the US was done with Afghanistan, Syria should be next, followed by Iran and Iraq: 'The war on terrorism will conclude in Baghdad,' when we finish off 'the most dangerous terrorist regime in the world'.

This was the beginning of an unrelenting public relations campaign to win support for an invasion of Iraq, a crucial part of which was the manipulation of intelligence in such a way as to make it seem as if Saddam posed an imminent threat. For example, Libby pressured CIA analysts to find evidence supporting the case for war and helped prepare Colin Powell's now discredited briefing to the UN Security Council. Within the Pentagon, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group was charged with finding links between al-Qaida and Iraq that the intelligence community had supposedly missed. Its two key members were David Wurmser, a hard-core neo-conservative, and Michael Maloof, a Lebanese-American with close ties to Perle. Another Pentagon group, the so-called Office of Special Plans, was given the task of uncovering evidence that could be used to sell the war. It was headed by Abram Shulsky, a neo-conservative with long-standing ties to Wolfowitz, and its ranks included recruits from pro-Israel think tanks. Both these organisations were created after 9/11 and reported directly to Douglas Feith.

Like virtually all the neo-conservatives, Feith is deeply committed to Israel; he also has long-term ties to Likud. He wrote articles in the 1990s supporting the settlements and arguing that Israel should retain the Occupied Territories. More important, along with Perle and Wurmser, he wrote the famous 'Clean Break' report in June 1996 for Netanyahu, who had just become prime minister. Among other things, it recommended that Netanyahu 'focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq – an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right'. It also called for Israel to take steps to reorder the entire Middle East. Netanyahu did not follow their advice, but Feith, Perle and Wurmser were soon urging the Bush administration to pursue those same goals. The Ha'aretz columnist Akiva Eldar warned that Feith and Perle 'are walking a fine line between their loyalty to American governments . . . and Israeli interests'.

Wolfowitz is equally committed to Israel. The Forward once described him as 'the most hawkishly pro-Israel voice in the administration', and selected him in 2002 as first among 50 notables who 'have consciously pursued Jewish activism'. At about the same time, JINSA gave Wolfowitz its Henry M. Jackson Distinguished Service Award for promoting a strong partnership between Israel and the United States; and the Jerusalem Post, describing him as 'devoutly pro-Israel', named him 'Man of the Year' in 2003.

Finally, a brief word is in order about the neo-conservatives' prewar support of Ahmed Chalabi, the unscrupulous Iraqi exile who headed the Iraqi National Congress. They backed Chalabi because he had established close ties with Jewish-American groups and had pledged to foster good relations with Israel once he gained power. This was precisely what pro-Israel proponents of regime change wanted to hear. Matthew Berger laid out the essence of the bargain in the Jewish Journal: 'The INC saw improved relations as a way to tap Jewish influence in Washington and Jerusalem and to drum up increased support for its cause. For their part, the Jewish groups saw an opportunity to pave the way for better relations between Israel and Iraq, if and when the INC is involved in replacing Saddam Hussein's regime.'

Given the neo-conservatives' devotion to Israel, their obsession with Iraq, and their influence in the Bush administration, it isn't surprising that many Americans suspected that the war was designed to further Israeli interests. Last March, Barry Jacobs of the American Jewish Committee acknowledged that the belief that Israel and the neo-conservatives had conspired to get the US into a war in Iraq was 'pervasive' in the intelligence community. Yet few people would say so publicly, and most of those who did – including Senator Ernest Hollings and Representative James Moran – were condemned for raising the issue. Michael Kinsley wrote in late 2002 that 'the lack of public discussion about the role of Israel . . . is the proverbial elephant in the room.' The reason for the reluctance to talk about it, he observed, was fear of being labelled an anti-semite. There is little doubt that Israel and the Lobby were key factors in the decision to go to war. It's a decision the US would have been far less likely to take without their efforts. And the war itself was intended to be only the first step. A front-page headline in the Wall Street Journal shortly after the war began says it all: 'President's Dream: Changing Not Just Regime but a Region: A Pro-US, Democratic Area Is a Goal that Has Israeli and Neo-Conservative Roots.'

Pro-Israel forces have long been interested in getting the US military more directly involved in the Middle East. But they had limited success during the Cold War, because America acted as an 'off-shore balancer' in the region. Most forces designated for the Middle East, like the Rapid Deployment Force, were kept 'over the horizon' and out of harm's way. The idea was to play local powers off against each other – which is why the Reagan administration supported Saddam against revolutionary Iran during the Iran-Iraq War – in order to maintain a balance favourable to the US.

This policy changed after the first Gulf War, when the Clinton administration adopted a strategy of 'dual containment'. Substantial US forces would be stationed in the region in order to contain both Iran and Iraq, instead of one being used to check the other. The father of dual containment was none other than Martin Indyk, who first outlined the strategy in May 1993 at WINEP and then implemented it as director for Near East and South Asian Affairs at the National Security Council.

By the mid-1990s there was considerable dissatisfaction with dual containment, because it made the United States the mortal enemy of two countries that hated each other, and forced Washington to bear the burden of containing both. But it was a strategy the Lobby favoured and worked actively in Congress to preserve. Pressed by AIPAC and other pro-Israel forces, Clinton toughened up the policy in the spring of 1995 by imposing an economic embargo on Iran. But AIPAC and the others wanted more. The result was the 1996 Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, which imposed sanctions on any foreign companies investing more than $40 million to develop petroleum resources in Iran or Libya. As Ze'ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha'aretz, noted at the time, 'Israel is but a tiny element in the big scheme, but one should not conclude that it cannot influence those within the Beltway.'

By the late 1990s, however, the neo-conservatives were arguing that dual containment was no

Her uncle was wounded. The Israeli army was hunting for militants when a gunbattle erupted with Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades fighters.

Mean-while, Hamas fine-tuned its cabinet list yesterday after more moderate Palestinian factions refused to join the militant Islamist movement in a coalition.

Hamas said it would complete its government today before giving the list to President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Fatah faction and other parties had wanted the surprise winner of the January 25 election to accept past interim peace deals with Israel.

Hamas leader-in-exile, Khaled Meshaal, said running the Palestinian Authority would not deflect the group from its overriding goal of pursuing a long-term struggle with Israel.

"We and the Zionists have a date with destiny. If they want a fight, we are ready for it. If they want a war, we are the sons of war. If they want a struggle, we are for it to the end," he declared.

In general, Lerman feels that paranoia has developed around the issue of anti-Semitism, and the tendency to define anything negative that happens to a Jew as an anti-Semitic incident.

Representatives of the Jewish community in Britain, he contends, only complicate matters by insisting on public debates with public figures they consider to be anti-Semites, instead of arranging matters in the traditional and respectable manner, behind closed doors.

Lerman, 60, who until January served as director of European programs for the Rothschild family's Yad Hanadiv Foundation, previously served as director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR) in the 1990s. The institute is a prestigious private think-tank: four lords of Jewish descent - Rothschild, Weidenfeld, Kalms and Haskel - are on the honorary board of directors of JPR; and the British media and governing authorities place great weight on the position adopted by the institute.

In 1999, during Lerman's first term as executive director, the institute played a major role in persuading prime minister Tony Blair to abandon his initiative to legislate a law against Holocaust denial. In 2003, the institute sparked a public debate following publication of the book "A New Anti-Semitism?", an anthology of articles related to the contention that an anti-Semitism of a new form - reflected by a tendency to attribute to the Jewish state stereotypes that were in the past attributed to Jews as individuals - had spread among what is called the "liberal elites" in Britain. Lerman, who authored one of the articles, dismissed out of hand the would-be phenomenon, and claimed that there was nothing new in anti-Semitism.

The new anti-Semitism thesis has gained some recognition in recent years in the non-Jewish European establishment. An international conference in Berlin in April 2004 stated that what was happening in the Middle East "could not justify the expression of anti-Semitism opinions." A public report submitted to the French administration in June of that year confirmed that anti-Zionism was one of the forms of expression of anti-Semitic opinions in France.

Professor Robert Wistrich of Hebrew University, a colleague and old adversary of Lerman's, charges that the man has been saying the same things for the past 15 years.

"The reality has completely changed in the past few years," says Wistrich, who heads the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, "but Lerman has not changed his opinions one whit."

In response, Lerman says, "I never claimed that anti-Semitism is not a serious problem. At the same time, I feel now, no less than in the past, that it is impossible to say that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are the same thing."

Lerman considers allegations of anti-Semitism in the British left to be absurd.

"On the extreme left there is a problem and there has been, but I find this obsession with the left rather strange," he says. "I don't believe they have great deal of influence. But people like Barry Kosmin [Lerman's predecessor at the JPR] indeed see the anti-Semitism of the left as having seeped into Liberal circles. He and Paul Igansky [who co-edited the "A New Anti-Semitism?" book] wrote an article several years ago in which they argued that the Observer newspaper was institutionally anti-Semitic.

"This seems to me to be utterly, utterly absurd, and I think there is no basis for arguing that whatsoever," says Lerman. "The Observer newspaper has been and I believe still is, a very strong supporter of Jews and of Jewish emancipation, and very much opposed to anti-Semitism. So I think you will find even among the Liberal circles certainly a degree of anti-Semitism, but nowhere near to the degree that will lead you to the conclusion that newspapers like the Observer are anti-Semitic."

Since officially taking up his post last month, Lerman has aimed his arrows at major elements in the community who have failed, he says, in representing the interests of Britain's Jews.

In an interview on BBC four weeks ago, Lerman attacked Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Britain's chief rabbi, for his use of the term 'tsunami' to describe anti-Semitism in the Muslim world. Two weeks ago, Lerman attacked the Board of Deputies, the community's umbrella organization, for having lodged the complaint against London Mayor Ken Livingstone for having told a Jewish reporter that he could have been a guard in a concentration camp. The complaint led to the mayor's suspension for two weeks, and provoked a public storm.

"My feeling in relation to the incident was that it was clearly offensive, but I question the wisdom of turning it into a major public incident," he said.

But, in effect, ever since you entered the job you have not stopped criticizing the official representatives of the community.

"I define myself as someone who tries to look at these things in a kind of pragmatic, analytic way. I'm not a natural oppositionist, my default position isn't to be anti the establishment or anti the Board of Deputies. It seems to me you need to judge things on the basis of whether they're right or wrong, whether the tactics followed are correct or not correct. And I say this with some sadness - it appears to me that quite a lot of the things that are being said by people in the establishment today, whether it's Jonathan Sachs or the Board of Deputies, are not well-considered. I don't believe they're in the best interest of the Jews of Britain. The Livingstone case could have been handled much better. The way that the Board of Deputies handled it only aggravated the situation."

Livingstone published a column last week in the Guardian, in which he charged - basing himself on Lerman - that he is not anti-Semitic, because criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitism. Lerman says he has no problem with the use made of him, and that he does not believe that Livingstone is anti-Semitic.

Don't you see a problem in the fact that you are coming to the defense of a person like Livingstone at a time when the Jewish establishment is conducting a serious struggle against him?

"Why did they have to be in a struggle against him to begin with? Instead of clashing with him, they should have sought dialogue. This is a horrible tactic. It would have been possible to accomplish much more had they made contact with him behind closed doors and tried to convince him to understand the Jewish side."

In you opinion, why isn't the denial of Israel's right to exist considered anti-Semitism?

"Because if I was a Palestinian and my family had lived in Palestine for six generations, and I thought of this as my home, and somebody comes in from outside and says, "actually, this is my home and I'm going to set up a state here," I can quite understand that persons' feelings that the people who have done this and set up this state are illegitimate. If I were a Palestinian, I would say that I understand the claim of the Jews because they suffered etc., but why should it be here? They [the Jews] say it's because biblically they have an attachment but I, as a Palestinian, say, 'well my people have been here for centuries, generations - that to me is equal if not more equal than the biblical claim.' I can understand that view."

So then the statements by the Iranian president that the State of Israel should have been established in Europe are not anti-Semitic?

"I don't think it's automatically anti-Semitic, no. I can understand that kind of resentment, but I think that it's not very helpful."

Professor Wistrich and activists in the Jewish community in Britain are convinced that Lerman's conservative views on anti-Semitism and his abhorrence of public clashes comprised the primary consideration in his selection for the post at JPR.

"The reason they preferred him has to do with the traditional stand of the wealthiest and most assimilated circles in English Jewry," says Wistrich. "These are people who don't like the Jews going out into the streets and causing a confrontation, because as they see it, that endangers their own status in general British society. Lerman's views are very convenient for them."

"Goodness me," responds Lerman. "This is absolute nonsense. There is a range of views on the board. I'm pretty sure I'll be in minority as far as the board members of the JPR are concerned on the question of Ken Livingstone. When I was working for the Hanadiv Foundation, the question of anti-Semitism came up a number of times, and I don't think for a minute that Lord Rothschild agreed with my views on anti-Semitism. He is not a person who feels that anti-Semitism was exaggerated."

Since the outbreak of the Aqsa Intifada, young Muslim immigrants have become the primary factor in attacks against Jews in France and other European countries. Lerman shows a degree of understanding for the motives of the assailants.

"For Muslims it's a way of expressing their anger - I don't condone it, and I think they should find other ways of expressing their anger, but I think I can understand why they use it. But I also think that if the conflict was solved, the degree of anti-Semitism that one finds - although we don't know exactly what that degree is, but whatever degree there is - I think it would be diminished if there was a solution to the conflict."

This leads to the conclusion that Israel, as a party that bears at least partial blame for the conflict not yet being resolved, also bears indirect responsibility for Muslim anti-Semitism in Europe.

"Yes, I think that's right. Israel is a sovereign state, it has to take what actions it feels are right, but the fact of the matter is that it has consequences for Jewish communities, and some these consequences are indeed to aggravate the problem of anti-Semitism."

And what about a case such as the murder of Ilan Halimi. Is that also part of the Muslim solidarity with the Palestinians?

"To be honest, I haven't followed it very closely. What I have read is that there is some controversy surrounding the issue as to whether this should be seen as entirely an anti-Semitic incident. Clearly they picked on this person because they had this notion that Jews are wealthy, but does that make it an anti-Semitic incident? I'm not sure. As indeed in France, a number of the high-profile incidents that have happened in the last years have been rather complex.

"Take, for example, the story of the woman who claimed that she was attacked on the train by youth. At the time that caused the most extreme concern, and in the end it turned out she made it up. I think what that shows is how complex the problem is. Certainly when you are living in that kind of feudal atmosphere, you could easily get into that paranoid situation which doesn't conform to the reality of what's actually going on. It doesn't mean that there isn't a serious problem of anti-Semitism - there is, but not everything negative that happens to a Jew is anti-Semitism. That is a misuse of the word 'anti-Semitism,' it almost loses its meaning."

"He will none the less ask the new government to respect the programmes of the Palestine Liberation Organisation and the Palestinian National Authority as any other path will lead to isolation and the collective punishment of the Palestinian people because Hamas' programme fails to meet the demands of the international community."

"In my view, the president is not going to reject the Hamas government because he is not willing to block a government that will win a confidence vote in parliament"

Nabil Abu Rudaina,
spokesman for Mahmoud Abbas
His comments were echoed by Azzam al-Ahmad, the leader of Fatah's parliamentary bloc.

"In my view, the president is going to accept the government, although Fatah has decided neither to join it nor to give it its support in parliament, because its policies are different from ours," al-Ahmad said.

Hamas, the surprise winner of parliamentary elections in January, has refused to accept interim peace deals with Israel or to commit to seeking a negotiated settlement as demanded by Abbas.

Abbas could try to delay installation of a government until after Israel's 28 March parliamentary election.

A standoff over Hamas' government programme could trigger a constitutional crisis, Palestinian officials have said.

Hamas list completed

Hamas completed forming a Palestinian cabinet that will put loyal members of the Islamist group in charge of key ministries, including interior, foreign affairs and finance, Hamas officials said on Saturday.

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, said: "The cabinet is ready to be presented to President Mahmoud Abbas in a meeting to be agreed with him."

Hamas had planned to hand its cabinet lineup to Abbas on Saturday. But the meeting with the president, whose Fatah group has refused to join the Hamas-led government, was postponed to Sunday.

The Islamist resistance movement's inability to win any coalition partners and its decision to appoint its own members to the top three ministries could bolster US and Israeli efforts to isolate the new government diplomatically and economically.

Hamas spokesman Abu Zuhri said it did not plan to unveil its ministerial list publicly before presenting it to Abbas.

The delay in the meeting with Abbas could give Hamas extra time to try to find a coalition partner.

Only the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, whose leader was seized this week by Israeli forces from a West Bank prison, was still considering joining the government.

Abbas' Fatah and the other factions were under heavy US pressure not to join.

Finance minister

According to sources close to the deliberations, Hamas will name Omar Abdel-Razeq, a prominent West Bank economics professor and Hamas election official, to the post of finance minister.

Abdel-Razeq, a professor at an-Najah University, led Hamas' election team for the West Bank. He was seized by Israeli forces early in January and freed three days ago, Hamas sources said.

The US and Israel have vowed not to provide any money to a Hamas-led finance ministry, which pays the salaries of about 140,000 public employees and security force members.

As many as one in four Palestinians depend on wages from the Palestinian Authority.

Donor countries could set up a trust fund that would pay salaries directly to the Authority's employees, bypassing a Hamas-led finance ministry, Western diplomats said on Friday.

Hamas sources said the group might keep Mazen Sonnoqrot, an independent, in his post as economy minister.

The foreign minister will be Mahmoud al-Zahar, a leader in Gaza whom Israel has tried to assassinate, Hamas sources said.

And another Hamas leader, Saeed Seyam, would become interior minister, with control over three Palestinian security agencies.

The academic paper, whose authors are well-known scholars in the fields of political science and government, sets out to dispute almost every argument of the pro-Israel activists in the US.

It argues that supporting Israel is not in America's best interest and furthermore, that it complicates the US's international stand and its ability to fight terror. "Israel is in fact a liability in the war on terror and the broader effort to deal with rogue states," the authors write, claiming that "The United States has a terrorism problem in good part because it is so closely allied with Israel, not the other way around." The paper also argues that the US would not be worried about Iran, Iraq and Syria, if not for its close ties with Israel.

The Harvard paper also argues that Israel is not a worthy ally for the US, that it is not a true democracy and that it uses torture methods that are against American values.

The main claim of the authors is that the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US is the reason for a biased US foreign policy in the region that favors Israel. They point to The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)'s activity in Congress and in the executive branch and talk about how it allegedly "manipulates the media" and "polices academia" in order to make sure the US maintains a pro-Israel approach. The authors add that AIPAC also uses the claim of anti-Semitism, or "the great silencer" as they refer to it, to shut off any criticism of Israel.

The paper voices the claim that pro-Israeli officials in the Bush administration, namely Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and David Wurmser, were behind the push for war in Iraq and that the pro-Israel lobby was a driving force in encouraging the administration to go to war against Saddam Hussein.

The research has sparked instant controversy in the US. It was distributed over the weekend through several Web sites and list serves known for their anti-Israel approach and drew harsh criticism from pro-Israel activists.

An official with a pro-Israel organization in Washington said that the authors' disagreement "is not with America's pro-Israel lobby, but with the American people, who overwhelmingly support our relationship with Israel, and with Democrats and Republicans in successive administrations and Congress, who so strongly and consistently support the special relationship between the United States and Israel."

The discussion highlighted frustrations within Fatah, beaten by Hamas in elections in January, after Israel's seizure of a Palestinian leader in a prison raid in the West Bank this week.

A Fatah official said Abbas's aide, Tayib Abd al-Rahim, had sparked the debate in the central committee, winning support from several members.

"Abdel-Rahim said at the meeting Abbas must consider resigning and dissolving the Palestinian Authority if Israel continues with its attacks and unilateral measures," said the official, who asked not to be named.

"Why should we accept blow after blow to President Abbas whom the world claims to support?"

Abbas, who resigned once when he was prime minister under the late Yasser Arafat, and has threatened to quit since becoming president, told the central committee that he would consider the proposal, the official said.

Hamas opposition

Islamist resistance movement Hamas, which is about to form a government that Fatah and other factions have refused to join, said it opposed dissolving the PA.

Khalid Sulayman, a Hamas member of parliament, said: "This is not the right national position to take."

Sami Abu Zuhri, a Hamas spokesman, asked why Fatah members had not proposed scrapping the PA earlier when its writ was undermined by Israeli offensives in the West Bank.

"These events were more grave than what happened in Jericho," he said.

Aid groups and an international envoy have warned of the risk of chaos and violence if the PA collapses amid moves to isolate a Hamas-led government.

Tit-for-tat

Fatah officials said winding up the PA would be a protest against what they saw as efforts by Israel and the United States to sideline Abbas as a negotiating partner.

They said it would be timely because unilateral Israeli policies had already weakened the PA and dimmed hopes of achieving a viable, contiguous Palestinian state.

Many Palestinians saw Tuesday's prison raid in the West Bank city of Jericho as a deliberate attempt to humiliate Abbas and the PA.

Ehud Olmert, the interim Israeli prime minister, has said he will impose final borders if Hamas does not change course.

By withholding Palestinian tax revenues to deny funds to a Hamas-led government, Israel has also pushed the PA to seek international funds to pay public sector salaries.

Israel has accused Abbas of not fulfilling Palestinian obligations to disarm armed factions under a US-negotiated peace plan.

Israel's own commitments to freeze settlement building have not been met.

Fatah's ruling committee has never previously considered dismantling the PA created by the Palestine Liberation Organisation under the Oslo peace deals with Israel in 1994.

The original concept was to give 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza a say over their affairs until statehood.

Dissolving a body that Fatah had dominated until the election would require the PLO formally to hand responsibility for the territories back to Israel.

The PLO could then urge UN action to end Israel's occupation, advocates of the plan say.

Now, with the world focusing on an Israeli attack on the Palestinian prison in Jericho, an event that many Palestinians and Israelis view as a 'publicity stunt' by Israel to garner support for the ruling Kadima Party in upcoming elections, the impoverished population of the Gaza Strip waits, ignored and forgotten, for the Israeli military to re-open their border crossing as was promised by Israeli leaders last week so that their children will not starve.

Palestinians in the Gaza Strip were mainly employed in Israel, prior to the current open conflict that broke out in September 2000. Since 2000, the unemployment rate has reached levels of up to 80% in some areas, making the Palestinian population more and more dependent on foreign imports and aid.

Palestinian Economic Ministry Undersecretary Mr. Nasser As'saraj confirmed that the Gaza Strip mills are empty of flour as a result of the Israeli closure of the crossings used to import this vital grain.

As'saraj confirmed Thursday that the ministry has been in contact with the Israeli and Egyptian authorities so as to have the crossings reopened so the Palestinian people will be able to import the substantial and vital food stuffs such as flour, sugar and rice.

"The Gaza Strip is facing a serious problem; there is a crisis in this regard", Saraj added.

Saraj pointed out that all bakeries in the Strip are closed because there is no flour.

Israeli authorities appeared unconcerned about the severe shortage of food in the Gaza Strip. Top advisor to the Israeli prime minister, Dov Weisglass, said recently that Palestinians should be "put on a diet", referring to the imposition of sanctions on the population as punishment for voting for the Hamas party in January's democratic election. Despite the fact that the United Nations has condemned the closure, and noted that 40% of children in the Gaza Strip suffer from malnutrition, Israeli politicians seem entirely unconcerned with the fate of the 1.2 million Gaza Palestinians -- a fate that is, at this point, entirely in their hands.

The PFLP, a Marxist movement notorious for engineering a spate of airline hijackings in the early 1970s, had in previous years ended its involvement in international terrorism and had returned from exile to emerge as part of the secular leftist opposition to both the Fatah-dominated Palestine Authority and the Islamist Hamas. As a legal political party, the PFLP regularly put forward candidates in Palestinian elections, though their percentage of the popular vote rarely scored better than the low single digits. The PFLP also maintained an armed militia, though--unlike Hamas and Islamic Jihad--it primarily targeted the Israeli military and police in the occupied territories rather than civilians inside Israel.

Seven weeks after the Israeli assassination of their leader, a PFLP militant assassinated Rehavam Zeevi, head of the far-right Moledet Party, who had been serving as Israeli Tourism Minister in Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's coalition government. The Moledet Party--which subsequently merged with other far right parties to form the National Alliance--is even more extremist in ideology than the PFLP, calling for the ethnic cleansing of all Palestinians from Israel and the occupied territories.

In response to Mustafa's murder, the State Department issued only a mild statement reiterating its opposition to Israel's assassination policy. In subsequent months, the Bush administration--with the encouragement of both Republican and Democratic congressional leaders--dropped even this nominal opposition and began to openly defend assassinations by Israeli death squads of suspected Palestinian militants. By contrast, President Bush personally condemned Zeevi's murder, criticized the Palestinian Authority's failure to jail the suspected assassins and PFLP leaders, and demanded that they be punished.

When Israel violently re-occupied Ramallah four months later and launched a six-week siege on Palestinian President Yasir Arafat's offices, President Bush expressed his understanding for the Israeli action--otherwise universally condemned in the international community--on the grounds that the suspected PFLP assassin and three alleged accomplices had sought refuge there. Bush noted how "these people are accused of killing a cabinet official of the Israel government. I can understand why the prime minister wants them brought to justice." He added, "They should be brought to justice if they killed this man in cold blood."

By contrast, there were no American demands to bring to justice the Israeli helicopter pilots or Israeli political and military leaders who were responsible for Mustafa's assassination. Similarly, there was no U.S. criticism of the 1988 Israeli assassination of a member of Arafat's cabinet, Defense Minister Khalid al-Wazir in Tunisia, much less a demand that those responsible for his murder be brought to justice. (An investigation by the Israeli newspaper Maariv revealed that the leader of the seaborne command center who oversaw al-Wazir's murder was Israel's then-deputy military chief Ehud Barak, who would later become Israeli prime minister, widely praised by President Bill Clinton and others as a great peacemaker.)

Arafat finally agreed to have the four PFLP militants implicated in the assassination--along with Ahmed Saadat, Mustafa's successor as PFLP leader--jailed in return for the Israelis lifting the siege, even though the Palestinian judiciary cleared him of involvement. Arafat was also forced to agree to imprison a sixth man, Palestinian Authority finance chief Fuad Shubaki, for attempting to smuggle arms from Iran. The U.S. position has been that while it is legitimate for the United States to send arms to the Israeli government to facilitate their occupation of Palestinian territory seized by Israel in the 1967 war, it is illegitimate for the Palestinians to import arms to resist the occupation.

Though the Bush administration had rejected calls from the Palestinians to dispatch U.S. peacekeeping forces to the West Bank to separate the two sides and protect civilian populations, President Bush--not trusting the Palestinian Authority to keep the six men incarcerated--insisted that American servicemen, later joined by British servicemen, be sent into the West Bank city of Jericho to help guard the prisoners.

While U.S. and British officials had complained in recent weeks of a deteriorating security climate, they did not give Palestinian officials any notice of their sudden departure on March 14. They did, however, apparently inform Israeli officials. Though there was no evidence to suggest that the departure of the foreign prison guards would lead to an imminent release of the six men, Israeli forces moved into Jericho and assaulted the prison, killing two guards and wounding two dozen others, kidnapping the six prisoners and bringing them to Israel.

The widespread Palestinian anger in response to the Israeli attack and kidnappings went well beyond those who support the PFLP's ideology or its retaliatory assassination of Zeevi. This latest violation of Palestine's limited sovereignty, with the apparent collusion of the United States--the supposed guarantor of the Oslo peace process and the detention agreement--and Great Britain deepens the sense of humiliation from the nearly 29 years of U.S.-backed Israeli occupation of the West Bank. It has weakened moderate Palestinian leaders like President Mahmoud Abbas, who has argued that the U.S.-brokered peace process offers hope for the establishment of a viable Palestinian state alongside Israel, while strengthening Hamas and other extremists who reject the peace process and Israel's very right to exist.

Mr Carter also questioned Israel's commitment to the US-led "road map" peace process. "Israel has officially rejected its basic premises with patently unacceptable caveats and prerequisites," he said.

He said Israel was insincere at peace negotiations during the 1990s when it offered to withdraw only a small proportion of the 225,000 settlers living in the West Bank. "Their best official offer to the Palestinians was to withdraw 20% of them, leaving 180,000 [Israelis] in 209 settlements, covering about 5% of the occupied land," he said.

"The 5% figure is grossly misleading, with surrounding areas taken or earmarked for expansion, roadways joining settlements with each other and to Jerusalem, and wide arterial swaths providing water, sewage, electricity and communications. This intricate honeycomb divides the entire West Bank into multiple fragments, often uninhabitable or even unreachable."

This week the acting Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said that if he wins this month's general election, as expected, he will annex the main settlement blocks that are home to about 80% of settlers.|

Mr Carter said Israel's unilateral pullout from the Gaza Strip had left it as a "non-viable economic and political entity" and that the future of the West Bank is "equally dismal".

"Especially troublesome is Israel's construction of huge concrete dividing walls in populated areas and high fences in rural areas - located entirely on Palestinian territory and often with deep intrusions to encompass more land and settlements ...

"This will never be acceptable either to Palestinians or to the international community, and will inevitably precipitate increased tension and violence within Palestine, and stronger resentment and animosity from the Arab world against America, which will be held accountable for the plight of the Palestinians."

Hamas is expected to deliver a list of proposed cabinet ministers to the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, today after the once-dominant Fatah party said it would not join the new government. The prime minister designate, Ismail Haniyeh, told CBS television that he hoped one day to sign a peace agreement with Israel. But he said Hamas would renounce violence and recognise the Jewish state only when Israel recognised "a Palestinian state within the boundaries of Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem".

In the midst of journalism's "Sunshine Week"--during which the Associated Press and other news organizations are valiantly proclaiming the public's "right to know"--AP insists on conducting its own activities in the dark, and refuses to answer even the simplest questions about its system of international news reporting.

Most of all, it refuses to explain why it erased footage of an Israeli soldier intentionally shooting a Palestinian boy.

AP, according to its website, is the world's oldest and largest news organization. It is the behemoth of news reporting, providing what its editors determine is the news to a billion people each day. Through its feeds to thousands of newspapers, radio and television stations, AP is a major determinant in what Americans read, hear and see--and what they don't.

What they don't is profoundly important. I investigated one such omission when I was in the Palestinian Territories last year working on a documentary with my colleague (and daughter), who was filming our interviews.

On Oct. 17, 2004 Israeli military forces invaded Balata, a dense, poverty-stricken community deep in Palestine's West Bank (Israel frequently invades this area and others). According to witnesses, the vehicles stayed for about twenty minutes, the military asserting its power over the Palestinian population. The witnesses state that there was no Palestinian resistance--no "clash," no "crossfire," not even any stone-throwing. At one point, after most of the vehicles had finally driven away, an Israeli soldier stuck his gun out of his armored vehicle, aimed at a pre-pubescent boy nearby, and pulled the trigger.

We went to the hospital and interviewed the boy, Ahmad, his doctors, family, and others. Ahmad had bandages around his lower abdomen, where surgeons had operated on his bladder. He said he was afraid of Israeli soldiers, and pulled up his pants leg to show where he had been shot previously.

In the hospital there was a second boy, this one with a shattered femur; and a third boy, this one in critical condition with a bullet hole in his lung. A fourth boy, not a patient, was visiting a friend. He showed us a scarred lip and missing teeth from when Israeli soldiers had shot him in the mouth.

This was not an unusual situation. When I had visited Palestinian hospitals on a previous trip, I had seen many such victims; some with worse injuries. Yet, very few Americans know this is going on. AP's actions in regard to Ahmad's shooting may explain why.

We discovered that an AP cameraman had filmed the entire incident. This cameraman had then followed what apparently is the usual routine. He sent his video--an extremely valuable commodity, since it contained documentary evidence of a war crime--to the AP control bureau for the region. This bureau is in Israel.

What happened next is unfathomable. Did AP broadcast it? No. Did AP place the video in safe-keeping, available for an investigation of this crime? No.

According to its cameraman, AP erased it.

We were astounded. We traveled to AP's control bureau in Israel. With our own video camera out and running, we asked bureau chief Steve Gutkin about this incident. Was the information we had been told correct, or did he have a different version? Did the bureau have the video, or had they indeed erased it. If so, why?

Gutkin, repeatedly looking at the camera and visibly flustered, told us that AP did not allow its journalists to give interviews. He told us that all questions must go to Corporate Communications, located in New York. He explained that they were on deadline and couldn't talk. I said I understood deadline pressure, and sat down to wait until they were done. When he called Israeli police to arrest us, we left.

Back in the US later, I phoned Corporate Communications and reached Director of Media Relations Jack Stokes, AP's public relations spokesman. I had conversed with Stokes before.

Over the past several years I have noticed disturbing flaws in AP coverage of Israel-Palestine: newsworthy stories not being covered, reports sent to international newspapers but not to American ones, stories omitting or misreporting significant facts, critical sentences being removed from updated reports.

I would phone AP with the appropriate correction or news alert. One time this resulted in a flawed news story being slightly corrected in updates. In a few cases stories were then covered that had been neglected. In many cases, however, I was told that I needed to speak to Corporate Communications. I would phone Corporate Communications, leave a message, and wait for a response. Most often, none came.

Several times, however, I was able to have long conversations with AP spokesman Stokes. None of these conversations, however, ever ended with AP taking any action. Some typical responses:

* The omitted story was "not newsworthy."

* The story deemed by AP editors to be newsworthy to the rest of the world--e.g. Israel's brutal imprisonment of over 300 Palestinian youths--was not newsworthy in the US (Israel's major ally).

* Burying a report of Israeli forces shooting a four-year-old Palestinian girl in the mouth was justified.

* Misreporting an incident in which an Israeli officer riddled a 13-year-old girl at close range with bullets was unimportant.

Despite this unresponsive pattern, when I learned firsthand of an AP bureau erasing footage of an atrocity, I again phoned Corporate Communications. I no longer had much expectation that AP would take any corrective action, but I did expect to receive some information. I gave spokesperson Stokes the numerous details about this incident that we had gathered on the scene and asked him the same questions I had asked Gutkin. He said he would look into this and get back to me.

After several days he had not gotten back to me, so I again phoned him. He said that he had looked into this incident, and that AP had determined that this was "an internal matter" and that they would give no response.

While I should have known better, I was again astounded. AP was blatantly violating fundamental journalistic norms of ethical behavior, and clearly felt it had the power to get away with it.

Journalism, according to the Statement of Principles of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, is a "sacred trust." It is the bulwark of a free society and is so essential to the functioning of a democracy that our forefathers affirmed its primacy in the very first amendment of the Bill of Rights.

According to the Society of Professional Journalists, one of the four major pillars of journalistic ethics is to "Be Accountable." According to SPJ's Code of Ethics:

"Journalists are accountable to their readers, listeners, viewers and each other.

"Journalists should:

* Clarify and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the public over journalistic conduct.

* Encourage the public to voice grievances against the news media.

* Admit mistakes and correct them promptly.

* Expose unethical practices of journalists and the news media.

* Abide by the same high standards to which they hold others.

Finally, this week, on deadline with a chapter about media coverage of Israel-Palestine, I again tried to confirm some of my facts with AP. Certainly, I felt, during "Sunshine Week" AP would respond. As part of the Sunshine campaign, AP's CEO and President Tom Curley is traveling the country giving speeches on the necessity of transparency and accountability (for government) and emphasizing "the openness that effective democracy requires."

"The trend toward secrecy," AP's president has correctly been pointing out, "is the greatest threat to democracy."

I emailed my questions to AP, talked to Stokes by phone, and again was told he would get back to me. Again, I got back to him. Then, in a surreal exchange, he conveyed AP's reply: "The official response is we decline to respond." As I asked question after question, many as simple as a confirmation of the number of bureaus AP has in Israel-Palestine, the response was silence or a repetition of: "The official response is we decline to respond."

The next day I tried phoning AP's President Curley directly. I was unable to reach Curley, since he was on the road giving his Sunshine Week speeches ("Secrecy," Curley says, "is for losers"), but I left a message for him with an assistant. She said someone would respond.

I am still waiting.

It is clearly time to go to AP's superiors. The fact is, AP is a cooperative. It is not owned by Corporate Communications spokespeople or by its CEO or even by its board of directors. It is owned by the thousands of newspapers and broadcast stations around the United States that use AP reports. These newspapers, radio and television stations are the true directors of AP, and bear the responsibility for its coverage.

In the end, it appears, the only way that Americans will receive full, unbiased reporting from AP on Israel-Palestine will be when these member-owners demand such coverage from their employees in the Middle East and in New York. As long as AP's owners remain too busy or too negligent to ensure the quality and accuracy of their Israel-Palestine coverage, the handful of people within AP who are distorting its news reporting on this tragic, life-and-death, globally destabilizing issue will quite likely continue to do so.

In the final analysis, therefore, it is up to us--members of the public--to step in. Everyone who believes that Americans have the right and the need to receive full, undistorted information on all issues, including Israel-Palestine, must take action. We must require our news media to fulfill their profoundly important obligation, and we must ourselves distribute the critical information our media are leaving out.

If we don't take action, no one else will. AP can be reached at 212-621-1500.

-Alison Weir, a former journalist is Executive Director of If Americans Knew, which is currently conducting a statistical analysis of AP's coverage of Israel-Palestine, to be released within a few months. The organization has created cards that describe AP actions for people to disseminate in their communities.