"What you see is a copy - the original was on a cigarette box," Vice Premier Shimon Peres said this week of a document from the Israel Defense Force Archive relating to the Sinai Campaign. The document, a sketch by then chief of staff Moshe Dayan of the Sinai Peninsula, has three arrows indicating the advance of Israeli forces. It will be displayed this week on the Archive Web site (www.archives.mod.gov.il) to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1956 Sinai Campaign.

The sketch bears the words: "The map, according to which planning was discussed at the next to last minute. Drawn by Moshe Dayan." Peres had then prime minister and defense minister David Ben-Gurion sign it, and then signed it himself. It is dated October 24, 1956, six days before the war, which began with the parachuting of Israeli troops into the Mitla Pass, some 60 kilometers from the Suez Canal.

The sketch was made on the third and last day of what became known as the Sevres Conference, named after the villa and the Paris suburb where representatives of France, Great Britain and Israel met secretly to plan the war.

"The day before, Ben-Gurion presented us with 10 questions," Peres, who was then director general of the defense ministry, recalled. "He did not want us to appear as mercenaries. He was willing to cooperate on timing with the French and the English but not for us to appear as their collaborators. He therefore hesitated and wanted answers to these questions."

Peres said he and Dayan left the villa and worked all night at their hotel to prepare answers. "When we came back to the villa, we wanted to show Ben-Gurion a map of Sinai but there was none, so I pulled out the pack of Kent I was smoking and took out the silver foil and Dayan drew the map and the arrows on the other side ... The central arrow is as far as the Mitla. The plan was to parachute into the Mitla and from there to move backward to the border," Peres explained.

Peres says he gave the original document to the IDF Museum. Neither he nor Archive curator Michal Tzur knows what happened to it. Tzur says the document was transferred from the defense minister's offices in 1982.

It is one of a number of recently declassified documents grouped under the heading "Meetings of Officers with the Defense Minister."

One document describes a meeting, which took place on the evening of November 5, 1956. Dayan, Colonel Ariel Sharon, commander of the Paratroop Brigade, Maj. Gen. Haim Laskov, and the deputy director general of the Foreign Ministry, Yaakov Herzog, arrived separately at Ben-Gurion's apartment on Keren Kayemeth Street (now Ben-Gurion street) in Tel Aviv. They came to report the successful conclusion of the war to Ben-Gurion, who had taken ill. A cease-fire was being discussed in the United Nations and, in Israel, they were trying to figure out how to delay it to allow British and French forces to take control of the Suez Canal, as was decided at Sevres. Ben-Gurion's military secretary Nehemia Argov was present, as well as his secretary, Yitzhak Navon. Sharon came with his first wife Margalit.

"At 9:30 A.M. all units entered Sharm al-Sheikh, thus completing the conquest of Sinai," Dayan told to Ben-Gurion. "Among the prisoners is one Egyptian officer whom everyone is amazed at. He was also in Faluja [a 1948 battle site in the Negev - Y.M.]. He said this time it was no big deal, we did it with the French and the English. He was in the know and he knew Arik [Sharon] had parachuted."

Ben-Gurion was particularly interested in the place names and how to say them in Hebrew. "We'll finish with all those Arab names," the prime minister said. Despite his fever, Ben-Gurion was almost euphoric. "If we had had an army like this in 1948 we could have conquered all the Arab countries," he said. "Things have changed. Sinai is in our hands."

Ben-Gurion said Sinai "must be under Israeli control, the mail must be Israeli."

He proposed opening a sailing route for tourists from Eilat to Sharm al-Sheikh. "Masses of people will want to tour and will pay the asking price," he said.

Ben-Gurion asked Laskov, who fought on the Gaza-Rafa-El Arish line: "Aren't you satisfied?" To which Laskov replied, "there are many aspects to this business. The matter of looting. That's not good."

Ben-Gurion answered him: "What did they loot?" Laskov: "Rags, boxes of Polaris cigarettes, cookies,"

The oil fields at a-Tur in Sinai also came up that evening. "We could send the oil in ships to Haifa. We would be free of foreign [countries.] We have oil," Ben-Gurion said.

From the day he was elected president, Israel referred to Mahmoud Abbas as an empty, weak, and impotent figure, thus laying the groundwork for his defeat in parliamentary elections and ascension of Hamas to power. The most blatant example of this policy is of course Israel's refusal to coordinate the Gaza Strip withdrawal with the Palestinian government, which did not include Hamas at the time, while opting for a unilateral move - a brilliant Israeli maneuver that exempted the government, in its own eyes, of the need to refer to the Palestinian side, which it viewed as virtual.

As we know, the "no partner" policy was not invented in honor of Hamas, yet with the rise of the Islamic movement to power, this policy took a grave active turn: Not only do we refuse to talk with this no-partner, we also use all means available in order to defeat it, including the abduction of its elected officials and starvation of its voters.

Carefully orchestrated play

Yet if it appears for a moment that Hamas is losing some of its status among Palestinians and Abbas' position may again be boosted, Israel makes sure to detain the Presidential Guard's commander, thus delivering yet another elbow to Abbas' ribs, and so on and so forth. At this stage, the fashionable discourse regarding "strengthening Abbas," which recently replaced the "no partner" mantra, is no more than a sad joke, as both in Jerusalem and Washington officials realize this is too little, and particularly too late.

This play Israel is carefully orchestrating also has a set, called the Gaza Strip. In the past year since the withdrawal, Israel made sure to turn the Strip into a pressure cooker with a particularly short fuse, awaiting the explosion to come. With unemployment skyrocketing, a naval, ground and aerial siege, and often sealed off crossings, along with an economic siege and a freeze on the transfer of tax monies belonging to the Palestinian Authority by law, the Israeli government knew with certainty that it will only be a matter of time before the Strip collapses into violent chaos -

as indeed happened - and now the government can post a satisfied checkmark next to the objective it formulated a while ago.

However, it's worthwhile reminding all those happy to see the Palestinians killing each other at this time that this play also has an epilogue. When the day comes, possibly sooner than expected, they will seek to end the bloodshed and unite around a common objective.

Then, no objective could unite around it the split Palestinian factions more than resistance to the occupation. This way, Israel is cooking up, with its own hands and through significant satisfaction, the third Intifada, even before the second one died down, in order to continue feeding the no-partner ethos.

Nonetheless, it came into force on April 1, 1978, prohibiting the offering of "material inducement" for a person to change his religion. A material inducement could be something as minor as the giving of a Bible. Although the Likud government of Menachem Begin assured the Christian community that the law applied equally to all religions and did not specifically mention Christians, the United Christian Council of Israel charged that it was biased and aimed specifically at Christians since only Christians openly proselytized. Council representatives also cited anti-Christian speeches made in the parliament during debate on the law. Parliament member Binyamin Halevy had called missionaries "a cancer in the body of the nation."

The next year Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, considered a political moderate, issued a religious ruling that copies of the New Testament should be torn out of any edition of a Bible owned by a Jew. Israeli scholar Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote that he was disturbed by "these manifestations of hostility-the designation of Christians as idolaters, the demand to invoke the 'resident alien' ordinances, and the burning of the New Testament." Observed Harkabi: "Outside of the Land of Israel Jews never dared behave in this fashion. Has independence made the Jews take leave of their senses?"

Desecration of Christian property and churches-arson, window breaking, burning of the New Testament-had long marred relations between the two communities. A small but fanatical group of Jews wanted no Christians, whom they considered fallen Jews, in Israel. This virulent strain of prejudice had been present since before the Jewish state was founded.

For instance, after the capture by Jewish forces of Jaffa on May 13, 1948, two days before Israel's birth, there was desecration of Christian churches. Father Deleque, a Catholic priest, reported: "Jewish soldiers broke down the doors of my church and robbed many precious and sacred objects. Then they threw the statues of Christ down into a nearby garden." He added that Jewish leaders had reassured that religious buildings would be respected, "but their deeds do not correspond to their words."

On May 31, 1948, a group of Christian leaders comprising the Christian Union of Palestine publicly complained that Jewish forces had used 10 Christian churches and humanitarian institutions in Jerusalem as military bases and otherwise desecrated them. They added that a total of 14 churches had suffered shell damage, which killed three priests and made casualties of more than 100 women and children.

The group's statement said Arab forces had abided by their promise to respect Christian institutions, but that the Jews had forcefully occupied Christian structures and been indiscriminate in shelling churches. It said, among other charges, that "many children were killed or wounded" by Jewish shells on the Convent of Orthodox Copts on May 19, 23 and 24; that eight refugees were killed and about 120 wounded at the Orthodox Armenian Convent at some unstated date; and that Father Pierre Somi, secretary to the Bishop, had been killed and two wounded at the Orthodox Syrian Church of St. Mark on May 16.

Churches were again desecrated during the 1967 war when Israel captured East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, completing the occupation of all of Palestine. On July 21, 1967, the Reverend James L. Kelso, a former moderator of the United Presbyterian Church and long-time resident in Palestine, complained of extensive damage to churches adding: "So significant was this third Jewish war against the Arabs that one of the finest missionaries of the Near East called it 'perhaps the most serious setback that Christendom has had since the fall of Constantinople in 1453.'"

Kelso continued: "How did Israel respect church property in the fighting...? They shot up the Episcopal Cathedral [in Jerusalem], just as they had done in 1948. They smashed down the Episcopal school for boys...The Israelis wrecked and looted the YMCA...They wrecked the big Lutheran hospital...The Lutheran center for cripples also suffered..."

Nancy Nolan, wife of a physician at the American University Hospital in Beirut, who was in Jerusalem during and after the fighting, charged that "while the Israeli authorities proclaim to the world that all religions will be respected and protected, and post notices identifying the Holy Places, Israeli soldiers and youths are throwing stink bombs in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

"The Church of St. Anne, who crypt marks the birthplace of the Virgin Mary, has been severely damaged and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem also was damaged. The wanton killing of the Warden of the Garden Tomb followed by the shooting into the tomb itself, in an attempt to kill the warden's wife, was another instance that we knew first-hand which illustrated the utter disregard shown by the occupation forces toward the Holy Places and the religious sensibilities of the people in Jordan and in the rest of the world."

"The desecration of churches...includes smoking in the churches, littering the churches, taking dogs inside and entering in inappropriate manner of dress. Behavior such as this cannot be construed other than as a direct insult to the whole Christian world."

Desecration has occurred not only in times of war. As recently as 1995, an Israeli soldier, Daniel Koren, 22, entered St. Anthony Catholic Church in Jaffa and went on a shooting rampage, firing more than 100 bullets in the altar and the cross above it but causing no injuries. Koren said his Judaic convictions forced him to destroy all physical images of God, and admitted that he had staged a prior attack in Jerusalem's Gethsemane Church.

Perhaps the worst outbreak of organized desecration of Christian institutions came on Sept. 10, 1963, when hundreds of ultra-orthodox Jews simultaneously attacked Christian missions in Jaffa, Haifa and Jerusalem. (One has to say "perhaps because reporting on this sensitive subject in the U.S. media has been so poor over the decades.) At any rate, the attacks were a concerted effort to intimidate Christians in Israel by a religious vigilante group called Hever Peelei Hamahane Hatorati, the Society of Activists of the Torah Camp. In an attack on the Church of Scotland school in Jaffa, Christian children were beaten and considerable damage was caused to the school by at least 200 rampaging Jews.

Other attacks occurred at two nearby church schools, the Greek Catholic missionary school of St. Joseph and a Christian Brothers school. In Jerusalem, attacks occurred at the St. Joseph convent and the Finnish Lutheran mission school. In Haifa, the American-European Beth El Messianic Mission Children's Hostel and School was attacked. No serious damage occurred in any of the attacks except at the Scotland school. More than 100 Jews were convicted in the attacks, none of them receiving more than small fines and suspended sentences.

The first half of the 1980s, with Likud governments in control, was a particularly active period for Jewish bigots. On Oct. 8, 1982, the Baptist Church in Jerusalem was burned down. Kerosene had been sprinkled on the church's wooden chapel, constructed in 1933. Although no one was ever charged in the arson, the Baptist Center's bookstore had been vandalized a dozen times in previous years, and Jews were suspected. When the Baptists sought to rebuild the church, Jews demonstrated against the project and the Jewish district planning commission refused to grant a building permit. In 1985, the Israeli Supreme Court advised the Baptists to leave the all-Jewish area.

On Christmas Day in 1983, a hotel in Tiberias where Christians held meetings was set afire, the latest in a series of attacks on a small group of about 50 Christians. Two Jews were arrested in the arson incident. Other attacks included stones thrown through windows at the hotel while the group was meeting and break-ins at the homes of members of the group. The anti-missionary group Yad Le'Achim complained that Christian missionaries were offering money, clothes, jewelry and tennis shoes to listen to Christian lectures.

Just over a fortnight later, on Jan. 11, 1984, suspected Jewish extremists stacked hymnals on a piano in a Christian prayer room in Jerusalem and set them afire. Also in the same week angry Jews protesting Christian proselytizing caused Beth Shalom, a Christian evangelical group, to withdraw its plans to build a multimillion-dollar hotel in Jerusalem. Beth Shalom took its action after about 150 Jews showed up at a city council meeting with placards reading "You can't buy me" and "I didn't immigrate to live next door to missionaries." A leader of the protest, Rabbi Moshe Berlinger, compared Christian missionaries to Trojan horses.

Jewish infringements on Christian rights became so bad by 1990 that on Dec. 20 the leaders of Christian churches in Jerusalem took the extraordinary decision to restrict Christmas celebrations to protest "the continuing sad state of affairs in our land," including encroachment by Israel on traditional Christian institutions. Among concerns expressed by the patriarchs and heads of churches were attempts by Jewish settlers to move into the Old City and an "erosion of the traditional rights and centuries-old privileges of the churches," including imposition by Israel of municipal and state taxes on the churches.

The statement added: "We express our deep concern over new problems confronting the local church. They interfere with the proper functioning of our religious institutions, and we call upon the civil authorities in the country to safeguard our historic rights and status honored by all governments."

Anti-Christian prejudice helps account for the fact that the number of Christian Palestinians in all of former Palestine had dwindled to only 50,000 in 1995. They no longer were a major presence in either Jerusalem or Ramallah, and they were fast losing their majority status in Bethlehem.

When Israel was established in 1948, the Palestinian Christian community had numbered 200,000, compared to roughly 600,000 Jews in Palestine at the time. Now the Christians are not even one percent of the population of Israel/Palestine. Of today's estimated total 400,000 Christian Palestinians, most now are living in their own diaspora, mainly in the Americas.

"The phone calls were very elegant but may be interpreted as exercising a delicate pressure," Kasprzyk said. "That's obvious -- we are adults and our IQs are high enough to understand that."

Judt, who was born and raised in England and lost much of his family in the Holocaust, took strong exception to the cancellation of his speech. He noted that he was forced to cancel another speech later this month at Manhattan College in the Bronx after a different Jewish group had complained. Other prominent academics have described encountering such problems, in some cases more severe, stretching over the past three decades.

The pattern, Judt says, is unmistakable and chilling.

"This is serious and frightening, and only in America -- not in Israel -- is this a problem," he said. "These are Jewish organizations that believe they should keep people who disagree with them on the Middle East away from anyone who might listen."

The leaders of the Jewish organizations denied asking the consulate to block Judt's speech and accused the professor of retailing "wild conspiracy theories" about their roles. But they applauded the consulate for rescinding Judt's invitation.

"I think they made the right decision," said Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. "He's taken the position that Israel shouldn't exist. That puts him on our radar."

David A. Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Congress, took a similar view. "I never asked for a particular action; I was calling as a friend of Poland," Harris said. "The message of that evening was going to be entirely contrary to the entire spirit of Polish foreign policy."

Judt has crossed rhetorical swords with the Jewish organizations on two key issues. Over the past few years he has written essays in the New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books and in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz arguing that power in Israel has shifted to religious fundamentalists and territorial zealots, that woven into Zionism is a view of the Arab as the irreconcilable enemy, and that Israel might not survive as a communal Jewish state.

The solution, he argues, lies in a slow and tortuous walk toward a binational and secular state.

He has, of late, defended an academic paper -- co-authored by professor Stephen M. Walt of Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government and John J. Mearsheimer, a professor at the University of Chicago -- which argues the American Israel lobby has pushed policies that are not in the United States' best interests and in fact often encourage Israel to engage in self-destructive behavior.

These are deeply controversial views -- Foxman of the ADL and writer Christopher Hitchens, among others, have attacked the Walt and Mearsheimer paper as anti-Semitic. And Judt's advocacy of a binational state has drawn a flock of critics, the more angry of whom accuse him of "pandering to genocide" as the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America put it. Former Bush speechwriter David Frum said Judt was pursuing "genocide liberalism."

Foxman has referred to Judt's views of Israel as "an offensive caricature."

The Mearsheimer and Walt paper, however, has drawn praise in some quarters in Israel, particularly on the left. So, too some Israeli writers, not least Israeli historian and social critic Amos Elon, have praised Judt's writings on Israel. Nor are Judt's arguments without historical precedent: Massachusetts Institute of Technology linguist and political philosopher Noam Chomsky, who is Jewish, has advocated a binational solution in Israel, a view that three decades ago sparked such anger that police stood guard at his college talks. More recently, the ADL repeatedly accused DePaul University professor Norman G. Finkelstein, who is Jewish and strongly opposes Israeli policies, of being a "Holocaust denier." These charges have proved baseless.

"There is an often organized and often spontaneous attempt to marginalize anyone in the Jewish world who offers a critique of Israeli policy," said Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of the liberal magazine Tikkun. "It's equated with anti-Semitism and Israel denial."

Foxman says such complaints are silly. "Nobody has called Judt an anti-Semite," Foxman said. "People who are critical of Israel and of the Jewish people often flaunt their Jewishness. Why isn't that an issue?"

Judt replies that he only reluctantly talks of his Jewishness, in no small part to inoculate himself against charges of anti-Semitism. "For many, the way to be Jewish in this country is to aggressively assert that the Holocaust is your identification tag," Judt said. "I know perfectly well my history, but it never occurred to me that my most prominent identity was as a Jew."

During the visit to Galway, the third largest city in Ireland, the ambassador met with the mayor and president of the university and was also interviewed at a local radio station.

On Saturday night, Dr. Evrony spoke with Yedioth Ahronoth, saying that "despite the incident I intend to continue to speak everywhere. It is important that Israel's voice be head and its position clarified."