I have been trying to understand what has happened in Palestine which started the current events, and I finally understand what has been going on. There are plenty of articles on the history of the conflict.

I particularly like this account of events: "The origin of the Palestine-Israeli conflict".

The article above is interesting in understanding why the Oslo and Madrid agreements are not being followed up on.

The Electronic Intifada has pointers and resources to information on the new intifada. I read with interest the Historical Myths section (covering for example, the origin of the various wars, and the Israeli need for security).

A countering view of things can be viewed in the Israeli Insider.

The palestinians are in checkmate: Arafat locked down, 450 tanks vs 50 and 130 helicopters vs 2 and 450k active soldiers vs 69,000 militia man (as reported by Spain's newspapers).

Elen Cantarow describes her experience.

Chomsky has covered the topic in depth in various books, there is a short Q/A with him from a couple of days ago.

From the front

Reports from the front are available on the Electronic Intifada WebLog.

Robert Frisk who has been covering the Middle East for a long time has a great piece.

Neta Golan, an Israeli part of the 40 peace observers that are in the building with Arafat has a live report

War criminals.

I do not know what Arafat's background is, but Robert Fisk once called him a criminal of war (He did not go into the details in the article I read that, Robert was covering the bombing in Afghanistan).

He refers in the same terms to Sharon.

Electronic Intifada has an annotated resume of Sharon.