Center party list

ARUTZ7 3/16/99: "Centrist party leaders will announce their party list for the upcoming Knesset elections today. Sources say that Dalia Rabin-Pilosof (daughter of late Prime Minister Yizchak Rabin) and Nechamah Ronen (previously of Tzomet) will be placed in the 5th and 6th spots respectively.

Former Labor MK Haggai Merom and Shachak- crony Uri Savir are also expected to make the party's top ten. Meanwhile, Tzomet MK Moti Zandberg (previously of Tzomet) has been pushed to an "unrealistic" spot on the roster, while one-time Labor party Secretary-General Nissim Zvilli has withdrawn his name from the running.

Phone strikes: Hello?

ARUTZ7 3/16/99: "Approximately 200,000 Bezek customers are without phone service this morning as striking workers refrain from repairing numerous technical problems throughout the country.

At this hour, the Tel Aviv District Court is deliberating on the management's request to compel employees to return to work. In related news, the Histadrut labor union will hold top-level meetings this afternoon to discuss a possible nation-wide strike next week.

Jerusalem: East is east and so is West

ARUTZ7 3/15/99: "The Palestinians have demands not only on eastern Jerusalem, but on the western part as well. Palestinian Authority senior Abu Allah declared three days ago that the PA will insist on discussing western Jerusalem in the final-status negotiations.

Arutz-7 correspondent Haggai Huberman reports that Abu Allah, who appeared before a gathering of the Fatah Youth movement, said he was speaking in the name of Yasser Arafat. Abu Allah also cited the recent European Union letter implying that Israel has no sovereignty over any part of Jerusalem."

Abolish religious councils?

THE JERUSALEM POST 3/16/99: "In the ongoing conflict over the seating of Reform and Conservative representatives on the local religious councils, the Chief Rabbinical Council yesterday decided that the councils should be abolished, rather than include the non-Orthodox representatives.

Their decision came after consulting with representatives of the leading haredi rabbis, prompting one Reform leader to propose that the positions of chief rabbis be abolished, so that the Orthodox public could hear the haredi views without the mediation of the chief rabbis..."

HA'ARETZ 3/15/99: "Even as U.S. envoy Martin Indyk met yesterday with Syrian President Hafez Assad to discuss the "delicate" sitution in southern Lebanon and its impact on a possible resumption of Israel-Syria peace talks, the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon was forced out of the Beka'a Valley by students demonstrating against Israel and the U.S. Indyk expressed hope that his talks with Syrian officials would help prepare the way for peace talks stalled since 1996 to resume after Israeli elections in May.

He met for three hours with Assad in the capital, Damascus. The two men discussed the peace process and Indyk delivered a message from U.S. President Bill Clinton about his desire to develop ties between the two countries, according to a statement from Syrian spokesman Jubran Kourieh.

Details of the talks were not released. Before the meeting, however, Indyk briefed reporters about his talks earlier Sunday with Syrian Foreign Minister Farouk Shara. Indyk, a former ambassador to Israel, told reporters that he and the minister discussed the need to preserve calm "at this sensitive time" in southern Lebanon.

U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon David Satterfield learned just how delicate the situation was when he ventured into Lebanon's Beka'a Valley yesterday, touching off protests from anti-Israeli demonstrators who managed to force Satterfield's convoy to turn back without reaching its destination, a graduation ceremony for computer trainees in the Bekaa village of Qaa...

Asked whether there was a U.S. initiative to revive the Syrian-Israeli talks, Indyk said his effort was focusing on Syria for the time-being because it is "simply not realistic for [an initiative] to occur before the Israeli elections."

Officials said Shara reiterated Syria's demand that talks resume from the point where they left off with the previous Labor-led Israeli government...

The U.S. envoy arrived in the Syrian capital on Saturday from Jordan, where he met with King Abdullah. Indyk's tour also has taken him to Morocco and Turkey, where he talked to government officials about Iraq and Iran as well as the stalled Middle East peace process. He did not include Israel on his regional swing..."

Druze voting slightly irregular

HA'ARETZ 3/16/99: "The primary elections held by the Labor Party a month ago were marred by irregularities among the party's Druze voters, according to a report aired last night on Channel One's Elections Magazine. About 100,000 of 160,000 eligible Laborites cast ballots in the February 15 primaries.

According to the report, Labor - and the computer company it hired to tally the voting, Teldor - counted 6,760 eligible Druze voters. Labor and Teldor said 6,719 of those actually cast ballots, or more than 99 percent, which would mean only 41 eligible Druze Laborites did not take part in the primaries.

Channel One reported that it had polled northern Druze Laborites, and said 116 of them signed a declaration that they had not voted in the primaries. Moreover, Channel One reported that a large number of Druze Labor members living in northern towns like Beit Jann and Daliat al-Carmel said they had not voted.

A spokesman for the Labor Party denied the allegations. Labor MK Saleh Tarif, who was the only Druze candidate on the Labor ballot, said the report was driven by Center Party interests.