-THE POINT OF INCLUDING THE TERM OF REFERENCE BELOW IS PRIMARILY RELATED TO THE ANNOTATIONS PROVIDED IN IT CENTERING ON THE VARIOUS FORMS OF THE KEYWORD: "SUCKERS."
MORE ON THIS SUBJECT AT THE END OF THIS TERM OF REFERENCE.

By DEBORAH SONTAG

JERUSALEM, Feb. 5--The Israel that votes on Tuesday is not the same hopeful Israel that overwhelmingly elected Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 1999 with confidence in his supreme confidence that he could bring peace to the land.

After four months of violent conflict with the Palestinians, many Israelis have lost their faith not only in Mr. Barak but also in the peace effort itself and in their Palestinian "peace partners."

After Mr. Barak was elected, an Israel Democracy Institute poll showed that 67 percent of Israelis believed that real peace was possible. Now, a new poll indicates that only about a fifth of Israelis think that a peace agreement would solve and end the bitter, blood-soaked conflict with the Palestinians. In a few months' time, many people in this country have lost their faith and started to think of their peace dreams as naïve--and of themselves as "suckers."

"That is the key to the emergence of Ariel Sharon," said Asher Arian, a political scientist and senior fellow at the democracy institute.

Mr. Sharon, the right-wing Likud Party leader, is expected to win a resounding victory over Mr. Barak on Tuesday. While some see his presumed victory purely as a rejection of Mr. Barak, many see it also as an affirmative embrace of Mr. Sharon for his iron-fisted image and for his more cautious, distrustful approach to the peace effort.

Just two years ago, Mr. Sharon's approach seemed paranoid to many Israelis, based as it was on the belief that the Palestinians still do not wholeheartedly accept Israel's existence. But after Mr. Barak failed to reach a peace deal with the Palestinians despite what many Israelis saw as his willingness to make broad concessions, Mr. Sharon's approach began looking more sensible to Israelis. Maybe, they said, the Palestinians don't really want to reach an agreement.

"These elections, sadly, are rational," said Ruth Gavison, a Hebrew University law professor. "They are not just an emotional response to an infuriating prime minister. They reflect an impasse in the underlying political reality of the conflict. It's no longer clear to Israelis that there is a way to reach a solution."

Boaz Druker, 31, a sales manager for a high-tech firm in Herzliya, said he no longer believes that the Palestinians are "willing to go ahead and be practical and end the conflict." A Labor Party voter, he said he used to be a "real believer."

"But now," he said, "I think that what our partner for peace wants most is to see us out of here. I'm not switching my political loyalty. But other people who think like me, they are."

Mr. Sharon advocates a long-term interim arrangement with the Palestinians that puts off into the indefinite future the final resolution of the thorniest issues, like the status of Jerusalem's holy places.

"The whole period of the last negotiations taught us that the gaps are unbridgeable on the hard issues of permanent status like Jerusalem," said Dore Gold, a senior adviser to Mr. Sharon and former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations.

An end of January "peace index" poll by Tel Aviv University, released today, found that a decisive majority of Israelis believes that Mr. Barak's policy toward the Palestinians has been "too yielding." A large majority thinks that a tougher stance would better serve the ultimate goal of a peace agreement, the respondents said, because the Palestinians would keep expecting more and more "concessions" from a conciliatory Israeli leader.

In a column in the daily Maariv today, Amnon Dankner asserted that Mr. Barak is destined to lose the elections because he has made Israelis feel like "suckers." Israelis are well-known to be averse to being perceived as suckers, in daily life and in diplomacy, so much so that one Israeli professor offers a course in "sucker studies" that analyzes this theme in society.

"The Israelis feel they are suckers because, after great concessions and promises of even greater concessions, the Palestinians informed them: your concessions are in our pocket, but we want more, including things you never dreamed of giving, and then--there will be war," Mr. Dankner wrote.

Mr. Barak says that Israelis do not understand that Israel has gone to the limit of what would be considered an internationally acceptable military response to the Palestinians. And it is true that many consider him to have been "soft," and worry that Israel's deterrence* has eroded.

"Israelis don't want war," Professor Gavison said, "but they don't want to be seen as running away from war. The way to prevent war is by being extremely deterrent."*

Some Israelis say Mr. Sharon has the potential to be the kind of ruthless leader that Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat deserves.

Some Palestinians, in turn, say Mr. Sharon does not scare them. "He will not be the stick that Israel uses against us," Marwan Barghouti, the secretary general of the Fatah organization in the West Bank, said on Voice of Palestine radio today. "After a few months, Sharon will fail the same way that Barak has failed in providing security for Israel because there will be no peace, no security, no stability in this region until the Palestinian people get their national rights."

(article accompanied by [NYT] photograph of voter casting his ballot, captioned:

An Israeli soldier voting on the outskirts of Ramallah. The military votes the day before the rest of the nation.)

(text of February 6, 2001 New York Times On The Web article)

Copyright 2001 The New York Times Company

*-AND HERE WE HAVE CURRENTLY PERHAPS THE MOST DANGEROUS INSTANCE ON EARTH WHERE THE TERM OF REFERENCE LINKED IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE IS RELEVANT TO "ALL OF US."
AND I POINT OUT THE FIRST FOOTNOTE TO IT RELATING TO THIS TERM OF REFERENCE, THE ONGOING ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN MISUNDERSTANDING, AND THE ELECTION OF ARIEL SHARON AS ISRAEL'S NEW PRIME MINISTER.

WHAT PIQUES MY CONCERNS HERE, (MORE ARGUMENTATIVE) VISITORS TO MY AWARD-WINNING WEBSITE MIGHT STILL BE ASKING?
WELL, BEAR IN MIND THAT, AS IS EVIDENCED BY WHAT YOU FIND IF YOU TAKE A BRIEF SIDESTEP HERE: "ALL OF US" HAVE BEEN WARNED...