July - August 1998, No.50

• We have extended this Challenge by seven pages to describe, in a special section, the unsung side of Israel's Jubilee. In Stripping the Strip (and Robbing the Bank) Udi Tagari, a veteran freelance journalist, casts a cold eye (like Hieronymus Bosch peeking into hell) on Israel's thirty-one years of plunder in the Gaza Strip. His main resources are Sara Roy's The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-development and Arie Arnon et al., The Palestinian Economy.
• Stephen Langfur examines a recent UNSCO Report on economic conditions in the Territories, the tone of which he epitomizes in a title stolen from Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Up To Me.
• Otherwise, things go on as usual. Our editorial examines The Man with the State in His Mouth. Yakov Ben Efrat answers Netanyahu's critics, who ask, When Will He Leap?
• Roni Ben Efrat interviews Ramsey Clark about US policy toward Iraq.
• Michal Schwartz discusses Collusion in Jerusalem between the government and right-wing settler groups, which fabricate documents to take over houses and land.
• In Long Distance Calling. Diana Mardi exposes the latest telephone scam: the space between Jerusalem and the West Bank, it seems, has suddenly widened to include an ocean of money.
• The rates are Murder, which also happens to be the title of a new work by Israel's most prolific and controversial playwright, Hanoch Levine. Hadas Lahav reviews it.