PA Chairman Yasser Arafat used the release of the report to call for another Middle East diplomatic gathering along the lines of the Sharm e-Sheik summit that set up the Mitchell Commission. And US Secretary of State Colin Powell used the opportunity to appoint a special assistant on the continuing crisis. There's a growing sense of alienation among Israel's Arab citizens. A survey of 1,200 Israeli Arabs by the Givat Haviva Institute for Peace Research found that 60 percent of those questioned feel more alienated from Israel following the October 2000 riots. Thirty percent say they support transferring an area made up of Israeli Arab villages to a new Palestinian state.
Tax reform is back on the front burner.
The prime minister and finance minister met Monday to develop a proposal acceptable to the cabinet and Knesset. In economic news, per capita GDP fell during January through March by slightly over 1 percent. However, the drop was less than the steep fall in the previous quarter. Other indexes posted much smaller gains. The shekel-dollar exchange rate pegged the shekel at 4.1387 to the US greenback.