April 8: Ariel Sharon's plan for Israeli disengagement from the Palestinians will cost around $1 billion. President Bush sent Passover greetings to the Jewish community. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) warned against the renewed threat of anti-Semitism in a Passover message. Two Israeli Arabs reportedly were abducted by insurgents in Iraq. Ten fervently Orthodox Israelis are suspected in an anti-Arab rampage over Purim. April 9: Sharon will submit his plan for Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and West Bank to his Likud Party. Hamas may take part in Palestinian elections after Israel withdraws from the Gaza Strip and West Bank. The Bush administration won't impose further aid penalties for now, after Israel rerouted its West Bank security barrier. Palestinians rallied in support of Iraqi insurgents fighting the United States. Quebec's premier visited a Montreal Jewish school that was firebombed just before Passover. U.S. officials and Jewish leaders testified to the Senate about the rise of antiSemitism in Europe. April 14: Ariel Sharon hopes to receive U.S. backing to retain some West Bank settlements when he meets Wednesday with President Bush. The Palestinian Authority prime minister appealed to Washington not to approve Israel's "disengagement plan."

United States Congressman Howard Berman, writing last week in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal (1) We've operated under the assumption that once the thorny Israeli-Palestinian conflict gets worked out, peace will come to the Middle East as part of a domino effect. But that's not just wrong, it's backward. Israel and America won't have stable, long-term, peaceful relations with the PA or Egypt, for example, until they're across the negotiating table from a truly democratic Palestine or Egypt. (2) Can America help to reform and democratize the Arab world or help those budding forces in the Middle East who understand that imperative, without looking like imperialist colonizers? We must at least try to help the region's reformers facilitate change. (3) American leaders have gotten the message since Sept. 11 that the days of looking the other way, while despotic regimes trample human rights and then gloss them over by feeding their people a steady diet of anti-Israel and anti-Western hatred, are over. (4) This summer, President Bush is scheduled to announce a new Middle East initiative aimed at encouraging democratic and economic reform in Arab and Muslim countries. Egypt, which receives $1 billion in annual U.S. assistance, is spearheading a massive effort to undercut the plan. In Paris, Mubarak played the Israel card, saying that only an equitable solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would allow a strengthening of popular support for reforms in the Arab world. (5) But we must not let Mubarak and other leaders get away with this perennial excuse for delaying the reforms their people deserve. Real peace is possible when you reverse Mubarak's rhetoric. Democratize the region, and you'll solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict permanently, not the other way around. (6)The only real guarantor for long-term peace and security for Israel and America is freedom. Freedom from oppression for the peoples of the Middle East. Freedom to elect their leaders. Freedom for women to do basic things like drive and go to school. Freedom to access knowledge. (7) Passover is called "zman heruteinu," the "time of our freedom," because it is the time when the Jewish people were freed from Egyptian slavery. Perhaps this year, it's time to begin to free the Egyptians, so-to-speak, from slavery and grant them the freedom we as American Jews can celebrate openly.