Beginning of the winter

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The heavens opened a few hours after Bibi got the nod from Shimon to form a government. "The start of the winter," said the forecaster on the radio in view of the drought and heat this winter.

Maybe Kadima will join Bibi's right wing government and maybe it won't. In any event the situation is critical. As someone wrote in the trendy/lefty Ha-ir local TA paper, it's romantic to be a leftist again, for the few to huddle together in companionship and wallow in the glow of being special.

Lone tree still survives development along the old Ottoman train line


In these situations the thing to do is to take a wintry walk around the neighbourhood in search of other versions of reality


Horses in Neve Tsedek raised a smile from the locals. People stuck their heads out of the windows and strangers started talking to each other.

A recent and intriguing news items not related to the elections was a report that

"The Obama administration has given the Palestinian Authority a "green light" to
talk to Hamas about forming a Palestinian unity government, a PA official in
Ramallah said over the weekend. The official said that Washington had also given Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak the go-ahead to resume his efforts to achieve reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah. "The new administration has a different policy than that of [former US president] George W. Bush," the official told The Jerusalem Post. "The administration of President Barack Obama believes that a Hamas-Fatah government is good for stability."

Since Bibi's election promise was "to topple the Hamas", this does not augur well for future Israel-US relations. And with the possibility of a two-headed government in Israel and a similarly shaped creature in Ramallah, Obama will now have to bash at least four heads together to make some headway.

Street art in Florentin. Walls Start in the Head


Someone painted a pink shadow behind a tree in Neve Tsedek

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