Israel:FIREWORKS AND military fanfare launched Israel's 60th anniversary celebrations yesterday, with leaders of a state that has known no peace saying they would pursue their quest for accommodation with their enemies.
Boasting economic success and democratic credentials rare in the Middle East, Israel only recently revived coexistence talks with the Palestinians - who, like fellow Arabs, consider its founding in a 1948 war an injustice that demands redress.
"Our conflict has been long indeed," prime minister Ehud Olmert said in a speech honouring Israel's fallen soldiers before Independence Day events began. "However, it is peace, not war, that we aspire to and crave."
The diplomatic drive will be crowned in a visit next week by its chief sponsor, US president George W Bush, but has been overshadowed by mutual recrimination and a police investigation into Olmert's affairs that has raised questions over his future.
Israel, whose advanced military is widely assumed to include the region's only atomic arsenal, is also nervous about Iran's nuclear programme and support for Islamist guerrillas in neighbouring Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.
For Palestinians, whose leaders rejected a UN proposal to divide the territory into Jewish and Arab states, May 15 is marked as a "Nakba" or "catastrophe", in memory of hundreds of thousands of compatriots dispossessed in the war. - (Reuters)