Word: bankes
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Walid Abu Obeida, a 13-year-old Palestinian farm boy from the West Bank village of Ya'abad, had never spoken to an Israeli until he rounded a corner at dusk carrying his shopping bags and found two Israeli soldiers waiting with their rifles aimed at him. "They accused me of throwing stones at them," recounts Walid, a skinny kid with dark eyes. "Then one of them smacked me in the face, and my nose started bleeding...
...lightly: he spent 28 days in prison and was fined 500 shekels (approximately $120). Under Israeli military law, which prevails in the Palestinian territories, the crime of throwing a stone at an Israeli solider or even at the monolithic 20-ft.-high "security barrier" enclosing much of the West Bank can carry a maximum 20-year-prison sentence. Since 2000, according to the Palestinian Ministry for Prisoner Affairs, more than 6,500 children have been arrested, mostly for hurling rocks...
...prioritized. Netanyahu, who faces more public pressure from Washington than any Israeli leader in nearly two decades, says he wants peace talks and recently declared his qualified support for a two-state solution. But even as he makes concessions on other fronts - like easing security restrictions on the West Bank - Netanyahu insists on continuing building inside existing settlements; days before Netanyahu and Mitchell were to have met, Israel's government approved the construction of hundreds more housing units in two West Bank settlements. As if that wasn't clear enough, Netanyahu this week derided the Administration's concern over settlements...
Washington is insisting on the settlement freeze in line with the requirements of the 2003 road map for peace, and because the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem are the geographic basis of the Palestinian state envisaged in the two-state solution. As long as Israel continues settlement construction, Palestinians doubt its seriousness about agreeing to a viable Palestinian state. But Israel claims it has a right to keep building within the boundaries of its existing settlements to deal with what it calls "natural growth," and it expects to keep the occupied land on which most are built...
Netanyahu and Obama have made some progress on other aspects of restarting a peace process. The Israeli leader has finally accepted the idea of a Palestinian state, albeit with limited sovereignty, and he has signaled an intent to ease the Gaza blockade, remove some West Bank roadblocks, release some Palestinian prisoners and transfer more security responsibility in West Bank towns to Palestinian forces. But in publicly and repeatedly demanding a settlement freeze, even after Israel objected, Obama has made it not only a test of Netanyahu's bona fides as a peacemaker, but also of U.S. credibility. The President hasn...