Word: barak
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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After years of political probation following the Lebanon war, it was, ironically, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who gave Sharon his final big break. At peace talks in the summer of 2000, Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat a Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip and the bulk of the West Bank, including some part of East Jerusalem. Arafat refused the deal. Presumably to protest Barak's offer to divide Jerusalem, Sharon, accompanied by dozens of Israeli police, took the unusual step of visiting what Jews call the Temple Mount, the plateau that today hosts al-Aqsa Mosque...
...people at a Netanya hotel during Passover in 2002, Sharon went all out. He reinvaded the cities of the West Bank with brutal force, using the army's presence to get intelligence on the terrorists and to make arrests.He stepped up construction of a controversial barrier, started by Barak, that cut through the West Bank and walled out the Palestinians. In 2004, Sharon ordered the assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin and, later, another of the group's leaders, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, steps that previously had been considered too provocative. And he got results; the intifadeh never recovered...
...even like Ariel Sharon. In fact, I couldn’t stand him. I remember the night, in February 2001, when Sharon emerged from the political desert and won Israeli’s parliamentary elections, beating “our guy”—Ehud Barak. My whole family sat in silence in front of the TV, each person too depressed to talk. We couldn’t believe that he, who we regarded as a dangerous right-winger, was our new prime minister...
When union firebrand Amir Peretz snatched the leadership of Israel's Labor Party last week, he sent a shock through the country's political system. Labor, the traditional bastion of the Israeli lite, has been in sharp decline since its last Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, was defeated by Ariel Sharon in 2001. Now Peretz, a Moroccan-born resident of one of Israel's poorest towns, promises to revitalize Labor by shaking things up even more...
...Peretz's 10 years heading the Histadrut, Israel's labor federation, he squeezed successive governments with general strikes and, after a falling out with Barak, formed a breakaway faction in parliament. It was the grass-roots devotion of union activists and the faction's supporters that earned him his surprise win last week. Peretz promises a more conciliatory approach to the Palestinians than Sharon's. Opponents lampooned him during the campaign, saying it was impossible to imagine the roughhewn Peretz meeting with President Bush to discuss the peace process. But Peretz told TIME that he'll cut out the middleman...