Word: barak
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Firstly, the Israeli right wing knows it has a winning issue when it comes to Barak offering big concessions in Jerusalem. It's a very nationalistic demonstration - I was there earlier, and it's the same people you usually see at nationalist demonstrations. Mostly religious people, but wearing knitted yarmulkas - not the ultra-Orthodox, in other words, but the religious nationalists who make up the backbone of the settlement movement...
...Jerusalem is an issue on which many very liberal Israelis feel great discomfort. Not so much because they don't like the concessions on the Temple Mount that Barak has put on the table, but because they feel that while they're making all these concession on what for them is the holiest site, the Palestinians are moving in the opposite direction, refusing to acknowledge the fact that the Jewish temple stood on the same site, and refusing to compromise. Many Jews who are not particularly nationalistic see that as a very unfair element of current negotiations...
...this was the Temple Mount. That touches a raw nerve for a lot of people who wouldn't go to this demonstration because they wouldn't feel comfortable with the sort of people who are organizing it. But they feel uncomfortable to the point of possibly not voting for Barak, because while agreeing with his stance, the response from the Palestinians has been so negative. There's growing alarm in Israel at a sense that the more compromises Israel offers, the more hard-line Palestinian positions appear to become...
...Prime Minister Barak's reelection chances looking...
...Things are looking absolutely awful for Barak. He's 22 points behind in the polls. His strategy had been to get a peace agreement and make the election a referendum on peace, but he's not going to get a deal. At best he'll get a loose declaration on peace that may not even be signed, but may simply be read by Clinton. The object would be mostly to carry over some momentum to the Bush administration, getting them excited about prospects for peace rather than making the whole issue look like a hand grenade about to explode...