Word: baraker
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...anniversary has been an opportunity to reflect on their government's decision to unilaterally end its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon - a decision forced on Israel by the relentless stream of casualties inflicted on its forces by Hizballah's low-intensity guerrilla campaign. When then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave the order to withdraw, in line with a campaign promise to pull out within a year of his election, he was expressing the will of some 70 percent of Israeli voters, who could no longer see any valid purpose in sending their sons and daughters to die in Lebanon...
...Rees: That may be the way the Americans and Europeans see it, but Sharon refuses to return to the position Barak was in before the intifada, which resulted in Barak being driven from office by Arafat. Sharon was extremely critical of the offers made by Barak. He doesn't necessarily even need a cease-fire; he just needs to tone down the current violence. The F-16 strikes were condemned as stupid by many Israelis, and the international community was scandalized. But if Sharon had confined himself to the assassinations, helicopter strikes and sending his troops into Palestinian controlled areas...
...response because it helps them politically. That was the way Hizbollah fought their war in Lebanon. Now, the radical groups have provoked Sharon into a serious escalation that's causing him political and diplomatic problems. Until now, Sharon's strategy had simply been an intensified version of the things Barak had done. But the air strikes mark a serious departure...
...feel safer than they did six months ago, but that won't affect Sharon's standing. On security, the fact that he appears to be doing something and acting resolutely is more important than the success or failure of the things he is doing. Israelis lost confidence in Ehud Barak because he appeared to be dithering, doing this one day, that the next day, instead of pursuing a clear policy such as Sharon's. Doing something about security is not the same as delivering security, but if you're seen to be acting tough on security threats you're perceived...
...Syrians and the Israelis, of course, is more terrestrial than spiritual: Possession of the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in their 1967 war remains the key to an elusive peace deal between the two countries that remain, technically, at war. While both Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak - and even Benjamin Netanyahu, in secret, according to reports - had negotiated with Syria over returning the territory, they were unable to resolve disputes over just where the international border began and ended and over the security guarantees required by Israel. The pope's visit to the Golan Heights area may have...