Word: baraker
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...Israelis and Palestinians face-to-face around a table again. What they talk about and achieve there is not the important thing, the important thing is getting them together. That's how they're seeing the first step. The second step would be to mix the desire of Barak to achieve a settlement with the Palestinians before February, when he faces a tough reelection battle, together with Arafat's fear of having to deal with a right-wing government. Mixing these desires and fears together, some Americans and Europeans feel, may lead to some kind of framework agreement...
...goat, and then a cow, and then a horse and so on inside the house - and then he advises the man to remove them one by one, and the man feels better about how much space he has. This is what's happening here. I don't believe that Barak is in a position to give Arafat something dramatic on Jerusalem or on the settlements. The West Bank is crowded not only with settlements, but with political mines. And don't forget, he's in a very weak position. He's a caretaker prime minister now, and lacks support from...
...opinion that restrained Arafat from accepting the deal offered him at Camp David has hardened considerably following 10 weeks of violence in which more than 300, mostly Palestinian, lives have been lost. And with the hawkish Benjamin Netanyahu enjoying a double-digit lead in opinion polls, Prime Minister Ehud Barak is unlikely to sweeten his offer. Netanyahu moved a step closer to overcoming legal obstacles to his candidacy Wednesday when Israel's parliament voted to allow any citizen to contest the special election triggered by Barak's resignation. The bill must pass two more votes to become law, and replace...
...Netanyahu's popularity may be the surest sign that Israel is in no mood to make peace right now. He has already begun campaigning, playing on Israeli anxiety in the face of the renewed Palestinian intifada to charge that Barak's peace efforts have compromised Israel's security, and promising a return to his peace-through-strength philosophy. It may be a measure of the depth of their fears that many of the same Israeli voters who drove Netanyahu out of office only 18 months ago for his failure to make meaningful progress toward peace with the Palestinians...
...that clamping down harder on Palestinians doesn't solve the problem, and ultimately they'll be back at the peace table. And Israel's fractious and complicated parliamentary system allows a prime minister to win by a landslide but even then struggle to maintain a workable majority government (as Barak did). Now, Netanyahu looks set to return to the same booby-trapped office. But even having to govern via a traditionally fractious Israeli coalition government won't stop Netanyahu from keeping his foot firmly jammed on the brake of the peace process. Or at least, proceeding only in Bibi steps...