Word: baraker
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...hard to believe after one of the bloodiest weeks of the current Israeli-Palestinian clashes, but both Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat appear to be moving to calm the situation. The decision by Israel's security cabinet Thursday to refrain from another high-profile military retaliation to Wednesday's car bomb that killed two people in northern Israel is a sign that Israel's prime minister has recognized the danger in trying to shoot his way out of a crisis...
...Gaza attack also highlights the rationale for the unilateral "divorce" option touted by Israeli officials in recent weeks, in which Israel simply withdraws from those parts of the West Bank and Gaza that are difficult to defend, breaking economic ties and giving Arafat a patchwork Palestinian state. For Barak, ultimately, the principle of risking soldiers' lives in order to protect a handful of settlers deep inside hostile territory outside the borders of Israel proper is unappealing, and he's long advocated consolidating settlements in areas adjacent to Israel that can be annexed in order to create new, defensible borders...
...weeks as the Israelis have deployed everything from rubber-coated bullets to tank artillery and air-to-surface missiles against Palestinian militants. But the fact remains that the Israeli military is capable of a far higher degree of violence than it has unleashed thus far, and Prime Minister Ehud Barak's government is under increasing domestic pressure to up the ante. Israel has once again cordoned off Palestinian towns throughout the West Bank and Gaza, and cabinet ministers and military officials suggested harsher responses were now under consideration...
...fear of "Lebanization" of the conflict arises from the deadlock in the peace process. Neither Barak nor Arafat can afford, politically, to return to the negotiating table in the near term, and both sides have tacitly acknowledged that the Oslo process is essentially dead. Indeed, the White House's rhetorical switch last week from referring to reviving "the peace process" to talking of restoring "a political process" between Israelis and Palestinians appears to confirm that while negotiations ultimately remain inevitable, they may occur within a framework quite different from the one President Clinton has overseen throughout his tenure...
...President Clinton still speaks hopefully about the prospect of sitting down to one last summit with Barak and Arafat before he leaves office. But with Barak - his grip on power hanging by a thread - feeling pressure from his generals to be allowed to act with fewer restraints and Arafat's political authority now routinely flouted even in the ranks of his own Fatah organization, neither man appears particularly keen on a lame-duck Camp David reunion...