Word: blocs
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...masterminds behind the trial - believed to be either Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei or the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari, or both - probably realize the proceedings will convince few supporters of the opposition or the average Tehrani. But the confessions may galvanize the still substantial bloc of conservative voters, many of whom are older and rely on state media for news...
...election in Poland, was only very briefly mentioned. The start of it all was the work of the Solidarity trade union, which by 1989 had been operating for a decade, and had survived martial law in Poland when there was no thought of such a movement in other Eastern bloc countries. Of course, Gorbachev played a significant role in that he allowed Poland to hold partially free elections - the first country behind the Iron Curtain to do so. But it was the boldness of the Solidarity movement, and the millions of Poles who risked arrest or worse by voting...
...heartland the prophets would not recognize, replete as it is with pizza parlor, jazz nights at the coffee shop, grocery store and yellow electronic gate with machine-gun-wielding guards. Efrat is one of 17 settlements that make up a bloc called Gush Etzion, located not in Israel but in the occupied West Bank. The Katzes (Sharon, husband Israel and five children) consider themselves law-abiding citizens. They publish a small community magazine and take part in civic projects. Sharon raises money for charity by putting on tap-dancing and theater shows. And yet to much of the outside world...
...Netanyahu government, like its predecessors, makes a distinction between what it calls "legal" settlements like the Gush Etzion bloc (pop. 75,000) and "illegal" outposts deeper in the West Bank. Within sight of the Arab city of Nablus, settler Itay Zar, 33, lives in a two-room shanty with his wife and their five children, above a stretch of road at risk from Palestinian snipers. Zar's father, Moshe Zar, is one of the biggest - and therefore most despised by Palestinians - Jewish buyers of Arab land in the West Bank. Zar grew up in the West Bank. His outpost - named...
...Authority forbids that. But he can't afford to leave the fields fallow - and open to Israeli confiscation. Three Sarras brothers and a cousin tend the fields under the constant surveillance of video cameras at the edge of a nearby settlement. They complain that settlers from the Gush Etzion bloc have come in the night and uprooted or poisoned olive trees. "I am willing to live with Israelis," Sarras says. "But they will not live with us." Shaul Goldstein, mayor of the Gush Etzion regional council, defends his community's dealings with local Arabs. "We have the right to have...