Word: formality
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Palestinians will quickly establish a consensus over which leaders will fill the formal positions of Yasser Arafat, who died early Thursday in Paris. But consensus over the way forward will remain as elusive as it has been for the past decade. It is a measure of Arafat?s unique status as a national symbol that despite that absence of consensus, Palestinian leaders ranging from moderate liberals such as Hanan Ashrawi to the hard-eyed bombers of Hamas have concurred on the role of the aging revolutionary, who spent his last three years living under virtual house arrest at the Ramallah...
...Some of his successors, such Mahmoud Abbas, the U.S.-favored moderate who will likely inherit Arafat's formal leadership roles in Fatah and the Palestinian Authority, recognize the failure of the tactics of the past four years. They will promote compromise as a means of completing Arafat's mission of creating a Palestinian state. But the grassroots operatives of not only Hamas and Islamic Jihad, but also of Fatah itself are in no mood to compromise, and they will proclaim Arafat the very symbol of their unshakable defiance...
...While the formal succession process will likely see titles passed from Arafat to Abbas without any direct challenge, Abbas will lack anything close to Arafat's political authority. There?s little reason to expect that Mahmoud Abbas will be more able to implement U.S. and Israeli demands for action against Hamas now that Arafat has gone than they were when he held veto power over their actions. The militants are already demanding a collective leadership, not simply a consultative arrangement among such old guard figures as Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, but also that groupings such as Hamas...
...editorial “Columbia’s Anti-Semitism Problem” (Nov. 4) the Crimson Staff outlined a procedural remedy they believe would “ensure a safer, more welcoming learning environment.” More specifically, they suggest the creation of a “formal complaint mechanism” separate from academic departments. Such an entity, they point out, ought to safeguard students from religiously motivated improprieties. A wonderful idea, to be sure, but somewhat misplaced in the temporal order of things, namely because at Columbia such an entity already exists. We call...
...that end, up to 15,000 U.S. and British troops have been deployed in a ring of steel around the town, intending to cut off any lines of retreat from insurgents who may seek to disperse and fight on elsewhere, and then methodically retake it street by street. Although formal political control of the operation is in the hands of the Allawi government - the interim prime minister gave the attack order Monday - the Iraqi forces deployed there are very much in a support role to the Marine spearhead. Indeed, the battle is also considered a major test of the Iraqi...