Word: gaza
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...from clear that Abbas has sufficient means even if he had the political will to go to war with Hamas. His security services remain weak and dispersed, and may be weaker on the ground than the militant groups in different parts of the West Bank and particularly Gaza. More importantly, in the absence of a consensus in Palestinian society behind pursuing the "roadmap" route, Abbas may struggle to persuade his gendarmes to follow orders to act against fellow Palestinians. President Bush may believe that by cracking down on the militants, Abbas "is serving the deepest hopes of his people...
...intentions by speaking the language of peace, promising to make "painful concessions" after the Palestinians stop all violence - and, most recently, causing consternation even in his own party by uttering the taboo word "occupation" to describe Israel's rule over the 3.5 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Such dovish phrases are all the more confusing when Sharon intersperses them with promises to the settlers that they can start building houses for their great grandchildren...
...real dispute between Sharon and the Palestinians is over land. The Israeli leader has made clear he accepts the inevitability of a Palestinian state and knows Israel can't sustain a regime of occupation over the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. The question is where the boundaries between such a state and Israel will be drawn, and what will become of the settlements Israel has built on the territories conquered in 1967 which are the basis of the new Palestinian state...
...Sharon has previously made clear that his conception of a Palestinian state is contained within the boundaries of the 40-50 percent of the West Bank and 70 percent of Gaza currently controlled by the Palestinian Authority - with some modification to ensure territorial contiguity. And the surest indicator of what he has in mind may well be the security fence Israel is currently building to separate Israelis from West Bank Palestinians. Rather than follow the 1967 borders as originally proposed, Sharon's proposed fence essentially encircles the current PA territories in the West Bank, keeping most of the settlements...
...freezing of new construction on settlements built before that. Sharon has spoken of dismantling "illegal" outposts - those built without government authorization, although his narrow use of the term "illegal" deflects attention from the fact that the legal status of all Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza is contested, and their future had been put on the negotiating table as a "final status" issue in the Oslo process. His senior party colleague, Reuven Rivlin has said that Sharon plans eventually to evacuate 17 of the 130 permanent Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, in order to allow...