Word: gaza
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...considerable skepticism in his own camp over whether there's any point in talking at all. Listening to the statements of Arafat and Ariel Sharon, it's easy to see why. Fundamentally, Sharon is focused on achieving security guarantees without ending Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, and Arafat is pursuing an end to the occupation but appears unable or unwilling to provide the required security guarantees...
...Ironically, if the Berlin discussions were to bear fruit, that might actually deepen the crisis. Without a political mechanism for achieving a peaceful end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and creating a viable Palestinian state in those territories, there's no incentive for Arafat or any other Palestinian leader to make peace with Israel. And, of course, no Israeli leader could afford to withdraw from the occupied territories without cast-iron guarantees of Israeli security. Those two premises formed the very foundation of the Oslo peace process, and Oslo's collapse does nothing to change...
...Driven by fear that the passions ignited by the ongoing Palestinian uprising could soon threaten their own somewhat precarious domestic political situation, the Egyptians are pressing the U.S. to work together with Arab moderates to lower the political temperature in the West Bank and Gaza. Essentially they're offering Arab assistance in pressing Arafat to tamp down violence if Washington will press Israel to show restraint and to make the concessions, in line with the Mitchell recommendations, that would give Arafat political cover to curb the militants...
...poverty and despair of daily life in the West Bank and Gaza certainly makes young Palestinian men more receptive to the monstrous promises made by Hamas and Islamic Jihad that suicide bombers earn a their way into a kind of heavenly VIP lounge, complete with the bizarre guarantees of salvation for 70 of their relatives and the right to have their way with 70 virgins in paradise. And yet the fundamentalist movements of Afghanistan and Egypt are a reminder that the most extreme distortions of Islam tend to gestate in situations of the most extreme social and economic conditions...
...everyone from President Bush on down is insisting that he does. The PLO has moved to initiate a meeting of the United Nations Security Council to discuss the issue, which despite U.S. and Israeli objections could reinforce calls for the deployment of international monitors in the West Bank and Gaza...