Word: gaza
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Would they ever? Arafat returned to a hero's welcome in the Gaza Strip, where thousands cheered him for not giving up Jerusalem. Barak stepped off his plane at Tel Aviv with what he admitted was a "sour heart" and with the worry of a crumbling government coalition...
Until the talks at Camp David--and there too at times--Arafat and his delegates held hard to maximalist positions that the Israelis reject out of hand. To end the conflict once and for all, the Palestinians said, Israel would have to relinquish every inch of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. That would include all of East Jerusalem, which would become the capital of Palestine, as well as areas colonized by 175,000 Jewish settlers, who would have to leave. The negotiators also demanded the right of all Palestinian refugees from areas that are within Israel to return...
...More immediately, of course, any unilateral declaration of a state would immediately plunge Israelis and Palestinians into a bruising battle for land. Arafat right now controls a Rorschach pattern of enclaves comprising most of Gaza and some 40 percent of the West Bank, intermingled with Israeli settlements and military facilities. The failure at Camp David makes it unlikely that Israel will move any time soon to complete the third withdrawal required by the Oslo Accords, much less give up the further 45 percent of the West Bank Arafat has demanded. And that means potentially violent confrontations throughout the territory...
...Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine accepted, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine demurred). And Arafat's aides proclaimed over the weekend that any deal the leader reaches would be put to the vote in a referendum involving all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza as well as the millions who live abroad...
...home as peace talks with Palestinians enter a decisive phase, that impression may actually suit the Israeli leader's negotiating stance. Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon has hardened Palestinian resolve to press for the return of all Palestinian territory seized by Israel in the war of 1967 - all of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem - and Yasser Arafat is clearly under mounting pressure from his own followers to make no further concessions. As both sides prepare for a new round of umpiring in the U.S., a parliamentary vote casting Barak as a beleaguered dove certainly reminds both Arafat...