Word: gaza
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...paper, what a handful of bargainers have written looks rather small, a narrow agreement on limited self-rule for the 770,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and 1 million more in the West Bank, starting in the oasis of Jericho. Yet the psychological breakthrough in recognizing each other's humanity is huge, the step neither Israelis nor Palestinians would take before. Making it work will take years to realize, but only a failure of the test they have set themselves can undo what has been done. The nagging question is whether these two can live with a victory...
...tougher challenge lies among Palestinians inside the occupied territories. Fed up with the P.L.O.'s failures, young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and West Bank have been radicalized, many of them embracing militant fundamentalist Islam. Conversely, Arafat was compelled toward moderation after the Soviet Union's demise deprived him of a superpower patron, and even more when his mistaken allegiance to Iraq over Kuwait cost him his bankroll from the gulf states. Without money, without visible progress in the two-year-old peace talks he had endorsed, fundamentalism's rise threatened to make him irrelevant...
...seen by most Israelis as a symbol of terrorism surprised his rivals by accepting a little instead of all-or-nothing: home rule in the squalid Gaza Strip, a hotbed of extremism, before any full autonomy for the West Bank outside of Jericho. The Gaza Strip had been the orphan no one wanted; certainly not Israelis, whose policing of the turbulent slums has become a shame and burden to them. So many protesters have been killed, wounded and thrown into jail that Jews had come to see the suppression as a moral cancer they had to excise. To save himself...
...some settlers are prepared to go much further: in the past, West Bankers have embraced violence, even against Israeli soldiers, as part of theirprotests. "We are reacting with violence," said Aaron Domb, spokesmanfor the Council of Settlements in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, "because thegovernment has acted with violence by forcing this agreement on the nation." Former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Goren asserted, "Arafat is responsible for thousands of murders. Therefore, everyone in Israel who meets him in the streets has the right to kill...
Threats of violence and civil war horrify most Israelis and divide the settlers. Last week the most respected pollster in Israel asked Jewish settlers what they would do if the Gaza-Jericho first plan is adopted. Only 2% said they would take part in armed resistance against the Israeli authorities; 11% promised to take up arms but only against the future Palestinian police. Nearly half said they would actively resist the accord without the use of arms...