Word: intifadas
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...change the basic deadlock. Few Israeli commentators these days believe that, almost one year after being elected on promises to stamp out Palestinian violence and ensure Israeli security, Sharon has a political or military program that can transform the violent face-off into a decisive defeat of the intifada. While the term is still used, the current violence has little in common with the original intifada, in which masses of youths armed mostly with stones and molotov cocktails confronted Israeli troops in West Bank towns...
...Chazan on a recent Israeli-Palestinian sit-down in South Africa, in which both sides apprised themselves of the lessons of that country's near-miraculous negotiated peaceful transition away from minority rule. And in Egypt's official Al Ahram, commentator Hani Shukrallah offers a withering critique of an intifada hijacked by suicide bombers. "The Biblical Samson strikes a ridiculous, rather than heroic, figure," he writes. "Not to mention that our attempts to bring down the temple over the heads of our enemies as well as our own invariably miss the enemy altogether. Not only do we manage to lose...
...Sharon is in a strategic bind. His talk of local-level Palestinian leaders who might prove more pliable than Arafat is somewhat delusional. It is precisely these local-level leaders who have for the most part defied Arafat's periodic cease-fire calls and have vowed to continue the intifada despite the diplomatic maneuvering of their national leader. It is at the local level that the structures of Arafat's Fatah coordinate directly with the militants of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and where even Arafat's own rank-and-file reserves the right to conduct armed attacks on Israeli soldiers...
...West Bank and Gaza, the portent of his latest message is not yet clear. Pronouncing Arafat "irrelevant" simply repeats, hyperbolically, what many close observers of Palestinian politics have warned of for months - that the aging leader's political authority has waned over the course of the current intifada to the point that he is no longer able to impose his will on the Palestinian street. Or, he is unable to find the political will to reassert his authority against the tide of Palestinian public opinion. Either way, the upshot is the same...
...into Palestinian towns from which terror cells operate have not stemmed the tide of suicide bombings. And more sustained, long-term operations in Palestinian towns and refugee camps carry the risk of a substantial increase in Israeli casualties for limited tactical benefits. After all, the difference between the first intifada and the current one is that there are now tens of thousands of assault rifles, grenades and makeshift mortars in Palestinian hands - which is precisely why disarming the unofficial militias had been a critical element of the Mitchell cease-fire plan...