Word: intifadas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...hardly surprising that Israel's Labor Party can't agree on a new leader, because the party of Oslo is no longer sure of what it wants to be. In dealing with the intifada, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon believes time and muscle is on Israel's side, and that the only way forward for the Jewish state is to tough it out, for decades if need be, in the belief that the resolve of its enemies will ultimately weaken. But the more dovish Labor party leaders such as Knesset speaker Avram Burg believe Sharon's strategic vision is the more...
...Sharon likes to joke that the tough-talking Ben-Eliezer is even more hawkish than himself. Burg is the thoughtful dove who, despite supporting strong military action in response to the current intifada, believes that Israel ultimately has no choice but to resume talks with the Palestinians. Those positions, of course, are not incompatible in the short term - Labor's caretaker leader Shimon Peres has, in his capacity as Sharon's foreign minister, been pursuing cease-fire talks with Yasser Arafat even as Ben-Eliezer has been sending tanks into Palestinian-controlled territories. And a strong feeling that they were...
...occupation that paradoxically saved the PLO. While Israeli military actions had driven the leadership from Lebanon to Tunisia and roundly defeated its terrorism and guerrilla campaigns launched abroad, the Palestinians under occupation were a fount of renewal for the nationalist movement. The four-year intifada waged in the West Bank and Gaza ultimately forced Israel to a political reckoning with Arafat, and the Oslo accords. And despite its near-total collapse, the Oslo peace process has profoundly altered the terms of battle over the West Bank and Gaza...
...West Bank. Moreover, unlike in Lebanon, the Israelis have no local proxy forces to undertake garrison duties - it was Arafat's PA that was to have policed the territories, and had indeed been certified by the CIA to have been reining in the Islamists before the current intifada, which has buried many of the differences between the rival Palestinian factions. The network of settlements and army positions may make a fine Maginot Line against a conventional invasion from the east, but they leave Israeli forces far more vulnerable to close quarters attack than they had been in Lebanon...
...developments in the West Bank and Gaza go far beyond the intifada. It's no longer marches and stones; it's guns and tanks and missiles. It's becoming a purely military confrontation...