Word: intifadas
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This argument goes too far, I think, in its cynicism about the current plight of Israel. Although the Intifada is making life extremely stressful and increasing the personal insecurity of Israelis, the country is under no real military threat. A unity government comprising Labor and Likud would shut down the internal discourse on peace within Israel, reinforcing the Palestinians in their belief that there is no real difference between the two sides...
...making peace than Barak. Long-term observers of the region wouldn't be at all surprised if Sharon begins by making some dramatic gesture toward the Palestinians, such as lifting the closure of the West Bank and Gaza that has been in force throughout most of the current intifada. Indeed, as a longtime counterinsurgency warrior, his approach may be to shift Israeli strategy toward punishing Palestinian leaders rather than the entire Palestinian population, as a way of isolating them from their own supporters. And sending positive messages to the Palestinians, as well as the neighboring Arab regimes and Washington, would...
...vote for him. It was the withdrawal of Israeli-Arab support that cost Shimon Peres the 1996 race against Benjamin Netanyahu, and they helped Barak trounce Netanyahu three years later. But the killing of some 13 Israeli-Arab youths by police during protests in support of the Palestinian intifada has embittered the community against Barak's government, and his chances of winning their support are minimal even in the face of the challenge from Sharon...
...Israeli law from returning to Israel suggests that both Arafat and his Arab backers have been forced by the anger on the Palestinian and Arab streets to retreat from compromises they may have been prepared to make at an earlier stage of the peace process. And the intifada of the past three months has woken Israeli leaders up to the vast gulf between their own and their neighbors' ideas of the shape of an acceptable final settlement, which has set the Jewish state on a political swing back to the right. All of which leaves the region no closer...
...independence. Under mounting domestic pressure, Barak had suggested he'd accept the deal with reservations but wouldn't sign over sovereignty over the Muslim sites. That issue alone, as Camp David showed, could be enough to scupper a deal. But after three months of a bitter intifada that has seen the Palestinian street increasingly willing to contradict Arafat, the Palestinian leader may now find himself unable to simply sign away the claims of the refugees, even if that had been his original intention. Right now, the followers of both Chairman Arafat and Prime Minister Barak are simply not yet ready...