Word: intifadeh
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Since the intifadeh began 19 months ago, 572 Palestinians and 36 Israelis have died. But they are not the only casualties: thousands of young people in the Israeli-occupied West Bank have suffered a kind of intellectual starvation as a result of shutdowns of the area's schools. Israeli authorities, charging that the schools had become hotbeds of political unrest, not only barred some 330,000 elementary and secondary school children and 17,000 university students from attending courses but even outlawed private classes and kindergarten. Says Elham, a West Bank English teacher: "My children do nothing except watch...
...diplomatic theory, its charm remains irresistible: the intifadeh is a blessing in disguise. A rising spiral of violence and economic dislocation will propel Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to concessions deemed impossible before the Palestinian uprising began in December 1988. Get a peace process going, reason the U.S.'s Middle East savants. Any process. Get the parties a little bit pregnant, and there will be no turning back...
...come to feel that even their individual survival hangs in the balance. Those who contend that the recent Palestinian attack on a bus full of civilians could be something other than a foretaste of future horrors are urged to recall that after 18 months of sticks and stones, the intifadeh command last month instructed its followers to "kill a settler or a soldier for every martyr of our people." And those who dismiss the settlers' increasing resort to acts of revenge as the scattered expressions of madmen are similarly out of touch...
From this, the Prime Minister's bottom line, a dangerous notion transcends Israel's current internal political crisis. It is the idea that the intifadeh must be defeated rather than merely calmed...
Surprisingly, the insistence on victory comes from both ideological poles, but for very different reasons. On the right, the unstated premise is simply put: no more intifadeh, no more need for peace. Even the downside is welcomed. Given the undisputed hardening of opinion -- especially among those Israelis and Palestinians who have reached their majority since Israel took the West Bank and Gaza in 1967 -- failing to resolve the matter peacefully now will almost inevitably lead to another region-wide Arab-Israeli war. "Which we would win," says an aide to Ariel Sharon confidently. "And then we will be that much...