Word: jerusalem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...JERUSALEM: Chaim Herzog, Israel's longest-serving president, died in Jerusalem at age 78. Herzog, who became Israel's sixth president in 1983, served in the largely ceremonial post for 10 years and was instrumental in helping shape the country's world image. "He was such a gentleman and a scholar, who had a sort of soothing impact which took a lot of the hard, sharp edges out of internal political debate," says TIME's Bruce Nelan. "He moderated the dialogue and helped people reach accommodations behind the scenes that they might not have otherwise been able to achieve...
Inexperience disrupted the peace process as well. At the outset, recalls a senior U.S. official, "this group of Israelis assumed they could just roll Yasser Arafat." After an early interview, a Jerusalem Post reporter wrote that it was clear Netanyahu hadn't actually read the details of the Oslo accords. For two months his men refused to deal with Arafat's chief negotiator. Even when pressure from Washington got talks under way, Netanyahu thought he could gain leverage by restricting Arafat's use of his helicopter...
...part, Arafat has used tough tactics. He dallied on arresting activists, reinforcing Netanyahu's belief that Arafat was cheating on the accords. Catering to his own extremists, he helped unleash a brutal spasm of violence last September when Netanyahu, asserting Israeli authority in East Jerusalem, opened a tunnel near Islamic holy sites in the Old City. When Netanyahu was ready to dicker over withdrawal from Hebron in earnest, Arafat procrastinated in hopes of gaining more concessions...
...after Hebron, when Netanyahu declared he would begin construction of 6,500 housing units for Jews on the hill in Arab East Jerusalem called Har Homa, it looked like another reckless move to appease the right wing of his coalition. This would be the last link in a chain of settlements surrounding the city that would permanently cut off the Arab part of Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. Nothing inflames Palestinian opinion more than the creation of "new facts on the ground," especially those designed to foreclose Arab claims to the Holy City. Nor did the government...
...with international charges that "everything we do is a violation of the accords and everything the Palestinians say is in compliance." To appease the peace camp, he tossed out an old proposal to accelerate the final-status talks so that agreement on the hard issues--such as Jerusalem, borders, Palestinian sovereignty and Jewish settlements--could be reached within six months...