Word: lebanons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...states and organizations have a major stake in the experiment's success. Once Arab leaders get over their momentary pique at being kept in the dark, peace agreements could snowball. Jordan has been ready to sign a treaty with Israel as long as Amman is not alone; Syria and Lebanon are as eager as the Palestinians to get back territory now in Israeli hands. Damascus has tried to increase its negotiating leverage by insisting that the Palestinians and Arab states coordinate their agreements with Israel. But now that the Palestinians are out in front, Syria may want to play catch...
Others foresee in the West Bank and Gaza not a mini-Syria but a mini- Lebanon: a hopelessly fractured and heavily armed society riven by civil war (here between the secularist P.L.O. and Islamic fundamentalists) simply dissolving into anarchy and chaos. Some are even predicting that Arafat may not live very long if he returns to Gaza, stronghold of the Islamic Hamas militants who revile him and reject any hint of coexistence with Israel...
...this vision, the dream vision, the Palestine living next door to Israel is not Syria, not Lebanon, but Belgium: moderate, modern, tolerant, rational, accommodating. And reconciled to the relatively humble plot of land it has been assigned by the lottery of history. In this Palestine the people have chosen the satisfactions of ordinary bourgeois life -- the pursuit of happiness, as we Americans say -- over the thrills of revenge and revolution...
...Netherlands and Luxembourg, sets the world standard for cooperative neighborliness. Unfortunately, however, the Arab Middle East does not look very much like Benelux. Eighteen states, and not a single functioning democracy. Among them, such spectacular failures in ordinary civil decency, let alone "great tolerance" and "real freedom," as Lebanon and Iraq...
British diplomats believe Sudan has also taken in many non-Iranian fundamentalists that Syria kicked out of Lebanon during the Gulf War. According to the British, most of these men are organized into combat units of company size serving at their own high-security camps. Others are trained as agitators and sent abroad. Still others, who might not number more than 100, are terrorists. The British sources say they are kept in five camps around Khartoum, equipped and financed mainly by Iran, though Palestinian groups also channel funds, weapons and orders to their own adherents. The annual budget for these...