Word: likud
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...deal with the Palestinian question. Now the latest attempt at unity is faltering after seven months, as the country's two major parties bump heads over the future course of a peace plan that calls for elections in the occupied territories. Bowing to pressures from hard-liners within his Likud bloc, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir two weeks ago saddled the proposal with conditions that are anathema to the Palestinians. Labor Party leaders responded last week by voting to quit the government. The move, yet to be ratified by the party's 1,300-member Central Committee, threatens not only...
Extremism was in the ascendancy again last week in the Middle East. Capitulating to the hard-line right of his Likud bloc, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir fettered his own plan for elections in the occupied territories with stiff conditions that seem to doom the peace initiative. Almost before the players could grasp the political implications, a fanatic Palestinian wrenched an Israeli bus over a cliff, killing 14 passengers in what was described as an act of vengeance. Those civilian deaths will only harden hearts against thoughts of peace. Once again the small steps being taken toward peace were shoved...
Shamir's move jeopardized his fragile coalition with the rival Labor Party and threatened to strain relations with a Bush Administration eager to get peace talks under way. Charging that Likud had "put heavy handcuffs on the peace process," Finance Minister Shimon Peres fumed, "Shamir can agree to Sharon's dictates, but the Labor Party will not." Party politicians pressed their leaders to bolt the coalition and force new elections. But Labor's popular appeal is dwindling, so the party leadership is expected to give the wounded peace plan one more chance...
...clear victor last week was Sharon. By forcing Shamir to adopt the killer amendments, Sharon committed Likud to a position that leaves virtually no room for negotiation, just as he intended. He had denounced Shamir's proposal as "the most dangerous plan ever suggested by a government," warning that it would lead to the formation of a Palestinian state. Sharon's assault on the peace plan also served to boost his own leadership ambitions...
...years ago last week, another adamant Likud leader, Menachem Begin, signed a peace treaty with Egypt and embraced his foe, Anwar Sadat. At a meeting of Israel-bond volunteers in Washington commemorating that breakthrough, Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel movingly evoked the dilemma felt by many Jews. Wiesel, a survivor of the Holocaust, warned against allowing frustration over the absence of peace to be translated into disunity. "I feel so much gratitude to the people of Israel and to the State of Israel," he said, "that I simply cannot bring myself to become a judge over my people...