Word: lull
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...street level, this lull means Ali is grumpier than usual because taking home poor tips guarantees a regular ear bashing from his wife. In a wider context, however, it's even more serious: luxury hotels across the country?a legacy of the Israeli-Jordanian peace accords of 1994 and the subsequent joint tourism projects undertaken a few years before the start of the second intifadeh?are nearly empty, and the tourist sites deserted. Any passing traveler can currently walk into a five-star property and pick up a room fit for King Abdullah II himself for less than...
...killing had to be done just right. If the goddess were to grant Khudu Karmakar the awesome powers he expected from a virgin's death, the victim had to be willing, had to know what was happening, watch the knife, and not stop it. But even tranquilizers couldn't lull 15-year-old Manju Kumari to her fate. In his police confession, Karmakar says his wife, daughter and three accomplices had to gag Manju and pin her down on the earthen floor before the shrine. In ritual order, Karmakar wafted incense over her, tore off her blue skirt and pink...
...latest wave of attacks ended a three-week respite that has accompanied Israel's reoccupation of most of the major West Bank cities in the hope of uprooting terror networks. Israel had taken that lull as a sign of the effectiveness of its military action, but Palestinian militants are clearly feeling pressure to demonstrate that they have not been silenced. Israel blamed the Palestinian Authority for the attacks, although given the fact that most of the major West Bank towns are already in the hands of the Israeli military and under 24-hour curfew, it's not yet clear...
...finding any Arab support for a new war against Iraq. In its recent positions on the conflict, the Bush administration has essentially given Ariel Sharon carte blanche to do as he pleases in what had once been designated as Palestinian Authority-controlled territory. Despite a three-week lull in suicide bombings, there's little reason to believe Israel's reoccupation of West Bank cities will break the pattern of Israeli-Palestinian violence. Whatever Washington's own priorities, its interventions in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remain the benchmark against which Arab public opinion measures U.S. bona fides. And under present circumstances...
...Israelis lock horns over the shape and timetable of a final political settlement, the security vacuum threatens to eclipse all of those discussions. Indeed, the continued potential for terror attacks inside Israel and for a large-scale IDF retaliation suggests that the current calm may simply be the lull before the next storm...