Word: netanyahu
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...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...
...when the Hebron agreement was finally signed after four months of excruciating bargaining, the Israeli Prime Minister was still not a winner. Palestinians came away convinced that Netanyahu would never yield anything to them except under extreme duress. Many Israelis wondered what real security advantage all the tension and ill will had gained them. What the rest of the world regarded as a significant breakthrough for peace ranked as total betrayal to Jewish settlers and hard-line nationalists. At bottom, both his Palestinian foes and his right-wing faithful suspected the Prime Minister of terminal insincerity...
...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...
...week later, Palestinians were stung again when Netanyahu announced that Israel would fulfill its obligation to make another partial pullback from the West Bank but would vacate just 9% of the land still under occupation--of which only 2% was not already under shared Israeli-Palestinian authority. Israeli nationalists were up in arms again at the "giveaway," while Palestinians had expected to retrieve at least 20% or 30% of the West Bank. Arafat was so enraged that he rejected the handover and refused to take any calls from Netanyahu...
Breaking ground at Har Homa just as negotiations on a "final status" agreement were supposed to get under way last week seemed so unnecessary, so calculated to disrupt the delicate proceedings. To reassure his hard-line constituents that he would not back down, Netanyahu complained he was "fed up" 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...