Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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None of these points were lost on the Palestinian extremists who claimed responsibility for the explosions. "Our first goal was to bring down Arafat's administration," says "Abu Assad," a senior figure in the military wing of Hamas. According to him, the group was trying to prevent the anticipated full resumption of joint antiterror measures between the Israelis and the Palestinians. "This cooperation," notes Abu Assad, "is done at our expense." Then, in a boast that might be only bravado, the Hamas activist claimed, "We were about to assassinate Dennis Ross" on one of his previous peace shuttles. U.S. officials...
...opponents of peace are adept at timing their deadly attacks to coincide with the resumption of momentum. Only two days before the bombing, it looked as if relations between the Israelis and the Palestinians were moving back to normal after a four-month chill. The standstill had been provoked by Netanyahu's decision to build a new Jewish settlement in mostly Arab East Jerusalem, and that in turn led Arafat to restrict security cooperation, curtailing intelligence sharing and easing up on commitments to collect weapons, jail militants and stop calls to violence. On the Monday before the bombing, Israeli...
Netanyahu indefinitely closed Israel's borders to all Palestinians, putting some 100,000 day laborers out of work. He banned travel within the West Bank, cooping up Palestinians in their hometowns and handicapping normal commerce. For the first time, the Israeli government said it would stop paying out several million dollars it owes the Palestinian Authority in tax refunds. The Israelis also decided to jam broadcasts of the Palestinian Authority's official Voice of Palestine radio station, whose transmissions have recently been filled with anti-Israeli invective...
Taking on terror suspects directly, the Israeli government issued an arrest warrant for Palestinian police chief Ghazi Jabali, whom the Israelis accuse of inciting an attack on a Jewish settlement in the West Bank last month. Most ominously, Netanyahu's government warned that if Arafat didn't neutralize activists, Israel would send its forces back into areas now under Palestinian self-rule to do the job. That would be a blatant violation of the Israeli-Palestinian accords. "You're not going to see tanks or columns of soldiers going inside," says a senior Israeli officer in the West Bank...
...pressures on Arafat from outside were not enough, they coincide with the worst domestic scandal of his tenure as Palestinian Authority chief. Last Friday his entire Cabinet resigned after the elected Legislative Council voted to demand that he dissolve his government and appoint a new one within a month. In the past, Arafat has capriciously ignored the council's resolutions, but the charges of abuse of power are badly undercutting his credibility. Says an Arafat aide: "The resolution left Arafat armless. He can't confront the Israeli measures and policies with a corrupt administration and with no public support...