Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...short term, Palestinians are reacting calmly, but over time their response to an unbending Netanyahu could flare up into a new intifadeh, the six-year stones-and-guns uprising that finally forced Israel to negotiate with them. The new Prime Minister claims that Arab leaders will simply lower their expectations when confronted by in-your-face showdowns. Instead he might drive despairing Palestinians, who have profited even less than Israelis by the peace process so far, into battle. It is a possibility that Benny Begin, Menachem's son and another hardheaded prospect for the Likud government, concedes is real...
...Wednesday evening, the night of the Israeli elections, and the atmosphere in the Gaza City home of Nabil Shaath is quiet and tense. About a dozen people have gathered to watch the returns. Most are top aides to Yasser Arafat. Shaath, the Palestinian Authority's Minister of International Relations and Development, negotiated the complicated arrangements for the staged Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. As a member of the authority's six-member senior committee overseeing the crucial "final status" talks, he has just returned from Washington, where he and the Clinton Administration's top Middle East hands...
...about anything that could help Peres, they have done--or more exactly not done--avoiding rhetoric and protests that could stir up unrest. In response to terrorist attacks, Peres has for the past three months prevented workers who live in Gaza and the West Bank from entering Israel, but Palestinian officials said little about it in the final weeks of the campaign. If, because of his political situation, Peres failed to live up to one of his promises, they simply ignored it. The accord Shaath brokered, for example, calls for Israelis to withdraw forces from the West Bank town...
...vote count starts, early reports predict only a modest turnout of Israel's Arab citizens; Shaath becomes nervous. "We need an 80% Israeli-Arab participation rate," he says heatedly ("we" refers to the Peres effort, and Shaath uses the word throughout the evening). To reach that goal the Palestinian Authority had urged Arab clerics and other trusted pro-Peres Palestinians to go door to door to push Arab Israelis to the polls. After a last-minute surge, 79% of them did vote, and more than 94% supported Peres. "Remember," Shaath says, smiling, "we don't interfere. But after this...
There is nothing Shaath, Arafat or any Palestinian leader can do now except hope that everything Bibi Netanyahu said during his campaign was nothing more than electioneering rhetoric. Three years ago, though, Shaath predicted a Netanyahu government would mean the "end of the peace process." Nothing that has happened since has caused him to change that view. He will probably soon begin to sound the optimistic notes that are the only acceptable public reaction Arafat and his aides can offer at a time like this. But in the shock of the moment Shaath candidly characterized Netanyahu's election...