Word: palestinians
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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HIGH HOPES Pneumonia ended Ali Bushnaq's quest to be the first Palestinian up the mountain. But his teammates on the Everest Peace Project, including two Israelis, made...
ISMAIL HANIYEH, Palestinian Prime Minister, urging restraint in a power struggle between his Hamas party and the rival Fatah bloc of President Mahmoud Abbas--who said he would call a referendum on a proposal for peace with Israel if Hamas, which refuses to recognize the Jewish state, does not accept the plan within 10 days...
...Abbas is making a smart calculation that Hamas is less unified on its hostility to peace than its longstanding rhetoric would indicate, and he may be using the threat of a referendum over a negotiating position to exacerbate those divisions. Most polls show a solid majority of Palestinians backing the two-state option, and the proposed peace plan he put to Hamas was actually crafted by imprisoned leaders of both Fatah and Hamas, adding to its street credibility. So, while Hamas's leaders had hoped to put the issue of how it relates to Israel on the back burner while...
...What the Palestinian showdown reveals, however, is that the obstacles to a negotiated solution are not simply the fact that Hamas now runs the Palestinian government or that armed groups have not been dismantled. While Abbas sees the basis for negotiations as the 1967 borders, Olmert's version of the border - as described by the route of the security wall he is in the process of completing - folds in the major Israeli settlement blocs on the West Bank, bissecting the territory and cutting it off from East Jerusalem. The fact that the Israeli negotiating position is so far from even...
...that respect, Abbas may simply be looking to outflank Olmert by denying Israel the space to claim there is no Palestinian negotiating partner. But Olmert can comfortably agree to talk to Abbas, insisting that the Palestinian leader first implement his obligations under President Bush's "roadmap," which requires that the Palestinians dismantle the armed factions before any talk of borders can begin. It's a relatively safe bet that four to six months from now, Olmert will tell Bush that he gave it his best shot, but just couldn't make any progress with Abbas. At that point, when Olmert...