Word: palestinians
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...East is a tough neighborhood, and many of its various ills - repression, extremism and conflict - have been around for decades. Bush deserves credit, in fact, for reversing - on paper if not in practice - years of American policy by promoting democracy in the Arab world and calling for an independent Palestinian state. But the Bush Administration made five fatal mistakes that contributed to the crisis in which it now finds itself...
...until the week that Bill Clinton left office in January 2001, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were still trying to work out an ambitious end-of-conflict agreement. True, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had unleashed an intifadeh, and the Israelis were on the verge of electing Ariel Sharon - an avowed enemy of the Oslo peace process - as prime minister, but the two sides were still talking. When Bush became president, he ended crucial American mediation, repudiated Arafat and backed Sharon, who proceeded to expand Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. With the conflict becoming bloodier than ever, Arafat died...
...cease-fire was hammered out between the Palestinian Prime Minister Ismael Haniyeh, a leader of Hamas, and various armed militant groups that have been peppering Israeli territory around the Gaza strip with rocket fire. Over the last four months, Israeli forces have launched one offensive after another into Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinian militants and civilians, but the rockets kept crashing into Israel...
...Once Haniyeh had secured the militants? accord, he notified Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas who passed on the offer to the Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was told that if he pulled troops out of Gaza, the Palestinian militants would halt their rocket fire. For Palestinians and Israelis, the truce offered a respite from a brutal and inconclusive mess in Gaza. In last week?s offensive, over 30 tanks rolled into Gaza, and Israeli forces used aircraft to fire missiles killing suspected Palestinian commanders. The Palestinians tried to counter this assault by sending a swarm of civilians to the house...
...Israelis agree with Olmert?s truce. On Sunday, Israeli security officials warned in the media that Palestinian militants might use the cease-fire to re-arm themselves in Gaza. Still, Olmert is hoping that if he and the Palestinians can make a truce stick, the two enemies may build up trust to hammer out a deal swapping an Israeli soldier, Corporal Gilad Shalit, kidnapped on June 25 in Gaza, for hundreds of Palestinians inside Israeli jails...