Word: plo
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Ehud Barak didn't become Israel's most decorated soldier by acting predictably. He earned his stripes in such daring escapades as the dramatic 1976 hostage rescue at Uganda's Entebbe airport and the assassination of key PLO leaders in distant Arab capitals. Now the plucky little commando appears to have sprung a nasty booby trap on his domestic political foes - by announcing his resignation Saturday, and calling a new election that must be held within two months...
...Many of those who led the last intifada believe it was their efforts that saved Arafat and the PLO and made the peace process possible, and yet there's widespread resentment in their ranks at being sidelined politically once the exiled leaders arrived home...
...sure, it's unlikely that Chairman Arafat's headquarters would have moved from Tunis to the West Bank without the intifada. The PLO's efforts to launch guerrilla warfare against Israel from neighboring Arab states had been singularly unsuccessful. Arafat's headquarters had been in Jordan in the late '60s and Lebanon in the '70s and early '80s, but by 1987 he was billeted in far-off Tunisia with few instruments to pursue his nationalist struggle. Then came the uprising in the West Bank and Gaza. The young men of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 may have suffered...
...Then as now, the Israelis were able to contain the rebellion through force, but they were unable to end it - and the continued application of force was hurting Israel politically. That led the Israelis to begin tentative informal discussions with the PLO in 1989. Although the Palestinian delegates to the initial formal talks in Madrid in 1991 came from the West Bank and Gaza rather than from PLO headquarters, they all took direction from the leadership in Tunis...
...parents may have a hard time stopping their children from doing what they themselves grew up doing - after all, the occupation began 33 years ago. Arafat should know better than anyone, because he was once a young rebel himself, rejecting the moderation of his parents' generation, taking over the PLO in 1968 and reorienting it toward independent armed struggle...