Word: rabin
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Since Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin instructed his soldiers in late August to start using cartridges tipped with plastic to break up riots in the occupied territories, Palestinian casualties in Gaza alone have leaped from about 20 in July to more than 170 in September. At close range, the bullets can even kill. Not surprisingly, Rabin's latest gambit to crush the intifadeh has provoked yet another round of criticism from abroad and from Israel's far left, which charges Rabin with excessive brutality. But it has also raised a disturbing new question: Are Israeli leaders turning up the violence against...
Last week, as seven protesters were killed -- two by plastic bullets -- and more than 90 others wounded, the U.S. State Department rebuked Israel by saying there is "no justification" for deliberately causing Palestinian casualties. Some U.S. officials charge that Rabin's plastic bullets are aimed at the voters. The Defense Minister, considered the No. 2 figure in Israel's Labor Party, dismisses the notion that his new crackdown is politically motivated. But he makes no apologies about stepping up the army's operations. "The rioters are suffering more casualties," he told reporters during a tour of the West Bank. "That...
...Rabin contends that other methods of curbing the protests have proved ineffective, including tear gas and the brutal beatings that prompted an international outcry earlier this year. Israeli troops are generally barred from using regular ammunition unless their lives are in immediate danger. Israel has tried dispersing protesters by firing rubber bullets, which bruise but rarely penetrate the skin. Aggressive Palestinians were undaunted. The new .556-mm plastic projectiles are supposedly less lethal than full metal jackets, but they are intended to cause injuries serious enough to put demonstrators out of action...
...design or not, Rabin's new crackdown may have the political benefit of reassuring Israeli voters who deem the Labor Party soft on the Palestinians. The right-wing Likud bloc of Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir refuses to surrender any of the West Bank and Gaza, and some members even boast they could crush the intifadeh in weeks. Labor leader Shimon Peres has endorsed proposals for negotiations that would return some territory to Arab rule, which many interpret as signifying an inability to quell the rebellion. Rabin seems determined to prove them wrong. Said Shamir media adviser Avi Pazner...
This is not say that Israel has utterly ignored Palestinians. Far from it. Since December, the Israeli response to the national desires of Palestinans has been "force, power and blows," in the words of Israeli Defense Minister, Yitzhak Rabin...