Word: ramallah
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This may be as good as Middle East peace gets for the foreseeable future - a smoldering stalemate peppered with sporadic violence. Wednesday's case in point: Israeli tanks and helicopter gunships blasted Palestinian Authority targets in Gaza and Ramallah after a Hamas suicide bomber had earlier in the day killed himself and two Israeli teenagers on the border between Israel and the West Bank. The latest attacks followed two bomb blasts in Jerusalem the previous day for which Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, and ongoing clashes throughout the West Bank. The Israeli attacks came as no surprise - Israel had promised...
...Israel tightened its closure around Palestinian towns early last week, blockading Ramallah, the "intifadeh capital" of the West Bank, because it said it had uncovered a terrorist cell planning further attacks on Israelis. But E.U. ministers warned that they might suspend a key agreement with Israel if the economic stranglehold of Palestinian areas was not relaxed. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon gave military officials discretion to ease restrictions, but many roads to Palestinian villages throughout the West Bank remained blocked by trenches or piles of rubble set up by the Israeli army...
TIME.com: On the one hand Israel has Ramallah in a stranglehold; on the other hand it's lifting the blockade on a number of West Bank cities and talking of allowing Palestinian workers back into Israel. What's Ariel Sharon's game...
...They're saying they're keeping Ramallah under siege because they have information that a terrorist cell is trying to send a car full of explosives to Israel, and that they'll maintain the siege until they capture this cell. Sharon doesn't believe in collective punishment, but he wants to send a message that he'll take a tough line against armed people. He wants to turn Palestinian public opinion against those who are shooting at Israel...
...took great umbrage. Protests quickly led to violence, and in the next week rocks, firebombs and bullets claimed the lives of some 70 people and injured more than 1,800 others. It didn't stop there: in October this young Palestinian hurled a molotov cocktail into an alley in Ramallah; whether there were victims of this particular assault is uncertain, but by mid-November the death toll had climbed to 270, most of them Palestinians. The three participants in the earlier U.S. meeting found themselves caught in various binds: President Bill Clinton was desperate for a large foreign policy victory...