Word: shamir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...performance, given by a wily veteran of guerrilla warfare, was a tactical masterpiece. Arriving in Washington last week, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir faced heavy pressure from the Reagan Administration to accept a U.S. proposal for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, a plan whose conditions he had publicly reviled at home. Engaging in a shrewd game of stalling and sliding, Shamir, who got his start as a leader in the Jewish underground in pre-1948 Palestine, managed to avoid an open confrontation with his U.S. allies: he neither formally rejected their proposal nor moved an inch closer...
...series of interviews, a defiant Shamir rejected the U.S. plan. Said he: "This paper given to us is not Moses' Commandments from Mount Sinai." Calling the proposal "fraught with danger" for Israel, he said the "document does not serve the cause of peace or advance it even by one centimeter." Shamir opposes surrendering the West Bank in return for a promise of peace, arguing that the territory, captured in 1967, formed part of the biblical land of Israel and now provides the nation with more secure borders...
...Shamir, leader of the conservative Likud bloc, repeatedly resisted Peres' call for a formal Cabinet vote on the U.S. plan. He intends to offer his own peace initiative, which would give Palestinians some autonomy, but rather than beginning negotiations on the disposition of territories within nine months, it would stall for at least three more years. Last week the Palestine Liberation Organization foolishly played into Shamir's stonewalling strategy by hijacking a bus carrying civilians in Israel. The terrorist incident, which left three Israelis and all three guerrillas dead, bolstered Shamir's position that Israel should not enter into negotiations...
...Shamir hopes that a rightward trend in Israeli politics, fueled by the continuing Palestinian unrest, will enable Likud to oust Labor from Israel's power-sharing coalition government in this year's elections, scheduled for November. But a gnawing problem for Likud as well as Labor is that the nation continues to be deeply divided over what to do about the occupied territories. At week's end a poll of some 500 Israelis published in the Tel Aviv daily Hadashot showed that while 46% favored the land-for-peace proposal and 37% opposed it, fully 17% were undecided...
...shortage puts Panama' s strongman in a painful squeeze. While he easily rides out street protests, the general may step aside if Washington drops drug charges. -- Besieged by critics, Israel' s Prime Minister Shamir prepares to visit Washington. -- The pace slows in Afghan peace talks, but a settlement is still in sight. -- Welcome to Medellin, the cocaine capital of the world...