Word: shamir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...months it has been billed as a national unity coalition, but the two wings of the Jerusalem government last week displayed little evidence of anything approaching harmony. "Perverse and criminal!" cried Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir at Foreign Minister Shimon Peres' proposal to convene an international peace conference in the region. Peres, the leader of the Labor Party, retaliated by accusing his coalition partner of "character assassination...
...until November 1988. Before leaving for the U.S. to consult with Secretary of State George Shultz, Peres was forced to announce that for the moment Labor would remain in the troubled government. But the dispute continued on another front: the Foreign Ministry refused to transmit to its embassies a Shamir message saying that the peace plan was dead...
...Peres, who has long believed that Israel should be prepared to trade some of the West Bank and Gaza Strip for a settlement, thinks the time is ripe to enter into negotiations. He also knows that Labor now enjoys a strong lead over Likud in public opinion polls. Shamir, for his part, is determined to hang on to every square inch of the territories Israel has occupied since 1967, even though their 1.46 million residents are 96% Palestinian. He refuses to consider negotiations with the Soviets or indirect dealings with the P.L.O. or Arab governments. And he is infuriated that...
Israel's national unity government appeared to work smoothly enough in its first 31 months. But by last week its two leaders, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, seemed increasingly destined to tangle in a bitter clash of wills. The reason: Peres wants Israel to cooperate with Jordan, the U.S. and probably Egypt in the convening of an international peace conference on the Middle East, but Shamir is dead set against the idea. When Peres left on a trip to Western Europe to pursue the plan, Shamir declared testily, "I hope he fails." Last week the Prime...
...endorse the idea of a conference. If it refuses, he seems determined to keep the peace initiative alive by bringing down the government and pushing for early elections. Peres told Israeli newspaper editors last week that he was "more than optimistic" about the prospects for peace talks. Replied Shamir: "I believe it would be irresponsible with regard to the country's interests to thrust us into the whirlpool of elections . . . and, God forbid, send the country back into the period of inflation and instability...