Word: shamir
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that, comes a bitter and very public dispute between the leaders of the country's national unity government about the next step in Middle East diplomacy. Both Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, head of the Likud bloc, and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, the Labor Party leader, are increasingly worried that Israelis will judge the government's greatest failure to be its inability to achieve a breakthrough in relations with its Arab neighbors. Yet the two men are at loggerheads over a peace strategy. Shamir holds out for direct talks, maintaining that the only way to guarantee enduring peace is to negotiate...
Peres' diplomatic initiative had the blessing of neither the Israeli Cabinet nor the Prime Minister. When Shamir heard about the Peres proposal, he warned, "No salvation, and certainly no peace, can result from this." To reporters he snapped, "I hope he won't succeed." Shamir fears the Soviets' involvement would help the Arabs exact territorial concessions from Israel and give Moscow the power to impose its own terms on the Middle East...
...After Shamir's criticism, Peres threatened that any attempt to disrupt his trip would endanger the "existence of the present government." Then, while Peres was on his way home, the Prime Minister stepped up his attacks. An international peace conference would be "national suicide," he said. "The whole idea is crazy and illogical." Again Peres warned of a government breakup. Then, more calmly, he added, "I'm not looking for the end of the government but for the beginning of peace...
...plunge seems to reflect in part the public reaction to the leadership change within the coalition government. Last October, under the terms of a power-sharing plan worked out by Labor and Likud after the elections of 1984 resulted in political deadlock, Peres and Shamir swapped jobs. The intellectual Peres tends to fare better in the polls than the scrappy Shamir. In January, Peres' approval rating was 70%, Shamir's 49%. Although the Prime Minister was recently elected leader of the Herut Party, core of the Likud bloc, Smith says that a new poll due out in several weeks will...
Throughout the week, both Jerusalem and Washington took tentative steps toward repairing the damage. The Reagan Administration allowed Army Secretary John O. Marsh to make a previously scheduled trip to Israel. The Shamir government, reacting to pressure from Congress, announced that it would not sign new military sales contracts with South Africa, although existing commitments would be unaffected. But the impasse over the Pollard affair was far from over. Declared a Western diplomat in Tel Aviv: "The Israelis have to understand that Washington wants blood...