Word: sheiking
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JERUSALEM: Looking closer to death than to the freedom into which he had just been bundled, Sheik Ahmed Yassin was strapped to a stretcher and wheeled across the tarmac before dawn Wednesday, bound for a Jordanian helicopter. The release of the man that Hamas considers its "spiritual leader" was sudden, but not a surprise to those in the know. "The Israelis have debated about releasing Yassin for two years," says TIME Jerusalem Bureau Chief Lisa Beyer. "They've been terrified that he'll die in jail and provoke even more attacks...
Just what the Israelis were up to outside their zone in Lebanon remained unexplained. Lebanese sources speculated that the Israelis intended to snatch Sheik Abdul-Amir Kabalan, who has a house in Insariyeh and is influential in Amal, one of the Shi'ite militia groups. Israel has carried out such kidnappings before, but military insiders downplayed this theory. They hinted instead that the mission was to plant explosive devices in the area, targeted either at a nearby Hizballah post or an Amal encampment...
...when Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, 44, enters through a side door, he ignores formalities, proffers a friendly handshake, and talks frankly with a journalist for two hours--acts normally taboo in cloistered Arab monarchies. He breezily inquires, "Can you come to lunch Saturday...
...proved as beneficial--though fraught with palace intrigue--as in tiny, thumb-shaped Qatar (pop. 500,000). Eighteen months ago, Hamad, trained at Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy, was merely an heir apparent. Then he staged a bloodless coup that ended the 23-year reign of his father Sheik Khalifa bin Hamad al-Thani, 64, who had developed an unseemly fondness for liquor and opulent palaces. Since then, Qataris have witnessed one of the bitterest Arabian family spats in memory, involving cash and arms, ritual and reform. Only last week did a cease-fire seem to take hold. Khalifa appeared...
...glass-and-steel city whose residents once survived on pearl fishing, Hamad has scheduled municipal elections and loosened restrictions on the press, near revolutionary moves in the ultrapatriarchal gulf. He has angered neighbors by receiving a minister from Iraq and a minister plus a battleship from Iran--every other sheik's two worst enemies. He has also tried to outdo them in pleasing the U.S., offering the Pentagon a base on his soil and, until Benjamin Netanyahu came to power, moving faster to normalize relations with Israel...