Word: towards
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...eventual elimination of nuclear weapons. He's spent diplomatic capital trying to negotiate a new nuclear-arms-control agreement with Russia, and in his Nobel Peace Prize speech in December, he called atomic-weapons control "the centerpiece of my foreign policy," asking all nuclear countries to work toward disarmament...
...sophomore effort (a follow-on from 2006's equally pastoral Stories from the North), it's that his high-definition images - all darkening clouds and lustrous green paddies - are too beautiful. Despite its share of grumbling about corrupt politicians, Agrarian Utopia quickly moves beyond some heavy-handed message movie toward Buddhist meditation. Uruphong's oppressed peasants are as much victims of their own restlessness as they are of meager rice prices. With a poet's eye, the sights and sounds of their close-to-nature existence are transformed into sources of comfort...
Still, President Obama has admitted that the domestic political calculus on both sides of the divide has blocked progress toward realizing a two-state solution. But if his efforts are to bear any fruit, Obama and his international partners will have to change the cost-benefit analysis for the Israelis and Palestinians by raising both the inducements to act and the consequences of inaction. As long as the status quo remains more politically comfortable than the alternative, there's no reason to expect any progress...
...Defense Minister Barak sounds a little exasperated, that may be because he's swimming against Israel's domestic political tide in seeking to restart momentum toward a two-state solution. Whatever the long-term dangers, Israelis right now don't see any negative consequences for maintaining the status quo. The Palestinians are under siege in Gaza and walled off in the West Bank. Terror attacks are rare today and most Israelis are scarcely aware that the Palestinians exist. Israel's booming economy, increasingly integrated with those of Europe and the U.S., is knocking on the door of membership...
...longer makes sense. That was true for Rabin - who embraced the Oslo process after calculating that Israel could not forever count on unconditional U.S. support - and also for Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas. Rabin's cost-benefit analysis told him that Israel's best interests required moving toward a two-state solution from a position of strength, and the Palestinian leadership recognized that, as much as they desired a return to the homes and land they lost in 1948, the balance of forces made that a futile goal. They decided to instead seek a state in the West Bank...