Word: tunnelling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Putatively, it was all about a hole in the ground, dug by the Israelis in Arab East Jerusalem to complete an ancient tunnel showing off the buried foundations of Judaism's sacred Western Wall. Palestinians considered the digging a provocative incursion into their terrain, but in truth, it was only the match thrown into the tinderbox of accumulated Palestinian fury. For months, Israeli and Palestinian intelligence officials had warned of an impending explosion in the territories. In August, Ali Jirbawi, a political scientist at Bir-Zeit University in the West Bank, said, "Scratch the surface, and you find a state...
...fact, the tunnel opening was a godsend for Arafat. "The Israelis threw him a golden opportunity, and he pounced on it," says Khalil Shikaki, director of the Center of Palestine Research and Studies, based in Nablus. For one thing, embracing the uprising offered Arafat the prospect of improving his standing with his own people, which had fallen unprecedentedly low. Says Shikaki, whose center regularly monitors public opinion: "Optimism about the future had flown out the window." Palestinians blamed mostly the Israelis for their hopelessness, but also Arafat and his P.A. They felt their leadership had been duped into a dead...
They also passed out a two paragraph statement promoting peaceful negotiations and condemning last week's "violent Palestinian response" to the opening of an ancient tunnel near Muslim and Jewish holy sites...
...statement said the opening of the tunnel was "ill-timed" and expressed "solidarity with Palestinian police officers who exercised restraint and intervened to end the attacks...
...someone was serious about peace they would call for the closing of the tunnel," he added, referring to HSI's silence on the tunnel's future...