Word: yasser
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...unclear how long his smile will last. On the very day of Friedman's outrage, negotiators were predicting a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to put the final touches on a pact for self-rule in Hebron. After the shooting, that schedule was pushed back, but U.S. officials brokering the talks say it is still just a matter of time before an accord is reached. Such an agreement was already signed in September 1995 by Arafat and the previous Israeli government. But Netanyahu, after his election last May, insisted on reopening negotiations...
...troops and civilians out of Gaza and turned over responsibility for the area to the Palestinian Authority, Abu Samhadana and his troops have a new target: Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his security services, who are struggling to impose order in Gaza, home to 1.5 million Palestinians. Abbas' predecessor, Yasser Arafat, used to send Abu Samhadana $10,000 a month, but Abbas ended those payments in February. Without such support, Abu Samhadana's army is filled with jobless (and armed) men who have been expressing their frustration by going on a spree of kidnappings and assassinations. "Gaza is in security...
...problem lies in the large numbers of gunmen nominally linked to the ruling Fatah faction of the PLO. Over the five years of the intifadeh, they've come to rule their villages, refugee camps, or towns as gangster fiefs. They were somewhat held in check by the money Yasser Arafat sent them. When Abbas took over as Palestinian leader after Arafat's death in November, he stopped the funds. That makes these groups dangerous and desperate. They've kidnapped foreign aid works and journalists to threaten the Authority. They've also become linked to infighting among top Palestinian Authority officials...
...Gaza is in security chaos. Last week's assassination of Moussa Arafat, a nephew of Yasser Arafat and a security chief seen as deeply corrupt, showed the precipitous slip into fraternal violence that seriously threatens Abbas's hold on the Strip. This week, the mobs that burned the abandoned Israeli synagogues in the evacuated settlements illustrated how little control Abbas has over the situation in Gaza. There were Palestinian troops around the settlements, but they didn't prevent the riots...
...ASSASSINATED. MOUSSA ARAFAT, 61, security adviser to Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, and a cousin of Yasser Arafat; after gunmen stormed his family compound, dragged him into the street in his pajamas and shot him 23 times; in Gaza City. Amid claims of responsibility by militant Palestinian group Popular Resistance Committees, which criticized Arafat as corrupt, Abbas put his security forces on heightened alert, vowing to punish the killers...