Word: quo
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...years ago for comparing the standoff between Israel and the Palestinians to apartheid - the South African system that meant not only segregation, but a denial of citizenship to a whole category of people. And so it was ironic that a key Israeli leader warned his people that the status quo on the territories conquered by Israel in 1967 amounts to the same thing. Barak's point was to warn that unless the Palestinians are given an independent state of their own, the world will eventually notice that their lives are controlled by an Israeli state that denies them citizenship, raising...
...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...
...situation may be intolerable for the Palestinians, but for Israel there simply is no immediate downside to maintaining the status quo. Telling Israelis about the specter of apartheid and demographic "time bombs" is like telling Americans that they must fix social security. Nobody disagrees, but don't hold your breath...
...with the Cold War essentially over, Pretoria had gotten the message that it could no longer count on U.S. support to head off sanctions and other international pressure in the name of anticommunist solidarity. Financial sanctions were beginning to bite and the price of maintaining the status quo was beginning to appear prohibitive. De Klerk, to his credit, realized that his people had more to gain from negotiating from a position of relative strength. And the political unrest in the black townships, combined with the expanding sanctions and growing isolation, helped him make the case to his own electorate...
Political leaders typically change course not because they change their philosophy, but because the cost-benefit ratio in maintaining the status quo no 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...