Word: damascus
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...majlis on the second floor of the Hamas office in a quiet Damascus neighborhood. Mashaal, a handsome, soft-spoken man with salt-and-pepper hair, sat flanked by Palestinian and Hamas flags. I asked about his reaction to the Obama speech. He was officially skeptical. He acknowledged the President's new tone, but wanted to know what the Obama Administration would do to pressure the Israeli government to stop building settlements on Palestinian lands. "The Americans have an abundance of experience in pressuring countries around the world," he said. "Why is it only in the case of Israel that America...
...play reluctant host to the refugees. The exact number of refugees is hard to gauge, but the Iraqi government estimates there are 2 million. The majority of them live in Syria and Jordan, which are struggling with weak economies and mounting joblessness among their own populations. Government officials in Damascus and Amman have been counting on the improving security environment in Iraq to persuade many refugees to go home. Aid workers in both countries say many refugees are being pressured to leave. (See pictures of the recent revival of daily life in Iraq...
Although the U.N. agency has warned that its new guidelines don't mean Iraq has turned a corner, aid workers fear that's exactly how they will be taken by officials in Damascus and Amman - with dire consequences for the refugees. "I'm wary that this will be interpreted by asylum countries that it's O.K. to return Iraqis forcibly," says Bob Carey, vice president for resettlement and migration policy at the International Rescue Committee...
...despite listing it as a state sponsor of terrorism. In Iraq, it not only talked to Baathists who had been killing other Iraqis and our troops, it paid and armed them. And the Obama Administration has gone further. It has advertised its willingness to negotiate with the governments in Damascus and Tehran, both terrorism sponsors, according to the State Department. It is also mulling overtures to the Taliban, which is killing U.S. troops and ordinary Afghans nearly every day. The U.S. still doesn't talk to Hizballah, but we do talk to the Lebanese government, in which Hizballah plays...
...Hamas, in Israel's view, was moderate once, could it moderate itself again? The group's founding charter - which brims with anti-Semitism and rules out conceding any historically Palestinian land - doesn't exactly fill one with hope. On the other hand, Hamas' leader in Damascus, Khaled Mashaal, declared a couple of years ago, "I speak of a Palestinian and Arab demand for a state on 1967 borders. It is true that in reality there will be an entity or a state called Israel on the rest of Palestinian land." Ephraim Halevy, a former head of Israel's national intelligence...