Word: israel
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1990
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Israel has held on to the West Bank at least partly because of a belief that it needed the territory for defense against neighboring states that have never recognized its right to exist and often threatened to destroy "the Zionist entity." No one, not even Ayatullah Khomeini, has ever proposed to wipe Iraq off the map. Nor can Iraq conceivably claim that it needs Kuwaiti ( territory for defense. It fought off Iranian assaults quite effectively throughout eight years of war without making any use of Kuwaiti soil...
...Israel has followed harsh policies in the West Bank and Gaza, particularly in efforts during the past three years to suppress the intifadeh. But its sternness cannot be compared with the tales told by Kuwaiti refugees about looting, rape, torture, beheadings and other summary executions by Iraqi soldiers. That the outside world has to rely on refugees' stories to learn what is happening in Kuwait is itself significant. Reporters and photographers roam the Israeli-occupied territories, albeit with many restrictions imposed by the army, and report what they see and hear; they are not allowed into Kuwait...
None of this excuses Israel's endless stalling on meeting the legitimate aspirations of the Palestinians, nor Washington's reluctance to lean harder on its ally to do so. Nor can Israel be encouraged to believe that the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait might somehow give it an excuse to hang on to the West Bank and Gaza for another 23 years. But the two wrongs simply are not equal. And any attempt to pretend that they are can only confuse and weaken the world community's response to Saddam Hussein's blatant aggression...
...once Saddam Hussein must be delighted to share the limelight. Eager to divert attention from his rape of Kuwait, the Iraqi leader has tried repeatedly to drag Israel onto center stage in order to convince his fellow Arabs that the enemy is not Iraq but the Zionists and their American backers. Israeli security forces played right into his hands last week when they fired into an angry Palestinian mob on Jerusalem's Temple Mount, killing 19 Palestinians and wounding 140. The deaths, said Boutros Boutros Ghali, Egypt's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, were "Israel's great gift...
Thus ended the low profile Israel had maintained in the gulf crisis at the request of the Bush Administration, which had persuaded Jerusalem that its silence was essential to keeping most of the Arab world united against Saddam. The tragedy on the Temple Mount, one of the most sacred sites in Islam, put Israel under diplomatic siege. Saudi Arabia decried the "brutal and savage attack," and Jordan denounced it as "racist and criminal." Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak accused Israel of "brutal repression," while Syria . alleged that Israel actually orchestrated the clashes to force Arabs out of the occupied territories...