Word: palestinian
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...Land seemed like ancient history, as did the unsuccessful mid-summer Camp David summit, when fighting erupted between Arabs and Israelis in the autumn. The spark: on Sept. 28 right-wing Israeli politician and former Defense Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City, and Palestinians took great umbrage. Protests quickly led to violence, and in the next week rocks, firebombs and bullets claimed the lives of some 70 people and injured more than 1,800 others. It didn't stop there: in October this young Palestinian hurled a molotov cocktail into an alley in Ramallah...
...Hopes for a summit, which was to be hosted by Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and was aimed at getting the two sides down to business, evaporated after the Palestinian leadership sniffed at the Clinton proposals and asked the White House for more details...
...proposals - which are not in written form - reportedly grant the Palestinians sovereignty over Jerusalem's Haram al-Sharif (called the Temple Mount by Jews) while the Israelis would have sovereignty over the Western Wall (the only remaining piece of the Second Temple). The proposal also calls for the resettlement of thousands of Palestinian refugees in Palestinian-controlled land rather than in Israel. And so Barak went back to Jerusalem to huddle with his cabinet and security chiefs, and Arafat went off to Cairo by himself...
...Clinton, doesn't have a changing of the guard to worry about. But politics is politics, and if Arafat doesn't bring home a deal that includes the Haram al-Sharif and tackles the very touchy refugee problem to his own hawks' satisfaction, he'll go down in Palestinian infamy and quite possibly be blown up himself by militants. Or so he says. This is Middle East peace, not some Beltway budget battle, and Arafat is under some very serious pressure to come out on top at the negotiating table...
...Egypt's leading newspaper, chief editor and Mubarak confidant Samir Ragab wrote that Arabs "unanimously rejected" the nature of the U.S. proposals. "This offer does not meet Arab and Palestinian interests and there is nothing which will force us to accept it." In Lebanon, a Foreign Ministry official renewed his country's objections to "any agreement between Palestinians and Israelis that may be related to the issue of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon without Lebanon being party to the agreement." Of course that means Syria has to come too - and Thursday the mouthpiece Syria Times nixed the proposals too. The plan...