Word: settlers
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...Years of resentment over the corruption of the "Tunisians" and the failure of their Oslo strategy to end the most irksome aspects of the occupation - Israel's settler population in the West Bank actually doubled in the years during which Arafat told Palestinians he was negotiating an end to the Israeli presence - finally exploded in the second intifada in September of 2000. As much as Arafat rode, and encouraged that wave of outrage, hoping - foolishly, as it turned out - that he could exploit a surge of violence to win new concessions at the negotiating table, close observers of Palestinian politics...
...intifada, but to exiles who returned from Tunis with Arafat and in most cases rushed to use their new positions to feather their own nests. While Arafat enjoyed his new role as feted statesman in Western capitals, some painful realities didn't change for his people: The Israeli settler population of the West Bank doubled during the Oslo years, raising Palestinian suspicions over Israel's intentions. Meanwhile, on the Israeli side, the assassination of Rabin and a series of Hamas suicide attacks in Israel had installed a right-wing government dedicated to reversing Oslo. Arafat was stuck between the proverbial...
...return, Israel won't block him. But just as a potentially seismic shake-up of the Palestinian leadership was developing, there were deep rumblings on the Israeli side as well. Sharon won approval last week in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, for a bill scheduling the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza to begin next June. Sharon's aides say the plan, which would involve uprooting 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, would make it easier to defend Israelis against terrorist attacks and deflect international pressure on Israel to engage in peace talks. But while...
...settlers view Sharon as a sellout. For years, he urged them to "grab hilltops" so that the land could never be given to the Palestinians in a peace deal. Now, says Arieh Eldad, a right-wing lawmaker, "Sharon is betraying everything he preached for so many years. He is betraying the people he sent to these hilltops, and they feel stabbed in the back. It may lead to civil war." While that's remote, a poll last month showed 7% of Israelis believed resisting the government by force of arms would be justified. Israeli intelligence fears an attack...
...when you're fighting for your political life. During a recent session of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, Ariel Sharon sat impassively as a former supporter harangued him from the podium, addressing the Prime Minister by his nickname, Arik, and attacking his plan to evacuate 7,500 Israeli settlers from the Gaza Strip. "Why can't you be the man you once were?" shouted the man, a settler named Nissim Slomiansky. "Be the old Arik?" Slomiansky accused Sharon of selling out longtime comrades in his single-minded quest to redraw Israel's borders according to his own design. After listening...