Word: sharone
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...antagonists came close in a series of taboo-shattering discussions begun at Camp David in 2000 that nearly concluded before President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Ehud Barak both left office in early 2001. If negotiations ever do resume, Arafat wants to start where those talks left off. But Sharon has revoked previous Israeli offers. Here are the four chief obstacles to peace in the Middle East...
...possible for Israel to give those lands back--as it did with Sinai in 1979--if it were not for the 163 Jewish settlements now dotting the land. Since the peace process began in 1993, the number of Jewish settlers in the territories has doubled, to 214,000. Before Sharon's latest military incursion, the Palestinians had won full control of just 18% of the West Bank, scattered in a noncontiguous patchwork...
...would encompass all of Gaza and up to 96% of the West Bank. To make up for territory annexed to keep many settlements, Israel would swap an equal percentage of land inhabited by Arabs inside Israel. Arafat accepts the idea but rejects anything less than a solid, contiguous border. Sharon's grudging acceptance of an "eventual" Palestine never goes far beyond civil autonomy for Palestinian islets in a sea patrolled by Israeli forces...
...proposal that, as a practical matter, most of the refugees could go back only as far as the new Palestine. Arafat has spoken of "understanding" that any return of refugees "must be implemented in a way that takes into account" Israel's unshakable determination to remain Jewish. But Sharon's Likud Party has rejected the return of any Palestinian refugees, from anywhere. And Arafat can't guarantee those 1,235,000 camp refugees will accept that they're never going all the way home...
...hoped they could finesse these demands and could gerrymander the city into an Arab East Jerusalem that the Palestinians could call a capital and a Jewish West Jerusalem that the Israelis could keep as theirs. But Arafat scuttled Camp David when he couldn't get enough of Jerusalem. And Sharon--who in 1987 acquired a house inside the Arab Old City and decorated it with a huge menorah--said Friday that the city will "forever" be the "united capital" of Israel...