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p them. But look what happened." Such a jaundiced view of history also lies behind Barak's advocacy of Israel's unilateral withdrawal from most of the West Bank. Barak's motivation here has little or nothing to do with Palestinian well-being. His EFTA00693050 argument is twofold: one, that ending the occu
astrously. The most prominent failure, of course, and the one likely to forever define Barak's legacy, was his attempt as prime minister to cut the Gordian knots binding Israel to permanent insecurity by ending the conflicts with Syria and the Palestinians and the two-decade-long occupation of Lebanon.
ly bad terms. The Israelis refused to acquiesce to certain preconditions, including the cessation of all settlement building in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, enraging Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Negotiations this time around will likely pick up where the 2010 conference left off, and
use Rouhani is telling Iranians he will ensure the sanctions are lifted without making concessions on the nuclear issue. Rouhani faces a diplomatic Gordian knot. On the one hand, he must prove that Iran is not trying to build a EFTA_R1_00440996 EFTA01964320 nuclear arsenal. But how does one prove a
ifferent. On the Israeli side, the unabated building of illegal settlements and other facts on the ground, such as the Israeli-constructed wall in the West Bank, are destroying prospects for two states and are pushing the two peoples, unwillingly, toward a one-state solution instead. Demographic projections
to deploy its full arsenal of means and measures before we consider other options? This is good advice. War must always be the last resort. If the Gordian knot could be untied with fingers, why use the sword? However, diplomacy cannot become a fig leaf to hide inaction. Over the past two years, numero
Entities connected to both the West Bank and Gordian

Barack Obama
PERSON
Benjamin Netanyahu
PERSON
Jerusalem
LOCATION
Lebanon
LOCATION
George W. Bush
PERSON
United States
LOCATION
Bill Clinton
PERSON
Bashar al-Assad
PERSON
Middle East
LOCATION
Tehran
LOCATION
West Bank
LOCATION
Cairo
LOCATION
Terje Rod-Larsen
PERSON
Hosni Mubarak
PERSON
Jeffrey Epstein
PERSON
Damascus
LOCATION
Marc Rich
PERSON
Hillary Clinton
PERSON
Vladimir Putin
PERSONLeon Black
PERSON