WG: SPECIAL FOCUS: The Middle East on the brink of peace

> ----------
> Von:  Le Monde diplomatique[SMTP:dispatch@london.monde-diplomatique.fr]
> Gesendet:     Donnerstag, 30. März 2000 17:43
> An:   English edition
> Betreff:      SPECIAL FOCUS: The Middle East on the brink of peace
> 
> 
>                    Le Monde diplomatique presents
>                  A special focus on the Middle East
>                         --------------------
> 
> 
>                The Middle East on the brink of peace
> 
> 
> 
>    http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/focus/mideast/
> 
>      On 15 December 1999 Syria and Israel resumed the peace talks
>      between them that had been broken off early in 1996. Three
>      months before, the Israelis and Palestinians had also resumed
>      negotiations, which had been blocked for a year. They signed an
>      agreement at Sharm el-Sheikh (Egypt) on a timetable for Israeli
>      withdrawal from the occupied territories and undertook to
>      conclude a final agreement by 13 September 2000.
> 
>      This focus feature provides the background to the negotiations
>      and clarifies the issues at stake. It contains all the major
>      texts on the Israeli-Arab conflict - from the Balfour
>      Declaration of 1917, which accepted the principle of a "Jewish
>      national home in Palestine", to the Oslo peace accords -
>      including all the main UN resolutions and the major statements
>      of the Palestinian resistance movement. It also provides
>      timelines, discussions of key issues, maps, and links to web
>      sites and Le Monde diplomatique articles.
> 
>      All this information is vital for a proper understanding of the
>      region, where events have reached a major turning point. On 15
>      December 1999 Syrian foreign minister Farouk Sharaa declared
>      that peace "would indeed mean for our region the end of a
>      history of wars and conflicts, and may well usher in a dialogue
>      of civilisation and an honorable competition in various domains
>      - the political, cultural, scientific, and economic." A new
>      chapter is beginning for the states of the Middle East, where a
>      new generation is about to take power and new strategic
>      alliances are taking shape.
> 
>      But although there has been considerable progress towards
>      peace, the future of the Palestinians remains uncertain. Many
>      outstanding issues have been left to the final negotiations:
>      water, the fate of the 3.6 million Palestinian refugees, the
>      status of Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements, and the extent
>      of Palestinian sovereignty. After the agreed Israeli
>      withdrawals have been completed, 59 % of the West Bank will
>      still remain under Israeli control. Will the resulting
>      Palestinian state be a "mini-state" with limited sovereignty?
> 
>      Yet settlement of the Palestinian question is vital if a
>      lasting peace is to be established in a region whose history,
>      alliances, divisions and wars have been shaped for half a
>      century by the Israeli-Arab conflict.
> 
> 
> 
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>                  http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/
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