Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)
The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is an organization founded in 1964 with the purpose of the "liberation of Palestine" through armed struggle. It is recognized as the "sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people" by over 100 states with which it holds diplomatic relations, and has enjoyed observer status at the United Nations since 1974. The PLO was considered by the United States and Israel to be a terrorist organization until the Madrid Conference in 1991. In 1993, the PLO recognized Israel's right to exist in peace, accepted UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and rejected "violence and terrorism" in response, Israel officially recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people.
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Yasser Arafat
He was Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization(PLO), President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA), and leader of the Fatah political party and former paramilitary group, which he founded in 1959. Originally opposed to Israel's existence, he modified his position in 1988 when he accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242. Arafat and his movement operated from several Arab countries. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fatah faced off with Jordan in a brief civil war. Forced out of Jordan and into Lebanon, Arafat and Fatah were major targets of Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions of that country.
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Anwar Sadat
Muhammad Anwar El Sadat was the third President of Egypt, serving from 15 October 1970 until his assassination by fundamentalist army officers on 6 October 1981. A few years after the Yom Kippur War, Sadat restarted his efforts to build peace in the Middle East, traveling to Jerusalem in November 1977 and presenting his peace plan to the Israeli parliament. Thus began a series of diplomatic efforts, with Sadat making overtures to Israel in the face of strong Arab resistance across the region. U.S. President Jimmy Carter brokered the negotiations between Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, and a preliminary peace agreement, the Camp David Accords, was agreed upon between Egypt and Israel in September 1978.
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Jimmy Carter
Carter attempted to calm various conflicts around the world, most visibly in the Middle East with the signing of the Camp David Accords; giving back the Panama Canal; and signing the SALT II nuclear arms reduction treaty with Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev. His final year was marred by the Iran hostage crisis, which contributed to his losing the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan. There is strong evidence that he supported and helped to instigate the Iran–Iraq War. On November 4, 1979 a group of Iranian students, belonging to the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam's Line, who were supporting the Iranian Revolution, took over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for the next 444 days until January 20, 1981. During the crisis, Carter remained in isolation in the White House for more than 100 days, until he left to participate in the lighting of the National Menorah on the ellipse. On April 24, 1980, Carter ordered Operation Eagle Claw to try free the hostages. The mission failed leaving eight American servicemen dead and the destruction of two aircraft.
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Yitzhak Rabin
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War Rabin directed Israeli operations in Jerusalem and fought the Egyptian army in the Negev. During the beginning of the war he was the commander of the Harel Brigade, which fought on the road to Jerusalem from the coastal plain. In the following period he was the deputy commander of Operation Danny, the largest scale operation to that point, which involved four IDF brigades. The cities of Ramle and Lydda were captured, as well as the major airport in Lydda, as part of the operation. Following the capture of the two towns there was an exodus of their Arab population. Later, Rabin was chief of operations for the Southern Front and participated in the major battles ending the fighting there. In the beginning of 1949 he was a member of the Israeli delegation to the armistice talks with Egypt. The result of the negotiations were the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which ended the official hostilities of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.
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Bill Clinton
In 1993 Israel and the PLO held secret meetings in Oslo, Norway. During these talks, a framework was created for future meetings between the Israelis and the Palestinians. On September 10, 1993, President Bill Clinton announced that the Oslo Accords would be formalized in a ceremony at the White House three days later. Clinton personally tried to persuade Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat to attend. At the end of his second term, President Clinton attempted to resurrect the peace talks. One of the conditions of the Oslo Accords was that agreement on all outstanding issues should be reached within five years. While a number of contentious issues remained, perhaps the most significant issue concerned the status of Jerusalem. The Palestinians wanted control of East Jerusalem. Israel was willing to grant Palestinians custody of some holy sites, but wanted to maintain sovereignty over Jerusalem. The fact that the Second Intifada began shortly after the 2000 Camp David Summit broke down suggested that Arafat and the PLO were no longer interested in making peace.
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Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon was an Israeli politician and general who served as the 11th Prime Minister of Israel until he was incapacitated by a stroke. He participated prominently in the 1948 War of Independence. Upon retirement from the military, Sharon entered politics, joining the Likud, and served in a number of ministerial posts in Likud-led governments. He became the leader of the Likud in 2000, and served as Israel's prime minister from 2001 to 2006. From the 1970s through to the 1990s, Sharon championed construction of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, as Prime Minister, in 2004–05 Sharon orchestrates Israel's unilateral disengagement from the Gaza Strip. His decision to withdraw from Gaza sparked bitter protests from members of the Likud party and the settler movement, opinion polls showed that it was a popular move among most of the Israeli electorate, with more than 80 percent of Israelis backing the plans.
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Benjamin Netanyahu
Benjamin Netanyahu is the current Prime Minister of Israel and currently serves as a member of the Knesset and Chairman of the Likud party. As Minister of Finance, Netanyahu engaged in a major reform of the Israeli economy, which was credited by commentators as having significantly improved Israel's subsequent economic performance. He retook the Likud leadership in December 2005, after Sharon left to form a new party, Kadima. Netanyahu opposed the Oslo accords from their inception. During his term as prime minister in the late 1990s, Netanyahu consistently reneged on commitments made by previous Israeli governments as part of the Oslo peace process.
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Mahmoud Abbas
Mahmoud Abbas is the President of the State of Palestine and Palestinian National Authority. Abbas is a member of the Fatah party. On 25 July 2006, Abbas announced that he would move his office to Gaza until the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops in order to coordinate the Palestinian side of the withdrawal, mediating between the different factions. On 20 May 2008, Abbas stated he would resign from his office if the current round of peace talks had not yielded an agreement in principle "within six months". He also stated that the current negotiations were, in effect, deadlocked. On 25 May, Abbas gave Hamas a ten-day deadline to accept the 1967 ceasefire lines. On 16 December, 2006, Abbas called for new legislative elections, to bring an end to the parliamentary stalemate between Fatah and Hamas in forming a national coalition government. On 14 June, 2007, Abbas dissolved the Hamas-led unity government of Haniyeh.
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Zionist
Zionism is a nationalist and political movement of Jews and Jewish culture that supports the re-establishment of a Jewish homeland in the territory defined as the historic Land of Israel. Zionism emerged in the late 19th century in central and eastern Europe as a national revival movement. Soon after this most leaders of the movement associated the main goal with creating the desired state in Palestine, then an area controlled by the Ottoman Empire. It endorsed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, as follows: His Majesty's government view with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. In 1922, the League of Nations adopted the declaration, and granted to Britain the Palestine Mandate: The Mandate will secure the establishment of the Jewish national home ... and the development of self-governing institutions, and also safeguard the civil and religious rights of all the inhabitants of Palestine, irrespective of race and religion.
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Hamas
Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic organization, with an associated military wing located in the Palestinian territories and elsewhere in the Middle East including Qatar. Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union, Canada, Israel, Egypt, Japan, and the United States. Hamas was founded sometime in 1988 soon after the First Intifada broke out, as an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. The Hamas Charter affirmed in 1988, that Hamas was founded to liberate Palestine, from Israeli occupation and to establish an Islamic state in the area that is now Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary elections, Hamas won a decisive majority in the Palestinian Parliament.
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