Материал: Журавлева Сборник текстов для подготовки аспирантов-економистов 2011

security arrangements – система безопасности refugee – беженец, эмигрант

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accountable, contradict, protuberant, prominent, plausible, concession, highlight, folly, undermine, partition

Find out the words, which describe the conflict best

If you were the author writing about this conflict, which words would you choose?

Imagine you are a reporter interviewing heads of the warring states. Write a list of questions you would like to ask.

Write an essay “My vision of the national conflicts”.

Supplementary Reading

The settlement freeze

Sep 27th 2010, 15:41 by The Economist online | REVAVA SETTLEMENT

"THEY can build,” declared Israel’s military spokesperson of his country's settlers, announcing the end of Israel’s self-declared settlement moratorium in the West Bank. The expiry induced cheers from Israel’s 300,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and their many supporters at the heart of Israel’s decision-making process. But from Palestinian officials came cries of dismay. The decision, they warned, could torpedo direct negotiations over a two-state solution to Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians only three weeks after they began.

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In defying American and Palestinian appeals to extend the tenmonth freeze, Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, deemed his internal allies more important for his political survival than his external ones. He appears determined to avoid the miscalculation of his first term, when he heeded American demands to partially withdraw from the West Bank town of Hebron, prompting his religious backers on the right to abandon him and precipitate his downfall.

The cost to the political process is already tangible. Israeli and Palestinian negotiators left America without reaching a compromise on a formula or a date for resumption of talks. Mr Abbas says he will seek Arab League advice on October 4th before deciding his next steps. Palestinian negotiators, who had earlier expressed “pleasant surprise” at Mr Netanyahu’s readiness to discuss Palestinian sovereignty in the West Bank, now accuse him of speaking with a forked tongue.

In Revava, a small settlement in the northern West Bank, thousands marked the end of the freeze at a rally called by activists from

ments deep in the West Bank as Israel’s homeland. (Their rhetoric drowned out more nuanced messaging from another Likud minister and former hawk, Michael Eitan, who is lobbying for negotiations to continue on a rapid Israeli withdrawal from most of the West Bank.)

By early Monday, bulldozers were again breaking ground not only in the settlement "blocks" adjoining the 1967 border, but deep inside the West Bank. While playing down bulldozer activity - particularly during the Jewish holiday of Sukkot- a settler leader, David HaIvri, said work could now resume on hundreds of units in settlements surrounding Nablus, the main Palestinian town in the northern West Bank.

While Mr Netanyahu courts his domestic hardliners, Mr Abbas is sidling towards his. Indicating his alternative options should talks collapse, Mr Abbas sent an adviser, Azzam al-Ahmed, to Damascus to

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resume negotiations on ending the rift with the Palestinian Islamist movement, Hamas. Following a meeting with Khaled Meshal, Hamas’s politburo chief, both sides reported progress. A deal, noted one of Mr Abbas’s advisers, would strengthen Mr Abbas’s negotiating hand, and refute Israeli barbs that Mr Abbas would be unable to implement any deal without control of Hamas-run Gaza, where forty percent of the Palestinian Authority's subjects live.

Across the political spectrum, Israeli and Palestinian politicians warned that a collapse of negotiations could so harden positions and induce despair in a negotiated settlement that it could trigger a fresh bout of fighting. Last week Mr Abbas’s security forces successfully contained the spread of Palestinian clashes with Jewish settlers in Israeli-occupied East Jerusalem. But drive-by shootings of West Bank settlers have increased, and not only by Hamas. A couple were shot last night by the armed wing of Fatah, Mr Abbas’s faction following a series of warnings.

Even if formal negotiations were to be suspended and violence to flare up again, precedent suggests that under American tutelage talks would

the blocks adjoining the pre-1967 armistice line would make any resumption more digestible for the Palestinians.

But after two decades, commentators question how many more interruptions and attacks on their credibility negotiations on a twostate settlement can bear. With settlement growth peaking during negotiations and slowing during bouts of violence, Palestinian leaders remain vulnerable to the charge that negotiations are simply a cover for Israeli expansion.

The trajectory during the current talks appeared to be no different. According to monitors, the moratorium was always more symbolic than real. "The government issued hundreds of exemptions to the freeze, and settlers built hundreds more regardless, without permits," says Dror Etkes, who mapped construction during the freeze. Last

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month, Peace Now, an anti-settlement Israeli watchdog, issued a report stating that "there was almost no visible slowdown." And contrary to his repeated undertakings, Ehud Barak, the defence minister, has shied away from dismantling over a hundred outposts, settlements Israel’s government never authorised.

For Palestinians, the moratorium’s real achievement was less a perceptible slowing in construction than the fact that in declaring its freeze, Israel acknowledged the contradiction between simultaneously expanding its West Bank presence and negotiating a withdrawal. Mr

Vocabulary

expiry - окончание, истечение срока действия – expiry date Syn: expiration , lapse

dismay – испуг, беспокойство, волнение, смятение to smb.'s dismay – к чьему-л. ужасу Syn: perturbation;. лишать мужества, силы духа, решимости; пугать; приводить в смятение; Syn: appall , horrify

negotiations – переговоры; ведение переговоров

appeal – призыв, обращение, воззвание (к кому-л.) to make an appeal – выступить с обращением

ally – друг, союзник, сторонник

heed -обращать внимание, учитывать, принимать во внимание; внимательно следить (за чем-л.)

partially – немного, отчасти, частично, частью Syn: partly , parcel prompting – побуждение; Syn: motive , impulse; указание, помощь, precipitate – низвергать, торопить, ускорять, форсировать; подгонять

tangible – вещественный, материальный, осязаемый; tangible assets

– материальные средства Syn: palpable , material; ясный; ощутимый, заметный; отчётливый, реальный

drowned out – заглушать

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hawk – ястреб; сокол – fish hawk; Syn: falcon; хищник (о человеке);

амер.- милитарист, сторонник военных действий; сторонник "жёсткого" курса (в политике)

adjoining – граничащий, пограничный, прилегающий, примыкающий, сопредельный, соседний Syn: neighbouring

bout – раз, черёд; круг, приступ

clash – сталкиваться; ударяться друг о друга (обычно об оружии); сталкиваться с кем-л. (бороться), стычка

tutelage – опекунство, опека, попечительство 2) нахождение под опекой

commitment – обязательство; вручение, передача digestible – удобоваримый, усвояемый, перевариваемый vulnerable – восприимчивый; чувствительный, уязвимый exemption – освобождение (от налогов, пошлин)

undertaking – предприятие; дело large-scale undertaking – крупно-

масштабное предприятие Syn: project; обязательство; соглашение shied away – сторониться, избегать, уклоняться

acknowledge – признавать, подтверждать

Blockbuster files for bankruptcy

Sep 23rd 2010, 12:56 by The Economist online

IN THE early days of the commercial internet, it was often predicted that pure e-commerce sites would begin to struggle as bricks-and-mortar stores moved online. “Clicks-and-mortar” stores, which could reach consumers both on the internet and on the high street, were thought to be inherently superior. Surely Blockbuster would be able to crush Netflix, an online service that rents DVDs through the post? Surely Barnes & Noble, a bookseller, would easily see off Amazon? As it turned out, they could not. Shares in Barnes & Noble have slumped over the past few years as those of Amazon have soared. The British arm of Borders, another media retailer, went into administration last year. And on September 23rd Blockbuster filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York. The firm, once owned by Viacom, a giant media conglomerate, aims to reduce its debts by about $900m. It is likely to close some

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