Middle East Saying No to Arafat

Shamir forges another government and rules out talks with the P.L.O.

Barely visible behind a lectern in Tel Aviv's Yad Eliyahu basketball arena, the diminutive Yitzhak Shamir struggled to make his voice heard. His Likud bloc must agree to share power with Labor, he pleaded, "to be united against the danger of a Palestinian state." But even that potent argument elicited little but jeers from hundreds of angry members of the right-wing Likud bloc's central committee. Cheers rang out only when Ariel Sharon, the big and assertive leader of the party's hard-liners, called for a narrow coalition without left-leaning Labor. "People in Labor say we must talk to the P.L.O.," he shouted....

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