Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: U.S. Endorses New Tactic in Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: 4/05/04
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june04/sharon_4-14.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What do you know about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

2. Who are the Palestinians? Who are the Israelis? Why are the two groups fighting?

3. What role has the U.S. played in past peace negotiations?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. What controversial announcement did Ariel Sharon make prior to his visit to Washington? Why is this significant?

Prior to his trip Sharon announced that between four to six main West Bank settlements -- home to about 92,500 Israelis -- will stay under Israeli control. The small towns, built on land Israel captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War, are considered illegal under international law.

2. What has Israel said it wants from the United States?

Israel wants explicit approval from the United States that it will not be forced to withdraw its borders to those that existed prior to the Arab-Israeli war in 1967. For many years the United States has tried to negotiate peace with a Palestinian state in pre-war borders.

Another sensitive topic is the resettlement of some Palestinians who say their families were forced from their homes during Israel's founding in 1947-48. Sharon wants Mr. Bush to agree that these Palestinian refugees will not have the so-called "right of return" and will instead settle in the new Palestinian state.

3. What is the Palestinian reaction to Sharon's plan?

Palestinians argue that Sharon's plan to "disengage" from them contradicts the terms of the U.S.-backed "road map" for peace, which says that the borders of a future Palestinian state must be negotiated.

The "road map" was launched in April 2003, but has made little progress. The plan seeks to end the violent conflict in the region and establish a Palestinian state by 2005. It is the fourth attempt by the United States in 25 years to broker a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians.

"The maintenance of six settlement blocks in the West Bank is a recipe for closing all the doors in the peace process and its destruction," said Palestinian negotiations minister Saeb Erekat.

4. What did President Bush have to say about Sharon's plan?

At a joint press conference Wednesday President Bush endorsed Sharon's plan calling the proposed pullout "historic and courageous actions."

"In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949," Mr. Bush said.

When asked directly about the right of Israel to maintain some settlements Mr. Bush said that final decisions must wait for "final status" negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis on the creation of a Palestinian state.

"It is now up to responsible Palestinians, caring Europeans, the United Nations, to step in and create such a state," Mr. Bush said.

The president also seemed to back Israel's demand that Palestinians not be guaranteed a right of return to land that is now Israel.

5. How do Israeli's feel about Sharon's plan?

While polls show that a majority of Israelis support Sharon's plan, many leading Likud Party members oppose any withdrawal by Israel from the Gaza Strip.

Discussion Questions (more research might be needed):

1. United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan has called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict one of the most critical issues in the world today. Why would he say that and do you agree?

2. How does U.S. support for Israel affect its relationship with other countries-- especially Arab nations-- in the region?

3. Prime Minister Sharon has said his country must do what ever it needs to protect its citizens from the Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed hundreds of Israelis over the past three years. Terrorist organizations have said one of the reasons they are targeting the United States is because of its support for Israel and the oppression of the Palestinian people. If you were president of the U.S., how would you respond to these statements?

Send your answers, in essay form, to extra@newshour.org for possible publication!