Ex. 7. Match the nouns and verbs as they are used in the article.

1. hold a chance

2. make b assistance

3. commit c pressure

4. label d referendum

5. increase e pledge

6. keep f genocide

 

Ex. 8. Write the summary of the newspaper article.

Ex. 9. Read the text below, use the following words to complete it.

Scales, rocket, pull, refugee, militants, patrolled, security

Israel Begins to Pull Troops in Gaza, Scaling Back Offensive

Israel said Friday that it had begun to redeploy troops in Gaza and remove some of them altogether as it (1) __________ back its 17-day military operation in the northern Gaza Strip after the deaths of more than 100 Palestinians. The operation was intended to end or sharply reduce the number of homemade Qassam (2) __________ attacks from northern Gaza on nearby Israeli towns like Sederot, and the army has been arguing for nearly a week that it has largely accomplished its goals.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon met with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz on Thursday night and agreed to scale back the operation, Israel's deadliest since the start of the second intifada four years ago, and (3) _________ out an unknown number of troops.

Early on Friday, Israelis fired rockets at militants they said were planting a bomb in Jabaliya, which is more like an urban slum than a (4) _________ camp. Three Palestinians, one member of Hamas and two members of Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades, died in the attack.

Later on Friday, the Israelis said they had shot at (5) ___________ trying to launch rockets from Jabaliya while surrounded by children, and all fled; two Qassam rockets were later launched, landing in a field near a town north of the Gaza Strip, but no one was injured. Hundreds of extra police officers (6) _________ the Old City and East Jerusalem, which is largely Arab, and police helicopters flew overhead.

On the West Bank, two Israeli settlers in the southern Hebron hills were arrested Friday after attacking Palestinians who were picking olives. Israeli farmers have complained that (7) __________ measures applied against Palestinians' movement in and out of the West Bank have badly harmed their ability to harvest olives this year.

Ex. 10. Work in pairs or in small groups. Discuss the following issues:

1. Israel vs. Palestine conflict.

2. Insergencies in Iraq.

3. India vs. Pakistan: the Kashmere knot of contradictions.

4. The Nothern Ireland: Catholics vs. Protestants.

5. The Basques: separatist movement.

Unit 4. Terrorism

Key vocabulary

Give equivalents in your mothertongue to the following English words and phrases:

To act against terrorism

Ambush

To assassinate

Assaults

To behead a hostage

Bomb-laden suicide vest

Booby-trapped cars, a booby-trapped, headless body

Captive

Carnage

To claim responsibility for the attack

Combatants

Cover

To curb

To detain Syn.: to capture

To detonate a bomb

To dismantle the network

Fatalities

To fight Islamic extremism

To fight terrorism

To foil an attack

A fuel-truck bomb

Hijacker

Informant

Intercepted communications

Interim government

Laundering money illegally

Militant

To plant a bomb

Police crackdown

To press forward with (a plan)

To smuggle weapons

To be taken hostage

A religiously sanctioned holy war

To slay (slew, slain)

To be subject to limited economic sanctions by

A suicide bomber Syn. a suicide attacker

Suicide bombing Syn. suicide blast

 

Ex. 1. Speak on the following:

1. Types of terrorism: a) transnational organized crime; b) state-sponsored terrorism; c) nationalistic; d) ideological.

2. Methods used by terrorists: aircraft hijacking, kidnapping, destruction of property, hostage-taking, bombings, assassinations.

3. Concerted international efforts: the use of sanctions, security measures, strenthening of international law.

 

Ex. 2. Before reading the newspaper article below discuss in pairs what you think

It is about. Read the article and see if your ideas were correct.

Suicide Bomber Attacks Saudi Arabia's Interior Ministry

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CAIRO, Dec. 29 - Militants apparently linked to Al Qaeda turned two neighborhoods of Riyadh, the Saudi capital, into battle zones late Wednesday, with booby-trapped cars exploding outside the landmark Interior Ministry and a training center for Emergency Forces.

Seven militants responsible for the car bombings were gunneddown in a police ambush of a house, according to a statement read on state television, but the final toll from all the attacks remained unclear.

The initial toll elsewhere included 2 suicide bombers killed and 20 people wounded, including police officers who suffered light injuries, mostly from flying glass, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry and various officials.

Brig. Gen. Mansour Turki, the spokesman for the ministry, could not confirm the number of wounded but said all the injuries were minor. He said the only fatalities were militants.

Prince Ahmed Abdel Aziz, the longtime deputy interior minister, went on Saudi television to denounce the attackers as criminals who were heedless about risking Muslim lives.

The effect of the attacks was more psychological than physical, however.

They showed that the militants are still capable of striking in the very heart of the capital despite an 19-month, nationwide police crackdown that, the police say, has killed or captured three-quarters of the most wanted terrorists inspired by Al Qaeda and dismantled much of their network. Hundreds of suspected sympathizers have been detained.

General Turki described the attacks as the actions of increasingly desperate militants.

"When you get closer and closer and closer to them, they react to show that they are still there," he said. "This building is the symbol of the forces that are attacking them, confronting them," he said of the Interior Ministry.

But the fact that the latest attacks did so little damage - especially compared to earlier assaults against residential compounds that killed nearly 100 people, many of them foreigners - is a sign that the police are curbing the militants' ability to act, the general said. "We can read their weakness through the results of their work," he said.

The bombings were the second such brazen attack in December after a relatively quiet period following the beheading of an American hostagein June. On Dec. 6, attackers stormed the heavily guarded United States Consulate in Jidda, killing five local employees before four of the five gunman were shot dead.

In a tape-recorded message 10 days later, Osama bin Laden praised the Jidda attack and threatened attacks against Saudi oil facilities.

Previous attacks by the group, including a bombing of a police headquarters in Riyadh last April, sharply reduced public support for the idea that Al Qaeda was engaged in a religiously sanctioned holy war to drive all non-Muslims from Islam's holy land.

Despite the relative puniness of the attacks, oil markets quickly reacted to the violence with a jittery bump up in prices, with key prices in the United States rising $1.87 a barrel, to $43.64.

The first explosion outside the ministry could be felt across the capital around 9 p.m., with a plume of smoke visible from the diplomatic quarter several miles away, a Western diplomat said.

The bomb erupted at the beginning of a traffic underpass along a major road that leads past the ministry, twisting open a portion of the high metal fence around the fortresslike structure and tearing some letters off the facade of a guard house. The explosion shook buildings all around the area, including the InterContinental Hotel, which sits within a sprawling compound right across the street.

Television pictures showed a bloody and battered taxi that apparently absorbed some of the explosion, jackknifed across the road leading down into the underpass.

In the second attack, police officers opened fire at a car trying to ram its way into a training center of the Emergency Forces, which concentrate on antiterrorism recently. The car exploded 350 yards away, the official statement read on Saudi television said.

Exactly how the ensuing car chase was related remained murky, but local news reports and officials said the police surrounded the occupants of the car in a house in a residential area toward the airport, killing all seven of them. The statement said they were responsible for the two earlier attacks.

The attacks followed skirmishes earlier in the week that left one militant dead, two injured and several more arrested.

(Source: New York Times, 2004)

Ex. 3. Read the article again and decide if the following statements are true or false:

1. The latest terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia seem to have psycholodical effect.

2. They were denounced because of numerous fatalities.

3. Terorist attacks don't damage heavily in Saudi Arabia because it is a Muslim state.

4. The public support for Al Qaeda reduced because police had detained hundreds of sympathizers.

5. The police demonstrate efficient results in fighting terrorism.

 

Ex. 4. Read the article and explain the following phrases:

Seven militants responsible for the car bombings were gunned down, with booby-trapped cars exploding outside; heedlessabout risking Muslim lives; oil markets quickly reacted to the violence with a jittery bump up in prices; taxi that apparently absorbed some of the explosion, jackknifed across the road; exactly how the ensuing car chase was related remained murky.

 

Ex. 5. Find words in the article which correspond to the following defintions:

1. a surprise attack from a place of hiding (para 2)

2. to strongly criticize sb/sth that you think is wrong, illegal, etc. (para 5)

3. severe action taken to restrict the activities of criminals or opposition (para 7)

4. to end an organization or system gradually in an organized way (para 7)

5. the act of attacking a building, an area, etc. in order to take control of it (para 10)

6. to control or limit sth, especially sth bad (para 10)

7. a person captured and held prisoner by a person or group, till the other side do what they demand (para 11)

8. weak or slight quality or condition (para 14)

9. to explode and pour out fire (para 16)