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Last updated at 10:21 BST, Friday, 23 September 2011

Palestinians in UN bid

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Report and vocabulary

Transcript

The site of the most intractable conflict in the modern era...

This land, occupied by Israel since 1967, has been fought over in two Palestinian uprisings.

Now their officials have launched a campaign to join the United Nations as a full member state.

The idea's strongly opposed by Israel and its close ally, the United States, who say they'll veto the move.

intractable

difficult to manage or resolve

uprisings

violent protest against a higher authority

launched a campaign

started a series of activities to reach a goal

ally

country which supports another

veto

power to prevent a move

Exercise

Use one of the words or phrases below to complete each of these sentences from a Â鶹Éç news report.

Note that you may have to change the form of a word to complete the sentence correctly.

intractable / uprisings / launched a campaign / ally / veto

1.
Turkey used to be a close ________ of Syria, but has recently joined calls for Mr Assad to implement reforms.

2.
Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told me at the end of March that Turkey feared the chaos that might well follow the fall of President Assad. This is not like Egypt or Libya, he said. It has the potential to become an ___________ sectarian conflict, more like Iraq.

3.
But that proposal came with a caveat - a promise from Mr Obama that he would ____________ any bill eventually passed by Congress that cut healthcare but did include new taxes on the rich.

4.
Six months after they started their ___________, Syrian opposition groups have for the first time agreed on a single body to represent them.

5.
Roald Dahl's family has ___________ to save the hut in which the late author wrote many of his best-loved stories.

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Exercise

Answers

How did you do?

1

ally

2

intractable

3

veto

4

uprising

5

launched a campaign

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