Richard, there was quite major progress in the "condition" of the Palestinians, until Arafat turned down, without even attempting to make a counter offer, the Clinton imposed Barak offer. Arafat simply wanted "two Palestinian states", the one he was negotiating for and the one currently recognized as the State of Israel. Since that turn of events, when Arafat failed to seize on the historical opportunity to create a Palestinian state, there has been drastic deterioration in the Palestinian territories. I believe that the standard of living in the territories has declined by more than 50% since then. Some 350,000 foreign workers displaced the Palestinians that worked within Israel, depriving the Palestinians from a major source of economic activity.
Look at all the new restrictions we are put under here in the US as a direct result of 9/11, you simply must multiply that by 100 when considering the Palestinians. They have trained hundreds if not thousands of suicide bombers, the Israeli government is doing what is absolutely necessary to protect its population. For each successful terror act or suicide bombing, 20 such events are prevented by the tight control the Israeli have imposed, and as a government that is sworn to do what it can to protect its citizens, they really have no other choice.
Arafat's tactic of reneging on his Oslo agreement not to use force as an instrument of its negotiation for a fair settlement, has backfired. He expected that the renewed violence and the pain inflicted by it on the Israeli population will yield concessions, but you and I know that yielding to terrorism only leads the way to additional demands, and thus Israel had no other alternative but to make that Intifada more painful to the Palestinians than the pain inflicted by the Intifada on the Israeli. Arafat wrecked the Israeli peace movement, and thus will end up with much less than what he was offered by Barak. Settlements that just a short 18 months ago, were "dismantable" (just as Israel dismantled settlements within the Sinai under a peace agreement with Egypt) will become more and more entrenched, the longer the Intifada continues, and as a result, the eventual Palestinian state, if it ever sees the light of day, will be smaller and more fragmented.
Arafat was "working" under the principle that "time is on his side" (he was talking about the "demographic bombs"), now it seems that this assumption was quite faulty.
Zeev |
