Also from arabnews.com today:
Bill Clinton — a feather to every diplomatic wind that blows
By John R. Bradley, Arab News Staff
JEDDAH, 22 January — It was breakfast in Jeddah, lunch in Tel Aviv — and two very different messages for the two very different audiences. Former US President Bill Clinton has demonstrated brilliantly in the last 48 hours how he remains, diplomatically, a feather to every wind that blows.
Addressing an audience in Jeddah, Clinton confidently predicted that there would be a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank, and two capitals in Jerusalem. This was the first time a prominent American leader had made such a linkage.
However, lunching with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a few hours later, Clinton snubbed Yasser Arafat, chiding the Palestinian leader for having missed an "historic" chance for peace. Of course, a meeting with the leader of the Palestinian state Clinton had earlier so boldly envisaged — a leader confined to his headquarters since Dec. 3 by illegal Israeli military maneuvers in the West Bank town of Ramallah — was so much out of the question that it was not even raised as one.
Actions, as ever, speak louder than words — although in this instance Clinton’s words were themselves damning.
In Israel he said that, while all was not lost in the peace process, it would take "a major act of providence" to pull the region out of 16 months of spiraling violence. Speaking to an audience which included Sharon, Peres and many other members of Israel’s extreme coalition government, just hours after having shared with his Jeddah audience his rosy optimism, Clinton was now talking of the need for a "miracle".
"Don’t give up, don’t give in, God works in strange ways — a miracle will yet present itself," he said.
The peace process was again relegated to the level of "failure", and the best Clinton could come up in response to the question of why was a lame plug for his forthcoming memoir.
"I hope I can figure out the answer before I write my book," he said. "I think I spent more time with the Palestinian team than any other US president. The honest truth is I don’t know."
Clinton, who arrived in Israel on Sunday to receive an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University, met Foreign Minister Shimon Peres after lunch. He also visited the grave of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, and was to meet Defense Minister Binyamin Ben Eliezer.
He was later scheduled to hold talks with a Palestinian delegation in Tel Aviv, including senior negotiators Saeb Erekat and Gen. Muhammad Dahlan, head of preventative security in the Gaza Strip.
But not with Arafat himself.
Clinton’s snub was another blow to the Palestinian leader, who has been shunned by two groups of visiting US congressman in as many weeks. And as if to rub salt in Arafat’s wounds, Tel Aviv University plans to open a Clinton Center for American Studies — the first department dedicated to Israel’s political, economic and military backer.
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