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Politics : War -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: KLP who wrote (1161)	5/18/2001 10:53:44 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23908

Yes, the stakes are certainly getting higher in this game of Palestinian poker Arafat has been playing. One part of the problem is that Arafat, by providing sanctuary to the extremist Hamas types and using their terrorist threats/actions as leverage over the Israelis should the Jews not cave in to their demands, has undermined his own position and political independence. Arafat apparently believes that he needs some form of armed struggle in order to unite the Palestinians under his leaderhip. But he doesn't want it to get out of his control either. Unfortunately, Hamas has proven rather difficult to control and now they are acting independently and leaving Arafat and his cromies to pay the political price for their own agenda. This is apparent by the fact that shortly after the suicide bombing, Arafat's second in command made a statement deploring the attack (which means they didn't know about it in advance, nor approve of the attack). And the Palestinians apparently are finding their support fading amongst other Arab governments because this is bad for business and is a source of instability that might cause this situation to spiral out of everyone's control (particularly in Jordan). So if I see the future correctly, there are two primary scenarios being played out here. The first is that Sharon is trying to coerce Arafat into getting these extremist elements under control, who would naturally oppose any such effort. This would leave Arafat in the delicate position of relying upon Israel to do the job for him, and leave him an effective figurehead leader requiring Israeli protection from Hamas revenge. The second scenario I see is that the Israelis are figuring that Hamas is going to eventually gain control anyway, so they continue to take the hard line and leave Arafat in a position where the only action he can undertake is a general war against Israel, which AGAIN, gives Israel the justification to move into the areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority to "clean house" and remove the Hamas infrastructure. Either way, this escalation by the Israelis towards using their air force, is a clear signal to Arafat it's now time to "fish or cut bait" with regard to Hamas terrorism. Either Arafat gets them under control and stops the violence, or the Israelis will do it for him. Hawk