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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Frederick Langford who wrote (2359)	10/3/2001 12:07:49 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

"Barak's offer was the best they could have ever dreamed of. Hamas and their extremist group wouldn't have it. They don't want peace. They want Israel driven into the sea, and nothing less will make them happy. I am in constant amazement that people can't see such an obvious fact. Arafat looks the other way, while Hamas really controls the Palestinians. If he moves against them, he will meet Sadat's fate." Yes, it took me a while to figure out why Arafat didn't at least pretend to accept the offer at Taba. I mean, all it would have cost him was words, and he's good at words, right? Then if the Israelis had rejected it, he would have looked the peacemaker, while if they had accepted it he would have had a contiguous state, and be in a much better position to launch his intifada. Couldn't he have just portrayed the deal as a temporary truce, as he had done all through Oslo? Then I understood that to take the deal at Taba, Arafat would have had to stand up and say out loud, "the conflict is over; this is the final deal." These were words that not even Arafat could say, for if he had he would have followed Sadat's end, and quickly too.