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

To: JohnM who wrote (20811)	3/7/2002 1:09:14 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Talk about predictable You could say the same about the Saudi "peace plan", which they trot out every ten years or whenever they need a charm offensive in the US. John, you may not like Krauthammer, but I do believe these are his real views. And I mostly agree with them. My one point of dissention is that the Israeli right (and American right also) has taken the view that Arafat is in control of affairs in the PA. As far as I can see, Arafat is in semi-control; if he whips things up and keeps getting more and more extreme to stay ahead of the flow, then he's sort of in control, but I doubt he is in enough control to stop or change course. The proof of this to my mind was Arafat's refusal to take the deal at Taba, or even to negotiate it seriously. If Arafat had really been in control, he could have said to his hard-liners in Arabic, "hush now, go along with me, remember this is just a ruse, a temporary truce, we're still working on the Plan of Phases to destroy Israel", even as he said to the Israelis and Americans in English, "this is the final peace accord". Nobody would have called him on it; Arafat talked peace in English and war in Arabic during the whole course of Oslo. Then Arafat would have gotten a state in the whole West Bank and Gaza and been in much better shape to smuggle in rocket launchers and to launch the intifada. But he did not have enough control, and taking the deal would have cost him a civil war with his hard-liners, which he has always avoided by trimming and temporizing. So I don't think Arafat has real control; he has just whipped up a boiling mass of grievance and hatred and pointed it at the Israelis, who have naturally increased it by fighting back.