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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (1732)	3/25/2002 4:20:38 PM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 32591

"If a final peace settlement seemed so close two years ago, why can't America actively negotiate a peace agreement now?" According to a recent article in the Village Voice the agreement did not provide for Jerusalem. A poll of Palestinians found that the people did not want an accord if Jerusalem was not somehow included in the final agreement, so an Arab would say it was Israel's intransigents that prevented the an agreement from happening because it wouldn't bend on Jerusalem.

To: Haim R. Branisteanu who wrote (1732)	3/25/2002 4:44:04 PM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

Or, as University of Virginia visiting professor and terrorism scholar Harold Gould wrote last year, "The root cause of what is occurring in Palestine today is not political chicanery," but, in part, "a fatal disconnect between ordinary Palestinians and leaders on both sides of the border. Ordinary Palestinians are saying that they have endured enough denigration and are taking matters into their own hands. Arafat no longer is effectively leading the Palestinian masses. He is following them, desperately trying to regain enough credibility and control to restore his authority." As such, bringing his full force to bear on the militants—who have never garnered the support of more than 30 percent of Palestinians but who are gaining more sympathy born not out of love for Islamist extremism but due to general disaffection—"creates such potential for blow-back on Arafat that it's not exactly an incentive," says the CIA officer. villagevoice.com But then misunderstanding or disregarding the relationship between Arafat and Palestinian public opinion isn't new either. At Camp David II last year, much of the blame for the failure to reach an accord was placed on Arafat; indeed, then-president Bill Clinton was anything but circumspect in expressions of consternation about the PA chief. As University of Maryland professor and Brookings Institution scholar Shibley Telhami has noted, the conventional wisdom in the wake of the collapsed talks was as follows: "The trick was to give him [Arafat] enough incentives to accept Israeli sovereignty on the Old City of Jerusalem, including Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. [Then-Israeli prime minister Ehud] Barak provided him with significant incentives, but he still rejected the deal; therefore, either he did not want an agreement or he was just using Camp David to extract more concessions from Barak down the road." The shortcoming of this thesis, Telhami has written, is that it fails to acknowledge the very real possibility that "Palestinian, Arab and Islamic public opinion provided serious redlines for Arafat. . . . Palestinian public opinion polls had shown that, given a choice between an agreement that gave the Palestinians a state without East Jerusalem and no agreement at all, the vast majority of Palestinians would choose the latter." While examination of the degree to which the Palestinian Authority either encouraged or—once it started—enabled the latest intifada is certainly germane, the real point, according to Telhami, is that "Palestinian public passion, and the heavy price in human lives that Palestinians were willing to accept, could not be merely due to the urging of the unpopular PA." And, as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson noted earlier this month, while Palestinian suicide bombings aren't helping the overall situation, neither are the Israeli military's bombings, which are "terrorising and terrifying the civilian population" of the PA. While Robinson's comments went unreported in the American media, the CIA veteran says they highlight a reality that has to be acknowledged. "Since September 11, we've set the standard that acts of terrorism, regardless of the cause, are no longer acceptable," he says. "While that goes for the Palestinians, it goes for the Israelis, too. Which means you have to delegitimize the settlements, which is exactly 180 degrees from where Sharon is going. The settlements are a form of terrorism, too. You have to eliminate terrorism throughout Israeli territory and eliminate Israeli occupation throughout Palestinian territory. But recent history is going to make it easier to deal with one than the other."