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

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (27897)	5/1/2002 10:50:29 AM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

RAGE AND REASON by DAVID REMNICK The New Yorker Issue of 2002-05-06 Will anyone listen to the P.L.O.'s voice of restraint? <<...Sari Nusseibeh, the Palestine Liberation Organization's chief representative in Jerusalem, is perhaps the most moderate adviser in the councils of Yasir Arafat. (He is no doubt the only one to have worked on a kibbutz or to have written a graduate-school essay at Harvard on Wittgenstein and the role of jokes in philosophical discourse.) On many issues of moment within the Palestinian hierarchy—the morality of suicide bombings, the wisdom of Arafat's rejection of the Israeli offers at Camp David and at Taba, the refugees' demand for the "right of return" to historical Palestine—Nusseibeh disagrees, publicly and in all languages, with the hard men of the P.L.O. and Hamas, and even with Arafat (to the extent that Arafat reveals himself). To him, "martyr operations" are blatantly "immoral," the flat rejection of the Israeli proposals a "major missed opportunity," and the right of return a painful delusion best forgotten. It is not obvious why Arafat, who craves the support and supposed authenticity of the maximalists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, appointed a mild man in corduroy and tweed to run the East Jerusalem portfolio. As a scholar and as the scion of a distinguished family, Nusseibeh wields about as much street credibility in the refugee camps of Nablus as a duke among the sansculottes. He has no muscle to offer Arafat, no immediate value, except, perhaps, as an ornament of democracy where democracy hardly exists. There is no argument to be made for Nusseibeh's power—unless one happens to believe in the power of restraint and rational thought...>> [IMO, this is a must read article from the current issue of The New Yorker...It contains some fascinating insights] Here's a link to the full article... newyorker.com

To: AmericanVoter who wrote (27897)	5/1/2002 3:09:12 PM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Will wonders never cease? Fisk sounds almost sensible in this interview. Mostly don't agreee with him but the parallel between Israelis/Palestinians and the French/ Algerians is interesting and fits very well. About Arafat/israeli relations: And so it was easy to see why the Israelis wanted to use him. He was not brought into the Oslo process, and he was not encouraged by the Americans, and his forces were not trained by the CIA so that he could lead a wonderful, new Arab state. He was brought in as a colonial governor to do what the Israelis could no longer do: to control the West Bank and Gaza. His task was always to control his people. Not to lead his people. Not to lead a friendly state that would live next to Israel. His job was to control his people, just like all the other Arab dictators do... Conspiracy theory, at its best; the punchline: -- usually on our behalf. Remember that the Arab states we support -- the Mubaraks of Egypt, the Gulf kingdoms, the king of Jordan -- when they do have elections, their leaders are elected by 98.7 percent of the vote. In Mubarak's case, 0.2 percent more than Saddam! So Arafat fits perfectly into this lexicon of rule. He's confronted with the choice of either leading the Palestinian people or being the point man for the Israelis. Fisk always goes for the either/or. He doesn't mention, or its edited out, that Arafat's choice is determined greatly by outside players from the middle east, not by Americans or Europeans. It's also determined by Arafat's own dishonesty and love of corruption and violence which he does mention.