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

To: JohnM who wrote (97774)	5/9/2003 11:32:31 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

There is no give on the other side so we'll just keep pounding away at them. No flexibility; no give. It's just as sad as ever. Perhaps there is a small glimmer of a possibiity here Sharon has said that he is willing to make painful concessions, give up land, give up some settlements, welcome a Palestinian state. He is waiting to see some sign - in deed, not words - of a Palestinian state that is both able and willing to take a monopoly of force and make peace with Israel. So far, not a sign except a few words from Abu Mazen. So, you think he should 'take advantage' of this 'glimmer' by stopping the fight against Hamas, while Hamas is neither stopping nor being stopped by any Palestinian agent? Why the hell should he? If there is a glimmer, it will only shine when the other Palestinians decide, as Abu Mazen has apparently decided, that the intifada is not going to work and should be abandoned. They won't decide that if Israel starts giving them anything unilaterally while the intifada is still going on. Any Israeli Prime Minister who failed to reward Palestinian deeds in the right direction would be a fool. By the same token, any Prime Minister who was gulled into - yet again! - rewarding words without deeds would be an even greater fool. I was disheartened to hear President Bush seem to buy into the pretense of Palestinian reform, when Arafat still calls most of the shots. There will be neither peace nor reform until the day that Arafat is carried out feet first, may it be soon.

To: JohnM who wrote (97774)	5/10/2003 12:04:04 AM
From: Jacob Snyder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

<just keep pounding away at them> And keep saying they are for peace. But only if the only side yields first. So, Sharon is ready to make peace...after Hamas ends suicide bombing. To which Hamas replies, "Oh, yes, we are peace-lovers too. Just as soon as the Israelis dismantle all their illegal settlements, then we'll think about a cease-fire." What I don't understand is, if the Israelis truly intended on colonizing and permanently occupying the West Bank, why didn't they just expel the entire Arab population in 1967? There is no other way they can hold that land. Alternately, if they are serious about a land-for-peace deal, why did they put all those settlements there, which makes giving up the land impossible? I can't believe they are so self-delusioinal, as to believe they could leave the Palestinians in place, and not face a nationalist revolt eventually. They've got themselves stuck now, in an endless cycle of violence. And their reflexive defensiveness, automatically rejecting all criticism (or labelling it anti-semitism) makes a solution even more difficult. The clock is ticking, they better figure out something, before Hamas gets a nuclear weapon. Which is only a matter of time. And we face precisely the same situation in Iraq, except we have the option of leaving when we are defeated. Which is also only a matter of time.

To: JohnM who wrote (97774)	5/10/2003 1:51:10 AM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

fyi, here's what the most dovish Prime Minister in Israel's history has to say about the current situation: Arafat is still there, By Ehud Barak Mahmoud Abbas is a serious person and so is Muhammad Dahlan. They are two of the few in the Palestinian Authority who said publicly and repeatedly that the continued violence of the second intifada does not make sense from the Palestinian viewpoint, and that suicide bombings are not the right approach to deal with the Israelis. All this having been said, it will still be meaningless if they do not rise to the challenge that is facing them, namely the proof of the pudding is in the eating. If they will not wield all the executive power, if Arafat emerges with more than a symbolic role, if they can not crack down on Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and even Fatah's Al Aksa brigades, they will end up as failures. It is not going to be easy for them. They clearly need the backing of the US and even some gestures from Israel. But we all should be careful not to hug them too tightly, since that might weaken them. As for Arafat, he is far weaker, but the arm-twisting just in the last few days before Abu Mazen's establishment of the government bodes ill for the future. Basically, Arafat is still there, and he can still try to obstruct. He is quite an effective manipulator. For my part, I suspect there is no way to make peace as long as Arafat has power. The world should therefore set a legitimacy test before this new government - testing not what it says, but what it does. For Arafat to step down means for him to disappear, to be away, not to prevail. I do not pretend to be able to penetrate his soul. I already observed that he doesn't have the capacity and the character of a leader. The man is trying to appeal to the widest common denominator within his own society and is consequently always late to read the writing on the wall. He is the ultimate implementer of Abba Eban's saying that the Palestinian leadership has never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity. I don't think anything is going to change at the age of 75 and for him it's political survival and influence. Arafat is afraid that if some other Palestinian leader proves capable of making decisions of the sort taken by President Sadat or King Hussein, and put an end to the conflict, it will cast a giant shadow on him. Maybe he wants to make sure that what he missed cannot be repeated. As for the US, what it can and probably will now do is pressure the Syrians to redeploy Hizbullah outside southern Lebanon and replace it with the Lebanese army. At the same time they should back Abu Mazen and Dahlan without hugging them too tightly in public, and encourage other Arab leaders to keep the pressure on Arafat to comply with the road map. That's about as much as they can do. Israel, at the same time, can provide certain gestures, and the Palestinians - particularly Dahlan and Abu Mazen themselves, but maybe also some of their colleagues - should be able to stand firm and insist on getting all the executive power in the hands of the government without formally at least leaving anything executive to Arafat. Informally, he may not disappear or cease to influence. Now, we should realize that ultimately it's up to the Palestinians. jpost.com