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

To: michael97123 who wrote (163232)	5/27/2005 11:33:03 AM
From: bentway	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

Sharon is an old, fat guy. I noticed watching him waddle up to the microphone in Crawford that he doesn't seem very healthy. He may be meeting Arafat in Hell soon. I think a proper Hell for those two would be to be immortal and locked a broom closet forever together. Still, I never though he'd give up ANY of the settlements, seeing as how they were a project of his. He surprised me. I imagine he just did a cost-benefit on Gaza, and it was a loser. So far, he's only mentioned 4 settlements out of 100+? on the West Bank he's willing to give up. He, or someone will have to do much better in the future. Think of the goodwill the Israelis could earn by just giving illegal settlements to the Palestinians!

To: michael97123 who wrote (163232)	5/27/2005 4:37:47 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 281500

Call me a cockeyed optimist but i think Abbas is doing OK and even have some hope that Hamas can be turned into a middle east IRA. The best you can say about Abbas from what I've read is that he, personally, understands how self-destructive Pal politics is and thinks they should try to get a deal. But what does that matter? Abbas has few guns (who knows who the current Pal security forces answer to), no charisma, little following, and was basically put up as an aceptable front man for Fatah. So far his efforts at reform are a sham, and all he can try to do is sweet-talk Hamas into the elections, fully armed. He can't lay his hands on Arafat's billions or reform Fatah, and he certainly can't move against the terrorist organizations. So Pal politics is doing what it normally does, become a contest over who is in a better position to kill Jews. The intifada will restart during the Gaza pullout so that Hamas can claim 'victory'. The most you can say is that Abbas got a temporary lull (Hamas wouldn't even call it a hudna). The Israelis are still catching bombers and getting shelled every day during this "lull" but the Pals have the level that they can do 'for free' pretty well calibrated. The idea that their agreements should ever mean anything obviously doesn't occur to them or anybody else. The whole name of the game is to get Israel to agree to something so that you can collect it for nothing if Israel comes through, and whine about it if they don't, never mind that Israel generally stops because the Pals have as usual failed to do Step 1 of their agreements. The Pal's basic strategy is to shoot and whine at once. It protects them from defeat but is corrosive to the whole region - certainly to the Palestinian people it's a disaster - which until now suited the Arab leaders just fine. It certainly suited Arafat just fine. Nothing really has changed since he died, except that Hamas' position has improved markedly. I just don't believe in putting lipstick on the pig and calling it a princess.