Word: arafat
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Nobody wants Yasser Arafat in charge of Palestinian affairs: Not Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who has been trying to sideline his old enemy since taking office three years ago; not the Bush administration, which made clear last summer that sidelining Arafat is an essential condition for renewing the peace process; and not even many Palestinian leaders from his own Fatah faction, who have spent much of the past year working to break the aging Arafat's personal monopoly on power. And yet, as Wednesday's deadline approaches for Palestinian prime minister-designate Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen) to present...
...After weeks of fierce infighting, Arafat has refused to endorse the cabinet picked by Abu Mazen - and failure to reach agreement by deadline will mean that the prime minister-designate strongly backed by the main sponsors of the road map for Israeli-Palestinian peace (the U.S. and Europe) will step aside, and Arafat will pick a new prime minister. With the Bush administration having made the swearing-in of Abu Mazen a precondition for releasing the long-awaited road map to restart the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, his defeat by Arafat would be a disaster for U.S. and British plans...
After Sharon called Palestinian Authority President Yassir Arafat “irrelevant,” the U.S. had pushed for the appointment of a Palestinian prime minister who would crack down on terror and restart negotiations. The choice of reformer Mahmoud Abbas (known as Abu Mazen) offers great hope that Arafat will be sidelined, opening avenues for new leaders to negotiate with Israel. If Abu Mazen is able to gain approval for his cabinet, the Bush Administration has said it will publish the “road map” which describes the series of steps for Israelis and Palestinians...
Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen is generally perceived as a moderate and has earned some credibility by fighting for a reformist cabinet that intends to depose several Arafat cronies. Sharon, on the other hand, could hardly be more of a hawk; many see him as a war criminal for his indirect responsibility for the Sabra and Shatila massacre in Lebanon, and he has always been a staunch supporter of settlements. It is time for Sharon to make a meaningful concession to show Palestinians that a leader committed to peace, as Abu Mazen seems to be, can extract real compromise from...
Some in the Arab world are dismayed by Garner's selection. They note that in October 2000, soon after the start of the latest Palestinian uprising, Garner signed a statement blaming Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority for orchestrating the violence. The statement had been prepared by the Washington-based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, which had earlier paid to take Garner and other U.S. officers to Israel for security briefings. In civilian life Garner was president of SYColeman, a defense contractor that helped Israel develop its Arrow missile-defense system...