Word: arafat
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...unclear how long his smile will last. On the very day of Friedman's outrage, negotiators were predicting a summit between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to put the final touches on a pact for self-rule in Hebron. After the shooting, that schedule was pushed back, but U.S. officials brokering the talks say it is still just a matter of time before an accord is reached. Such an agreement was already signed in September 1995 by Arafat and the previous Israeli government. But Netanyahu, after his election last May, insisted on reopening negotiations...
...foot-dragging. But gradually, after the September miniwar between Israeli and Palestinian security forces, the Israeli Prime Minister began to grasp the price of constantly frustrating Palestinian aspirations, thereby incurring U.S. and international disapprobation. At the same time, buoyed by Palestinian and foreign support that followed the September conflagration, Arafat turned tough and instructed his negotiators to remain steely in the Hebron talks. The result was that the Palestinians won a number of concessions. Most significant, the Israelis gave up their insistence on obtaining an explicit right, in the event of a security emergency, to re-enter areas in Hebron...
...then it was Arafat's turn to foot-drag. He withheld instructions to close, fearing that a Hebron agreement would lift international pressure on Israel and free Netanyahu to accelerate building in Jewish settlements in the West Bank as well as slow action to fulfill Israel's commitment to expand Palestinian autonomy further. Netanyahu fanned Palestinian concern about the settlements when his government on Dec. 13 restored to those communities large public subsidies that had been revoked by the previous government...
Ross was also primed to soften up Arafat. "Arafat was stung by some of the things communicated to him about how the outcome of the talks would affect his relationship with Washington," says a negotiation insider. "With U.S. support for him eroding, he had to decide whether he'd got as much as he could. Ross persuaded him he had." Still, at week's end the Palestinians were holding out for written Israeli assurances that three further Israeli withdrawals in the West Bank countryside would take place according to a specific schedule, ending preferably by next September...
...violence seems likely to escalate. Arafat's family will no doubt eventually take revenge. And armed Fatah factions, including the Salah ed-Din Brigades, have compiled a hit list, according to senior Fatah officials, that includes party officials and cabinet ministers suspected of corruption. Fearing for their lives, several senior Fatah officials fled last month to Jordan. In Nablus, a former Interior Minister narrowly escaped being assassinated Sept. 20 by a group of masked men. Meanwhile, the leader of the Fatah militia in the West Bank town of Jenin said two weeks ago that he no longer considers himself bound...