Word: arafats
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...thing to boo and hiss, as many legislators did, when Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat acceded to demands by reform-minded members of the Legislative Council and presented a so-called new Cabinet last week. But Minister Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi, prominent spokeswoman for the Palestinian cause, made her protest sting by loudly quitting the Cabinet. Disgusted at Arafat?s failure to remove three of her colleagues accused of corruption last year, Mikhail-Ashrawi, a former literature professor, was also offended that Arafat did not consult her before switching her from the Ministry of Higher Education to the Tourism portfolio...
...political fallout from putting the squeeze on Israel, the White House has washed its hands of the failed Mideast peace process. With the erstwhile guarantor of the Oslo process now telling Israelis and Palestinians to resolve their own problems, the big winner may be the Islamic militants of Hamas. "Arafat's strategy relied on the Americans' pressuring Israel to make concessions," says TIME West Bank correspondent Jamil Hamad. "Their failure to do this leaves Arafat's ability to lead the Palestinians badly weakened...
...Hamas will claim vindication for its anti-peace-process policy, and will use the failure of Arafat's strategy to push its own claims for leadership. The likely response? "Arafat will probably try to rally the Palestinians behind him and get them to take action in support of his demands. He may be hoping that a couple of flare-ups will bring the fire brigade from Washington," says Hamad. "But the fire brigade may be out of water...
...Arafat's likely response will be to declare a Palestinian state in May 1999. That option may be a trap: "If they do it next May, they're not going to control enough territory to create a meaningful state," says Beyer. "But there's a danger that declaring a state allows the international community to close the file on the Palestinian issue." In the short term, however, look for Washington to send out Dennis Ross to start rolling his boulder up the hill again...
...vote (with 10 abstentions) accords the Palestinians the unique status of nonvoting member of the General Assembly, giving them the right to speak and cosponsor resolutions. More importantly for Yasser Arafat, it signals overwhelming international support for his planned declaration of independence next year. But if international consensus counted for anything in the Middle East, the state of Palestine would be two decades old. The decisions that count are made in Washington, where Palestinian statehood still remains a taboo topic...