Word: arafats
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...Abbas, now the Palestinian Prime Minister, prepares for another meeting with a U.S. President, Arafat has entered what may prove to be his most portentous sulk yet. George W. Bush is scheduled to arrive in the Red Sea port of Aqaba, Jordan, this week for a summit with Abbas and his Israeli counterpart, Ariel Sharon. Bush wants more than a reaffirmation of their commitment to his road map for peace in the Middle East; he is expected to demand a real timetable for progress and genuine action on the ground. Sharon last week signaled that he is willing, though some...
Abbas doesn't have the deep roots in the West Bank and Gaza Strip that count for so much in Palestinian politics, where loyalties are often based on clan. Arafat, 73, brags of his descent from a Jerusalem family, whereas Abbas, 68, was born in the ancient Galilean town of Safed, now part of Israel. In 1948 his family fled to Damascus to escape the fighting of the first Arab-Israeli war. Abbas' best connections are in the Persian Gulf, where he was long the P.L.O.'s main man. In peace talks before and after the 1993 agreement, Abbas gained...
With the onset of Palestinian self-rule in 1994, relations between Arafat, chairman of the P.L.O., and Abbas, secretary-general of its executive committee, became further strained. After a dispute that year about the terms of a second peace agreement, Abbas headed to his Qatar home, refused to talk to Arafat and didn't return to the West Bank for months. Tension between the two rose again this past year, say senior officials in the Fatah faction of the P.L.O. to which Abbas and Arafat belong. Abbas, they say, lost faith in Arafat when he didn't respond to Abbas...
...emergence of Abbas as Prime Minister has put even greater distance between the two old allies. The idea of creating the new post arose out of U.S. and Israeli demands that Arafat's power be diminished. Arafat tried to block it but ultimately could not face down the power of the U.S. At one point, according to officials both in Fatah and in the Palestinian Authority (Arafat's government), Arafat instructed his head of special forces, Bashir Nafa, to send someone to fire warning shots at the house of a prominent pro-Abbas cadre. Afterward, Abbas went off again...
...time, he did go back. When the Fatah central committee voted on whether to nominate Abbas for Prime Minister, the tally was 16 to 1. The only vote against was cast by Arafat, who was so angry at the result that, according to senior Fatah officials, he refused to speak to anyone--even his bodyguards--for two days. Once he did start talking, Arafat made sure to bad-mouth both Abbas, who was confirmed in office by the elected Palestinian Legislative Council on April 29, and his chosen security chief, Mohammed Dahlan. Confined by Israeli troops to his headquarters...