Word: arafats
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Tomorrow night in the West Bank, the highest-level meeting between Israeli and Palestinian leaders in three years is set to begin an historic new era in the Mideast peace process in which Yassir Arafat is not at the negotiating table...
...groups is that he wants to avoid a civil war in the Palestinian territories that he may well lose. And the radicals are in no mood to listen, having vowed to fight to keep their weapons. Hamas is far more popular now than it was in 1996 when Yasser Arafat's administration successfully cracked down on the organization to stop a wave of suicide bombing, and Abbas's has to contend with the fact that today, his own Fatah movement has a militant armed wing of its own, which has vowed to stand alongside the Islamists in defying disarmament...
...much for "no policy." So much for "no progress." Bush has provided perhaps the best opportunity for peace in 35 years. But many pitfalls remain. The first is that the transition away from Arafat is incomplete. The new Prime Minister, Abu Mazen, represents hope. He is the most senior Palestinian leader to declare the intifadeh a mistake and to pledge an end to terrorism. Arafat, however, is doing everything to undermine him. He has portrayed Abu Mazen as an American stooge and is opposing the dismantling of the Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which just last week took credit for a massacre...
...second pitfall is the "road map for peace." Its title insists that it is "performance-based," but the text reveals a timetable that is calendar based. This repeats the mistake of the catastrophic Oslo "peace process," in which Israel acquiesced to the establishment of an Arafat mini-state, without Arafat's being held to his pledges to control weaponry, crack down on terrorism and cease anti-Israel incitement. No one wanted to halt the peace train by demanding compliance. The result was a bloody wreck...
...road map might thus produce a tactical cease-fire. But that would just provide an interval of safety for Palestinian terrorists to rearm, regroup and prepare to fight later on. Publishing the road map with Arafat still clinging to power and with Abu Mazen unproved is a bad omen. By rewarding the Palestinians before Arafat is gone and by demanding Israeli concessions while the violence continues, it belies the very premise of the June 24 policy, the only policy since Oslo that has produced real progress...