Word: arafats
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...compromise with his opponents a familiar, stubborn determination that, while useful in the battles young Sharon won as a general, may prove to be his undoing. Among Sharon's longtime nemeses, there has been glee at news of his possible downfall. When an aide informed Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat of the prosecutor's call to indict Sharon, Arafat smiled broadly and, according to people who were present, interrupted a meeting he was chairing. "Didn't I tell you," said Arafat, a man not unfamiliar with charges of corruption, "that he will be consigned to the trash can of history...
...withdrawal from Gaza as the centerpiece of his lifelong obsession with Israel's security. "We need to get out of Gaza, not to be responsible anymore for what happens there," he says. In his reading, there's no chance of a negotiated peace with the Palestinians so long as Arafat leads them. So, to stem the tide of blood in the meantime, Sharon is preparing to pull Israeli forces and settlers behind his West Bank security barrier and wait for the Palestinian political map to change. The trouble is, to prove he is not pulling out because of pressure from...
...learn that Israeli leaders freely admit that the growth of Hamas was partly a tragedy of their own making. Israel made a conscious decision to allow the Islamist movement to grow in the West Bank and Gaza in the early 1980s, hoping that this would undermine support for Yasser Arafat's PLO. "In retrospect we made a mistake," former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben Eliezer told the daily Maariv last week...
...make people ready to participate in terrorist acts. As long as they convince Palestinians to look at suicide bombers as heroes and martyrs, instead of the roadblock to peace, Hamas is going to be successful." And at the moment, Hamas' power is unchallenged. Both Americans and Israelis believe that Arafat's downtrodden Palestinian Authority has the means to dismantle Hamas but not the will, whereas Palestinians believe it has neither. "No one can finish Hamas," says Rantisi. Al-Zahar put it in starker terms: if Arafat tries to crack down again, "we are going to defend ourselves with all means...
Palestinian security forces in Gaza don't want a battle either. Brigadier General Saeb Ajez, commander of military security in northern Gaza, says that taking on Hamas isn't a realistic option. Riven by internal disputes and personal power struggles, and undermined by Israel's campaign to strip Arafat of relevance, the Authority is weaker than ever. Its jealous assortment of security forces are at one another's throats, not Hamas'. Nor, says the general, do his men have the firepower to prevail. "Would Israel allow us to have a battalion armed with tanks so we could really fight Hamas...