Word: arafats
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...failure of President Bush?s Middle East peace "roadmap" will likely be blamed on the actors: Mahmoud Abbas lacked the strength and the political will to stamp out Hamas; Yasser Arafat remained effectively in charge, undermining the efforts of Abbas so as to ensure his own continued relevance; Ariel Sharon didn?t take seriously the need for Israel to bolster Abbas and made only token gestures toward the "roadmap," and so on. But the fatal flaw in the "roadmap" lies not with the actors, but in the script itself. A look at how we go here, and what it will...
...restore Israeli security, it grows distinctly fuzzy when addressing issues of occupation. The first phase requires that the Palestinians renounce armed struggle, dismantle all organizations wielding arms outside of the formal security services of the PA, and reform Palestinian institutions (code, in U.S. and Israeli parlance, for sidelining Yasser Arafat). The requirements of Israel in the same first phase are limited to easing the humanitarian plight of the Palestinians, withdrawing from towns reoccupied by the Israeli Defense Force and dismantling settlements built in the course of the current intifada...
...Neither side has done much to implement the "roadmap." Instead of dismantling the militant organizations that have waged the terror war, the PA leadership brokered a truce agreement under which they would refrain from attacking Israel in exchange for prisoner releases and other concessions. Yasser Arafat remained very much in charge of the PA despite U.S. efforts to sideline him. And Israel confined itself to mostly token gestures in respect of settlement outposts, reversible military withdrawals from a couple of Palestinian areas and the release of a couple of hundred of the 6,000 Palestinian militants currently in Israeli prisons...
...perceptive commentary by Camp David veterans Robert Malley and Hussein Agha notes, none of the key participants - Ariel Sharon, Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas - saw the "roadmap" as a path to a solution; they saw it instead as a tactical challenge, brought on by diplomatic pressures, in their ongoing struggle. Each had his own goals: Arafat?s and Sharon?s were mirror opposites; Abbas?s were different from both, but his negligible political standing made him a marginal figure except in the wishful thinking of President Bush. Abbas adopted the ?roadmap? and then equivocated on implementing it; Sharon artfully avoided...
...response to pressure following Tuesday's Jerusalem bombing, Abbas threatened to resign unless Yasser Arafat agreed to order Palestinian security forces (of which he controls the most important units) to crack down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Regardless of the outcome of their discussions, Thursday's assassination of a Hamas leader who had played a key role in negotiating the "hudna" made a Palestinian crackdown on Hamas and Islamic Jihad a non-starter. Abbas's security chief, Mohammed Dahlan, said his proposed set of actions against Hamas would have to be reassessed - PA security forces can't be seen...