Word: barak
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...Ehud Barak has been complaining for some weeks now that Israel no longer has a partner for peace. And while that may be part of the blame game for the violent clashes in Palestinian territories that have continued despite Tuesday's cease-fire agreement, it may contain a more profound truth: Yasser Arafat's claim to leadership over the Palestinians has never looked more shaky. Doubts are growing throughout the Middle East over whether the aging, ailing Palestinian leader will be able to deliver on undertakings given to President Clinton at Sharm el-Sheik to rein in militants...
...next day or two, the cease-fire - like the peace process it's supposed to save - is inherently vulnerable to sabotage by the hard-liners on both sides who oppose it. A terrorist bombing or even a dramatic shooting by Hamas or other hard-liners would force Prime Minister Barak, in deep political peril at home, to respond harshly, which would in turn prompt the Palestinian leadership to respond in kind. And another stroll around the Temple Mount by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon or even more shootings of Palestinian civilians by anti-peace Israeli settlers in the West Bank...
...process, they also bled the Israeli peace camp of much of its faith in the process. Just as the center of gravity in Palestinian politics has shifted toward the militancy of the Islamists and Fatah grass roots, so has the momentum in Israeli politics swung dramatically against Prime Minister Barak's peace policy. Barak is already seeking out a coalition with the right-wing Likud party, and few observers doubt that if he went to the polls now, he'd be trounced by a resurgent Benjamin Netanyahu...
...look further than within walking distance of their homes. Israel was under attack in the last three weeks, but for the most part not inside Israel proper. As during the intifada, almost all of the fighting took place inside the territories occupied since 1967, most of which Prime Minister Barak had planned to turn over to Arafat. Indeed, President Clinton called at the conclusion of Tuesday's talks for a resumption of peace negotiations based, inter alia, on U.N. Resolution 242 - which calls for Israeli withdrawal from territories occupied...
Oral agreements, as the saying goes, are worth about as much as the paper on which they're written. And in the case of the cease-fire agreed to at Sharm el-Sheikh Tuesday, the oral agreement was not one between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak, but rather two separate agreements between each man and President Clinton. That leaves each side to interpret the agreement according to their own explanation of the current violence, and gives it at best a 50-50 chance of holding. Israel has ostensibly agreed to withdraw its army from the perimeter of most major Palestinian...