Word: barak
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...Barak has already signaled that he was game if Arafat was, and Wednesday declared the proposals acceptable to Israel as a "basis for discussion" with the Palestinians...
...Barak has reason to be pliable - he's desperate...
...Barak is campaigning for an early election on Feb. 6 with fast-fading support in the polls. He needs a platform, something to take to the voters besides more negotiations and more violence, and peace - a peace solution from which both sides can take some finality - is it. At some point, Barak will have to bring a deal home to the Israeli parliament and face down the hawks (Ariel Sharon, for one, who is running against Barak). But until then he's got nothing to lose but his job, and without a deal he expects to lose that anyway...
...Arafat, of course, unlike Barak or Clinton, doesn't have a changing of the guard to worry about. But politics is politics, and if Arafat doesn't bring home a deal that includes the Haram al-Sharif and tackles the very touchy refugee problem to his own hawks' satisfaction, he'll go down in Palestinian infamy and quite possibly be blown up himself by militants. Or so he says. This is Middle East peace, not some Beltway budget battle, and Arafat is under some very serious pressure to come out on top at the negotiating table...
...Palestinians still want a Palestine, and they want their people to stop dying, which means they want a deal. And Arafat would much rather deal with Barak than Sharon, whose last foray into the peace process at Temple Mount kicked off the current round of bloodshed...