Word: baraker
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...Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat started their Camp David with a jocular scuffle to be last into the room with President Clinton; now they're jockeying to be the first to leave in a huff. After all, if you can't bring home a peace deal, then a little righteous indignation helps you look tough back home in the district. Leaks from the delegations suggest Arafat has twice gestured toward the door, ordering his aides to pack their bags on Saturday night and trying to phone U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan early Tuesday to tell him the talks had failed...
...Ehud Barak is prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to do just that. He is ready to give the Palestinians virtually all of the West Bank, to surrender a large measure of control over Jerusalem, and to recognize a Palestinian state bordering Jordan and Egypt (which means that the perennial Israeli demand for a demilitarized Palestinian state evaporates: it will be impossible to monitor the inflow of weapons into Palestine...
...simply as property, or land. They haven't grasped what Jerusalem means in the minds and hearts of Palestinians - as Arabs and Muslims it represents something extremely powerful. In the same way, the Palestinians have failed to understand the emotional significance of the city for Jews, and why Barak can't move an inch on Jerusalem. And this is the basic problem. There's very little mutual understanding among the parties at the talks - they talk past one another...
...Jerusalem may be the most intractable issue of all: Barak is under mounting pressure at home to avoid returning an inch of the Holy City to Arab sovereignty, while Arafat will be branded a sellout if he settles for anything less than Palestinian control over that part of the city they call Al Quds captured by Israel in 1967. Both sides' recalcitrance is driven by the religious passions at the very heart of their national identities - passions which militate against seeing the other side's point of view, which, after all, is the very essence of negotiation...
...real culture gap between the Americans, the Israelis and the Palestinians. The Palestinians simply don't understand the Israelis. They see them either as all-powerful and able to do anything, or otherwise as easily defeated. There's no objective, realistic approach to Israel. For example, when Barak has problems with parties leaving his coalition, they see it either as a plot or as a sign that Barak counts for nothing. They don't understand the political culture of Israel, of a democracy. Of course they're going to disagree with Israel's positions on Jerusalem, for example, but they...