Word: gaza
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...hard to find reasons why Israel is hesitant to repeat its recent West Bank military offensive in the Gaza Strip. Although Israeli forces continued to mass at the edge of the territory Friday following a cabinet decision to authorize a retaliation for Tuesday's Hamas suicide bombing in Rishon Letzion, politicians and generals debated the wisdom and purpose of such an operation - and the U.S. was reportedly quietly urging restraint on the Israelis, while pressing the Palestinians to crack down on terrorist groups...
...Sharon appears to have convinced Bush this week that reforming the PA is a precondition for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians - which means such negotiations couldn't start any time soon. That position may change if the expected Israeli military offensive in Gaza rekindles the fires of crisis that prompted the U.S. to intervene three weeks ago. A primary objective of "reforming" the PA from Sharon's point of view is simply getting rid of Arafat, allowing Israel to deal with a new leader Sharon hopes will be more pliant. But the moderate Arab states and even Palestinian critics...
...power. Any move to consolidate the PA's security structures into a single force - much less to disarm the militias as envisaged by CIA director George Tenet's cease-fire plan - is likely to provoke fierce power struggles. The rivalry between West Bank security chief Jibril Rajoub and his Gaza counterpart Mohammed Dahlan has been increasingly open since the Israeli invasion, while the leader of Fatah's West Bank militias, Marwan Barghouti, languishes in an Israeli prison...
...Sharon's insistence that a democratic PA is a precondition for negotiations may also be something of a hedge. After all, most surveys of public opinion in the West Bank and Gaza find a majority of Palestinians implacably opposed to cracking down on those who have fought the intifada, and disinclined to accept the terms of new cease-fires with the Israelis. A more democratic Palestinian leadership would naturally be more responsive to the concerns of its constituency, and therefore possibly even more difficult for the Israelis to deal with than Arafat. Even before the latest intifada, the Palestinian public...
...little over a week to reject the principle of any Palestinian state west of the Jordan River, which would preclude the two-state solution being pursued by Washington. And while Secretary of State Colin Powell is calling for an end to settlement activities in the West Bank and Gaza, Sharon continues to insist that the settlements are sacrosanct. A little over a week ago, he proclaimed that the fate of Netzarim (a remote settlement in Gaza where hundreds of soldiers guard a few dozen families) is the fate of Tel Aviv...