Word: oslo
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...blanket freeze on settlement activity. He's also questioning the four-week timetable, proposing a three-month cooling off period before talks. But most important, Sharon has made abundantly clear that he has no intention of negotiating on the basis of offers made by Ehud Barak. Sharon considers the Oslo peace process over, and wants to negotiate a series of long-term interim non-belligerency agreements with the Palestinians...
...Despite this week's dramatic escalation - Palestinians firing mortars from Gaza into Israel; Israel for the first time reoccupying territory ceded to Arafat under the Oslo agreement - neither Sharon nor Arafat has a strategy to transcend the increasingly violent impasse. Arafat can harass and occasionally provoke the Israelis, but he can't alter the strategic balance; Sharon can pound and pummel Arafat's resources but he can't subdue Palestinian militancy. So even as violence increases, politically the situation remains at a stalemate. And that's likely to mean Secretary of State Powell will find himself devoting more...
...Sharon's objective clearly isn't to get hundreds of thousands of Israelis filling the streets of Tel Aviv singing songs of peace and hope. Indeed, he makes clear in the interview that he sees the Oslo peace process started by Yitzhak Rabin as dangerously deluded - and that he, Sharon, has no intention whatsoever of pursuing it. Withdrawing from the Golan Heights or the Jordan Valley or removing the Israeli settlements dotted throughout the West Bank and Gaza deprives Israel of the "strategic depth" to defend herself, Sharon insists. Returning those lands to Arab control - as his predecessors had considered...
...minister's outlook may be relentlessly depressing for anyone inspired by Rabin's vision, but Sharon supporters would see it as simply pouring cold water on the naïve dreams of the peaceniks. And they'll claim the events of the past six months as irrefutable evidence that Oslo could never deliver on its promise to Israelis...
Sharon convened his cabinet at 6:30 Wednesday evening with a joke that has serious implications for peace. The Prime Minister had just held a meeting with Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Arafat for the Oslo peace accords. Sharon, whose reputation is as hawkish as Peres' is dovish, told his cabinet that Peres had advocated a stronger response: "Peres is more aggressive than I am." Peres responded, "Yes, he had to restrain me this time." It was another sign that there is a deep anger among supporters of the peace process who feel Arafat...