Word: oslo
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Only yesterday a Palestinian dream seemed within reach. Trying to finalize the Oslo peace accords signed by the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993, Barak had agreed to a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. He threw in some sovereignty over Jerusalem. But Arafat bargained for more and didn't get it, then gambled on the new intifadeh, demolishing Barak's re-election hopes. So Arafat must now face Sharon, who calls him a liar and refuses to shake his hand. The dread is, it could be Beirut all over again...
...facto leader in Jordan and later in Lebanon dragged both countries into civil war. In the Gulf War, he bet on Saddam. This was all well before Arafat was ever on speaking terms with the Israelis, prior to winning the Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and Shimon Peres for Oslo. That was supposed to be the old Arafat. So why has he gone to the brink again...
Everything was supposed to change after Arafat signed Oslo. But while Israelis saw Oslo as the end of the war, Palestinians saw it merely as the first, conditional step toward peace. Today they still live with no state, no capital in Jerusalem. Israeli forces still occupy much of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, requiring Palestinians continually to move through humiliating military checkpoints. Jewish settlements housing 180,000 Israelis dot the territories. Palestinians have seen economic decline, while Israel's GDP initially took...
Such failings may have been forgiven if Arafat had been able to deliver in the political arena. But after 33 years in power, all Arafat could bring the Palestinian people were an ambiguous set of treaties known as the Oslo Accords. Hailed in the West as a breakthrough, the Oslo Accords--which reaped Nobel Peace Prizes for Arafat and his Israeli counterparts--left the Palestinians worse off than ever before. The agreements virtually conceded that Palestinian refugees would give up their internationally-recognized human right to return to their homes--the right for which they had been fighting since...
...both sides, the fact remains that he has failed on both counts. To the West, he is an extremist who would not agree to the Clinton-Barak peace proposal. To an increasing number of Arabs and Muslims, he is a spineless tool of the enemy who conceded to the Oslo Accords and who refused to allow the PNA police force to protect Palestinian children even as they were being mowed down by professional Israeli soldiers and helicopter gunships...