Word: statehood
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...stopped Palestinian militants making hit-and-run attacks and suicide strikes, but armed action by Palestinians has done little to advance their cause politically, militarily or diplomatically. The attacks have hardened Israel's resolve, alienated the West, brought harsh repression down on ordinary Palestinians and put the goals of statehood and Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza even further beyond reach. There's a grim consensus in Palestinian society today that the al-Aqsa intifada has achieved little for their people - but that doesn't stop the militants who flip the equation by asking what will be achieved...
...Negotiations over Palestinian statehood are not a prospect in which Prime Minister Sharon has ever shown much interest, and would likely require some active interventionist diplomacy on the part of the U.S. - something its European and Arab allies and even Israeli peaceniks are pressing...
...Powell's purported vision signals a recognition by the Bush administration that the Palestinians have no incentive to maintain a cease-fire unless its purpose is a resumption of political negotiations on ending the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and establishing Palestinian statehood...
...Although President Bush's Monday announcement of support for Palestinian statehood will be widely interpreted as a concession to Arab sensitivities, there's nothing particularly new about it - a de facto a recognition of the Palestinians' right to statehood has undergirded both U.S. and Israeli policy in the last decade. President Clinton explicitly endorsed the principle late last year, while Israel's last two Labor Party prime ministers, Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak, implicitly accepted it as a basis for the Oslo peace process with the Palestinians. Oslo was based on the premise of a "two-state" solution...
...both Sharon and Arafat into a cease-fire, but it's hardly a comfortable fit. The truce appears to be buckling under pressure of the renewed fighting, and even if it holds it becomes quickly untenable unless it leads to renewed political negotiations - hence the U.S. statement on Palestinian statehood. But having opposed Oslo from the outset and having voided the deal offered to Arafat by his predecessor, Sharon appears to have very little to bring to the political negotiating table. And after a year in which the intifada has demanded heavy sacrifices of Palestinians, Arafat would struggle to settle...