Word: statehooder
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...strengthen moderate Palestinian leaders is for the U.S. to be clear about what the Palestinians will get if they make peace. Last June, an official involved tells TIME, Qurei and other top officials met quietly with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice in Berlin to push for progress toward Palestinian statehood. "They said, 'Why can't we jump to final status talks and start negotiating borders?'" says the official. Rice, according to the official, replied, "We're sitting in Germany. Its borders were settled in 1991, but by then it was a successful, democratic country. That's what you need...
...support if the Palestinians develop democratic institutions, and see how they do. In the short run, says the official, overt support for moderates would fatally discredit them in Palestinian eyes. In any case, the Administration believes that Arafat left Palestinians unprepared to make the concessions required to attain statehood, like restrictions of the number of returning refugees, limited control of Jerusalem and the loss of part of the West Bank. Bush's decision to play it cool for now was a bitter pill for Blair, who went to Washington hoping the U.S. would pay back his unpopular solidarity in Iraq...
...challenge emerged later from a more ruthless opponent. The P.L.O. chiefs fear that without Arafat, the armed gangs ruling Palestinian towns wouldn't have even the modest restraining influence "the old man," as they call him, has had over them. The resulting civil unrest could doom Palestinian aspirations for statehood. "We have to avoid anarchy, because we know the alternative is that the Israelis will come in and take over," a senior Fatah official told TIME...
...epic irony of Yasser Arafat's final hours or days is the growing sense that he may facilitate, by his death, what he failed to achieve in the course of his storied life. As recently as a week ago, Palestinian statehood had seemed like nothing more than an abstract wish for the foreseeable future; now, suddenly, with the Palestinian leader reportedly in a terminal coma, Palestinian statehood is once again being discussed in the realm of the possible. It's not simply Arafat's passing from the scene that has enabled the shift. The Bush administration is facing rising pressure...
...still faces a plummeting image in the Muslim world that is unlikely to improve so long as U.S. forces are embroiled in combat in Iraq and Palestinian aspirations for statehood are unfulfilled. Here too the candidates' positions differ only in degree: Kerry says, if elected, he would appoint an envoy to the Middle East to restart the peace process, but like Bush, he backs Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's refusal to negotiate a permanent settlement while Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat remains in power...