Word: truce
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...disclaimer: TIME.com's Person of the Week is not a beauty competition or an achievement award; it's an acknowledgment of the nominee's influence over the events that have dominated the week's headlines. And as U.S. mediators work feverishly to broker an ever-elusive Middle East truce even as suicide bombers continue to terrorize Israel's towns and cities, Yasser Arafat is that man. Because once again he appears to hold the immediate fate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in his hands...
...even a new cease-fire can buy Sharon much respite from Israel's basic dilemma over the West Bank and Gaza. If a truce is concluded, it's simply Step 1 on the path prescribed by the Mitchell and Tenet plans back to negotiating a two-state solution with Arafat. And if it fails, it simply plunges Israelis - and Palestinians - ever deeper into the horrors of a present that cannot hold...
...parties quickly back to the negotiating table they abandoned last January. But if Arafat and Ehud Barak couldn't reach a final Israeli-Palestinian agreement, it takes a leap of the imagination to visualize an Arafat-Sharon deal. And yet without one, there's little chance that any truce emerging in the coming days will amount to much more than a time...
Sharon's room for maneuvering--between seeking a truce and initiating hostilities--is constrained in part by the political environment in which he operates. He heads a coalition government that relies on both an ultra-right and a center-left faction. Thus he cannot lean too far in either direction without risking that one of the coalition members will quit, bringing his government down. If that were to happen, new elections would follow. With Israelis in a hawkish mood, Sharon's right-wing Likud Party would almost surely make significant electoral gains. But Sharon might not be his party...
...when Bush administration envoy General Anthony Zinni arrives later this week. And it is Zinni's visit - as part of the renewed U.S. cease-fire effort designed to court Arab support for action against Iraq - that has Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon at once making gestures towards a truce and escalating military activity...