Word: yasser
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Secretary of State Colin Powell flew to the Middle East last weekend in an effort to kick-start the U.S.-backed plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace. But its fate may depend largely on one leader Powell did not plan to meet: Yasser Arafat. The Palestinian chief last month grudgingly turned over power, at least in theory, to a newly installed Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas. But top Palestinian officials tell TIME that Arafat is still fomenting opposition to the new PM. Arafat met last week with several local leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization's Fatah faction (to which Abbas also...
...RESIGNED. SAEB ERAKAT, 48, Palestinian negotiation minister, from the Palestinian Cabinet. Erakat, who has led the Palestinian side in negotiations with Israel for almost a decade, tendered his resignation to Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat and Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas after being left off a negotiating team scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to discuss the U.S.-backed road map to peace...
...militant groups is that he wants to avoid a civil war in the Palestinian territories that he may well lose. And the radicals are in no mood to listen, having vowed to fight to keep their weapons. Hamas is far more popular now than it was in 1996 when Yasser Arafat's administration successfully cracked down on the organization to stop a wave of suicide bombing, and Abbas's has to contend with the fact that today, his own Fatah movement has a militant armed wing of its own, which has vowed to stand alongside the Islamists in defying disarmament...
This is nonsense squared. If someone had told you at the time of the Passover massacres of 2002 (seven suicide bombings in seven days) that a year later terrorism deaths would be down more than 80%, Yasser Arafat would be edged aside, a new reformist Palestinian leadership would be approved, Palestinian finances would start to become transparent, and negotiations between the parties would become possible once again, you would have said this is utterly fanciful. But that is exactly what has happened. Why? Because of the radical new policy adopted by President Bush and enunciated last June...
...that the "regime-change" was in effect mandated by the Bush administration. But as they try to settle their dispute with Israel, the political standing and moral position of the Palestinians can only be enhanced by a government that is less tightly controlled by an old-style leader like Yasser Arafat...