Word: zinni
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...sparing Ariel Sharon even pro-forma calls for restraint, the Bush administration has lately been scrambling to reinvent itself as an even-handed activist mediator. The President on Wednesday castigated Sharon's tactics, sponsored a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a Palestinian state and sent Marine General Anthony Zinni back to Israel to pummel the two sides into a cease-fire...
...Zinni's cease-fire mission is in no small part to run interference for Cheney's efforts to recruit Arab support against Saddam, and the Israelis have adjusted their posture accordingly. Sharon has dropped his insistence on seven days of calm before implementing a cease-fire, vowed to ease travel restrictions on Arafat, and ordered Israeli troops out of the West Bank town of Ramallah. Still, the Bush administration on Thursday asked for more - an Israeli pullout from all Palestinian Authority (PA) territory. The Palestinians have long said that there would be no cease-fire talks as long as Israeli...
...Sharon's actions are not necessarily contradictory. He knows the U.S. will face pressure to restrain Israel from the Arab regimes Dick Cheney is lobbying this week for help in the fight against Saddam Hussein. Raising the ante ahead of Zinni's visit allows Sharon to paint the inevitable retreat from Palestinian areas recently reoccupied as a concession. More important, the Israelis believe - with good reason - that no matter what cease-fire agreement is reached, Yasser Arafat will be unable or unwilling to take down Hamas and Islamic Jihad, much less to disarm the militias linked to his own Fatah...
...Arafat has no political authority over the Islamists, and they remain fiercely opposed to any new cease-fire. That, and the rage of the Palestinian public stirred by the latest Israeli operations, suggest they'll try to cut short Zinni's visit (and spoil Cheney's) with a series of terror outrages in Israel's cities. Even the militants of Arafat's own Fatah organization now believe that armed struggle is more effective than U.S.-brokered negotiations...
...best-case scenario for General Zinni is a cease-fire agreement and adoption of the Saudi peace plan at the March 27 Arab League summit in Beirut. That?s not going to happen while bombs are going off in Israel, Israeli tanks are rumbling through Palestinian refugee camps and Arafat is prevented from even traveling to Beirut. As General Zinni knows from experience, best-case scenarios seldom pan out in the Middle East...