BBC: Arafat--Obstacle or the key to peace?

[Jack Rabbit]

EDITED to fix link

From the BBC Online
Dated Thursday November 6

Arafat: Obstacle or the key to peace?
by Jeremy Bowen
The BBC's special correspondent

Once a regular guest at The White House, Yasser Arafat is now politically isolated by Israel and America who insist he has the power to stop suicide bombings against Israelis.
But could a peace deal be made without the man who has led the Palestinians for decades? . . . .
The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has stated its intention of deporting him to an unspecified location, although pressure from the United States has stopped them carrying out their threat.
Members of Mr Sharon's cabinet have mused publicly about killing Arafat.
But Israel's actions have demonstrated, once again, that Arafat is the unchallenged leader of the Palestinian people.

One thing shown by the very existence of the Geneva Accords is that reasonable men in Israel and Palestine aren't going to wait for their irresponsible leaders to step aside and make peace. The negotiations in Geneva show that the process can go very nicely without Arafat or Sharon and would probably do much better if both were out of the picture.

[Lithos]

1. link?

n/t

[ForestsBeatBushes]

2. From the following 2 paragraphs in your posted article,

"In the atmosphere of shock that followed the assassination, he was allowed to visit Rabin's widow, Leah, at their flat in Tel Aviv. He was even photographed with her bare-headed, without his famous black and white checked keffiyah.

It was the closest he ever came to acceptance in Israel. As the peace process crumbled without Rabin, the old Israeli view that Arafat was an unreconstructed terrorist, which many of them had anyway never lost, once again reasserted itself."


it would seem to me he is an obstacle.

[bluesoul]

3. Well

As much as Sharon is an obstacle..