[Mb-civic] A Golden Opportunity Squandered - Jackson Diehl -Washington Post

[richard haase]

all of these people could have backed shows
it is very very sad
the waste
oh the humanity

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: William Swiggard 
  To: mb-civic 
  Sent: Monday, August 01, 2005 9:33 AM
  Subject: [Mb-civic] A Golden Opportunity Squandered - Jackson Diehl -Washington Post


  A Golden Opportunity Squandered


  By Jackson Diehl
  Monday, August 1, 2005; Page A17

  Yasser Arafat's death last November created, it was commonly said, a golden opportunity for Palestinians to arrest their society's downward spiral into squalor and suicide bombing. It also set up a test for all those who believed that Arafat himself was the principal Palestinian problem.

  The test went like this: Let's say Arafat were abruptly replaced, via a fair democratic election, by a civilized moderate with a long record of opposing violence and a clear commitment to negotiating a peaceful settlement with Israel. Amazingly, that happened six months ago, when Mahmoud Abbas became the Palestinian president. Let's further say that Israel decided to unilaterally withdraw from all of the Gaza Strip and a portion of the West Bank -- as, almost incredibly, it appears ready to do just two weeks from now. What difference would we see in Palestinian behavior?

  Here, so far, are the empirical results: With the Israeli pullout looming, the new Palestinian authorities are promising to rein in extremists who threaten to attack the withdrawing settlers and soldiers -- but so far their efforts have been weak. An experts' study recently concluded that Palestinian security forces remain factionalized, underarmed and undertrained, and that they are more easily commanded by local warlords than their official leaders. Corrupt hacks populate Palestinian ministries and dominate the legislature and the ruling Fatah party. Democratic elections scheduled for last month were indefinitely postponed.

  There are fitful negotiations with Israel about coordinating the withdrawal and subsequent status of Gaza. But Palestinian leaders appear more focused on using U.S. mediators to extract concessions from Israel than they are on formalizing agreements with the Jewish state. In the end, they may prefer to remain passive and blame Ariel Sharon for a unilateral and chaotic withdrawal.

  It all sounds, in short, very much like Yasser Arafat's Palestine.

  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/31/AR2005073101034.html



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