.... Clinton’s face, urgent and animated in admiration for (Moshe) Dayan, turned somber as he recalled another Israeli general, Ariel Sharon, who, three decades later, deliberately crossed this line of wisdom in search of right-wing votes.
Barak was prime minister then, and under political pressure from a surging Sharon who attacked the peace efforts predictably, describing them as “sell-out”. Sharon wanted to provoke the Arabs and mobilize Israeli hard-liners behind him. Clinton advised Barak to stop Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount. Barak replied that he could not legally do so, and persuasion was beyond his capabilities.
A mixture of regret and excitement filled Clinton’s voice [Oh please] as he recalled his next suggestion to Barak. First, ensure that there are enough policemen to prevent any violence. Then ask a young Palestinian girl, alone, to wait for Sharon with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She should give him the flowers, and add one sentence: “You are most welcome to come here every day when there is peace.”
That single image, Clinton believes, would have etched a place in the heart of the region and the mind of the world; it would have defined the future.
Was America’s extraordinary president being naïve? Had his deep conviction in peace blurred harsher truths?
No. Clinton understood what mapmakers and wall-builders do not; that peace, like love, first begins in the heart. Only then does it start to search for statistics, arguments and a saleable rationale. As I heard him describe what might have been I could feel my own emotions stir at such a simple, beautiful and powerful image. It was an idea of pure genius, typical of a man who had sought the impossible in his own life — and found it. ... full story, Arab News
260 posted on 11/30/2003 10:43 AM EST by mountaineer