Posted on 11/12/2004 7:47:21 AM PST by OESY
...At the Madrid Peace Conference of 1992, the world discovered a new Palestinian leadership... voices of wisdom and moderation.
...[T]he Israeli delegation, notably... Shamir and... Netanyahu, felt in the face of a Palestinian leadership that could not be branded "terrorist" or "extremist."
The Palestinians who had come... lived in Palestine and, because of their work as teachers, lawyers and doctors, were in daily contact with their people. They were not professional "liberators"....
They did not want the Palestinian people to kill and die so that Arab despots could silence their own people in the name of the Palestinian "cause."...
Talking to the Palestinian delegates, I started to see Palestine as less of an abstract cause and more of a concrete political problem....
...To address that unease, Israel opened a back channel to Arafat, thus undermining the burgeoning new leadership from inside Palestine....
Arafat... needed attention and money. The Israelis offered him both. In exchange, he agreed to join the Oslo game. The aim was to shut the Americans out of the negotiations, and derail the Madrid process....
As Madrid was derailed and Oslo became the order of the day, Arafat was back in the fold as "the sole leader of the Palestinian people." The new leadership that had appeared in Madrid melted away. Palestine re-became a "cause."...
There are a dozen Palestinian politicians who have the stature to replace Arafat. With Arafat no longer there to interfere in their work, any of them can step in as head of a transitional government.
...Since the Palestinians are the best educated and politically most mature of all Arabs, they are, if given a chance, certain to produce a parliament of reasonable people. That parliament would then appoint a government with a mission to negotiate peace with Israel based on the two-states formula....
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
Let's hope Mahmoud Abbas can tamp down on the terrorists, establish authority and restart the road map.
Wishful thinking.
Palestinians are mostly Muslims, and negotiating peace with the Jews or other Infidels is not what Allah wants done. - Tom
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