Posted on 06/22/2002 7:40:35 PM PDT by knighthawk
Aasser Arafat said yesterday he's willing to embrace the Mideast peace deal he disdained two years ago at Camp David, but Bush officials dismissed the offer as the cynical posturing of a desperate man.
"Just more of his rant," said one senior administration official of the offer. "Arafat who? The man has made himself irrelevant to this process."
In an interview with the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, the Palestinian Authority chairman declared that "enough is enough" — the phrase recently used by President Bush — and said it was time for "no more war."
For the first time, Arafat said he would accept the terms of the proposed deal brokered by former President Bill Clinton in July 2000. But that agreement — which would have given the Palestinians a state with 95% of the West Bank and sovereignty over the Arab sections of Old Jerusalem — was rejected by Arafat in January 2001, just before Clinton left office.
Aides to Clinton said the former President was working on his memoirs at his Chappaqua home and would have no comment on Arafat's remarks. But a former Clinton official pointed out that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is unlikely to agree to any political settlement remotely as generous as the one Arafat now says he'll take.
In a sign of Arafat's dwindling credibility in the Bush administration, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher politely turned aside the chairman's offer.
"We've heard a lot of different ideas, suggestions and views from different parties," Boucher said.
"Arafat finds himself completely without support in the Arab world," said Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Defamation Committee. "He's come to the point where he's willing to say almost anything in order to try to get negotiations going again."
Disagree. The fanatical fundamentalist Arab world rejoices in Arafat - he keeps the heat off them, but keeps the pot boiling.
Right. After Camp David, Arafat lied about what Barak had offerred in order to deflect criticisms (virtually none of them from his own people) that he had missed an opportunity. So if Arafat is saying that he is accepting Camp David as he characterized it at the time, this would mean Arafat had reversed core positions he has held since before the 1967 war. But of course Arafat's statement is meaningless propaganda.
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