Posted on 04/13/2002 6:06:26 PM PDT by Pokey78
EARLY on Friday morning, Colin Powell sat down to breakfast with Ariel Sharon in the cavernous reception room at the Israeli prime minister's Jerusalem residence.
As they surveyed the spread of freshly baked bread, olives, salad, fruit and sardines - Sharon's favourite - the two former military men chatted.
Then out of the blue, as Mr Powell tucked in, Mr Sharon handed him a collection of gruesome photographs showing mangled Israeli victims of recent suicide bomb attacks, as always blamed squarely on the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat.
"The Secretary of State could not finish his breakfast," said one Israeli official, with a hint of satisfaction.
An hour later, Mr Powell was sitting around another table in the residence with a group of ministers representing the parties in Israel's broad-based coalition government, gathered to present a united and formidable front for the visitor.
Effi Eitam, a controversial "hawk", who had only been a member of the cabinet for a few days, turned to Mr Powell and said forcefully: "You have had seven months in Afghanistan and you have not finished your work. We only want eight weeks for our military operation, so why not let us finish the job?"
David Levy, the rough-edged former foreign minister, was also in combative mood.
"Sometimes we hear from people in the States that the Israeli prime minister is divided from his people, but I can tell you he was elected by the majority of Israelis and now we are all behind him.
"The world tells us that Arafat was elected by the Palestinian people and because of that we do not have the right to fight against his terror. Let me remind you that Saddam Hussein was also elected. Does that mean that you cannot fight against Saddam?"
As the Israelis gave full vent to their anger, Mr Powell sat back and listened, like a dazed man who has strayed into a minefield.
Later, as he emerged into the bright sunshine for a press conference, a chastened Mr Powell had dropped the confrontational tone adopted by Washington in previous days, which had seen President Bush demanding an "immediate withdrawal" of the Israeli army from Jenin and other West Bank Palestinian towns.
Instead, Mr Powell emphasised his close "personal friendship" with Mr Sharon as the Israeli leader glowed with satisfaction beside him. When the nervous Hebrew translator inadvertently referred to the "United States of Israel", there were knowing smiles all round.
The world had been expecting Mr Powell to wield the big stick against Israel, but the Gulf War commander was forced to admit that he had received no "specific answer" on the timing for a military withdrawal from Mr Sharon - if indeed he had even asked for one.
As he proceeded with his schedule, the news networks were buzzing with calls from Palestinian and Arab leaders urging him to visit Jenin, where reports had been swelling about a "massacre" inside the area sealed off from the outside world by the Israeli army.
Instead, the entourage moved on to a Jerusalem hotel for a meeting with Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, Israel's grizzled Defence Minister. Then it was on to a nearby helipad for a flight to the base of the Israeli army's Northern Command in Safed, near the Lebanese border.
As he was leaving, the mobile phones belonging to Mr Ben-Eliezer's aides began shrilling. Nidal Daraghmeh, a young woman from Jenin, had just detonated an explosives belt around her waist at the entrance to a crowded market.
The defence minister turned to Mr Powell: "You see, this is the reception the Palestinians give you."
Instead of flying directly north, Mr Powell's Black Hawk helicopter headed west, swooping over Jaffa Street and circling for some minutes over the site of the latest bombing. Wailing ambulances and scrambling emergency workers were clearly visible below.
The solemn party then proceeded, skirting around the ruined refugee camp in Jenin, en route for the northern border. On the ground, Hizbollah guerrillas obliged the visitors with a mortar barrage at Israeli positions.
Mr Powell's visit was in a spin and he appeared sombre as he reflected on his "sobering briefing" from the Israeli Northern Command.
It had come at the end of a sobering week, in which he had been exposed to the full force of the Middle East maelstrom.
At his first stop, the young king of Morocco had impudently asked why he was visiting his country when he should be in Jerusalem, suggesting that the Americans were buying time for Israel's military operations.
At his next stop, angry Egyptians had told him that Mr Arafat was the "only address" for the Palestinians and a meeting with the Palestinian leader was imperative. It was the same message from the Europeans and the United Nations.
At the beginning of his mission, the Americans had been undecided as to whether Mr Powell would meet the Palestinian leader; within a couple of days, as the Arab streets boiled with rage, it had been confirmed that he would.
The Israelis had reluctantly even agreed to allow food to be delivered into Mr Arafat's compound, restored the electricity supply and promised to pull back the tanks, at least temporarily.
A US official explained: "Mr Powell refuses to be seen walking into Arafat's compound under the barrels of Israeli tanks." All the while, Mr Sharon was protesting that the decision to go ahead with the meeting was a huge "mistake".
Many Israeli officials had predicted another suicide bombing. Barely a day into the Powell visit, their fears were confirmed.
It was instantly obvious that the meeting arranged between Mr Powell and Mr Arafat for Saturday could not go ahead, and that the Palestinian leader would have to condemn the bombing if it were to happen at all.
A State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, did not mince his words: "It is important that Chairman Arafat not miss this opportunity to take a clear stand against violence that harms the Palestinian cause," he said.
The message from American officials was that Mr Arafat had 24 hours to decide how he would respond to the suicide bombing.
Senior Palestinian officials had been saying all week that the meeting with Mr Powell was hugely important to Mr Arafat, isolated and besieged in his ruined compound.
But with the intensity of Palestinian fury reaching unprecedented levels, officials were suggesting it would be difficult to denounce unequivocally an act of rage against the Israelis that had already been welcomed by many of his followers.
Nabil Abu Rudaineh, Mr Arafat's senior adviser, accused the Americans of trying to impose a one-sided ceasefire, skewed in Israel's favour, and said scathingly: "The Americans want the Palestinians to declare a condemnation of the [suicide] operation and describe it as a terror act which would give the Israeli massacres in Jenin and Nablus legitimacy."
Arafat, however, has publicly distanced himself from terrorism before and was prepared to do so again. By the end of yesterday, the Americans' hopes that Mr Arafat would give them just enough leeway to announce a rescheduled meeting had been fulfilled.
If the two men were not talking face to face today, Mr Powell's mission would have been seen as a failure, perhaps with disastrous consequences.
The Israeli media had already written of Mr Powell's visit as "Zinni 2", a reference to General Anthony Zinni, the US special envoy for the Middle East who has achieved little on his three missions to the Middle East since December.
The Palestinians, meanwhile, had given warning that if the Americans ignored their position and allowed the Israelis to continue with their campaign on the West Bank, there would be even greater bloodshed. For his part, Mr Powell was confronting the prospect of a severe loss of face.
The Americans scrambled to fill the void left by the scrapped Arafat meeting. Mr Powell's aides did their best to present his decision to meet international aid workers as a forceful intervention.
On Friday, Mr Powell had completely sidestepped the disaster unfolding in Jenin, Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns. Now, apparently, it was uppermost in his mind.
To the bewilderment of journalists travelling with him, it was announced that he was going to meet Red Cross officials and local religious leaders, even though it was not immediately clear who, when or where. "There has been too much suffering on both sides," his official spokesman intoned.
For all the State Department's face-saving, however, Mr Powell had looked strained and despondent at a hastily arranged meeting with all the Christian patriarchs in Jerusalem yesterday morning in the residence of the American consul general, refusing to comment even to the travelling State Department media corps.
As burly security men escorted his immense black armoured Cadillac into the garden of the residence, it emerged that, besides meeting aid organisation workers an hour later, he had no further plans for the day.
"At this moment we are examining what we are going to do," Mr Powell said, leaving all interested parties still not much wiser.
Today, however, Mr Powell has a firm date in the diary with Mr Arafat, rescuing his mission from complete failure. That the meeting will lead to lasting progress in the peace process looks unlikely.
I'm not sure if I trust the source, but I sure hope that this story is true. It's about time that somebody told Colon Bowel what's what. The guy doesn't have the intelligence and principles to figure it out on his own.
Give me a frickin' break. If the Israelis wanted to commit a massacre, they would never have sent troops into Jenin. They would have just gotten their artillery close enough to shell the place and hit the place with 500 lb. bombs carried by their F-15s and F-16s.
A little severe don't you think? He may be be trying too hard but stupid he ain't!
Oh my, I am afraid. NOT.
Perhaps it would have been best for Powell to walk among the broken glass and body parts, to smell that smell and to REMEMBER what this is all really about.
I tend to agree with you. For a military man, a hawk he is not. But ... anyone can understand the realities of war!
I don't think Colin Powell is as bad as some Freepers seem to think. He is a team player who has never exceeded his instructions from President Bush, as far as we know. And although I have been criticizing both of them in the forum over the past couple of weeks, we need to understand that they are now entering uncharted waters, where no U.S. government has ever gone before. No previous president, Republican or Democrat, has ever given Israel a free hand, although they have occasionally--and very briefly--gone ahead and done what needed to be done. And there has been no open war between the West and Islam for a very long time.
It really is an awesome responsibility to risk the growing anger of a billion people. Yet more and more it looks as if we have no choice. Weakness will only encourage more violence. The only alternative would be to pull a clinton and back down, buying a little more time but making matters worse in the long run; and when push comes to shove Bush isn't going to back down.
Our "intelligence" services have severely underperformed for years. Even domestically, look at WACO...I can't believe that the cause of the raid was a report of dummy grenades by United Parcel Service. Then they put a huge raid together with NO LOCAL INTEL!!!
Clinton's Administration suffered grief for 8 years on that screwup!!
Things don't seem to have gotten much better, INTEL wise.
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