THE END OF ARAFAT?: We’re in an end-game here, aren’t we? However you feel about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it seems clear to me that Yassir Arafat is perilously close to being irrelevant. He can’t deliver peace, as we found out at Camp David. He can’t deliver even a semblance of order in the Palestinian territories, let alone Israel. So what use is he as an interlocutor or even protagonist in the bloody conflict? This piece in the Washington Post is as gloomy as it is hard-headed. Even Colin Powell is apparently refusing to lecture the Israelis on what they should do next. Here’s my prediction: a brutal finale that re-establishes some semblance of order in Israel and on the West Bank at the cost of even greater Palestinian bitterness and further conflict. Who’s responsible? Ultimately the majority of Palestinians who still cannot reconcile themselves to a viable Zionist entity in Palestine. They’d rather suffer and die and be pummeled than concede Israel’s right to exist. The tragedy is ultimately theirs.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2001

Answers

I waffle back and forth between Arafat's inability to negotiate (because the Fatah party doesn't represent enough of Palestine) and perhaps simply an unwillingness to negotiate honestly (perhaps holding out until the situation resolves itself by blowing up). It may be possible to test the first scenario by how many terrorists the PAs actually round up, and how long they bother to keep them. House arrest just doesn't have the same ring to me.

-- Anonymous, December 03, 2001