Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has said he won’t make a trip to Washington, D.C., next month to make another attempt to patch up relations with the state of Israel, though he had said earlier he would go if he did not have to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
Arafat, according to Palestinian press sources today, had already said he would attend the meeting, requested by President Clinton as a way to jump start the fading Arab-Israeli peace process before he leaves office in January.
It was unclear why Arafat changed his mind, but earlier in the day, the militant group Hamas warned Arafat against traveling to the United States because it suspected a “conspiracy aimed at aborting the Intifada of al-Aqsa [mosque].”
“We affirm that our people, who offered more than 140 martyrs and over 5,000 wounded, will not in any way accept that the price of this blood be the return of the head of the authority to the negotiating table or to improve his negotiating conditions,” Hamas said in a statement.
Earlier in the day, the White House said Clinton had spoken to Arafat and Barak about meeting with each of them once more but separately, unlike the talks he hosted between the two leaders in June at Camp David, Md.
Observers from both camps said many of the same problems Barak and Arafat were unable to work out in June — and for months before the June meeting — remained just as divisive as they have always been.
In its statement, Hamas repeated that carrying out its holy war against Israel — along with “popular resistance” from Palestinians — was “the only road to defend the sanctities, restore Palestinian rights and fight the occupation.”
In a separate report, the Washington Post said Arafat had aligned himself with Hamas and the Islamic Jihad — another militant Muslim group — forming a “tactical” partnership with group members he once had jailed.
“With the Palestinian intifada, or uprising, now three and a half weeks old and showing few signs of abating, Mr. Arafat has given a seat at the decision-making table to political leaders of the Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Front, which is also known as Hamas, according to leaders of those two groups and Israeli officials,” the paper said.