Arafat won’t go to D.C.

By Jon Dougherty

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 yesterday, 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.

Jon Dougherty

Jon E. Dougherty is a Missouri-based political science major, author, writer and columnist. Follow him on Twitter. Read more of Jon Dougherty's articles here.