Clinton blames Arafat for peace-talk failure

By Aaron Klein

In his autobiography “My Life” being released Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton blames Yasser Arafat for the collapse of the 2000 Camp David peace summit, and writes that Arafat was confused, not in command of the facts, and no longer on the top of his game, according to a New York Times review published Sunday.

Seasoned Mideast observers and politicians have been awaiting the release of the book, which Clinton has hinted contains many pages of his experiences trying to broker peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

Clinton has already publicly blamed Arafat for his failure to respond to Israeli peace proposals at Camp David, and instead returning to Ramallah to start a terror war against the Jewish State.

Vice President Dick Cheney recently described how Clinton, on Bush’s Inauguration Day, “talked repeatedly all day long about his disappointment in Yasser Arafat, how Arafat had, in effect, torpedoed the peace process.”

Clinton writes at length about his awareness that terrorism was a growing threat, but reportedly does not talk about the consequences of his administration’s decisions to pressure Sudan to expel Osama bin Laden in 1996 – sending the al-Qaida leader to Afghanistan, where he was harder to track – or Clinton’s decisions to lob a few cruise missiles at symbolic targets in Sudan and Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy bombings in 1998, an act many terrorism experts believe fueled bin Laden’s convictions that he could mount Sept. 11 without serious consequence to al-Qaida.

Aaron Klein

Aaron Klein is WND's senior staff writer and Jerusalem bureau chief. He also hosts "Aaron Klein Investigative Radio" on Salem Talk Radio. Follow Aaron on Twitter and Facebook. Read more of Aaron Klein's articles here.