Word: oslo
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...Arafat's political demise will be welcomed with equal satisfaction by the Israeli right and by Palestinian militants. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have always opposed the Oslo peace process and have done their utmost to sabotage any moves to restore dialogue. Even much of the rank-and-file of Arafat's own Fatah have long-since given up on the potential for diplomacy to secure Palestinian national goals. The strategy of the militants will be to "Lebanize" the conflict, waging a long-term campaign of violence against Israeli soldiers and settlers in the West Bank and Gaza, combined with sending...
...damning admission also puts the lie to Hasan’s characterization of Arafat as an “incompetent” leader under pressure to control a situation that is out of his hands. Arafat may be many things, but he is hardly incompetent; since Oslo, he has balanced talk of peace with use of violence in a carefully calculated way. That the United States and European Union have only now begun to call his bluff testifies to Arafat’s skill at playing this bloody game...
...Israeli-Palestinian conflict reached new levels of barbarism this past week, nobody was talking about a peace agreement. The deal that almost came about last January is a distant memory, and so are the Oslo Accords, Sharm-el-Sheikh and the proposed Camp David agreements. Although Israelis and Palestinians need a breakthrough deal more desperately than ever before, the peace process continues to be held captive by Palestinian extremists and a trigger-happy Israeli military. According to many commentators, fault lies with the political elites. The more cynical argue that peace is impossible under the current Israeli and Palestinian leadership...
...Palestinian side, there are no clear-cut successors to Arafat, but there are a number of capable ones. Abu Mazen, the chief Palestinian negotiator of the Oslo accords, is a sure-footed leader who has experience working with Israeli leaders. Another emerging candidate is Sari Nusseibeh, president of al-Quds University, whom Arafat has nominated to direct Jerusalem affairs. While he lacks a political base, Nusseibeh is a darling of the West, where he is regarded as a voice of reason within the Palestinian Authority...
...opposition to Oslo kept Hamas from challenging Arafat in the 1994 elections for the PA. It did, however, challenge and resoundingly defeat Fatah in many student council elections in the West Bank and Gaza. Still, there was always dialogue between the PA and Hamas, and periodic uneasy, silent agreements between them. In 1996, Hamas unleashed a wave of deadly bombings that killed 60 Israelis in eight days, prompting Arafat to clamp down heavily - some 1,000 Palestinians were arrested and the PA even ousted Hamas from some of its mosques. Later, the organizations appear to have negotiated a modus vivendi...