Word: yasser
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...Washington from Arab countries just as the U.S. is engaged in the delicate process of urging Israel and the Palestinians to negotiate a peaceful settlement concerning the occupation of the West Bank. Such action would also play directly into the hands of Israeli hard-liners. On Friday P.L.O. leader Yasser Arafat opened a congress in Tunis of Al Fatah, the P.L.O.'s chief guerrilla group, the first such meeting since 1980. The discussions may prove critical because Arafat's public declarations calling for negotiations with Israel have brought him under increasing pressure from more extreme elements in the P.L.O...
...politicians -- especially Middle Eastern politicians -- are wont to do, Shamir was fudging the facts. Jamil Tarifi, a West Bank lawyer associated with the P.L.O., confirmed the talks and implied that he would report on the meeting to P.L.O. chairman Yasser Arafat. By meeting with Tarifi, insisted Labor Party official Yossi Beilin, Shamir made the P.L.O. leader implicitly part of the bargaining process. Said Beilin: "That there is negotiation with the P.L.O. is quite clear...
...government," but invited Shamir to "retract" the appended conditions, which include barring East Jerusalem's 140,000 Palestinian residents from participating in the elections. The Bush Administration signaled its irritation by reviving talk of an international peace conference, an option repellent to Shamir. In a New York Times interview, Yasser Arafat, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, called the Likud stipulations a "deadly blow," but he did not torpedo the plan...
...ground, the rhetoric of peace counts for nothing. Few Israelis believe that the vast distance traveled by Yasser Arafat toward a credible negotiating position is anything but a ruse. The P.L.O.'s apparent readiness to bless a peace initiative whose salient points are at best ambiguous is dismissed as derisively as its earlier recognition of Israel's right to exist. The majority of Israeli Jews scorn as naive the possibility that the Palestinians may finally have decided to "settle" for something short of everything. How could they?, asks Yitzhak Shamir; the central problem has never changed: "We think the land...
That won't be easy. Arab officials all but pronounced the plan dead in its tracks. In Tunis, P.L.O spokesman Ahmed Abdul-Rahman said Shamir's conditions represent a "complete rejection of American and Palestinian efforts to bring about peace." P.L.O. Chairman Yasser Arafat did not comment publicly, but he was known to be concerned that Shamir's intransigence might trigger a fresh wave of violence in the occupied territories and cede the upper hand to radical elements within the P.L.O. who oppose Arafat's attempts to promote more moderate policies...