The Bad Ship Arafat
This Washington Post editorial on the subject of Arafat's ship full of Iranian weapons appears to have been written in Cloudcuckoo Land (or at least in the European Union):
Like Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, [Hamas] sees this episode as a way to block what had been a slow march toward a renewal of peace talks, nudged along by U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni. If the process ever went forward, Hamas would be bottled up and critically weakened... Mr. Arafat owes the world a credible explanation. He probably won't offer one, which means that he and his government will have to begin from the beginning to separate themselves from terrorism, implement a cease-fire and offer Israel the prospect of serious negotiations.
European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana says that he hopes the weapons ship incident will not scuttle peace talks. The peace efforts, says a U.S. official, will not be derailed. "The Zinni mission will continue, ship or no ship."Posted by Dr. Frank at January 12, 2002 12:13 AM | TrackBackThis is madness. The ship is not an incident. The ship is not an accident. The ship is an announcement, inadvertent and therefore indisputable, of Arafat's duplicitous intentions: a temporary truce -- as he girds for war, a far wider, deadlier, more explosive war.
What to do? Dare to face the truth. Arafat is not a peace partner. Any truce Gen. Anthony Zinni gets him to sign will have the same durability as the dozens of truces Arafat signed while destroying Lebanon in the 1970s.