The important news in Powell's meeting today with Sharon was that he rejected a UN deployment, and instead suggested a small seployment of US troops.

The US should reject this outright as a non-starter.

First, what Sharon wants is at least to insure that all settlements in the West Bank and Gaza remain, and what he would prefer is freedom of action to expand the settlements. In that case the terorism, attacks on civilian targets, will continue, and US troops would be in the middle of them.

Second, as a matter of policy Israel is continuing its public relations attack on Arafat. Israeli spokesmen continue to try to tie Arafat to all terrrorist attacks. Arafat has only very limited control, even over Fatah, while Hamas, the Hezbollah and PIJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) are almost entirely outside his control.

Israeli spokesmen uniformly fail to mention that Israel has never lived up to any of the commitments it has made about stopping the construction of new settlements, commitments including the Camp David Accords. What came first, the terrorism, or the new settlements? The new settlements. Israeli spokemen also delicately fail to mention Sharon's tank attacks on Arafat and the Palestinian Aurhority for the last year and a half.

The mistake is to focus US policy on the current Israeli assault. Focus instead on the settlements, and issue demands to Sharon tying US aid to how Sharon handles this issue.

Don't let Sharon take the diplomatic initiative, as what he will propose will be in what percieves as Israel's interest, which may or may not coincide with US interests in this region and elsewhere.

ep

ep