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MIDEAST: Worse and Worser
Wednesday, July 17, 2002
(9:22 PM ET)
The Florida Times-Union / OPINION PAGE

If the voters oust Arafat, they probably will elect someone more militant.

New Palestinian leadership must emerge before the peace process can move forward.

Yasser Arafat either is responsible for the homicide bombings or is powerless to stop them. As long as he remains in power, there is little reason to think the killings will stop.

Even his "reforms" are suspect. He fired Jibril Rajoub, the influential leader of his West Bank security force, for example. An optimist would say Arafat was trying to restore order. A pessimist, however, might suggest the Hebrew-speaking Rajoub was dismissed because he had turned a group of Hamas terrorists over to the Israelis.

Ideally, Israel should depose of Arafat and replace him with someone committed to cracking down on the terrorists. As former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Jerusalem Post, letting Arafat remain in power is "akin to the United States cleaning up al-Qaida cells in Afghanistan while leaving the Taliban regime intact."
(More: Jacksonville.com News Source)
2002 © Florida Times-Union.

Dan