Where Arafat appears
208 total
…st several weeks ago we were prepared to go very far in order to put this entire conflict behind us. It is Mr Arafat who rejected the proposal, even as a basis for negotiations. Just a basis to seek peace. He then deliberately turned to ter...
t’s own influence was also inexorably on the wane by the time he passed away, in Paris, at the end of 2004, to be succeeded by Abu Mazen. I do not know of a single senior figure in Israel with any military experience who believes that we wo...
…vocating. He had endorsed the Bush Administration’s “road map” for resuming the peace process. Yet with Yasir Arafat ageing, ailing and even less inclined to consider the difficult decisions he had shirked at Camp David, Arik went one, dram...
…air shortly before the new intifada, he’d “implored me to block Mr Sharon’s plans” to visit the Temple Mount. Arafat didn’t raise the issue at all, and presumably knew that we had consulted his West Bank security chief to ensure it happened...
…ing mix of opinions garnered from an assortment of Americans, Europeans, Israelis and Palestinians, including Arafat himself, with the overall conclusion that Clinton and I had not offered as generous a deal as was assumed and that it was s...
…largest military operation on the West Bank since 1967. Israeli forces retook major Palestinian towns, placed Arafat under de facto siege in his headquarters in Ramallah and imposed curfews and closures. In June, the government formally app...
…l remained in a state of war with its Arab neighbors. For Labor and the political left, it was as if, despite Arafat’s repeated rejections of ever more forthcoming terms of peace, they still couldn’t bring themselves to believe he really me...
…etreat in the midst of Palestinian violence, and when Israel still faced key decisions on how to move on from Arafat’s unreadiness to negotiate an end to our decades-old conflict. 389 / BARAK / 104 I did regret being unable to rely on the s...
… the agreement would work on the ground. But none fell outside his parameters for a peace agreement. At first Arafat asked the Americans for more time. Then he went to Washington to see Clinton. There, he presented his “reservations”. They...
…t by Israel and the Palestinians of the right of refugees to return to a new Palestinian state. In Jerusalem, Arafat would have sovereignty over the entirety of the Old City except for the Jewish Quarter and, of course, the Western Wall and...
ding to do so was a decision that was probably easier for me than for other politicians. Privileged though I felt as Prime Minister to be able to pursue what I felt deeply were Israel’s national interests, the trappings of office were not t...
ing Arafat from evading his responsibility for making a deal impossible. I could also have wrongfooted my opponents by insisting that any early election be not just for a new Prime Minister but for a new Knesset, something very few existing...
…eace proposal. 384 / BARAK / 99 By the end of November, I believed that the chances of a peace agreement with Arafat were so microscopic as to border on non-existent, and that my own prospects for retaining sufficient support to be an effec...
…toneweall his efforts, and encourage the false narrative that Israeli “intransigence” was somehow frustrating Arafat’s readiness to make peace. The Palestinian campaign of violence was getting worse. An Islamic Jihad car bomb near Mahaneh Y...
were parameters he could accept. Arafat had said yes. I assume they expected me to say the same. But I told them I couldn’t give them an answer. What concerned me now was the violence. Until it was reined in, I would not be party to rewardi...
m, Arafat, King Abdullah of Jordan and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a summit in Sharm al-Sheikh, I agreed. We worked out a series of steps to disengage. Arafat was finally supposed to order the Palestinian Authority security forces a...
’t see a change in the patterns of violence in the next two days, we will regard this as a cessation by Arafat of the peace process.” That did, briefly, have an effect. When Clinton reinforced my message later in the day, Dennis told me tha...
…st several weeks ago we were prepared to go very far in order to put this entire conflict behind us. It is Mr Arafat who rejected the proposal, even as a basis for negotiations. Just a basis to seek peace. He then deliberately turned to ter...
…he understanding was that Madeleine would be in charge. Far from showing any willingness to end the violence, Arafat at first simply lied. He said the Palestinian violence was in response to an unprovoked assault by Israeli troops, and dema...
…ready to join in their efforts to try. About ten days into the new intifada, I attended a crisis meeting with Arafat, mediated by Madeleine Albright and Dennis Ross, at the US ambassador’s residence Paris. It was nominally under the aegis o...
