Where Arafat appears
208 total
of potential agreement. But the bulldog never took its eyes of our ankle. There was no escaping the fact that without addressing the question of our withdrawal from the Golan Heights, we weren’t going to get to the next stage. So a decision...
living room with one aim: to lock on to your ankle. You can throw fireworks, cookies, balloons, a tasty bone. But it’s a bulldog. It’s still going to move another step toward your ankle.” For Assad, the ankle was the Golan. I understood why...
licitly to honor Rabin’s “pocket deposit” on the Golan Heights. Still, in my formal remarks at the dinner, I urged both sides to resume our effort to negotiate an Israeli-Syrian agreement. Sharaa’s response was, again, unencouraging. But I...
…ontemplate such a thing. Which, I hastened to add, I was not. There was another idiosyncrasy I encountered in Arafat. He was constantly writing notes as we spoke. I didn’t mind that. But it did strike me as slightly diluting the kind of fra...
…Carlos’s palatial estates, and, for me, a first opportunity to meet not only Arab foreign ministers but Yasir Arafat. My first, brief encounter with Arafat began a bit embarrassingly. I’d arrived a few minutes early for the conference dinne...
…ad to ministers on the potential dangers inherent in the Oslo process as we moved forward. I pointed out that Arafat had made no move to rein in groups like Hamas, and that more Israelis had actually been killed by terror since Oslo than in...
ts to me, and I said he could repeat them here. It is right that he should raise them.” He said there was no need for ministers to agree with me, but that it was proper that the points I’d raised should be heard. Many clearly didn’t agree w...
se of our “pocket deposit” on the Golan. I realized that, having come this far with Oslo, neither he nor the government was likely to back away from approving the Gaza-Jericho accord. But he did say he thought the points I’d raised were imp...
…eli and a Palestinian. He agreed this needed to be addressed, although it was clear he intended to do so with Arafat, via the Americans, not by reopening and delaying the formal agreement. But I had a deeper concern about the entire Oslo Ag...
…ng. Despite Oslo, Palestinian attacks were continuing. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and other dissident factions saw Arafat’s concessions as treachery, and were setting out to drive home that point with violence. 257 * * * Yet as I approached my f...
…inst their resistance. Here, the other side will choose to make it easiest for us in the place it prefers. If Arafat thinks he’ll get more from the Bear and the Mouse than from the other talks, it’s hardly a surprise we’re finding that only...
…he process forward came from two men who were not there: on our side, Yossi Beilin, and for the Palestinians, Arafat’s trusted diplomatic adviser, and eventual successor, Mahmoud Abbas, or Abu Mazen. Since Rabin knew I was following the ost...
… to reach a political settlement with them. In one respect, the prospects looked slightly better than before. Arafat’s political position had been weakened: first by an intifada driven as much by local insurgents as by the PLO in faraway Tu...
elt all that would be challenging enough. But in Arik’s eyes, this was only part of a complete reordering of our conflict with the Arabs. He expected Gemayel’s Lebanon to openly align itself with Israel and expel all Syrian troops. As for t...
…m my first meeting with Arik and Raful, it became clear it was more than just a possibility. “Why the hell is Arafat still alive,” Arik snapped at us. He said that when he’d been commander of Unit 101, he’d never waited for the government t...
improper or immoral. In that case, I would have no hesitation in refusing. I said I viewed what we were being asked to do in Beirut not as an act of revenge, but a deterrent. It was a way of leaving no doubt in the minds of potential future...
ions, we would be operating in daytime. Now that nearly all our soldiers and officers had arrived, I began arranging the final line-up of attack teams. We would need six rather than four, since the new plan would give us access to the front...
within sight of the hijacked jet. Dayan also arranged for another Boeing 707, ostensibly to take the “freed prisoners” on to Cairo. “What then?” Ze’evi asked Dayan. “We’re not really going to put them on a plane and take off!” It was after...
… of imperative. 12 Bibi is right about one thing. The negotiating challenges have become more difficult since Arafat’s refusal of our offer at Camp David. Arafat is no longer alive. Palestinian politics have become ever more fragmented and...
… he’d ever met. He made no grand policy statements. Mostly, he asked me questions: what were the prospects of Arafat reining in Hamas and Islamic Jihad? How were our relations going with King Hussein? What was my view of the chances of conc...
