Bill's Comment Page

Today, at long last, Yasser Arafat has broadcast in Arabic on Palestinian television a condemnation of suicide (aka 'homicide' pace Bush, it seems) bombing, at the insistence of US Secretary of State Colin Powell. Powell had 'postponed' his meeting with Arafat, earlier tentatively scheduled for today, and it was widely interpreted as indicating his fury that Arafat had delayed broadcasting such a condemnation of terrorism, despite repeated calls to do so by President Bush over the past couple of weeks.

Now it is announced that the Powell/Arafat meeting will take place tomorrow (Sunday), and it is to be hoped that this won't prove a complete waste of time. Powell's meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Sharon does seem to have have been a pretty complete, if not a total, waste of time. The pretence that the Israeli authorities had US approval for what they are doing in the West Bank now seems to have been dropped, fortunately.

Most Israelis, one assumes, wish to live in peace and harmony in a country which is recognised to have a right to exist in the middle east, and it is perfectly clear that, until the recent peace proposals from Saudi Arabia, many Arab nations (including Saudi Arabia) did not really accept that Israel had a right to exist. However, it is extremely difficult to understand how this agenda can be advanced by the military activities of Israel in recent weeks. If Israel is in fact conducting its operations with due regard for the safety and dignity of most Palestinians, whilst 'going after' terrorists, it would be a great deal more persuasive if it stopped attempting to prevent impartial reporting of what is going on by the foreign media - firing stun grenades at journalists from respected foreign news media is definitely not the way to persuade people like me, generally sympathetic to Israel, that what it is doing is justified.