Ex-PA Mnister: Arafat Missed Chance At Camp David

04 Sep, 2002 by John Hawkins

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Ex-PA minister: Arafat missed chance at Camp David: I find this to be very interesting…

“Former Palestinian Authority cabinet minister Nabil Amer published a letter Tuesday addressed to PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, holding him responsible for the state of chaos in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and accusing him of missing an opportunity to reach a deal at Camp David.

“Were we sincere about what we did? Were we right in what we did? No, we were not. After two years of bloodshed, we are now calling for what we rejected. Perhaps because now we realize that it is impossible to achieve.”

But wait a second, haven’t the Palestinian apologists been trying to telling us that the Camp David deal was so rotten that the Palestinians couldn’t possibly have accepted it? Yet here is a former Arafat cabinet minister who not only says they should have taken the offer, but also says he is partially to blame for it’s failure.

Furthermore, have you considered what convinced, “one of the main defenders and spokesmen of the PA and Arafat,” to turn on Arafat like this? I think Amer’s attitude adjustment, Arafat’s unpopularity, the decline in terrorist attacks, the upcoming elections (we hope), and the increasing popularity of peace are all a direct result of what I think of as “Operation Defensive Shield 2” and Bush’s big speech about the requirements for a Palestinian state. Once the pandering stopped and once the Palestinians realized that terrorism was an IMPEDIMENT to getting a state instead of something that would help them achieve a state faster, things started to change for the better. I’ll grant you that there is a long way to go and that progress is slowly inching forward but at least they’re going in the right direction for the first time since the latest Intifada started back in late 2000.