"While many would like to predict otherwise, Arafat's departure from power or life is unlikely to have any substantial impact on the discourse of Palestinian politics or the dynamics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict."

Patently untrue. If a leader emerges to replace Arafat, namely one whose hands are not stained with the blood of innocent Israelis, the Sharon government is willing to negotiate for peace. They won't negotiate with Arafat simply because he makes promises of peace in English, then turns around and orders more homicide bombers in Arabic. He's two-faced, untrustworthy, and a mass murderer, so the Israelis have no reason to negotiate with him.

"A new, immediate diplomatic effort toward the Middle East must start by requiring the Israelis to withdraw troops from Palestinian towns and dismantling of checkpoints that restrict the movement of students, workers and medical teams."

It could start there. Or it could start by requiring the Palestinians to stop funding terrorist operations and using ambulances to transport bombs across the Green Line.

"Doctors believe this had serious effects on his mental capacity."

That assumes he had his menatl capacity before he got sick.

The man is a two faced leader. On one hand he talks peace, on the other he does nothing to stop the fighting.

There will never be peace in this part of the world as long as people believe that heaven awaits them for killing inocent people.

As to Israelis removing check points or leaving Palestinan towns.... why? The flood gates would open for more terriots to get to heaven quicker and easier by killing more.

Bush will begin work on this conflict for one simple reason. Tony Blair...he has had Bush's back through everything he has done, upsetting many of his people. Blair is calling on Bush, and Bush will be the man he is and do what needs to be done. This will be a very interesting situation very soon.

Now that Arafat is out of the way for good, maybe there will be a chance for a real and lasting peace in Israel.

Tony Blair may be the man to push for continuation of negotiations, but you better hope they come up with somehting better than that rediculous "road map" to no where.

Tony Blair has no credibility in the Middle East. You want someone with credibility and gravitas? How about Bill Clinton?

Think about it. He's nowhere near as liberal as the reactionary conservatives on campus would have you believe, and he's nowhere near as conservative as the reactionary liberals on campus would have you believe. He nearly brokered a peace deal four years ago and only failed because Arafat is a bloodthirsty genocidal maniac. Now that Arafat is about to die, Clinton may be able to get Arafat's replacement to agree to the same deal, which would have given the Palestinians almost everything they want. Let's face it, they don't deserve everything they want -- they should have to compromise with Israel, which also wouldn't get everything it wants. That would be a fair deal, and Clinton can get it done. It would also be a good way for President Bush to extend an olive branch to Democrats and begin to heal the tremendous rift he created over the past four years.

I suppose then that the terrorist bombings are a secret plan by Palestinians to bring about peace?
Explain to me why Israelis would WANT to subvert a peace process.
Polls done by a leading Palestinian professor who came onto campus here last year said that according to his polls, 70& of Israelis want peace, and 70% of Palestinians want peace! The difference, 70% of Israelis thought that other Israelis want peace, while only 33% of Palestinians thought other Palestinians want peace.
It shows that both sides want peace (and extremists are ruining it for both). Yet, until whatever the social issues are that prevent Palestinians from realizing that their brothers and sisters and mothers too want peace, they are going to keep allowing extremists to ruin the situation.
Israel can no longer wait for this to resolve itself, so they are doing two things. They are creating a barrier between the two places (like any other country in the world), and it helps prevent terrorism, it saves peoples lives.
And, they are disengaging from the Gaza and many parts of the West Bank. It is not an ideal solution, but it will prevent terrorism, and it will give Palestinians a chance to run their own state.
Fayyad breeds unrest and even hate. Why not support peace instead of supporting instability?????
I don't think Fayyad would ever support a peace plan, unless it called for Israel being pushed into the sea.
The honus is not on bush this time Fayyad, it is on Palestinians to run a state in the Gaza that works--and to stand up for peace when extremists on your side devalue it.
Inflammatory words like Fayyads will never bring peace.

A two state solution along what clinton proposed or the road map offers are no longer viable.
The solution has to be a binational state that constitutes of a federal union between a palestine and an Israel, with opne borders, that are drawn accoring to the population distribution.
Gaza is not anywhere near enough to start a

Oh, if only the Palestinians would do this, if only they would just let the Israelis railroad them, the world would be better, blah, blah, blah. Wake up people. There are two sides to every argument. Israel is not innocent here.

When Arafat was given the deal brokered by Clinton in 2000, what you clueless people must have missed was that Ehud Barak made impossible requests and made no effort to give the Palestinians any major concessions.

If you think Israelis are the victims, maybe it would help you to put yourself in the Palestinians' shoes. Consider this: Military personnel come to your nice suburban home and tell you that they have this holy book that tells them that the land you live on is theirs. They threaten your life if you don't cooperate.

As Americans, we would simply tell these guys to beat it, and call the cops, but guess what? This is what happened to the Palestinians. This is why so many fled to the surrounding countries, and this is why they are not leaving without a fight. Palestinians have no cops to defend them, and the UN is certainly not going to help out, since they established Israel in the first place. Basically, Palestinians have no choice but to take matters into their own hands.

Every single day, without fail, Israeli soldiers and missiles kill about 10 Palestinians, including Bush's beloved phrase of "men, women, and children." Of the 4000 total deaths this year, 3500 were Palestinian. That's a ratio of 7 to 1!!!

So, please tell the Palestinians to sit back like Bush while Palestinian children are shot in the throat while leaning out of a balcony or are beheaded by an Israeli missile.

Tell them to ignore the fact that their houses are bulldozed because a suspected terrorist lives next door or their next-door neighbor's son is arrested because he threw ROCKS at an Israeli TANK. Is it that Israeli soldiers are afraid of rocks, or is it merely that the Palestinian kid showed that he wasn't going to put up with the Israeli presence?

Don't believe me? Read Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know, edited by Roy Gutman and published in 1999. You can find it at both the College and Memrial libraries. In the book, you'll find evidence that Israel is violating many international laws. It is also in violation of over seventy United Nations laws, and the list goes on...

After you read the shocking revelations, then tell the Palestinians not to resist the fact that they're being imprisoned in a concentration camp, a fact that was terrible for the Jews, but is acceptable for Palestinians because they are considered gentiles.

Do you all have any idea what the Palestinians are dealing with here? Jews believe that they're the chosen ones, and that all other people are gentiles, or non-Jews, people who are basically thought of as cattle.

According to Merriam-Webster Online, racism is "a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race."

Now, I'm not saying that all Jews are this way. I've had my share of nice Jewish friends. It's those Zionists and the fundamentalist Jewish Orthodoxy who believe they deserve everything in the world, and everyone else can be "pushed into the sea" as one responder wrote. To me, their behavior is the epitome of racism.

Israel accuses the Palestinians of killing their civilians. The fact of the matter is that Israeli men and women, for the most part, aren't civilians. They are all trained soldiers, taught the latest torture techniques, such as using rubber-coated bullets to break children's bones and firing missiles into buildings housing dozens of families.

More importantly, however, they are living on stolen land. What made the Israelis go there in the first place? What made them think that they could just steal people's land and not get their just desserts? Only a fool would think otherwise. To use the David and Goliath analogy, David is Palestine and Goliath is Israel, and we all know that David's fatal ROCK brought down the giant that was Israel, er, Goliath.

So, the next time you hear a news report on those bad Palestinians, stop and think about what you would do if you had to "walk a mile in their shoes."

To whoever who wrote that last long piece--
I was with you, especially about how Israelis soldiers into Palestinian homes---except when you started talking about stolen land.
Give me a break. There have been wars upon wars initiated upon Israel from its neighbors, and Israel won...but it is stolen?
Israel did not initiate these wars. Israel does not initiate terrorist bombings.

But they happen. And now Israel is fighting back. Yes. They would rather go into a home and wake people up than let people get killed.

They are fighting back, in the same way you said a Palestinian child is.

Either way, disengagement is occuring. Let's see if Palestinians can create a working state.

so, how are you with the previous post, or that's just a nice line to get some credibility before you start your blather. If you are Jewish, or another Zionist in support of Israel in the US, Get over your self, you have no business instigating the fighting any longer, I know you don't care about the 4000 palestinians dieing, but how about the 500 israelis, are they a justifiable price for your ideological bankrubcy_