Tuesday, May 13, 2003

Another Eurocrat who thinks only Israel needs to be strongarmed into accepting the 'road map'.

Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou, whose country holds the rotating E.U. presidency, took up where U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell left off a day earlier, meeting Tuesday with Israeli and Palestinian leaders to push the " road map."

But while Powell went to the desert oasis of Jericho to meet new Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas Abbas, pointedly snubbing Arafat, who is virtually trapped in his West Bank office in Ramallah, Papandreou went to Ramallah, met Abbas, and then saw Arafat.

Israel and the U.S. are boycotting Arafat, charging that he is involved with Palestinian terrorism. European nations reject that approach, saying that Arafat remains a key player in Mideast diplomacy.

"We want to live in peace with our neighbor Israel and this is our clear decision," Arafat said, adding that he and Papandreou "have agreed on the necessity to make the Israelis accept the road map in order to push the peace process ahead."

Abbas didn't make a statement, but Papandreou said he believed the new premier "is determined to go ahead with reforms and the necessary creation of a strong state structure that can govern and impose law and order in the Palestinian areas."

Papandreu despite every bit of evidence to the contrary stands by while Arafat lies through his teeth and without even speaking to Abbas chooses to state what he thinks he knows about him.

Papandreou said the international Quartet that unveiled the peace plan last month, which also includes the U.N. and Russia, "expects from Israel specific steps according to the road map, as this is the only way to go forward."

And evidence of the Palestinians' adherence to the 'peace process'? Stopping terrorism? Denouncing those in power who call for the destruction of Israel? He'll have none of that apparently. You see, it is only the Israelis standing in the way of peace.

The Israeli leader has suggested in the past, though never formally, that the Palestinians could have about half of the West Bank, composed of disconnected islands of land, as an interim solution for many years.

The Palestinians have rejected the idea, saying they are entitled to all the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem, the areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war.

That's an outright lie. Not one Palestinian leader accepts only East Jerusalem. And as always the report never wonders exactly what constitutes the 'Occupied Territories'. Papandreou only needed to stop fawning over Arafat and take a passing glance at the map in his office. There is no Israel. Everything from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea is marked as the 'Occupied Territories'. And still this pompous ignorant fool thinks it is the Israelis who stand in the way of peace.

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