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Palestinians Must Face Up to Hamas, Arafat

(Detroit Free Press) - Secretary of State Colin Powell As long as Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad can just sit back and make their own judgment as to whether they think things are going well or not and decide whenever they wish to that they're going to blow up another bus full of children and bring the whole thing to a halt again - until the Palestinians take on that challenge and say to them "No, enough of that. This is no longer an acceptable way to achieve our political objectives. We will never get a Palestinian state as long as we try to do it by blowing up innocent people. We're blowing up the dreams of our own people." And until the Palestinian leadership takes on that challenge, we can have conferences, we can have plans, we can have proposals, we can have timelines, but it will be very difficult to go forward. We painfully came to the conclusion that Chairman Arafat was not a partner for peace. The Israelis had come to that conclusion some time ago. President Clinton came to that conclusion at the very end of his administration. The last day of his administration he called me about Yasser Arafat and how a great deal had been put before him and he didn't take it. I went into the Muqata'a and I sat there across from him when he had a machine gun on his desk and told him that you've got to change or I'm not going to be able to deal with you. He didn't change. Arafat is still seen by the Palestinian people as their leader. But the Palestinian people have to start looking at what that leadership has gotten them. It's not gotten them one day closer to the Palestinian state.
2003-09-30 00:00:00
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