| On the eve of the elections, Bill Clinton still hopes to save the Middle East settlement Three weeks before the election of a successor, US President Bill Clinton canceled events in support of his deputy Gore, traveling instead to Egypt. In Sharm el-Sheikh on the shores of the Red Sea, Clinton hopes to save the face of American diplomacy, which received a resounding slap in the face from its Middle Eastern clients. The disagreements between Arabs and Jews over Jerusalem went so far that they put the Middle East on the brink of a new war and actually erased all the many years of peacemaking achievements of the Clinton administration.
The presidents of Egypt and the United States persuaded Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and the head of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, to talk about peace again, although no one is optimistic. “It’s good that Arafat and Barak agreed. But the road ahead is difficult,” Clinton admitted the day before. The summit could collapse at any minute, so there are few people willing to share the laurels of a peacemaker with Clinton. The Russian Foreign Ministry did not know yesterday whether Igor Ivanov would go to Egypt. Just yesterday afternoon the minister was not going there and was preparing for a planned visit to Romania.
Even if Barak and Arafat themselves are inclined to new compromises, their own comrades will not allow them to do this. The Israeli opposition is confident that the problem must be solved by force. The Arabs use the Lebanese organization Hezbollah as an example for Arafat. In May, it used force to achieve the withdrawal of Israeli troops from southern Lebanon, and has now resumed operations. A member of the Lebanese parliament from Hezbollah, Sheikh Hussein Al-Haj Hassan, confirmed to our newspaper that “the Israeli colonel stolen yesterday by Hezbollah, together with the three soldiers taken earlier, will be a means of putting pressure on Israel, which has not withdrawn troops from all of Lebanon and is holding prisons for Hezbollah activists. It is also an expression of solidarity with the Palestinians." Although the Israelis did not confirm the capture of the officer, the deputy assured that “the operations will continue, and we are ready to explain to the mediators the conditions for the release of the hostages.”
The aggravation on the border with Lebanon became for many in Israel proof that the policy of concessions leads to new demands. Only a miracle can save the face of American diplomacy. Elena SUPONINA |
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