"Fine, it is within their rights to demand whatever is theirs but it
is also sensible to take whatever you can for the time being while
bidding your time for more demands. But to adopt a policy of "all or
nothing" does not look like what statesmen are involved in. The
splitting of the Palestinian leadership into two weakened factions was
a terrible mistake made at a terrible time. There is the saying that a
child who is not mature enough to avenge his father's death do not go
about asking about who killed his father. That is simply common sense.
Yasser Arafat had a golden opportunity to head a truly independent
Palestinian state but he was more interested in being a martyr than
anything else. As a matter of fact, when he declared independence for
the state of Palestine in 1988, the international community supported
him and the General Assembly of the UN endorsed it. The UN action was
said to be a "historic benchmark for the sovereign State of Palestine
and its citizens." It gave the Palestinians the right to claim legal
rights over its territorial waters and air space as a sovereign state
recognised by Sharon. It is not every bait thrown at a goat that it
responds to. All these were advances on the legal status of the
Palestinian state which several years of semi-military struggle could
not achieve. It has already been observed that every military
encounter they entered into proved to be a considerable setback for
them. This should have alerted a smarter leadership to adopt other
options than intifadas that have only led them into greater defeats
and territorial losses."
Culled from Punch
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