After Arafat;There is little to suggest Sharon will seize this chance

Ewen MacAskill
Friday November 12, 2004
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,10551,1349611,00.html

>>There are two basic scenarios for what will happen to the Palestinians in the post-Arafat era: the optimistic and the pessimistic.

>>The optimistic one, and it is extremely optimistic, goes like this. Sharon has lost his excuse for not negotiating with the Palestinians: that Arafat was untrustworthy. His death opens the way for negotiations with his successors. Those successors, the present prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and the former prime minister, Mahmoud Abbas, now free from Arafat, will be able to maintain a reasonable level of order in the West Bank. With US, Egyptian and British help, they will build a police service capable of maintaining law and order and, if necessary, suppressing Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the two main Islamist groups.

>>The pessimistic scenario - and it is seldom possible to be too pessimistic about this conflict - begins with the Gaza withdrawal. If the Palestinians keep up attacks and Hamas fires more and better rockets into Israel the government will not leave, or if it has left, will go back in. It will keep soldiers along the Egyptian border and not allow the Palestinians to have their own port and airport.

>>As long as there are sizeable numbers of settlers in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, there is no prospect of peace. Arafat was an obstacle to lasting peace. But so, too, is Sharon. He could afford to be magnanimous, but there is nothing in his record of involvement with the Palestinians to suggest he will be.<<

-Ewen MacAskill is the Guardian's diplomatic editor