Last week's suicide bombings in Israel strengthened President Bush's resolve to seek the removal of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian leadership, White House officials said after the American leader’s speech.
"When you're disappointed time and time again with the Palestinian leadership, and when time and time again you have evidence that they are not doing what they can to fight terror ... you have to come to the conclusion that you're going to have to have new leadership if you're going to make progress," a U.S. official told Reuters. The official spoke to reporters at a White House briefing.
Bush on Monday backed creating a provisional Palestinian state, but only if there is a "different Palestinian leadership" -- a clear rejection of Arafat.
The speech was delayed by two Palestinian suicide bombings in Jerusalem last week that killed 26 Israelis. The violence reshaped Bush's speech from a summary of several weeks of consultations on the Middle East into a strongly worded call for change, officials said.
Another U.S. official said: "It was time to lay things out, because the situation in the Middle East was untenable" "The violence did change the character of this speech," the official said. "It also crystallized again the fact that the disappointments that we've had with the Palestinian leadership -- finally you have to say something has to change."
She declined to say whether U.S. officials would deal directly with Arafat pending his replacement, saying only that the issue of leadership change was bigger than any individual.
Another official said Washington had been increasingly emphasizing a need for institutional reform among Palestinians, but the recent violence gave "new impetus" to Washington's disappointment with Arafat.
"The president really feels strongly that one of the key jobs of a leader is to offer hope. And he reached the conclusion that the only hope for Israel to live in security and for Israeli citizens to live free from fear, and the only hope Palestinians to have a vibrant economy is for a new, responsible partner to emerge with whom Israel can work," she said. (Albawaba.com)
© 2002 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
