But the choice is really between the glory of greater Islam and the ordinary claims of Palestinians displaced when Israel was established in 1948. Arafat said after last summer's unsuccessful talks at Camp David that he could not sell out Arabs and would never come to an agreement over the disputed mountain in Jerusalem that Jews call Temple Mount.
At issue is the plight of about 4 million Palestinians in Diaspora, some of whom make quite a good living in the West and many others who are destined to misery in the refugee camps of Lebanon and the almost segregated Palestinian townships outside Kuwait. And their claim is deeper than the aspirations of a Palestinian state, going back to U.N. resolution 194, which called in 1948 that refugees may return to Israel to live peaceably with their neighbors.
The problem is that the 430,000 refugees the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics claim live in camps in south Lebanon, for example, can't possibly return to a state that is little more than the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank of the Jordan River. That state would have neither the financial resources nor the physical space to accommodate them. This is not to mention the 2.3 million Palestinians estimated to be living in Jordan or 465,000 living in Syria, according to the United Nations.
"If peace occurs, most of the people in these countries will confront a serious problem because they are not going back," said Anthony Cordesman, a Middle East analyst at Center for Strategic International Studies and former adviser to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
Politically, Arafat is under immense pressure. Even the usually moderate Fatah wing of the Palestinian National Authority party has expressed reservations about the gambit. Yasser Abed Rabbo, Palestinian minister of information, told reporters in Gaza Wednesday, "We can never accept the American proposals because accepting it means endangering the Palestinian people's fate and the future of every Palestinian child."
The plan would have to be adjusted, West Bank Fatah leader Hussein Al-Sheikh said Tuesday, so that Israel would agree "in principle that it is the right of every Palestinian to choose to return when they want," as a condition of an "historic compromise," according to Israel's leading daily newspaper Ha'Aretz.
Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat chairman for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland, said, "There is no way Arafat will sign off the 'right of return.'" Instead, Telhami sees Arafat agreeing that the property claims of Palestinians returning to Israel will not be an objective of a future Palestinian state.
But Arafat can negotiate a likely solution on compensation. Estimates for compensation range from $7 billion on the low end to as much as $40 billion, and will likely require significant payments from other nations, including the United States. It is unclear whether President-elect Bush will be inclined to make Palestinian refugee compensation a legislative priority when he takes the reins of the White House.
It is also unclear that even if there is a "framework agreement," a Bush foreign policy team would be inclined to follow up with the effort a refugee agreement with Israel would likely require.
"Right of return can mean a multitude of different things," says Jonathan Kessler, the editor of Middle East Insight. "The real issue is how this issue will be defined and delineated and laid out in a way, which is practical and manageable for the Israelis and still meet the minimum requirements of the Palestinians."
Kessler predicts that any framework agreement will still need to be worked through by parties after the transition of power in Washington.
Cordesman, for example, says it will take significant diplomatic efforts to work through questions over access to the Palestinian state for refugees, whether roads will be controlled by Israelis or the Palestinian Authority. Kessler predicts wrangling over the number of refugees that would be allowed to immigrate to a Palestinian state and over what time period. Either way these issues are likely to stretch into the next U.S. administration, but also the next Israeli one.
In February, Israelis will vote for a new prime minister. If Barak cannot win re-election, his primary challenger, Likud leader Ariel Sharon has indicated he would re-examine any agreement made with Americans. It was Sharon, after all, who effectively launched his bid for prime minister from the Temple Mount, the very site over which Clinton has asked the Israelis to relinquish sovereignty.
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