Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat has been sending a message to the world over the past few months: Despite being confined in his destroyed headquarters for a year and a half, he is still the only person that can make peace between Palestinians and Israelis. U.S.-led attempts to sideline Mr. Arafat have failed; as a result the "road map" to peace is in tatters. Mr. Arafat has proven far more adept at waging war than making peace, but he must be dealt with. No peace plan that ignores the longtime Palestinian leader can succeed.
U.S. President George W. Bush took office convinced that Mr. Arafat was an obstacle to an enduring settlement between Israelis and Palestinians. His administration blamed the Palestinian leader for torpedoing the deal brokered by President Bill Clinton in the waning days of his term. Moreover, the United States believed that Mr. Arafat was more interested in consolidating power -- even at the price of institutionalizing corruption and violence -- than in making peace. Wary of getting sucked into an intractable situation, the Bush administration turned its back on active peacemaking, hoping that the two sides would become exhausted by violence and return to the business of making peace.
The war against terror, and the planned invasion of Iraq, forced the U.S. to change tack. American credibility in the Arab world was seen to rest on a sustained effort to settle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Dutifully, Washington re-engaged. The U.S. maintained, however, that Mr. Arafat was part of the problem and that Palestinians needed a new leadership who was "not compromised by terror" and who would make democratic reforms that would permit the emergence of an independent state by 2005, as laid out in the road map established by the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the United Nations.