A senior Israeli official, listening to President Bush’s June 24 speech outlining U.S. policy on the Middle East, kept waiting to hear what pressure the U.S. was going to apply to Israel. He never heard it mentioned. “I thought all the way through the speech: this is the carrot, now comes the stick,” said the official. But “there was no stick.”
Long before George W. Bush began calling for reform of the Palestinian National Authority (and for Yasir Arafat’s ouster), a group of Palestinian lawmakers and researchers had outlined plans for creating a democratic society. The elected members of the Legislative Council, including Hanan Ashrawi, had been pressuring Arafat to accept their 1997 draft constitution, streamline his cabinet and set a date and procedures for new elections.