Independent Palestinian State

In the wake of the Palestine Liberation Organization's peace agreement with Israel, a surprising majority of American Jews now favor allowing an independent Palestinian state to rise on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a nationwide survey has found. An overwhelming majority supports the peace agreement and Israel's decision to recognize the PLO. And a substantial majority supports U.S. economic aid to the Palestinians, the poll found.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced today that he would not seek reelection next year, citing a lack of U.S. support for his conditions for resuming peace talks with Israel. In a televised speech, the 74-year-old Palestinian leader said the move was not a tactic to bring more pressure on Israel, although his language appeared to leave room for a change of heart. Visibly tense, Abbas spoke hours after the Palestine Liberation Organization's executive committee heard his decision in a closed-door meeting and urged him to reconsider.

Re "Oasis of Understanding in Desert of Despair" by Kathleen Hendrix, April 12: Proposals for an Arab-Jewish dialogue and support of an independent Palestinian state, sounds just great! When are we going to hand over California to the Mexicans? AL GORDON Hollywood

Seeking to calm a public spat with Israel, U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell assured its leaders Tuesday that American support for the Jewish state was "unshakable." But he said the Obama administration stood by a goal the new Israeli government has yet to embrace: an independent Palestinian state.

Aziz Shehadeh, a prominent Palestinian attorney, was stabbed to death outside his home in Ramallah, in the West Bank about 10 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Shehadeh, 73, was a moderate who advocated coexistence with Israel. He was one of the first Arabs to urge creation of an independent Palestinian state as part of a peace agreement with Israel after the 1967 Mideast War. A radical Palestinian guerrilla group called Revolutionary Council of Fatah took responsibility for the slaying.

Israeli Foreign Minister Ariel Sharon said Wednesday that he believed any future independent Palestinian state should be strictly limited in its military potential and foreign ties and should be hemmed in by Israel. Speaking before the Institute for Foreign Relations, a French think tank, Sharon gave what aides said were his most detailed thoughts to date on the geographical outline of two buffer zones that he believes would have to exist on either side of the West Bank.

In your Aug. 9 editorial, you describe Israel allowing Palestinian police officers to carry pistols as a "small positive step." What would satisfy you then? Maybe they should give the "militants" helicopters and tanks. You also say that the "proclaimed goal" of the Palestinian Authority is the creation of an independent Palestinian state. You failed to mention that it could have had that, with 97% of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as the capital in 2000, but Yasser Arafat preferred war. If you read the Palestinian Authority charter and look at the maps of the region on its websites, you would soon know that its primary "proclaimed goal" is the destruction of Israel.

Palestinian leaders agreed today to proclaim an independent Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip following a marathon meeting of their parliament-in-exile, PLO sources said. They said the "declaration of independence" would be announced later in the day at the Palestine National Council. The council, which represents Palestinians scattered through the Arab world, also was expected to show majority support--about 85%--for a "political statement" that would endorse U.

Former Under Secretary of State Ball's article (Op-Ed Page, Jan. 17) shows either an amazing lack of memory or a more amazing abundance of venom directed at Israel. He writes, "Since the West Bank and Gaza Strip were first overrun by Israel's army in 1967, a Palestinian generation has grown up under the domination of occupation troops. Because three out of four Gazans are under the age of 25, they have never tasted self-rule and increasingly despair of doing so." It isn't because they are under the age of 25. No Gazan of any age has tasted self-rule.

The Palestine Liberation Organization said Thursday that the Palestinian parliament in exile will meet in Algiers Nov. 12-14 to endorse a PLO political initiative calling for an independent Palestinian state in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip. PLO spokesman Ahmed Abdelrahman said the Palestine National Council meeting "will be a step forward . . . for the Palestinian side to achieve peace in the Middle East on the basis of self-determination and an independent state."

Frustrated by years of on-and-off peace talks with Israel, Palestinians are losing hope for an independent homeland, and some are proposing a radically different cause: a shared state with equal rights for Palestinians and Jews. A "two-state solution" has been the basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations for nearly 15 years and remains the declared aim of both groups' highest elected leaders and the Bush administration.

Declaring that an independent Palestinian state was "long overdue," Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday that the success of the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations depends on the Palestinian ability to rein in militant groups that favor armed resistance over negotiations. "Terror and rockets do not merely kill civilians, they also kill the legitimate hopes and aspirations of the Palestinian people," Cheney said after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday expressed hope that a successfully negotiated vision of a Palestinian state would marginalize the militant group Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip. "There will have to come a time when the Palestinian people will have to decide whether the prospect of that state is in their interest, and I think they will decide that it is," Rice said after meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

In your Aug. 9 editorial, you describe Israel allowing Palestinian police officers to carry pistols as a "small positive step." What would satisfy you then? Maybe they should give the "militants" helicopters and tanks. You also say that the "proclaimed goal" of the Palestinian Authority is the creation of an independent Palestinian state. You failed to mention that it could have had that, with 97% of the West Bank and Gaza with East Jerusalem as the capital in 2000, but Yasser Arafat preferred war. If you read the Palestinian Authority charter and look at the maps of the region on its websites, you would soon know that its primary "proclaimed goal" is the destruction of Israel.

In diplomacy, there are times when process and substance take on equal importance. Ideas that might be acceptable, or at least tolerable, if presented one way become wholly unacceptable when presented another way. That may help explain some of the backlash against President Bush's announcement Wednesday that the U.S. would endorse Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's unilateral plans for the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The recent decision of the Israeli government to deport Yasser Arafat from the disputed territories has unleashed a flood of international indignation, with a collection of the most unlikely bedfellows rallying to the Palestinian leader's defense. Even the U.S., although vetoing an Arab-drafted United Nations Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli decision, has pressured Israel not to harm Arafat or send him into exile. The U.S.

Fatah, the mainstream faction in the Palestine Liberation Organization, gave PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat clearance Monday to follow through with his diplomatic campaign for a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Delegates to a congress of more than 1,100 Fatah militants, the movement's first since 1980, said that Arafat won 90% support in the voting, which came on the fourth day of the five-day gathering here in the Tunisian capital.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III, attempting to soften the impact of his conclusion that Israel eventually may have to negotiate directly with the Palestine Liberation Organization, Tuesday reaffirmed the Bush Administration's opposition to the creation of an independent Palestinian state. "It is the policy of the United States that we do not support an independent Palestinian state," Baker told a House panel.

After 50 years in exile, Mahmoud Abbas finally had the chance to fulfill a lifelong dream: to visit the home where he spent part of his boyhood. In 1994, he made the pilgrimage to Safed in northern Israel, which was part of British-run Palestine when he was born in 1935. Accounts of the visit say Abbas was moved and shocked by what he saw: moved to be back in his hometown, shocked to discover that his old house no longer existed, overtaken by time and new development.

President Bush's welcome change of strategy Thursday provides a road map to end the slaughter in the Middle East. His dispatch of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell offers a navigator for the journey. Bush's declaration that "enough is enough" was days overdue, as was the evenhanded tone of his remarks.