She did not lay a wreath on his grave-a minimal gesture of courtesy that would have won the hearts of the Palestinians. However, as a diplomatic compromise, she agreed to have her handshake with Abu Mazen photographed under the picture of Arafat.
Arafat smiled his canny smile. He surely understood.
So what was achieved at this conference?
Easier to say what was not.
The Oslo agreement failed because it did not spell out the final aim that was to be achieved after the tortuous interim stages. Arafat and Abu Mazen had a clear objective: a Palestinian state in all of the occupied territories with East Jerusalem as its capital, a return to the Green Line border (with minimal adjustments), dismantling of the settlements, and a practical solution to the refugee problem. The Israelis did not have the courage to define this inevitable solution, and many still dreamed about a Greater Israel.
That was a recipe for failure. And the very next day the quarrelling about every single paragraph began.
At Sharm-al-Sheikh the resolution of the conflict was not
mentioned at all. Abu Mazen succeeded in slipping in some words, but Sharon did not react. This omission is very significant. It must be emphasized: Sharon did not utter a single word that does not conform with his plan of annexing 58 percent of the West Bank and enclosing the Palestinians in small enclaves in the rest of the territories.
The same goes for the timetable. In Oslo dates were indeed fixed, but the Israeli party had no intention of keeping to them. "There are no sacred dates," Yitzhak Rabin famously declared after signing the timetable.
That was a fatal mistake. Quite literally-it killed Rabin. The postponement of the solution allowed the opponents of peace the time to regain their strength, to regroup and mount the counter-attack that culminated in the assassination of Rabin. In vain did we quote to Rabin the dictum of Lloyd-George: "You cannot cross an abyss in two jumps."
Abu Mazen said at Sharm-al-Sheikh that this was the first step on a long road. A long road is a dangerous road. All along it the saboteurs of peace, Israelis and Palestinians, are lurking.
Moreover, one of the basic conditions for a real peace process-and perhaps the most important one-is the truthful representation of reality. If one listened to all the speeches, one could get the impression that the root problem is "Palestinian terrorism," and that if this stops, everything will be alright. In the following sequence: (a) The