A dispatch from Jerusalem in the international section of today's New York Times reports, "If Mr. Bush had his way, an American knowledgeable about the peace effort here said, the meeting between Mr. Peres and Mr. Arafat would have taken place on Sept. 14. Instead, two days later, Mr. Sharon imposed a new condition: 48 hours of 'absolute quiet' before any talks."
The notion that the Israeli demand that Yasser Arafat cease orchestrating violence against Israel is a "new condition" is truly laughable. A Palestinian renunciation of violence was a condition for Israel's signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords and for every agreement Israel has signed with the Palestinian Arabs since then. What is perhaps new is that Mr. Sharon is insisting that the Palestinian Arabs adhere to that commitment. In any event, since Mr. Sharon took office, he has insisted that he will not negotiate under fire. His requirement for a cessation of violence before resuming negotiations has steadily dwindled -- from two weeks, to ten days, to a week, to now, apparently, a mere 48 hours.
The Times writes, "The administration interpreted that condition as an effort by Mr. Sharon to cooperate." Clearly, the Times interpreted it otherwise -- not as an effort by Mr. Sharon to cooperate, but as an effort by Mr. Sharon to impose "a new condition." In the context, though, Mr. Sharon in fact isn't imposing a new condition -- he's relaxing a longstanding insistence. It's a concession, not a new condition. The Times interpretation is unjustified.
The same Times article reports, "Mr. Arafat has kept his distance for almost 10 years from Syria, which the Bush administration has listed as a sponsor of terrorism." It's the U.S. government that has listed Syria as a sponsor of terrorism, not the "Bush administration." The Clinton administration had done the same thing. The most recent Patterns of Global Terrorism report that the Bush administration issued was released in April 2001 -- barely three months after the administration took office -- and based largely on material and judgements amassed by career civil servants and by Clinton appointees. The Bush administration has kept Syria on the list of state sponsors of terrorism, but it didn't make the initial decision to put Syria on the list in the first place. Syria was on the list when Bush came into office.
Rush: A dispatch from Seattle in today's New York Times reports on how talk radio shows are responding to the terrorist attacks. The article makes reference to "Mr. Limbaugh" without ever mentioning the host Rush Limbaugh's first name.
The same article reports, "talk radio often presents the kind of voices rarely heard on network television or in big-city papers. In general, listeners tend to be white, male and conservative." Funny how the shortage of white males on network television has gone unnoticed. Someone better tell Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and Tom Brokaw. As for conservatives being "rarely heard" in big-city papers, well, look who's talking. In fairness, maybe the sentence about listeners is intended as a new thought, distinct from the sentence about rarely heard voices.