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On September 25, after weeks of efforts by our team to get peace talks back on track, Barak invited Arafat to his home for dinnerNear the end of the meal, I called and had a good talk with both of themThe next day both sides sent negotiators to Washington to take up where they had left off at Camp DavidOn the twenty-eighth, everything changed, as Ariel Sharon became the first leading Israeli politician to walk on the Temple Mount since Israel captured it in the 1967 warAt the time, Moshe Dayan had said that Muslim religious sites would be respected, and thereafter the mount was overseen by Muslims
Arafat said he had asked Barak to prevent Sharons stroll, which was clearly intended to affirm Israels sovereignty over the site and to strengthen his hand against a challenge to his leadership of the Likud Party from former prime minister Netanyahu, who was now sounding more hawkish than SharonI had also hoped Barak would prevent Sharons inflammatory escapade, but Barak told me he couldntInstead, Sharon was forbidden to enter the Dome of the Rock, or the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and was escorted to the Mount by a large number of heavily armed police officers
I and others on our team had urged Arafat to prevent violenceIt was a great opportunity for the Palestinians, for once, to refuse to be provokedI thought Sharon should have been greeted with flowers by Palestinian children and knock off chanel wholesale purse told that when the Temple Mount was under Palestinian control, he would be welcome anytimeBut as Abba Eban had said long ago, the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunityThe next day there were large Palestinian demonstrations near the Western Wall, during which Israeli police opened fire with rubber bullets on stone throwers and othersAt least five people were killed and hundreds were woundedAs the violence persisted, two vivid images of its pain and futility emerged: a twelve-year-old Palestinian boy shot in the crossfire and dying in his fathers arms, and two Israeli soldiers pulled from a building and beaten to death, with their lifeless bodies dragged through the streets and one of their assailants proudly showing his bloodstained hands to the world on television
While the Middle East was exploding, the Balkans was getting betterIn the last week of September, Slobodan Milosevic was defeated for the presidency of Serbia by Vojislav Kostunica in a campaign in which we had helped ensure that the election could not be stolen and Kostunica could get his message outMilosevic tried to steal the election anyway, but massive demonstrations convinced him he couldnt get away with it, and on October 6, the prime mover behind the Balkan slaughters admitted defeat
In early October, I hosted a meeting in the Cabinet Room for supporters of the debt-relief omega usa initiativeReverned Pat Robertson was thereHis strong support and that of the evangelical Christian community showed how broad and deep support for debt relief had becomeIn the House, the effort was being pushed by Maxine Waters, one of our most liberal members, and conservative Budget Committee chairman John KasichEven Jesse Helms was supporting it, thanks in no small measure to Bonos personal outreach to himThe early results were encouraging: Bolivia had spent $77 million on health and education; Uganda had doubled primary school enrollment; and Honduras was to go from six to nine years of mandatory schoolingI was aiming to get the rest of our contribution in the final budget agreement
In the second week of the month, Hillary did well in her second, more civilized debate with Rick LazioI signed the China trade bill and thanked Charlene Barshefsky and Gene Sperling for their arduous trek to China to hammer out our agreement at the eleventh hour; signed into law my Lands Legacy Initiative and the new investments for Native American communities; and on October 11, in Chappaqua, met Hillary to celebrate our twenty-fifth wedding anniversaryIt seemed like only yesterday when we were young and just beginningNow our daughter was almost out of college and the White House years were almost overI was confident Hillary would win the Senate race, and optimistic about what the future white chanel j12 watch replica held for all of us
My brief reverie was shattered the next day, when a small boat laden with explosives blew up beside the USS Cole, in port in Aden, YemenSeventeen sailors were killed in what was obviously a terrorist attackWe all thought it was the work of bin Laden and al Qaeda, but we couldnt be sureThe CIA went to work on it, and I sent officials from Defense, State, and the FBI to Yemen, where President Ali Saleh had promised to cooperate fully in the investigation and in bringing the murderers to justice
Meanwhile, I continued to push the Pentagon and the national security team for more options to get bin LadenWe came close to launching another missile strike at him in October, but the CIA recommended that we call it off at the last minute, believing that the evidence of his presence was insufficiently reliableThe Pentagon recommended against putting Special Forces into Afghanistan, with all the attendant logistical difficulties, unless we had more reliable intelligence on bin Ladens whereaboutsThat left bigger military options: a large-scale bombing campaign of all suspected campsites or a sizable invasionI thought neither was feasible without a finding of al Qaeda responsibility for the ColeI was very frustrated, and I hoped that before I left office we would locate bin Laden for a missile strike
After campaign stops in Colorado and Washington, I flew to Sharm chanel fashion el-Sheikh, Egypt, for a summit on the Middle East violence with President Mubarak, King Abdullah, Kofi Annan, and Javier Solana, now secretary-general of the European UnionAll of them wanted to end the violence, as did Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who was not there but had already weighed in on the subjectBarak and Arafat were present, but might as well have been on opposite sides of the world from each otherBarak wanted the violence stopped; Arafat wanted an inquiry into the alleged excessive use of force by the Israeli military and policeGeorge Tenet worked out a security plan with both sides, and I had to sell it to Barak and Arafat, as well as a statement to be read at the end of the summit
I told Arafat that I had intended to present a proposal to resolve the outstanding issues in the peace talks but couldnt do so until he agreed to the security planThere could be no peace without shutting down the violenceArafat agreed to the planWe then worked until early in the morning on a statement for me to issue on behalf of all the partiesIt contained three parts: a commitment to end the violence; the establishment of a fact-finding committee to look into what had caused the uprising and the conduct of both sides, appointed by the United States with the Israelis and Palestinians and in consultation with Kofi Annan; and a commitment to move forward with the peace chanel sheepskin bag talks |
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