Arafat also continued to orchestrate international terror activities. One of the most heinous was the hijacking of the Achille Lauro cruise ship on October 7, 1985, during which Palestinian terrorists shot a wheelchair-bound Jewish passenger named Leon Klinghoffer and dumped his body overboard.
As he had in 1974, however, Arafat shifted tactics again, this time in response to prodding from the United States. In a December 13, 1988, address, Arafat accepted UN Security Council Resolution 242, promised future recognition of Israel, and renounced “terrorism in all its forms, including state terrorism.”
This statement satisfied the conditions for opening a dialogue between the PLO and the United States. Up to this point, the United. States. had gone along with Israeli opposition to any formal contacts between American and PLO officials (though many informal discussions had taken place over the years).
Arafat’s statement was supposed to reflect a shift from one of the PLO’s primary aims — the destruction of Israel (as in the Palestinian National Covenant) — toward the establishment of two separate entities, an Israeli state within the 1949 armistice lines and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. However, on April 2, 1989, Arafat was elected by the Central Council of the Palestine National Council (the governing body of the PLO) to be the president of the proclaimed State of Palestine, an entity which laid claim to the whole of Palestine as defined by the British Mandate.
The PLO squandered the opportunity the United States offered by continuing terrorist attacks. In May 1990, the Palestine Liberation Front attacked the beaches near Tel Aviv, aiming to raid hotels and the U.S. Embassy. This was the final straw for the Bush Administration, which suspended its dialogue with the PLO and refocused its attention on efforts to persuade Palestinians in the territories to talk directly with the Israelis.
U.S. policymakers recognized that agreement on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations wasn’t likely until the Arab states took steps toward peace with Israel. It was toward this end that U.S. Secretary of State James Baker shuttled to the Middle East in 1991 and won agreement from Israel and her neighbors to attend a regional peace conference.
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had labored to keep the PLO out of the negotiations, but he ultimately bowed to the reality that the Palestinians in the territories were not strong enough to make decisions and that they were forced to take directions from Tunis. During the 1991 Madrid Conference, Israel conducted open negotiations with the PLO for
上一页 [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] ... 下一页 >>