![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
| Who?
|
What?
|
When?
|
Where?
|
Why?
|
How?
|
| Return to Lesson Page-1 | Return to Practice News Story |
The 5W's and How question details are identified by the
color code above. See if you can identify some more details.
July 19, 2000
Talks Yield High Hopes, Few Fruits
By JANE PERLEZ
HURMONT, Md., July 18 -- The White House described
the scene inside Camp David
today as one of little sleep and unwavering
intensity, with President Clinton negotiating
until
dawn with Prime Minister
Ehud Barak of Israel and then, after
just a few hours' sleep,
meeting with the Palestinian leader,Yasir
Arafat.
Informally, officials were suggesting that Mr. Clinton's artificial
deadline of Wednesday morning,
when he is scheduled to leave for Japan, could be stretched as much as
21 hours, an element of
information that added to a steadily building
drama.
At times today, it seemed the impossible might be
possible: an agreement on all the issues,
including Jerusalem. At other times, the temperature
fell to the more sober expectation of a rather
modest agreement and a second meeting before Mr. Arafat's Sept. 13 deadline
for declaring a
Palestinian state.
These polar extremes were fed by the pitch of diplomacy that dribbled through
the phone wires of
the mountain retreat. Members of the Israeli delegation have called home
in the last 24 hours,
leaking news that the question of Jerusalem had been under discussion since
Monday and hinting
at progress on this most intractable issue.
In contrast, Mr. Arafat was reported to have called his headquarters in
Gaza and told his aides to
spread the word that he was considering packing his bags and leaving.
Both sides were playing to their constituents, and preparing public opinion
for possible outcomes.
Mr. Arafat, presumably, was showing that he was not going to give up on
his long-held stance that
East Jerusalem must be the capital of a Palestinian state.
As part of the same script, Mr. Barak was demonstrating that he was a man
of reason, and was
prepared as Channel 2 in Israel reported tonight to make "unprecedented
steps" toward the
Palestinian position on Jerusalem. If an agreement were not reached on
the status of Jerusalem, Mr.
Barak would be able to say that he had tried his best and that the Palestinians
were unmovable.
But the fact that Jerusalem was on the table was itself progress over the
seven-year time line of
negotiations.
"I was astonished by the degree of progress in the last few hours," said
an Israeli who was in
contact with the delegation by telephone.
Only several months ago, Jerusalem was virtually taboo in back channel
talks in Stockholm, where
the top negotiators of Mr. Arafat and Mr. Barak met and made progress on
a variety of issues.
These included what might constitute the territorial boundaries of a Palestinian
state and what would
be the fate of the three million Palestinian refugees scattered across
the Middle East.
But on Jerusalem, there was only generalized talk in Stockholm.
According to reports attributed to Israeli officials, the Israeli delegation
at Camp David was
presenting a plan that would incorporate the Israeli bedroom communities
that are now a de facto
part of the capital into the legal entity of Jerusalem. Among these West
Bank settlements near
Jerusalem being mentioned are Maale Advmim and Givat Zeev.
The plan also calls for areas populated by Palestinians, such as Beit Hanina
and the Shuafat refugee
camp, to be placed under Palestinian control. The moves together would
provide more demographic
balance in Jerusalem.
But this version of a solution for Jerusalem leaves unanswered the top
concerns of Mr. Arafat, who
has insisted all along that East Jerusalem, annexed by the Israelis in
the 1967 war, should be the
capital of a Palestinian state.
From the Palestinian point of view, the Israeli plan does not deal with
the heart of the matter: it
leaves under Israeli sovereignty the Old City of Jerusalem, home of the
main religious sites of
Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
There have been some suggestions from outside the Camp David negotiations
in the last few days
that the future of the Old City could be set aside for future generations
to decide. But there have
also been reports that Mr. Arafat...
(Source: New York Timeson the Web, Learning Network, July 19, 2000)