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Palestinians Seek Alternative Collective Leadership

(Washington Post) - "Collectively, the Palestinian leadership has lost its credibility with the Palestinian people, and Arafat is having serious difficulty trying to control things....He's finished," said Eyad Sarraj, a Palestinian psychiatrist and a leading civil rights activist and political analyst in Gaza City. "Hamas reflects the basic feeling of every Palestinian that we cannot surrender without a feeling of hope and dignity." "We hope that the Palestinian leadership and Arafat will draw the conclusion that Arafat should relinquish power to a collective leadership or institution" that could include Hamas, said Ziad Abu Amr, a member of the Palestinian Legislative Council in Gaza. According to Raanan Gissin, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "The Palestinians are losing support on the international front, and they have to take action, but their dilemma is how to take action without causing a rift in the rank and file and creating a civil war, so they are trying to create a broad consensus on terms that are totally unacceptable to Israel. They've tried to achieve an elimination of terrorism by consensus. We've seen it before, and it never works, because there's always a renegade willing to launch an attack in Israel or against the [Jewish] settlers" in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
2002-08-14 00:00:00
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