The Courier News · Bridgewater, New Jersey · 8 September 2000

CP-2000-003

Arafat at the United Nations

Clinton proposal rejected by Arafat

By Barry Schweid, The Associated Press

Transcribed from the clipping

“UNITED NATIONS — Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat has rejected a proposal by President Clinton for control of Muslim and Jewish holy sites in East Jerusalem, but Clinton refused to abandon his effort to bring about a Mideast peace accord. Although Arafat’s action dimmed already fading hopes for an agreement, Clinton directed his senior mediator, Dennis B. Ross, to keep talking to Israeli and Palestinian negotiators. Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak are still committed to concluding a settlement and ‘they understand the time is short,’ Clinton said. Arafat has reserved the right to proclaim Palestinian statehood without Israel’s blessing on Sept. 13, though he has hinted the PLO’s top policy-making body, which will make the final decision, is likely to delay such a proclamation until later this year… Even if Arafat accepted the proposal, east Jerusalem’s future would still be undecided. At the Camp David summit in July, Barak offered the Palestinians local control of some neighborhoods and suburbs, but Arafat rejected the overture, insisting on sovereignty over the entire part of the city Israel won from Jordan in the 1967 Mideast war.”

Context added by this archive

The same Barry Schweid dispatch the Columbian ran the same day (CP-2000-002), under a different headline and a different photograph. Here it is a transaction — Clinton proposal rejected by Arafat — and the picture is Arafat shaking hands at a summit. There it was Arafat’s refusal of plan dims peace hopes, over a photograph of nuns climbing a staircase in the Old City. Neither headline carries the second half of the first sentence, which is that Clinton refused to give up. The last paragraph is the one worth reading twice: it says Barak offered local control of some neighborhoods and suburbs of a city Israel won from Jordan, which is a lot of the argument in one sentence.

Cite this item

"Arafat at the United Nations," The Courier News, 8 September 2000. Covering Palestine archive, CP-2000-003. https://coveringpalestine.org/archive/cp-2000-003

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