A lot of papers picked up on Lally Weymouth’s Q+A with Ehud Olmert published in the Washington Post and Newsweek. While MSM focused on the Prime Minister’s readiness to cede more land, we were more fascinated by some give and take near the end. Weymouth takes it for granted that Arafat was a “terrorist.”
[Syrian] President [Bashar al-] Assad is sending out suggestions that he would like to talk to Israel. Why wouldn’t it be a good idea to explore those hints?
If Assad was serious, he would have stopped his total support of Khaled Mashal, the man directly responsible for daily terrorist actions against Israel. I would be happy to negotiate with Bashar Assad, but on the basis of a certain environment, where you stop your support of terror and of Hezbollah. Assad doesn’t show any sign that he’s ready to do this.
But you negotiated with [Yasser] Arafat when he was in Tunisia , and he was certainly a terrorist.
I think we learned something about negotiations of this kind from this experience. I don’t expect my enemies to be wonderful guys. But I want them to come with clean hands when they come to negotiate. Bashar Assad doesn’t come with clean hands. When he comes with clean hands, I will talk to him.
The media certainly didn’t always assume he was a terrorist. Just one year ago, we addressed coverage of the first anniversary of Arafat’s death. Weekend coverage of the second anniversary was lower-key.
