Yasser Arafat

WASHINGTON - A powerful remote-controlled bomb blew up under an official U.S. convoy in the Gaza Strip yesterday, killing three American security guards and drawing the United States more deeply into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The explosion marked the first fatal attack on U.S. personnel in the 3-year-old Palestinian uprising. A State Department spokesman said the Bush administration assumed that the American convoy had been specifically targeted. President Bush quickly blamed Palestinian authorities, particularly Yasser Arafat, for a failure to crack down on militant groups - a failure the president called the "greatest obstacle" to achieving statehood.

WASHINGTON - There is an old proverb that says, "If you're going to sup with the devil, use a long spoon." Does the White House pantry have any long spoons? I ask because if President Bush really wants to achieve his objectives in Iraq, he may have to sup a little with Yasser Arafat, the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and Syria's president, Bashar Assad. First, let me state my own bias: Iraq is the whole ballgame. If we can produce a reasonably decent, constitutionally grounded Iraqi government, good things will happen all around the Middle East.

WASHINGTON - And now for a clichM-i. After filming a documentary on both sides of the fence Israel is building in the West Bank, I can report the following: Israelis and Palestinians really don't understand each other. Yes, they actually pay me for such observations. Alas, it's not quite as trite as it seems. You see, there has always been a certain lack of understanding between the two sides, but they have often overcome that to strike mini-deals and even Oslo. But the last three years of the Palestinian uprising, suicide bombs and Israeli settlement expansion have blown away any remnants of that.

The World Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat offered a new truce to Israel in a televised interview. But Israeli leaders said there must first be action against Hamas and other militant groups. In a 14-minute audiotape broadcast by a Dubai-based satellite television station, a speaker purporting to be Saddam Hussein urged Iraqis to escalate attacks on Americans. U.S. troops in Iraq opened fire on a car carrying Italian diplomat Pietro Cordone, killing his Iraqi interpreter. Sources said the car tried to pass a military convoy near Tikrit after it had been warned not to pass.

`Punting' bill on prescriptions will hurt seniors If Congress and the president lower the bar on providing drug coverage to the nation's 40 million Medicare beneficiaries, they won't be simply punting the ball -- forfeiting the game is more like it ("Punting," editorial, Sept. 15). As The Sun notes, the bills being debated in conference committee have their problems. Employers should be strongly encouraged (not discouraged) to continue offering retiree health coverage; premiums and deductibles are too high and gaps in coverage too wide; and there are no guarantees things will be equal for those who stay in the traditional Medicare model instead of joining a private insurer (which is one of the most potentially destabilizing of the proposed changes)

JERUSALEM - Israel's deputy prime minister said yesterday that killing Yasser Arafat is an option for Israel, but U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell emphatically rejected the idea, saying that it would ignite "rage throughout the Arab world." The remark by Ehud Olmert reflected the political currents in the Israeli government after it decided in principle Thursday to "remove" Arafat, drawing an international outcry. "Arafat can no longer be a factor in what happens here," Olmert told Israel radio yesterday.

THOUSANDS of Palestinians vowing to defend him to the death - Yasser Arafat couldn't be happier. Chanting crowds outside his hovel of a headquarters in the West Bank show that, despite a concerted U.S. effort to marginalize him and Israel's determination to expel him, Mr. Arafat is in command and in control - at least of the public events unfolding across that blood-soaked landscape. His revival as the defiant leader of a besieged people only complicates the prospects of defusing a dangerous situation that will lead to more suicide bombings, more retaliatory strikes, more dead.

Here's a question: If Yasser Arafat is as irrelevant as the governments of Israel and the United States say he is, why all the commotion about him? If the Palestinian leader were irrelevant, the best way to treat him would be to ignore him. Let him stew in his wrecked compound in Ramallah where one assumes the intelligence services of Israel and the United States are capable of monitoring every word he utters, of knowing who his visitors are and what...