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The pope tweaks some Israeli sore spots

March 22, 2000
Web posted at: 12:04 PM EST (1704 GMT)

By Tony Karon

(TIME.com) -- It's no longer considered controversial (except, perhaps, in New York election campaigns) to call for a Palestinian state, as Pope John Paul II did on Wednesday to the delight of Yasser Arafat. The pontiff's call left Israeli leaders unfazed -- after all, they're currently negotiating the outlines of a Palestinian "entity" both sides know will eventually be declared a state, and Israel's primary concern is to ensure that Arafat's domain remains a splotchy camouflage pattern on the map of the West Bank that allows Israeli forces to maintain their defensive front line along the Jordan River.

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The pontiff's visit on Wednesday to the Dheisheh refugee camp outside Bethlehem will be more troubling for Israel, since it will draw world attention to the plight of Palestinian refugees from Israel's war of independence, who've been barred for over a half century from returning to the Jewish state. John Paul II is expected to affirm the right of the refugees to return home, an issue that remains among the most sensitive issues in the "final status" peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

While the fate of the refugees, the status of Jerusalem and the final boundaries between them remain to be finalized in ongoing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, Israel and Syria are reportedly close to a peace deal despite holding no formal negotiations since the failure of January's talks in the U.S. Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak has told an interviewer that ongoing talks between Israel's Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Sharaa, conducted via American and British diplomats and other envoys, have brought the two sides close to settling the basic outline of an agreement.

President Clinton's scheduled meeting with Syria's President Hafez Assad in Geneva, Sunday -- a rare foray abroad by the ailing strongman -- suggests an imminent resumption of formal talks. Of course, reaching an agreement between the two governments may yet turn out to be the easy part: Both sides are expected to encounter resistance to any deal from the hawks back home. Then again, the same would once have been said about the prospects of getting Israel and the Palestinians to trade land for peace.

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