Just The Facts

The Arab League Summit is under way in Beirut. However, the three Arab leaders who recognize the State of Israel - Hosni Mubarak, Abdullah II, and Yasr Arafat - were not in attendance, for a number of real and perceived reasons. The remaining leaders created a resolution: Lebanon, the host country, said the Arab leaders had taken a unified stand in endorsing the final resolution. A so-called Beirut Declaration was read out by Lebanon's culture minister, Ghassan Salameh. According to the NYTimes, "Syria hailed the proposal on Wednesday, but demanded that Arab states sever any current ties with Israel, and Lebanon tried to prevent Mr. Arafat from delivering a speech via satellite. Mr. Arafat, who stayed away for fear that Israel would not allow his return, resorted to Al Jazeera's television network and delivered his speech anyway. He said all Palestinians welcomed the Saudi proposal and expressed the hope that it would lead to resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Interesting politics at work here, but it's anybody's guess as to who's pulling what strings and what the real motives are.

Not surprisingly, the Arab League's "Today" page doesn't have anything relevent; in fact, it hasn't been updated since September 19th!

On the ground, things got ugly last night as Passover began. As I'm sure you all have heard, a suicide bomber made it past security into a Netanya hotel with some very powerful explosives. Twenty Passover celebrants were murdered, and 64 others were still hospitalized as of Thursday evening in Israel. The bomber had been on the wanted list in Israel for 4 years, and Israel had received numerous warnings about him. Source: Ha'aretzdaily.com.

Not surprisingly, Arafat knows this could be the very end for him, so serious is this latest attack. AP reports that he's scrambling. Apparently the events of the last few days made him decide to be "ready to implement an immediate, unconditional cease-fire with Israel and ... he... informed a U.S. envoy of his decision." Timely.

The very latest? Three Israeli settlers have been killed by a gunmen in Elon Moreh, near Nablus. As of twenty minutes ago, the gunman was holed up in the house, but two civilians are still upstairs, so they can't just blow it up.