Summary and Analysis

VOP and the Palestinian Authority dramatically changed their approach to Ehud Barak within the last 18 hours in the following ways:

  • Switching from attention to a growing rift between Yasser Arafat and Barak, following Arafat’s Davos speech condemning Israel, to downplaying the Arafat-Barak differences;
  • Highlighting the “extreme” nature of Ariel Sharon and some of his backers such as the “extreme” Avigdor Lieberman [Note: some of the Israeli Labor Party’s campaign advertisements on January 29/30 were almost identical to some of these and earlier texts on VOP)
  • Announcing the likelihood of a Barak-Arafat summit, after talking about no contacts until after the elections, and, also, after talking, until Tuesday afternoon, about Barak’s media “campaign” against the PA.

    In Short, both VOP and the PA now seem to be joining the campaign against Ariel Sharon, even though an 8:18 a.m. studio-read VOP analysis Wednesday morning laid out the near certainty of a Barak loss to Sharon.

    The PA analysis was sophisticated and unemotional, stressing the following points:

    • Sharon’s election is imminent, but he will not be able to form a broad government;
    • Sharon’s narrow parliamentary base — only 19 Likud seats out of 120 — will make serious negotiations with the PA very unlikely;
    • The likelihood that israel Will again go to elections within six months, thus signaling a period of deep instability in Israel.

    In a morning interview, PA Information Minister Yasser Abd-Rabbo denied categorically a report in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv that the PA and Israel had agreed to put of discussions on Jerusalem for five years.

    Elsewhere, VOP continued to shepherd the Iraqi normalization process, featuring a long studio-read analysis by senior announcer Khaled Sukar detailing Iraq’s return to the fold, i.e. the Arab world’s renewed embrace of Saddam Hussein.

    Morning Round-up Headlines

    • “Efforts by UN Secretary General Kofi Anan and European officials pushing hard for a continuing Palestinian-Israeli summit, but a site and a time for the summit are not yet decided;
    • It is likely to be in a European capital, but time pressure is a problem;
    • The extremist and rightist Likud candidate for the prime ministry Ariel Sharon is vainly contriving to (reconstruct) his past vis a vis the Palestinian Leadership and to convince by putting on new clothes (to distract from) the ugly truth;
    • Supporters of Sharon tell the e-mail edition of Yediot Aharonot that there is NO danger of acceptance of the plans of the extremist Avigdor Lieberman who threatened striking against the Aswan High Dam in Egypt and at Teheran;
    • The Israeli government refuses to meet the Palestinian side about transferring sums to the Palestinian side and regarding the financial difficulties of the (Palestinian) National Authority, and Muhammd Zuhdi Nashashibi (PA finance official) condemns this Israeli step.”

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