"INTERNATIONAL" AS IN AMERICAN:

Cabinet Resigns as Legislators Challenge Arafat: Some Palestinians Welcome Move as Start of Reform (Molly Moore, September 12, 2002, Washington Post)

Yasser Arafat, the president of the Palestinian Authority, accepted the resignation of his cabinet today rather than face a no-confidence vote from legislators in the stiffest internal challenge yet to his leadership.

The Palestinian Legislative Council, which often has been at odds with Arafat, was only minutes away from a showdown vote against Arafat's cabinet when the Palestinian leader sent word that the entire 21-member body had resigned.

"We have started the reform," said Salah Tamari, a member of Arafat's Fatah movement and a legislator from Bethlehem. "This is a positive step toward the division of authority and the rule of law."

The impassioned day-long debate in the legislative branch underscored growing rifts in the Palestinian Authority as its leader faces increasing international pressure to step aside and mounting unrest within Palestinian society.

Is the Post joking? Exactly three peoples on Earth want Arafat to resign--the Americans, the Israelis, and the Palestinians. World reaction to President Bush's speech calling for new Palestinian leadership, untainted by terror, has otherwise been uniformly hostile. Even the normally steadfast Brits have been unwilling to go so far. Suddenly, when the President's policy begins to bear fruit--a fruit that elite and world opinion wrongly assumed would never come--they're supposed to get credit for it? Truly is it said that while defeat is an orphan, victory has a hundred fathers. Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2002 10:32 AM