TENET: ARAFAT WAS BARRIER TO PEACE

Tenet blames Arafat for being 'barrier to peace' (JPost)
Former CIA director George Tenet places most of the blame for the breakdown of the security plan bearing his name and other efforts to stop the violence after the outbreak of the second intifada on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in his new book published Monday.

"Almost always, that last impenetrable barrier to peace had the same name: Arafat," he writes in his 576-page memoir, of which an entire chapter is devoted to the late PA chairman.

In At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA,Tenet also confirms reports from the Wye River negotiations in 1998 that he threatened to resign if then President Bill Clinton released convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard as part of the agreement.

Tenet, who served as CIA director from 1997-2004, was brought into an unusually visible negotiating role between Israelis and Palestinians at Clinton's behest. His book recounts this experience in Middle East peace-making, as well as his views on the terrorist threat before and after September 11, intelligence questions surrounding the Iraq War and many other of the other issues he encountered as the second-longest serving head of America's spy agency. ...

It was not the first time Tenet faced such a scenario. "Arafat always wanted one more thing, and one more thing was never enough because what he really wanted was for the peace process to be ever-active and eternally unresolved," according to Tenet.

Clinton's memoir, My Life, assigned Arafat much of the blame for the failed Camp David peace process in 2000....

Still, he says that the White House was right not to push for greater diplomacy with the Palestinians once Bush entered office, as it was apparent little could be done with Arafat in power.

"He got what he could from us [through the Oslo process], and from that point on gave little back," Tenet says. "Therefore - and it was a view I supported - there would be no more letting him in the front door." Despite his critique of Arafat, Tenet acknowledges that on a personal level, "I couldn't keep myself from liking him."

Tenet recalls the personal hospitality lavished on him by Arafat before he headed the CIA, at one point reminiscing about his visit to a local archbishop's residence in Bethlehem.

In the previous sentence, he writes that, "I love the Israelis - their passion for life, what they've done to stand up for themselves, and what they've done in establishing their state."