DATE=08/29/2002

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-01233 SHORT #1

TITLE=REFORMING THE PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY

EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY -- 619-0037

CONTENT= INSERTS ARE IN AUDIO SERVICES & DALET

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Host: This is On the Line and I'm --------.

President George W. Bush has proposed a road map for ending the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. The plan calls for the creation of an independent democratic Palestinian state within three years. Israel is asked to lift curfews and travel bans and to dismantle the newest Jewish settlements in disputed territories. The Palestinians are asked to stop terrorism and to reform their government.

Nathan Brown is a professor of political science at George Washington University who specializes in Palestinian politics. He says that the Palestinian advocates of change have been helped by the U-S call for reform.

Brown: The Palestinian reformers are pushing forward. They have an agenda that the one thing everybody seems to agree here on is that it's an old agenda. It goes back to 1993 or 1994. They've got their own fairly solid blueprint and they haven't given up, despite the Israeli military campaign of last April. When the United States starts operating on the ground and starts pushing Palestinian reform, they start running into these blueprints that the Palestinians have drawn.

Host: Meyrav Wurmser is director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Hudson Institute. She warns that the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, will try to block efforts at reform.

Wurmser: The person who's blocking reform and has blocked reform in the Palestinian Authority since the creation of the P-A is Yasser Arafat himself. And you cannot talk about reform and at the same time leave him there. Right now what you have in Palestinian Authority is an extremely powerful presidency and you do have other branches of government, they're just weak, powerless and incapable of standing up to the president. What you have to do is force a change.

Host: Khalil Jashan, vice president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, says that Palestinians want reform and can achieve it, if given support.

Jashan: We are intervening left and right in Palestinian domestic affairs. That will not bring about lasting reform. We need, from a distance, to support democrats in Palestine who on their own would like to reform the system.

Host: President Bush continues to articulate his vision for Middle East peace. Central to it is the creation of a free and democratic Palestinian state. For On the Line, I'm -----------.