 Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said in an interview aired on Sunday that the era of suicide bombings may be over.
| Yeah. And I may be 30 again when I wake up tomorrow... |
"We have started to deal with the culture of violence," he said. "We stopped the culture of violence and the Palestinian people have started looking at it as something that should be condemned and it should stop."
| The culture of violence was just popping a few Qassams into Jewish settlements today, resulting in a couple innocent bystanders getting slightly banged... |
Asked on ABC whether the suicide bombing era had ended, he said: "I believe it is over."
| And I really believe Patty Ann Brown is just searching for my phone number and she'll call any day now... |
But he warned that if progress toward a peace agreement was not achieved in meetings with Sharon next month, "despair and loss of hope will come back and a return to the old ideas" of armed resistance.
| Oh, yasss! If Patty Ann doesn't call, why, the despair and loss of hope will prob'ly cause me to explode... |
But earlier Sunday Prime Minister Ariel Sharon expressed skepticism over Abbas's ability to quell terror even as he bolstered the Palestinian leader by pushing the cabinet to approve the release of 400 Palestinian prisoners. Sharon told the cabinet that "anyone who thinks there will be a straight passage from disengagement to the road map is wrong." There are a number of things that need to happen first, including the cessation of terror, he said.
| If it happens at all, it still won't be overnight. More like over the course of a few years... |
His words ran counter to US President George W. Bush's statement last Thursday after his summit with Abbas which spoke of disengagement as an "opportunity to lay the groundwork for a return to the road map." |