FLASHBACK for background to last September in Washington:

Update: Last time they invited Arafat's much-discredited Jerusalem rep, Feisal Husseini, to kick off the "Right of Return" Rally, and then they let Jim Zogby sneak in later in the day (though thankfully they kept Clovis Maksoud off the stage!). This time they are going to march down a largely weekend deserted street in New York City, after gathering at a closed Israeli Consulate, to listen to a group of largely unknown speakers familiar only to themselves, with no strategy other than to gather among themselves to listen to themselves and to be able to say for themselves that they are doing something important -- when it fact they are simply letting off a little steam; just burning up more precious time, money, and energy for no significant result or impact. Two background articles from last September follow. But in view of what has happened in the Middle East and in Washington since last September, things are actually considerably worse now than then.

MER EDITORIAL:

MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington, DC - 9/12/00: What could be done more thoughtfully than the way this coming Saturday's mini-march in Washington about the "Right of Return" for Palestinian refugees is currently planned? That's an important question, once various MER articles have addressed in recent months in various ways, and one which deserves much urgent contemplation.

The biggest problem, though, is not a little change here or there. It's the whole structure and context that is wrong. After two generations now of bumbling along, of being used and co-opted, of being held in check and undermined by the very organizations they belong to, it's not a simple or easy matter to correct such a tragic situation in the confused, mislead, and demoralized Arab American community.

But even so, when it comes to this Saturday's rally specifically, making that more serious and more real can still be done in the following two simple ways:

LOCATION. First of all getting together on Pennsylvania Avenue and walking over a few blocks to Lafayette Park is hardly what the situation cries out for. Rather, the demo should start at the Israeli Embassy -- that's where the major initial shouting should take place -- and then march right down nearby Connecticut Avenue to the White House. Actually, and its so convenient as they are both nearby, brief stops at the Jordanian and Egyptian Embassies would be in order before heading down Connecticut. These are the two Arab regimes that have worked most closely with the Israelis and Americans to create today's situation and the two regimes which are now pressing Yasser Arafat, on behalf of the U.S. and Israel, to sign this "apartheid peace" -- one which will do more to prevent the "Right of Return" than any document ever agreed to by any Palestinian leader.

Oh yes, one more little diversion on the way down to the White House -- which by the way is only about a 45 minute walk from the Israeli Embassy. There ought to be a stop as well at the downtown offices of the Arab League, where Arafat also has his offices. For the Arafat Regime itself has very much become a part of the overall plot to prevent the "Right of Return" for the great majority of Palestinians -- no matter what crafty rhetoric is uttered otherwise.

SPEAKERS. About the last thing anyone should want to hear is another rhetoric bombast by either of the Maksoud's, or Jim Zogby, or Hisham Sharabi, or Nihad Awad. Taken all together their credibility is way in the minus zone. They and their client organizations are in fact among those also responsible for the desperate state of affairs in Washington these days, having greatly enriched themselves personally while squandering so much valuable time and money to no significant effect.

All the organizers of Saturday's rally have to do is get themselves a couple of cell phones and a loud-speaker system to connect them up to. Then let them call Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, in Syria, and in Lebanon and invite a representative of each camp to speak for 15 minutes about how they really view this "peace process" and their agonizing plight. It is THEIR plight afterall, and few of those who are going to be in Washington Saturday have ever even been to a refugee camp themselves!

And then after a little break and just a few words from the American organizers -- a very few please! -- let them go back to the refugee camps and call some in historic Palestine, near Nablus, near Ramallah, near Jerusalem, and in Gaza.

The whole thing would only take a couple of hours and a few hundred dollars and for the first time ever the real Palestinian refugees would be heard loudly in Washington -- unfiltered, uncensored, unrestrained.

Indeed, why not make this a conference call and let everyone from the other camps hear what those in the other camps have to say. And let them speak honestly and spontaneously and with dignity -- don't censor them or twist things toward any particular outcome. LET THEM SPEAK THEMSELVES ABOUT THEMSELVES!

Now let's be clear about this. Not just one sanitized and approved refugee, that's not what we're talk about! We're talking about calling at least half a dozen camps throughout the region and letting them choose their own spokesperson and tell us what they want us to hear.

But of course we're not naive about this. We know very well the organizers of Saturday rally aren't likely to do any of this. They are too afraid. They are too infiltrated. There are too cowardly to do such creative and controversial and uncontrolled things of this kind.

They won't even mention that the Hashemite regime has collaborated with the Israelis going back to the 40s, and is greatly responsible for what happened to the Palestinians in the past and for their plight today. Or that the Hashemite regime has siphoned away over $25 billion dollars into their own pockets, while the great majority of the Jordanian/Palestinian people are so poor and needy.

They won't mention that the Egyptians have been working closely with the CIA and Mossad for years, are well paid for their assistance, and that this situation explains why they are pressuring Arafat to sign the "apartheid peace" which does more to disenfranchise the great majority of Palestinians than any previous agreement ever.

They won't mention that Arafat's top cronies have become multi-millionaires and built splendid villas for themselves, not far from the squalid refugee camps, as a result of various "Peace Process" payoffs -- whereas the lot of the Palestinian people has gotten worse and worse as a result of their corruption, incompetence, repression, and grossly self-serving ways.

And they won't mention that while they are spending a few hours in Washington shouting simple slogans about the "Right of Return" the "agreement" Arafat is being cornered into signing is specifically designed to make that "Right of Return" all but impossible -- with less than 20% of what was Palestine to be "autonomous" and without agricultural lands, water resources, jobs, and even the freedom to come and go without Israeli "supervision". All these are being stripped away while the Palestinian patrimony and society is further dissected and fractured by this latest disengenuous "peace process".

Just where is it the nearly 4 million refugees are going to return to?

Now just in case we're wrong about this and there are among the organizers some honorable and courageous people with real guts and convictions, here are a few specific suggestions to give them a head start. Start with Dr. Hisham Ahmed at Deheishe Camp near Bethlehem - an amazing man born a blind refugee in a cold tent who has become a university Professor of International Relations. Move on to Ghazi Asadi, a simple but smart grocer in Ein el-Hilweh, the largest camp in Lebanon. And then of course we have to hear from survivors in both Sabra and Shatilla Camps, sites of the most recent horrible massacres in 1982; before moving on to more real refugees in Jordan, Syria, and the big camps in Gaza.

MER - Washington Scene:

"Instead of anything really useful and effective, the Arabs have a bunch of squabbling, incestuous, incompetent, corrupt, and petty "client organizations" that are all controlled and manipulated by the very Arab regimes who have caused all the problems in the first place..."

"The basic issue is finding serious and effective ways to oppose the entire despicably misnomered 'peace process', one in fact supported and promoted by the key Arab 'client regimes' who support the U.S.-based 'client organizations' who then control and manipulate the Arab activists -- no matter how sincere they might be."

MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 9/14/00: There is no American group that has had a better cause, large numbers, much press interest, and lots of money; but that has done a worse job of promoting its concerns than the Palestinian and Arab communities in the USA. It's a long and complicated story of gross failures, incestuous self-serving "leaders", political manipulation and prostitution, and false-flag "client organizations".

This simple yet basic reality was dramatized in a most visible way in Washington at the time of the 50th anniversary of the 1948 War a few years ago -- the "nakba", the "disaster" as far as the Arabs are concerned.

After half a century of time for the community to seriously organize and build up support, the one grass-roots organization that actually exists, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), spent most of the year organizing for, and came up with a large list of "co-sponsors" for, a Sunday demonstration at the U.S. Capital.

In order to get a large turn-out, it was scheduled for right after the completion of the ADC annual convention. It order to get a large turn-out the focus was on a large "Palestinian quilt" with panels representing destroyed Arab villages -- nothing controversial or critical about the ongoing "peace process", Oslo, Arafat, regimes, Clinton, Israel lobby, etc. And as it turned out it was a bright and sunny Sunday afternoon -- so no excuses here either!

Yet, it was so pathetic, so shameful. At this important anniversary time of the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian defeat, and while American Jews were throwing huge parties at Madison Square Garden and TV spectaculars, working at their hardest and drawing on everything and everyone they could, the Arabs managed to bring no more than 500 persons to their much promoted demonstration! Gosh -- the list of supposed "endorsers" must have been a hundred in itself! Moreover, not one Congressman or Senator...not even one prominent former such.

The ADC was in fact so disorganized and incompetent that it couldn't even arrange to get the couple of buses that were supposed to go from the convention Hotel to the Capital to show up; and a few people who came from out of town even complained they had been given the wrong information and never even found the demonstration before it was over!

To juxtapose matters even more, literally at the same time the Arab American community was disgracing itself with such a disastrous turn out, the Free Tibet movement was gathering at Robert F. Kennedy stadium in Washington, just a few miles away, with a crowd approaching a hundred thousand!

The bottom line is very simple. Today in Washington the Israeli/Jewish lobby is extraordinarily well-organized and powerful. But the Arabs don't even have a lobby worthy of using that term. In fact the one organization they pretended was seriously lobbying for them for two decades, the "National Association of Arab Americans" (NAAA), recently totally collapsed -- though the President was rewarded (rather than being booted out for his gross failures) by being made a V-P of the same ADC just mentioned!

Instead of anything really useful and effective, the Arabs have a bunch of squabbling, incestuous, incompetent, corrupt, and petty "client organizations" that are all controlled and manipulated by the very Arab regimes who have caused all the problems in the first place and who are actually themselves working closely with the U.S. Government and the Israelis, albeit often under-the-table.

In recent years this collection of rag-tag and disingenuous Arab groups has been joined by a few Muslim organizations, again all creatures of and controlled by the Arab "client regimes" in one way or another. The leaders of the largest of these, the American Muslim Council (AMC), are off today paying homage to Crown Prince Abdullah in New York, the regional country that has helped the most to bring about the genocidal destruction of neighboring Iraq.

This then is the real overall backdrop to this weekend's "Right of Return" demonstration, one which is itself manipulated by a group of persons essentially ADC in origin but trying to mask that reality a bit because of ADC's terrible reputation for being such a bunch of self-serving and deceptive bunglers.

Bottom Line: Palestinian and Arab Americans have failed miserably in attempting to promote Palestinian rights and protect Arab lives at a crucial time in history when matters Middle Eastern have been higher than ever on the U.S. national radar.

They have stood by as Lebanon was destroyed, Iran was bloodied, the Palestinians were increasingly dispossessed, Algeria exploded, and Iraq was pulverized -- completely unable and unwilling to stand for anything principled and to do anything serious.

And all this is why in the year 2000 the entire Arab American community is in the confused and demoralized state it is, with few allies, and most of its own uninterested in what the the petty organizations say or do. It is also why some of the younger activists -- in many cases sincere and spirited though -- are so clueless as to what is really going on and often just plain ignorant about who is whom and what is what so that they spend most of their time recreating the wheel.

Bottom Line: All this explains one of the important factors making it possible that the Palestinians remaining in their once unified homeland are being subjected to an apartheid-style disenfranchisement process which continues to shrink their lands, fragment their continuity, and round them up into "autonomous population centers" now controlled by a "Palestinian Authority" itself controlled by the Israelis and the CIA.

This whole situation also explains why the Israelis are so terribly eager to consolidate and "legalize" today's situation with an Arafat-signed "final peace".

They realize that the current situation gives them far more control and legitimacy that at any time in history and offers them a chance to "end the conflict" with the Palestinians totally on Israeli terms -- the Palestinians under their control (and that includes Arafat's Authority of course) so confused and demoralized they hardly even know how to explain what is happening to them; and the Palestinians abroad, especially in the U.S., not even able to figure out how to seriously oppose a "peace process" that is rapidly undermining everything they claim they are so concerned about.

This then is the overall context in which this weekend's "Right of Return" rally needs to be understood as far too little, far too late, and far too misdirected.

The basic issue at this point in history isn't making speeches at a park across from the White House for a few hours telling everyone what they already know...that there are millions of Palestinian refugees languishing in refugee camps.

The basic issue is finding serious and effective ways -- not self-deluding and self-serving ways -- to oppose the entire despicably misnomered "peace process", one in fact supported and promoted (for self-serving reasons of their own) by the key Arab "client regimes" who support the U.S.-based "client organizations" who then control and manipulate the Arab activists -- no matter how sincere they might be.

Indeed, in many ways the likelihood is that this weekend's mini-march actually plays into the very clever and very complicated designs being promoted by the Israelis and their American allies, for these reasons:

1) Even if they now manage to bring out 4 or 5 thousand demonstrators, deluding themselves about the significance of this in a city where far larger demonstrations take place all the time, the real message to the tough-minded politicos in Washington is this: There's nothing to worry about from Arab Americans...working overtime they can only mobilize quite few in numbers...they are not even protesting against the upcoming agreement itself likely to be soon signed across the street...they know nothing about the power of civil disobedience...they have no powerful or even significant allies...their leadership is naive and oftentimes foolish...and the Arab organizations we work with can be counted on to keep them under control come what may.

2) The Israelis are already working the "Right of Return" issue very cleverly.

If Arafat can be made to sign the "end of conflict" agreement in one form or another -- and for which he and his cronies will get billions -- the Israelis know this is a tremendous accomplishment for them as it will essentially banish the Palestinians to Bantustan status and permanent Israeli control. In this context the Israelis may let a very few percent of the refugees "return" under concepts of "family reunification" and "humanitarian concern", promising a few more something yet to come. Having then gotten an agreement which they will claim has the force of international law and which gives them more than 80 percent of historic Palestine, with most of the good land and resources, and with everything else still under their ultimate control -- the Israelis know very well there isn't anywhere for any sizeable number of Palestinians to return to. Rather, the real Israeli plot is to twist all this "Right of Return" stuff to their own purposes in order to obtain a huge pool of money -- not their own mind you but rather from the Europeans and the Americans and even from the Gulf Arabs and the Japanese if they can pull it off -- which will be used to "compensate" the refugees whether they like it or not. Right after Camp David II, in fact, the Americans quietly tested the waters with the Lebanese, offering some $20 billion if the Lebanese government would resettle most of the 350,000 Palestinian refugees -- a sizeable sum for a small country whose entire national debt is about that amount.

We will have much more about the "Washington Scene" in future MER articles. Upcoming in the weeks ahead are exclusive reports about a number of Washington-based groups and organizations that have contributed to this overall deplorable state of affairs. Among them: Sharabi and his millions, the Foundation for Middle East Peace hoax, the CNI "Lobby" deception, "Washington Report" and the Saudis, How the Jewish Lobby Conquered Washington, The "U.S. Institute for Peace" scandal.