THE PATHETIC ARAFAT - GIVER AND BEGGAR
Latest | Recent Articles | Multimedia Page | TV | Search | Blog

Email this article | Print this article | Link to this Article

THE PATHETIC ARAFAT - GIVER AND BEGGAR

April 8, 2001

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/08: This guy Arafat, and those who advise him, are truly getting ore pathetic all the time. We now learn that while his people suffer even worse than before as a result of what he and his cronies have done, and not done, Arafat has been busy giving expensive jewelry gifts to the former American President, First Lady, and Secretary of State (and no doubt there is a larger list!). And while the Israelis are busy shelling his people and assassasinating potential opposition Arafat is on the phone calling Sharon to wish the Jewish people a Happy Passover and beg Sharon to return to the dastardly "Oslo Peace Process" which has provided the Israelis the smokescreen that have wanted to create today's neo-Apartheid conditions in the first place!

Meanwhile, partially thanks to Arafat's "leadership", corruption, and incompetence, the Palestinian people are forced to prepare for even worse times ahead, as the third article below details.

It is Arafat who had lead everyone into this unbelievable situation having squandered so much time, money, and support for so long; having been used and co-opted and corrupted for so long. And it is surely long overdue that Arafat, Sha'ath, Abu Mazen, Erakat and Abed-Rabbo and that whole discredited cabal of Palestinian "leaders" and "negotiators" and "VIPs" resign in disgrace; and if they refuse they should be removed and indicted for gross corruption and malfeasance as has happened in recent history to other despicable regimes in other parts of the world.

ARAFAT GAVE CLINTONS, ALBRIGHT, THOUSANDS IN DIAMOND JEWELRY

Clintons left the gifts behind in White House

By Shlomo Shamir

[Ha'aretz - 6 April]: Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat gave diamond jewelry worth thousands of dollars to then-president Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary, and to then-secretary of state Madeleine Albright during their terms in office,the New York Observer reported yesterday.

According to the report, the Clintons left the gifts behind when they left the White House. The newspaper did not say what happened to the gifts Albright got.

The Clinton gifts included braceletes, necklaces and earrings studded with diamonds, said the newspaper, and were worth some $12,000. The gifts to Albright were worth $17,400 the newspaper said.

Arafat's gifts to the Clintons went to the U.S. National Archive, along with other gifts the First Couple received from world leaders. A State Department spokesman said he did not know what happened to the Albright gifts.

According to the newspaper, the Clinton's accounting of their official gifts did not specify that they were from Arafat.

ARAFAT CALLS SHARON IN GOODWILL GESTURE AMIND TENSION

JERUSALEM (Reuters - 7 April) - Palestinian President Yasser Arafat delivered a goodwill message on Saturday to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for the Jewish Passover holiday after a week of violence in the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel Radio said Arafat spoke by telephone with Sharon to wish the Jewish people a happy holiday and also invited leftist Mertez party leader Yossi Sarid to meet him in the next few days.

A Palestinian official said Arafat also spoke with Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and expressed hope that stalled peace talks would resume.

Sharon's office said his response to Arafat's gesture on the eve of Passover, which commemorates the Israelites' biblical exodus from Egypt, was guarded and Sharon took the opportunity to reiterate his demand that violence stop before peace talks restart.

The conversation came on a day of sporadic exchanges of gunfire in the West Bank and Gaza. The Israeli army reported Saturday night shooting near Ramallah and the Jewish settlements of Psagot and Ariel in the West Bank.

Troops earlier fired rubber-coated metal bullets to disperse around 200 stone and bottle-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank town of Hebron who blocked the road to nearby Bethlehem.

ARMY SEIZES PALESTINIANS

The Arafat-Sharon conversation followed Israeli-Palestinian security talks earlier in the week that failed to stem the violence between the two sides.

An Israeli undercover army unit seized two Palestinians on Friday in an Israeli-ruled area in Ramallah who it said were activists from Arafat's Fatah faction suspected of shooting at Israeli citizens and soldiers.

Fatah said the men had been "kidnapped." At least four Palestinians were wounded in Gaza, one critically, after Israel launched a Friday night armored strike on a police station less than two kilometers (one mile) from Arafat's offices.

The army said tanks later destroyed two empty warehouses and a building belonging to the Force-17 security unit near the Jewish settlement of Netzarim in Gaza that had been used as a base to attack Israelis.

Carmi Gillon, a former security chief of the Shin Bet secret service, told Israel Radio on Saturday the security meetings were a positive sign but it was still impossible to reach a deal with Arafat on key issues such as Jerusalem.

Around 70 children near the Gaza-Egypt Rafah crossing set fire to a box representing peace talks with Israel. At Gaza's checkpoint with Israel, around 100 Palestinian doctors marched to condemn what they called Israel's "excessive use of power."

United Arab Emirates Deputy Prime Minister Sheikh Sultan bin Zaid al-Nahayan urged U.S. action to protect Palestinians against Israeli attacks and said failure to act was morally and politically wrong, the Gulf state's official WAM news agency reported.

Israeli border police said they were checking circumstances surrounding the death of 58-year-old Palestinian shepherd Mahmoud Hrabad near Hebron. Witnesses last saw him alive boarding an Israeli army jeep. Hospital officials said his body bore no signs of violence.

At least 369 Palestinians, 71 Israelis and 13 Israeli Arabs have been killed in the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation that erupted in September.

Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer told Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Friday that he still saw Arafat as a peace "partner" and the goal of Israel's military operations was to bring him back to the negotiating table.

PALESTINIANS PREPARE FOR THE WORST

By Mouin Rabbani*

Mouin Rabbani is director of the Palestinian American
Research Center in the West Bank town of Ramallah.

[6 April] Speaking on April 1, Palestinian Authority (PA) Minister of Information and Culture Yasser Abed Rabbo described the current Israeli-Palestinian relationship as "open warfare." While his characterization may have been premature, it was anything but an April fool's joke. During Ehud Barak's short and chaotic tenure, Israel entered the first substantive permanent status negotiations with the Palestinians, and thereafter restored violent conflict as the preferred method of extracting political concessions from the Palestinian leadership. So far, Ariel Sharon's strategy appears to be to escalate the conflict to the point where it renders a comprehensive settlement neither possible nor necessary.

Pursuant to its conviction that Oslo's permanent status negotiations neither can nor should be revived, the Sharon-Peres government is determined to avoid any alternative formula for concluding an Israeli- Palestinian settlement. Rather, it is seeking to consolidate the pre-intifada status quo -- with cosmetic modifications -- in the guise of a "long-term interim agreement." In this context, the escalation of violence is designed not only to curtail the Palestinian uprising, but to compel the PA to accept a "ceasefire in place." Once this is achieved, the Palestinian leadership will be invited to negotiate the new interim agreement. Should it refuse, Sharon's objective will be fulfilled by perennially extending the "ceasefire."

The Sharon-Peres strategy will almost certainly fail. A unified Palestinian rejection of perpetual interim accords is precisely what sustains the uprising. Without firm commitments that permanent settlement negotiations will pick up close to where January's Taba talks left off, the PA will not and indeed cannot substantially reduce the level of unrest. The increasingly direct pressure Israel is exercising on the PA may push the PA's security forces into more direct confrontation with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). If not, the more militant and autonomous forces within the Fatah movement, the Islamist opposition and local militias -- including activists from across the political spectrum as well as PA security personnel -- will resist force with force. Neither open warfare with the PA nor the PA's demise will help Sharon fulfill his campaign promises of individual and collective security for Israel's citizens.

RAMPARTS AND ROADBLOCKS

Almost immediately after Sharon's government assumed power in early March, the Israeli military converted the Occupied Territories into an open air First World War museum. The addition of roughly 90 new trenches, earthen ramparts and concrete barriers -- often attended by tanks and armored personnel carriers -- divided the West Bank into 64 isolated and besieged enclaves. Gaza was divided into four pieces. Like a faucet, each enclave can be opened or closed at will by the IDF. For several days the beach south of Gaza City was converted into a main thoroughfare, while in the West Bank soldiers actively prevented the passage of pedestrians.

The proximity of so many roadblocks to Palestinian population centers provided the National and Islamic Forces (NIF) coalition which coordinates the uprising with the opportunity to launch a campaign of civil disobedience against the siege. On March 12, about 1,000 Birzeit University students and staff, accompanied by an even greater number of civilians from all walks of life, marched behind a number of PA ministers and parliamentarians and the entire NIF leadership toward a large trench the IDF had dug in the only road connecting Birzeit and about 25 surrounding villages with the towns of Ramallah and al-Bireh. Using a bulldozer, shovels and their bare hands, the protesters restored the vital road to service. In the ensuing clashes between soldiers and unarmed civilian demonstrators, one Palestinian was killed and a larger number wounded.

SINGING ARTISTS AND STUN GRENADES

The popular and civil character of the action, reminiscent of campaigns in South Africa during the 1980s, garnered massive international media attention, including numerous reports about the punitive nature and inhumane consequences of this particular siege. Caught off guard by the media glare, several days later the IDF reopened the road. During the following week, first Palestinian intellectuals and artists, and then a group of women, demonstrated at the al-Ram checkpoint on the Ramallah-Jerusalem road. The soldiers manning this permanent barricade were at a loss for a response to the singing artists, though they threw tear gas canisters and stun grenades at the women's march, injuring several people including Palestinian legislator Hanan Ashrawi. Civil resistance quickly spread throughout the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with additional marches taking place in Nablus, Jericho, Gaza City and elsewhere. In these latter instances, which enjoyed substantially less foreign press coverage, the Israeli response was significantly more violent, and the demonstrators were easily provoked into throwing stones at soldiers who responded with automatic weapons fire, producing many casualties. In combination with recent suicide attacks, the renewed Israeli policy of assassinations and bombings has taken the wind out of the sails of the civic campaign, though perhaps only temporarily.

The above efforts were not intended to transform the uprising from a war of attrition into a popular campaign of civil disobedience, but rather to extend participation in the intifada to sectors of the population marginalized by the pattern of daily clashes and nightly guerrilla attacks.

At the same time, the NIF has begun proposing solutions to problems of daily life -- such as unemployment and unpaid civil servant salaries -- that are of urgent concern to the civilian population but have been all but ignored by the PA. More and more, representatives of NGOs and local authorities are being invited to participate in the NIF's weekly deliberations. Partly in response, Yasser Arafat has invited a number of opposition parties to assume ministerial posts in an emergency government of national unity. The opposition parties have thus far declined, on the grounds that the Palestinian polity first needs to reach agreement on a common political and socio-economic program.

(MIS)TARGETING FORCE 17

Throughout the Occupied Territories -- and particularly in Gaza -- Palestinian paramilitary units have ratcheted up their response to Israel's unprecedented campaign of siege and destruction. Israeli allegations that these units are directed by PA security, specifically by Arafat's Presidential Guard (Force 17) are difficult to take seriously. While a portion of the PA's more than 40,000 security personnel are clearly involved, the simple fact is that the paramilitaries are neither prepared to take orders from the PA, nor in need of its assistance. The clearest example is the suicide attacks and other bombings carried out in various Israeli cities in February and March, for which the Sharon-Peres government held Arafat personally responsible. The Islamist organizations responsible for these attacks hardly require access to the PA armories, or covering fire from Force 17, to infiltrate their members into Israel. More to the point, the idea that Hamas and Islamic Jihad would expose their clandestine cells to a past adversary and potential rival, for no discernible benefit, defies logic.

Through the NIF, there is political coordination between various factions, and thus indirectly between factions and the PA. Although each faction retains independent control over its own paramilitary units -- much like the PLO during the 1970s -- it seems reasonable to assume that some level of military cooperation in the field exists as well. But the PA can only influence, and not control, the armed campaign of attrition. How much influence the PA can exert is determined by how accurately the leadership's political positions reflect the general mood of the Palestinian street. There is no single chain of command.

Despite this reality, the Sharon-Peres strategy is to strike directly at the PA, and Force 17 in particular. The strategy appears to rest upon traditional theories which hold that one influences the conduct of Third World leaders with attacks on their vital interests -- most notably the praetorian guard -- thereby visibly eroding the presumed pillars of their rule. Part of the so-called Operation Bronze, the Sharon-Peres escalation -- dubbed the "100-day plan" by the Palestinian media -- is an expansion of the policies pursued by Barak. A return to traditional Israeli propaganda has accompanied Operation Bronze. Whereas Barak concluded that Camp David and the subsequent eruption of the intifada demonstrated that Arafat "is not a peace partner" for Israel, Sharon consistently denounces Arafat as an unregenerate "terrorist." Chief of Staff Shaul Mofaz condemns the PA as a "terrorist entity," while Foreign Minister Shimon Peres characterizes the uprising as a "campaign of terror and violence." This is an extremely dangerous game. The Sharon-Peres government's constituents increasingly demand that "Palestinian terrorism" in the West Bank and Gaza be confronted with the same tactics used by Sharon in Lebanon during 1982.

A STORM TO BE WEATHERED

Meanwhile, Sharon's mantra that his government "will not negotiate with the PA under fire" is belied by a new round of not-so-secret contacts with Palestinian officials. Sharon has justified these talks by claiming that they are exclusively dealing with matters of security. More accurately, they have dealt with both political and security issues, but have consistently run aground over the substance of Israel's security demands and its insistence that these be met before political negotiations resume. The Palestinians, who have have come to view the Sharon-Peres government as a storm to be weathered, have strenuously rejected the Israeli demands. In their view, Sharon's security agenda is but a mask for his political one, and to accept the first is to guarantee the implementation of the second. The Palestinians have concluded that the next several weeks will bring unprecedented Israeli pressure on them, designed to compel their acquiescence to Sharon's agenda. The Palestinians believe they are facing a defining moment in an ongoing test of wills to see who snaps first.

On the night of April 4, almost immediately after the Bush administration auspices at the Tel Aviv residence of US Ambassador to Israel Martin Indyk. Preliminary reports indicate that it failed to produce substantial results. As the convoy of vehicles transporting PA security chiefs Muhammad Dahlan, Amin al-Hindi and Abd al-Razzaq al-Majayda passed through the Erez/Beit Hanun checkpoint on the boundary between Israel and the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces opened fire upon the jeeps, lightly injuring three Palestinian bodyguards. The Palestinians dismissed Israeli claims that they were responding to gunfire from the convoy, pointing instead to Sharon's vociferous pre-election demands for Dahlan's assassination. Yasser Abed Rabbo's prediction of "open warfare" may soon be proven correct.

* MERIP Press Information Note 54 - April 6, 2001.)


April 2001


Magazine



ARAB-AMERICANS - PATHETIC STATE OF AFFAIRS
(April 30, 2001)
Regular readers of MER won't be all that surprised; though many others will be, especially those who misguidedly and in many cases sincerely give their money, support, and most of all their hopes to these pathetic groups.

THE DARK SIDE OF ISRAELI INDEPENDENCE Day
(April 30, 2001)
Leave it to the Arab Americans to screw things up all the time. As the iconoclastic Israel writer Israel Shamir said as he prematurely departed American shores a few days ago: "With such Palestinian activists, who needs the Israeli lobby?"

ABDULLAH AND THE CIA - LONG HISTORICAL CONSPIRACY AGAINST PALESTINIANS
(April 30, 2001)
The Israelis and the Americans are busy using the Mubarak Regime in Egypt and the Hashemite Regime in Jordan in an increasingly desperate attempt to quash Intifada II and create still more years for the Israelis to consolidate and make permanent their grip on the Palestinians.

WAR MACHINES ON THE MARCH - MER FLASHBACK
(April 29, 2001)
Before the Second Intifada began, before last year's aborted Camp David fiasco, before this year's sweeping victory of Ariel Sharon and the attempt to then position Ehud Barak as Defense Minister, MER was already writing about what was to come while most of the media was sidetracked with and seduced by "the peace process."

THE "APARTHEID PEACE" REMAINS THE GAME BEING PLAYED
(April 28, 2001)
They -- the same personalities representing the same countries that created this "Apartheid Peace" and its resultant intensified uprising against it -- are at it again.

THE SLAUGHTER IN ALGERIA
(April 28, 2001)
This book contains shocking testimony about what is happening inside a country where, according to reliable estimates, more than 150,000 of its citizens have been slaughtered during the past decade.

THE ARAB AMERICAN and JEWISH AMERICAN SCENES
(April 27, 2001)
You gotta love all these scams that so many so tragically so often fall for -- especially the confused and naive Arab Americans.

THE GAZA CONCENTRATION CAMP
(April 27, 2001)
Over the years the Israelis have essentially turned The Gaza Strip from a Ghetto to a kind of Concentration Camp. In this small area today live more than 1 million Palestinians, a large number of whom have never been able to leave and reenter.

ARAFAT'S ESCAPE PLAN - MER FLASHBACK
(April 26, 2001)
More than $100 million dollars in a secret bank account set up by the Israelis and designed to make it possible for Arafat and friends to flee a coup and set up a "government in exile"?

SHA'ATH and PERES DESERVE EACH OTHER -- BUT HOW TRAGIC FOR THE PALESTINIANS
(April 26, 2001)
Sharon is sending Peres to Cairo, and Sha'ath visiting Sweden says there is a "crack in the wall of darkensss."

BERKELEY STUDENTS TAKE THE LEAD
(April 25, 2001)
With the total failure of the Arab American organizations at the national level, and of course provoked now by an Intifada II that is half a year old and the election of Ariel Sharon as PM in Israel, the grassroots are finally stirring a little, students in the lead as at other times in history.

CASINO FIRST!
(April 25, 2001)
In the old days of Intifada I Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres were busy pursuing their "Gaza First" strategy. It was never presented, but always designed, as a kind of trap for the Palestinians; and it was continually rejected by the Palestinian negotiating team that went to Madrid and then Washington, headed by Dr. Haider Abdul-Shafi.

Washington Scene: THE TRAGIC STATE OF ARAB AMERICAN AFFAIRS
(April 25, 2001)
Three things this week underscored the pathetically tragic state of affairs for the Arab American community which remains, well, politically retarded and as a result miserably weak...not to mention oh so co-opted and manipulated.

ISRAEL & TURKEY - MAJOR MILITARY ALLIANCE
(April 25, 2001)
While the misnomered "peace process" continues to dominate the news, arms continue to flood into the Middle East region and possible war preparations are underway.

SHIMON PERES - NOW HOLOCAUST DENIER!
(April 23, 2001)
For the past few years we have mentioned the great importance of the new military axis in the Middle East that adds Turkey's size and power to the U.S.-Israeli alliance that dominates and controls the region.

ARAFAT'S TRAVEL NOW RESTRICTED - MAYBE ON PURPOSE?
(April 23, 2001)
The front-page Washington Post article over the weekend about what the Israelis are up to helps reveal what the new General in charge of the Israeli Army, Ariel Sharon, is attempting to accomplish.

BLOODY SUNDAY AS SIX BOMBS ROCK ISRAEL, GAZA
(April 22, 2001)
Two explosions hit Israel over the space of several hours, and four bombs were detonated in Gaza City which is under Palestinian control.

TERROR IN TEL AVIV TODAY AS US PREPARES FOR BIOLOGICAL ATTACK
(April 22, 2001)
Like so many things in life, terror is a two-edged sword. No doubt the Israelis will use today's bomb blast in Tel Aviv to still further clamp down on and try to choke the Palestinians into submission.

ISRAEL'S ETHNIC CLEANSING SECRETS
(April 21, 2001)
Israel's prime minister-elect, in the throes of forming a new government, is known to be a militant nationalist. Ariel Sharon's view of history is that the Zionists unequivocally have justice on their side in the conflict over what is known to Jews as the Land of Israel and to Palestinians as Palestine.

HISTORIC JEWISH STATEMENT SUPPORTING PALESTINIAN INTIFADA
(April 21, 2001)
Two months after the first Palestinian Intifada began in December 1987, a group of professionals, all American Jews including many professors and lawyers, joined together to publish as a full page ad in THE NATION Magazine of 13 February 1988 this historic statement: "Time To Dissociate From Israel"

ARAB AMERICANS STILL TERRIBLY WEAK
(April 20, 2001)
Three things this week underscored the pathetically tragic state of affairs for the Arab American community which remains, well, politically retarded and as a result miserably weak...not to mention oh so co-opted and manipulated.

FROM THE FRONT
(April 19, 2001)
Attempts by Ariel Sharon, Israel's prime minister, to crush Palestinian violence by adopting still harsher military tactics came to nought last night, after guerrillas in the Gaza Strip fired more mortars into Israel, and one of the worst battles for months erupted on the edge of Bethlehem.

MUBARAK - MORE FRIGHTENED THAN ANGRY OR CREDIBLE
(April 19, 2001)
They use to call him the "laughing cow". Anwar Sadat made him Vice-President thinking he'd never really have to worry much about him. And he himself has never made anyone Vice-President fearing any and everyone.

QANA MASSACRE - 5TH ANNIVERSARY
(April 18, 2001)
It was only four years ago; but already it has been mostly forgotten -- the terrible Qana Massacre in southern Lebanon, and the atrocious cover-up by Israel, the U.S. and the U.N. that followed.

QANA REMEMBERED
(April 18, 2001)
It was five years ago today that hundreds of civilians under U.N. protection in southern Lebanon were brutally killed or maimed by the Israeli Army. With Shimon Peres then Prime Minister after the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israelis desperately tried to cover it all up and pretend it was just a mistake of war.

LATEST NEWS FROM THE FRONTS
(April 17, 2001)
With a heavy rocket barrage, Israel seized nearly a square mile of the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, retaking Palestinian-controlled territory for the first time since 1994 in retaliation for a mortar attack on a small Israeli desert town.

ROBERT FISK SPEAKS UP OH SO THOUGHTFULLY AND COURAGEOUSLY
(April 17, 2001)
The famous American Jewish iconoclastic journalist Izzy Stone (I.F.Stone) once told me over a long dinner in my apartment that the role of real and serious journalists in our day and age needed to be "to afflict the comfortable and to comfort the afflicted."

ISRAEL STRIKES STILL HARDER, IMPOTENT ARAB "CLIENT REGIMES" COWER
(April 17, 2001)
We shouldn't be surprised what the Israelis are doing. Ehud Barak may have hesitated, but after all in the end both he and Shimon Peres publicly gave their endorsements to Ariel Sharon and Sharon has been warning and threatening to do just such things for a very long time.

HASHEMITES CONTINUE TO COLLABORATE
(April 16, 2001)
Today the Jordanian Foreign Minister goes to Israel even as Israeli bombs kill Syrians, Lebanese and Palestinians and the whole region is being humbled and shaken by the Israeli Generals, accused war criminal Ariel Sharon now in charge.

CIA BUGS ARAFAT AND ALL P.A. LEADERSHIP
(April 14, 2001)
Arafat has been paid a very great amount of money for the deals he signed in Washington, Cairo, Sharm, Hebron, et. al. He, his family (the Tawils), and top cronies like Nabil Shaath, Abu Mazen, et. al., now have hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign bank accounts as a result.

EPILOGUE TO A DECADE - A SERIOUS ISRAELI ANALYSIS
(April 14, 2001)
From what would usually be called the far far left in Israel and whose voice is rarely heard these days beyond their own circles -- but which we would term the serious, sophisticated, highly committed and principled Israeli intelligentsia -- there is a magazine published every other month called "Challenge".

EASTER IN THE "HOLY LAND"
(April 13, 2001)
Two thousand years ago on the ancient streets of Jerusalem it was the Roman army in control, the Jewish people under occupation, and Jesus, a heretical Jewish rabbi, heading to his crucifixation as a result of "official" Jewish and Roman cooperation.

DEATH MY REMOTE CONTROL AS HIT SQUADES RETURN
(April 13, 2001)
Israel's strategy has always been to overwhelm and suffocate the Palestinians. At various times different tactics have been used ranging from diplomacy to brutality, from talk of "Statehood" to the imposition of neo-Apartheid.

ISRAELI ARMY ON THE RAMPAGE
(April 12, 2001)
A seven-year-old Palestinian girl was shot in the face by an Israeli rubber bullet while at school in the West Bank village of al-Khader when clashes broke out nearby, medical sources said.

IT'S WAR, MURDER, ASSASSINATIONS AND BEATINGS
(April 12, 2001)
With Robert Fisk, based out of Beirut and the longest serving Western journalist in the region, and Phil Reeves among the Palestinians and the Israelis, The Independent is usually heads above the English rest in both its coverage and analysis.

ISRAELIS ATTACK EVEN MORE BOLDLY
(April 11, 2001)
The Israelis won't be returning to "Zone A"; why should they? After all one of the major goals of the Madrid-Oslo "Peace Process" was to get the Palestinians into isolated and controlled "autonomous population centers" and let them fend for themselves.

ISRAEL BEGINS MINI INVASION STRATEGY
(April 11, 2001)
The Israelis have changed Generals, and the new master General Ariel Sharon is doing things his way. But then nearly everyone else among the Israeli elite has lined up right behind him.

ABDULLAH - KING OF JORDAN, AGENT OF THE ANGLO-AMERICANS
(April 11, 2001)
Abdullah II, ruler of Jordan, once called TransJordan, once called the East Bank of Palestine, is once again in Washington. The pattern is all too familiar.

ISRAELIS START USING GROUND TO GROUND MISSILES TO ATTACK PALESTINIANS
(April 10, 2001)
Starting yesterday, and for the first time in the occupied territories against the Palestinians, the Israelies have begun to use surface to surface missiles. In doing so the Israelis are once again throwing down the gauntlet to the entire Arab and Muslim world.

RACISM, MILITARISM, NEO-NAZISM IN THE "JEWISH STATE"
(April 10, 2001)
Racism, militarism, and a peculiar form of Israeli neo-Nazism thrives in today "Jewish State". Harsh conclusions, true; but buttressed by considerable evidence, both factual and ideological.

"VOICE OF AMERICA" EXPANDING TOWARDS CRUCIAL MIDDLE EAST
(April 9, 2001)
Just a few years ago, after the original Camp David agreement in 1978, the joke around Cairo was that the "Voice of America" was really all those loud muffler-broken U.S-supplied buses helping choke, or unchoke depending on your perspective, Cairo's teeming streets.

BARAK AND SHARON PLAN NEXT WAR
(April 9, 2001)
Long before anyone even thought Ariel Sharon might become Israeli Prime Minister... Long before anyone even thought Shimon Peres would serve as Sharon's Foreign Minister... While the "Peace Process" and plans for "Camp David II" were riding high... MER was writing about the coming war being planned by Generals Barak and Sharon in tandem.

DEIR YASSIN REMEMBERED AND "THE QUILT"
(April 8, 2001)
"It's so unfair... After 50 years the Israelis have nuclear weapons, the Mossad, Hollywood, a kosher White House, and their own Assistant Secretary of State; while the Arabs have corruption, secret-police, pathetic Arab- American organizations, Arafat, and the 50th anniversary quilt!"

THE PATHETIC ARAFAT - GIVER AND BEGGAR
(April 8, 2001)
This guy Arafat, and those who advise him, are truly getting ore pathetic all the time. We now learn that while his people suffer even worse than before as a result of what he and his cronies have done, and not done, Arafat has been busy giving expensive jewelry gifts to the former American President, First Lady, and Secretary of State (and no doubt there is a larger list!).

PASSOVER IN THE TIME OF THE INTIFADA
(April 8, 2001)
"I have been invited to a neighbor's Seder this year, and in my fantasy I have thought that I would rather sit on a box at home by myself in the dark with my face to the wall for the length of time the Seder lasts, out of a mixture of shame and protest against Israel's denial of freedom to her Palestinian neighbors."

THE LAST PASSOVER
(April 7, 2001)
"Is this the last Passover that I will celebrate? My heart is not in the celebration this year. And it can never be again until freedom for Jews is also freedom for Palestinians."

THE NEXT EXPULSION OF THE PALESTINIANS?
(April 7, 2001)
The effect of the four-month-old al-Aqsa intifada has been to radicalize and polarize all sides and thus the current situation poses a great danger to the Palestinian people.

ISRAELIS AND U.S. CONGRESS POUND PALESTINIANS
(April 6, 2001)
What is happening now is the result of all the past years of ineptitude, corruption, stupidities, and mistakes by the the various Arab "client regimes", Yasser Arafat's included of course, as well as from the various "client organizations" allied with them, especially in the US.

ISRAELIS BUILD, AMERICANS DECEIVE, ARABS WINK AND HIDE
(April 6, 2001)
This little game has gone on quite literally for decades now. The Israelis twist and turn, delay and obfuscate, but all the while push forward. The Americans say one thing and do another, and when the going gets hot they provide a little criticism of Israel for the Arab media but reserve the important things that really matter for ongoing and escalating cooperation with the Israelis.

"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 4
(April 5, 2001)
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...

ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT AGAINST TOP THREE ARAFAT PEOPLE?
(April 5, 2001)
Believing the official Israelis is all but impossible at this point; so one has to do the best one can to put together the pieces in ways that make sense. What happened yesterday was probably not an actual assassination attempt -- if that's what the Israelis wanted to do to these three they have the capabilities to do so and not to miss.

THE JORDANIAN POLICE STATE
(April 4, 2001)
About five days before the convening of the Arab Summit in Amman, dozens of masked security men armed to the teeth, along with officers of the Intelligence service (mukhabarat), stormed the house of Siajj Said Daraghmeh near Jabri on the Gardens Street in Amman.

"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 3
(April 4, 2001)
Saturday a few thousand Arab Americans are planning to make it to Washington "demanding" the "Right of Return" for Palestinian refugees. What should one think about this?

"RIGHT OF RETURN" CONF A "DISASTER" - PART 2
(April 3, 2001)
The region itself has corrupt and incompetent "client regimes", now including that of Yasser Arafat. And that explains a great deal why such an important and rich part of the world with over 200 million people is so regularly humbled and bleeding.

"RIGHT OF RETURN" AMERICAN STYLE - PART 1
(April 3, 2001)
This year the selected slogan for Arab Americans is "the Right of Return". A couple of years ago at the time of the 50th anniversary of the 1948 war -- the "nakba", the "disaster" -- the slogan was "the Quilt".

"INVASION" PREPARATIONS AS MUBARAK COMES COLLECTING
(April 2, 2001)
Hosni Mubarak of Egypt has come to Washington once again. His visits have become customary to in a sense collect his allowance and meet with his new American keepers, which are in fact really the old Bush crowd he is very familiar with.

PERES 'MORE AGGRESSIVE' THAN SHARON
(April 2, 2001)
"Peres is more aggressive than I am, (said Sharon). "Peres responded (to the Cabinet), "Yes, he had to restrain me this time."

PLOT TO KILL ARAFAT'S TOP PEOPLE
(April 1, 2001)
Yesterday the Senior U.S. Senator from New York, Chuck Shumer, went before the Washington cameras to denounce Yasser Arafat as a "terrorist" and demand he comply with U.S./Israeli dictate or else.

ANOTHER ARAB SUMMIT COMES AND GOES
(April 1, 2001)
If the demonstrators going to the Palestinian Rally in New York next weekend had any guts, and any smarts, after they gather at the Israeli Consulate they would move on and conduct their serious shouting where the Arab Ambassadors and the Arab League hang their sorry hats.




© 2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved