ARAFAT'S TRAVEL NOW RESTRICTED - MAYBE ON PURPOSE?
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ARAFAT'S TRAVEL NOW RESTRICTED - MAYBE ON PURPOSE?

April 23, 2001

"THERE IS NO NEW SHARON"

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 4/23: 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. There is a style and tactics here that go way back with Sharon. It is the same style and tactic that in the past suppressed the Palestinians for awhile, only for the conflict to reerupt in the future more virulent than ever.

Meanwhile, isn't it interesting that during the very weeks when the Israelis are attacking Gaza more than ever Yasser Arafat is spending his time away from Gaza in Ramallah. Of course it's not just Arafat that's involved, but such people as Nabil Shaath, Abu Mazen, and key Arafat aides and entourage, who also are maybe mostly out of Gaza these days? How convenient if that is in fact the case, which we do not know for sure but hope those who do will let us know. Could it be a crafty way for the Israelis and Americans to be protecting Arafat and entourage while at the same time putting their boot to him?

No doubt about it, General Sharon is a crafty fellow. No doubt about it, General Sharon's racism, brutality, and thuggary have in fact had considerable impact over the years. But this time, Sharon's history may fail him; and he may yet ignite a firestorm that even his rampant militarism will not be able to extinguish and which in the end will engulf him and those who started it all.

ISRAEL KEPT ARAFAT PLANE FROM RETURNING TO GAZA

[MIDDLE EAST NEWSLINE - Ramallah - April 20, 2001 Israel has attempted to keep Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat from returning to Gaza from a brief visit to Cairo, PA sources said.

The sources said Arafat's jet was prevented from entering Gaza air space on late Tuesday amid the Israeli invasion of Palestinian areas of Gaza. They said Arafat was forced to fly to Amman instead.

In Amman, the sources said, Arafat appealed to Jordan's King Abdullah to press Israel to allow the PA chairman to return to the Palestinian areas. Hours later, Arafat flew into Ramallah.

The sources said Israel has launched a new policy meant to disrupt Arafat's movements and particularly to prevent him from returning to the West Bank and Gaza Strip from abroad. They said the new policy requires specific permission for Arafat's plane to land in Gaza's Rafah airport. In the past, such approval was granted immediately...

Arafat has not been in Gaza since the Arab League summit in Amman on March 27. Instead, he has been based in Ramallah and has traveled abroad and returned on a Jordanian military helicopter.

The PA chairman is expected to travel to Damascus at the end of the month for his first official meetings in Damascus. The London-based Al Hayat daily said Syrian and Palestinian officials are drafting a joint communique.

Egypt has not pressed Israel regarding restrictions on Arafat, a PA source said. The source said Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is dismayed by Arafat's refusal to reduce the mini-war against Israel to enable implementation of an Egyptian-Jordanian plan meant to resume peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians.

OLD TACTICS GET NEW LIFE UNDER SHARON

By Daniel Williams

[Washington Post - Page 1 - JERUSALEM, April 20] In a recent newspaper interview, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon went out of his way to assure readers that "there is no new Sharon." A few days later, he set out to prove it.

Reviving a signature tactic from the days of Israel's full occupation of the Gaza Strip, Sharon ordered army bulldozers to clear swaths of Palestinian-run territory, knocking down trees and buildings to create free-fire zones to deter Palestinian mortar launchers and riflemen. Immediate U.S. criticism cut short the incursion, regarded as an assault on the 1993 Oslo peace accords that transferred 20 percent of the West Bank and two-thirds of the Gaza Strip to Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority.

But Tuesday's 24-hour reoccupation was just one facet of a consistent escalation that has taken place since Sharon took office six weeks ago, designed to pressure the Palestinians into ending their almost seven-month-old revolt against Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank. Despite the expression of U.S. concern, the escalation policy will not be abandoned, aides to Sharon said, because the veteran Israeli warrior believes it is the best way to deal with the Palestinians and protect Israeli civilians from attack.

"I am tired of always hearing people say that Israel uses excessive force," Sharon told the French newspaper Le Figaro, referring to language used Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell. The Israeli leader added that foreign criticisms only "encourage Arafat to start shooting at Israeli civilians again."

Since taking over from Ehud Barak on March 7, Sharon has redefined many of the reference points in Israel's conflict with the Palestinians. After eight years of peacemaking in which Arafat was a negotiating partner and the goal was ending a half-century of war, Israel has reverted to calling Arafat a terrorist. And Sharon's government -- dismissing final peace as impractical for now -- has set out to show the Palestinians with military force that they must submit to continued Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip and West Bank.

Sharon, 73, has made no secret of his desire to fulfill a lifelong goal of keeping hold of the West Bank and Gaza, which were captured in 1967, and maintaining the settlements there that now dot the landscape and house nearly 200,000 Israelis. It is an objective that is also vintage Sharon, part and parcel of the ideology of the Likud Party he heads. Asked if he would ever abandon any settlements, he told the newspaper Haaretz, "No.. Absolutely not."

Sharon has insisted he still wants to negotiate with Arafat. But he wants the discussion to center on "interim agreements" that essentially would keep the present map in place, with Israeli troops and settlements remaining in place, too. That is a far cry from the final peace accord, with a Palestinian state in most of Gaza and the West Bank, that was under discussion during Barak's tenure. Palestinian leaders say it is a recipe for no talks -- and no peace -- at all.

At the same time, Sharon and his aides have repeatedly blamed Arafat and his administration for tolerating, and even directing, attacks against Israeli troops and civilians. They have accused him time and again of running an administration that promotes "terror" against Israelis, a revival of vocabulary that skips back to the 1980s.

Action has matched the words. Sharon has increased the use of tanks, helicopters and heavy automatic rifle fire against Palestinian civilians and military targets. In recent weeks, Israel has begun to use surface-to-surface missiles to bombard Gaza. Shelling of Bethlehem on Wednesday, in retaliation for gunfire on roads used by settlers traveling from the West Bank into Jerusalem, lasted at least two hours. It was the most persistent attack on a Palestinian town since the latest round of Israeli-Palestinian conflicts erupted last September.

Target selection in Bethlehem also represented an escalation. Not only was a stone cutting factory severely damaged, but Israeli tanks bombarded a new conference center on the southern end of the city. Both facilities symbolize major Bethlehem industries: stone working and tourism.

The military strategy, according to government officials, does not merely reflect Sharon's career-long reputation for an iron fist. Rather, it combines classic elements of anti-guerrilla strategy with limited warfare, a miniature version of tactics dating back to the Vietnam War: sending messages through destruction and killing.

Through carrot-and-stick methods -- bombing and bulldozing houses on the one hand, and on the other, pledging to ease travel and let more workers get jobs in Israel -- Sharon hopes to drive a wedge between civilians and the Arafat administration, his aides say. In effect, Sharon wants to poison the sea in which Palestinian armed groups operate.

"The tactic is out of the past, but we think it can work here. We believe the majority of Palestinians are ready to end this violence," said Raanan Gissin, an adviser and spokesman for Sharon.

Attacks on Palestinian Authority security facilities and efforts to assassinate activists in the Fatah movement, the main part of Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organization, have a similar, more focused goal. They are designed to fix blame on Arafat's forces and to sap the morale of his armed agencies by showing that they are vulnerable.

"Arafat will understand he can't provide security to his own people," Gissin said.

In execution of that strategy, Palestinians in recent weeks have been punished by the destruction of dozens of homes on the edges of the Khan Younis and Rafah refugee camps in Gaza, the source of gunfire and mortar attacks on nearby Israeli troops and settlements. The tin-roofed, one-story Palestinian houses are not suitable as launching pads for mortar fire; most were in positions from where snipers had no line of fire onto Israeli military positions or settlements. But hundreds of Palestinians were left homeless, and the message was sent.

Shells and missile fire into the Gaza Strip were also aimed at a police station, offices of the Preventive Security forces and military posts near the territory's frontiers with Israel. "If the Palestinians want to complain, they should complain to Arafat," remarked an Israeli military official.

Sharon has described his tactics as a means of "unbalancing" the Palestinians "so that they will be busy protecting themselves."

The other side of the policy, easing conditions on civilians, came in the form of permission for about 3,000 workers to cross from Gaza into Israel to return to jobs. Blockades along roads in the West Bank and Gaza were also lifted.

Sharon came under intense criticism in the Israeli press for invading Gaza, and for then pulling back, evidently under U.S. pressure. Commentators noted that mortar attacks on Israeli farms near the Gaza border and on military posts in the Gaza Strip did not stop, suggesting the decision managed only to provoke U.S. criticism.

"Now Sharon knows where the limits of Israel's might are . . . they pass through the White House lawn," wrote the Yedioth Aharonoth newspaper.

Labor Party members in the governing coalition seized on the controversy to offer their own plan for ending the confrontations. Transportation Minister Ephraim Sneh proposed opening talks with the Palestinians on "concrete measures" to end violence and offering a freeze on settlement construction and means to revive the prostrate Palestinian economy. Talks on a final settlement would begin after "a few months of quiet," he said.

"Military action is not enough. The events of this week and the . . . hasty withdrawal from the Gaza Strip showed us the limits of force and the thin tissue of international support for Israel," he said.

Nonetheless, Sharon has decided to continue attacks into Palestinian-ruled territories, albeit with smaller numbers of troops and without threats to reoccupy Palestinian land for an extended period. The day after the Gaza incursion, tanks and bulldozers briefly crossed into southern Gaza to knock down a police post and uproot trees.

The controversial assassination policy begun under Barak remains. Israeli undercover units will continue to enter Palestinian territory to pursue leaders of armed groups, government officials said.

"Israel will do what's necessary to protect its towns and cities," said Dore Gold, an adviser to Sharon. "What is important is the principle: This government will not negotiate under fire."

Despite the harsh tone from the Bush administration, Sharon is satisfied that the United States puts primary blame on the Palestinians and has "not confused the arsonist with the fireman," Gold said.

One departure from the Sharon of old is sensitivity to political and international opinion, Israeli observers said. As head of a coalition government, he needs to balance an urge to punish the Palestinians with the preference of such partners as Sneh to negotiate. If the government falls, Sharon will face a challenge in his own party from former prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is waiting to run in the next elections.

"Twenty years ago, Sharon would have dismissed the American complaints and stayed in Gaza," said Gerald Steinberg, a political analyst at Bar-Ilan University. "He now understands the problem of image. He doesn't want to be seen as the Sharon of Lebanon," Steinberg continued, referring to the 1982 invasion led by Sharon, who was defense minister at the time. "The Gaza business revived the image of invasion, occupation and aggressiveness. He doesn't want to project that image."


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.




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