"I DON'T THINK IT'S WRONG OR ANY KIND OF EXAGGERATION TO SAY THAT ARAFAT AND HIS 'PALESTINE AUTHORITY' HAVE BECOME COLLABORATORS WITH THE MILITARY OCCUPATION, A SORT OF VICHY GOVERNMENT* FOR PALESTINIANS... WITH OSLO THE 'PEACE PROCESS' ENTERED A NEW AND MUCH MORE DESTRUCTIVE PHASE. FAR FROM BRINGING PEACE, IT BROUGHT GREATER SUFFERING FOR PALESTINIANS... EVERY LEADER INVOLVED WITH THE OSLO PROCESS -- PALESTINIAN, ISRAELI, AMERICAN OR EUROPEAN -- HAS ACTED, IN MY OPINION, WITHOUT PRINCIPLES AND WITHOUT ANYTHING REMOTELY RESEMBLING VISION AND TRUTHFULNESS... WORSE, LARGE DROVES OF INTELLECTUALS, SCHOLARS AND EXPERTS HAVE IN MY OPINION BETRAYED THEIR VOCATIONS, TO SAY NOTHING OF THEIR EXPERTISE AND KNOWLEDGE. AND THIS BETRAY HAS CONTRIBUTED TO THE AMAZINGLY COMPLIANT ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN MEDIA IN PARTICULAR, WHO HAVE CELEBRATED, EXTOLLED, SALUTED AND REJOICED WHERE THERE HAS BEEN NEITHER OCCASION NOR CAUSE TO JUSTIFY SUCH EXCESSIVE HANDCLAPPING AND JUBILATION."

Professor Edward Said speaking at Tufts University, 4/95 (Featured in MER-TV Program "PEACE PROCESS - REAL OR PHONY?" which can now be viewed at http://www.MiddleEast.Org/video.htm * Reference to the Nazi-installed French Government headed by Marshall Petain during World War II.

MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 5/4/97:

The recent orgy of 'activism' surrounding the new "Har Homa" settlement has given 'peace groups' and various Arab Americans groups something to do again.

Once again they are claiming to be active and involved when in reality they are nearly all irrelevant and disingenuous, terribly misleading their members with deceptive statements, meaningless gestures, and always safe and simplistic slogans that closely correlate with whatever the Americanized Arab regimes are pushing at the moment.

With few exceptions these groups have done little if anything now for many years when it comes to speaking up seriously and honestly about U.S. policies, the 'peace process', the Arab "client-regimes", and the collaborationist nature of the Arafat "PA". The reasons are many, but the bottom line is that nearly all of these groups have either succumbed or expired (PAS a good example), been co-opted or taken over (ADC a good example), or simply allowed themselves to become irrelevant (PSC a good example). Other groups have always been little but fronts for governments or associated business interests on the one hand (ANERA and NAAA good examples), or for either the Israeli/Jewish Lobby (Labor Party wing - 'Peace Now' a good example) or the Arab client-regime lobbies (Zogby's duplicitous AAI a good example). And still other groups like AET, CNI, and MEI are pretty much retirement homes for former foreign service officers and U.S. government officials; never straying straying far from the views and concerns of those they use to work directly for and now continue to front for.

Washington is quite literally littered these days with lies and treachery when it comes to matters Middle Eastern. And that too is a part of the realities of the so-called "peace process".

After all, what is really happening today in the "peace process" was all quite foreseeable years ago, as the quote from Edward Said makes clearly evident. The notion that Rabin and Peres were taking things somewhere other than where Netanyahu is going simply doesn't accord with Israeli history or overall Zionist ideology. Oslo is in fact pretty much the old "Allon Plan" from the 60s and 70s -- named for the Labor Party Foreign Minister of that era. And the notion that Bush and Baker -- with the "New World Order" and Madrid -- were pursuing something different than what transpired at Oslo simply doesn't accord with the history of American foreign policy in the Middle East.

Clinton policy is in fact pretty much the same as that of all American Administrations going back to Kennedy and Johnson. It was during the LBJ Presidency in fact that the U.S. clandestinely helped Israel win the "Six-Day War" and capture the areas they have been colonizing -- with ever-increasing American assistance -- ever since. The main difference with Clinton, in fact, is the much greater direct participation of many card-carrying members of the Israeli/Jewish lobby now as U.S. government officials in charge of U.S. Middle East policies