Shimon Peres has many secrets to try to keep, and that explains his desperation to stay in power practically at any cost. Ariel Sharon knows this.

Yasser Arafat has many secrets to keep, and that also explains his desperation to stay in power practically at any cost. And Ariel Sharon also knows this.

Everything is likely to get still worse for the Palestinian people -- soon.

The collapse, impoverishment, imprisonment, and despair now taking place is the price of so many years of ineptitude and corruption at the top. Anarchy and internal shake-downs are no positive substitute for principled and dignified leadership which have been desperately needed for so many years now.

And much will also likely get worse for the Israeli people -- but not so soon. The facism, militarism, cockiness, and racism now more evident than ever when it comes to Israeli ways is the result of so many years of self-deception and brutality coming from the top. Stretching these black behaviours even more through a Sharon led "unity government" is no positive substitute for realizing the basic errors of their ways and the urgency of contrition.

The current path leads eventually, sooner or later, toward more war and destruction in "the Holy Land". A whole new course is needed for the welfare, indeed for the survival, of both the Palestinians and the Israelis. Whether it will come before, or after, is the basic question thoughtful and sane people should be contemplating.

[The Independent, UK, 1 March 2001] United Nations officials say Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority may have only one month left before it collapses financially, plunging the occupied territories into anarchy.

Their warnings back recent statements by the UN's Middle East envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, about the growing fiscal crisis facing the Palestinian Authority (PA) because of the five-month intifada and Israel's economic blockade of the West Bank and Gaza. The envoy's office is trying to convince the international community to take these predictions seriously and to help bail out the Palestinians before it is too late.

"There is no question in our minds that the PA could collapse by the end of March, if nothing is done," said one source. "We have been criticised for saying this but we seriously believe it to be true. We do not want to be accused, after the event, of saying nothing."

The Palestinian intifada - and particularly Israel's unprecedentedly harsh and almost uninterrupted blockade of the occupied territories - has devastated the Palestinian economy, tripling unemployment (to at least 30 per cent) and pushing the number of people living below the poverty line to about one million.

About 100,000 Palestinians have been unable to cross into Israel to work. Figures released this week by Mr Roed-Larsen's office showed income losses of $1.15bn from October to January. The main fear of Western diplomats is not that the financial collapse of the PA - which cannot pay its 130,000 employees - will bring about the fall of Yasser Arafat. His role as a figurehead, the international face of the Palestinian cause for decades, is well understood by his domestic opponents.

But diplomats fear that the Palestinian leader's already partial control over his population of three million will be so eroded that he will no longer be in a position to negotiate with the Israelis - for example over restoring calm - and that the occupied territories will slide into anarchy, withwarlords and armed groups running amok. There are already signs that armed and largely criminal elements are increasingly active and influential in parts of the West Bank and Gaza.

The UN's drive to rescue the PA has been complicated by well-founded international concerns about the deep corruption within it and fears that aid money will disappear into private bank accounts. Mr Arafat is understood to be planning an anti-corruption drive, not least because the PA's dismal reputation for graft boosts his increasingly popular nationalist opponents, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

The warnings may be getting through. The US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, pointedly called for an end to Israel's "siege" of the occupied territories on his visit to the region on Sunday. America also pressed Israel to release more than $50m in Palestinian tax revenues collected by Israel. This week, the European Union agreed to turn a $57m loan to the Palestinians into a grant.

These measures have coincided with efforts on the ground to ease the growing poverty. The UN's World Food Programme began an emergency distribution of flour in the occupied territories. This went ahead despite the Israeli army's refusal to allow WFP officials access to one of the most needy areas, southern Gaza.

Nor was the UN's efforts to generate help for the Palestinians made any easier yesterday by allegations from Israel's armed forces chief of staff, Shaul Mofaz, that the PA is stockpiling weapons - including anti-tank and antiaircraft missiles - smuggled into the Gaza strip by sea and through tunnels from Egypt. These accusations were dismissed as "baseless" by an aide to Mr Arafat.