MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/14/01: The Palestinian support groups in the US and elsewhere are pathetically weak, terribly lead, and still engaged most of the time in rather juvenile uninformed internal debates about who is who and what is what. But even so, once and awhile there's a good idea circulated in their incestuous and bloated email forums, though there is hardly ever any follow-through in any serious way. This all said and understood, one such interesting, and certainly very timely, idea just got forwarded to MER -- very timely as Ramadan is now ending and who knows where, or even if, Arafat will be next year.

Now we're well aware that this is directed to the very same Yasser Arafat who has missed one historic opportunity after another for so long now. Indeed, just in the past year he could have tried to go to Jerusalem to attend the the burial and funeral of Feisal Hussein on the al Haram, the holy Muslim site the Israelis call the "Temple Mount" but have been forced to leave under Islamic Waft control. Or, if he had just done as he incessantly promised he was going to do and "declared" a "Palestinian State" for the turn of the millenium after the "five year Oslo deadline" he would at least have achieved considerable world diplomatic recognition at that time...even though of course the Israelis would have continued to circumvent the realities of such a "State" on the ground.

Now, for the first time in history, Yasser Arafat is hunkered down in a bunker within walking distance of Jerusalem with Israeli tanks a few hundred meters away pointing in his direction.

And to add even more historic color to such a potentially symbolic event and visual moment, if he were to take this suggestion to heart Yasser Arafat would be traveling unguarded to the very same historic sight Ariel Sharon forced his way onto with over 1000 armed Israeli troops not that long ago, purpose igniting the hatreds and resentments that have lead to today's disastrous situation.