But in the long term the Israelis are pursuing policies lead by their most notorious General and war criminal which may eventually bring down the wrath of God himself on them; precisely why all those who came before Sharon have always greatly hesitated to do what is now happening.

[The Independent, UK, 23 July 2001]: Just a year after the abortive Israeli-Palestinian "peace" talks at Camp David, one of Israel's greatest public relations triumphs - persuading the world that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, was to blame for the collapse of the summit - is turning into a hollow victory.

For despite Israeli and American claims that Mr Arafat turned down an offer of "96 per cent" of the Palestinian occupied territories, one of former president Bill Clinton's senior Middle East advisers now says that Mr Clinton and the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, were equally responsible for the failure of the Camp David initiative.

Writing in the New York Review of Books, Robert Malley, who was Mr Clinton's special adviser on Arab-Israeli affairs, claims that Mr Barak failed to honour previous Israeli agreements - assurances which Mr Clinton had been personally guaranteed to Mr Arafat. Mr Barak, the author writes, failed to fulfil promises to withdraw from three villages around Jerusalem and to release Palestinian prisoners - provoking an angry confrontation with Mr Clinton.

The article, which is co-authored with Hussein Agha, a former Arafat adviser and university don, reveals only two of the reasons why Mr Arafat failed to reach a peace agreement but already the claims have severely damaged Israel's repeated assertion that the Palestinian leader "turned to violence" after "massive concessions" from Israel.

Immediately after the Camp David talks broke down, Israel mounted a huge public relations exercise to convince the international community that it had made unprecedented offers to Mr Arafat which amounted to the return of almost the entire occupied Palestinian territories. Israeli embassies wined and dined Western newspaper editors with stories of the supposed 96 per cent of land which was offered to Mr Arafat, repeating the tired old shibboleth that the Palestinian leader "never lost an opportunity to lose an opportunity".

Mr Clinton took the unprecedented step of appearing on Israeli television to blame Mr Arafat. American journalists dutifully reported that the Palestinian Authority president - out of greed or stupidity - had demanded the return of 100 per cent of the occupied land and, failing to achieve this, opted for a second intifada in which more than 600 men, women and children, the vast majority of them Palestinians, have been killed by Israeli soldiers, Jewish settlers, Palestinian guerrillas and suicide bombers.

In reality, Palestinian officials and American sources - the latter wisely avoiding Israeli condemnation by talking anonymously - have pointed out that the figure of 96 per cent represented the percentage of the land over which Israel was prepared to negotiate - not 96 per cent of the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Left out of the equation was Arab east Jerusalem - illegally annexed by Israel after the 1967 Arab-Israeli Six Day War - the huge belt of Jewish settlements, including Male Adumim, around the city and a 10-mile wide military buffer zone around the Palestinian territories.

Along with the obligation to lease back settlements - built illegally under international law on Arab land - to Israel for 25 years, the total Palestinian land from which Israel was prepared to withdraw came to only around 46 per cent - a far cry from the 96 per cent touted after Camp David.

With his usual inability to explain himself, Mr Arafat failed to explain these details after Camp David, preferring to concentrate on Israel's refusal to grant Palestinians sovereignty in east Jerusalem - an important symbolic point but by no means the only reason for Camp David's failure.

The Israelis had only offered the Palestinians "control" over some Arab streets in Jerusalem - a miniature version of the little "bantustans" that already exist in the West Bank - and "control" over the Al Aqsa mosque and its surrounds, the territory beneath (including the remains of the Jewish Temple) being under Israeli sovereignty. The Palestinians were apparently to receive some territorial waters in the Dead Sea - upon which they could hardly build any houses.

Mr Malley's disclosures - which do not include the percentage breakdown of land to be offered back to Mr Arafat - appear a little self-serving. By making Mr Barak share the blame for the collapse of Camp David, he cleans up Mr Clinton's image as a Middle East peacemaker, presenting him as a victim of Mr Barak's double-cross as well as Mr Arafat's intransigence.

According to the two authors, Mr Barak decided, for domestic political reasons, not to keep his promise to withdraw from the three villages outside Jerusalem, allowing instead the rapid construction of new - and illegal - Jewish settlements on Palestinian land.

He did not, the authors say, want to alienate the Israeli right wing before a final peace settlement. Mr Arafat was therefore reluctant to attend the talks even before they began - and suspicious of Mr Barak because the latter wanted to negotiate first with Syria.

The painful linguistic vice from which all US policy makers suffer in their attempts to be even-handed while at the same time being Israel's closest ally, was all too evident yesterday when the Arabs perused Washington's reaction to the killing by Jewish settlers of two Palestinian civilians and a three-month-old baby.

Never afraid to refer to the Palestinian murder of Israelis as "terrorism", the State Department referred to the latest killings as a barbaric attack of "unconscionable vigilantism".

JERUSALEM, July 22 (AFP) - Outspoken former Israeli premier Benjamin Netanyahu took the next step in his much touted political comeback on Sunday in a showdown with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who is struggling to contain the Palestinian uprising.

Netanyahu used a meeting of the right-wing Likud party's central committee to tear into Sharon's policies to squash the uprising, or Intifada. "We have been told to use a policy of restraint but this restraint has only provoked an escalation of terrorism and new demands from the international community for more restraint," Sharon's firebrand rival said.

"Eventually, it will bring us foreign observers that will not fight against terrorism and will hamper our army," he added.

Sharon said he was leading an "anti-terrorist war operation" when Netanyahu criticised his "restraint" policy.

"We are pursuing a policy of active defence, with a priority placed on the roads of the West Bank. It is a question of an anti-terrorist operation coming from our right to self-defence," Sharon told the first meeting of the Likud party's central committee since he was elected in February.

He ruled out an overall offensive against the Palestinian Authority, called for by hardliners in his party.

"We have two possibilities -- either undertake harsh military actions against the Palestinian Authority, its leaders and institutions, or launch immediate spontaneous operations on the dot after each attack. It is that second strategy that we have adopted and we are going to pursue," he added.

The two right-wing rivals met and squared off for the first time since Sharon's election as each addressed the 2,700 members of the Likud central committee in Tel Aviv.

Sharon had to fend off angry rabble-rousers who stridently heckled his gloved approach toward the Palestinians.

"Yelling and shouting has never helped anyone deal with anything, certaintly not terrorism and certainly not with me," Sharon said, as he stared down the restive crowd's call for the use of greater military force.

"We are conducting an active defensive policy with the priority of security on West Bank roads. It is a counter-terrorist guerrilla offensive which follows from our right to self defence," he added.

Before the evening's events, Likud members had toiled to put the best spin on the political rumble.

"There is no division within the Likud but some criticism and some internal debate are natural practices of a democratic party like Likud," Likud MP and Netanyahu backer Yuval Steinitz told public television.

But Netanyahu has been fanning the flames of discontent, especially among his core base of right-wingers and hardliners, over Sharon's refusal to answer continuing Palestinian violence with an all-out army assault.

Last week he called Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat "the head of the largest terror organisation in the world" and said parliament should annul the 1993 Oslo peace accords which gave the Palestinians limited independence.

Few observers would have thought Sharon, a hawkish former general detested in the Arab world for his alleged role in the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Lebanon, could find himself under attack for being too "soft".

But the 73-year-old has adopted a self-declared policy of "restraint" which he believes essential in securing support from the international community, seen here as overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian.

Israel has drawn limited praise from abroad for not retaliating with a massive military attack to the ongoing Palestinian violence, most recently a suicide bombing last week that killed two Israeli soldiers.

Yet after winning in a landslide in February by presenting himself as the man to restore security in the midst of the Palestinian uprising, Sharon's limited response to the continuing violence has left many supporters disappointed.

Hardline ministers have boycotted his cabinet meetings, while his so-called "national unity" government, a right-left coalition cobbled together to unite Israel against the Palestinian uprising, is increasingly under threat.

Environment Minister Tzahi Hanegbi said Likud would have to work to keep Sunday's gathering -- intended as a regular party meeting with the next election still two years away -- from degenerating into a political free-for-all.

"No one has an interest in letting the meeting get out of hand," Hanegbi told the Jerusalem Post.

No one except perhaps for Netanyahu, who used a divide-and-conquer strategy to become in 1996 the youngest ever Israeli prime minister and the only premier born after the Jewish state was founded in 1948.

After surviving a fraud and corruption investigation last year, the US-educated Netanyahu has been politicking his way across the nation, notably visiting with the families of Jewish settlers slain by Palestinians.

The Maariv paper reported last week that Netanyahu's internal polling shows him easily winning a head-to-head contest with Sharon for the Likud leadership by more than 20 percent of the vote.

Meanwhile Sharon is downplaying any talk of a political challenge from the man he served as foreign minister.

"I am not contending with anyone," he said on Saturday. "There are no internal party struggles at the moment."

Mid-East Realities

www.middleeast.org

Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/7/297.htm