_______ ____ ______ / |/ / /___/ / /_ // M I D - E A S T R E A L I T I E S / /|_/ / /_/_ / /\\ Making Sense of the Middle East /_/ /_/ /___/ /_/ \\ MER FLASHBACK - 7 Years
www.MiddleEast.Org News, Information, & Analysis That Governments, Interest Groups, and the Corporate Media Don't Want You To Know! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MER FLASHBACK - Published by MER Seven Long Years Ago in August 1997
To Understand the Present You Must Appreciate The Past --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MORE TERRORISM BEING BRED BY "PEACE PROCESS"
"This 'peace' is a lie - they are cheating us, laughing at us." Palestinian living in occupied West Bank*
"In the end, so long as the U.S. continues to back Israeli occupation
with ever greater amounts of money, guns, and political protection,
little will change and the "peace process" will remain a grand
deception breeding resistance, hatred, and yes, more terrorism."
MER Editorial - Washington - 8/4/97: Now leader
of the Labor Party, former General Ehud Barak -- himself in reality a
hard-liner whose major efforts for the past 10 years have been to crush
the Intifada, and the man who commanded the assassination of the PLO's
#2 in Tunis a decade ago -- has recently called Netanyahu a "blind
goat." He is hoping of course, as is Washington and the Arafat regime,
to use the chaos brought on by the terror to bring his party back to
power in Israel.
And indeed one day Labor will be back in power -- maybe not too distant
a day. The Arab "client-regimes", now with Arafat as point man, will
smile and shake hands profusely. The American government, parroted by
much of the compliant media, will harken a new dawn for the renewed
"peace process". But only the style of things, not the real substance
of things, will change.
We've all been through this "good cop - bad cop" cycle quite a few
times now. It was the Labor party that began the settlements policy in
the first place, including allowing fanatics to settle in downtown
Hebron.
It is the Labor party that has always bragged about the ongoing
"Judaiization of Jerusalem," with Labor Mayor Teddy Kolleck himself
cavalierly insisting he'd never done anything for the Arabs! It
is the Labor Party that conceived of the "autonomy" for Palestinians
plan back in the late 1960s when Israel had exceedingly close relations
with Apartheid South Africa and the Bantustans policy there was
something of an unspoken model. And it is the Labor Party that
came up with the "Gaza First" approach, essentially designed to let the
swelling Gaza ghetto be taken care of by others, including the gullible
international community!
The goals of modern-day sophisticated terrorism are political and
historical. And now the politicians on all sides are using and twisting
what has happened, and what is likely to continue to happen, to
perpetuate their game of political musical chairs without amending the
basic policies that have created today's desperate situation.
In the end, however, so long as the U.S. continues to back Israeli
occupation with ever greater amounts of money, guns, and political
protection, little will change and the "peace process" will remain a
grand deception breeding resistance, hatred, and yes, more terrorism.
MAB
And the following report from the Agence France Press tells
another part of the story largely unreported in the USA:
AIN HELWE, Lebanon, 1 Aug 1997 (AFP) - "About 300 Palestinian refugees
demonstrated support here on Friday for the deadly Islamic suicide
bombings in Jerusalem, chanting "Death to Israel, Death to Jews."
The protest was organized by about 30 Islamic militants carrying
machine guns over their shoulders and dressed in black with scarves
covering their faces, correspondents reported.
The demonstrators came out of a mosque after Friday prayers in the
Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Helwe, outside the main southern
Lebanese port city of Sidon. Moslem religious leaders and heads of the
Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which spearheads anti-Israeli attacks in
south Lebanon, led the hour-long demonstration and denounced Yasser
Arafat's Palestinian Authority.
"We must pursue the Jihad (holy war)," and "No to Arafat, Yes to HAMAS,
we want suicide operations," the demonstrators chanted. The Islamic
Resistance Movement (HAMAS) claimed responsibility for the twin suicide
bombings in a Jerusalem market that killed 13 Israelis on Wednesday.
Ain Helwe, home to nearly 50,000 Palestinian refugees, is one of
several such camps in Lebanon. The refugees strongly oppose Arafat's
peace deal with Israel because it does not allow them the right to
return to Palestinian territories."
* 65-year old Palestinian, Abdel Qadir Ghneimat, Surif, occupied West Bank, 8/3/97, NYT.
TOMORROW FROM MER, another Flashback to August three years ago: "Why We Are All Suicide Bombers" by Dr. Eyad Sarraj, internationally recognized human rights expert in Gaza.