MER - Washington - 6/17/97: Last year MER first carried information about the increasingly close CIA, Shinbet, and Mossad connections with Yasser Arafat's "Palestinian Authority".

There is no free lunch; and when Arafat agreed to take arms and funding from the Americans and the Israelis -- to in effect become the sub-occupier of the Palestinian people -- intelligence cooperation was one of the prices for this arrangement.

Various things flow from such deals. The assassination in Gaza by the Israelis of Yehya Ayyash, "The Engineer" was one of the more visible results. The ongoing round-up of Hamas cells in the occupied territories is of course another direct manifestation of this collabor ation.

New information is gradually leaking out about the extensive CIA connection with Arafat and the "Authority".

There seems to be a special arrangement to train Arafat's personal "Force 17" people in the U.S. This training is carried out at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia; at the CIA "farm" in southern Virginia; and in Philadelphia with the assistance of the local police force there.

The notorious Colonel Jabril Rajoub -- described as a "ruthless thug" by some who know him and considered a possible successor to Arafat should he be assassinated -- is said to be directly involved in this training and has personally visited CIA Headquarters and other intelligence officials in Washington.

Since the training and collaboration began a few years ago American intelligence agents have established close working relations with "PA" police in the autonomous Palestinian areas that have come under their control.

Though there is no direct evidence at this time of actual complicity on an operational level, the American agents are said to be well aware of the "PA" policies of torturing and sometimes executing opponents along with the ever-increasing repression the "Palestinian police" have brought to the occupied territories on behalf of the Israelis and their American allies.

MER - 9 June 1997: This recent editorial from a publication known as PALESTINE TIMES has come to our attention. Those of you who get MER regularly will note that the people at this publication clearly are themselves reading MER, for some of the phrasing and concepts in their editorial come practically verbatim from our own analysis and editorials. Palestine Times may be associated with Hamas -- we do not know and we have not had any association with the publication. Even if so, after interviewing the Hamas leader Dr. Musa Abu Marzook while he was imprisoned in New York and meeting with others associated with the organization, it appears Hamas is a far more dedicated, far more dignified, and far more dedicated group of Palestinian nationalists than is Yasser Arafat's "Palestinian Authority".

Last month Arafat's self-rule authority revealed its ugly face when leaders of the PA security services proved collaboration with the Israeli occupation authorities which in turn led to the arrest of a striking Hamas military cell said to be responsible for numerous attacks on the Zionist occupation soldiers.

In his battle to survive, Chairman Arafat has given in to the Israeli security dictation, making his Authority an instrument in the hands of the Israeli Shin Bet security service. The PA senior officials claim they have suspended security cooperation with the Israelis following the decision made by the Israeli government to proceed with the construction of the new Jewish settlement in Jabal Abu Ghneim in occupied East Jerusalem. In fact, this collaboration" has not stopped given the simple fact that it is the only means of survival for Chairman Arafat and his men (labeled by the Gazans as the "Tunisians") who returned with Mr. Arafat to the homeland after having spent 11 years in Tunisia. The Israelis, who suspended the final status negotiations with the PLO, kept the door wide open for security cooperation with the PA's security leaders who promised to suppress the Palestinian popular intifada and to destroy the infrastructures of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad; a task in which the Zionists have failed to achieve over the years of occupation. Has Chairman Yasser Arafat become the vassal of the Israeli state? Have the Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza merely seen an exchange of harsh and cruel regimes?

Professor Edward Said, the renowned Arab/American thinker, has repeatedly used the word "collaborator" to portray Yasser Arafat. Dr. Nasser Aruri, a Professor of Political Science at Southeastern Massachusetts University, publicly described the Palestinian President as a "vassal." Dr. Haidar Abdul Shafi, former head of the Palestinian negotiating team at Madrid and in Washington, has denounced the Palestine Authority as a "terrible disaster" for the Palestinian people. He said that the PA was created with American and Israeli arms and money. Despair and fear of the PA continue to grow in the doubly occupied territories. Journalists and newspapers have been intimidated by the PA and there is now a new form of oppression for the Palestinian people. Many Hamas leaders and members have been imprisoned by the PA instead of Shin Bet, and it is no secret that brutal methods of torture have been used to extract information from these prisoners and that Palestinians have died as a result at the hands of their PA interrogators. A Gazan merchant summarized to Mr. David Hirst of the British Guardian his people's misery after the coming of Mr. Arafat's retired 'resistants'. He said, "We live in amazing, shameful times, but you should know that every revolution has its fighters, thinkers and profiteers. Our fighters have been killed, our thinkers assassinated, and all we have left are the profiteers." Mr. Arafat has proved great commitment to the secret provisions of the Oslo Accords regarding the security "collaboration" with the Israelis and that the parties on which he now completely dependssIsraelis and Americans are willing to ignore, even encourage, his manifest corruption, as the British journalist recorded.

Arafat has come to light as not only an oppressor but a dictator and tyrant as well. He also has complete control over the budget and finances. Furthermore, after the signing of the Peace Accords in Oslo in 1994, the living conditions of average Palestinians have sharply deteriorated since the coming of the PA to the so-called self-rule areas. There are the closures of the two huge concentration camps of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, the continued building of settlements, and complete control of all aspects of Palestinian economy. Israeli reports revealed that Chairman Arafat has a secret account of more than $150 million in the Israeli Leumi Bank in Tel Aviv. These funds, which Mr. Arafat uses to buy off his rivals, are the taxes collected by the PA from the poor Palestinians which only adds to their suffering. It is all too clear that Arafat's services have been bought and that he now serves the interests of the Israeli government. For the Palestinian population, the oppression continues; it is merely an exchange of oppressors in the now doubly occupied territories. [Palestine Times can be found at www.Ptimes.com]