Latest | Recent Articles | Multimedia Page | TV | Search | Blog

Email this article | Print this article | Link to this Article

IMPRISONED, TRAPPED, AND UNPREPARED BY ARAFAT

July 31, 2001

NEWSFLASH: NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters - 31 July, 7:11am ET) - At least five Palestinians were killed on Tuesday in an explosion in an office of the militant Muslim group Hamas in the West Bank city of Nablus, witnesses and ambulance workers said. The witnesses said missiles fired from an Israeli aircraft hit the office. Ambulance workers at the scene said they saw at least five bodies.

MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 7/31: Arafat has once again trapped and imprisoned his own people -- keep reading. Wherever he has set up his headquarters corruption, repression, nepotism, and scandal have followed. And always these realities of what we have termed the "Arafat regime" are exploited to further fracture and weaken the Palestinian people -- a people whose basic claim to independence, "return", and reparations should at this point be unassailable.

It was that way leading up to the Jordanian civil war in 1971, it was that way in Lebanon with Arafat fleeing leaving his people defenseless just before the horrible Sabra and Shatila Refugee Camp massacres in 1982, it was that way in distant exile in Tunisia, and it is that way in Gaza and the West Bank under the Arafat-created "Palestinian Authority".

This first article from Reuters today shows how helpless and defenseless individual Palestinians are under the agreements Arafat has signed. The next two articles, the first from The Independent (London) and the second from Agence France-Presse (Paris), help explain the terrible circumstances in which Arafat has essentially trapped his own people who are still extraordinarily unprepared both on the ground and internationally to deal with what the Israelis are dishing out.

PALESTINIANS SAY ISRAELI SOLDIERS BEAT THEM
By Michael Carney
JERUSALEM, July 31 (Reuters) - The Israeli soldiers whistled, so Khaled Rawashdeh pulled his yellow Palestinian taxi to the side of the Samou'-Hebron road in the West Bank. But instead of engaging in what Palestinians call the usual routine of humiliation and harassment, a dozen soldiers beat Rawashdeh and eight other Palestinians for two hours, the taxi driver said, according to a complaint he filed with a human rights group.

"We were nine men standing in a line...and the soldiers continued beating us as if they were playing a game," Rawashdeh told Israel's B'Tselem organisation, which has investigated numerous reports of brutality since a Palestinian uprising erupted in September. "I saw one of the soldiers run from his position, six meters (20 feet) away, and kick one of the men in the stomach," Rawashdeh said two days after being released from hospital. "They also threw stones at us and beat us with their hands and their gun butts."

The soldiers also destroyed two taxis and stole about $300, according to four complaints filed with B'Tselem.

The Israeli army confirmed that its soldiers behaved in a "violent manner" and were being investigated by military police, but said it had no information about the alleged theft. The army mentioned only one taxi in its response. "In the next 24 hours the investigation will be concluded, and at that time any soldier found to be connected with this event will be tried and severely punished," an army spokeswoman told Reuters on Monday. Tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have worsened dramatically since a Palestinian uprising against occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip began 10 months ago. The army is also investigating reports of regular harassment and brutality at a checkpoint in the West Bank city of Hebron, a review announced on the same day the soldiers stopped Rawashdeh and another taxi driver, Muhammad a-Salamin.

The soldiers, lounging alongside their jeep, whistled and motioned for the taxis to pull over near the Palestinian village of Karma. "When I stopped near the jeep, one of the soldiers came towards us and took my ID card and those of the passengers and told me to get out of the car," said Rawashdeh, 36. "Another soldier got into the taxi and opened the glove compartment. He threw the documents, the cassettes and the money that were in the glove compartment on the floor of the taxi."

The soldiers then chased away three women, a child and an elderly man who had been passengers in the taxis, the Palestinians say. "The soldier dragged me behind the jeep...and started beating me while swearing and yelling in Arabic," passenger Muhammad Sufia, 21, told B'Tselem. "He hit me on the left ear with the butt of his gun. He took a metal helmet from the jeep and hit me. "I was crying and screaming," said Sufia, who lost consciousness and awoke on Tuesday in a Hebron hospital.

The reports describe severe beatings in which the soldiers punched and kicked the Palestinians from the West Bank village of Samou', who were also forced -- at gunpoint -- to strike one another. By all indications, the attack was unprovoked. "One of the soldiers pulled my hair hard and ordered me to beat the man who was standing next to me," passenger Mahmoud Muhammad Hawamdeh, 22, told B'Tselem. "I hesitated at first, but the soldier started hitting me on the head and shouting at me to beat the person next to me."

"I hit him with my fist three times," Hawamdeh, a student, said. "They then turned to that person and told him to hit me back. He hit me twice." The Palestinians say the soldiers also forced Rawashdeh and a-Salamin to drive across a rock-strewn field, where the Israelis reportedly smashed windows, punctured tyres and slashed upholstery. The army confirmed one of its soldiers punctured the tires.

"They broke the windshield," a-Salamin, 28, told investigators. "One of the soldiers grabbed me by the hair, turned my head around and said: 'Look at your vehicle, pretty isn't it? If we broke the rear window it would look even better."' The Palestinians say they were chased away after two hours, pelted with rocks and forced to abandon the two taxis.

"I ran away toward the storage rooms and from there, I could see the jeep's license plate," a-Salamin said. "I will never forget the number - 6100210."

PALESTINIANS IMPRISONED BY ARAFAT'S FLAWED DEAL
By Phil Reeves in Hebron

[The Independent - 28 July 2001]: Wars create lies as fast as corpses. Take "curfew" and "closure". What nice, cool, BBC Radio 4 kind of words. Isn't curfew the word you use when you order your stroppy teenager to stay at home after a night out on the Special Brew? And "closure" sounds like a road, blocked off because of flooding.

But the Arabs of Hebron know other meanings. They know that "closure" means economic misery, and "curfew" means to be imprisoned for up to 24 hours a day, under threat of being arrested, beaten, jailed or shot for "looking suspicious" if they so much as stray beyond their doorstep. The king of lying, Jeffrey Archer, has more freedom.

Three British aid agencies ­ Oxfam, Christian Aid and Save the Children ­ have warned this week that violence, insecurity and poverty in the West Bank and Gaza Strip could turn an already dire situation into "a full-scale humanitarian crisis".

They said that nearly two thirds ­ some 64 per cent ­ of Palestinian households now live below the poverty line, and an estimated 74 per cent of the 3 million Palestinian population qualify for emergency food assistance from the United Nations. There were, they noted, disturbing indications that the population's ability to cope with the cumulative effects of "closure" ­ better described as a siege ­ is coming to an end.

Hebron, once a flourishing West Bank city, has felt the brunt more than most. The entire city has been blockaded by the Israeli army for months. But the 35,000 Arabs living in the Israeli-controlled sector have been under curfew for more than 128 days since last September. I went there the other day, on a bright summer's mid-afternoon. Streets that I remember as full of activity before the Palestinian intifada were utterly deserted.

A small boy was flying a kite from a rooftop, searching in the sky for the freedom denied to him on the ground. The babble of TV sets and bursts of conversation, muffled by the thick walls of Hebron's old stone houses, occasionally interrupted the hush. One had the surreal sense that everyone was hiding, waiting to leap out and shout "Surprise!"

>From time to time, an Israeli army jeep thundered through, checking that everyone was locked away. But no one was on the streets, except for some Israeli soldiers, loading a lorry, and a few armed Jewish settlers, whose presence in this overwhelmingly Arab city has provided Israel with a reason for imposing this misery.

Although the sun was high, it was as quiet as the dead of night ­ in contrast to the frenetic, teeming day of the market place on the city's Arab side a few hundred yards away, or to the hum of the fenced-in Jewish settlement of neighbouring Kiryat Arba, an oasis of wide roads, modern buildings and green lawns through which we drove to get into Hebron. (No one bothers with euphemisms there; "No Arabs," announced the armed security guard at the electric iron gate, as he glowered into our car before letting us through).

Hebron's imprisoned residents are now seeing the results of an agreement concluded in 1997 by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister of the day, and the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, the flaws of which are becoming more cruelly apparent. Eighty per cent of the city of 120,000 people was handed to the Palestinians, who assumed control over municipal services ­ local security, education, health, traffic and so on.

But Israel kept all the main levers of power including crucial parts of the city's infrastructure, such as water and electricity. The other 20 per cent of the city also remained in its hands on the staggering basis of protecting some 450 Jewish settlers ­ many recent immigrants. They refuse to budge from a city in which they form 0.03 per cent of the population because they see it as historically and religiously their own.

Their continued presence ­ armed by the Israel Defence Forces, guarded by thousands of troops ­ laid the ground for the inter-communal strife that has now erupted. The agreement meant that the Israeli army remained in overall charge, controlling the entrances, and looming over the city from an army base on a hill to the south.

Hebron became a model in miniature of the larger configuration of power and control that Israel was using the Oslo negotiations to establish in the West Bank and Gaza Strip: an island of limited Palestinian autonomy, cut off from the outside world and set in a landscape which Israel rules.

No one understands this better than Mustafa Abdel-Nabi Natshe, the Palestinian Mayor of Hebron. During the Oslo negotiations, he pressed Mr Arafat not to sign a deal that allowed the 450 settlers to stay, perpetuating a terrible fault-line between the city's two communities, which now produces almost daily acts of horror ­ the killing, for instance, of a 10-month-old settler baby by a Palestinian sniper, or the killing by the army of unarmed Arabs, and the bombardment of Palestinian homes with tanks .

Mr Natshe is surely right when he says that life is "becoming more and more unbearable". The industrial zone in H2, the Israeli-controlled part of Hebron, is closed. Electricity has been regularly interrupted, not least because Israeli tanks shelled the transformers. Businesses have been ruined.

And in a hospital intensive care unit nearby, lies one of the latest victims ­ 10-year-old Marwar Ishrif. She has a bullet in the head, which hit her as she slept in bed. There aren't many nice, cool BBC Radio 4 words to sum all this up. But curfew and closure won't do.

[For background on the Hebron Agreement that led to this situation: http://www.MiddleEast.Org/archives/hebron.htm]

PALESTINIANS ILL-PREPARED FOR ISRAELI OFFENSIVE
NABLUS, West Bank, July 28 (AFP) - Even if the threat of an outright offensive by the Israelis is to be taken seriously, there is virtually no evidence of Palestinian preparedness for such a move. "We are not left with many options. All we can do is stock food, medicines and get our emergency units ready", Nablus governor Mahmud al-Allul told AFP. "We have given instructions to our forces posted at the entrances of the autonomous zones to redeploy in case of an attack" in order to retreat to safer sectors, said Allul, a high-ranking civil and military official.

"We can fight against Israeli infantrymen, but it will be a lot more difficult to resist tanks, helicopter attacks or shooting coming from the hills which overlook the city", the governor pointed out. Yet in Nablus, as in all West Bank cities and towns, it is difficult to detect any sign of preparations to face a major military offensive. Nothing has been done to replace or even beef up the simple defence of sandbags around Palestinian posts: no concrete shelters, not even any trenches.

Colonel Abdel Hai Abdel al-Wahed, in charge of civilian security for the whole of the West Bank, complains of "a total lack of coordination between the various civilian and police services". A high-ranking West Bank security official told AFP that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority "does not even have a plan taking into account the various scenarios" of an Israeli attack.

When an outright offensive seemed imminent six weeks ago, the National Islamic Forces -- a Palestinian coalition of 13 movements including Arafat's Fatah, as well as Islamic Jihad and Hamas -- called on Nablus residents to prepare Molotov cocktails with which to attack Israeli tanks. Hamas even urged volunteers to prepare explosive belts to be used in suicide attacks against the occupying forces.

Last week, the same coalition distributed flyers calling on the population to "be on alert and ready to defend its land", while giving no guidance or instructions to that effect. The makeshift defence strategy coupled with the calls for mobilisation leave more than one West Bank Palestinian bemused. "I suggest we prepare stocks of stones, it'll be more effective", says a sarcastic refugee from the Dheisheh camp near Bethlehem.

On several occasions Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has ruled out an all-out offensive against the Palestinian Authority, because of the international complications it would create for Israel and because it is not in the Jewish state's interest to reoccupy Palestinian urban centres. On this point many Palestinians agree with the hardline Israeli leader, including those directly involved in the conflict that has torn the region apart since last September.

"I am expecting the Israeli army to carry out repeated incursions, to create buffer zones (where it may shoot on sight), to step up assassinations (of Palestinian activists), but not to launch a global offensive", said an anonymous member of the Fatah's armed wing in the West Bank town of Ramallah.


July 2001


Magazine






DISASTEROUS ARAB-AMERICAN AFFAIRS IN WASHINGTON-PART 1
(July 31, 2001)
The Arabs are so weak in the Middle East and in the world for reasons that go deep into history and culture. This isn't a genetic matter, it's the way they are politically and socially organized in "modern times" that creates an absurd situation whereby a small resourceless country like Israel can dominate some 23 Arab countries with a population nearly as large as the United States.

IMPRISONED, TRAPPED, AND UNPREPARED BY ARAFAT
(July 31, 2001)
Arafat has once again trapped and imprisoned his own people -- keep reading. Wherever he has set up his headquarters corruption, repression, nepotism, and scandal have followed. And always these realities of what we have termed the "Arafat regime" are exploited to further fracture and weaken the Palestinian people -- a people whose basic claim to independence, "return", and reparations should at this point be unassailable.

DECEPTIVE AND OUT OF FOCUS REPORTS
(July 30, 2001)
About that report published "in full" in the Saudi Royal Family London newspaper Al-Hayat over the weekend and then, it now appears erroneously, picked up by Israel's top newspaper Ha'aretz. We already mentioned that the whole thing seemed suspicious. And sure enough with the Monday dawn of a new week and a little fast checking it seems the author, long-time military analysis and close CIA confidant at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Anthony Cordesman, says he didn't write it and the whole thing looks like a set-up.

AMERICAN STUDY: ISRAEL WOULD BE UNABLE TO REPEL ALL-OUT ARAB ATTACK
(July 30, 2001)
The report in Saturday's Ha'aretz is not up to their usual standards as names are misspelled and context missing -- it appears to be a journalistic quickie. But even so, and though the Israelis aren't going to admit it, they are becoming more nervous and insecure about their future. And among other reasons that's why they choose the heretofore unelectable Ariel Sharon as their Prime Minister.

CREEPING TEMPLE AND CREEPING EMBASSY
(July 29, 2001)
In 1967, as the Israeli army took control of all of Jerusalem, the Israeli Flag flew on what the Jews call "the Temple Mount" for the first time since Christ and Mohamed walked the area. Sensing what this could lead to General Moshe Dayan quickly ordered the flag lowered, turned the area that the Muslims call "the Noble Sanctuary", al Haram al Sharif, back over to the Islamic authorities, and though Israel claims sovereignty it's flag has never flown again over the area of the Temple Mount

THE BLEAK FUTURE TODAY IN THE HOLY CITY OF JERUSALEM
(July 29, 2001)
It was "radical" groups that emplanted themselves in the city of Hebron a long time ago, back in fact when the Labor party was still supreme in Israeli affairs. And just look today at that city where the common forefather of both the Jews and the Arabs is buried.

POTENTIAL EXPLOSION IN JERUSALEM SUNDAY
(July 28, 2001)
Arab leaders have warned that a messianic Jewish organisation's plan to make the first move towards rebuilding the Biblical Temple in Jerusalem is a "dangerous step" that could lead to uncontrollable consequences.

JEWS PREPARE FOR JERUSALEM THIRD TEMPLE- AND SO FINALLY DO THE ARABS
(July 28, 2001)
After today's previous MER article was published -- "God War Emerging In Holy Land" -- this Agence France-Presse article has just come over the wires. Characteristically the representatives of the Hashemite Kingdom -- the regime that has been most complicitous in secretly collaborating with the Israelis for decades to control the Palestinians sandwiched between them -- are publicly posturing in one way while actually acting in another.

RELIGIOUS WAR EMERGING IN THE HOLY LAND
(July 28, 2001)
In the years since the turn of the millenium the Arab-Israeli conflict is being transformed into an even more dangerous and potentially cataclysmic Muslim-Jewish war. Ariel Sharon's "visit" to the Temple Mount last year, accompanied by a huge military force, helped sparked Intifada II -- make no mistake about that.

WAR CRIMES TRIALS FOR SHARON ET. AL.?
(July 27, 2001)
In the end the Israelis are likely to find a way to deal with this new situation. They have great resources at their disposal when it comes to the media, intelligence information, lobbying capabilities, help from key governments in the US, UK, and Germany. They have a long history of twisting things to their advantage one way or another. And those opposed to them have a long reputation for much the opposite in fact.

TWISTING ARAFAT UNTIL HE IS DEAD OR GONE
(July 27, 2001)
The Israelis probably prefer Arafat dead at this point; but not at their own hand, at least not directly. Indeed, many of those who used the "Oslo Peace Process" to end Intifada I probably thought Arafat would have either been assassinated or died by now, leaving behind a "peace process" legacy as did Anwar Sadat when he was gunned down by his own soldiers just a few years after reluctantly signing on-the-dotted-line at Camp David 1.

"WARNING! ELECTRIC FENCE" - "WARNING! ISRAELI ARMY"
(July 26, 2001)
NEWSFLASH Thursday Evening 9pm ET: An Israeli teenager has been killed in a shooting attack in the West Bank and three bombs have gone off in the West Bank near Israeli vehicles. The attacks came hours after Palestinians buried a militant killed in an Israeli missile attack. Israeli tanks also shelled Palestinian police posts in a village north of Ramallah and a checkpoint run by Force 17, an elite unit of the police, south of the town, not far from the site of the shooting, said Palestinian security sources.

DEATH, REPRESSION, AND DESTRUCTION EVERYWHERE. SHARON'S POLICY TO PROVOKE VIOLENCE IS WORKING
(July 26, 2001)
Everywhere the settlements continue to expand even as the Israelis constantly twist their words as well as the facts. The Israelis know very well what they are doing and what they want -- they are taking the land and the resources from the indigenous people and then isolating the people in what amount to ghettos and concentration camps calling them "autonomous" areas.

ISRAELI RIGHT STRIKES WHILE ISRAELI LEFT WRITES
(July 25, 2001)
The Israeli army is partially mobilized and positioned for a quick and multi-directional assault on the forces of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, ironically armed by the Israelis themselves in years past. Draft mobilization offices have been opened by the Israelis in key U.S. and European cities. The Israelis propaganda machine has been beefed up and already beginning to operate on all cylinders.

PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR DRAWS CLOSER
(July 25, 2001)
"Israel says Arafat is not doing enough to bolster a US-brokered truce, demanding he arrest activists and stop attacks against armed Jewish settlers and soldiers in occupied areas of the West Bank and Gaza. But Arafat has said he is not in control of security in occupied areas. Palestinians blame Israel for the on-going violence"

WHAT'S UP FOR ARAFAT?
(July 25, 2001)
Ariel Sharon has always been scamming everyone. His long career in the military is full of deception and treachery in public while committing blood-curdling massacres in private. In the most notorious case of all, the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps of 1982 ...

OFFICIAL PLO VERSION OF CAMP DAVID
(July 25, 2001)
The latest dueling, in advance of the "big bang" which Arafat himself now says is definitely coming -- and whose real purpose by the Israeli right-wing is to end the "Oslo Peace Process" once and for all -- is a battle for public opinion conducted through a convoluted debate over who offered what to whom and who is responsible for the failing of the "peace process".

REGIONAL WAR POSSIBILITIES
(July 24, 2001)
The following two articles are from publications associated with Janes Intelligence Weekly in the U.K. But what's looked at here are the short-term implications and the correct assessment that the very weak and in most cases U.S.-controlled Arab "client regimes" in the region will find one way or another to avoid any military clashes with the vastly superior Israelis.

PALESTINIAN CIVIL WAR LOOMS
(July 24, 2001)
Those who have read MER for some time know that we have long indicated that one of the Israeli goals was to foment a Palestinian civil war. Some of the Israelis, dubbed the "peace camp", preferred to twist Arafat into totally succumbing and signing some kind of "end of conflict" agreement along with creation of a rump and everywhere-controlled Palestinian State.

NEW BATTLE FOR HISTORY
(July 24, 2001)
The latest dueling, in advance of the "big bang" -- whose real purpose by the Israeli right-wing is to end the "Oslo Peace Process" once and for all -- is a battle for public opinion conducted through a convoluted debate over who offered what to whom and who is responsible for the failing of the "peace process".

ARMIES AND POLITICIANS POSITIONING THEMSELVES FOR "BIG BANG" AND THEREAFTER
(July 23, 2001)
Ehud Barak is in the U.S. explaining why his former "peace partner" Arafat is really a big thug who can't possibly be believed or trusted, and how he Barak proved it, kind of sacrificing himself he continually implies.

THE BIG LIES
(July 21, 2001)
Goebbels himself could not have done a better job. For those who don't recognize the name, check back in the not too distant history books under the heading Nazi Information Ministry.

ISRAEL SET TO ATTACK ACCORDING TO CIA
(July 20, 2001)
At first we had the adjective "cowardly" as a preface to "Arabs" in the headline. Let's be clear what we mean here. We're not talking about the Arab peoples, nor about those who do the brave struggling...and the real suffering...and the bleeding and the dying.

WAR DRUMS IN THE HOLY LAND
(July 20, 2001)
No way to know for sure, but if we had to predict at this moment the "Big Bang" (see previous "War Drums" articles for context) will be heard not this week but next after the Maccabiah games have ended and the G8 leaders survive Genoa.

AMERICANS GET ANOTHER WARNING
(July 19, 2001)
With the unprecedented "Red Zone" in Genoa; with key Washington buildings surrounded by concrete and high-tech survelliance; and with Americans warned again by their government to "beware" following on last month's Threatcon Delta alert; the "terrorists" have already accomplished a small part of their goal.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL AND ARAB LEAGUE OFFER LITTLE BUT WORDS AND A FEW BUCKS
(July 19, 2001)
It's that little old problem rearing it's ugly head again -- calls that come much too late and even then call for much too little. Worse yet the calls come in very self-serving ways from persons and institutions whose past records make them not very credible, and certainly not very potent.

FINALLY BURYING OSLO
(July 18, 2001)
The "Oslo Peace Process" -- which would have been more aptly named the "Rabin" or the "Clinton" -- has been brain-dead for some time now; kept alive only by extraordinary life-support efforts by its parent surrogates.

INDIA-PAKISTAN SUMMIT COLLAPSES, INDIA IMMEDIATELY ANNOUNCES MAJOR MILITARY ESCALATION WITH ISRAEL
(July 18, 2001)
With both Turkey and India the Israelis are developing formidable military, financial, and intelligence alliances surrounding the Arab and Muslim worlds. These relationships tremendously strengthen the Jewish State financially, militarily, and strategically at a very critical time.

TINDERBOX AWAITS MATCH
(July 17, 2001)
"This could result in a bloodbath and thereby set the entire region aflame. It's not out of the question that demonstrations could topple unpopular regimes in Jordan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia... The tinderbox is awaiting a match."

ARAFAT FADING
(July 17, 2001)
It's beginning to appear that it's just a matter of time now for Arafat to finally be gone. As far as the Israelis and Americans are concerned, it no longer really matters like it use to.

ISRAEL PUSHES PALESTINIANS TOWARD CIVIL WAR
(July 17, 2001)
"No power in the world can stop the resistance operations that come as a reaction to the Israeli aggression ... we have nothing more to lose."

ISRAELIS PUSHING HARD TO PROVOKE MORE PALESTINIAN ATTACKS
(July 16, 2001)
A few years ago when the Americans essentially forced Yasser Arafat to sign one of those deals, this one about Hebron, that was supposed to push the "peace process" forward, it was foreseeable that sooner rather than later Hebron would once again erupt.

MUBARAK REGIME EARNS ITS PAY ONCE AGAIN
(July 15, 2001)
Today the Egyptians hosted Shimon Peres and Yasser Arafat in Cairo. It's a replay of this kind of thing they've been doing for quite some years now. The Egyptians are at it again, fronting for the Americans as they have ever since the original Camp David extravaganza in 1978.

WAR DRUMS FROM ISRAEL
(July 15, 2001)
Longtime top adviser to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Osama el-Baz, has issued a not-so-veiled warning to the Israelis not to attack Syria. The head of Egyptian military intelligence rushed to Israel a few days ago supposedly to warn the Israelis not to dethrone Yasser Arafat.

RACE TO NUCLEAR WAR
(July 14, 2001)
While the Israelis and the Arabs confront each other in a conflict that may now last for a very long time and even lead to a Middle East holocaust in the future; and while the other "peace process" in Northern Ireland also collapses due to its similar duplicitous nature; it is in the subcontinent that the race toward a possible nuclear conflagration is furthest advanced at this moment in history.

MORE U.S. DUPLICLITY - COLIN POWELL NOW IN CHARGE
(July 13, 2001)
It was another top General turned State Department Secretary who gave Ariel Sharon the behind-the-scenes "green light" back in 1982 - General Alexander Haig.

PREPARING FOR THE WAR OF HIS CHOOSING
(July 13, 2001)
What we feared has come true: Two ethno-national groups, living in each other's backyards, are going through a proces of regression to superstitious tribalism. The sounds of the drums are heard throughout the land calling both tribes to gather around the campfire, dress in the colors of war and head out to battle to eliminate the very last member of the other side.

INVASION WATCH?
(July 13, 2001)
What are we to call this situation? "War Watch"...no, the sides are far too uneven, it's not really going to be a war...not unless one or more of the Arab regimes should find itself cornered or facing revolution.

WEST WING PARTIALLY EVACUATED
(July 12, 2001)
A few barks from the sniffers dogs and even after all the security checks required to get into the White House grounds the Secret Service pulled the alarm and quickly began the evacuation procedure.

ISRAELIS GENERALS' PLAN TO "SMASH" PALESTINIANS
(July 12, 2001)
Israeli generals have updated plans for an all-out assault to smash the Palestinian authority, force out leader Yasser Arafat and kill or detain its army, according to a report published Thursday in London.

JANES "FOREIGN REPORTS" DETAILS ISRAELI INVASION PLAN
(July 12, 2001)
The report that a force of some 30,000 Israeli troops is preparing to take on Arafat's "Authority" and bring it to an end was just published in one of the most reputable international publications, one published by the Janes Intelligence network in the U.K. and available only to members who pay a sizeable yearly subscription fee.

ISRAELIS PREPARE WAY TO TAKE OUT ARAFAT REGIME AND TO TAKE ON IRAN'S NEW WEAPON SYSTEMS
(July 11, 2001)
Whatever the truth of Israel's latest allegations against both the Arafat Authority and Iran, there should be little doubt what the Israelis are really up to at this point, with Shimon Peres leading the charge.

BULLDOZERS PREPARING THE WAY FOR THE "BIG BANG"
(July 11, 2001)
It's all part of the same game. The Israelis think they have the Palestinians trapped. They publicly debate how to put them in their place with bulldozers, expulsions, invasion, awaiting the "big bang".

ISRAELIS UNDER SIEGE WITH ARAFAT FACING HIS OWN
(July 10, 2001)
Nearly half of the Israeli Jewish population got a stern warning yesterday - don't drink the water. Today Israel's lifeline, it's international airport between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, is under virtual siege with huge traffic jams as all vehicles undergo the kind of rigorous fender-to-fender inspection previously reserved for just "Arab" cars with special blue plates.

ALGERIA READY TO EXPLODE
(July 10, 2001)
While the legacy of British colonialism still lingers in Palestine and Kashmir, still threatening cataclysmic conflict in both regions, in Algeria it is the legacy of French colonialism, which also of course still has loud echoes in Lebanon and Syria.

WAR IS IN THE AIR - Part 2
(July 10, 2001)
The Egyptians are arming with missiles to deter Israeli strikes against Egyptian cities or strategic targets such as the Aswan dam. These may be conceived as deterrent weapons; but they also could be used in other situations.

WAR IS IN THE AIR - Part 1
(July 9, 2001)
"The stage, therefore, has been set for the outbreak of the next wear: wall-to-wall political approval for a military solution to the current crisis, the appropriate international preparations during the period of restraint."

EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE "RIGHT OF RETURN" BUT WERE TOO AFRAID TO ASK
(July 7, 2001)
"Who will compensate me and my family for all the suffering we went through? Financial compensation cannot replace the right of return....The main thing is to go back to where I belong."

THE STAGE IS NOW SET
(July 7, 2001)
This is the way such things are done these days. Lots of testing of the waters. Lots of preparing the way. Lots of trial balloons. If (probably no longer when) the Israelis "remove" Arafat one way or another -- just as it was they who put him where he is in the first place -- it will no longer come as such a great shock.

FENCING THE PALESTINIANS IN - "UNILATERAL SEPARATION"
(July 6, 2001)
Having to a considerable extent succeeding in colonizing the "occupied territories", especially the most important areas around Jerusalem and the most cultivatable areas along with the crucial water resources, the Israelis are now ready for more fences and barricades.

STOPPING SHARON - PROBABLY TOO LATE
(July 6, 2001)
He's not likely to be stopped now. He's prepared most of his life for this moment in history. And as Israeli Prime Minister for just the past few months he's already visited the American President twice, Downing Street, and now both Germany and France, applauded in public more for his "restraint" as the "new Sharon" rather than for his war criminal past and the neo-apartheid oppression machine he now bears full responsibility for.

ISRAEL SHAHAK DIES AS CALAMITY HE FORESAW APPROACHES
(July 5, 2001)
Just what "cease-fire" is Sarid talking about? And if he really wants a serious outside force, why is he not appealing to the U.N. under Chapter 7 and why are not the Arabs included?

ISRAELIS TO NOW KILL MORE PALESTINIAN ACTIVISTS
(July 4, 2001)
Ariel Sharon and his government are preparing the way to kill more Palestinian street and faction leaders using various forms of high-tech assassination. They are also preparing world public opinion not only for bringing the Arafat "Authority" to an end but for killing and expelling as many Palestinians as circumstances will allow.

THE REAL ARAFAT
(July 3, 2001)
Of course Sharon's comment yesterday is ridiculous. Problem is the strategy behind it is not. "You must comply, resistance is futile" is indeed the loud message from Sharon to Arafat; and Sharon does intend to prove his words in the weeks and months ahead, make no mistake about that.

THE REAL SHARON, MASKED AND PREPARING FOR ANOTHER "GREEN LIGHT"
(July 2, 2001)
Ariel Sharon has Yasser Arafat cornered now -- right where he wants him. Sharon has in essence forced Arafat to publicly call off the Intifada -- or else Sharon made it rather clear, most of all to his American allies, that he would call off Arafat's regime whatever the consequences.

5 PALESTINIANS KILLED SUNDAY
(July 1, 2001)
Five Palestinian militants have been killed by Israeli forces, three in a pinpoint helicopter attack and two in a clash with soldiers. The helicopter fired missiles at a car in which the three men were travelling near Qabatiye in the northern West Bank, Palestinian security officials said.

SYRIA STRUCK FOR SECOND TIME SINCE SHARON BECAME PM
(July 1, 2001)
The Arabs have an amazing tolerance for being struck. Partly it is because of their weakness of course; coupled with their long history of subjugation and occupation. But those who know Arab society also are aware that after taking it and taking it there sometimes comes a moment of powerful emotional uproar screaming for revenge.

SHARON PLAYS THE PALESTINIANS OFF AGAINST EACH OTHER
(July 1, 2001)
While Ariel Sharon uses the greatest pressure of all so far in order to bow the Arafat regime into submission -- the possibility of crushing Arafat's "Authority" through brut military force -- at the same time he holds out the carrot.




© 2004 Mid-East Realities, All rights reserved