Posted on 03/30/2002 6:54:44 AM PST by veronica
As Israeli troops stormed the headquarters of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority Friday, a Palestinian spokesman warned that the Israelis are "playing with fire."
He should know.
Yasser Arafat took out the matches a year and a half ago, when he walked out of the Camp David negotiations just as peace seemed possible. He lit the fire when he freed Palestinian radicals to murder Israeli children in coffee houses and defile the Jewish Passover with a suicide bomb in Netanya.
He was huddling in a basement room Friday when the fire he started burned down his house.
Israeli troops began taking apart the compound in Ramallah where Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have been -- at least -- countenancing the attacks on Israeli civilians. They say it is an uprising against Israeli occupation. It is really an uprising against peace. And now the Israeli government appears to have had enough.
The attacks that Israel launched on Friday came after a period of restraint in the hope that one of the various peace proposals would gain traction. Palestinian radicals responded with the Netanya bombing, one in a Jerusalem business district, the Friday bombing of a supermarket and other violence.
The dovish Israeli politician, Ehud Barak, used a common American barnyard expletive to describe Arafat's behavior in recent months. Even Secretary of State Colin Powell, who Friday urged restraint on Israel's part, was blunt enough about his derailed peacemaking efforts. "Let's be clear," he said, "about what brought it all to a halt -- terrorism."
That clarity has sometimes been lacking in the United States' war against worldwide terrorism. It has almost seemed, at times, that we were fighting terror only when it was directed at someone besides Israel. That the radical Palestinian terrorist organizations were not quite as evil and the rest of the evil axis.
Maybe that wasn't our intent, but that's how it sounded.
If this approach was intended to mollify the Arab governments, it has not worked, as Vice President Dick Cheney learned in his visit to Arab capitals last week, and maybe we should learn from that experience.
It is not that we should not maintain good relationships with the Arab world. But the time has passed when the United States can simply ignore policies that are not only anti-Israel, but anti-Jewish.
Talk about playing with fire.
The United States shouldn't be involved in any of it.
'How much was Yasir Arafat really to blame? Barak and Clinton were right: it was the Palestinian who made the strategic decision to reject any all-embracing deal-though he was promised, orally, as much as 96 percent of the West Bank. He never offered up a counterproposal, which incensed Clinton. Yet the baleful lesson that Arafat took from Camp David is that not only did his stubbornness get him better offers, it solidified his political base at home. Barak returned from Camp David to a tiny band of sympathizers at the airport; Arafat came back to the embrace of thousands in Gaza City. Arafat began speaking in inflammatory terms in Arabic about taking Jerusalem, while still talking peace in English. The intifada was fueled by such rhetoric.
As Barak asks bitterly now, which version of what Arafat says "is the right one? The one that we hear, once again, in English, that already brought him the Nobel Peace Prize, or the one that we hear in Arabic?" So slippery has Arafat been that no one really knows to what extent he wanted or incited the intifada. Most Israelis and Americans believe he has deftly played a double game, goading his militias to attack Israelis but deflecting responsibility. The Palestinian leader's unofficial biographer, Said Aburish, says Arafat's ability to play both sides of the fence, peace and war, has helped ensure his leadership for more than 30 years despite internal rivalries and external threats. But it doesn't lead to bold decision making.
That, finally, is the most enduring indictment against Arafat: lacking the boldness of an Anwar Sadat at Camp David I, fearing for his life if he compromised, he shrank before the hard decisions. Clinton says he told Arafat that by turning down the best peace deal he was ever going to get he was guaranteeing the election of the hawkish Ariel Sharon. It did. Sharon was elected in a landslide Feb. 6, 2001, a few weeks after George W. Bush took office.'
Want to make more excuses for these thugs?
I cannot disagree with that. Though the call for withdrawal is rather weak, not specifying when, etc...One assumes the US gave Israel the go-ahead to go in in the first place. I don't think this article says support Israel just because, it assumes the long-time alliance of the two contries.
Serious Question:
A friend of mine asked me why the Jews seem to be hated by almost everyone all over the world. I never really thought about it....anyone have an answer??
Uh, 97% is not large? 97% of Palestinians are under Arfats control right now, tell me, why do they still whine "occupation"? I have to drive to within 5 miles of the ocean when driving from the middle of Israel (Jerusalem) to the top (Sea of Galilee) just to keep from getting my windshield ventilated by some Palestinian Village. Tell me, what's up with that? Call that continious for a nation? The Palestinians were never a nation before, why should it be now? Does the world really need another Islamic Dictator Terrorist Nation?
Five questions you can not answer without showing your agenda. If truth reigns, you should try it sometimes...
The Pallies were going to get 90% of the West Bank and Gaza. Show me your figures that say otherwise
http://www.poica.org/casestudies/Withdrawal-Percentages1-1-2001/
| This scheme is continuing now during the deliberations concerning Israeli proposals for final status withdrawals. At first, Israel proposed a withdrawal from 85 % of the West Bank while annexing the remaining 15 %. Then that figure changed to 90 % and finally the highest proposed withdrawal has been 94 %. Here again the game of calculating the percentages is put into practice in order to amplify Israel’s "generosity". An Israeli "94 %" withdrawal in effect corresponds to 88.9 % of the West Bank’s actual area. Furthermore, if one considers that Israel is planning to annex some 220 sq. km from the West Bank as part of "Greater Jerusalem" than that famous 94 % shrinks to 86.5 %. This way Israel gets to keep a sizeable portion of the West Bank while appearing as though it were relinquishing almost |
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