ONE MORE PALESTINIAN DISASTER

CHURCHILL CALLED IT "HELL DISASTER"

MER - 5/6/97:
Yasser Arafat has led the Palestinian people to another trap and still more disaster. He has squandered so much money, along with unprecedented international involvement and concern, and performed so terribly. Nowhere else in the world but the Middle East would such a failed personality survive -- even resigning in dignity seems no longer an option. He looks miserable, his lips continually quiver, and insiders are openly wondering about his psychological stability and mental senility. But still he persists, now caging, gagging and torturing the remnants of his demoralized people on behalf of the   occupier and its superpower patron. And this is the man, with his terribly compromised and corrupted entourage, they are bringing to Washington to twist still further into historical submission.

Yes indeed, onward to Washington once again. But even if Arafat were to get absolutely everything the Americans are now promising him (and the U.S. government it should not be forgotten is more firmly than ever controlled by the main faction of the Israeli/Jewish lobby) it would still be a disaster for the Palestinians. Slowly but surely they are being put on surrounded Reservations, continually monitored and controlled by Apartheid-style restrictions in a crafty double-occupation now locally enforced by 12 separate Palestinian "security"
services with more police and informers per capita than anywhere on earth.

The following are quotes from Robert Fisk writing in THE INDEPENDENT on 5 May:

ROBERT FISK

Writing in THE INDEPENDENT

Benjamin Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat came to London yesterday, dragged the corpse of the Oslo Agreement out of its coffin and - with respective satisfaction and despair - threw it back into the ground... The losers - at least for now - are the Palestinians...

A glance at the original Oslo agreement shows what a mockery the   discussions have now become of the document so solemnly signed by Israel and the PLO five years ago. Under the terms of the September 13, 1993 treaty, Israel should now have withdrawn from much of the West Bank and Gaza strip in preparation for final status talks on refugees and settlements next year. But the PLO still control only four per cent of the land for themselves - a larger part is under joint Israeli and Palestinian control - and Mr Netanyahu, far from discussing Jewish settlements next year, is busy building more on  occupied land close to Jerusalem. Mr Arafat, who is supposed to be in charge of security in PLO territory, now boasts 12 intelligence services (he is allowed three under Oslo) and his secret service men have killed 14 Palestinians in PLO detention... The figures of 13 per cent and nine per cent over which the two sides are now haggling bear no relation to the any paragraph in the Oslo agreement...

As photographers took their pictures in the conference room, Mr Arafat sat in silence, staring for much of the time at the floor...

Behind them in the lobby stood the bust of Winston Churchill, himself a fervent Zionist but one who by 1948 pronounced Palestine a "hell-disaster". He would have said the same again yesterday.

How they hated each other. And all the while, behind us, looms that fateful building in which Lord Balfour had composed in 1917 Britain's declaration of support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine...

It was the language of children that both sides spoke yesterday, the language of threat and false compromise. How Mr Netanyahu and Mr Arafat loved peace, strove for peace. But they could not even bring themselves to talk to each other. Mr Arafat was so politically weakened that all he could do, pathetically, was to accept Washington's demand for a further 13.1 per cent Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank - in itself a hopeless diminution of the Oslo agreement. In the Grosvenor House, Ms Albright - the supposedly tough-talking US Secretary of State who has used all the anger of a sheep to persuade the Israelis to stop building settlements on occupied Arab land and adhere to the Oslo timetable - tried to persuade Mr Netanyahu to cede more than 9 per cent of the land in the next handover of territory to Mr Arafat. In vain.

So much for the Palestinian state. So much for its putative capital of Jerusalem. So much for peace. Outside No 10, the networks were telling their viewers - in the words of the man from the BBC - that Netanyahu had "little room for compromise" because of his divided cabinet. There was no hint in his broadcast that Israel is not abiding by the terms of the signed Oslo deal.

Mr Bar Ilan spelt out the situation all too clearly. Israel wanted more security from Mr Arafat and demanded that he reduce the number of his Palestinian policemen. Better security, fewer police. Who, one wondered, dreamed up these crazed formulas?

The Blair theory, that "it's important just to talk", also failed yesterday. For all Messrs Netanyahu and Arafat wanted to do was blame the   other for the darkness approaching the Middle East and make sure that the world took their side when the storm broke."

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