MID-EAST REALITIES - Q U O T E OF THE WEEK

REALITY IN TODAY'S PALESTINE

"The flags may flutter, the traffic policemen may be Palestinian, and departments may call themselves ministries, but the reality is that its people and economy live, impoverished by an Israeli blockade, in cantons which feel more like prisons than pockets of freedom from occupation."

Kathy Evans GUARDIAN WEEKLY, 12/1/96

MER - Saddled with the collaborationist Arafat regime (to quote Edward Said), the Palestinian people are today occupied even worse than they were a few years ago. Nowhere else in the world would a man like Yasser Arafat retain "leadership" after leading his people to so many disasters and signing on to so many terrible agreements. Kathy Evans goes on to report that in essence U.S. and European aid to the Palestinians is doing little more than "subsidising the Israeli blockade of Palestine."

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