MER - WASHINGTON - 11 October, 1997:

Ariel Sharon has become a regular visitor to Jordan.  He has become the primary conduit to the Hashemites for what the press usually calls "talks" but which anyone who knows the personal history of Ariel Sharon must consider "conspiracies."

There could be no better symbol of how politically duplicitous the Hashemite Regime continues to be then the way it has courted and played up to Ariel Sharon:
 
* A man even many Israelis consider a war criminal.
* A man who flies a large Israeli flag and Menorah atop his requisitioned home in the Muslim quarter of the old city of Jerusalem which must be constantly guarded by Israeli troops.
* The man who commanded Israel's invasion of Lebanon in 1982 (20,000+ Lebanese civilians dead) and was personally responsible for the Sabra and Shatilla massacres).
* A man whose personal history of brutalizing and dispossessing Palestinians goes back to the 1950s,
* A man who today as in the past is the main architect of Israel's settlement expansion programs in Jerusalem and throughout the occupied territories.
 
This article was originally published in June as part two of the earlier MER Flashback republished earlier this week.]
 

MER - Washington - 6/1/97:

A few weeks ago, in what has become an ongoing series of usually secret talks, the top leaders of Israel and Jordan met in Aqaba, Jordan.  It has been learned that Minister of National Infrastructures, Ariel Sharon,  told the Israeli Cabinet, "They were nice, long talks."  Sharon went on to assure the Cabinet: "I emphasize that there were no concessions by Israel."

Supposedly these talks are primarily about water-related and trade-related issues; including the building of a Jordanian-Israeli rail link which the Jordanians are eagerly pursuing even though the Arab League has called for a suspension of dealings with Israel. In reality the Zionist and Hashemite leaderships continue to plot how to control and repress the Palestinians in ever more crafty and ever more duplicitous ways.
 
King Hussein and Crown Prince Hassan are personally involved in these discussions and were present in Aqaba, as was Prime Minister Netanyahu and top level military commanders from both countries.  What is really going on is nothing less than a continuation of the long-time conspiracy involving the Hashemites and the Zionists to sandwich the Palestinian between them, depriving the Palestinians of real self-determination even while Arafat's "Palestinian Authority" continues to be allowed to pretend it is on the way to an independent Palestinian State. 
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Symbolically worst of all, the Hashemites show no sensitivity at all to the fact that among their main Israeli interlocutors is none other than Ariel Sharon, the most notorious of the Israeli Generals accused of war crimes and quite literally a butcher of Palestinians during his long military career.
 
In addition, Sharon is the man who has planted the Israeli flag right in the middle of the Muslim quarter in Jerusalem's old city.

There he has forced on the Arabs his surreptitiously "purchased" apartment -- one which must be constantly constantly guarded by Uzi-armed Israeli combat troops -- and from which he constantly displays a huge Israeli Menorah alongside the giant Star of David flag.