M I D - E A S T    R E A L I T I E S - EDITORIAL

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.                    "News, Analysis & Commentary They Don't Want You to Know" ***************************************************************

Subject: Britain "Departed" Palestine Too -- Not Quite The Same Way However!

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BRITISH DEPARTED PALESTINE, LEAVING CIVIL WAR

NEED FOR "ARAB COMMUNITY" MORE URGENT THAN EVER

MER Editorial - 6/30/97:

The British leave Hong Kong today, in 1997, a glittering financial empire.

But one shouldn't forget the British left Palestine, just 50 years ago, a political, financial, and psychological mess.

After fracturing the Arab world with artificial boundaries and "client- regimes" -- most of which continue to this day -- the British ran from Palestine leaving a civil war to explode between Jewish immigrants they had encouraged and indigenous "natives" they had repressed. That conflict too continues to this day.

In other senses, though, the West doesn't completely leave. Even with Hong Kong, deeply embedded financial and cultural structures remain in place.

But for the Palestinians, and indeed for all the Arabs, Western imperialism has continued to control the political as well as financial destiny of the Arabs to this day.

CIA penetration of the Middle East has expanded decade by decade since the British departure. American manipulation of Arab "client-regimes" has become something of a political art-form -- controlling the region through local agents, a limited number of American military forces, and considerable CIA and covert penetration.

Another considerable difference looms large as well. Hong Kong lacked natural resources; and so the British were forced to build up the human and service resources of the small area on the Asian coast.

In the Middle East, the natural resources -- petroleum, "black gold", and then the huge amount of petrodollars that ensured -- were well understood to be the main prize of the huge region. And the West has proceeded to relentlessly exploit these resources for their own benefit; caring little about the human and service resources of the area. Indeed wanting to continually drain the petrol resources has required the West to seriously inhibit indigenous Arab institutions and democracy -- lest the Arabs seek to end the neo-colonial bondage they have been subjected to for so long.

"ARAB COMMUNITY" URGENTLY NEEDED

Until the Arabs undue the negative legacies the British left them, and which the Americans have continued to play upon and manipulate ever since, the Arab world will continue to be hopelessly subjugated and backward, divided and dominated.

Lastly it should be said clearly, contrary to contemporary assertions, the British and the Americans have done far more to prevent democracy in the Middle East, and to inhibit independent economic development as well, then they will ever admit.

The Europeans have come together in recent years to form the "European Community" with largely open borders, unrestricted trade, easy travel, and unrestricted press. Only if the Arabs finally bring an end to their legacy of British and Western colonialist past and establish a real "Arab Community" can they hope to have real independence and a serious role in the modern world.

                                                                   MAB

-----------------------------------6/30/97-------------------------------

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