The following Letter to the Editor by
Professor Edward Said was published
in the NEW YORK TIMES, 1/21/97
ARAFAT'S TYRANNICAL REGIME and
ISRAEL'S "INDIRECT OCCUPATION"
.
To the Editor:
     Re your Jan. 17 front-page article on the approval of the Hebron accord: Since the Oslo agreements were signed in 1993, Palestinians have lost more land to Israeli expropriations and are vastly poorer. They cannot move around, and because of Yasir Arafat's tyrannical regime they live without any democratic freedoms at all.
     Moreover, nothing in the "peace process" envisages any Palestinian sovereignty or repatriation of the 55 percent of the population who exist as refugees. The "autonomy" granted residents of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel relieves Israel of the bother of dealing with their municipal affairs. The Israeli Army is still in command, the settlements and armed settlers increase in number, annexed Jerusalem amounts to 25 percent of the West Bank, so much so that Palestinian autonomy -- confined to the bantustans of the seven largest towns whose entrances and exits are controlled by Israel and whose total area is about 4 percent of the West Bank -- is an indirect way of continuing the occupation.
     Such facts do not normally appear in the United States news media, which have decided to celebrate "peace" no matter what the truth is, and to exclude dissenting voices who believe in a real peace between two equal peoples.