Posted on 07/19/2002 4:12:39 PM PDT by knighthawk
The European Union, United Nations, Russia and others resolutely support Yasser Arafat as leader of the Palestinian people, but more evidence surfaced this week to make it plain that Mr. Arafat is far from resolute in supporting the aspirations and interests of "his" people. Bruce Riedel, who was former U.S. president Bill Clinton's adviser on the Middle East and a chief negotiator at Camp David, revealed that Washington offered an enormous financial aid package to the Palestinians if they reached a peace deal.
Dollar for dollar, Mr. Clinton's plan would have been many times more generous than the massive disbursements president Harry Truman's Marshall Plan gave to rebuild Germany and Japan after the Second World War. If Mr. Arafat had accepted the Camp David agreement, Mr. Riedel says Washington would have spent US$10-billion in direct compensation to families of Palestinian refugees who fled Israel in the 1948 war.
Another US$10-billion, either from Americans alone or augmented by contributions from other countries, was earmarked to build a water desalination infrastructure that would supply enough usable water for the Palestinians, Israel and Jordan, though Mr. Riedel notes that the Palestinians would have received the majority of that aid money as well. Apparently Mr. Clinton was aware that the huge scale of this aid would meet resistance in Congress and among the public, but he was willing to back it, believing the grand gesture necessary to resolve the Palestinians' refugee and water issues, both longstanding obstacles to achieving a lasting peace agreement.
Mr. Riedel's disclosure reveals that by walking away from Camp David and unleashing a renewed wave of terrorism upon Israel, Mr. Arafat abandoned more than the possibility of peaceful co-existence for Palestinians and Jews. He also deprived the people he supposedly represents of a means of escape from the grinding economic hardship in which they live. Unemployment rates in the West Bank and Gaza have reached 60% since the start of the second Intifada, and the per capita income of Palestinians has fallen by nearly half. And yet Mr. Arafat preferred that to a Marshall Plan that was within his grasp and was more generous than the largesse that helped transform the Axis powers into strong, confident and economically vital modern nations.
Even before the disclosure of Mr. Riedel's compelling evidence, many Palestinians had lately come to the view that Mr. Arafat betrayed them. Some 4,000 Palestinian demonstrators stormed their leader's headquarters in Gaza this month demanding jobs and food. The terrible truth is dawning on at least some of them that Mr. Arafat's interests are not the same as theirs. Now they face the harder task of making the bien pensants of Russia, the EU and the UN understand this too.
Even before the disclosure of Mr. Riedel's compelling evidence, many Palestinians had lately come to the view that Mr. Arafat betrayed them.
You know, first of all, this compelling evidence won't appear on Pali TV or in their newspapers. And secondly, even if the Palestinian Arabs were somehow to get wind of their leaders' "betrayal", I doubt it would make even a small dent on their mindset.
In my darker moods I think Israelis should close down their country, turn out the lights, and immigrate to the U.S.
Then turn the Middle East into a vast expanse of molten glass.
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