Arafat to Haaretz: West Bank fence is ruining new

(cont.) Middle East

Monday, August 4, was Yasser Arafat's 74th birthday
and delegations of children dressed in their best
clothes brought flowers to the chairman of the
Palestinian Authority. There were times, in the
heady days after the signing of the Oslo accords,
when many Israelis too would have made a small
pilgrimage to Arafat's office to offer him best
wishes for his birthday.

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The Palestinian position, which Arafat
wholeheartedly supports, is that there should
be no need for fences and walls between Israel
and the Palestinians. He says that in the days
of Oslo, there were dreams of a new Middle
East, like Benelux.

Arafat says he and many others wanted to see
cooperation and open borders between Israel,
Palestine, Jordan and possibly Lebanon, and
nobody thought about a separation wall running
through the country.

He also supports an idea recently raised by
Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to
Israel, for an American-British-Australian
mandate in the West bank and Gaza for an
interim period, until a permanent agreement is
reached. "I always was in favor of sending
international forces to the West Bank and Gaza,
under an American umbrella," he says, adding he
also spoke about the idea at the Camp David summit.

Haaretz

"Abu Rudeineh describes the chain of events in
the Muqata over the weekend, when Arafat's
security detail arrested 18 wanted men who were
in the compound, and in Arafat's name an appeal
was made to Israel to help move the wanted men
to Jericho. "But four days have gone by and we
haven't heard any Israeli response," says the
Arafat aide."

What's to say.

you know there are only two types of Arabs: murderous violent savages that exist to kill Jews and sneaky murderous, violent savages who say things like "peace" just to get their foot in the door :eyes: