Arafat

[Tawasakm]

The first problem will be where he is allowed to be buried.

I find it a sad indictment of the situation that hostility can extend beyond death. Ancient Romans believed (or so i was taught in Ancient Hostory 102) that it was wrong/immoral to allow hostilities to continue beyond death. Once a man was dead they were to let go of what led before and act graciously toward the individual (well their corpse and their memory). Would that we could all actually do that.

It seems to me that everybody has too much invested - in beliefs, in land, in identity. So much so that they are now entrenched and find it hard to move in any direction - to allow a change of direction.

I may just be an oddball but I think the first step toward peace is for everybody there to loosen their grip a bit - to invest a bit less in those things that are leading to conflict. If they are not held so tightly they may become even more valuable and more easily appreciated as there is room for movement.

Of course this is something of a philosophical view and not terribly practical to the complexities of the situation.

[Black Dog]

This is a very sad statement. Clinton met this terrorist more times than other world leader during the 1990s. Chirac finds it important to visit this dying terrorist on his deathbed in Paris than to meet with Allawi the President of an emerging Iraq. The Western media feted this man as the Che Guevara of the Palestinian cause, ignoring the murderous, corrupt regime that destroyed lives on both sides, presided over by this Egyptian terrorist.

Clinton and Bush both met terrorist Ariel Sharon many times. The Western media has feted Sharon, the former Hagganah terrorist and overser of the massacres at Shabra and Shatila, as a "man of peace", ignoring the m,urderous corrpupt regime that is destroying lives on both sides.

Shraon has murdered Jews, Westerners and even his own people. He has murdered many many Palestinians while accumulating millions in in illegal funds and presiding over the corruption and economic decline of Israel. He is no more than a criminal gang leader intent on ensuring the destruction of everyone but himself as he accumulates power, money and land.

I find the moral relativism of the right wing to be utterly foul.

[CdnRepublican]

In general your post is odious. You should not be able to post this type of blind unsupported racism. Sharon a terrorist ? Please. Sharon is the democratically elected leader of an embattled, 5 times attacked democratic nation.

GW Bush never met Arafat - he refused to meet Arafat and stated that Arafat was the main reason the Roadmap to Peace has failed. Provide proof that GW Bush met Arafat. I can provide lots of proof that Clinton and his team met Arafat - in fact the count is over 20 times.

Arafat is the leader of a non-democratically based, non-transparent organisation that has spent 4 decades killing innocents. He is the greatest obstacle to peace in the Middle East.

Sharon is giving up 85 % of the West bank and pulling out of Gaza. He has given far more than the Palestinians. The Palestinians live in UN sponsored poverty, and NGO funded PLA terror. They have themselves and their leaders and the UNO to blame.

[Cartman]

My prediction is that there will be an increase in violence and terrorism should Arafat die. Are you saying CdnRepublican, that there will be a reduction should he die (given that he is a terrorist)?

[CdnRepublican]

Everyone always predict this scenario. 'If you are not nice to 'insert terrorist name here' there will be more violence.' In short - nonsense. He was an obstacle and should have been killed long ago. With him dead maybe though i sorely doubt it, the PLO will get organised and start building institutions instead of homicide bombers. I have little faith in any of the parties in the PLO or Palestinian authority. They want violence. They incite violence. Their mandate is to destory Israel. This is clear from their actions, their pronouncements their rejection of the Roadmap for Peace.

Just because the media hails Arafat as the Che of his day, means little. Arafat was adept at using the media - just the same as Lenin and Stalin were - which is why Lenin named Western journalists and intellectuals - 'useful idiots'. He was right on.

With this terrorist gone Israel can give the PLO a chance to reform - if not - then let the Israeli's finish their war by wiping out the PLO and PLA.

Arafat's diplomatic success has had important and -- for him -- positive political consequences. Thirty years of Palestinian terrorism have dulled the world's moral outrage. At Nuremberg, the victorious Allies hanged German generals for atrocities against civilian populations. But atrocities against civilians are the only kind of war Arafat knows. Arafat's forces have rarely if ever taken the field against the Israeli military. They have instead waged a war of kidnappings and random murder, very similar to that practiced by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq. Yet this record has not isolated Arafat. To the contrary, the world has accepted Arafat's terrorism -- an acceptance symbolized by the fact that Arafat was allowed to wear a gun on to the rostrum of the United Nations in 1974, the only world leader ever to do so or try to do so.

Article by D. Frum NRO

[Black Dog]

In general your post is odious. You should not be able to post this type of blind unsupported racism. Sharon a terrorist ? Please. Sharon is the democratically elected leader of an embattled, 5 times attacked democratic nation.

Please. Sharon's crimes are well-documented:

Sharon's history offers a monochromatic record of moral corruption, with a documented record of war crimes going back to the early 1950s. He was born in 1928 and as a young man joined the Haganah, the underground military organization of Israel in its pre-state days. In 1953 he

was given command of Unit 101, whose mission is often described as that of retaliation against Arab attacks on Jewish villages. In fact, as can be seen from two terrible onslaughts, one of them very well known, Unit 101's purpose was that of instilling terror by the infliction of discriminate, murderous violence not only on able bodied fighters but on the young, the old, the helpless.

Sharon's first documented sortie in this role was in August of 1953 on the refugee camp of El-Bureig, south of Gaza. An Israeli history of the 101 unit records 50 refugees as having been killed; other sources allege 15 or 20. Major-General Vagn Bennike, the UN commander, reported that "bombs were thrown" by Sharon's men "through the windows of huts in which the refugees were sleeping and, as they fled, they were attacked by small arms and automatic weapons".

In October of 1953 came the attack by Sharon's unit 101 on the Jordanian village of Qibya, whose "stain" Israel's foreign minister at the time, Moshe Sharett, confided to his diary "would stick to us and not be washed away for many years". He was wrong.

...

Israeli historian Avi Shlaim describes the massacre thus: "Sharon's order was to penetrate Qibya, blow up houses and inflict heavy casualties on its inhabitants. His success in carrying out the order surpassed all expectations. The full and macabre story of what happened at Qibya was

revealed only during the morning after the attack. The village had been reduced to rubble: forty-five houses had been blown up, and sixty-nine civilians, two thirds of them women and children, had been killed. Sharon and his men claimed that they believed that all the inhabitants had run away and that they had no idea that anyone was hiding inside the houses."

The UN observer on the scene reached a different conclusion: "One story was repeated time after time: the bullet splintered door, the body sprawled across the threshhold, indicating that the inhabitants had been forced by heavy fire to stay inside until their homes were blown up over them." The slaughter in Qibya was described contemporaneously in a letter to the president of the United Nations Security Council dated 16 October 1953 (S/3113) from the Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of Jordan to the United States. On 14 October 1953 at 9:30 at night, he wrote, Israeli troops launched a battalion-scale attack on the village of Qibya in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (at the time the West Bank was annexed to Jordan).

According to the diplomat's account, Israeli forces had entered the village and systematically murdered all occupants of houses, using automatic weapons, grenades and incendiaries. On 14 October, the bodies of 42 Arab civilians had been recovered; several more bodies were still under the wreckage. Forty houses, the village school and a reservoir had been destroyed. Quantities of unused explosives, bearing Israel army markings in Hebrew, had been found in the village. At about 3 a.m., to cover their withdrawal, Israeli support troops had begun shelling the

neighbouring villages of Budrus and Shuqba from positions in Israel.

...

As defense minister in Menachem Begin's second government, Sharon was the commander who led the full dress 1982 assault on Lebanon, with the express design of destroying the PLO, driving as many Palestinians as possible to Jordan and making Lebanon a client state of Israel. It was a war plan that cost untold suffering, around 20,000 Palestinian and Lebanese lives, and also the deaths of over one thousand Israeli soldiers. The Israelis bombed civilian populations at will. Sharon also oversaw the infamous massacres at Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. The Lebanese government counted 762 bodies recovered and a further 1,200 buried privately by relatives. However, the Middle East may have been spared worse, thanks to Menachem Begin. Just as the '82 war was getting under way, Sharon approached Begin, then Prime Minister, and suggested that Begin cede control over Israel's nuclear trigger to him. Begin had just enough sense to refuse.

The slaughter in the two contiguous camps at Sabra and Shatilla took place from 6:00 at night on September 16, 1982 until 8:00 in the morning on September 18, 1982, in an area under the control of the Israel Defense Forces. The perpetrators were members of the Phalange militia, the Lebanese force that was armed by and closely allied with Israel since the onset of Lebanon's civil war in 1975. The victims during the 62-hour rampage included infants, children, women (including pregnant women), and the elderly, some of whom were mutilated or disemboweled before or after they were killed

The Crimes of Ariel Sharon

Sharon is giving up 85 % of the West bank and pulling out of Gaza. He has given far more than the Palestinians. The Palestinians live in UN sponsored poverty, and NGO funded PLA terror. They have themselves and their leaders and the UNO to blame.

"UN sponsored poverty" what a joke: it's not the UN that's driving bulldozers through homes, blocking roads and bulding walls: it's Israel. And please: show me where you got that bogus 85% of the West Bank figure. I expect it's the same place you get the rest of your "information: your hind end.

[CdnRepublican]

Sharon was in a war and acted with restraint in the so-called atrocities you list from some palestinian.org website. Or maybe the BBC and CBC inform your inflated opinion with their endless obsessed support for the aggrieved Palestinians:

Meanwhile, this week's BBC "Panorama" documentary on the role of Sharon in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps is continuing to cause waves in Israel and in judicial circles.

Israel's Foreign Ministry put out a statement saying that "Israel views with the utmost gravity the distorted, unfair, and intentionally hostile nature of the Panorama program. The timing of the program, 19 years after the events in question, shows a lack of good faith and an attempt to tarnish Israel and its leader.

"The BBC has put itself up as a television tribunal, while at the same time manifestly and willfully ignoring the findings of established courts in the U.S. and Israel."

In addition, Israel's state-owned television channel refuses to air the documentary, and a leading international war-crimes lawyer, who participated in the program, is insisting he did not say Sharon should be indicted for his role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees, despite reports to the contrary.

During the Sunday broadcast, Judge Richard Goldstone said that "if the person who gave the command knows, or should know, that there's a situation where innocent civilians are going to be injured or killed, then that person is as responsible -- in my book more responsible even, than the people who carry out the orders."

Goldstone, a former chief prosecutor for the U.N.'s criminal tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, sought to clarify his comments in an interview with Jerusalem Post Radio.

"I agreed to speak to [the BBC] as an expert on the law in general, on command responsibility, but I said I would not in any way comment on any liability, criminal or civil, of Ariel Sharon and I didn't do so.

"I haven't yet seen the program, but if it comes across that way it's incorrect... I certainly didn't comment on the responsibility of Sharon."

Well certainly the BBC and CBC would distort such views.

Ridiculous. I suppose in war you should not fight the enemy but passively let them kill you. Interesting. He is now the elected leader of a democratic country.

Arafat has engaged in nothing BUT terror. He has never deployed his army of thugs and criminals against the Israeli army, but only against civilians.

Jenna and other UNO sponsored camps are swamps of terror and terrorist activity. This is well documented. By giving money to Arafat with no strings attached the UNO and other other groups have guaranteed the continuation of the so-called Intifada - or war against civilians.

[Black Dog]

Sharon was in a war and acted with restraint in the so-called atrocities you list from some leftwing.org website.

Ridiculous. I suppose in war you should not fight the enemy but passively let them kill you. Interesting. He is now the elected leader of a democratic country.

An entirely predictable response. Membership in a terrorist organization (the Haganah), "the infliction of discriminate, murderous violence not only on able bodied fighters but on the young, the old, the helpless" is considered "restraint" in Sharon's case, but "terrorism" in Arafat's. It's rank hypocrisy.

Your moral equivalency is not surprising but nonethless nauseating.

I'll wear the badge of moral equivalency with pride, as it demonstrates a moral and ethical consistency that stands in sharp conterast with your moral relativism (which also undermines your credibility when it comes to other moral issues).

[CdnRepublican]

The response is based on Palestinian investigations which confirm that Sharon's so-called 'war crimes' are nothing of the sort.

Listen to yourself - your moral equivalency which means you have no moral concepts is superior to my moral relativity ?? I do not possess moral relativity - i am sharply pro-Christian and pro-Judeo and reject relativity. I am not a post modernist. Do you really know what you are stating ?

Your immorality and anti-Semiticism is hardly a source of pride. Defending terrorists like Arafat leads inevitably to your defense no doubt of 9-11 and Bin Laden. Your inability to see what makes the West superior blinds you to what is at stake in Israel and elsewhere. Your pining for intellectual authenticity leads you to cohabitate with mendacious mendicants such as Michael Moore or Edward Said. It is the same pattern of muddled thinking that obstructed Reagan in the 80s with cries of Russians love their children too ! It is why the left is so dangerous - it is their denial of reality.

On Sharon he has always been cleared of wrong doing by independent investigations. Time Mag. was sued by Sharon for alleging war misconduct and withdrew its claim. There is no independent proof that Sharon is a war criminal.

http://www.palestinefacts.org/pf_current_sharon.php

1953: The Raid on Qibya

In 1953, Israeli forces attacked the Arab West Bank village of Qibya (also spelled Kibya, Quibya or Qibiya), east of Tel Aviv, in Samaria, then under Jordanian control. An Israeli Army anti-terrorism unit (Unit 101) commanded by 25 year old Ariel Sharon destroyed the village of Qibya during the night of October 14-15, 1953 killing 69 civilian inhabitants in the process because they were were hiding inside the homes unbeknownst to the Israeli soldiers.

Was this an accident or a war crime? As documented in the Palestine Facts topic page on Qibya, and the associated links, the deaths occurred during an Israeli raid on the base used by Palestinian Arab terrorists involved in attacks on Israeli civilians, especially a particularly vicious murder of a Jewish mother and her two infants the night before. The Arab civilian deaths were not deliberate; they were unfortunate casualties of the defensive action of the IDF responding to the terrorist attacks.

1982: Sabra and Shatila Massacres

As discussed on the Palestine Facts topic page on Sabra and Shatila, on September 16, 1982 the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia entered the Beruit refugee camps looking for PLO fighters. The Phalangist forces, allies of Israel and in an area controlled by the IDF, carried out a 62-hour rampage of rape and murder that left hundreds dead.

In 1983, an Israeli government commission of inquiry, known as the Kahane Commission, determined that Defense Minister Sharon was negligent and should have foreseen that permitting the Phalangist forces to enter the camps carried a potential for catastrophe. They charged that Sharon should have taken precautions against such a massacre. But the commission rejected the idea that Minister Sharon was directly responsible for the crime, an idea that was also rejected by the federal court in New York that heard Sharon's 1985 libel suit against Time magazine who repeated unfounded allegations about Sharon's role. Nonetheless, due to Israeli discomfort with the event, Sharon was forced to resign and face widespread public opprobrium that nearly ended his political career. The matter was therefore lawfully settled in Israeli and US courts with a reasonable conclusion and outcome.

For years, Mr. Sharon's political opponents, in Israel and abroad, along with a host of Arab leaders, have exploited Sabra and Shatila to score moral points against Israel -- even as Syria made an ally of Elie Hobeika, the Phalangist personally responsible for carrying out the massacres. They continue to accuse Sharon of crimes for which he has already been cleared.

On June 18, 2001, nineteen years after the event, a group of 28 Palestinian relatives of the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacres, motivated and financed by anti-Israel operatives, filed a civil claim under Belgium's "war crime" law, a 1993 law that allows Belgian magistrates to try war-crimes cases no matter where they were committed. The Belgians are embarrassed by this case: Foreign Minister Louis Michel has suggested that the law will have to change lest Belgian courtrooms become clogged with politically motivated "war-crimes" indictments. In June 2002, the Belgian court dismissed the case.

Sources and additional reading on this topic:

The BBC vs. Ariel Sharon

The Greatest War Criminal Of Them All

The Trials of Sharon

Witch Hunt?

The BBC Should Be Tried For War Crimes

Belgian court rules against Sharon war crimes trial

The Myth of the “War Criminal” Sharon

[Black Dog]

Listen to yourself - your moral equivalency which means you have no moral concepts is superior to my moral relativity ?? I do not possess moral relativity - i am sharply pro-Christian and pro-Judeo and reject relativity. I am not a post modernist. Do you really know what you are stating ?

I know exactly what I'm saying: your views on when terror and violence are "wrong" are wholly inconsistent and ever-shifting. There is no objective moral reality for you, only political expediency.

Your immorality and anti-Semiticism is hardly a source of pride.

I wondered how long it would take you to play the race card. Unless you can produce evidence of anti-semetism, I demand an apology.

Was this an accident or a war crime? As documented in the Palestine Facts topic page on Qibya, and the associated links, the deaths occurred during an Israeli raid on the base used by Palestinian Arab terrorists involved in attacks on Israeli civilians, especially a particularly vicious murder of a Jewish mother and her two infants the night before. The Arab civilian deaths were not deliberate; they were unfortunate casualties of the defensive action of the IDF responding to the terrorist attacks.

Israeli historian Benny Morris reported that the original orders issued by the Israeli General Staff for the operation originally called for "blowing up a number of houses ... and hitting the inhabitants", but were changed prior to reaching unit commanders to demand "maximum killing".

It is also notable that fully two-thirds of the casualties inflicted during this raid on the "terrorist base" were women and children.

Also, in what was to become a familiar pattern, the Israeli government initially denied any involvement, blaming Jewish settlers, before changing the story to claim that troops thought the village was abandoned when they began operations (despite US, UN and Arab Legion reports to the contrary).

There is no independent proof that Sharon is a war criminal.

Nor is there any independant evidence he was not. Indeed, I would say the rather extraordinary admission of responsibility by the Israeli inquiry (the IDF not exactly being renowned for its fairness in dealing with such matters) is evidence that Sharon was negligent, if not culpable.

Your pining for intellectual authenticity leads you to cohabitate with mendacious mendicants such as Michael Moore or Edward Said.

OOOh! You found a thesarus!

Here's some more words for you:

apologist

hypocrite

thug

quisling

equivocator

Should be easy to find: just look for your picture.

[caesar]

Micael Moore is right. I like him and agree with him. Sharon and Bush and Cheney are the dangerous ones.

[caesar]

Caesar represents the equivocating left

Caesar represents that ALL nations including the USA and Israel should abiode by international agreements and quit the bs and invasions of civillians under the pretense of reigning in terrorists.

[caesar]

Tawak...."That seems off topic to me.

Gee whiz just answering your incessant questions. Are you just trying to irritate me?

[August1991]

I suspected that Arafat's wife was Palestinian Christian. I didn't know that she had lived in Paris for the past four years.

Anyone know about this?

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear CdnRepublican,

i am sharply pro-Christian and pro-Judeo

I always find this claim interesting. It seems that few understand that Judaism refutes Christianity as a dangerous and foolish religion.

There was recently an interesting question posed on "Ask The Rabbi" on the Arutz-Sheva news website. The Question was "Is it OK for a Jew to read The New Testament?". The answer was "NO, unless it was for the purpose of refuting it's lies".

[CdnRepublican]

Judeo values are not Jewish Talmudic values. There is little correlation between the two. Jewish values inform Christrianity - Christ after all was a Jew and was trained by the Essenes a Jewish sect. Jewish philosophy is not beholden to Fundamentalist Rabbi's alone. Jewish and Judeao concepts permeate Western thought and have served a great contribution to Western civilisation. Without these Jewish philosophies we would be a far poorer world today.

There is right and wrong in life; black and white; good and evil. Back to Arafat. He was evil. He purloined $1 billion in International funds that were supposed to go to his 'people' and expropriated these monies for himself and his darling wife. He apparently skimmed off a further $2-3 billion which is deposited in various accounts around the world. He did nothing but murder innocents; ensure the poverty of his own people; build up a terrorist/criminal regime; and embark on policies that assured the region of war and brutality.

And the Western media's and Liberal's reaction ? Arafat was chic. Clinton had to meet him 20 times. He was the new Che. They ignored his atrocious record and self serving nepotism.

Useful idiots.

[caesar]

Non Canadian Republic; You are posting a bunch of unproven and even then exaggerated rumours probably started by Jewish interest. Israel and its leader Sharon is guilty of killing 7x more innocent Palestinian citizens including women and children. Israel has committed a large list of human rights abuses. This is not a one sided issue with Israel being right and the Palestinians wrong. Israel has annexed their land; give it back. Israel has a right to exist but so do the Palestinians.

[Black Dog]

Cdn republicam: I'm still waiting for you to back up your claims of anti-semetism on my part.

There is right and wrong in life; black and white; good and evil. Back to Arafat. He was evil. He purloined $1 billion in International funds that were supposed to go to his 'people' and expropriated these monies for himself and his darling wife. He apparently skimmed off a further $2-3 billion which is deposited in various accounts around the world. He did nothing but murder innocents; ensure the poverty of his own people; build up a terrorist/criminal regime; and embark on policies that assured the region of war and brutality.

Evil is a construct. It is useful for purposes of demonization and manipulation of simpeltons unwilling or unable to grasp complex issues, or for the purpose of demonizing opponents.

As I've demonstrated above, we have a perfect example on this thread we see Arafat painted as a corrupt terrorist uninterested in peace, while his counterpart, Ariel Sharon, is defended despite similar corruption, a history of terrorism and a demonstratable unwillingness to pursue a meaningful peace.

This is yet another nail in the coffin of the myth of contemporary conservatives as "moral" and "principled": nothing could be further from the truth. This breed of conservative (not to be confused with true conservatives who advocate for individual freedom from coercion) are characterized by a fawning lust for power and control. Thus the failure to apply a uniform moral standard, despite falling back on the archaic "good/evil" bianary.

[Guest eureka]

Was Christ trained by the Essenes? Were you there to have this knowledge that no other has?

Or was he walking "upon those clouded hills? Or was he in India learning some of the ways of the East? Or in any other of the speculative placings.

Sharon, was, by his own admission, a terrorist. Still is.

[August1991]

The truly sad story in all this is that Arafat has provided bad leadership and poorly represented ordinary Palestinians.

Even the manner of Arafat's death is pathetic. Was the man so foolish or vein not to have determined a succession?

No one knows what his illness is nor even how seriously ill he is. At one moment, it is claimed that he will soon return and another that he is in a deep coma.

The Israelis are not at fault for this absurd spectacle. It is ultimately Arafat himself that is the cause. And this is the kind of leadership Arafat has provided Palestinians over the past 35 years or so.

Ordinary Palestinians have suffered far less from Israelis and far more from their incompetent leadership. This pathetic saga between Ramallah and Paris is perfect evidence.

[caesar]

Ordinary Palestinians have suffered far less from Israelis and far more from their incompetent leadership. This pathetic saga between Ramallah and Paris is perfect evidence.

Oh give us a break. The Israelis have targettted innocent children and civillians and destroyed homes of people only for whom they are related too.

[caesar]

Even the manner of Arafat's death is pathetic. Was the man so foolish or vein not to have determined a succession?

Perhaps he is just more "democratic" than you give him credit for and believes the Palestinians should decide on a new leader after he is gone. HMMMMMM

[Black Dog]

Ordinary Palestinians have suffered far less from Israelis and far more from their incompetent leadership. This pathetic saga between Ramallah and Paris is perfect evidence.

Uh. No.

Not to defend the P.A., which is admittdly corrupt, but the conditions imposed by the Israeli occupation are not exactly conducive to building a viable civil society. Remove the occupation, and you remove the number one barrier to the progress of a Palestinian state.

[theloniusfleabag]

Dear CdnRepublican,

Judeo values are not Jewish Talmudic values

I believe that there is a large group of people out there, mostly of similar religious base, ethnicity and sex, Jew and Gentile alike, that will continue to place their faith in 'The Old Testes'.

Back to Arafat. He was evil.

Yes, Arafat was corrupt. He spent most of his efforts holding on to his own power rather than fighting on behalf of Palestinians. There is a good book that covers a lot of this, it is called 'Intifada' by Ze'ev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari (1989). It is very impartial and pragmatic. Basically it states that both the Palestinians and the Israelis are both doing things wrongly.

There is right and wrong in life; black and white; good and evil.

Mankind has tainted both sides for so long it is tough to discern the colors anymore.

[August1991]

Remove the occupation, and you remove the number one barrier to the progress of a Palestinian state.

Huh?

BD, one doesn't have to be an expert on the finer points of the Oslo accord to realize that Arafat's "death" is amateurish, pathetic, disorganized and thoroughly incompetent. For heaven's sakes, his wife (who lives in Paris) is now claiming that she has some kind of authority.

These clowns have been representing the interests of ordinary Palestinians.

Israel has had absolutely nothing to do with this. The Palestinian leadership has created this mess entirely on their own.

I frankly cannot imagine better evidence of the true nature of this dispute than what we are witnessing between a military hospital near Paris and Ramallah. No writer could imagine a more symbolic scenario.

Perhaps he is just more "democratic" than you give him credit for and believes the Palestinians should decide on a new leader after he is gone. HMMMMMM

Even Caesar had to put the word "democratic" in quotation marks when referring to Arafat.