Jerome, I believe yo err there. Arafat has controlled terrorists within the territories when he thought it was to his advantage. The problem is that after the Barak offer, he felt he can et even more by resuming terrorist activities, just as Bin Laden think he can force the US to change its policies under pressure of terrorism. It will be a grave mistake, once you give in to terrorism, terrorists keep increasing their demands with threats and actual additional terrorism, that is a fact. You stamp them out, and they are more amenable to talk then fight. When Israel went to Entebe to release by force the abducted passenger of the French Airline on July 4, 1976, instead of releasing the terrorists it had in jail (violating the air space of a number of countries, doing the French's government work without their permission, and violating Uganda's territorial integrity in the process), they put an end to that mode of terrorism. Hussein got rid of terrorists (mostly) in Jordan, so can Arafat. He simply does not want to. You got to read translations of what he tells his people in Arabic, not listen to his "dovish" pronouncements in English for "world opinion" consumption.
The Bush administration is making a grave error in pressuring Israel to respond "mildly" to Ze'evi's murder, they play into the hands of Bin Laden by changing policy under terrorist pressure, the terrorists win.
Zeev
PS, by the way, the Muslims Arabs (and Christian Arabs) in Israel do live better than in Muslim countries if you take their annual income per capita, until the recent "Intifada", that was even true for Arabs in the "Territories", but since then their standard of living has fallen by a solid 50% (if not more), because a large degree of thei economic life was tied to work in Israel (spreading thus the "goods" within the Palestinian territories.) |
