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Politics : Middle East Politics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (418)	1/11/2002 7:05:27 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Respond to of 6945

From today's National Review: I trust you have read about the latest breathtaking operation by the Israelis, locating, sneaking up on, and commandeering that ship full of explosives bound, from Iran, for Yasser Arafat. The operation was positively cinematic, or novelistic: Choppers go out into a storm, the men throw rubber boats down into the churning sea, they rappel down flimsy, swinging ladders, they silently scale the ship, and they overwhelm the 14-man Palestinian crew without firing a shot — keeping 50 tons of matériel from the hands of those who would destroy Israel. Why do they do this? Because they have to: The country is too small, and its position is too perilous, for anything else. Necessity has made the Jews of Israel such fighters, nothing else. Any people, which wanted to survive, which determined to live despite all the nations trying to kill it, would do it. Here’s the point I wish to make: Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, who has long apologized for Arafat or made excuses for him, angrily called this moment — the shipment of arms when Arafat was declaring a cease-fire — a “watershed.” A watershed! I love that. Arafat is always facing a watershed. We always hear, “This is his moment of truth. It’s do-or-die. It’s put-up-or-shut-up.” Then the next month comes, and we hear, “This is his moment of truth . . .” There’s never a real moment of truth, a real watershed. Arafat always manages to get a pass. I, like many others, am, after these 40 years (about as long as Castro), willing to take a chance on the next Palestinian leadership. Let Arafat deal with a real watershed. We will see. nationalreview.com

To: maceng2 who wrote (418)	1/11/2002 10:00:23 PM
From: Nadine Carroll	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6945

Well, you are assuming that the authorities that control the Palestinians are the end all of all control...They are not! Even if they were effective as Stalin, even he paid lots of notice to what the ground movements were up to. Sure he did...to send them to the gulag. It's not particularly healthy to express wishes contrary to Arafat's in the PA either. Sure, shoot a bomber when you see one, otherwise don't increase the divide amongst ordinary peaceful Palestinians PB, from your own words, you understand that Arafat is the "head of the serpent", bent on destroying Israel. You understand that the Palestinians have been waging a purposeful campaign, attacking and bombing Israeli targets and civilians while being willing and even eager to take casualties as part of the PR campaign. Yet this response means to me that you haven't understood the implications of your own words. The intifada is a war situation, low-grade, but still a war. The peaceful Palestinians are locked behind closed borders and are suffering already. In such a situation, weak and sporadic responses to continual attacks do not win you the hearts of the enemy civilians; it just means that you will lose the war of attrition.