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Politics : WAR on Terror. Will it engulf the Entire Middle East? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ILCUL8R who wrote (2876)	4/19/2002 3:15:35 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 32591

"Yasser Arafat's hands are covered with Israeli and American blood. But his greatest crime may be "weaponizing" Palestinian children, and robbing them of their futures. " Jack Kelly - What the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank gained from the "peace accords" newsandopinion.com \| Much has been written about the deleterious effect the Oslo "peace process" has had upon Israel. Not enough attention has been given to the harm it has done to Palestinians. Arguably, the worst thing that has happened to the Palestinians since the Six Day War in June, 1967, was the creation of the Palestinian Authority in 1993. Before Oslo, Arabs in Israel/Palestine lived in circumstances comparable to those of blacks in the segregated American South of half a century ago. They were second-class citizens, frozen out of the best jobs, each day having to endure slights which burned and rankled. But there were jobs, a good deal of personal freedom, and some hope for the future. With the creation of the Palestinian Authority, Palestinians moved, figuratively speaking, from 1950s Alabama to Haiti. This was not an improvement. More than 95 percent of Palestinians are now ruled by fellow Arabs. But they are ruled harshly and incompetently. JWR's Michael Kelly (regrettably, no relation) was in the West Bank in 1994 when Arafat arrived to take charge of the quasi-country the Israelis had given him: "He arrived from the Sinai in a long caravan of Chevrolet Blazers and Mercedes-Benzes and BMWs, 70 or 80 cars packed to the rooflines with men with guns. The caravan roared up the thronged roads and down the mobbed streets, with the overfed, leather-jacketed, sunglassed thugs of Arafat's bodyguard detail all the time screaming and shooting off their Kalashnikovs to make their beloved people scurry out of their beloved leader's way." "This was the whole of the Palestinian Authority from the beginning, an ugly little cartoon of Middle East despotism," Kelly said. "There was never any pretense of democracy, of rule of law, of a free press, of a working system of taxes or courts or hospitals...No one ever bothered to build an economy or create jobs or even pick up the trash or pave the streets." According to the CIA World Factbook, the economy in the West Bank had by 1996 declined 36 percent from what it had been in 1992, the year before Arafat's triumphal entry. By 2000, per capita income had clawed its way back to almost what it had been when the Palestinian Authority was created. But then the current intifada started, and the economy went back into the toilet. The World Bank reported last year that Arafat's government was bankrupt, and the Palestinian economy on the verge of collapse. Almost half of Palestinians had less than $2 a day on which to live. Those times were good times compared to now. Yasser Arafat has been a terrorist since his youth. His overriding goal is the destruction of Israel. Most of his attention and resources have been devoted to this end. He has little interest in economic development, and no expertise in it. He and his entourage are notoriously corrupt, even by the abysmally low standards of other Arab regimes. But the impoverishment of ordinary Palestinians may be more than the accidental consequence of Arafat's war with Israel. Arafat's principal weapon has been the suicide bomber. There are two important ingredients in the manufacture of a suicide bomber: The first is hopelessness. If you are a young person in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip today, you haven't much to look forward to. There is little likelihood you can get a job, and if you do, the odds are it won't pay much. You look into your future, and see a black hole. Such desperation can make a cash payment of up to $30,000 for a suicide bomber seem attractive. You get your 15 minutes of fame, a release from a dead-end life, and the knowledge your family will be provided for. The second is zealous hatred. Arafat has turned schools into weapons factories, designed to turn children into bomb carriers. Reading, writing and arithmetic are subordinated to teaching hate. From the time they are toddlers, Palestinian children are taught that Paradise awaits them if they die killing Jews. Yasser Arafat's hands are covered with Israeli and American blood. But his greatest crime may be "weaponizing" Palestinian children, and robbing them of their futures.

To: ILCUL8R who wrote (2876)	4/19/2002 7:55:48 PM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Respond to of 32591

U.S. suspects Saudi pact with Saddam Promise to bar American military, equipment worth $5.6 billion rotting -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 19, 2002 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2002 WorldNetDaily.com U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell came away with no illusions on where Saudi Arabia stands in the U.S. battle against terror after his talks in Morocco last week with the kingdom's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah. Washington finally realizes that Saudi Arabia has no intention of choking off Saudi donations to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers or silencing support in its official media for the terrorist attacks. The United States also now suspects that Abdullah and Saddam Hussein are in cahoots and that the Iraqi leader recently gave secret guarantees to the prince that Baghdad would not attack Saudi Arabia or its oil fields as long as the kingdom banned all U.S. military action, including command and control activities, against Iraq. DEBKAfile's military sources reveal one astonishing result of the secret Abdullah-Saddam agreement. Not only did Saudi Arabia force an accelerated U.S. evacuation of the Prince Sultan air base and a halt to U.S. operations there, but it also brought out state-of-the-art American equipment from underground buildings at the key facility and dumped it in large crates in the desert to bake under a scorching sun. Saudi Arabia's aim was to show Iraq or any spy planes in the area that the equipment was now out of U.S. reach and that Saudi forces had no intention of using it themselves. As a result, some of the world's most sophisticated electronic gear, worth $5.6 billion, is now rotting away like tomatoes in a steaming Arab souk. DEBKAfile's military sources say the cessation of activities in the Sultan command and control center has slashed the Saudi air force's operational capabilities by more than 50 percent. Each Saudi air base now operates independently, with no central brain to guide them. Senior Saudi air force commanders recently told U.S. officers they had raised the issue with Abdullah. He replied that at this stage in Middle East and Gulf events, the kingdom's security was best served through understandings with its neighbors, rather than by a U.S. command and control center at the Sultan base. Abdullah pledged that as time went by he would budget the necessary funds to build a new center. The crown prince said nothing when the officers replied there was no need for a new facility when quite simply the crates could be opened and the gear reactivated. DEBKAfile's Gulf sources believe Abdullah fears the United States could gain remote access to the equipment if it is switched on. He believes that U.S. control and surveillance networks in Oman and Kuwait, and now also in Qatar, as well as those aboard U.S. aircraft carriers in the Gulf, could access information in the system and track Saudi air force activity. For all these reasons, Abdullah's official visit to George W. Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch on April 25 is likely to be one of the most important and decisive events of his presidency. The crown prince's decision to shut Sultan air base to U.S. forces -- and the manner in which the evacuation was carried out -- marked the first time in Saudi Arabian history that it assumed sole responsibility for its own security. Riyadh appears to have discarded the U.S. umbrella that protected the kingdom, its oil fields and the royal family for more than 60 years. The Crawford summit will have to address five of the most sensitive questions in contemporaneous U.S.-Saudi relations: What happens to the U.S. nuclear umbrella over Saudi Arabia as the kingdom continues to march along the new security line it has drawn in the sand? Will Saudi Arabia want to take its chances in the stormy and volatile region? Will an angry United States fold up the umbrella in high dudgeon? Will the United States remain committed to the security and defense of Saudi Arabia's oil fields and pipelines? To what extent will the United States stay true to its pledge to protect the House of Saud from external or internal threat? How far will Saudi Arabia go to take action against al-Qaida terrorists who have found shelter in the kingdom and have been operating there since March? Under what conditions and to what degree would Saudi Arabia join, or reject, an oil embargo? Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah in his talks with Powell, promised to not be a party to an embargo. But DEBKAfile's sources in the Gulf doubt the Saudis will stand up to pressure from Iraq, Iran, the Palestinians and Venezuela to declare at least a one-month oil embargo. Chances are good that in the next 10 to 14 days, when Israel launches another major retaliation for a Palestinian terror attack, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela will declare a 30-day oil embargo. Should Israel hold off, Saudi Arabia would in turn be able to postpone its declaration of an embargo until after the Bush-Abdullah talks.