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Politics : Moderate Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TigerPaw who wrote (19611)	9/22/2005 12:20:21 PM
From: E. T.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

"Palestinian were subject to the extortion and violence of Arafat's overlapping security services, which competed for payoffs, arbitrarily arrested people and seized their land." Sept. Atlantic cover story. "The next morning I meet with Iyad Sarraj, a human-rights activist and the director of the leading mental-health organization in Gaza. In the 1980s, during the first intifada, many of his patients were prisoners who had been tortured by the Israelis. In the 1990s the prisoners he treated were victims of torture by the Palestinian Authority's principal militia, the Preventive Security Service. When Sarraj complained about the poor state of civil liberties under President Arafat, he was jailed three times, beaten and tortured. ... "Palestinians have lost the battle because of their lack of organization and because they have been captives of rhetoric and sloganeering rather than actual work," he says. "I believe that the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians in one way or the other is between development and underdevelopment, civilization and backwardness. Israel was established on the rule of law, on democratization, and certain principles that would advance Israel, while the Arabs and the Palestinians were waiting always for the prophet, for the rescuer, for the savior, the mahdi. Arafat came and eveyone hung their hats on him without realizing that there is a big gap between the rescuer and the actual work that needs to be done. This where the Palestinians lost again the battle. They lost it in '48 because of their backwardness, ignorance and lack of organization in how to how to confroant the Zionist enemy. They lost it when they had the chance to build a state, because the PA was absolutely corrupt and disorganized."