by Joe Mitchell

This Morrissey ditty has been ringing through my head since hearing the Palestinian leader had slipped out of consciousness and into what has been described as an "irreversible coma." Call me harsh, but I soon hope to be hearing a variation of Bauhaus', "Bela Legosi's Dead" resonating through my skull. 

As Arafat rots away in hell, the parting on the left will be parting on the right. There'll be a tussle among those who would love to have the lucrative Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) leadership position. Rumor has it that Arafat is being kept alive artificially and will be kept so while the wanna-bes among the PLO play musical chairs. Islamic law dictates that leadership must be replaced within 24 hours of the former leader's death.

After all, there is still a "slim chance" that Arafat will "pull through." But be assured, to many people on all sides of the Middle Eastern "situation," he's as good as dead anyway. Besides, with American and Isreali interests still perverting the "Road Map to Peace" in the Middle-East, what difference does it make? No one has a genuine vested interest in the Palestinian plight; not when it comes to American imperialism, Isreali real estate, and Arafat's avarice.

"The Situation" as many refer to the Israel-Palestine conflict, and its fallout such as 9/11 and the Madrid Train bombings is about real estate. It is not about whether Jews deserve a homeland or if the Palestinians deserve one. They both deserve one. "Israel take all" or "Palestine take all" is not going to work. A binational single state will not work- that's essentially what you have now and it's a mess. 

I use the term "leader" for Arafat very loosely. Face it, first and foremost Mr. Arafat has always been a "terrorist." He has either ordered or inspired the deaths of countless Israelis and even his own people in the form of suicide bombers, and other agitation.

"Here young adolescent Muslim. You have no future because papa Arafat is hoarding all that money meant to help you. So go blow-up yourself along with some innocent Israelis in a disco, or an open market. Die for Palestine so uncle Yasser doesn't have to."

Thanks Yasser, they did. Now their blood is on your hands, not that you didn't already have thousands of buckets of Arab and Jewish blood alike queued around your palace waiting to bath them.

If Mr. Arafat and the PLO really cared one bit for Palestine, He would not have walked away from the Camp David-Taba talks of 2000-2001 and commenced the al-Aqsa or second Palestinian intifada.

The main points of the offer were as follows:

*Rendering approximately 95% of the West Bank to Palestinian control
*Rendering ALL of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians
*A Palestinian capitol in Jerusalem
*Palestinian control of the Temple Mount
*A $30 Billion compensation package for Palestinians displaced in 1948

And these are only the "main" points.

*For a detailed map of Israel and the occupied territories click here.*
 

Basically, at Camp David-Taba, Arafat and the Palestinians got what they wanted, or what they always said they wanted. Yet gutless Arafat chose violence instead. Rather than make peace and accept a "two-state solution" to the endless regional imbroglio that has indeed become an international one, Arafat took the lazy way out. After all, establishing a government and being a real leader of a people requires real work. As I've heard a few of my more historically sentient friends say on more than one occasion, "establishing a functioning Palestinian government to work out the problems of the Palestinian people would mean that Palestinians would want real solutions to real, mainly economic, problems. Blame for the Palestinians' woeful lot would be shifted from those "oppressive Israelis" to Arafat and his cronies instead." Yasser couldn't have that happen, could he?

President Clinton, who lead the talks at Camp David, saw his opportunity to become a "Statesman for the Ages" by finishing what Jimmy Carter started disintegrate into the ether.

Clinton did not hide his contempt for Arafat behind his normally affable demeanor. When Arafat made a congratulatory call to Clinton during the last week of his Administration, he told Clinton he was "A great man and statesman."

Clinton's rejoinder to Arafat said it all, "No I'm not. I'm a colossal failure and I have you to blame for that."

Arafat and the PLO, just like other preening Palestinian Political Glam-Terrorist groups, Hamas, Black September, Hezbollah, and whoever else is out there waving that red, green, black, and white flag are quasi-governmental versions of Enron. Billions, perhaps even trillions, pour into the coffers of these groups from Palsymps (short for Palestinian Sympathizer) worldwide. The money is intended to help the Palestinian people and establish a free sovereign Palestine. Instead it merely builds palaces and buys other luxuries for their "leaders."

Perhaps this is why Arafat walked away from the best chance at peace in the Middle East and his alleged dream of a Palestinian state. He'd finally have to account for all those public funds he'd spent on himself now that he'd be expected to actually build a nation with it. The accountants were already on Mr. Arafat's tail in late 2003, smelling something mighty suspicious.

Which brings us to the other side of the coin. If you couldn't tell from the diatribe above, I lean to the side of the Zisymps (short for Zionist sympathizer). Arafat detractors like myself saw the Camp David-Taba collapse and second intifada as an excuse to bait the Israeli public into electing Likudite Arial Sharon as new Prime Minister, replacing the dovish Barak. Indeed, this is exactly what happened. Arafat wanted this "no compromise" ex-Ben Gurion comrade at the head of Israel as an excuse to continue his profitable "Perpetual War for Perpetual War." Again, rather than use the bulging PLO coffers to build a working government, he could continue siphoning-off buckets of money for himself while saying it was going to the struggle against those evil extremist Likudites. Arafat and Sharon are a match made in hell.

Yet despite my Zisympist leanings, I often wonder if the United States and Israel are also a match made in hell. I can't quite reconcile whether Israel is America's sneaky little brother who reads America's diaries and spies on his every move, using the "I'll tell mom and dad" blackmail for leverage, or just a yapping little Chihuaha under the legs of America the Rottweiller as the medium-sized dogs of its Arab neighbors keep their distance. I think it's a bit of both, but mostly the former.

To read Gordon Thomas' Gideon's Spies, a cracking good read about Israel's intrepid Mossad intelligence agency, one would tend to think that particular intelligence bureau had agents in every household of the USA, if not the entire world. In fact, after reading this book, I began to look upon my two cats with wary suspicion.

If you don't think the "little brother" analogy is valid, you may want to read Thomas' book then reevaluate that thinking.

According to the book:

· Mossad knew in advance about the October 1983 bombing of the U.S. Eighth Marine Battalion in Beirut, but did not warn the U.S. because Israel could not formulate a way to gain political capital from such warning. 241 U.S. Marines died as a result of the bombing. The book quotes former Katsa Victor Ostrovsky as saying that Israel's attitude toward the U.S. in that context was "They wanted to stick their nose into this Lebanon thing, let them pay the price." Ostrovsky has also written an expose on Mossad called By Way of Deception. The book has been banned in several countries.

· The rampant rumors that the Israeli government had foreknowledge of, and, horrors! maybe even helped orchestrate, the 9/11 attacks. Though unsubstantiated, and seeming to be a native of whacko-conspiracy-theory-land, there is some interesting information floating about that makes one wonder. What's up with this Daniel Lewin guy? Why did that Israeli shipping company break its lease and abandon its WTC office just prior to 9/11? Who were those Israeli dudes who were arrested while videotaping the burning WTC, laughing the whole time? What about those 60 or so Israeli citizens locked-up at Guantanamo? 

· Mainstream sources have documented Israel's reverse engineering of U.S. weapons given to them by the U.S. government. The Israelis then turned around and sold U.S. design-based weapons to China and other U.S. unfriendlies. Israel has also been caught "redressing" U.S. weapons and reselling them to China and other U.S. unfriendlies. 

Curiouser and curiouser. 

Ah, with friends like these…Friends who get more than $3 Billion from U.S. taxpayers per year.

Yet, with the re-election (or is this the first election?) of Mr. Bush last week, the hawks' cry of "Terrorists hate freedom" will get even louder, and give Dubya carte blanche to invade any oil-producing nation he wishes. But it isn't about freedom. It's about Israel, a nation and term that many see as synonymous with America. To them, it is America's foothold in the Middle East. It even looks like the U.S. It is an advanced western-style culture and economy in the middle of a third-world region. Mr. Bin Laden himself even admits it's all about Israel.

The Arab extremists - and this would include Arafat - in the region want to destroy Israel and create Palestine in its place. They base their convictions on the Quoran. Conversely, the extremists - and this is Likud, et. al. despite Sharon's recent concessions in the West Bank - in Israel and elsewhere want all Arabs out of Israel- and that includes the Golan Heights, Gaza Strip, and West Bank. They base their convictions on the Torah.

The scariest of the Israeli extremists are right here in the U.S. and they are Gentiles. They are among Dubya's evangelical base (link may require subscription or viewing of Ad to log on) , a group who interpret the bible as stating that a solid Jewish state in Israel must exist before the return of Christ. Of course the return doesn't occur until all the Jews worldwide profess that Christ is the Messiah. Oh, that'll be easy. So religion is just mucking up the issue on all sides.

If one really wants to end Middle-Eastern-born terrorism, and there are doubts that the Bushies really want to do this - it's that profit motive again, chaos equals money and all that - its time to put aside the demagoguery about "freedom-haters," "evildoers," and "most-wanted posters." It's also time to put aside the dogma of so-called religious prophecies. 

It's time for all parties, if possible, to get down with the enlightenment and get rational for awhile. If the Bin Ladens, Arafats, Sharons, Dubyas, et. al. of the world want peace in the Middle East and an end to terrorism from the region, it's time to shut up a truly deal. But again, is this what they truly want? Peace just isn't profitable- economically or politically. It doesn't make money and it doesn't keep your subjects malleable from being in a constant state of abject fear. Besides, think about the duct tape industry