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Jewish World ReviewOct. 13 , 2000 / 14 Tishrei 5761
Advice from rock victim: KNOCK IT OFF, YASSER!
http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
I DON'T KNOW about you. But I'm growing weary of
Palestinian whining. Yasser Arafat's government already
controls the day to day lives of more than 90 per cent of
the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza.
With the US urging them on, Israeli Prime Miniister Ehud
Barak and his peace team recently offered Arafat and his
people a full fledged Palestinian sovereignty deal that's
far more reaching than anything proposed by any of
Barak's predecessors -- including Yitzhak Rabin. To top
it off, the Israelis even broke their longstanding taboo
on sharing rule in Jerusalem with the Palestinian..
So what does Arafat do? After refusing to sign off on the
peace deal, he uses the ill-timed visit to a holy shrine
by an Israeli opposition politician as the excuse to
renew the intifada -- and then cries "foul" when Israeli
troops try to defend themselves against a torrent of
molotov cocktails and flying stones.
As one who once got hit by a Palestinian thrown stone, I
can tell you they are hard, dangerous and can be deadly.
Pushing children and teenagers into the front ranks of
violent demonstrations is hardly a new Palestinian
tactic. During the height of the intifada in the late
1980s, I witnessed the following: an Israeli detachment
was standing guard along the road to Bethleham. Suddenly
a group of school-aged Palestinian kids, some as young as
10 or 11, emerged from a nearby school and began pelting
the soldiers with stones. They were warned by Israeli
bullhorn to back off, but continued - eventually adding
gasoline filled molotov cocktails to their barrage.
Finally, the Israelis fired teargas at the kids -- and
when that failed to stop them, the Israelis fired several
rounds into the air. Within a few moments all hell had
broken loose and the rubber bullets were flying.
Most of the demonstraters fled in terror and then and
only then, their teachers suddenly appeared and began
yelling in English, "Journalists - you see how the
Israeli aggressors are killing our Palestinian children!"
My immediate reaction was well, why don't you tell the
kids to stop throwing stones? But, hey, what better way
to garner international sympathy then to send kids out to
battle soldiers?
The deaths of the past ten days - especially the horrid
TV filmed shooting of that 12 year old boy in Gaza -
have been horrendous. But now, everyone from the US
Secretary of State to the Russian Foreign Minister to
the UN Secretary General are trying to herd the two sides
back to the peace table.
The problem is that while Arafat thinks he has garnered
new sympathy around the world for his cause, he has done
nothing but create harm and havoc among those
non-Palestinians who are the most important to that
cause: his Israeli interlocuters. Even the most dovish of
Israelis were shocked by the unneccessary ferocity of
Arafat's reponse to Arik Sharon's Temple Mount visit.
Even the most dovish of Israelis were alarmed by the
sight of masked contingents of heavily armed Palestinians
parading through the streets of Gaza and Nablus and
shooting their guns in the air -- and then at Israeli
settlers and soldiers. And who wasn't outraged in Israel
when Arafat refused to call on his people to refrain from
violence. Are these Israel's partners for peace? Are
these the people with whom Israel is supposed to share
the sacred city of Jerusalem? Are these the people whom
Israel is to trust?
Arafat & Co have confirmed some of Israel's worst fears:
that they can't be trusted and/or are not in full
control. Instead of calling for an international
investigation into who started the recent spate of
violence, Arafat's people should be considering what they
can do to restore their severely damaged
By Richard Z. Chesnoff
JWR contributor and veteran journalist
Richard Z. Chesnoff is a senior correspondent at US News
And World Report and a columnist at the NY Daily News. His latest book is Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe
Plundered the Jews and Committed the Greatest Theft in History.
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