Israel's claims to areas of the territories are no less supported by international law than those of the Palestinians. While the Palestinians obviously want to push Israel back at least to the 1967 borders, the Israelis want to retain in any final settlement areas necessary for the defense of the country and the security of Jerusalem. Both sides have worked at "building facts on the ground" to support their own goals in advance of a final status agreement. Israel has constructed settlements almost exclusively in strategically significant areas, and the Pal-estinians have sought to encroach on these areas, which are mainly away from their population centers, with their own widespread construction. The call for a total Israeli freeze on building without any comparable constraint on the Palestinians is flagrantly biased, and to support this demand with allusions to the spirit of the peace process, while ignoring Palestinian violations of the letter of Oslo, simply amplifies that bias.

In Europe, the legacy of the Middle Ages, particularly in attitudes toward Jews, is very much alive in some quarters, as so horribly demonstrated in the last century. It is then perhaps hardly surprising that a number of countries there, and indeed the European Union, have remained silent on the Palestinians' violations of their Oslo commitments while excoriating Israel for its supposed violation of Oslo's "spirit," or that European governments have likewise insisted on an end to all Jewish construction in the territories. Norwegian foreign minister and Mitchell Commission member Thorbjorn Jagland, whose nation has been financing Palestinian textbooks that teach medieval anti-Jewish calumnies and indoctrinate Palestinian children into believing it is their right and duty to pursue Israel's annihilation, recently supported his stance against all Israeli construction by equating Israeli building with Palestinian terrorism.

Nor is it entirely surprising that calls for an end to Jewish construction should be heard from our own State Department. Sympathy for Israel has rarely had a place in the deliberations of the foreign service professionals at State's Middle East desk, and has entered into those deliberations, if at all, only when forced in by a vigilant Congress and White House.

But one would have expected more from a committee under George Mitchell's chairmanship than simply more echoes of such bias. Perhaps there were pressures, from within the panel and without, but to bow to such pressures should have been beneath the former Senator. Now, instead of providing an honest assessment of the recent violence and its causes, he has simply whitewashed those causes and proffered rewards to Arafat for his betrayals of Oslo. This is no way contributes to peace.

Kenneth Levin is a historian and psychiatrist who writes frequently on the Middle East.

The venerable New Yorker has long been associated with leftwing causes. Media fatigue usually leads me to ignore its political articles and concentrate on the brilliant cartoons. In the issue of July 9th, the article "Letter From Gaza" was entitled "The Martyr Strategy: What does the new phase of terrorism signify?" I was sure it would be another exculpatory piece detailing Arab grievances. To my surprise, author Jeffrey Goldberg wrote an excellent article, describing the mindset and ultimate goal of Israel's enemies.

He offers a chilling account of interviews with Abddullah Shami, a leader of Islamic Jihad, whose children play games enacting suicide missions against Jews. Shami is unruffled by the prospect of sending his progeny into suicide terrorist missions. He has one goal: to kill as many Jews as possible. Shami deplores the use of the word suicide, preferring martyrdom. He speaks of cease-fires as a distraction in the "otherwise unrelenting march to Jerusalem." He is quite candid with Goldberg: "We must fight Israel until it is gone."

While much of the mainstream press continues to deny Arafat's control over groups such as Hamas, the Popular Front and Islamic Jihad, Goldberg ties them all to Arafat, including Black September, the group responsible for the massacre of Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972. While Goldberg states that many splinter groups are beyond Arafat's control, he avers that ideological gaps among these groups have shrunk.

Goldberg seems to have had unfettered access to terrorists who, like me, doubtless anticipated more empathy for them than Goldberg displays. He describes attendance at a meeting of Ahmed Jabril's Popular Front. The participants iincluded members of Hamas as well as Marwan Barghouti, the Fatah leader who is Arafat's right hand for the violence against Israel.

During a private session with Barghouti, Goldberg sought a response to the obvious question of the Arabs' ultimate goal. When asked what the Arabs want, Barghouti responded with the usual "100 percent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the refugee right of return." However, when pressed, he continued, "then, we could talk about bigger things."

Goldberg is also refreshingly clear-headed when it comes to the late Faisal Husseini, whom the New York Times hailed as a "political prisoner turned peace advocate." He quotes Husseini in late April stating, "Our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic

Outpost               - 10 -               August 2001