Nor was what Peres claimed true. Arafat never arrested "thousands of their leaders" nor is there anything to verify Peres's claim that Arafat disposed of "20 of their killers." Those who were detained were released shortly thereafter as part of the infamous "revolving door" charade at which Arafat excelled. Even worse, Prof. Porath relates that in December 1995, Hamas and the speaker of the Palestinian National Council entered into an agreement permitting Hamas to continue terror attacks so long as the Palestinian Authority "would not be embarrassed." The signed document was presented at a Cairo press conference and reported in the Arab media. According to Prof. Porat, Peres, then Israel's Prime Minister, "initially denied [the agreement's] existence from the Knesset podium" and never attacked it! Even now, on U.S. nationwide television, Peres continues to defend Arafat's imagined war against Hamas.

Ever since Oslo, Peres seems to have conceived his role to be spokesman for Arafat and the Palestinian Arab cause.

Peres is equally cavalier with facts when it comes to his own actions. As part of the closed door negotiations of the Oslo Declaration of Principles, Peres, as Foreign Minister of Israel, wrote a "secret letter" on October 11, 1993 to Norwegian Foreign Minister Holst, giving various assurances to Arafat regarding Eastern Jerusalem. When Arafat revealed the existence of the "secret letter" in May 1994, Peres flatly denied its existence, stating that there was no basis for Arafat's assertion. When the letter's existence was confirmed, Peres announced that "a letter is not a document" and that he regretted only that the letter was made public because as a secret letter, "it had strength, but once it was revealed it became weak."

Ever since Oslo, Peres seems to have conceived his role to be spokesman for Arafat and the Palestinian Arab cause. At a meeting in 1996, Peres told Arafat "we are working today for the Palestinian cause in the American Congress more than you are." In his book, Battling for Peace, Peres proudly writes that Arafat explained that Peres "was capable of saying and doing things on behalf of the Palestinians that many Arab states would neither say nor do." When Mahmoud Abbas resigned as Prime Minister, and even he blamed Arafat for his downfall, Peres, in an interview with the Jerusalem Post published on September 11, charged that Israel "had not fulfilled its promises" during the past few months and had "undermined" Abbas. He asserted that "I thought Sharon would release more prisoners." [Israel was not obligated to release even one prisoner under the Road Map, and that very night two of the detainees who had been released earlier this year as a "confidence building measure" blew themselves up at a bus stop across from the Tzrifin base and at the Cafe Hillel in Jerusalem killing 15 and maiming dozens.] "We promised," said Peres, "to dismantle the outlawed settlements" but "nothing happened." [In fact, the Sharon government did dismantle several unauthorized outposts as promised, even though the Palestinian Authority did not take one single step to implement its obligations under the Road Map to dismantle terror infrastructures.] He went on to chastise Israel for failing to "hand over Gaza"; not only was Israel not obligated to do so, but Peres ignored the fact that Gaza continued to be used as base for firing mortars and rockets into Israeli towns and communities. Finally, Peres insisted that Israel should negotiate with the Palestinian Authority even as terror continues.

Peres's flippant comments and wildly off the mark prognostications have often made him appear more buffoon than the man leading his nation to self-destruction. After Palestinian Arabs, in May 2002, murdered six Israelis, including three teenagers and a baby, Foreign Minister Peres announced that Israel's security cabinet believed there is a window of opportunity for progress but "we haven't yet made a decision about what exactly the window is and what exactly the opportunity is." In response to U.S. General Anthony Zinni's mission and the plan floated by Saudi Prince Abdullah, Peres said: "It is like having light at the end of the tunnel. This is the first time we have a light, and we shall have to build a tunnel." In 1993, Peres asserted "we are approaching the stage at which it will become clear that terror has no future and is fated to die." And in 1996, he informed the Labor Party Convention "By the year 2000 we will overcome Hamas, Islamic Jihad and terrorism. By then we will bring a comprehensive peace to the Middle East."

While not hesitating to make repeated confident predictions about the future, Peres asserts his contempt for history. He told the Wall Street Journal in 1994, "I have become totally tired of history, because I feel history is a long misunderstanding." In a June 17, 2002 interview with the journal Vision, he said: "Today I would be very reluctant to teach my children history. What is history, after all? A chain of wars, of bloodshed, of hatred, of generals." Divorced from historical realities and a self-described "dreamer," Peres feels free to create his own versions of history, ancient and modern, according to his fantasies. Thus he writes: "There was no greater leftist than Moses...The most socialist of socialists." In Battling for Peace, Peres declares: "In almost every foreign war, [the United States] has conquered territories. But in none of them has it even attempted to retain either territories or resources, or to rule over another nation." Peres blithely ignores possessions such as American Samoa, Guam, Midway Islands, Wake Islands and Puerto Rico, as well as our occupation of the Philippines (1898-1946), Haiti (1915-1934), Nicaragua (1909-25, 1926-33) and the Panama Canal Zone until 1979. Even more remarkable, because closer to home, Peres also writes: "East of the Jordan River, Jordan is four times the size of Mandate Palestine, the area to the west of the river that comprises Israel, the West Bank and Gaza." In fact, Jordan was

Outpost               - 4 -               October 2003