BIBI BEATS PERES,
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summarized the enormous damage sustained in this latest catastrophe in Clinton foreign policy:
"The Administration should take a deep breath and think, for about three weeks...It should not get itself into the position where the peace process is more important to America than to the parties themselves." Dov Zakheim, a senior Reagan administration defense official, noted: "The State Department did a tremendous disservice to the President of the United States. It put him in the position of being seen by the entire Middle East as potentially backing a loser. They should never have done anything remotely like that." To the additionally mortifying embarrassment of the Democrats in the Big Media and the White House and Foggy Bottom, Bibi Netanyahu was, only weeks ago, trailing Peres in the polls by thirty points! As for Simple Simon of CBS and his Firm-Mandate-For-Labor-Who-Beat-Likud, the huge gains in the religious parties, plus seven Knesset seats won by the new immigrants party of Natan Scharansky, would surely seem to provide the new Prime Minister with a working coalition. For none of these are anything like the Peres-Peace-At-Any-Pricers so favored by Israel's Arab voters. Think back to 1972. Passengers are held hostage by Arab terrorists aboard a plane in Lod airport, now renamed Ben Gurion airport. They are rescued, with amazing grace, by Israeli commandos led by an officer whose father is a professor at Cornell University. This officer's name is Benjamin Netanyahu, whose brother |
B'SEDERnot itself inspect shipments coming into the Gaza Port. Instead we are to inspect documents. If we want to check a particular shipment we have to make a request to the "Palestinians" and a "Palestinian" inspector checks it for us. I want to point out that in contrast to this lax approach, shipments reaching Aqaba to this day are subject to complete inspection by Lloyds. Lloyds was hired by a coalition headed by the United States to insure that no contraband reaches Iraq through Aqaba.Now consider "safe passages." Under the terms of the agreements, Israel cannot stop a wanted criminal traveling between Gaza and Jericho once he has passed through the first checkpoint. When I asked about this rule I got a simple answer: "Well, we can stop them at the checkpoint. If we screwed up at the checkpoint, its our own fault." As for gross violations of the agreement, the list is too long to fit in the time I have been given: The PLO has not seriously confiscated illegal weapons, they only go through the motions of actually fighting terrorism, they have set as their principle security goal the destruction of Israel's human intelligence infrastructure, their police operate openly in Jerusalem. And crime? On April 28th, there was an article in Davar Rishon titled "Gaza Police help Israel Police in Fight Against Car Nabbers." And how do the "Palestinian" Police help? |
Every month they give us a list of the stolen cars which have been registered in Gaza. That's right - registered in Gaza. The "Palestinians" don't return the stolen cars but they give us a list!
Every few months we go through the same cycle. The government says, "This time the PLO is serious." Then the press runs some articles about how nice things are going and that this time the PLO is really serious. The festival goes on until the number of attacks is too great to allow the farce to continue. There are stern faces for a day or two. Military sources complain that the joint patrols are a nightmare, etc. But then, a few days later, when things cool off, its back to business as usual. "This time they really are serious." The first time I came to Israel was in the summer of 1973. When the Egyptians made their test crossing of the Suez Canal, I asked the Israelis I was studying with if there was any cause for concern and they assured me "yihyeh b'seder." The Labor government ruling at that time was already beginning its election campaign which included ads proclaiming that everything was "b'seder." And that Yom Kippur we all learned just how wrong they were. The upcoming elections present the electorate the choice between those who recklessly say "yihyeh b'seder" and those who will take the necessary steps so that it will truly be "b'seder." Dr. Aaron Lerner is Associate Director of Independent Media Review & Analysis, in Israel. |
Outpost - 6 - June 1996