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"leaders" to inculcate armed violence and hatred of Jews, 75% of Arabs polled said the Israelis provide them with "good or very good human and civil rights." Only 30% said that about Arafat and his "security forces." Some surveys go unnoticed in major Western media.Perhaps those polled had in mind incidents like that of January 11 in Gaza, when a fender-bender prompted a rampage by the bodyguard of Arafat's chief of "police," Ghazi Jabali, who shot three of his "brother" Arabs. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights deplored "the great deal of injuries and deaths in the past few years" from such incidents. A couple of weeks earlier, some flirting in a nightclub in Nablus prompted a mini-war between Arafat's personal Fatah militia and Rajoub's Preventive Security "police."
If Palestinians are sick of Arafat and his cronies, Labor MK Yossi Beilin takes a different view. "Abu Amar [Arafat] is a unique and special person," Beilin commented late in January. "I view him as the supreme expression of the Palestinian national and human interest." Not content with this bombast, Beilin added, "I view Abu Mazen as a complete partner, a pioneer like Sa'eb Erekat. For me, giving up most of the settlements [in Judea and Samaria] is no price at all." Since Beilin must know, he must simply not care that even this surrender will not satisfy his Arab heroes.
Meanwhile, Palestinian violence against Jews continues. On January 17 in Gaza, PA police shot at Israeli soldiers with whom they were conducting a joint patrol. Bound like prisoners to a stake, the Israelis did not return fire "so as not to escalate an incident." On January 14, an Israeli soldier guarding a road junction in Judea was shot to death. The previous week, two grade school teachers were shot and seriously injured while driving to work near Hebron. Other Israeli drivers had their windshields shattered by rocks and, when their cars crashed, their broken bodies carried to hospital. For people like Beilin, this is no price at all. Yitzhak Mordechai, standard bearer of the new "centrist" party, preens himself for securing an "understanding" with Arafat that there will be no terror till after the election (what a bargain, what a surrender), lest it help Netanyahu. Mordechai gets a few more votes and Israelis may not be killed till May 20. Peace grinds on.
The PA's lawless profile makes one wonder about the enthusiasm of world "leaders" for carving an Arab state into Judea and Samaria. It seems to be a worst case scenario for all concerned, pursued in contempt of the real life issues and history of the Promised Land.
Eugene Narrett teaches English at Boston University.
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calmly and purposefully in their most routine affairs.This ironic and counterproductive juxtaposition should no longer be the case if these scholars could learn to begin to contemplate the very moment of Israel's collective disappearance. It follows that Israeli strategists must begin soon to replace reassuringly abstract conceptualizations of End Times with concrete imaginings of catastrophe. I realize, of course, that such advice is altogether contrary to what Israeli academics have learned in American graduate schools, but their American professors were plainly wrong. As in the case of each individual life, fear in this context has its proper place. And there is no necessary correlation between existential dread and injury to "objective" forms of scholarship.
Tenth, Israeli strategists should pay special attention to the requirements of scholarly audacity, of seeking, self-consciously, to steer clear of the comfortable intellectual middle-ground and to take risks, personal and professional, in finding serious answers to vital questions.
Professor Louis Rene Beres teaches political science at Purdue University.
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next war against Israel.The administration's pressure on Israel on the "Palestinian track" is sending Syria a dangerous message: there is no need to make concessions to Israel, because the U.S. will pressure Israel to hand over territory regardless of Syrian behavior. Right now, the administration is publicly blaming Israel for delays in the Wye process, despite Israel's concessions and the Palestinian Authority's total non-compliance. The U.S. is withholding $1.2-billion in aid promised to Israel as part of the Wye deal, and it is stalling on providing funding for the Arrow missile project that Israel needs for its defense.
Pressuring allies and appeasing enemies has once again become the watchword of the Clinton administration's foreign policy.
Herbert Zweibon is chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel.
March 1999 - 5 - Outpost