Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Arafat back onstage

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH is the first president to see through the peace facade sported by Palestinian Authority leader Yasser Arafat. For almost 30 years the White House and State Department have bet the bank on Arafat to promote peace in the Middle East. The results have been disappointing to say the least.

What peace lovers over the world have received from Arafat is more bloodshed and the increased use of suicide bombers. Arafat in return has become wealthy from funds provided by the United States and other nations trying to encourage him to practice good government and provide for his people. His siphoning off of funds was exposed several years ago but this practice is an accepted way of life for most leaders of Arab nations.

Ten days ago a new audit was released that shows that Arafat has diverted at least another $900 million of public money into his own special bank account. This is being done while the Palestinian people continue to suffer from housing shortages and high unemployment. Arafat makes sure they have enough explosives and weapons to kill Israelis when they get bored. The Palestinian people continue to live in misery while Arafat's wife and daughter reside in France living in luxury.

Three years ago President Bill Clinton brought then Israel Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat together seeking peace. Barak offered everything but his family house to achieve peace and Arafat rewarded him by returning home and starting new and even more bloody attacks on Israeli citizens. Barak became just one more casualty among the long list of leaders who have tried to be fair and appease Arafat. Arafat views any appeasement as a sign of weakness, which he quickly uses to his advantage.

Bush saw the games Arafat has played and quickly determined he couldn't do business with him. The president then presented his "Roadmap to Peace," which demanded that Arafat be excluded from peace negotiations. This resulted in Arafat appointing Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister. The wiley PA chairman retained his power over finances, security and negotiations and in short order Abbas failed and Arafat jumped back on the world stage. Strangely, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a personal public appeal for Arafat to turn the security forces over to Abbas. In return, Arafat stuck his finger in Powell's eye and the people around Bush seethed with anger that the secretary had been used by Arafat.

Abbas has been replaced by another tool, Ahmed Korei, and he will succeed only if he follows the instructions of Arafat. By now the world must be aware that success in Arafat's plan is the eventual destruction of Israel and the death of every Jew in that small country. So the planned killing of Israeli civilians continues and will not end until Arafat is removed from power. More than 100 Israeli civilians have been killed by these attacks during the first nine months of 2003.

Ion Mihai Pacepa, former chief of Romanian intelligence, is the highest-ranking intelligence officer to defect from the former Soviet bloc. Recently Pacepa, in The Wall Street Journal, put the finger on Arafat as a career terrorist -- trained, armed and financed by the KGB. He relates the efforts the KGB put into making Arafat a successful terrorist. Following a meeting with Arafat, Pacepa "was given the KGB's 'personal file' on Arafat. He was an Egyptian bourgeois turned into a devoted Marxist by KGB foreign intelligence. The KGB had trained him at its Balashikha special-ops school east of Moscow and in the mid-1960s decided to groom him as the future PLO leader. First the KGB destroyed the official records of Arafat's birth in Cairo, replacing them with fictitious documents saying that he had been born in Jerusalem and was therefore a Palestinian by birt h."

Two weeks ago an Israeli official said that thought was being given to expelling Arafat from both Gaza and the West Bank because he is an "obstacle to peace." Immediately there was an international uproar that Arafat had to be protected and to expel or maybe even kill him would inflame the Middle East. If expelled, they argue, he would then roam the world stage causing more problems and if killed he would become a martyr. I can't remember any such uproar when he has been kicked out of several Arab countries in past years.

Although the Israelis say he hasn't been targeted for assassination, there are several reasons for people to ask, why not? Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are dodging our snipers and neither have killed as many Israelis as Arafat. The Israelis must ask themselves if a dead martyr is more dangerous than a live terrorist?

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