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To receive MER regularly email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] THE "MINI-STATE" DECEPTION U.S. AND ISRAEL TRY AGAIN TO DIVIDE THE PALESTINIANS AND EXTINGUISH THE NEW INTIFADA MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 10/28: It's little more than another U.S./Israeli trick in reality. They want to pretend to be offering something real to the Palestinians when the opposite is actually the case. They want to offer Arafat a way out of the current predicament he has lead his people into, a way that will "reward" him and his friends and perpetuate the Regime he leads with large sums of money...if only Arafat will just agree to sign the appropriate documents and appear on the White House lawn one more time. They want to mislead world public opinion into thinking it is the Palestinians rejecting a "reasonable offer" when it fact it is the Israelis and the Americans who insist on putting Palestinians on reservations and controlling them everywhere with the Israeli Army and the CIA. Bill Clinton continues to act as a de facto Israeli super- agent; and anyone who continues to be confused by the smoke screen at this point has only themselves to blame. This "mini-state" now being proposed (see the articles below) is in fact just what the Israelis have wanted to trick and trap Arafat into doing all along. That's what Oslo was all about. That's what Camp David was all about. They want the "Palestinian State" to be in name only, on their terms, and with restrictions that no other sovereign state in the world endures. They want the crucial issues of boundaries, refugees, compensation, and Jerusalem, all to be put off one more time while Arafat agrees to "keep talking". They want the reality to be one of Israeli army control, barricades, settlements, by-pass roads, "free passage" zones, and ongoing "negotiations". They want to "repackage" the occupation but not really change it. They want to confuse and demoralize the Palestinian people and their supporters and to extinguish Intifada II -- just as they did Intifada I. And it appears Arafat will try to continue playing ball with this ongoing charade. He does so because all the mistakes he has made in the past, coupled with the terribly corrupt and repressive regime he has established, leave him with no good choices, just a series of bad ones. He does so most of all at this point because the Americans keep dangling in front of him continuing CIA help and billions of dollars for his regime and his cronies; or alternatively, they hint, they might just discard him if he can't do the job of controlling and repressing his people that he was essentially hired to do. And even while they pursue their old policies, repackaged now as the "mini-state" deception, the Israelis are actually taking steps to further box-in the Palestinians, essentially trying to collectively torture them into submission. This summary of what is happening in Gaza from a Palestinian group pleading with the world to understand: "In the context of the current policy of the belligerent Israeli Occupation Forces aiming at isolating the Palestinian civilian population centers, the Israeli army has blocked the main road in the Gaza Strip. This road is a very vital one for the residents of the Strip as it extends from Beit Hanoun in the north till Rafah in the south, thus connecting the two halves of Gaza Strip. In fact it is the only road that connects the two halves of the Strip. In a new escalating step, the Israelis have blocked the above mentioned road using cement walls this morning. They placed these walls across the sections of the road by Kfar-Darom Jewish settlement in the north and Gosh Qatif Jewish settlement in the south, and announced the area between these two points a closed military zone. This act means a complete and real division of the Strip as it isolates the Palestinian cities in Gaza Strip from each other. This new Israeli aggression is highly dangerous. It comes in the context of the Israeli policy aiming at creating isolated Palestinian cantons in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. In this context, the belligerent Israeli Occupation Forces continued to impose siege upon the Palestinian cities and blocking the roads in the West Bank." The following two British articles -- one from the Guardian the other from The Times -- help explain what's coming next if the U.S. and Israel have their way: REPORT OF U.S. PLAN TO OFFER ARAFAT AN INSTANT MINI- STATE Brian Whitaker in Jerusalem (The Guardian, U.K. - 28 October): The US president, Bill Clinton, will propose a Palestinian mini-state as a temporary way out of the current Middle East violence, an Israeli newspaper reported yesterday. Under the American plan, the Israelis and Palestinians would agree to the declaration of a state covering the territories currently controlled by the Palestinian Authority. "The sides would also agree on a mechanism for continued negotiations after the statehood declaration, with the objective of reaching a final- status agreement," the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper said. Citing American sources, the paper said Mr Clinton would present his plan at separate meetings in Washington with the Israeli prime minister, Ehud Barak, and the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, around November 16. There had earlier been speculation that Mr Arafat would declare a Palestinian state unilaterally on November 15. The Americans have cautioned both sides against unilateral moves. Mr Clinton has made clear that the US would not recognise a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. He has also warned Mr Barak not to contemplate steps such as annexing land where Jewish settlements have situated themselves, the paper added. In the occupied West Bank yesterday, Israeli troops shot dead three Palestinians, witnesses said. Another was killed on the Gaza border near Erez. In the West Bank, Israeli forces used tear gas, rubber-coated bullets and, in some cases, live rounds as demonstrators threw stones in another "day of rage". At Qalqilya, one man was killed by an Israeli bullet in the stomach. Two others died from bullets in the chest at Tulkarm and Ramallah, hospital sources said. Yesterday's violence brought the death toll during the past month to at least 137 people, all but eight of them Arabs. In the Jewish West Bank settlement of Efrat, the main synagogue was vandalised overnight. It was flooded with water, and swastikas and slogans were spray-painted on the walls in Arabic and Hebrew. The mayor, Eitan Golan, said security at the settlement, between Jerusalem and Hebron, must be improved. "Today they spray paint. Tomorrow they could spray gunfire," he said. Meanwhile, the Israeli army was said to be on higher alert along its borders with Lebanon and Syria in case of attacks by Hizbullah guerrillas. Brigadier-General Ron Kitrey, said the army had barred civilians from the Hermon and Dov mountains in the Golan Heights and taken "extra measures" along the frontier with Lebanon in recent weeks. He said the measures had been taken to stop the Lebanese border from "coming to life". Meanwhile, Israel's army radio said that four policemen and an officer were being investigated for the alleged beating of Thabet Abbas Aasi, a Palestinian who was photographed waving blood-drenched hands to a baying crowd outside Ramallah police station. CLINTON TO SUGGEST PALESTINIAN MINI-STATE FROM SAM KILEY IN JERUSALEM THE TIMES (U.K. - 28 October): PRESIDENT CLINTON is hoping to present a plan to Yassir Arafat and Ehud Barak for a Palestinian "mini-state" to be set up in parts of the West Bank as an interim move to thaw the frozen peace process. Mr Clinton wants to meet the Palestinian and Israeli leaders separately next week. The White House plan is clearly aimed at heading off either a unilateral declaration of independence by the Palestinians, or a unilateral separation by the Israelis. Either would result in greater conflict. Yesterday Western diplomats said they believed that if Mr Arafat were to accept independence in some of the West Bank, tougher issues, such as the status of Jerusalem and illegal Jewish settlements, could be discussed later. "The idea is to give the Palestinians some pride, in that they have got their own country at last, while making sure the Israelis don't grab the territory that is still up for negotiation," a diplomatic source said. The state would not have any formal borders, but it would consolidate Mr. Arafat's control over zones where he has administrative rule and the Israelis are in charge of security. Mr Clinton's plan would in effect be a return to previously agreed "withdrawals" that the Israelis did not carry out and would leave Mr Arafat in charge of a little under half of the West Bank. "It would have the advantage of focusing the minds of the settlers, who would start to see that the outlying colonies have to be taken down because they are so exposed. The rest could be annexed to Israel with the agreement of the Palestinians," the diplomat said. With trust between the Israelis and Palestinians at rock bottom, and Palestinian negotiators saying they no longer can be sure that America is acting as an honest broker, it will be hard to persuade Mr Arafat that the "mini-state" is not a confidence trick. The Israeli Right, which favours separation, would be equally unhappy if settlements were left exposed and has said that such a scheme risked introducing a Trojan Horse to the West Bank, from where Jerusalem could be threatened. Radical Islamic groups would reject any moves that did not give the Palestinians control of all the land seized by Israel in 1967, if not more. Israeli troops shot dead four Palestinians and injured 180, 12 of them critically, during clashes in the West Bank and Gaza Strip yesterday. The four died in Ramallah, Tulkarem and Qalqilya during what Palestinians had called "a day of rage". In Gaza, emotions ran high as 24-year-old Islamic Jihad activist Nabil al-Arair received a martyr's burial for his suicide attack a day earlier, which wounded one Israeli soldier. Leaders of Islamic Jihad and the Islamic Resistance Group Hamas told mourners more bombings would follow. "We say to Barak: we are coming. We have accepted the challenge," Ismail Abu Shanab, a Hamas leader in Gaza, said. MiD-EasT RealitieS - www.MiddleEast.Org Phone: 202 362-5266 Fax: 815 366-0800 Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscriibe email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject SUBSCRIBE To unsubscribe email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with subject UNSUBSCRIBE If you are interested in a free subscription to The Konformist Newswire, please visit http://www.eGroups.com/list/konformist/ and sign up. Or, e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the subject: "I NEED 2 KONFORM!!!" (Okay, you can use something else, but it's a kool catch phrase.) Visit the Klub Konformist at Yahoo!: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/klubkonformist
