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PROBLEM IS, IT'S THE SAME OLD REPRESSIVE AND CORRUPT ARAFAT
MID-EAST REALITIES - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12/04:
Now Arafat says he doesn't trust Barak -- imagine that! Now Arafat has put
on his gun again -- and imagine that! Problem is, this is the same Arafat who
wanted to hand over that gun, in public at the White House to Bill Clinton,
in September 1993 -- the Israelis actually had to step in and squash that one.
Problem is this is the same Arafat who along with his cronies have stolen hundreds
of millions of dollars in the past few years and squirreled it all away in secret
bank accounts. Problem is this is the same Arafat who is deeply interconnected
with the CIA. And the problems go on and on.
The Palestinian people are oppressed and disposessed for many reasons. First
of course because of the terribly oppressive policies of the Israeli occupier.
And then because of the policies of the United States. Third because of the
actual policies (rather than the stated ones) of the Arab "client regime" states
that owe their existence to the U.S. But also because of the miserably corrupt,
repressive, and cannibalistic policies of the Arafat Authority, specifically
designed to fit right in to the "client regimes" arrangement in the region.
This is also a good time to recall David Hirst's masterful essay about the
"Palestinian Authority" a few years ago in The Guardian which follows.
ARAFAT DISPLAYS GUN IN PUBLIC
By Ibrahim Barzak
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip (Associated Press - Monday, Dec. 4, 2000) �� Yasser Arafat
displayed a holstered pistol Monday � the first time he has shown a weapon in
public since returning from exile in 1994, and reviving memories of the day he
carried a gun into the United Nations more than a quarter-century ago.
The Palestinian leader said the gesture was an expression of anger over the blocking
of a key road by Jewish settlers. The settlers' demonstration delayed his drive
back to his Gaza City office after a trip to Arab countries.
More broadly, the display of the weapon reflected the deteriorating relations
between Israel and the Palestinians after more than two months of clashes, in
which almost 300 people, most of them Palestinians, have been killed.
The settlers were protesting a decision by the Israeli military to allow a resumption
of Palestinian traffic on the Salah Edin Road. The Israelis closed the road to
Palestinian traffic two weeks ago after a deadly bomb attack on a school bus.
Israeli authorities cleared the settlers from the road Monday, and Arafat was
able to continue back to Gaza City after a delay of more than an hour at the
Rafah border crossing.
Afterward, Arafat pulled out a German-made machine pistol and gripped it by its
carrying case as he passed an honor guard at his office in Gaza City. Talking
to reporters, he charged angrily that the Israeli army coordinated the protest
with the settlers to block his way.
"The most important thing is that right now they were closing Salah Edin Road
and that is why I am carrying this," he said, referring to the squat weapon,
partially covered with a carrying case.
The Israeli military rejected Arafat's charge that it coordinated the demonstration
with the settlers. "The settlers close roads and we clear them," the military
said in a statement. Police detained some of the protesters after they sat down
on the road to block it.
Arafat entered Gaza in triumph in 1994 after an interim peace agreement with
Israel allowed him to set up the Palestinian Authority to administer parts of
the West Bank and Gaza. He never stopped wearing his military-style uniform,
but he did not display arms.
While in exile, he carried a pistol in a holster. He caused an uproar on Nov.
13, 1974, by carrying a gun into the U.N. General Assembly. It was practically
unheard of for a world leader to bring a weapon into the building.
In his speech then, Arafat said he had come "bearing an olive branch and a freedom
fighter's gun," and added, "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."
The machine pistol Araat picked up Monday is one of the weapons his guards carry
in his car, a bodyguard said. His decision to carry the weapon in view of reporters
appeared to be a symbolic gesture, since he did not threaten anyone with it.
But it showed how deep the anger and mistrust has become with the continuing
violence and the absence of peace negotiations.
Holding the weapon at his side, Arafat told reporters that international mediators
must work to "stop (Israeli) violence and aggression against our people."
Israel charges that Arafat is responsible for the violence, characterized in
recent weeks by Palestinian gunfire at Israeli army posts and settlements and
roadside bomb attacks.
In recent days the level of unrest has dropped, and Israel has been easing some
of its restrictions.
The Israelis closed the main north-south road through Gaza to Palestinian traffic
two weeks ago, after a roadside bomb hit a school bus, killing two Israeli adults
and wounding nine people, including several children who lost limbs. On Monday
the Israelis reopened the road, citing relative calm in the area.
Settlers demonstrated in protest. Ronit Haratz, one of the demonstrators, said,
"Every time there is an attack, they close the road for a while, and then they
reopen it and there is another attack." She also objected to allowing Arafat
to use the road.
Elsewhere on the Gaza Strip on Monday, an explosion killed an Islamic militant,
apparently as he was preparing to plant a bomb. And on the West Bank, Israeli
troops and Palestinian gunmen waged fierce shootouts in and around biblical Bethlehem.
---------------------------
MER FLASHBACK - April 1997
ARAFAT IN GAZA:
"A REGIME OF EXTORTION"
MER - If you only have time for one article about the so-called
"Peace Process" and what has been done to the Palestinian
people since the Gulf War -- READ THIS ONE! AND READ
IT IN FULL! David Hirst is one of the most seasoned veteran
journalists in the Middle East today. This article is from the
GUARDIAN WEEKLY, 27 April.
SHAMLESS IN GAZA
By David Hirst
Yasser Arafat and his 'Tunisians' have turned the Palestinians'
homeland into a ramshackle, nepotistic regime of extortion....
GAZA is the most conservative of Palestinian communities; its Islamist militants
once set fire to a sea-front hotel, a restaurant and other such dens of iniquity.
So imagine the pious horror at the opening of Gaza's first and only nightclub.
On a Thursday evening of the Muslim weekend, I found the Zahra al-Mada'in, the
Flower of the Cities, packed almost to capacity, not just with lonely young men
come to admire Gaza's first belly dancers and songstresses -- locally recruited
gypsies -- but with entire families, women, children and even a babe-in-arms.
In other smart or risque places, you can add illicit liquor to your Coca-Cola,
but here -- in another Gazan first -- you can order your scotch or your Israeli
Maccabee beer on the very premises. However the oddest thing is not so much the
place, but the clientele: they are mainly "Tunisians", not Gazans at all.
Tunis was Yasser Arafat's last headquarters in exile, and "the Tunisians" is
a nickname which Gazans gave to those, officially known as "returnees", who came
with him when, following the Oslo accord he established himself here instead.
There are about 10,000 of them, bureaucrats who run his Palestinian Authority,
former guerillas who dominate his enormous security apparatus."
PHOTO: Suha Arafat laughing beneath a photo of Yasser.
Caption: "Suha Arafat: in charge of private slush fund."
The Tunisians" have " come home" to the soil of Palestine itself. But the terrible
irony is that they are not merely strangers in their own land, they are for the
most part disliked, despised, even hated. It is they who introduced such abominations
as Zahra al-Mada'in.
But it is not just Hamas and Islamic Jihad, or bigots in general, who feel the
shock. Liberals who welcome any challenge to the dour local mores feel it too.
For almost everyone, "the Tunisians" are as alien, as unfit to rule, as those
-- Turks, British, Egyptians, Israelis -- who came before them. And because they
are actually Palestinians,! and came as "liberators", the shock is even worse.Arafat's
Palestine Revolution never made itself very popular, among governments, elites
or even ordinary people of the territories it passed through .
But at least in Jordan, in the sixties, its men truly fought and died. So --
though with less purpose or conviction -- did they in Lebanon in the seventies
and eighties. Obviously, during the eightie s and nineties, they could not fight
from Tunis, and other far-flung Arab countries in which they fetched up, but
at least, as members of the world's richest liberation movement, they continued
to pump money into local economies.
Here, in the homeland itself, far from fighting the former Zionist foe, they
lead the collaboration with it. They may attract money -- in the form of international
aid -- to this poorest of Palestin an communities, but they take at least as
much away from it. They are oppressive -- and immeasurably corrupt. "
We live in amazing, shameful times," said one of Gaza's merchant princes, and
a former Fatah fighter himself, "but you should know that every revolution has
its fighters, thinkers and profiteers. Our fighters have been killed, our thinkers
assassinated, and all we have left are the profiteers. These don't think even
primarily of the cause, they don't think about it at all. They know that they
re just transients here, as they were in Tunis, and, as with any regime whose
end is near, they think only of profiting from it while they can."
This is a damning indictment, but if any system can be measured by the conduct
of its bureaucrats it is a fair one. In fact, the justice of it hits even a casual
visitor in the eye. Just go to the district of Rimal. Rimal means "sand", and
on this former wasteland there is now arising, at incredible speed, the most
up-market neighbourhood of "liberated" Gaza.
You might not think it at first sight; a sand-smothered, refuse-strewn mess of
empty lots amid shacks that are disappearing and half-finished concrete monsters
that are taking their place, it differs little in spirit from the rest of this
desolate, infinitely decrepit and unsightly city.
But it is mainly here that "the Tunisians" have taken root, with their amazing
array of "ministries", "authorities" and special "agencies", police stations
and sen ry posts, choice rooftop apartments, villas and places of entertainment.
Here is Arafat's own sea-front bureau -- al-Muntada, The Club -- with all the
"presidential" trappings he so adores, and here in the very next building, is
the Zahra al-Mada'in cabaret.
Here you will sooner or later run into Suha, his young wife, out for lunch at
Le Mirage, an exclusive sea-front restaurant, with her infant daughter and a
posse of Force-17 bodyguards. You will run into her, at least, when she is not
in Paris, where she does her shopping and can find a decent hairdresser, unlike
the first, disastrous Gazan one, who reportedy turned her blonde locks almost
orange .
PHOTO: Palestinians throwing stones.
Caption: While ordinary Palestinians continue to fight on the streets
against Jewish settlements, their rulers are busy lining their own pockets.
And you are bound to come across Susie, her ample British nanny who affects
leopard-skin
tights and often has too much to drink, a condition in which she is apt to dispense
indiscretions about the presidential household, threatening, some fear, another
Middle Eastern nanny scandal of Netanyahu proportions.
Among the fancy new villas, fanciest is that of Abu Mazen, key negotiator of
the ill-fated Oslo accord. It is not clear who paid for this $2 million-plus
affair, all balconies and balustrades in gothic profusion, but the graffiti which
some irreverent scoundrel scrawled on its wall proclaimed that "this is your
reward for selling Palestine".
Lifestyles match. Nabil Shaath, the highly articulate minister of planning much
seen on Western TV screens, recently took a wife young enough to be his daughter.
He required four receptions to celebrate this event, in Cairo, Gaza -- and two
in Jerusalem. Because his Israeli friends could not go to the one in East Jerusalem's
Orient House, that "illegal" outpost of the Palestinian Authority, he had another
in the Ambassador Hotel.
For salutary contrast with Rimal, just stroll up the coast where, just beyond
Le Mirage, you will come upon the awful squalor and open sewers of the Shati'
refugee camp, conditions resembling those n which most Gazans live.
There, in a windowless concrete block they call "the cafe", I asked some day
labourers, idled by yet another Israeli border closure, whether they thought
that Gaza's per capita income, far from rising, had actually fallen by as much
as 39 per cent since the Oslo accord. For that is what a recent UN survey says.
"More like 75 per cent," one replied. "some no longer think it a shame to send
their children out to beg." That also seems to be borne out by the UN report,
which records an "alarming" increase in "child labour".
More shocking, really, than the contrast itself is what lies behind it. When
he first came here, Arafat said he would turn Gaza into a "new Singapore". Palestinian
businessmen, who made their fortunes building the Arab oil states, would help
! him build his.
But, three years on, it is clear that none will seriously touch it. Not just
the Israelis deter them, with their repeated frontier closures that bedevil businessmen
as well as workers In truth, Arafat does not want them either. For they would
undermine his control, achieved through a combination of police surveillance
and money power. So instead of any kind of independent, creative, wealth-producing
capitalism, he and his coterie of unofficial economic "advisers" have thrown
up a ramshackle, nepotistic edifice of monopoly, racketeering and naked extortion
that enriches them as it further impoverishes society at large.
Two years ago, the al-Bahr company barely existed. Al-Bahr means "sea". But Gazans
now dub it "the ocean", because, they say, "it is swallowing Gaza whole". Legally
speaking, not being officially registered, it should not be operating at all.
Yet it is so brazen about its powerful connections that -- to the impotent indignation
of the Palestinian "parliament" -- it even uses the Authority's letter heads.
It belongs to Arafat, or, more precisely, to his wife Suha and the other "shareholders"
who handle his private finances. Al-Bahr -- who else? -- runs the Zahra al-Mada'in
nightclub. The premises were supposed to go by open tender to the most qualified
bidder. But Arafat just signed a decree placing it in his protege's hands. It
is never by fair, and often by quite foul, means that Arafat In corporated moves
into real estate, entertainment, computers, advertising, medicine, insurance.
Only the most powerful Gazan businessmen can resist its encroachments. It goes
chiefly after small and medium fry. These are pressed into "partnership" with
al-Bahr.
Al-Bahr is the new, strictly domestic instrument of Arafat's takeover of the
Gazan economy. It complements already existing monopolies, for the import of
such basic commodities as cement, petrol or flour, which he operates in complicity
with the Israelis. For example, out of the $74 for which a ton of cement is sold
in Gaza, $17 goes to the Authority, and $17 into his own account in a Tel Aviv
bank.
It is no secret what Arafat uses this money for. "I shall give you all you want
if you obey and protect me -- and give me all I want." That has always been his
message to his nomenklatura, and it has been amazingly successful. For what resistance
can be expected from an apparatus whose minister of civil affairs, Jamil Tarifi,
a big contractor, goes on building Israeli settlements even as the Palestinian
people threaten a new intifada over Har Homa? Or whose high officials use their
VIP cars to sail through Israeli checkpoints on their way to the fleshpots of
Tel Aviv even as Israel! i border closures rob day labourers of their menial
wage?
Rarely can a revolution have degenerated like Arafat's -- and yet survived. It
only survives because, in robbing his people to bribe his buraucrats, he has
proved so great a commitment to the peace process that the parties on which he
now completely depends -- Israelis, Americans, the international community at
large -- are willing to ignore, even encourage, his manifest corruptions. The
Israelis may be embarrassed by the latest, scandalous revelations of their leading
newspaper, Ha'aretz, about the Arafat slush fund that the great peace-maker,
Yitzhak Rabin, authorised. But so long as Arafat goes on bending to their conception
of the peace, they will go on letting him draw on it.
European governments would be far more embarrassed if it were established that
Arafat really does earn far more from al-Bahr and his illicit monopolies than
from all their aid combined. But unless the scandal becomes too great, they will
go on paying too. But they delude themselves if they think that they can go on
propping him up for ever. And in this regard, it seems, Arafat and his "Tunisians"
are more clear-headed than they are. They know that there is a point beyond which
even he cannot go without risking his people's wrath.
Small wonder then that, according to Ha'aretz, a part of Arafat's secret fund
is earmarked for "emergency situations", such as a coup or a civil war, in which
he, his family and immediate entourage could be forced to flee into exile once
more, and re-establish the leadership from there. They know, better than anyone,
that the peace process, and all they get out of it, is built, like the Zahra
a M ada'in, on nothing more solid than the fine white powdery sands of Rimal.
MiD-EasT RealitieS - www.MiddleEast.Org
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