Arafat's first move after being released is to go visit Jenin which will enshrine the myth of martyrdom and massacre.

"Never let the truth get in the way of a good propaganda opportunity".

PA have in part achieved a goal of theirs and that is to whip up hysteria among Arabs & Muslims against Israel, this has to be so obvious as to not need debate, but it is an incredibly dangerous ploy because it leads to the mentality among the target audience (Arabs & Muslims) that attacks such as Sept 11th, against Israel's protectors, are justifiable - but!, we in the west know that such justification is garbage.

Bin Laden stated that his reasons for attacking US were :-
1) Because he opposes US troops stationed in holy land (Saudi Arabia)
2) Because of plight of Palestininans and US support for Israel

Saddam Hussien uses the same rhetoric - his recent posturing on holding back Iraqi oil supplies was to be seen in Arab world as the true champion of the Palestinian cause, but in truth as an attempted bulwark against growing threats of US invasion.

Arafat & PA by reverting to calculated and steadily escalating violence in Palestine is really targeted at winning biased support from Arabs & Muslims. But none of these people really pay much attention to the hard effort that was put into reaching the camp David final negotiating positions. Both sides made painful concessions but Arafat was the one who backed away in the end.

Sadly Arabs generally seem to much prefer hearing distortions and lies about Israel (Jews eating blood of muslim children during Passover etc:).

What I do hope will come out of this recent round of Jew/Palestinian fighting is that Arafat uses his new found authority among fellow Arabs & Muslims, to finally decide to use peaceful means to obtain the desired Palestinian state. It is concievable that Arafat did not have the real broad based authority to accept the final position during last round at camp David but after his 'performance' in Ramallah he is seen as a winner by Arabs and can and should capitalize on this strength to push through a final but realistic agreement with Israel, Arafat had it in his hands once before.

But, based on Arafat's past history, I doubt he has what it takes to truly sieze the oppoprtunity presented to him. I do not believe Arafat is a man of Peace. He seems to always find refuge in plotting violence.

Cheers

Doug Marker