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Another view of Mr. Arafat and his tactics:



The New Republic Online: Killer Angels



Yasir Arafat, of course, has never been finicky about terrorism, and his long history on that score mocks America's calls for him to renounce the only craft he has ever truly known. Arafat's debut on the world stage coincides with the beginning of the Palestinian revolution, which, it is urgent to recall, commenced at least three years before the Six Day War. This means that Arafat started the Palestine Liberation Organization before one Israeli ever stepped foot into the West Bank or Gaza Strip--or, for that matter, prayed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem or walked in the city's ancient Jewish Quarter. There were no "occupied territories" back then, and there weren't really any disputed territories either--except in the heads of the Palestinians. What Arafat wanted then (and what I believe he still wants now) was to liberate not Hebron or Nablus or Gaza (which in 1967 were in Arab hands) but Haifa and Tel Aviv, the plains of Sharon, and the Negev desert. Or, as military historian Victor Davis Hanson put it in The Wall Street Journal this week, "the current Arab-Israeli war--at least the fourth fought since 1948--is fought over the West Bank: but that is only because ... the Arab world lost the first three wars to destroy Israel proper."

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