Sharon’s Policies May Aid Arafat

In “Stop Scolding, and Guide” (Commentary, Oct. 25), Robert Malley writes, “With each Israeli incursion and killing, the ability of the traditional Palestinian leadership to take control . . . grows weaker.” This former special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs illustrates why for eight years Israel has kept its head down and held on for dear life, while former Prime Minister Ehud Barak tried to exchange land for peace.

Simply put, Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have never controlled anything that Hamas, Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine didn’t allow them to control. U.S. action against world terrorism holds the potential of eventually extending to some positive effect on anti-Israeli terrorism, if the Palestinian Authority wants peace and has control.

But that’s precisely the point--Arafat has no control. Since becoming a “legitimate” political leader, he and the PA have simply provided a shield of impunity for terrorist organizations over which he has no control.

If Arafat wants to be the legitimate leader of a Palestinian state, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, through his policy of eradicating terrorists, may be his only real ally.

Kevin Trevithick

Crestline

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Asking Arafat to arrest all those responsible for the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi is analogous to asking Osama bin Laden to arrest his network of terrorists. What an exercise in futility!

Any sane person knows that neither Arafat nor Bin Laden has any intention of reining in his terror forces, especially when, in Arafat’s case, those forces kill so many innocent Israelis and then provoke the U.S. to criticize Israel for not showing restraint. When the U.S. pressures Israel instead of Arafat, then the forces of evil prevail.

Lynn Rohatiner

Los Angeles

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Militant Israeli policies may drag us into a war that we must not get into. Israel’s self-serving tactics to subjugate and humiliate the Palestinians into its way of thinking are flawed, and we are caught in the midst of this unfortunate dilemma.

It’s sad that people who have been downtrodden for so long are behaving in ways reminiscent of their powerful adversaries of yore.

Manuel E. Nunes

Garden Grove

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Your Oct. 24 editorial places the onus for the crisis on Israel when, in fact, it is caused by George Bush and Colin Powell blocking any effective reply by Israel to the organized terrorism it continues to suffer. Bush doesn’t want shooting at empty Palestinian police stations, targeted killings of suicide bombers, tightening borders--so what does he suggest? Nothing, essentially. Why is it proper for us to reply militarily but not the Israelis? Not only don’t Israeli deaths and injuries get valued equally by the U.S. or reported properly in the media, but soon they will be asked to not mourn in public.

Brad Scabbard

Woodland Hills