I am sorry I did not kill Arafat in Lebanon

How the leader of a country can make a statement such as this and remain in power is beyond belief. Yet this is Israel, the country which was carved out of the desert and given to the Jews as a wave of sympathy swept the world after the Holocaust was discovered.

Having no respect whatsoever for the original inhabitants, Israel set about systematically seizing Palestinian property, building colonies on these “occupied territories” (stolen lands) and refusing to hand them back. United Nations Resolutions telling Israel to hand back these territories are met with an arrogant silence.

Serbia was bombed for less, Iraq was attacked by forces from 32 nations for the same. Israel, however, the country with the most weapons of mass destruction after the Russian Federation and the USA, is protected.

Ariel Sharon was the Defence Minister of Israel during the 1982 invasion of the Lebanon. He declared to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, that “In the Lebanon, there was an agreement under the terms of which it was not necessary to liquidate him (Arafat) but after all I am sorry that this was the case”.

However, there are claims to the contrary. In the book Every Spy a Prince, Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman claim that “Various attempts were made by the Israeli forces to kill the PLO leader during the war (in the Lebanon), many other lives were lost. Car bombs and precision bombardments simply missed Arafat, the man Prime Minister Menachim Begin nicknamed ‘a beast with two legs’.”

It should be remembered that Sharon is being tried by the Belgian courts for alleged involvement in, and responsible for, two massacres of Palestinian refugees in the Lebanon in the 1980s.

Despite the arrogance, Sharon also declared in Maariv that if Arafat does what is asked of him by Israel, then Israel will give back the lands occupied in the 1967 war. “If Arafat takes all the measures that we demand of him, he will become a partner in the peace process. In the end, an independent state of Palestine will be created. It will be demilitarised and will only have a police force to guarantee public order. In return for a real peace, I am willing to renounce a part of Greater Israel, which includes the territories occupied in 1967”.

However, in another newspaper, the well-known Yediot Aharonot, there is a declaration by Sharon that “I will ask President Bush to boycott Arafat. There are other Palestinian leaders and I will speak to them”.

The reply from the Palestinians and the European Union was prompt. From the Palestinians, Saeb Erakat said “This declaration means that he continues to want to kill Yasser Arafat and he shows more the mind of a Mafia man than a Prime Minister”.

Spain’s Foreign Minister, Josip Pique, declared “If these declarations were really made, it is lamentable and they deserve our repudiation”.

Ariel Sharon is as trustworthy as a Rottweiler that has been trained to kill. He obviously has no intention whatsoever of honouring his word. If anything, Israel is more likely to perform an all-out attack on the Palestine Authority, eliminate Arafat and take over the lands currently governed by Arafat.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru