President Arafat: Gastric flu, not stomach cancer

President Arafat insulted for over two years by State of Israel

How the State of Israel can confine an ailing, 75-year-old man, a President recognized by the United Nations Organization, to a destroyed compound for more than two years defies logic, but then again, when the same state can commit acts of butchery such as those witnessed yet again today, against for instance 11-year-old boys (insurgents?), in Gaza, where is the big surprise?

Palestine Authority President Yasser Arafat has been suffering from gastric flu, which has been sweeping the Middle East and Europe this Autumn and as a consequence, has been vomiting and has had abdominal pains.

Any other President, recognised by the UNO, in any other part of the world, would have been immediately given the appropriate treatment in a proper health institution. Not so Yasser Arafat, who had to endure an endoscopy in the confines of his destroyed compound. The request for hospital treatment was made by Palestinian Authority officials, and accepted by Israeli defense Minister Shaul Mofaz.

As it happens, and according to our sources, President Arafat did not need to undergo treatment in a nearby hospital in Ramallah.

However, what is the justification for a President to have to request the Israeli authorities (kidnappers) for permission to leave the compound and have the treatment in a hospital?

Israel, like the USA of George Bush, is more and more evidently a state with a unique way of looking at the world, a world which is more and more turning against such unilateralism.

Which other President, in any other country, would have to make such a request? None. Such is the humiliation piled upon the oppressed people of Palestine, even against their democratically elected President, by the state of Israel, whose case under international law starts to look as indefensible as that of its political master, the United States of America (which certain influential Israelis claim to control).