Well, he worried them enough for them to keep him pretty much under house arrest for the last two years of his life, which may have something to do with his “pathetic” “marginalisation”. Don’t forget that Arafat was well liked and connected internationally, also.

You seem very sure that he was murdered, Sean.

Would these be the same Israeli’s who just this month admitted they murdered PLO Deputy Leader Khalid al-Wazir, his gardener and his bodyguard in an attack on his home in Tunisia?(During the raid they shot the three unarmed men at point blank rangein front of the wife and very small child of Mr Al-Wazir)

Yes, the very same. Isn’t one incident the result of an armed attack and one very covert? Hence my question about access to Arafat…

Ridiculous. By that reasoning the Gardai shouldn’t have bothered trying to catch Alan Ryan’s killers. Sure he was just a ruthless thug himself and finding his killers would only increase tensions between the rival gangs.

Barry – defamation of character is illegal in Ireland. What you’ve just said could get you into trouble legally.

You can’t defame the dead, ITS. Also, statements that are substantially true aren’t defamatory, so between the two of those, I’d say Barry’s alright.

One thing that strikes me is that the Hasbara line that “Hamas are evil fanatical Islamist terrorists who want Israel destroyed, so we’re completely justified in trying to destroy them, whatever the costs” will start to look even more dubious if it does turn out that they murdered both the leader and deputy leader of the secular, comparatively moderate PLO, especially given that the former was working on a negotiated settlement when he died.

@Voodoo you assume if he was murdered that the Israelis would be responsible. Yarafat stole a billion dollars from his own people. Maybe they did him in

That’s a disingenuous distortion, basically a lie – just that old hasbara name calling technique, yet again (pg.22):

“Through the careful choice of words, the name-calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol. ” . . . to try and get an audience to reject a person or idea . . . without allowing a real examination of that person or idea.”

http://www.middle-east-info.org/take/wujshasbara.pdf

There is no credible evidence of theft or embezzlement by Arafat. Per the IMF, who disclosed the mechanism by which Arafat moved moved monies into an account held jointly by him and his Finance Minister:

“Most of it has been used to invest in Palestinian assets at home and abroad,” Karim Nashashibi, the IMF representative to the West Bank and Gaza, said during a presentation of the report at an annual IMF and World Bank meeting in Dubai.

Of the money sent to accounts controlled by Arafat and his financial adviser Mohammed Rashid, about $700 million has been accounted for and is in investments held by the Palestinian Authority, Nashashibi said. He said the $200 million gap may represent a decline in investment value, rather than a further diversion of money by Arafat.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=arNczoMikRug

And Israel would have to be the prime suspects, given that they have priors:

http://www.dw.de/israel-admits-to-plo-deputy-assassination/a-16350913

That’s a disingenuous distortion, basically a lie – just that old hasbara name calling technique, yet again (pg.22):

“Through the careful choice of words, the name-calling technique links a person or an idea to a negative symbol. ” . . . to try and get an audience to reject a person or idea . . . without allowing a real examination of that person or idea.”

http://www.middle-east-info.org/take/wujshasbara.pdf

There is no credible evidence of theft or embezzlement by Arafat. Per the IMF, who disclosed the mechanism by which Arafat moved moved monies into an account held jointly by him and his Finance Minister:

“Most of it has been used to invest in Palestinian assets at home and abroad,” Karim Nashashibi, the IMF representative to the West Bank and Gaza, said during a presentation of the report at an annual IMF and World Bank meeting in Dubai.

Of the money sent to accounts controlled by Arafat and his financial adviser Mohammed Rashid, about $700 million has been accounted for and is in investments held by the Palestinian Authority, Nashashibi said. He said the $200 million gap may represent a decline in investment value, rather than a further diversion of money by Arafat.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=arNczoMikRug

And Israel would have to be the prime suspects, given that they have priors:

http://www.dw.de/israel-admits-to-plo-deputy-assassination/a-16350913

Key word, Mel, “comparatively”.

If Arafat was all about taqiyya – couldn’t be up to them schnakey Palestinians, wha? – then surely you won’t mind me saying that you’re engaging in some hasbara name calling here. Why don’t we judge the man by his actions?

In his final years, Arafat oversaw progressive reforms in the West Bank and Gaza:

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/med/2003/eng/wbg/wbg.pdf

Who knows, maybe if Rabin had lived, it might have been an extended hudna, and maybe people would’ve gotten to like it. Then again, no land grabs would have been possible in that time either, which I’m sure would have made some unhappy.

as well as his involvement in the Oslo accords, probably the last time a reasonable settlement looked likely.

Pity some nutcase had to murder Rabin, and that subsequent Israeli leadership hasn’t been so enlightened. Like Benjamin Netanyahu:

“They asked me before the election if I’d honor [the Oslo accords],” he said. “I said I would, but … I’m going to interpret the accords in such a way that would allow me to put an end to this galloping forward to the ’67 borders. How did we do it? Nobody said what defined military zones were. Defined military zones are security zones; as far as I’m concerned, the entire Jordan Valley is a defined military zone. Go argue.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/07/16/netanyahu-in-2001-america_n_649427.html

In that context, maybe it m

Last paragraph of that post seems to have mysteriously migrated North, to under the IMF link, but you get the idea, I’m sure.

Well, I suppose, ‘comparatively’ moderate… in the same way that 158 dead Israelis for 1993-99 is comparatively moderate alongside 1,200 dead Israelis for 2000-08… but at a time when there was supposed to be a ‘peace process’??

‘Taqiyya’ is name calling? Please, let’s not get back to that ‘Teacher, he’s calling me names’ nonsense again. Finding contradictions between what someone says to one set of hearers and something entirely different that he says he says to another set (and here there can be no question of a mistranslation, since Arafat spoke at Jo’burg in English, even apologising for his poor grasp of it) has a strong bearing on how we judge his actions. If he tells westerners he wants only peace with Israel, tells the Muslims he wants jihad and that the treaty is worthless, but in practice ensures that terrorism stops, then he’s deceiving the Muslims. But if he says those opposite things while orchestrating terrorism or allowing it to continue (as he actually did), he’s deceiving the infidels — and that’s the Islamic principle of ‘war is deception’ enunciated by the prophet himself.

Oslo the last time a reasonable settlement looked likely? But Oslo was meant to be only the start of a process leading to full Palestinian statehood. After the success of the 1979 Israel-Egypt treaty, in which Israel gave back the entire Sinai — 3 times its own area – taken in 1967, the prospects of ‘land-for-peace’ looked good, and a majority of Israelis embraced it enthusiastically in 1993. Oslo wasn’t about full independence, but it was a start — giving autonomy to 96% of Palestinians in 40% of the West Bank and all of Gaza. All the Jewish settlements are outside that area — no ‘land grab’ involved, all but one or two built on purchased or state land, some rebuilt where settlements had been destroyed and their inhabitants massacred, like at Kfar Etzion in the 1948-9 war. ‘Final status’ negotiations were to follow within 5 years, at which the future of the settlements was to be one of the issues for discussion.

In spite of the terrorism, and probably made more determined by the murder of Rabin by the Jewish extremist, peace-hoping Israelis elected Barak PM to meet Clinton and Arafat at Camp David in 2000 for the final status negotiations. Barak offered an eventual 92% of the West Bank + all of Gaza + parts of east Jerusalem to be the Palestinian state + withdrawal from 63 settlements + a compensation fund for refugees. That might be called a ‘reasonable’ settlement offer, though it had its flaws. Arafat walked away without making a counter-offer. At Taba six months later, Barak increased the offer to 94% of the West Bank + 3% more in land swaps from Israel + an international authority for the Jerusalem holy places. With Clinton and Barak both on their way out of office, the talks ran out of time, but by then the 2nd Intifada was well under way with Arafat’s complicity and the suicide bombers were in top gear.

All of this was about, remember, a piece of land (Israel + West Bank) representing 0.7% of the area of all Arab land in the Middle East, but about which, no matter how tiny, no Muslim is allowed to compromise. Once ruled by Islam, it can never be allowed return to infidel rule. Read Arafat’s words on Jerusalem: “It is your capital. It is the first shrine of Islam and the Muslims!” The whole ‘stolen Palestinian land’ thing is a scam, a cover for this religious imperative.