Arafat Acts to Unravel Reforms
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On July 29, Yasser Arafat posed with Rev. Jesse Jackson in Ramallah before
cameras and roundly condemned "suicide terrorism".

But as soon as Jackson was airborne, he vented his real feelings for
Americans of any stripe with a series of contemptuous actions - all
aimed at undermining the credibility of the US-sponsored reform program
for cleansing the Palestinian administration of terrorist and corrupt
elements.

First, his Fatah was ordered to execute a fresh wave of terrorist
attacks - three in 12 hours, leaving two Israelis dead and seven
injured.

Tuesday morning, masked Fatah terrorists waylaid and shot at close
quarters two Israelis who drove a fuel truck into the Palestinian
village of Jama'in south of Nablus; before dawn, a terrorist armed with
two knives attacked a sleeping couple in Itamar, south of Nablus. The
couple were injured but survived the attack by fighting back and
stabbing their assailant. Later that morning, a suicide bomber entered a
falafel kiosk on Jerusalem's Haneviim Street and blew up a bomb he
carried in his knapsack, injuring five passers-by.

Second, while executing this cycle of terror, Arafat acted to put back
to square one key steps in the reform program advanced by the United
States and seconded by the European Union.

He arbitrarily swept aside the police and security appointments made by
the new Palestinian interior minister Gen. Abdel Razek Yahya, claiming
they were unauthorized, and reinstated seven security officers the new
man fired because of their records in orchestrating suicide campaigns.
Arafat's move left the pro-American interior minister humiliated and
stripped of powers for setting up the single security force mandated in
the reform program to replace the dozen forces dedicated to Arafat and
his terrorist assaults.

Rather than face an empty office, Yahya announced he was leaving
forthwith for Amman to join his family. He also dropped out of the
Palestinian delegation invited to meet secretary of state Colin Powell
next week. Washington thereupon called off the delegation, unwilling to
receive Arafat's henchmen, Palestinian negotiator Saab Arikat and
Economy Minister Maher al-Masri, without the new faces presaging a
post-terror era.

Third, Arafat followed this up with an announcement that he does not
recognize Gen. Yahya as interior minister. He added that he does not
need Egyptian and Jordanian instructors to come and train the new
security force's men, under the training program approved by the US and
EU.

Fourth, in another move calculated to throw the reform program back in
Washington's face, Arafat pointedly humiliated the second pro-American,
reform minister, Salam Fayyad, who was named to the Palestinian finance
portfolio. Monday, July 29, when Arafat received the EU Middle East
envoy Miguel Moratinos in Ramallah, he was attended demonstratively -
not by the new minister but by his own appointee, Maher al-Masri, once
against cutting the authority out from under the feet of a pro-reform
minister.

This was Arafat's reply to Fayyad's request for a financial accounting
of the Palestinian Authority Chairman's office.

European leaders, however much they may condemn terrorist violence, are
loath to stigmatize its authors. Moratinos did not take amiss Arafat's
anti-reform gesture, any more than French President Jacques Chirac is
prepared to treat the Lebanese Hizballah, Arafat's allies, as a
terrorist group. Monday, he turned away a request by Israeli foreign
minister Shimon Peres for the EU to place the Hizballah on its list of
terrorist organizations, considering the danger that the group's
provocations could destabilize the entire region. Chirac dodged the
request on the pretext that the Hizballah has a political-social wing in
addition to its "military forces" which carries out "important work in
Lebanon".

As things stand now, therefore, the Hizballah is free to launch several
cross-border shelling attacks per week, while Yasser Arafat continues to
throw the terror switch off or on at will.

The Shin Beth Director Avi Director submitted to the Knesset foreign
affairs and defense committee Tuesday, July 30, a grim summing up of the
violent campaign of terror Arafat has waged against Israel for the last
22 months. The death toll has reached 585 Israelis and 1,547
Palestinians. Many died in the 139 suicide murders and massacres
perpetrated in that period, of which the Hamas was responsible for 51,
Arafat's Fatah for 42, Jihad Islami for 31 (5 in collusion with Fatah)
and the PFLP for 5.

Israeli military incursions into Palestinian towns on the West Bank
since April have thwarted an additional 138 potential suicide murders,
which would have doubled the deadly score had they been carried out. In
the first half of this week, the Palestinians carried out 16 terrorist
attacks. Sixty suicide bomber alert