			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT
INSIDE TRACK ON WORLD NEWS
by international syndicated columnist
& broadcaster Eric Margolis

Jan. 07, 2001

    CLINTON'S LAST HURRAH: A BAD DEAL THAT WON'T WORK
    By Eric S. Margolis

 This past week in the Mideast was enough to give heart-attacks to all concerned. With only days left in office, President Bill Clinton
was desperately trying to push the Arabs and Israel into a peace deal for which he could take credit. Israel's tough, embattled prime
minister, Ehud Barak, faces elections next month. As of now, he seems likely to lose to Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon, a hardliner
and extreme Zionist who vows to "get tough" with Palestinians.

 The only man who may save Barak from defeat is none other than his strange bedfellow, PLO chief Yasser Arafat. If Arafat agrees to the
latest peace deal being pressed upon him by partners Clinton and Barak, then, by this weird symbiosis, Barak will probably win re-election.


Even so, total US support for Israel may wane. For the past eight years, Israel has exercised unprecedented influence over the Clinton
Administration, virtually directing US Mideast policy. Unlike the Clinton team, which was top heavy with supporters of Israel, the
incoming Bush Administration has few in evidence. Nor is Bush beholden, as Clinton was, to pro-Israel financial contributors. To the
contrary, Bush's father, President George Bush, and his Secretary of State, James Baker, tried to put pressure on Israel to halt building
settlements. As a result, the pro-Israel media accused them of being anti-semites.

The defeat of Al Gore, who had been financed and cultivated for decades by Israel's US supporters, is being viewed as a blow to Israeli
influence in Washington.

Arafat now faces a deep dilemma. If he does not make a deal with Barak, then Sharon, who is hated and feared by Arabs as the potential
Milosevic of the Mideast, could win. Sharon says he will encourage more Jewish settlements and crush the current "intifada." Many Arabs
suspect Sharon favors Serb-style ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza. Sharon has long insisted that Jordan should
become the Palestinian homeland.

Arafat does not want to deal with Sharon. So what to do? The deal he is being offered by the US-Israeli tag team is the best to date: 95%
of the Occupied Territories; maybe a slice of East Jerusalem, including the all-important Haram al-Sharif mosque(though Barak now denies
it); fixed borders. Whether the Palestinian state will be a series of blobs surrounded by Israeli territory and Jewish-only roads remains
uncertain. Israel will retail troops on the Jordan River for three years. Palestine will be demilitarized and may have no borders with 
the outside world.

But the thorniest question, as this column has written for years, is the 4 million Palestinian refugees (plus 400,000 forgotten Syrian
refugees from Israeli-occupied Golan). The Palestinian Diaspora, the world's largest number of refugees, will not be allowed the right of
return to their lost homes in what is now Israel, according to Clinton's plan. Though driven from their land in 1947-48 and in 1967,
the original refugees and their offspring will remain in squalid camps, apparently without any substantial compensation or hope for the
future.

Arafat, one suspects, longs to make a deal with Barak. They badly need one another. But Arafat cannot enforce any lasting peace that
leaves four million Palestinians stranded. He dares not, for risk of his own skin. So he bobs and weaves, "conditionally accepting"
Clinton's plan, waiting for a miracle to solve this impasse.

This core problem appears insoluble. Though international law and the UN call for the refugees to be returned home, there seems no
possible way Israel would ever settle even a quarter of them, though it did find room for a million Russians, many of whom were not
even Jews. Four million Palestinians added to Israel's current one million Arabs would make Israel a predominantly Arab state. Israel
would never permit such racial dilution. If it did happen, an Israeli friend says, "I'd be a Jewish Palestinian!"

Barak did offer to allow back a small number of Palestinian refugees under the guise of "family reunification." This was to take heat
off Arafat. No one will be fooled by this ploy. The number of Arab refugees allowed to return to the new Palestinian mini-state may
also be limited by the US and Israel.

If the 11th - hour deal did go through, which is unlikely, Israel would still be left in the catbird seat. It would retain control of
much militarily strategic land and water resources. The resistive Palestinians would be surrounded by Israeli roads and security forces,
and policed by PLO units. The big Israeli settlements would remain. Palestine would become a military protectorate and economic dependency
of Israel.

PM Barak has threatened that if the current deal fails, he will go ahead with plans to erect high walls around all Palestinian areas, as
he says "totally separating Israeli's" from the Arabs. This uncomfortably recalls both the walled-in Jewish ghettos of Eastern Europe,
and South Africa's "apartheid," or "separation policy." Hopefully, it's pre-election rhetoric.

Even if Arafat is strongarmed into a shaky peace deal designed to salvage Clinton's besmirched reputation, his people will reject any
pact that forecloses their right of return. The Arab states also rejected Clinton's deal last week. King Solomon, not Bill Clinton,
seems the only person who can solve this impossible problem.

Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2001