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Israel strains at US leash

Can the USA restrain Israel for much longer?

General Arik Sharon's patience will be wearing very thin after a weekend of sustained violence particularly in northern Israel. The marked increase in bloodshed, bringing the deaths of  three Arab suicide bombers and five Israeli's with a further 45 or so injured, has dealt the prospects for peace a severe blow. Hawks within the Israeli Cabinet are furious at the lack, so far, of a decisive military response to the escalating Intifada and are pushing Sharon to ignore further US plea's for restraint.
Keeping a large number of Army units on constant alert is creating a severe strain on Israel's fragile economy and the blocking off of the occupied territories not only devastates an already impoverished Palestian people but deprives Israeli
companies of much of their lower paid work force. It is not a situation that can be maintained for much longer and the pressure for action grows with each funeral..
 
However, it has also become clear in recent weeks that part of the Islamic terrorist campaign is aimed at undermining Yasser Arafat, seen by many militants as being either in Israel's pocket or a CIA asset, or in fact both. Arafat is indeed in a an unenviable position, caught between  Israel and his own extremists. Unless the USA can provide a diplomatic escape route
it is unlikely that he can remain, under present circumstances, in power much beyond the end of this year. His survival therefore depends of whether the US considers he retains any value, if not he will undoubtedly be thrown to the wolves. It is, in part the grave doubts about just who would replace him that causes the US to argue for continuing Israeli patience.
 
The Israeli right-wing however, argue that 'who and when' matters little if the Israeli military successfully and swiftly re-occupy all of the Palestinian territory. A rather simplistic view, but one which in the light of some 180,000 of the Palestinian elite who have fled across the border into Jordan this year and applying for long-stay visas, may prove viable. These voluntary refugees, professionals and businessmen with their families and those of senior Police Officers and members of the Palestinian authority, would have provided the back-bone of any successful Palestinian resistance to Israel, without them the life blood of Palestinian proto-state is ebbing away.
 
It is not yet known whether this is a deliberate policy of Arafat's to create the nucleus of a 'Government in Exile' in anticipation of an Israeli invasion and abandonment by his US supporters or merely another symptom of the breakdown of his regime. The growing presence of a powerful Palestinian population within Jordan may not find favour with King Abdullah, particularly in the light of the desperate conflict his father fought against the PLO in September 1970. Yet again the Western nations must face up to the risk of the Middle Eastern conflict spreading yet further and threatening to destabilize another traditionally pro-Western State.
 
 
News leads for 9th Sept 2001
 
Israel is to receive a further 52 F-16I Fighter Bombers provided by a $2 billion hike in the US military aid budget. These will be in addition to 50 acquired earlier this year and the 250 F-16 already in service with the Israeli Air Force.
 
A CIA report claims that Iran has one of the worlds most active programs to acquire long range missile delivery systems and weapons of mass destruction. Iran is developing numerous advance weapons systems with Russian, Chinese, North Korean and Western European help. For more information on Iran's weapons development contact AFI today.
 

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