Volume 57, Issue 1 ________________________________Bible Prophecy Ministry



The Fiasco of Yasser Arafat
Reflections on Camp David 2000


    Well, there it is down there, can you see it? From way up here I can just barely make it out, but there it is! Yes, it is that tiny little sliver of a country called Israel, that has been recently re-gathered from the four corners of the globe, and sits now on the eastern edge of the great Mediterranean Sea, and ironically enough, right at the front edge of the giant Muslim world. Somehow this tiny speck of land has become the fuse that could propel the entire world into Armageddon. And what's even more incredible, is the fact that just one city situated astride a hilltop between the sea and the Jordan River, has just over the course of the last 35 years become a burdensome obstacle to the peace and welfare of the entire world. That city is Jerusalem! What a tiny spot it really does appear to be from this vantage point of view in this picture from out in space. Why in the world does this spot cause such perplexity among the nations of this world? And why now of all times? What is it with this place? Have you ever wondered why the whole world is suddenly preoccupied with this so-called place known as the Promised Land? Why is it that the 4.5 million Jews (0.07% of world population) that have been planted in this land are blamed for most of the world's problems?

    Ever since Israel was reborn into the community of nations in 1948, the world has been overcome with a perplexity about her arrival, and burdened with an anxious consternation about her geographical existence in the Middle East. Finally, after decades of postulating about a process to establish peace in the Middle East, the United States compelled upon Israel to enter into the Oslo Peace Process. That seven year long process eventually brought Israel back to Camp David (Israel first signed a peace treaty with Egypt at Camp David-1979) for Final Status negotiations regarding the issue of sovereignty over the city of Jerusalem. The Israeli Prime Minister at Camp David II, Ehud Barak came to the talks prepared to offer PLO leader Yasser Arafat an unprecedented, and an unimaginable diplomatic gesture in the name of peace.

    Barak was willing to concede the entire West Bank, with East Jerusalem to Yasser Arafat as the basis for the establishment of a new political State called Palestine. The only prerequisite that Israel demanded of Yasser Arafat, was that he sign and “end of conflict” clause addendum in the final peace draft.

    Without so much as even entering into a discussion or debate, or perhaps even suggesting a possible editing of the language, Yasser Arafat abruptly canceled any further negotiations with Israel, and abandoned the much publicized peace process altogether. With the fiasco of Camp David II now in hindsight, my mind keeps racing back to the events of those days, and to that ridiculous photo-op routine that Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak engaged in with a cackling President Clinton looking on as they entered the doorway of the Camp David retreat. That photo, shown around the world showed Barak and Arafat doing their version of the diplomatic shuffle dance. Each purported to play the gentlemanly peace-maker by allowing/insisting that the other enter the doorway first. In retrospect, it is very apparent that the little jig at the door was emblematic of some very subtle political maneuvering. President Clinton, laughing at the two, and recollecting the Jimmy Carter/Menachem Begin/Anwar Sadat summit, undoubtedly envisioned his opportunity to win the Nobel Peace Prize for himself. Ehud Barak was gladly there either to play out a diplomatic poker-call on Arafat's peace bluff, or else to solidify his place in history by sealing an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In any event, both leaders clearly believed that Arafat could be enticed into joining the building sphere of geo-political global powers that had placed a high priority on securing a Middle East Peace. Afterall, Arafat was going to be granted land for a new State and be afforded the status of an internationally respected head of state, complete with all the protocol and political trimmings.

    Lost in the side-stepping shuffle at the compound doorway was the reality that Yasser Arafat was only too happy to attend the summit meeting, as he expected to receive his usual bounty of gifts. Arafat had always planned to bilk the negotiating process, and had long ago become accustomed to merely accommodating its sponsors, so long as the game was relegated to granting him enticements, concessions, foreign aid subsidies, land withdrawals, and other tangible booty, in return for his participation! Yasser Arafat had renounced terrorism in 1991, and the Western world believed that it had a viable, and willing peace partner with which to negotiate an end to the ages old Israeli-Arab conflict. Arafat even coddled the Western news media by referring to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin as his partner. Arafat seized his opportunity in 1993, by shaking hands with Rabin, and publicly masquerading as a peace loving man.

    Yitshak Rabin was elected Prime Minister in 1992 for his second tenure as Prime Minister and immediately began to prepare the Israeli public for compromise with the Palestinians. But years in politics had not softened Rabin's abrasive manner. He needed a statesman to work alongside him. His old rival Shimon Peres fit the bill exactly. The climax of secret negotiations with the Palestinians came on September 13, 1993. On the White House lawn, in the presence of President Clinton, Rabin shook hands with Yasser Arafat. Even at that historic moment Rabin could not assume the guise of a statesman and hide his feelings. His grimace and his hesitation showed that he was reluctant to shake the hand of the PLO leader. His reluctance stemmed, perhaps, from the knowledge that many right-wing Israelis considered him a traitor, and also possibly because he knew he was taking a huge gamble by placing his trust in a renown terrorist. Rabin knew he had a tough political fight on his hands back home. And that battle was still under way when a young Israeli named Yigal Amir assassinated the 73-year-old prime minister after a peace-now rally in Tel Aviv in November 1995.

    But all along the process, even while shaking hands with Rabin, and sidestepping the dancing Barak at Camp David, Yasser Arafat was acting as a peace-decoy for the Arab League while simultaneously plotting the next phase of the war to exterminate Israel. Arafat never abandoned his PLO “phased plan”. That plan was simply to utilize the peace process to gain a better strategic position from which to wage Jihad against Israel.

The PLO Phased Plan in brief:

1. Through the "armed struggle" (i.e., terrorism), to establish an "independent combatant national authority" over any territory that is "liberated" from Israeli rule. (Article 2) ( a new Palestinian State—now projected to exist in fall 2003 )

2. To continue the struggle against Israel, using the territory of the national authority as a base of operations. (Article 4)

3. To provoke an all-out war in which Israel's Arab neighbors destroy the Zionist State entirely ("liberate all Palestinian territory"). (Article 8)

    Today, the Phased Plan remains relevant. Speaking just after the 1993 revelation of the Israel-PLO accord, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat announced that the historic agreement "will be a basis for an independent Palestinian state in accordance with the Palestine National Council resolution issued in 1974. The PNC resolution issued in 1974 calls for the establishment of a national authority on any part of Palestinian soil from which Israel withdraws or which is liberated. The PLO was founded by the Arab League in 1964, three years prior to the 1967 six-day war in which Israel acquired the so-called occupied territory.

    Immediately after joining the Oslo Peace Process, and being rejuvenated as a power in the Middle East, Yasser Arafat in the summer of 1995 was quoted as saying that war was only one of his two alternatives for becoming a peace-partner with Yitshak Rabin. Under the guise of being a Nobel Peace Prize recipient, Arafat's developed his devious scheme. He said that he had two alternatives to reach a Palestinian state, either via negotiations, or by returning to terrorism and inciting another war. In one FOJ news article, Arafat said that the Palestinian Fatah Organization would be able to withstand 20,000 or 30,000 losses, and that the logistics were already in place for utilizing shahidim [martyrs-suicide bombers], and further said that suicide bombers could even compel the Israelis to abandon the occupied territories altogether, since Israeli's would have a hard time bearing even 500 casualties. The past two years demonstrate that Yasser Arafat underestimated the Israeli resolve. But what lies ahead? What further conspiracies has he coordinated against Israel?

    The failure of the Oslo Peace Process and of Camp David II revealed to most Israeli's and to any objective person that Yasser Arafat never intended to forge a peace with Israel, not in 2000, nor ever. When Ehud Barak raised the stakes of the peace process to a final status possibility by presenting Arafat with a resolution over Jerusalem and Temple Mount issue, Arafat emphatically slammed the negotiating door shut, stating that the city of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount was an Islamic issue, and that he had no mandate from the Arab League to sign and end to the conflict, even if he wanted to.

    Arafat suddenly raised the negotiating ante by demanding a resolution of the Palestinian refugee issue without realizing that this was an issue for the Arab countries to negotiate and not solely for Arafat's evaluation." "Why, then, did Israel ever begin the endeavor of the Oslo Agreements with a peace-partner who did not even have the ability, nor the authority to bring about a permanent solution to the conflict?" More importantly, why did the sponsors of the peace process ever bring Arafat back into the Middle East equation when in reality, he could not authenticate a peace deal with Israel?

    It should be remembered that upon leaving the Camp David II Summit meetings in 2000, that Yasser Arafat undertook a globetrotting tour to China, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Indonesia, Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Quatar, United Arab Emirates, Oman, Pakistan, South Africa, and Russia. The purpose of this world tour was never disclosed, but the list of visitations lends itself to speculation that Arafat was already contemplating, if not actually coordinating the Al Aqsa Intifada that would break out only two months later. The launching of the new war of terror was acutely blamed on the visit of Ariel Sharon to the Temple Mount, but retrospection clearly indicates that the phased war of terrorism was plotted previously at the infamous “Jerusalem Conference” which convened in Damascus 6 months beforehand. (FOJ documented the development of these news accounts as they transpired) Thus, the Palestinian uprising that has witnessed the unique phenomenon of suicide bombers in Israel was prearranged by the radical membership of the Arab League, with the tacit approval of all of its members, and quite likely with a token foreknowledge of all of the countries that Arafat visited during his world-wide anti-Israel tour.

    Could it possibly be that the failure of Camp David II 2000 emphasized the geo-political point to the Muslim world that if it (Arab League/Islamic Fundamentalism) was to ever accomplish its goal of destroying the state of Israel, that the United States must first be reckoned with. One thing is for certain, the rest of the world would be only too happy to sacrifice Israel for a semblance peace and economic prosperity. And from a Biblical Prophetic perspective, the aspiring world superpowers of Russia, China, and the EU seem to be quite willing to sit back and let the US to go-it-alone in the war on terrorism, and terrorism's front players known as the Axis of Evil. My own personal prophetic sensitivity suggests to me that a “Middle East Trap” has been sprung for America to get itself entangled in, while the Beasts of Revelation prepare to fill the vacuum of power that could develop after America has been strategically checkmated by the forces of Hell and international terror.

    President Bush is now proposing that democracy is essential to any Middle East peace, and to the establishment of a peaceful coexistent State of Palestine adjacent to Israel, and on its eastern border. Jordan, having entered into peaceful coexistence with Israel in 1995 serves as a buffer between Israel and the radical states of Iraq and Iran. Egypt, serves as a peaceful coexistent southern neighbor, and the hope of the Oslo Process was to expand the multi-lateral peaceful perimeter around Israel to include a northern secure border by requiring Israel to withdraw from its South Lebanon security zone and then present the Golan Heights to Syria. Finally, peace with security could have been at hand, but that scenario all ended with Arafat's exit from the Camp David doorway, and ultimately his exit from the peace process, and return to terrorism. America has staked its prestige and power on the line in attempting to dismantle Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and endeavoring to establish democracy in Palestine and also in Iraq. If Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein is driven from power it is likely to bring about the total irrelevancy of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat as well. Saddam is a strong backer of the Palestinian cause, and Yasser Arafat and the many cells of Middle East terrorism that are sponsored by the Arab nations will never accommodate a pax-Americana that befriends Israel.

    The chants in the Arab/Muslim world reverberate with a subtle demonic message. “Death to America, Death to Israel”! Have you ever noted that the Middle East masses never resound, “death to Russia, death to the EU, death to China, or death to anybody else”?

     In the final analysis, the Middle East Peace Process, and the geo-political/terrorism histrionics of Yasser Arafat forecast one sure thing. All the players involved in the Middle East equation have acted in accordance with the Antichrist Conspiracy, and that is that they all continue to use peace as a pretext to continue to deny Israel its God given land. But, let us remember, God will not be mocked! God is peering down through the cosmos to our planet. His eyes are fixed upon his land, and his upon his people.

    Psalms 2:1-4 Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.

    Daniel 8:24-25 And his power shall be mighty, but not by his own power: and he shall destroy wonderfully, and shall prosper, and practise, and shall destroy the mighty and the holy people. (Israel) And through his policy (statecraft/diplomacy) also he shall cause craft (peace processes) to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; (Jesus Christ) but he (Antichrist) shall be broken without hand.



Author: Darrell G. Young
Copyright©2002





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