This can only strengthen the rejectionists and the fundamentalists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Given the record of financial corruption of Arafat's Authority, the Arab masses will also wonder where the billions of dolloars in aid pledged in Washington Nov. 30 will end up. Nor will the open role of the CIA in enforcing the agreement win much support among either Palestinian Arabs or in the Middle East more generally. The people of the region remember all too well the CIA's toppling of the democratically elected Mossadegh regime in Iran in 1953 and its installation of the Shah, its aid to Saddam Hussein's Ba'th Party during the 1960s against the leftist Qasim regime in Iraq, its betrayal again and again of the Kurdish movement, to name just a few examples. This is a far truer indicator of Washington's moral compass than the sanctimonious debate over impeachment.
Future months are sure to see further crises over Iraq and in the Israeli-Arab negotiations.
Living under U.S.-UN sanctions and the murderous Ba'thist regime will mean continued death and suffering for the people of Iraq. The Palestinian masses will also continue to experience the oppression of occupation and denial of their democratic and human rights, while the Israelis will continue to live in insecurity and as a hated occupying power in the region. Only a mass movement for freedom throughout the region can alter in any fundamental way this bleak reality.