Guest, as I'm sure you know from reading my many hundreds of posts on this subject, your assertions in your 16 Feb 04 - 01:43 PM post are factually incorrect. And this part:

Just a 3.5 years ago, peace and Palestinian statehood was imminent. The economies of both Israel and Palestine were thriving. President Clinton brokered a deal in which 95% of Arafat's demands were met by the Israeli government of Ehud Barak. 95%.

...is a lie.

But you knew that because you keep a running tally of all of my posts on this subject.

Arafat signed the Oslo accords and the PLO was honoring it's committments under Oslo, while Israel violated it's obligations under Oslo by continuing to build new settlements. After Rabin was murdered by an Israeli terrorist, his successor, Netanyahu, abandoned Oslo entirely. Even Shimon Perez admits this. Barak's offer to the Palestinians was nowhere near 95% of what the Palestinians wanted. Barak was offering nothing less than an aparthied state with the Palestinians living in tiny bantustans, with vast areas of Israeli controlled land in between them. The violence started when Netanyahu, and then Sharon after him, continued to reneg on the Oslo accords by escalating the construction of new settlements in the occupied territories. When the Palestinians lost all hope that the Israelis would ever honor the agreements they signed with the Palestinians, that's when the second intifada broke out. But you knew this because you keep a running tally on my many hundreds of posts on this subject.

The corruption of Arafat has nothing to do with the current state of affairs. The current state of affairs is exactly what the government of Israel wants it to be. And it will continue this way until either, A. all of the Palestinians are permanently removed from Israel and the Occupied Territories, B. the world community finds a way to prevent this from happening, or C. Israel and other countries in the Middle East destroy each other in a nuclear holocaust.