On U.S.-Arafat

The odds are increasingly stacked against Palestinian President Yasser Arafat. Confined to his headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah, he is now the target of a vociferous American campaign which unfairly and harshly blames him for the deterioration in the Middle East.

Washington, supposedly an honest broker in the now stalled peace process, has blatantly sided with (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon, who for the past three months has been intensifying his military and economic clampdown on the Palestinians.

By targeting the Palestinians with the most up-to-date lethal weaponry in Israeli arsenal, Sharon claims he is waging "a war on terror." Sadly the U.S. has been swayed by Sharon's putrid logic. The Israeli premier is himself a dyed-in-the-wool terrorist, and faces the prospect of standing trial at a Belgian court for his involvement in the 1982 massacres at Sabra and Chatilla, which claimed the lives of hundreds of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.

Ignoring these appalling realities, Washington is giving Sharon the go-ahead to "do enough" to decimate the Palestinians.

-- The Egyptian Gazette, Cairo, Egypt