ROPE AND CEMENT

On July 26, The London Telegraph ran the absolutely positively most delicious story I have seen in many an al-ilah (the moon, worshipped by pre-Islamic Arabs, and contracted into allah by Mohammed).

You know that famous quote of Lenin’s epitomizing his contempt for capitalism? “When it comes time to hang the capitalists, they will fight among themselves to sell us the rope.” You wonder what Lenin would say to fellow Marxist Yasser Arafat.

It turns out that Palestinian businessmen with connections to Arafat and other officials in the “Palestinian Authority” are making millions of dollars selling cement to the Israeli Government to build the Security Wall. Is this too beautiful or what?

The unnamed Palestinian businessmen bribed senior PA officials -such as PA Economy Minister Maher al-Masri — for cement import licenses and to keep their mouths shut – with the full knowledge of Arafat. “Wealthy Palestinians with connections at the highest levels have been making millions helping Israel build this wall while Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have been urging people to fight against it,” the Telegraph quoted Hassan Kreishe, a Palestinian Legislative Council member who called for Arafat’s resignation.

Kreishe revealed that the cement originally came from Egyptian companies which supplied it at a huge discount of $22 a ton, supposedly to help rebuild dilapidated Palestinian houses or buildings bulldozed by the Israelis. Between September 2003 and March this year, 420,000 tons of cement were allegedly sent to three big Palestinian companies.

But only 33,000 tons were sold in the Palestinian market. The remaining 387,000 tons were transported to Israel and sold with a mark-up of $15 a ton or more. The Israelis got the cement for their Wall, the Palestinians pocketed well over $6 million in cash profits, while word of the deal has nudged the Palestinian Civil War up a notch.

The cement bribes make a laughingstock of the United Nations’ International Court of Justice’s ruling on July 9 that the Security Fence is “illegal” and the resultant vote by the UN General Assembly on July 21 to condemn it. And no one is laughing harder at the UN – and the Palestinians – than Ariel Sharon.

Precisely as predicted in The Coming Palestinian Civil War (TTP, February 6, 2004) and updated in The Genius of Sharon (TTP, June 17, 2004 and currently in Classics), lawlessness continues to explode in the West Bank and Gaza, as well as outrage at Arafat by Palestinians suffering from it.

An Agence France Presse story datelined from Ramallah on July 18 reports: “Palestinians are witnessing a breakdown in law and order that threatens to destroy the fabric of their society and which cannot merely be blamed on the Israeli occupation.” Palestinian official Saeb Erakat is quoted: “This is a society whose social fabric is being destroyed” – by the Palestinians themselves.

We are fast reaching the tipping point in the war between Israel and Palestinian Arabs. For a Palestinian Phoenix of Peace to emerge, there has to be Palestinian ashes first. It was Sharon’s genius to turn the Palestinians’ suicidal energy upon itself, by bottling it up behind a Wall. It is the Palestinians’ Karma to end up, after slaughtering so many innocent Israelis in suicide bombs, slaughtering each other and selling themselves out – to end up hanging themselves with their own rope of cement.