(BESA Center for Strategic Studies-Bar-Ilan University) Hillel Frisch - The Palestinians are part of the old Arab order because time and time again they have aligned themselves with the worst dictators of the Arab world. Their own governments in the West Bank and Gaza are cut from the same cloth as the regimes of the old Arab order; they are one-party police-states where the opposition and the media are suppressed. They demand the right to self-determination for themselves but deny it to others. They are also part of the old Arab order of terrorism. The PLO itself is the ultimate example of the old Arab order. The dozen or more factions that constitute the PLO are over forty years old; yet in none of them has leadership change taken place except through the natural or unnatural death of the leader. The same can be said of the relatively younger Islamic Jihad and Hamas movements. There is no internal democracy in these groups. The writer is a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center.
2012-01-06 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive