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Did the Peace Process Radicalize Palestinians?
(Sydney Morning Herald-Australia) Miranda Devine - Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh, who writes for the Jerusalem Post, was in Sydney with the message: the peace process may do more harm than good. He said that after the 1993 Oslo accords, American money poured into the corrupt coffers of the PLO, whose chiefs built themselves huge beach villas while the Palestinian people grew disillusioned. Arafat's rule was ''not much different than other Arab dictatorships, though not as bad as Saddam [Hussein]." The PLO took people flooding out of Israeli jails and made them generals and colonels, despite not finishing high school. Car thieves were now interrogators. ''The longer in an Israeli jail, the higher the rank.'' He said the process radicalized Palestinians and empowered Hamas, the Islamic fundamentalist group backed by Iran and Syria, declared a terrorist organization by the U.S.