THANK GOODNESS ARAFAT REJECTED BARAK'S OFFER

Another Track: But for Arafat's grace By SARAH HONIG (JPost)
In his younger days Ezer Weizman was wont to repeat at the slightest provocation the Prophet Samuel's assurance that "the Eternity of Israel shall not deceive," but then he always followed it up with: "and the Arabs wouldn't let us down." So far, time after incredible time, they indeed bailed us out.

Yasser Arafat, bum rap that we gave him notwithstanding, certainly rescued us from Ehud Barak's hubris. Envision the ensuing calamity, had the PLO chieftain accepted the deal Barak and Bill Clinton dangled before him at the 2000 Camp David summit.

Had Arafat taken advantage of Barak's foolhardy generosity - instead of violently rebuffing it and launching his bloody Second Intifada - he'd have taken possession, besides Gaza, of nearly all of Judea and Samaria, settlement blocks included, as well as east Jerusalem and the Temple Mount (except for ill-defined "subterranean layers" thereof, according to Barak's cockamamie concoction). After Arafat's departure to the netherworld's great terrorist convocation, his PLO cohorts would have inherited his latifundia.

From here on the story is familiar, except for name-place variations. Everything that happened in the Gaza Strip - which Ariel Sharon ceded unilaterally according to Barak's reckless Lebanese precedent - would have been replayed in Bethlehem, Hebron, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, etc. Eventually Hamas would have gained domination over all that Arafat's fat Fatah failed to control.

The pattern is the one revealed before our eyes in Gaza-turned-Hamastan. The outstanding difference is that the Hamastan which brash Barak thoughtlessly almost created along Israel's entire long convoluted eastern flank, directly adjoining this country's densest population centers, would have been incalculably deadlier than anything visited from Gaza on poor suffering Sderot.