...As for Palestine, it will never die* After Arafat: The Death of the Two-State Solution. I am certain that there is no Palestinian leader who would be able to, as Arafat would have been able to, push for a two-state solution anymore. I, of course, do not mind that because I favor the one binational and secular state, for Palestinians and Jews in Palestine. And make no mistake about this: NO Palestinian leader would ever DARE to accept what Arafat had rejected (and rightly so) in Camp David or Taba. The US and Israel would of coourse try to push for their two candidates: Abu Mazin (Mahmud `Abbas) and Muhammad Dahlan. They will have all the financial and military backing of the US. But they are unpopular and crooks. Jockeying for power has already begun. US (and Israel) puppet Dahlan, who never dared to criticize the US in the past, yesterday took the opportunity on AlJazeera while speaking about Arafat to slam the US "and its war on the Iraqi people." He was obviously trying to score points with the Palestinian masses. Abu Mazin has no base within Fath at all. He does not have his own constituency: Hani AlHasan and Abu AlLutf (the latter was declared head of Fath and he opposed the Oslo process and is a former hard core Ba`thist) will control Fath. If Arafat did not intervene last year to save him, Bush's favorite Palestinian (Abu Mazin) would have been killed by Fath members. I hope the millions of PLO money that are stashed away in foreign banks will disappear. Nothing has damaged the Palestinian Revolution like the influx of oil money. Let the Palestinian Revolution go back to its early days of secret work, and meager resources.
*(that was the title of an article by As-Safir's publisher Talal Salman in tomorrow's issue).