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America in the Middle East

Israel supports Bush; Arafat, world want Kerry


By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
October 18, 2004

Three weeks before the people of the United States choose their president for the next four years, reports from Israel and elsewhere tellingly reveal how the parties to the Arab-Israeli conflict view the candidates.

While Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority is rooting for Democrat John Kerry, Israel’s Jews overwhelmingly hope President George W. Bush will stay in the Oval Office through 2008.

And Israel is believed to be the only nation in the world wanting Bush to win.

The Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported Monday that senior PA official Nabil Sha’ath informed the BBC in an interview that he believes the “peace” process would benefit from Bush’s removal from power.

Sha’ath was quoted as saying that, were Bush to be returned to office, despite his commitment to renew efforts to resume the diplomatic process, “with the staff that surrounds him and with his current opinions, it doesn’t look promising.”

Kerry’s election would likely result in the return to the new administration of a number of President Bill Clinton’s staff.

“That would be a good thing,” Sha’ath said.

His opinion substantiates the assessment delivered to the Israeli cabinet last July by Israeli military intelligence chief Major-General Aharon Ze’evi, who said that Arafat was hoping for a Bush defeat.

At that time, Ze’evi explained that a growing sense of turmoil in the PA was attributable to Arafat’s decision to sit tight and do nothing until after the US elections.

"Arafat is now waiting for the month of November in the hope that President Bush will be defeated in the presidential election and turned out of his office," Ze'evi was quoted as saying.

Arafat also hoped that the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would collapse.

Since Bush’s election, the US leader has adamantly refused to meet with Arafat, and has called on the Palestinian Arabs to replace him with new leadership. Those calls have gone unheeded.

According to a report in Newsmax on March 8 this year, Kerry has referred to Arafat – the most effective killer of Jews since Adolf Hitler, and the man who spawned the whole concept of Arab terrorism in the last century - as a “role model” and “statesman.”

The report was based on statements Kerry made in a book he wrote in 1997 called “The New War.”

Earlier this year, Kerry appeared to have changed his perception when he told New York Jewish leaders that he agrees with Bush’s decision to isolate and ignore Arafat because the PLO chief was “not a partner for peace, much less a statesman.”

His words were viewed as a transparent attempt to woo more Jewish voters to his side.

Meanwhile, under a shouting headline declaring that the “World wants Kerry to beat Bush,” the Sydney Morning Herald reported last week that “an ambitious polling exercise” carried out internationally in September singled Israel out as the only country on earth that supported the president over his opponent.

Israelis have by and large been fully supportive of the US war in Iraq, and, according to polls, are thankful to President Bush for removing Saddam Hussein from power.

Traditionally, most American Jews vote Democrat, and are expected to do so again in November.

Based on the surveyed feelings of Israeli Jews on the matter, analysts have questioned whether a rub-off affect on American Jewry could help swing a number of Jews to come out for Bush.

Around 250,000 US citizens live in Israel, of whom about 120,000 are eligible to vote. Only 14,000 voted in 2000, but nearly three times that number are expected to do so this year.

About 30,000 Palestinian Arabs also hold US citizenship.

In a interview carried in The Baltimore Sun Monday, an Israeli Jew expressed his solid support for the Republican leader, while a Palestinian Arab-American denounced Bush’s “destructive” policies in the Middle East and said he would be voting for Kerry.

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