Arafat courage and the love of the Palestinian people for Arafat, muhaha!

Arafat cancels visit to Jenin amid fears for his own safety

Flying by helicopter provided by Jordan's King Abdullah (his own Russian-piloted fleet was destroyed by an Israeli rocket attack last year), Mr Arafat went to Bethlehem, then Jenin, visiting the town, but not the rubble fields of the camp.

He knew this meant abandoning a chance to step into the international limelight in a place where atrocities were committed by the Israeli army, and where the United Nations sought -- and failed -- to send a fact-finding committee to discover what went on. At least 54 people were killed in the camp during eight days of fighting, nearly half of them civilians.

Arafat aides said they were worried about heckling. The odds are that their concerns were more serious. Palestinian opposition has been fuelled by popular anger over his decision to allow 13 Palestinian militants from Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity to be exiled, and six to be imprisoned in the West Bank under British and US supervision. Both deals were seen by many Arabs as a sell-out.

Lovely. Nice shots by the writer (Phil Reeves). Arafat has to borrow a helicopter because the Israelis zapped his. And then there's that failed "fact-finding" mission, which was going to investigate the massacre of hundreds of Palestinian refugees...oh, oops! Seems only 54 died, oh, yet UN "fact-finders" were declaring a massacre even before they had arrived in the area.

"...nearly half of them civilians." Lovely phrase. "Nearly" covers a lot of territority. There is also the persistent refusal to recognize that you can't tell a civilian from a soldier when so many "civilians" are hauling ammunition and ordnance around, such as the 10-year-olds who claim they were hustling bombs and such around.