Arafat's Arsenal of Missiles By William Safire June 4, 2001 Essay - New York Times WASHINGTON — In launching a war to drive the Jews from his Palestine, the Arabs' Arafat has come up with an impressive array of weaponry. It goes beyond the rifles and grenades that too-trusting Israeli governments permitted, which helped transform a police force into an army spoiling for a fight. Now it includes mortars built in Gaza factories and rockets smuggled in from headquarters in Syria. These are fired into Israel from sites near Muslim mosques, hospitals and schools so that when Israel retaliates Europeans watching CNN and the BBC will be shocked. But the pride and joy of Arafat's arsenal is a weapon of mass terror that has no known defense: the human missile. The latest in a series of these, carried by a brainwashed suicide bomber, ripped apart a score of young Israelis last week. These were mainly Russian immigrant women of child-bearing age, a high-priority target for those in Baghdad, Damascus and Jericho who dream of militarily or demographically overwhelming the Jews. Because the human missile that massacred Tel Aviv teenagers so satisfied the lust for casualties, and because the incredible restraint of Ariel Sharon was about to snap, Arafat "condemned" this attack and told a visiting German diplomat he would join Sharon's self-imposed cease-fire "unconditionally." That means only that Arafat will not insist on the latest reward for violence recommended by the Mitchell commission, Bill Clinton's final vehicle for appeasement: cessation of construction in and around already-existing settlements. Sharon had already pledged to build no new settlements, a concession not offered by Rabin or Barak, for which he got no credit. An unnatural "freeze" on the natural growth of existing Israeli settlements would be fair only with an equivalent restriction on the expansion of Arab villages in the disputed territories. Not in the cards. Arafat's guilty promise of a cease- fire may stay Israel's avenging hand if he finally takes the steps necessary to stop his war. His word is worthless because he has long specialized in what the poet Milton called "a certain clandestine Hostility covered over with the name of Peace." Arafat knows where the bomb factories are in Gaza because he ordered them set up. He knows what new and deadlier weapons of war are being smuggled in from Damascus because he pays for them. He knows who the most fanatic Muslim terrorists are because he released them from jail to prey on Jews. And he knows where the human missiles are being programmed and armed. Such fanatic indoctrination takes time and isolation; it takes teachers of terror skilled in evoking visions of a martyrdom and requires recruits from vulnerably infuriated families who are known to other cells. The brainwashing is reinforced with official broadcasts of films of a dead boy beckoning potential suicide killers to join him in paradise. Does anybody still believe that Yasir Arafat is out of the loop in all this? For years, doves have bought the illusion that he was a peacenik at heart who had to bring along the extremists of the "Arab street." Yet, when the moment of decision came at Camp David, he was the man in the street, demanding all or nothing. When nothing was what he got, he became a hero by launching a war. Because his terrorists are ecstatic at their famous victory over the Russian immigrant youths in Tel Aviv, and because his European allies are a little embarrassed by his bloodletting, Arafat will lower the level of violence — for a while. After setting protections of Israelis in place, the surprisingly patient Sharon will ultimately offer half of the Barak-Clinton deal. Then the European Union and the U.N. will turn up the economic heat on Israel. Colin Powell will hear the pleas of Dennis Ross, Martin Indyck and the other architects of the current disaster to "get involved and make peace." When such pressure fails to deliver the whole West Bank and divide Jerusalem, Arafat's way is to open his jails and launch his human missiles again. And at that point we may just hear from the Israeli "street." With doves turned to realists and pressure from Bibi Netanyahu to defend the nation, and with Israelis unwilling to further expose their children to lives of terror, Sharon will let Sharon be Sharon.