Stardate 20020428.1346

(On Screen): This is insanity. Have they lost their minds? The new plan to break the siege in Ramallah is for Arafat to yield up the six men with him who are most wanted by Israel. They won't be given to the Israelis, but rather will be imprisoned within Palestinian territory. However, their guards will be Americans and British, so as to make sure that they don't get released after a short pause, as has become rather traditional for the Palestinians. (In one rather famous incident, the Palestinians released a man from their prisons one morning and he committed a suicide bombing that afternoon.)

Remember how a Palestinian mob in Hebron broke into a Palestinian prison where three suspected Israeli collaborators were being held, seized them and dragged them outside and murdered them, then desecrated their corpses?

The six Palestinians who will be subject to this imprisonment are those who were responsible for killing a member of the Israeli cabinet. They're also folk heros for the Palestinians. What if another mob gets the notion of freeing them? What will these British and American guards do in that case?

Shoot to kill? Release the prisoners? Kill the prisoners to prevent them from being released? Try to resist without killing? What will happen to the guards?

Some or all of them will die at the hands of a Palestinian mob. That's what. It's only a matter of time. The Palestinian Authority didn't stop that lynch-mob in Hebron and it wouldn't stop this mob, either.

Who, exactly, from the US and UK is going to volunteer to go to the West Bank and be murdered?