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American Morning
The Big Question: Has Israel Made Arafat Stronger Than Ever?
Aired May 02, 2002 - 07:21 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: The question this hour, has Israel made Yasser Arafat stronger than ever? With the Israeli forces gone, Arafat emerged from his compound this morning after a month in virtual captivity.
For the Israeli perspective now we turn to former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who joins us from Jerusalem this morning.
Welcome back, sir.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: Mr. Netanyahu, I know you had a chance to listen to what Saeb Erakat, the chief Palestinian negotiator, just told us on the breaking news this morning that Israeli Defense Forces are saying that Palestinians have booby-trapped the Church of the Nativity. He said those are absolute lies by the Israelis. Is there any proof that the church has been booby-trapped?
NETANYAHU: Well I'm not familiar with the details of that, but I can say this. I just heard Mr. Erakat say that Yasser Arafat has condemned suicide bombings. Well on -- he must have condemned it when he called on Palestinian television that he controls, and including, by the way, on CNN takes of that same broadcast, he nightly calls for a million suicide bombers in Jerusalem. So that tells you something about the reliability of what the Palestinian spokesman -- their reliability.
As far as Arafat is sponsoring suicide bombers, he's got suicide kindergarten camps, he's sponsoring terror, and I wouldn't put it beyond them to booby-trap that church and to fan the fires there sort of like -- it's interesting that we have those fires the minute Arafat leaves the compound. It's a -- it's a well known technique. You know Hitler used the fires in the Reichstag to try to ferment hatred against the enemies of the Reich. And I suppose the Palestinians would like to begin fermenting hatred religious warfare between Jews and Christians. Well it's not going to happen. It's just not going to happen.
ZAHN: Of course, as you know, the details are conflicting today. The Israelis say that the Palestinians set the fires. The Palestinians saying that's simply not true, the fire started when the Israelis tried to storm the Church of the Nativity. NETANYAHU: Well I don't think we're -- I don't know that we're going to storm it, and I doubt very much that we'll take extreme action there because there is tremendous respect for religious sites, Muslim, Jewish, and Christian. And in fact, the only time in my lifetime and in the last millennium or so that anyone has respected all three shrines has been under Israel. Before that the Muslims desecrated the Jewish synagogues and the churches. And before that the crusaders destroyed synagogues and mosques. So it's only under Israel with our policy of safeguarding religious places that we've had this policy.
The fact is that the Palestinian gunmen under Arafat who have made, by the way, Bethlehem a Muslim town. I don't know if you're aware of this, they've just drove out all the Christians. So Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ, is now a Muslim town. Muslims or rather Christians are driven out, and it's not beyond Arafat's goons to play havoc with the Church of the Nativity. They're using it, for God's sake, as a -- as a bunker so that tells you a lot.
ZAHN: Prior to Mr. Arafat's captivity, his popularity numbers were way down, his resurgence of popularity, people say, is quite extraordinary, although there are no polls to reinforce that. Do you think Ariel Sharon's policy has turned him into a hero?
NETANYAHU: I think that we made a mistake, as I've said for the last year and a half, including many times on your program, we should have expelled him right away. I think that as long as he's here calling for suicide bombings, continuing to preach the destruction of Israel, fanning the flames of hatred, inculcating a cult of death and self-emulation for 4 or 5-year-old Palestinians and up, I think as long as this man is here, we're not going to have any peace. We had hoped, many of us in America and here, that Arafat would turn out to be a Palestinian King Hussein. He's turned out to be a Palestinian Saddam Hussein. And you don't make peace with Saddam Hussein; you get rid of him, which America is going to do. You don't make peace with the Taliban; you get rid of them. And I would have gotten rid of him, not by killing him, but by expelling him on day one, not giving him this platform to play the hero, because if he is the hero, then we're not going to get peace.
ZAHN: The U.N. fact-finding mission into Jenin has been called off. Of course the accusation of the Palestinian's part is the Israelis have something to hide. As you know, the European opinion of this is pretty negative at the moment. How ultimately do you think this affects public perceptions of Israel?
NETANYAHU: In America, not at all. I think that Americans understand that. Suppose the U.N. started talking about massacres in Afghanistan and then set up a fact-finding commission in Afghanistan ordered by al Qaeda? I mean it's ridiculous. So that's essentially what you have here except it's doubly ridiculous because we have untold numbers of proven massacres. The Passover Massacre, the massacres of people in cafes, of children in discotheques, of these two little -- three little girls that were gunned down just now two days ago by one of Arafat's gunmen, killing a 5-year-old girl, the other two escaped because their mother covered them under the bed -- these are proven massacres. Nobody has any question and yet the U.N. didn't lift a finger, didn't establish any commission to investigate those massacres.
Yet when Israel takes the kind of action that the U.S. takes in self-defense, putting its troops in danger, not using air power, in fact losing troops in self -- in an action in very crowded civilian areas, and you have some civilian casualties, unfortunately and tragically that accompanies every legitimate act of war against these terrorists.
ZAHN: Well let me ask you this.
NETANYAHU: Then the U.N. sets up this fact-finding commission. It's -- I suggest that Israel and the U.S. put forward their own fact finding commission on the U.N. I call it, Paula, the FFCC, the fact- finding commission on chutzpah -- on U.N. chutzpah. I think it's absurd.
ZAHN: Let me ask you this in closing, if the initial information reporters are being told is true, which is the majority of the deaths suffered in Jenin were by Palestinian gunmen and the deaths were not into the 500 mark but closer to 53, what would be so indicting about allowing the crew to come in and document that?
NETANYAHU: Nothing, but the U.N. is a red court. It's a kangaroo court. It's a rigged game. Whatever happens, they'll play against us. The only experience we've had with the U.N. is that they call us a racist country and that they -- and this is -- this comes from such philanthropic and human rights observing countries like the Sudan, Libya, Iran who are sitting on these commission. In fact, Syria is going to be the president of the Security Council next month or in two months. I mean this is the same U.N. that hid the Hezbollah tape of -- taken by U.N. forces of Hezbollah kidnapping Israelis and lied about it. So nobody in Israel takes the U.N. seriously.
The U.N. is an amalgamation of dictatorships and democracies and unfortunately, the democracies do not stand up at the end to the distortions and bilifications (ph) that U.N. bodies level against Israel for decades. We don't trust the U.N. on the Arab-Israeli conflict and neither should you.
ZAHN: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)...
NETANYAHU: By the way, I'd be very careful of fact-finding missions of the U.N. in Afghanistan, too. Be careful.
ZAHN: All right. Thank you very much, Bibi Netanyahu, for your time this morning. Always good to have you on AMERICAN MORNING.
NETANYAHU: Thank you. Thank you.
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