Subj: Traitor
Date: 10/25/98 3:14:02 PM Pacific Standard Time
From: para@clara.net (Roger Stevenson)
To: RUSSBACHER@aol.com (RUSSBACHER)

DAILY MAIL, Saturday 24th October 1998

Peace deal put in Jeopardy by traitor.

From Mail Reporter
in Washington
A LAST-NIINUTE hitch was threatening to delay a historic land-for-peace

deal in the Middle East last night.

After more than 20 hours of negotiations conducted by Bill Clinton, a
signing cere-mony involving the Israeli and Palestinian leaders was put on
hold because of a row over the release of a spy.

At the 11th hour, President Clinton refused to free Jonathan Pollard, an
American Navy intel-ligence expert serving life for passing an 'enormous'
quantity of military secrets to the Israelis.

Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister had insisted on the release
of tie spy in return for handing over dis-puted West Bank territory to
Palestinian control.

Mr Clinton, desperate for a major foreign policy triumph to restore his
image as a world statesman after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, had agreed,
according to Israeli sources.

But he is understood to have changed his mind after aides warned that the
release of a con-victed traitor could unleash a damaging political backlash.

Shortly before dawn yesterday, Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasser
Arafat thought they had secured a final agreement

ollowing nine days of tense talks at the Wye Plantation, 50 miles

ast of Washington. They were preparing for the signing cere-mony at the
White House.

But then the U.S. mediation team announced there had been a
'misunderstanding' over Pol-lard. The Americans were mak-ing frantic
attempts last night to find a way around the impasse.

The deal would break 19 months of deadlock over the implementation of the
1993 Oslo peace agreement.

Under the terms of the proposed deal, Israeli troops would with-draw from a
further 13 per cent of the West Bank. That would give the Palestinians
control of almost a fifth of the West Bank.

The Palestinians would get a safe passage between Gaza and

the West Bank and their own air-port and seaport in Gaza. The Israelis also
agreed to free 750 of the 3,000 Palestinian prisoners it holds, and to form
a committee to discuss the release of thou-sands more.

They also dropped their insis-tence that Palestinian police chief Razi
Gebali should be tried on terrorism charges.

Mr Arafat agreed to rewrite the 34-year-old charter'of the Pales-tinian
Liberation Organisation's ruling body to delete clauses call-ing for the
'destruction' of Israel.

He also pledged to draw up plans for the arrest of members of the Hamas and
Islamic Jihad terrorist organizations, after Mr Netanyahu's team abandoned
its insistence that suspects be extradited to Israel.

The size of Mr Arafat's police force would be reduced and ille-galy-held
weapons surrendered for destruction.

During the talks at the Wye Pl