The new agreement between Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian ‘president’ Yassir Arafat, signed at Sharm al-Shaikh, near Alexandria, on September 5, was widely greeted as a new start to the ‘peace process’ that had appeared on the verge of stalling during the premiership of Benyamin Netanyahu.
Hamas leader Shaikh Ahmad Yassin, whom Yasser Arafat was obliged by public pressure to greet as a hero when he returned to Ghazzah last year after eight years in an Israeli jail, was placed under house arrest by Palestinian police on October 29.
Palestinian protests against the Wye agreement broke out in Ghazzah and the West Bank towns on November 20, as the true nature of the agreement and Israeli attempts to further distort it became apparent.
