Nearly 3,000 Zimbabwean white farmers face eviction at midnight tonight, the government's deadline for them to leave their properties, as a 12-year land seizure battle reaches its crescendo. Many of the farmers affected remained on their land yesterday, despite the threat of a two-year prison sentence for defying the eviction order. Nothing like instituionalised racism, is there?
Yasser Arafat and the rest of the Palestinian cabinet gave cautious approval yesterday to an Israeli proposal for its troops to withdraw gradually from Palestinian areas, beginning in the
Gaza strip, in exchange for a Palestinian crackdown on militants. How they intend to crack down with most of their adminstration destroyed remians a mystery to me.
Saudi Arabia, the main launch pad for the 1991 war against Iraq, has made clear to Washington, publicly and privately, that it will not allow US forces to use its territory in any way for a new attack, the foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, said yesterday. The Sauds run a regime almost as oppressive as the Taleban, the difference being that they are allies of the West, and have lots of oil. The Saudi people are very critical of the West, and the Saudi government has every right to be concerned if there was a backlash against their government if Saddam was kicked out. So much for GWB's "you're either with us or you're against us."
