Does Mr Baraks Victory Really Change Anything?
By Robert Fisk, THE INDEPENDENT 5/19/1999 He has said he will not cede the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. So what hope for Palestine? In the dirt of the Sabra and Chatila Palestinian refugee camp and in Mar Elias, they were not celebrating the election victory of Ehud Barak yesterday. Over the entrance to Mar Elias camp with its open sewers and old, worn water pipes running down the laneways, there hung an iron map of Palestine: the original Palestine, Haifa as well as Ramallah, Tel Aviv as well as Nablus, Jerusalem as well as Jericho, the whole shebang. And they are not going to get it back. They would like – the Palestinians who live among the garbage here – to have the same “right of return” that Bill Clinton and Tony Blair have promised to the Kosovo Albanians. But Mr Clinton and Mr Blair did not intend their promise to apply to the Palestinians from Haifa and the rest of that part of Palestine that became Israel in 1948. “The differences between the Likud and Labour are minor,” the sp
