How Much Money Will it Take to Stop Mideast Bloodshed?

• U.S. taxpayers are expected to bear the brunt of the cost for any Mideast "peace."

The rehabilitation of Martin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, whose security clearance was suspended last month -- only to be restored by the White House on Oct. 10 -- was only the first among a long list of concessions being held out by President Clinton in order to persuade the Israeli government to halt the shoot-to-kill tactics it has been using against Palestinian protesters.

U.S. officials said that Indyk's security clearance was reinstated for the duration of the Mideast conflict. After that, according to officials, his status would be "reevaluated."

After days of ferocious firefights, the top leaders of the warring nations -- the historic Arab people of the Near East and Pa les tine's Zionist occupying forces -- flew to Paris for a meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

Instead of turning to negotiations with each other, Palestine Authority Chairman Yassir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak gave priority to talks with American officials, including long, frequent telephone palavers held by both sides with President Bill Clinton.

"In the course of the Mideast peace negotiations earlier this year, Clinton offered both antagonists enormous payoffs in return for a deal," said Dr. Herman Knorr, a former U.S. State Department intelligence analyst. "Now Arafat and Barak are telling Albright they want to make sure they have some of those billions in hand before they settle their differences."

The bloodletting American taxpayers are about to suffer as the latest price of America's stupid meddling in Palestine runs into billions of additional dollars.

Israel is asking for a special "strategic assistance package" to cover the cost of its military withdrawal from Lebanon, its planned "strategic redeployment" on the Syrian frontier, expensive new electronic se curity installations to protect its flanks from "surprise attack" and a squadron of the latest U.S.-made warplanes, the so-called "joint strike fighters," to patrol them. The cost: an estimated $55 billion.

Part of the "special security assistance" program is the installation of "death-ray" laser batteries at strategic points in and around Israel.

This apocalyptic weapon has the capability of blinding enemy troops at extended distances, reportedly over a mile. There are no known goggles or filters to protect against the instant and permanent blinding of infantrymen.

The laser was developed by the U.S. De fense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in the Pentagon under a variety of code names and innocuous descriptions.

Now, in order to persuade Barak to stop the massacres of unarmed Palestinian demonstrators and to rejoin the "peace process," the delivery of the "death-ray" laser, to be installed in Northern Israel by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, has been "prioritized" to begin in next month.

"Indyk has been abruptly rehabilitated because he is the indispensable dealmaker who arranged the 'pay-for-peace' strategy of appeasing hawkish Israeli leaders with huge handouts funded by U.S. taxpayers" says Dr. Francois Khouri, a Lebanese diplomatic historian.

A seasoned Israeli agent of influence at the time he was taken aboard by the incoming Clinton administration in early 1993 -- and an alien who was granted instant U.S. citizenship by special dispensation of the White House and Congress -- Indyk became the key go-between in the tortuous negotiations held by Clinton with a succession of Zionist leaders skilled at extortion, well-placed observers say.

"It was Indyk who laid out the plan for the unprecedented giveaways the U.S. is supposed to dole out to Israel for its agreement to grant the Palestinian Arabs some living space, a limited measure of autonomy, and 'peace,' " explained Khouri, who now teaches in Washington.

The Palestine Authority, on the other hand, is faced with the need to do something about the nearly 4 million Arab refugees hounded from their homeland.

Behind closed doors, Clinton and Arafat have been negotiating a compromise under which Palestinian refugees willing to waive their right of return would be paid "compensation" or "restitution" at some $15,000 per head.