by Askia Muhammad
White House Correspondent

THE WHITE HOUSE (FinalCall.com)�Just hours after President George W. Bush brokered an arrangement to end Israel�s month-long siege of Yasser Arafat�s headquarters in the West Bank town of Ramallah April 29, Israeli forces launched yet another raid, killing nine people in Hebron and another on the grounds of Bethlehem�s Church of the Nativity.

The raid�by 50 tanks and troop carriers, and another 200 armored vehicles supported by U.S.-made helicopter gun-ships, converged on the city where just 400 militant Jewish settlers live in heavily guarded enclaves among 120,000 Palestinians. The attack was launched despite repeated U.S. calls for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from all Palestinian-ruled areas.

Earlier, the Israeli cabinet voted to accept a scheme advanced by Mr. Bush in a telephone call to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during the cabinet deliberations. The plan called for U.S. or British troops to stand guard at a prison within Palestinian-controlled territory where four men convicted of murdering an Israeli would be incarcerated.

The Bush action came after a week of meetings with Morocco�s King Mohammed VI and Saudi Arabia�s Crown Prince Abdullah, two of America�s staunchest Arab allies.

The Crown Prince and a large Saudi entourage flew into Houston where they held what insiders described as a series of blunt meetings with administration officials. The Saudis presented an eight-point peace plan that included an end to Israeli military action in the West Bank and a U.S.-led peace initiative supported by international peacekeepers.

Privately, Saudi officials were saying they felt Mr. Bush has left the details of his Middle East policy too much in the hands of conservative, pro-Israel members of his administration, and that he needed to get more involved personally. Publicly, however, the two sides parted with kind words that papered over major policy disagreements.

"Before, during and after the talks we found the president fully engaged with that issue," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told reporters in Texas at the conclusion of the sessions.

"The two leaders reaffirmed the historical and rock-solid relationship which reflects the strategic interests of the two countries," he said.

"What this king and the Crown Prince were saying to (Mr.) Bush was that this conflict is not just between the Israelis and the Palestinians," Jeri Bird, president of Partners for Peace said in response to a question from The Final Call at the "Rescue Mideast Policy" forum sponsored by the Council for the National Interest (CNI) April 28.

Moderate Arab leaders are telling U.S. leaders that: "This conflict is affecting our populace. It is radicalizing our populace, and if you want stability, i.e. us to remain in power�and you know you can count on us�then you�d better do something about settling this dispute."

Disagreements between the Bush administration and its Arab allies remain over whether or not the proposed international Mideast peacekeeping force should be armed; the admission of a UN fact-finding mission looking into the Israeli assault on the Palestinian refugee camp in Jenin; the standoff over Palestinians holed up in the Church of the Nativity where Jesus Christ is believed to have been born; and over pending U.S. plans to send in troops if necessary to topple from power, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

The Israelis, who have cited Mr. Bush�s so-called "war on terror" as a justification for their own assault on the Palestinians, may be pushing the conflict to the "point of no return," Diana Buttu, a member of the Palestinian Negotiations Support Unit, just arrived from the West Bank, warned at the CNI meeting.

"Our projection is now that if the colony (settlement) construction continues at the rate it�s going now, within a year�s time,cho it will be absolutely impossible�and I underline the word impossible�to have a Palestinian state," Ms. Buttu said. The population of Israeli "colonies" has doubled from 200,000 at the time of the Oslo agreement in 1993, to more than 400,000 today, she said.

Yet with each bloodier and bloodier Israeli escalation followed by more and more desperate Palestinian responses, there is less and less public outcry in this country against the atrocities, observers charge.

The Bush administration�s goal of letting the Palestinians and the Israelis negotiate a settlement between themselves, Ms. Buttu warned, is akin to having a "child rape victim negotiate a settlement with his molester."

Despite the Israeli successes in the U.S. public relations campaign, international support for the Palestinian side has continued to grow.

In Johannesburg, an emergency ministerial committee on Palestine convened by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) expressed "strong feelings," concerning the "outrageous situation and tragedy" unfolding in the Middle East, pledged humanitarian support for the Palestinians, and warned of a possible call for future sanctions against Israel in the UN Security Council.

Meanwhile, as Muslims, Arabs and other Palestinian sympathizers wring their hands, evidence has surfaced that Mr. Sharon may be planning the expulsion of all 2 million Palestinians now living in the West Bank, east of the Jordan River into the Kingdom of Jordan.

Despite mounting international pressure against the U.S. and Israel, and grudging diplomatic progress in the bloody stand-off in the West Bank, Martin van Creveld, the leading Israeli historian predicted in an article in the London Daily Telegraph April 28 that a catastrophic terrorist attack inside the Jewish state, or a U.S. attack on Iraq could trigger a massive eight-day mobilization in which Israeli forces would "transfer" (drive) the entire Arab population out of the occupied territories and destroy the armies of any of its Arab neighbors which resisted.

Ms. Buttu agrees. The Israelis have only a few options concerning the Palestinians, she said. "One. Transfer them as the gentleman has pointed out. Two. Kill them. Three. Permit them to become equal citizens, and we all know that�s not going to happen. Or Four. Put them in the equivalent of American Indian reservations, and I think that that�s what�s going to happen."