Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who has refused most interviews since he left office in January, gave revealing insights to guests at a party at the Manhattan apartment of former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke; Newsweek published Clinton's commentary in a web exclusive.

Faisal Al-Husseini, PLO Executive Committee member in charge of Jerusalem Affairs, recently passed away after suffering a heart attack in Kuwait. Remembered by the Israeli peace camp as a promoter of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence, Al-Husseini's last interview with an Egyptian newspaper, given shortly before his death, revealed his interesting perspective on the Palestinians' long-term goals.

Clinton to Arafat: It's all your fault
The former president blames the collapse of the Middle East Peace Process on one person - Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat. In the Newsweek exclusive, "Clinton describes Arafat as an aging leader who relishes his own sense of victim hood and seems incapable of making a final peace deal."

"He could only get to step five, and he needed to get to step 10," the former president said.

Clinton told the guests at the Manhattan party that he never expected to close the peace deal at Camp David. Contrary to other reports, "the key issue that torpedoed the talks in their final stages was not the division of East Jerusalem between Palestinians and Israelis, but the Palestinian demand for a 'right of return' of refugees to Israel."

In one of the final conversations between Clinton and Arafat, the Palestinian leader expressed doubts over the existence of the ancient Jewish Temple below the Temple Mount.

"I know it's there," Clinton said he told Arafat.

Source: MSNBC

Al-Husseini: The Oslo Accords were a Trojan Horse
On his way to Kuwait, Faisal Al-Husseini gave what turned out to be his last interview to the Egyptian (Nasserite) daily, 'Al-Arabi'. In the interview with reporter Shafiq Ahmad Ali, Al-Husseini compared the Oslo Accords with a Trojan Horse, used by the ancient Greeks to sneak in and capture the city of Troy.

"Had the U.S. and Israel not realized, before Oslo, that all that was left of the Palestinian National movement and the Pan-Arab movement was a wooden horse called Arafat or the PLO, they would never have opened their fortified gates and let it inside their walls."

In Al-Husseini's parallel to the Grecian story, all Palestinians entered the newly formed Palestinian Authority within the territories through the means of the accords, whether they supported Oslo or not.

"So come down out of the horse and start working for the goal for which you entered the horse to begin with. In my opinion, the Intifada itself is the coming down out of the horse."

Once the Intifada released the Palestinians from their ploy, they could begin working for their final goal. Here Al-Husseini refers to Israelis who make no attempt to hide their strategy of extending Israel's borders to the biblical "Greater Land of Israel."

"The truth is that we are doing exactly what they are doing… If we agree to declare our state over what is now only 22% of Palestine, meaning the West Bank and Gaza - our ultimate goal is [still] the liberation of all historical Palestine from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea, even if this means that the conflict will last for another thousand years or for many generations."

Al-Husseini's greatest fear was that "while advancing towards my short-term goal I might turn my back on my long-term goal, which is the liberation of Palestine from the river to the sea..."

Source: MEMRI, The Middle East Media and Research Institute.

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