ARAFAT MUSTERS CHILDREN TO WAGE MORE WAR

Anyone who doubts the sincerity of Yasser Arafat's intentions for peace in the Middle East would be in good company following recent events. The PLO leader went into the streets of Jerusalem this week and urged children to fight Israelis.

This is the same Arafat who shared a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. In accepting the award, he said: "This highly indicative prize has not been granted to me and my partners, Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, to crown a mission that we have fulfilled, but to encourage us to complete a path which we have started with large strides, deeper awareness and more honest intentions." Within a year, Rabin was assassinated at a peace rally by a Jewish law student.

Peace is a puzzling conceptin the Mideast. Rabin may have been a martyr for peace. Arafat's call to arms issued to children does nothing but diminish the luster of the Nobel prize.