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Editorial Arafat is not the issue
November 4th, 2004 -- The dramatic removal of Yaser Arafat for a Paris hospital has generated a huge amount of speculation about the anticipated repercussions of his possible departure from the scene. This has become a well-rehearsed exercise, repeated on numerous occasions over the years whenever the Palestinian leader’s political survival has appeared to come into question — a perception usually more reflective of his detractors’ wishful thinking than of actual reality. It happened after his departure from besieged Beirut in 1982 and the subsequent Syrian-backed challenge to his leadership, after the 1990-91 Gulf crisis seemed to leave him bereft of Arab support, after the Israeli assault on his Ramallah headquarters three years ago finally buried the Oslo process, and after the US Administration joined the Israeli government in making a change of Palestinian leadership a precondition for peace. On each occasion, Arafat defied predictions of his impending demise. And every time, it was not just his tactical astuteness that came to his rescue, but also his unique standing among his people. But now Arafat’s continued leadership is being questioned on medical rather than political grounds. However he copes with his latest illness, the deterioration in his physical condition, even before his long-enforced incarceration in the Ramallah Muqaata, has been obvious for some time. The seriousness of the affliction that led to his being flown to Paris for treatment has yet to be made clear. But it is unsurprising that the Israelis should have sought to talk up its gravity before it was even diagnosed. While the news of Arafat’s illness earned him a fresh outpouring of Palestinian public sympathy and support — accompanied by a heightened sense of foreboding about the future — the Israeli government openly relished the prospect that it might be terminal. Israeli leaders contemptuously discussed the restrictions they would place on the Palestinian leader’s burial arrangements, while indicating that they might condescend to negotiate with his successors should they prove themselves deserving. Reactions on the two sides could not have been more different. Yet at a basic level they reflected a shared perception of the man who has, for better or worse, personified the Palestinian struggle for nearly four decades: as an obstacle, in the final analysis, to the kind of future that Ariel Sharon envisages for his people. There are few excuses for entertaining any illusions about what that future entails, under the guise of preparing for a “unilateral disengagement” from the Gaza Strip while subjecting it to the most fearsome military pounding in memory. As Sharon’s aide Dov Weisglass was recently obliging enough to spell out, the whole point of the Gaza ploy is to make sure “that there would not be a political process with the Palestinians” for the foreseeable future while Israel proceeds to make its colonization of the West Bank irreversible. The demonization of Arafat has been an essential and deliberate part of this strategy from the start, both on the ideological and diplomatic levels. By going along with it, Washington has enabled Israel to abandon even the pretence of aspiring to a negotiated settlement, and effectively compelled other players — Europeans and Arabs among them — to help side-line the only living Palestinian leader with the capacity to deliver one. That he also, for all his faults, has a stronger claim to democratic legitimacy than any other Arab ruler does not seem to have troubled them. For all their professed concern to see the cycle of violence end and the peace process revive, world governments have largely looked on as Sharon has dealt death and destruction to the Palestinians in ever increasing doses — over 150 killed by Israeli forces in October alone — while casting the problem as one of Palestinian leadership. There can be little doubt that even if Arafat were no longer in place, today’s Israel would have no difficulty concluding that there is still no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. Its chances of nurturing an alternative leadership that would (or could) do its bidding while retaining any public credibility must be close to zero, although some names are being touted as possible candidates. Sharon would probably like nothing more than a serious outbreak of succession-related struggles among the Palestinians that would demonstrate their unworthiness to the rest of the world. But nobody is more conscious of that than the Palestinians themselves, whatever they may think of Yaser Arafat and his methods. |
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