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Yasser Arafat

Arafat's path: unmet promise, unsated dreams

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN
Published November 11, 2004

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AMMAN, Jordan - The death of Yasser Arafat creates a huge vacuum in Palestinian leadership, but it presents a historic chance to revive moribund peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians.

An iconic figure in his checkered keffiyeh, Arafat leaves his people mired in violence, poverty and corruption yet still clinging to the dream of a Palestinian state.

Such was Arafat's devotion to the Palestinian cause he did not marry until late in life and spent little time with his glamorous wife, Suha. She and their young daughter live in Paris, where Suha reportedly squabbled with Palestinian officials over Arafat's estimated $1.3-billion fortune as he lay dying in a French hospital.

It was an ignominious end to a life that promised so much yet delivered so little.

"Arafat, what he do for the Palestinian people?" asked Wa'el Ibrhaim, heavy equipment operator from the Palestinian town of Jenin. "He get too much money from the gulf - Saudi Arabia - where's the money?"

Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, Arafat embodied the hopes of millions of Palestinians that they would return to their ancestral lands in Israel and claim Jerusalem as the capital of the new nation of Palestine.

It was a dream that always collided with reality: With aid from the United States, Israel emerged as a major military power unwilling to give up territory captured in Arab-Israeli wars.

After years of bloody guerrilla struggles and a general Palestinian uprising, Arafat and the PLO in 1993 renounced the use of terror and recognized Israel's right to exist. In return, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed that his country would withdraw from parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and Palestinian self-rule would be established in those areas.

For Arafat, the so-called Oslo accords would be the crowning glory of his career. He, Rabin and Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres shared the 1994 Nobel Peace Prize. And Arafat - who had been living in exile in Tunisia - returned in triumph to Gaza as the new Palestinian Authority began to run the day-to-day affairs of more than 3-million Palestinians.

But Rabin was assassinated a year later by a right-wing Jew, and Arafat lost the one Israeli leader he clearly admired and had proved he could work with.

Though Palestinians made some modest gains under Oslo's land-for-peace formula, they increasingly chafed under what they termed Israeli repression and harassment. The second Palestinian uprising began in September 2000, and it has been far more violent than the first.

Arafat denounced the suicide bombings, but Israelis said he did little to stop the terrorism and even encouraged it. In late 2001 Israeli missiles blew up his helicopter fleet, and Arafat was effectively banished to his compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah.

The confinement had an unexpected effect: It strengthened Arafat at the very time Palestinians had begun to question his leadership and the rampant corruption of the Palestinian Authority.

"Putting him under (Israeli) siege was a guaranteed method to provide Arafat with a shield against internal critics and any real attempts at reform," says Saleh Abd Al-Jawad, a Palestinian political scientist.

Al-Jawad says he is convinced Israel did not want a true "partner for peace," as it often stated, but instead hoped Palestinian society would disintegrate to the point most Palestinians would leave the region and drop their demands for statehood.

"I call it socie-cide," Al-Jawad said.

Even some Israelis say Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could have done far more to bolster Palestinians who might have mounted a credible challenge to Arafat during his lifetime.

One was Mahmoud Abbas, whom Arafat grudgingly named Palestinian prime minster in 2003. In a gesture of support for the moderate Abbas, it was widely suggested that Israel remove checkpoints, release some prisoners and ease economic restrictions.

But Sharon refused, saying Arafat would take credit for the gestures. Even as Sharon denied Abbas "achievements that could have strengthened his position," writes Akiva Eldar in Haaretz, the Israeli leader released terrorists of the radical group Hezbollah.

But with Arafat finally gone, Palestinians say there is a chance to develop new leaders and hold the first truly democratic elections. "While Arafat was here, no one dared to compete with him," says Mohsin Yusef, a history professor at the West Bank's Bir Zeit University.

Whether Arafat's death becomes a positive turning point in Israeli-Palestinian relations may depend on President Bush. Although he seemed to lose interest in his "road map for peace" before the U.S. elections, many around the world hope he will now take a more active role.

Among those encouraging him is British Prime Minister Tony Blair, whom Bush owes for his unstinting and unpopular support of the Iraq war.

Resolving the Mideast conflict is "the single most pressing political challenge in our world today," Blair said after Bush's victory, and the U.S. president will be hard pressed to ignore his closet ally.

In the end, though, it will come down to the simple issue of how much those directly affected want peace.

Will moderate Palestinians prevail over Hamas and other radical groups that seek to eliminate the Jewish nation and establish an Islamic state? Will moderate Israelis prevail over hard-liners who insist that the "Land of Israel" encompasses everything between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea?

Unfortunately, says the secular Yusef, "the religious people on our side are like the religious people on their side."

Susan Taylor Martin can be reached at susan@sptimes.com

[Last modified November 11, 2004, 05:25:40]