Prove them wrong

November 7 2004

Proving them wrong

pv vivekanand

THE FIRST thought that occurred to many in the Middle East and outside when they heard and saw Palestinian President Yasser Arafat being flown to France for urgent medical treatment last week was that he would never return alive to Palestine. There were two reasons for that conviction: It was presumed that Arafat was dying; and that even if he did somehow survive the health crisis, then Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon would not allow his return home.

Today, Arafat is reportedly hovering between life and death in a French hospital. Reports conflict over whether he is brain dead or is showing signs of recovery from a coma.

Back home in the West Bank, the top ranks of the Palestinian leadership are putting up a facade of unity at a time of crisis, but it is clear that a power struggle is already being fought behind the scenes. The very nature of the ideologies that went into the Palestinian struggle for independence and statehood and the various phases it went through in the last four decades dictate that the transition of power would not exactly be very smooth.

Fourteen secular and Islamist groups on Friday called for Palestinian unity and insisted on a unified leadership saying the deterioration of Arafat's condition warrants collective action. Islamist groups fear that Israel would exploit the situation and further advance its quest to pre-empt realisation of the Palestinian rights in Palestine. They have vowed not to ease their armed resistance against Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The Palestinian people, for whom Arafat continues to be an icon of their more than half a century of struggle for independence and statehood, seem confused amid suggestions that Sharon's secret agents had something to do with Arafat's ill-health; that the all-resourceful Mossad had used a secret biological weapon against Arafat. Or perhaps someone, somewhere close to Arafat had been corrupted into administering a slow-acting poison to remove him from the Palestinian political scene once and for all. That would help Sharon keep his "pledge" that he would never deal with Arafat as leader and representative of the Palestinian people and also to single out someone from the top Palestinian ranks to negotiate and accept the Israeli version of peace in Palestine.

Israel is fearful of a Palestinian backlash in the event of Arafat's death. It has stepped up its military presence in the occupied territories and is braced to carry out massacres if that is what it takes to quell the Palestinian sentiments.

Bush couldn't care less

US President George W Bush, who has stood solidly behind Sharon's refusal to deal with Arafat, could not care less if the Palestinian leader passes away. One gets a feeling that Bush might not indeed be well informed about the ground realities in Palestine and he could not be bothered to learn them either. As far as he is concerned, Israel would be given what it asks for, regardless of what Arafat, the Palestinians, the Arabs and the world think of the American posture.

The Europeans are indeed more aware of the situation in Palestine than their American counterparts. They know that Europe would be among the first to suffer if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were to spill over beyond the borders of Palestine. They realise that the Palestinians' frustration over the US-backed Israeli rejection of their legitimate rights would have more serious repercussions for Europe than the US.

That was behind the European Union's pledge on Friday to work "24 hours a day" to ensure Palestinians achieve their own state.

"To show our solidarity at this difficult time they can be sure that Europe will continue to make every effort to ensure that the Palestinian state becomes a reality," said the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana. "We are committed to that. We will continue to work 24 hours a day. That is the message of hope that we can give to the people of Palestine at this time of suffering."

The statement is also an explicit affirmation that regardless of what happens to Arafat, the world has a responsibility not to ignore the Palestinian cause that has gone through ups and downs over the decades and the struggle that has run into a wall in the form of Ariel Sharon and his hawkish camp which has no room whatsoever for allowing the creation of a Palestinian state in Palestine.

That European affirmation in itself is the greatest tribute to Arafat, who acquired the name of "the great survivor" against odds that often seemed impossible to bet against.

Arafat led the Palestinian struggle through turmoil and crises and had to make many compromises in order to arrive at the landmark Madrid conference in 1991 where Arab-Israeli peace talks were launched against a backdrop of what the Arabs and international community thought was the good faith of UN resolutions leading to the realisation of the Palestinian aspirations.

In fact, Arafat accepted in 1989 the inevitability of having to recognise that the hard-liners' quest to "eliminate" the state of Israel was only a pipe dream, given the regional and international geopolitical realities.

Committed to pledge

In a document called the Stockholm Declaration, Arafat accepted that the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was prepared to negotiate with Israel within the framework of a comprehensive peace settlement on the basis of UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338; he agreed that the to-be created Palestinian state would live in peace with Israel and other neighbours and internationally recognised borders; and that the PLO opposed "individual and state terrorism in all its forms" and would not resort to it.

Since then, Arafat remained committed to these pledges and the then Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, drew from that commitment in September 1993 to press him into signing the Oslo agreements under US auspices. The Oslo agreement called for five years of interim autonomy for the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza during which the two sides would negotiate the "final status" of the territories, including the future of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees and the borders of the proposed Palestinian state.

However, changes in the Israeli political scene following the assassination of Rabin in November 1995 shattered the process launched with the Olso agreements signed under US auspices.

Israel went back on every point that it had agreed with Arafat and led to the present state of renewed armed struggle against the Jewish state's occupation of Palestinian lands.

Israel is conveniently ignoring that Arafat had crossed what many Palestinians considered as the red line in their struggle for liberation. Israel is overlooking that it was because he adopted a "moderate" political line that Arafat lost some ground with his own people.

His acceptance of the points mentioned in the Stockholm Declaration and reaffirmed in the Oslo agreements was seen by hard-liners not only as reneging on all previous commitments to secure the liberation of Palestine from Israeli occupation but also as offering legitimacy to Israeli injustice against the Palestinians.

As a result, many say, Arafat was deemed to have lost on both sides. He already made "unacceptable concessions" without gaining anything in return from Israel and this has alienated a segment of the Palestinian people; and Israel is no longer willing to deal with him as leader of the Palestinian people.

Sharon subjected Arafat to the height of humiliation by confining him like a prisoner to his headquarters in Ramallah for nearly three years and portrayed him like a caged lion which had lost its teeth anyway.

However, Arafat might prove Israel wrong. The Palestinian masses still consider him as their father figure and symbol of their hopes and aspirations. Indeed, there are many who hope that Abu Ammar -- Arafat's nom de guerre he adopted from a companion of the Prophet Mohammed [PUBH], Ammar Bin Yasser -- or Al Khityar (Old Man), as he is fondly known among his people, might unite the Palestinians in his death.

That is the message that came out of Gaza on Friday in the call for a collective leadership for the Palestinian struggle.

Ironically, Sharon, who treated Arafat as inconsequential while confined in Ramallah, fears Arafat in death. He opposes an Arafat burial in Jerusalem because he is apprehensive that Abu Ammar's grave could be a rallying point for the entire Palestinian nation to hit back at Israel with a vengeance.