Ray Hanania
For the past four years, Israelis have insisted that they have no partner for peace and that Yasser Arafat was the stumbling block not only to achieving a real peace but also ending the cycle of violence in which they were the silent partner.
But now that Arafat is gone, Israelis must face the truth. They can no longer blame the failed peace process on the one man they vilified in life and slandered by hate in death.
On his deathbed, Arafat sought burial in Jerusalem, the city of his family and his people. Israel rejected that request, a first glimpse exposing the real obstacle to Middle East peace.
Arafat was also a hero to the Palestinian people. Yet in total disregard for the feelings of the Palestinians, the Israelis led a vicious onslaught against Arafat that was worse than the campaign launched against him in life.
The level of animosity by Israelis against Arafat, a heroic symbol to the Palestinian people, unravels Israel as the real absent peace partner.
True peace has always had a peace partner in both Arafat and the Palestinians. They have a track record of genuine compromise unmatched by Israel.
Arafat was the only Palestinian leader who could and did recognize Israel's right to exist, even without demanding a quid pro quo from the Israelis. He accepted the concept of a two-state solution in spite of a rule of law that prevailed on the side of Palestinian claims.
Arafat embraced a negotiated compromise that he mistakenly believed was on the up-and-up with Israel. He did so knowing full well that during that process Israel never once acted on its promise to dismantle its settlements, which are illegal, every single one, in the face of even the most conservative interpretations of international law. The peace process blamed on Arafat for failing was never on the up-and-up. It was always skewered toward Israel’s best interests and advantage. It was managed by Clinton envoy, Dennis Ross, a negotiator who had a religious conviction and bias toward Israel. Worse, rather than act as true arbiters for compromise, the United States and president Clinton stood as solid advocates for Israel.
The assertion that Israel’s offer to the Palestinians at Camp David was “fair” or “just” is so patently outrageous that it’s hard to resume peace negotiations from that point with any seriousness.
It may have been the “best offer,” but it was flawed. Never written down. Never affirmed. Always waved like a mirage to draw the Palestinians into conceding more in exchange for what they always get from Israel, nothing.
There is only one fair solution to the Palestine-Israel conflict and Arafat supported it. It is Israel that stands as the true obstacle to peace. Compromise demands the return of the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and Arab East Jerusalem, lands occupied in the 1967 War.
Compromise demands that Israel dismantle ALL of its illegal settlements, including those built around East Jerusalem on lands confiscated illegally from their rightful Palestinian owners.
Compromise demands that Israel trade, inch-for-inch, land for any that it keeps. Instead, Israel’s “greatest offer” proposed 1 inch for every 9 inches of occupied land, and not even in writing.
Rather than open a new door to peace, Arafat’s death might pave the way for a Palestinian leadership driven by political extremism and the rejection of negotiation with Israel based on religious faith.
The rise of religious Palestinian extremism is a force Israel inadvertently helped create when Israeli hard-liners helped Sheikh Ahmed Yassin launch an Islamic alternative to Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s. They believed a religious alternative would undermine Arafat’s growing influence.
That policy continued even up until Arafat’s death. By destroying Arafat’s secular government, and blaming the failure of the peace process on him personally, Israeli hard-liners have strengthened Hamas.
But wily in life, Arafat was strategic in death, too.
Though he died on November 11th, it was the ultimate irony that news of Arafat’s impending “death” began on the 9th anniversary of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, Arafat’s only real partner in peace.
Rabin was murdered by an Israeli fanatic on November 4, 1995, demonstrating that Israelis are prone to violence in the face of a reasoned outcome that requires true compromise.
Arafat was a hero. Plain and simple. He was a revolutionary in the same sense of George Washington. If Arafat can be faulted for anything, it was that he was never a good negotiator, nor was he a great government leader either. But what revolutionaries ever are?
Arafat faced an even greater, more insurmountable challenge of trying to transform from a revolutionary to the leader of a government constantly undermined and influenced by Israel.
But his genius is undeniable.
Arafat took the Palestinian people out of an oblivious desert. And in the face of the greatest ever hate-inspired propaganda campaign directed against any people on this Earth, he prevailed exposing a canard instilled by Israeli rejectionism that “the Palestinians, they don’t exist.”
Israel will forever be challenged by a people who refused to surrender, who cannot be defeated and who insist on negotiation based on fairness and justice.
Israelis must accept that there can be no peace without justice or fairness. They can no longer hide behind Arafat as the excuse for why peace is unachievable.
Although Arafat, the man, will be gone, his inspiration to fight for justice and fairness is a legacy that will forever flourish among Palestinians.
Arafat was also pragmatic and recognized that compromise and the notion of “two states” mandated that Palestinians give up the demand that refugees be allowed to return to their original homes and lands. But he insisted that the Israelis recognize their responsibility in creating the refugee problem, apologize for it and be the major sponsors of a compensation fund.
But without a solid foothold in sharing Jerusalem, Arafat could not push that compromise which remains the core foundation of the Palestinian resistance to Israel’s existence. Palestinians have given away a lot to Israel and even most moderates don’t believe that the right of return should be surrendered without a major concession from Israel.
As has always been the case, the choice between a just and fair peace, or a future of increasing violence is one that only Israel has the power to make.
Ray Hanania is an award-winning nationally syndicated Palestinian American columnist. He can be reached at www.hanania.com.
1929 – 2004
