Israel Plans Posthumous anti-Arafat Campaign 

ALUF BENN & AMOS HAREL / Haaretz 11nov04

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said yesterday that after the funeral of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, Israel will launch a propaganda campaign against him. The political-security cabinet yesterday approved the proposed plans to bury Arafat in Ramallah.

"It is feared that after his funeral Arafat will become a national hero and freedom- fighter," Sharon said. "We will launch a tough struggle to portray his murderous character and the fact that he is a strategist of world terror who hurt innocent people, both Israelis and American diplomats," he said.

The cabinet decided that the PA would be responsible for the public order and security in Ramallah during and after Arafat's funeral, and that Israel would not be involved in keeping order in the city. The Israel Defense Forces will be charged with "isolating" the event, in coordination with the Palestinians, to prevent a possible Palestinian attempt to "snatch" Arafat's coffin and bury him on the Temple Mount. However, at this time, this does not appear to be likely.

The defense establishment is getting ready for the Palestinian announcement of Arafat's death. Officials predict that it is most likely that the funeral will be held in relative quiet, but they are also preparing for other scenarios.

At this stage the PA's new leadership appears to be opting for a relatively small ceremony, for fear it may have trouble managing a large event. The Palestinians want to hold the memorial service in Cairo, in the presence of numerous world leaders. Then the body would be flown to Ramallah, where a ceremony would be held with the attendance of PA leaders, Fatah activists and foreign guests.

The PA will also hold symbolic funerals for Arafat in all West Bank and Gaza Strip cities for those who will not be able to make it to Ramallah.

IDF troops will form a "corridor" in which the foreign guests will move from Ben- Gurion Airport to Ramallah. Israel may allow Palestinian security forces to carry arms, unofficially.

The IDF will continue maintaining the roadblocks and allow no freedom of movement between the cities. Only funeral-goers will be allowed to leave their cities and go to Ramallah.

Israel's troops will be ordered to act with restraint and show respect for Palestinian grief, avoiding friction with the mourners as much as possible. Security sources said Israel will try to display goodwill toward the Palestinians regarding the funeral and refrain from sabotaging Abu Mazen's first leadership test.

Before the cabinet meeting Sharon consulted with Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and with senior defense and intelligence officials, who all said Israel would prefer Arafat to be buried in Gaza, but recommended consenting to the Palestinian request.

Sharon concurred and was backed by Military Intelligence head General Aharon Ze'evi Farkash and Shin Bet head Avi Dichter.

Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon noted, however, that the Palestinians do not have organized defense forces in Ramallah as they do in Gaza.

Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom suggested demanding the funeral not be held on Friday, but to have it on Saturday, for fear of disturbances at the prayers on the Temple Mount. Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supported him. But Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Amos Gilad, who heads the Defense Ministry's political- security branch, objected, saying it was better not to set conditions.

source: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEn.jhtml?itemNo=500075 13nov04

Behind the Camp David Myth:
Arafat didn't blindly spurn a generous offer

ROBERT MALLEY / Los Angeles Times 12nov04

Robert Malley was President Clinton's special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs. He now directs the Middle East and North Africa program at the International Crisis Group.

It took Yasser Arafat many years to persuade his fellow Palestinians of the wisdom of the two-state solution, and it took longer still to convince Americans and Israelis of the genuineness of his views. Yet it took only two weeks at Camp David in the summer of 2000 to wreck all the progress that had been made and for Arafat to regain the pariah status he once held.

Those talks failed, and in the aftermath a myth was born that has had a lasting and devastating effect: that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak made the most generous offer possible, but that Arafat summarily turned it down. He did so, the story goes, because he never really believed in the Jewish state's right to exist in the first place and because he had never really hoped to reach a just, comprehensive and lasting peace with Israel. Since 2000, it is this narrative — Camp David as a metaphor for Palestinian rejectionism — that has ravaged the Israeli peace camp, distorted both U.S. and Israeli policy and badly undermined confidence in a peaceful settlement of the conflict.

Why Arafat acted as he did during those 14 days will hover over any appraisal of his life. I was a member of the U.S. delegation at those talks and have never concealed my frustration with the Palestinians' attitude. Divided, they spent more time backstabbing each other than seeking a deal. Suspicious, they were quick to see potential loopholes and slow to recognize possible leads. Passive, they failed to put forward their own ideas, leaving it to others to present proposals they could then conveniently turn down. In all this, Arafat played his customary role — sitting back, standing still, staying mum.

Still, some reminders are in order. First, the question is not whether Arafat was up to the occasion — clearly, he was not — but whether his attitude reflected an inherent inability or unwillingness to end the conflict. As many Israeli and U.S. participants in the talks now acknowledge, numerous alternative explanations help account for his behavior: utter distrust of Barak, whom he saw as having humiliated and ignored the Palestinians and who he believed violated commitments; a rushed timetable oblivious to Palestinian political constraints; concern about domestic opposition at the popular level and divisions within the elite; and the absence of support from Arab countries for a deal. Arafat, as anyone who dealt with him knows well, moved only when compelled, preferring the ambiguity of deferral to the clarity of choice. At Camp David he had every reason to postpone and, as he saw it, little incentive to decide.

Second, although Camp David undoubtedly was a breakthrough, and although Israel was prepared to concede far more than in the past, the deal nevertheless didn't meet the minimum requirements of any Palestinian leader. Washington now welcomes the new leadership of Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Korei, but it is worth bearing in mind that neither could have embraced the Camp David ideas — and neither did.

A third oft-neglected point about Camp David is that the Palestinian positions, though clearly inconsistent with Israel's, nonetheless were compatible with the existence of a Jewish state: a Palestinian state based on the lines of June 4, 1967; Israeli annexation of limited West Bank territory to accommodate settlement blocs in exchange for the transfer of an equivalent amount of land from Israel proper; Palestinian sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem and over its holy sites; and implementation of the refugees' right of return in a manner designed to protect Israel's demographic interests. Those stances probably went beyond what the Israeli people could accept. But why is that any more relevant than whether Barak's stances went beyond what the Palestinian people could stomach?

The more difficult question is not why Arafat rebuffed the Camp David ideas but why he failed to embrace the Clinton parameters five months later in December 2000, which came far closer to meeting the Palestinian principles.

By then, however, everything had changed. The intifada was raging, Palestinians were seething and mourning their dead, and many of Arafat's advisors were counseling against the deal. Arafat, ever the short-term tactician and with his finger invariably fastened to the public pulse, wanted neither to reject the deal nor embrace it, basking in his reinvigorated popular status and unsure whether he could swiftly turn his people's mood from anger at Israel to peace with it. With President Clinton only weeks away from leaving office, and Barak not far behind, he probably believed he could wait for a better time, feeling more comfortable riding the wave of popular anger than risking his domestic status with a controversial agreement. Why rush to solve a 50-year-old conflict in a mere five months?

Besides, every previous encounter had suggested that if he held out for more, more would soon be offered. How Arafat will be remembered is a matter of historical interest, but, far more than that, one of great political import. Whoever succeeds him will lack his legitimacy, and any future peace agreement inevitably will be measured against what, in his people's eyes, would have been his stance. Arafat was a man who resorted to violence and tragically missed several opportunities. But he also was the first Palestinian leader to embrace the two-state solution and recognize Israel's right to exist. If we wrongly choose to depict Arafat as the man who could only say no, his successors will find it virtually impossible ever to say yes.

source: http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news2/latimes393.htm 13nov04

The Passing of Arafat With Him Goes the Two-State Solution

OMAR BARGHOUTI / Counterpunch 13nov04

As the pictures of the human waves have shown, not only his supporters grieved over his death. The more than 100,000 who converged in the Ramallah funeral included many who opposed his political line to various degrees. Even those who categorically opposed his idiosyncratic policy of "la-am," or yes-no, found themselves sharing in this communal sense of loss and sorrow. Arafat was more than just a leader. He was beyond doubt an emblematic Palestinian phenomenon that will not be replaced anytime soon.

Beyond the typical veneration of symbols, Arafat had another attribute that gave him his revered status in the minds and hearts of a majority of Palestinians: his assumption of the role of the political frame of reference. What Arafat did was, more often than not, perceived as somehow linked to a plan to achieve liberation and justice. People joked about, even derided his tactics at times, but he was the lowest common denominator among the diverse Palestinian political parties. He was the closest to the average person's analysis of the situation: emotive, not always rational, indulging in an exaggerated, but widely popular sense of autonomy. One Palestinian refugee once put it as such: "He speaks like us, without those big words that meant absolutely nothing to us. He is truly one of us."

And when you are the reference point, you can afford to shift your position at will. More or less. That's why only Arafat was able to shake hands and sign less-than-just interim deals with Israeli leaders of all convictions -- including accused war criminals -- without being seriously accused of treason. He always commanded the popular benefit of the doubt. This is precisely why only Yasser Arafat could deliver the two-state solution mentioned in numerous peace initiatives. Such a solution, by its very nature, falls far short of the minimal requirements of justice for Palestinians. Besides having passed its expiry date, it was never a moral solution to start with. In the best-case scenario, if UN resolution 242 were meticulously implemented, it would have addressed most of the legitimate rights of less than a third of the Palestinian people over less than a fifth of their ancestral land. More than two thirds of the Palestinians, refugees plus the Palestinian citizens of Israel, have been dubiously and shortsightedly expunged out of the definition of the Palestinians to make this happen. Such exclusion can only guarantee the perpetuation of conflict.

Even that was not on offer from anyone. Israel, with full and unflinching backing from the US, insisted on bantustanizing Palestinian territories, feverishly expanding Jewish colonies, stubbornly denying any responsibility for the Nakba (1948 catastrophe of dispossession) and along with it the right of Palestinian refugees to return, even refusing to recognize the Gaza strip and the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) as occupied territories, as stipulated in international law. What Israel demanded was capitulation. Nothing less. Arafat was not ready to sign on the dotted line, so he was severely punished. He went under with the memorable legacy of refusing to surrender. Thus the outpouring of sincere emotions by the mass of distraught Palestinians biding him farewell. "He preferred to die than to submit," many lamented.

Any future replacement of Arafat will have far less tolerance from a battered, impoverished and yet determined constituency. By definition, he will lack Arafat's unique historic clout, will garner less political support and will command far less popular backing; therefore, he will be quite vulnerable to public wrath in case he decides to even match Arafat's compromises, not to mention offer more concessions to Israel, as required to become "relevant" in the Israel-US club. Who would dare?

After Israel wakes up from its delusional euphoria over Arafat's death it will realize that it has lost its very last opportunity to impose on the Palestinians its own peace. Rather than accepting any settlement with the hope that their trusted leader will use it as a launching pad to achieve more far-reaching successes, now Palestinians will start recognizing any peace decoupled from justice for what it is: morally reprehensible and politically unacceptable. As a result, it will be pragmatically unwise as well. It may survive for a while, but only after it has been stripped of its essence, becoming a mere stabilization of an oppressive order, or what I call the master-slave peace, where the slave has no power and/or will to resist and therefore submits to the dictates of the master, passively, obediently, without a semblance of human dignity. This last so long as the slave has no power or will to resist. But only until then.

With Arafat's burial, the two-state solution will bite the dust. No one will dare break this piece of news, as too many have too much to lose if they admit it. But Israel will soon have to reckon with more and more Palestinians calling for a democratic, unitary state where Israeli-Jews and Palestinian-Arabs share equal rights and duties, after doing away with colonial oppression, ethnic supremacy and apartheid, and after the refugees are allowed to return. And if South Africa is any guide, such a struggle may exclude armed resistance, favoring non-violent means instead. How will Israel start to counter such a call on the world stage? Insisting on Jewish ethno-religious exclusivity will further entrench in the world public opinion the image of Israel as an anachronistic, pariah state, a new form of apartheid. Evoking the Holocaust may help Israel deflect any serious consideration of this democratic alternative for a while, but this is bound to crack under pressure from many parties interested in reaching an enduring and just peace in this troubled region.

Palestinians realize that a transient phase of chaos, indecisiveness and perhaps internal strife may descend upon them after Arafat's departure from the scene, but no birth comes without contractions. Those may well be the first signs of the next era: the struggle towards a democratic, secular state in historic Palestine.

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian political analyst. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on Human Terms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by the Guardian. He can be reached at: jenna@palnet.com

http://www.counterpunch.org/barghouti11132004.html