A look at life after Arafat
Yasser Arafat may be dead, but Arafatism lives on. That is the crucial fact amid all the talk about resurrecting the road map to peace. Arafat's principal legacy is hate, his gift to the world a kind of terrorism whose techniques have been aped from Indonesia to Iraq. Arafat was resolute in refusing to prepare his people for peace. He used every platform--radio, TV, newspapers, the mosques, schools, even summer camps for kids--to inculcate a hatred of Jews, Israel, and the West. The Jews, Arafat declared, "never lived in or ruled Palestine. . . . They were relying on false mythological sources," i.e., the Bible. Canaan, for Arafat, was not the Promised Land for Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their descendants; it was the land of banishment. For good measure, he added that "there was no temple in Jerusalem," thus denying that Jesus ever walked there, preached there, or was crucified there. A pox, in other words, on everyone's house. Pure Arafat.
The Palestinians who mobbed his coffin represented as much the hate he had fostered as grief. A Palestinian poll in Gaza asked whether rockets and mortar attacks on Israeli towns should continue even after Israel's full withdrawal: 51 percent approved of more attacks. Only 42 percent said no. A couple of years ago, another poll found only 26 percent of Palestinians favored stopping terrorist attacks--even if they were to receive all of the West Bank and Gaza, East Jerusalem, and sovereignty over the Temple Mount. No wonder any successor to Arafat will have trouble breaking with Arafat's rejectionist policies.
Mannequins. The great delusion in the West was that Arafat would lead the Palestinians to democracy and peace if only he were given more concessions. The hope in the Oslo peace pact was that Arafat might provide security for Israel against terrorism and democracy for the Palestinians. Instead, we ended up with neither security nor democracy. Again, pure Arafat. Yet even when he broke his promises, the Clinton administration refused to hold him accountable while the hundreds of millions of dollars he received to improve life for Palestinians were diverted to support a terrorist network. So now the Palestinians are to be guided, it appears, by some 10 feuding groups and their warlords who have about 40,000 guns (to say nothing of the criminal gangs that control swaths of the West Bank and Gaza).
Symptomatic of the chaos was the murder, at a commemorative service for Arafat, of two bodyguards of Arafat's likely successor, Mahmoud Abbas--a continuation of the enmity Arafat directed at Abbas in forcing him to step down as prime minister last year. Abbas and his sidekick, Ahmed Qureia, are both well known to the West, but both are only mannequins in a store window. The store itself is run by men like Bashir Nafi, Haj Ismail Jaber, Tawfik Tirawi, Jibril Rajoub, and Mohammed Dahlan. It is they who have the guns and, so, the power. There is no evidence that these men intend to give up either, or to crack down on terrorists and criminals. There is danger, instead, that the Palestinian leadership that emerges will seek popularity by encouraging the terrorists and the criminals.
What should Washington do?
1. Alleviate the difficulties of Palestinian life and encourage Israel to identify and support moderate Palestinians who want to build legitimacy and political power.
2. Hold Palestinians accountable. The fatal flaw of Oslo was that violations of Palestinian obligations provided the rationale not for rebuke but for more concessions.
3. Encourage the one positive development, namely Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's brave commitment, at the risk of his own political future, to withdraw from Gaza and from four West Bank settlements.
4. Resist the clamor from Europe to begin political negotiations before terrorist groups are dismantled.
5. President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair are right to advocate democratic ideals for the Palestinians, but we must recognize that, in the short run, we may see a Palestinian leadership even more radical than Arafat if those in charge insist on ignoring the underlying values of democracy--especially the rule of law.
There must be no rush to push a new road map. The emerging Palestinian leadership must prove its will and ability to transform the nation. A democratic Palestine offers the only chance to become a peaceful neighbor to Israel instead of a terrorist entity.
Careful, judicious leadership from Washington will have to convince Europe and the Arab countries that no single leap is likely to achieve justice and peace for all. If George Bush takes the long view, he could become not only a war president but a peace president, too.
This story appears in the November 29, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.