[News] Palestine Greater Than Arafat

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http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article3311.shtml
Palestine Greater Than Arafat
Sam Bahour writing from Ramallah, occupied Palestine, Live from Palestine, 
11 November 2004

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Posters of Arafat in central Ramallah, 11 November 2004. (Maureen Clare Murphy)

The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence is larger than the 
late President Yasir Arafat. The decades-long symbolism that Arafat 
embodied should not be underestimated. It is this symbolism that 
Palestinians are mourning. The substance of Arafat's symbolism has to do 
with how it has represented Palestinian nationalism and the five decade 
struggle for justice for a people that were dispossessed in 1948, 
militarily occupied in 1967, attacked while in exile in 1970 in Jordan and 
1982 in Lebanon, and most recently, battered in their own homes in the West 
Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. A wide spectrum of opinions about 
Arafat, the man and the leader, will surely outlive the international 
flurry of media interest in his death. However, the world must be aware 
that the Palestinian struggle is beyond any single individual.

During the last decade, Yasir Arafat brought to the table something that 
Israel and the United States could only previously dream about: the single 
legitimate source for Palestinian political decisions. Through his 
iron-fisted and highly centralized control of Palestinian decision making 
bodies, finances and fighters, Arafat was able to coax his people into 
dealing with a new reality, the Oslo Peace Process, that he hoped would 
open the door for good faith from Israel and the United States. Arafat 
hoped that this process would ultimately end in a political solution 
resulting in two independent states living side by side, Palestine and 
Israel. History has proven that Israel and the United States had other 
plans -- the creation of a process that would, in and of itself, become the 
means as well as the goal. It was a process that would serve as the final 
nail in the coffin of the legitimate Palestinian demands that international 
and humanitarian law be applied to their case.

Israel and the United States made a major blunder. They ignored the fact 
that the “peace” they had made was a peace between leaders and not between 
peoples. Thus, as the US and Israel unsuccessfully sought to twist Arafat's 
arm in the Camp David II talks in Year 2000, they began a concerted 
campaign discrediting Arafat and pinning the blame of the breakdown of 
talks on a single person. Arafat was truly the shrewder politician. He knew 
that for a peace among leaders to be transformed into a peace among 
peoples, the real issues of the conflict had to be justly addressed. 
Refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, and statehood were not negotiating cards, 
but the essence of the entire effort.

It is amazing how someone so "irrelevant," such as Arafat was deemed by 
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, can attract so much attention even in 
his death. The international media that has flooded the city of Ramallah, 
Arafat's last place of refuge, is poised to analyze every minute aspect of 
his death and burial. What they will most likely miss is the most important 
part of his legend, which lies in the fact that the struggle for 
Palestinian freedom and independence, which Arafat symbolized, will not be 
buried with him.

Once the tears are wiped away the situation can take many shapes, the most 
likely being that the Palestinian leadership will be able to establish 
governing legitimacy. However earning leadership legitimacy will take some 
time. Among the complications are that there are several Palestinian 
political bodies that must be addressed, since Arafat led all of them 
single-handedly.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will be the most difficult to 
address since it is a body that represents all Palestinians worldwide and 
is the formal signatory to the Oslo Peace Accords, from which the 
Palestinian Authority was established. The PLO has not held elections for 
decades and the basic issue of who is an eligible member of this body, as 
well as where their meetings should be held, will be internally questioned 
in the days to come. Additionally, unlike the Palestinian Authority, which 
is a rather new body and has been under tremendous international scrutiny, 
the PLO's inner workings and finances are a black box to many Palestinians, 
leaders as well as masses.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), being a product of the Oslo Peace Process, 
is solely focused on governing the Palestinians living under occupation. It 
is expected that this body, especially given a recently enacted Basic Law, 
will make a stable succession and continue to perform its duties. It is 
also expected that the international community will be extremely interested 
in continuing to politically and financially support the PA in order to 
avoid a social upheaval in the Occupied Territories that would certainly 
turn toward the Israeli occupiers as well. The Palestinian Authority is 
where it will be most likely that the first free and democratic elections 
would take place in the post-Arafat era. However, unlike Arafat, who had a 
multitude of vantage points, the expected outcome of PA elections would 
result in a vision produced by a people that, for many, know no other life 
except that of living under Israeli military occupation and the death and 
destruction that the Oslo process has brought them. Politically, this will 
create a more hard-line position toward Israel, albeit mixed with sober 
practicality.

The third body that the Palestinian leadership will need to address 
post-Arafat is Arafat's own political party, FATAH. This will be a long 
drawn-out saga since no one party member is privy to the decision-making 
process, finances and grassroots support. The one FATAH member that has the 
ability to rally the party is Palestinian Legislative Council member and 
FATAH Secretary Marwan Barghouti, who Israel has imprisoned along with 
7,000 other Palestinians.

In light of the complex and sensitive situation that Arafat's death has 
created, it would be naïve for the world, or the new Palestinian leadership 
for that matter, to think that a quick political settlement could be 
achieved without addressing the core issues, once and for all. To continue 
to force-feed Palestinians with half-cooked initiatives, such as the 
Unilateral Disengagement Plan, the Roadmap, the Tenant Plan, the Mitchell 
Plan, the Oslo Accords and such would be yet another wasted opportunity for 
the world community to resolve this conflict. And with every wasted effort 
more innocent people will die on both sides of the illegal Separation Wall 
that Israel is building on Palestinian lands and which has turned 
Palestinian cities into open-air concentration camps.

Time will be needed as Palestinians prepare for long overdue elections, the 
restructuring of their organizations, and the bringing to trial of those 
who have stolen or misused Palestinian public funds in the past. An Israel 
led by Ariel Sharon will surely do all in her power to make sure that the 
Palestinians fail in picking up the pieces after Arafat's demise. Thus, it 
is the responsibility of the international community to finally step in and 
play its neglected role of protecting the militarily occupied Palestinians 
and demanding that Israel immediately abide by all Security Council and 
General Assembly resolutions, which call for the real end of military 
occupation and not a redeployment ploy such as that being offered for Gaza 
in Israel's Disengagement Plan.

The United Nations should immediately convene to deploy multinational 
troops to provide protection to the Palestinian people, as stipulated for 
by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Such an international presence 
would serve many purposes. On the one hand, it would protect the 
Palestinians from the continuing onslaught by the Israeli military and give 
them time to recover from five decades of autocratic rule. On the other 
hand, a multinational peace-keeping force would save Israel from itself, 
since its continuous pushing of an occupied people to total despair can 
only breed more violence.

Despite the confusion of the hour, one fact remains clear. The Palestinian 
people, collectively, whether in the Occupied Territories, scattered in 
squalid refugee camps around the Middle East, or living in exile, will 
never wake up one day and accept the historic injustice that has been done 
to them. As long as Palestinians breathe they will rightfully demand that 
law and justice prevail in ending the nightmare that has haunted them for 
more than 50 years. It is in this spirit that one may recall the words of 
former United States President John F. Kennedy when he said, "Those who 
make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."




Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the Israeli 
Occupied Palestinian City of Al-Bireh in the West Bank and can be reached 
at sbahour at palnet.com.


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