Palestine Greater
Than Arafat
By Sam Bahour
11November , 2004
Countercurrents.org
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 Arafats 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 Arafats 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, Arafats 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 PLOs 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 Arafats 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 Arafats 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
Arafats 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 Israels 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 [email protected].Reprint
of this article is granted by the author.