Yassir Arafat died, 11/11 2004

[bosse_s]

Arafat died 3.30 AM CET at an army hospital in Paris.

This is a sad day for Palestinians and I send them my thoughts and wishes for a brighter future.

While Israeli military radio reported "nice to be rid of him", democratic and peaceloving nations will recognize Arafat for that without him, the world would probably not have known about the situation of the Palestinians in Israel.

"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." (Yassir Arafat at the UN, Nov.13, 1974) Remember that ones freedom fighter is another ones terrorist. That is how it has always been, still we try to see the world and its "evil" from only one perspective. Ours.

[bosse_s]

I find it rather interesting that not one single person have commented this. You know Arafat, yes?

[Marmaduke]

From Juan Cole's blog:

Levine on Arafat: Guest Editorial

The Death of Arafat and the Myth of New Beginnings

Guest editorial by Mark LeVine, Professor of modern Middle Eastern history at UC Irvine, author of Overthrowing Geography: Jaffa, Tel Aviv and the Struggle for Palestine (Berkeley: University of California Press) and Why They Don't Hate Us: Lifting the Veil on the Axis of Evil (forthcoming, Oneworld Publications.)


In the weeks leading up to Palestinian President Yassir Arafat’s death American politicians and pundits have repeatedly called on the Palestinian people to use the opportunity of his passing to transform the intifada from a violent uprising into a non-violent, democratic and pragmatic program for achieving independence. This is very good advice, needless to say, except for one small problem: Palestinians have been trying to build such a movement for the last two decades, and the Israeli Government, IDF and American policy-makers have done everything possible to make sure it could not be heeded.

One of the first exponents of Palestinian non-violence the Palestinian-American doctor Mubarak Awad, founded the Palestinian Centre for the Study of Nonviolence in 1985. His innovative ideas and training of Palestinians in the tactics of non-violent resistance to the occupation was considered dangerous enough by Israel that it expelled him from the land of his birth in 1988. During the same period, the government supported the rise to power of militant religious groups such as Hamas as a counterweight to the PLO (which that year recognized Israel’s right to exist).

By the time the first intifada wound down in the early 1990s Jewish/Israeli-Palestinian “dialog” or “people-to-people” groups had become all the rage, most of whom had as an important goal building relationships of trust and solidarity that could help Palestinians build a viable political future. Unfortunately, while liberal Israelis were busy sharing hummus with their new Palestinian friends successive Likud and Labor governments accelerated the pace of land confiscation, settlement construction and economic closure of the Territories, which ultimately left many Palestinians to wonder if all the conversation wasn’t a ruse to keep them occupied while Israel permanently secured its hold on their lands.

But mid-way through the Oslo era hope was still in the air. In January 1996 I sat on the terrace of a friend’s house in Abu Dis as about 100 meters away Yaser Arafat cast his vote in perhaps the greatest day in the history of Palestinian nationalism: the elections for the presidency and Legislative Assembly. Unfortunately, soon after the elections the CIA and Shin Bet began what seemed like weekly meetings with the “security” officials of the Palestinian Authority. The stated reasons were always to “coordinate security;” the real reason was to make sure the new Assembly was still born because newly elected legislators promised to investigate PA corruption and push for a final settlement more in line with the desire of Palestinian society.

Needless to say, the Assembly didn’t make it. In its place, however, Hamas did quite well, precisely because it constituted perhaps the only powerful voice of dissent against the emerging status quo of corruption and continued occupation.

Since the outbreak of the “al-Aksa intifada” in September 2000 most Palestinians I know--and increasingly, their comrades in the Israeli peace movement--have exerted incredible energy trying to build grass roots non violent movements that could somehow check the inexorable advance of the occupation and the slow death of the national dream of an independent state. The response by the Israeli military has often been brutal. Not just Palestinian activists, but foreign peace activists and even Israelis are routinely beaten, arrested, deported, and even killed by the IDF, with little fear that the Government of Israel would pay a political price for crushing non-violent resistance with violent means.

In this environment the very act of going about ones daily life without losing all hope and “joining Hamas” (something former Prime Minister Barak admitted he would have done if he were Palestinian) has become perhaps the supreme, if unheralded, act of non-violence against the occupation. The Israeli Government is quite aware of this, which is why it does its best to make daily life as difficult as possible for Palestinians.

Not surprisingly considering this dynamic, a poll I helped direct earlier this year revealed that Hamas has now surpassed the PLO as the most popular Palestinian political movement. But what of the courageous Palestinians who still believe in non-violence, who are risking their lives working with Israeli peace activists to fulfill the fading Oslo dream of two states living side by side in peace? We could ask this question to Ahmed Awad, founder of the non-violent Committee for the Popular Struggle against the Separation Fence, which has brought Palestinian and Israeli activists together in a relatively successful campaign to redirect the separation wall away from local olive groves. In the process his group has become a model for grass-roots, non-violent struggle.

Unfortunately, we’d have to wait at least three months for an answer, as Awad has just been jailed without charge by a military court on the accusation he constituted a “threat to security.” The judge who handed down the order hoped that his detention would lead him to “turn away from th[is] bad road with its unhappy ending,” although its hard to see whom his stated goal of “letting the world understand that there can be coexistence between us and the Jews” threatened. In the meantime, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that the army has stepped up violence and aggression against protesters in order to enable the fence to proceed along its original route.

And on it goes. As the Bush Administration and America’s pundocracy search for a new generation of pragmatic and non-violent Palestinian leaders, they should be heartened to know that they won’t have to look very hard to find them. But that’s because so many are either in the hospital, jail or exile. And like Arafat shriveling away in his besieged Muqata’a (which will now be his tomb), the Palestinian peace movement will continue to wither as long as Israel is more comfortable confronting Hamas than Ahmed Awad.



Mark Levine
Associate Professor of History
Department of History
Murray Krieger Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-3275

email: mlevine a_t_ uci d o t edu

Arafat's death is a loss. The man was far from perfect, but then he lived in far from perfect circumstances, and as this article clarifies, he was not the only one responsible for that.

[bosse_s]

So TC, what is your point beyond saying truisms?

[bosse_s]

People keep saying things like TC... and yeah, Arafat was probably corrupt. There have probably been some terrorist events happening with his knowledge and silent support.

It probably affect his credibility, but he was still important for the Palestinians and without him we would probably not even be discussing a Palestinian state today.

[bosse_s]

they all have blood on there hands, no doubt. So, looking at this from a "western political moral" perspective is like going into a porn club expecting to find a catholic priest preaching... (OH duh, maybe a very bad metahapor???)

[Marmaduke]

Originally posted by bosse_s
People keep saying things like TC... and yeah, Arafat was probably corrupt. There have probably been some terrorist events happening with his knowledge and silent support.

It probably affect his credibility, but he was still important for the Palestinians and without him we would probably not even be discussing a Palestinian state today.

I don't think T_C is so much to blame, more it results from the one sided media coverage that he received. Few I suspect realise that in an effort to dilute the PLA, Israel 'supported' Hamas. But it was easy to daemonise Arafat- that is not to say he was immune from criticism, but much of it in the mainstream press is biased and onesided.

I heard Sharon on the radio ask how Arafat could live with blood on his hands...a shame the interviewer did not ask him the same question.

And what do we get with the Bush-Blair lovein today ? More of the same garbage. There can only be peace when the Palestinians have done a,b,c....No mention about the demands that Israel should fulfill. Another 4 years of this bankrupt cr@p.

[bosse_s]

True TC, but only partially part of the problems. European nations and the EU have but a lot of money directly into projects like building schools, governmental structures etc., which have been ruined by Israeli forces without compensation to the Palestinian authorities OR the sponsors. (I think the EU have plans for a law-suit for the fact that Israel have not compensated for obvious cases of basically just destroying things without just cause)

Foreing aid have for the most part been re-routed around the Palestinian headquarters since several years, since it has been a problem with the corruption. Still, you will see that those money do only short-term positive effects, if they are being bulldozed to the ground.

[bosse_s]

Ah, I now realize the reason for your thread in at the Open Board! Seriously, I have no intention to make you think differently, nor to glorify the corrupt features of the Palestinan administration. My point was that we knew what was wrong and I do not think it was swept under the rug. IT WAS A TRUISM (if you have a problem with my choice of word, then consider that this is not my first language and help me with something more appropriate if you have a problem with it! )

The Israelis have also had its way to help renewing the Palestinan administration, by isolating it. I think it is important that EU and others have tried to re-direct its support around the administration, to be able to help where help has been needed. They have partially failed, and if large political and economical forces like that fail, it is not chocking that others do as well.

Finally, I think western media has a big responsibility not to demonize one part of this conflict as it is neither objective, nor does it benefit the situation. While the Swedish media probably have been "favoured" the Palestinians, the U.S media have "favoured" the Israeli side

[bosse_s]

I am lost!

[Wendist]

This may sound a bit provocative but where would the palestinians have been today without the use of violence?
There seem to be quite widespread support in Israel for some sort of peace negotiations but I belive the will to accept compromises is based more on a desire to end the violence rather than a desire to give the palestinians a fair deal.

If for example the next palestinian president were to unilaterally end all forms of palestinian use of force (and for the sake of argument lets pretend he would actually be able to deliver on his promise) would there then be any incentive for the israelis to go through with any meaningful negotiations? They would allready have achieved their most important goal, peace (or at least the absence of violence) and the outside world would probably lose interest as soon as the flow of images of death and destruction no longer filled the TV screens.

Would it be wrong to say that the palestinians need their "terrorists" because they are the only form of leverage the palestinians have on Israel?

[alissre]

Wendist: "Would it be wrong to say that the palestinians need their "terrorists" because they are the only form of leverage the palestinians have on Israel"

First of all, there is no need to use quotation marks in ""terrorists"", because those who deliberately kill innocent civilians are terrorists according to all definitions. You may wrongly argue Palestinians have no other choice but terror, but you can't deny their extensive use of terror. From a perspective of almost one year after Arafat death, the level of terror dropped quiet significantly, and this terror-reduction created a political situation that led to the Israeli Gaza disengagement. Mahmud abbas, the Palestinian authority leader said many times that the current Intifada (Palestinian terror campaign) is damaging the Palestinian cause, which contradicts the myth of terror as the only solution. Truly, the last 5 years of Intifada didn't help the Palestinians to achieve nothing except of death, unemployment, and raising a generation of children fed by hatred, ignorance, and poverty. Interestingly, this Intifada was in many ways helpful for Israelis, because it made the Israeli public more aware of the risks, and problems their state is facing. The Intifada also shifted the Israeli public opinion to the right, and left almost no left.
But anyway, the question of terror legitimacy is also related to the question of terror goal: whether or not the goal of terror is legitimate, not just if it's efficient. The second myth is that the Palestinian terror goal is freedom. Hamas, the main Palestinian terror resource, is an Islamic extreme group that its religious-goal is the destruction of Israel, while Palestinian freedom and democracy is not exactly their issue, on the contrary: they oppose democracy, oppose peace agreement with Israel. Interestingly, Hamas used terror as a tool for interrupting talks between Israelis and Palestinians, many times during the last 10 years.
In other words, terror was destructive for the Palestinians. More than that, Israel interest in political settlement with the Palestinians is motivated by many serious political reasons, while the terror issue is not necessarily the most important one.

"Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand." (Yassir Arafat at the UN, Nov.13, 1974)"
People believe to everything they want to believe, and turn blind eyes to everything else, this was exactly Arafat expertise: to tell completely different stories to different people.

[mykfin]

Good post alissre, unfortunately this thread is nearly a year old and the people involved are not here, you may get the odd one popping in every now and then, so i think you will dissapointed in a response.

Im not that interested in politics, but do you think the wall has anything to do with the slowing down of terror in the area?

[sortoff]

Arrrggghhh tis been awhile... mee thinks ol sortoff should lay in fer this page...arrrgghhh

seean as I bee part of this fram last year...arrrgghhh.


What say ye mates??? aaarrrggghh

[alissre]

"unfortunately this thread is nearly a year old and the people involved are not here"

It is still interesting that time changes the perspective, and things are looking different since Arafat death. About the question: I think the correct definition is barrier (most of this "wall" is composed of fence). If you ask me I would say this barrier is essential for Israel interests because of several reasons. Although the exact route of this barrier is not completely reasonable to me, I strongly support the principle of a barrier. I guess by this picture you trying to say something; I just don't understand exactly what.