A TRIBUTE TO YASIR ARAFAT

“Don’t forget Palestine”


by Sonja Karkar






For fifty years, Yasser Arafat - or Abu Ammar as he was more familiarly known
- made the Palestinian cause his life’s journey, and along the way, be
became the undisputed leader of the Palestinian people. His passion spilled
over into three words “Don’t forget Palestine” - words he wrote to Egypt’s
first President in 1953 when he was still a student, and words which
remained his mantra to the end. He lived and breathed Palestine, but
sadly, he did not survive to see an independent Palestinian state.

While the dream eluded him, Arafat was still looked upon as “father of the
nation”, a man who had almost single-handedly put Palestine back on the
world stage when the very name Palestine had been practically obliterated
from the history books and maps, and its people had been deemed
non-existent. Naturally, as one would expect after fifty years of
controversial public life, there are those who love him and those who hate
him, the praise and the slander each creating their own version of the man.
Some criticisms are valid: most have been manufactured. Yet, Arafat managed
to keep his head above the madding crowd, determined always to bring his
people home from the wilderness.

Like all liberation leaders, Yasser Arafat had to struggle against the tide
of influential powers, and even world opinion, but none were ever in
Arafat’s precarious position – pitted against a powerful enemy, surrounded
by ambitious Arab leaders from neighbouring countries, thwarted by an
interfering Western world, unable to operate from within his own country,
without a well-equipped army, his people dispersed throughout the world, and
internationally unrecognised. Against such overwhelming odds, Arafat
continually had to navigate the shifting sands of intrigue and sabotage, and
he made mistakes. But, as the late eminent Palestinian doctor, Haidar
abd-al-Shafi pointed out “Whenever the need arose to make a courageous
decision, all the others disappeared and Arafat was left alone. He was the
only one who had the courage to decide.”


Tripoli, 1973

He was beloved. Arafat always sat amongst his people, never in palaces.
Friends and visitors found his warmth engaging and his interest genuine.
Stories abound of how Arafat would offer a morsel of chicken or some other
delicacy from his own plate to tempt a guest – it was his form of breaking
bread. Even in his last years, he chose to remain in the besieged and
rotting Ramallah compound with his people rather than abandon them or his
country for a more comfortable life in exile. For all that, Arafat was a
lonely man. He had sacrificed what other men wouldn’t and couldn’t for
Palestine.


Ramallah, 2004

When Arafat was born sometime in August, 1929, his destiny was fated to be
burdensome. His birth name alone carried the weight of family pedigree –
Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat Al-Qudwa al-Husseini. His birthplace, often
disputed – Cairo or Jerusalem – saw him move from one city to the other so
much so that either could just as well have been his home. Perhaps some
foresaw his future and determined to call him Yasser meaning easy, but there
was nothing easy in the path he chose whilst studying engineering at Cairo
University. It was there that he became actively involved with the politics
of Palestine, and by 1958, he and some friends had founded Al-Fatah, an
underground network of secret cells, which then produced a magazine
advocating armed resistance against Israel.

Al-Fatah was not recognised by the Arab states because Syria, Jordan and
Egypt had formed their own group called the Palestine Liberation
Organisation (PLO) in a bid to control a political imbroglio fomenting
within their midst. However, the humiliating defeat of the Arab States in
the 1967 war - having lost the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the West
Bank – saw Arafat’s Fatah movement rise to prominence due to Arafat’s
guerrilla tactics which had achieved a considerable measure of success
against Israel. This was a turning point for Arafat. He realised that if
the Palestinians were ever to succeed, they could only rely on themselves,
and in 1968, thousands of Palestinians had joined the ranks of Fatah,
hailing Arafat as their hero and their leader.

It was natural that Arafat should take on the mantle of Chairman of the PLO
after the Arab losses, although his guerrilla attacks against Israel worried
the leaders of some Arab countries because they preferred a more
conciliatory approach, which would primarily benefit them. Not long after,
Jordan expelled him and his followers, accusing him of setting up “a state
within a state”. For the next 25 years, he operated from inside Lebanon and
then Tunis before finally setting foot in Palestine. This added to the many
difficulties Arafat faced in holding the liberation movement together. The
fact that he managed this for the years he spent outside Palestine, speaks
volumes about his command and influence, and more importantly, his
sensitivity to the nuances of all the different factions, passions,
opinions, and pressures that surrounded him.

However, Arafat never saw armed struggle as the only solution, and indeed
when he realised that Israel could not be vanquished by force after the 1973
defeat of Egypt and Syria, he began negotiating with Israel. One of his
greatest victories came on 13th November, 1974, when Arafat was invited to
address the UN General Assembly for the first time as leader of a legitimate
people – the Palestinians. In a dramatic speech, he called on the
international community to decide between an olive branch and a freedom
fighter’s gun.


speaking at the UN, 1974

For the next 14 years, Arafat worked with incredible patience, always
sensitive to the passions arising from his people’s overwhelming pain. It
was a slow process of dialogue and a gradual introduction of his ideas. But,
in all that time, he never neglected to support the men who were still
fighting in Lebanon. Both in 1982 and 1983, he stood with them against the
Israeli General Sharon who had invaded Lebanon to drive out the Palestinians
and to kill him. Both times, Arafat left to fight another day, refusing to
surrender. Those who fought with him will never forget his courage and
that he, like them, was ready to die for the cause.

As the 1987 intifada broke out, Arafat again began negotiations with Israel.
It was the following year that Arafat addressed the UN General Assembly in a
remarkable speech, which not only defended the Palestinian position, but
also accepted the need for compromise in the interests of peace. By agreeing
to an international conference for peace based on UN Resolutions 242 and
338, Arafat de facto recognised Israel and the right of the two states to
exist side by side. Until then, compromise had not been regarded as an
option by a people cruelly dispossessed and still victims of Israel’s brutal
occupation and oppression. That Arafat was able to bring about a paradigm
shift in their thinking, whereby they accepted their enemy’s right to exist
on 78% of the land stolen from them is extraordinary, and underlines
Arafat’s credibility with his people. No one else could have turned the
Palestinians around.

From then on, Arafat was involved in numerous peace negotiations with
Israel, and the US as broker. However, his decision to back Saddam Hussein
in the Gulf War of 1991 threw the Palestinians back into the abyss. He paid
a huge price for his loyalty to the one Arab leader who had supported the
Palestinians. His decision rendered Arafat irrelevant as a negotiating
partner, and from this position Arafat had the painful task of clambering
out of the abyss to re-establish his and the PLO’s credibility and bring
Palestine back into international focus.

In the meantime, bilateral talks held between Washington, Israel and a
non-PLO delegation, had stalled, and the PLO entered into secret
negotiations with Israel in Oslo. Arafat knew that concessions had to be
made and so he made concessions – too many for some and fatal ones for
others. Effectively, the arrangements gave Arafat limited self-rule in the
West Bank and the Gaza Strip in exchange for Palestinian recognition of
Israel. Arafat was expected to establish a police force to control internal
security and leave external security to the Israelis. Other issues were to
be negotiated at various stages over five years, the most difficult ones
being left to “final status” talks. These arrangements meant that Arafat had
finally abandoned his long held dream of a single secular democratic state
in favour of the two state solution. In reaching such a compromise, Arafat
had taken a political gamble knowing that some would see it as a sell-out in
order to bring the PLO back from the cold. Others were convinced that this
shift was well worth the sacrifices the Palestinians would have to make
individually and collectively. The negotiations culminated in the signing of
the “Declaration of Principles” in 1993. With US President Bill Clinton
watching, Arafat shook hands with Israel’s Prime Minister Rabin and thereby
sealed an interim agreement between the PLO and Israel of joint recognition.


Shaking hands with Israel Prime Minister Rabin, watched by US President Clinton, 1993

For Palestinians around the world, it was a momentous occasion. Many saw it
as the beginning of a new, although severely protracted, Palestine. Others
were outraged. They felt Arafat had offered too much and consigned the
Palestinians to Bantustans, effectively making a two state solution
impossible. Nevertheless, in January 1996 Arafat was elected the first
president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) overseeing the 88-seat
Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC) governing the West Bank and Gaza
Strip. It was a short-lived victory. Rabin was assassinated by an Israeli
extremist and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu, determined to undermine the
Oslo process, refused to implement the first stages of the agreement.

The world had expected Arafat to become a statesman after the Oslo Accords,
but Israel did not allow him the dignity of presiding over a state. Arafat
had been simply relegated to the task of keeping the Palestinian population
under control while Israel kept a vice-like grip on the provisional state’s
borders, airspace and water, inevitably affecting its economic viability.
Clearly, Israel had never intended to hand over territorial sovereignty.

It was another devastating blow to Arafat’s credibility. The Oslo Accords
had not ended the occupation. Instead, the Palestinians found themselves
facing an apartheid situation worse than anything endured by South Africa.
The blanket closure of Palestinian civilian life, random attacks and
relentless home demolitions rendering thousands homeless, while Israel
continued to build settlements, soon caused some Palestinians to wonder what
Arafat had actually achieved for them. Arafat, under an obligation to
provide peace and security, saw his police force being decimated by Israeli
targeted attacks and was then in the humiliating position of being unable to
keep a lid on the explosive situation that was building daily.


Elusive peace

By July 2000, Arafat was being pressured to take part in “final status”
talks hosted by US President Clinton at Camp David. These talks were
supposed to be the culmination of the phased Oslo peace process and were
meant to resolve the most difficult issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian
refugees. Arafat had to walk away: he simply could not agree to Israel’s
conditions. There was no choice. He either had to accept the Bantustans
already proven so disastrous in Apartheid South Africa, back down on the
inalienable right of return for the Palestinian refugees, and make
impossible concessions on East Jerusalem, or accept the ugly consequences of
refusing to negotiate “peace”. Prime Minister Barak’s “generous” offer was
totally without substance: a threat rather than a proposal.

Arafat, of course, was the bête noire of the talks. We are never told that
during those negotiations, Israel offered no detailed solution and nothing was in
writing. Neither are we told that contrary to what had been agreed at Oslo,
Barak continued to build settlements in the Occupied Territories. And,
whatever support Arafat might have been able to garner from his people on
some of the issues being negotiated, concessions on East Jerusalem as the
capital of the Palestinian State, and the right of return for all Palestinian refugees,
were simply non-negotiable. The irony of it all is that Israel was held up as offering
something when in fact it was offering nothing, and Arafat emerged as the
man who rejected peace. The Palestinian people despaired.


Failed talks, 2000

Arafat and Barak returned home to an enemy waiting in the wings. Sharon,
Arafat’s arch-enemy was about to make his entry on to the world stage. His
provocative visit to the compound in Jerusalem called Haram al-Sharif by
Muslims and Temple Mount by Jews with 1000 Israeli security forces was
deliberately engineered to display Jewish sovereignty over the area, and
when angry unarmed Palestinians began throwing stones at the police in riot
gear, Sharon’s security forces retaliated with gunfire. People were killed
and many were injured. The ugly clashes which ensued are often cited as the
beginning of the Al Aqsa intifada and were clearly set off by Sharon’s
provocative act and not Arafat’s so-called rejection of peace.

No one was surprised that the peace process was effectively frozen when
Barak lost the elections to Sharon. The war that had been unleashed on the
Palestinians even before Camp David, now escalated ferociously. No matter
how much Arafat condemned suicide bombings, Israel made sure that he was
seen as tolerating, even encouraging the suicide bombers which gave Sharon
the necessary excuse to reject Arafat as a viable partner in any peace
negotiations. This then led to a bizarre turn of events, whereby President
Bush declared Sharon “a man of peace” even as Sharon was bulldozing his way
through the territories and announcing that Arafat was a target for
assassination. Arafat, the man who had shared the Nobel peace prize with
Rabin and Peres was now branded a terrorist and unfit to negotiate peace.


More talks

The world watched incredulously as Sharon declared an all-out war on
Palestinians – on Ramallah, Jenin, Bethlehem, Nablus, Tulkarem, Qalqilya,
and particularly, Arafat. More than 100 tanks rolled into Ramallah in April
2002 and began smashing Arafat’s headquarters leaving him besieged in a few
rooms without electricity or water. For the next two and a half years,
Arafat was a prisoner within his own walls and within his own land, while
Sharon continued to blitz Palestinian cities and assassinate Palestinian
leaders. The Palestinian Authority was all but dead and the Oslo Accords had
foundered. Expecting Arafat to rein in the terrorists was a futile demand
under the circumstances, but Arafat continued to issue one statement after
another in Arabic calling for an end to violence and an end to suicide
attacks. All to no avail. The people had suffered too much and without an
effective police force, Arafat had no way of bringing law and order to civic
life.


Israel’s prisoner in Ramallah, 2002

This time, however, Arafat refused to go into exile, preferring to stay with
his people. If anyone knew Sharon, it was Arafat. He knew that Sharon
wanted all of Palestine and would dismantle everything that had been gained
through the Oslo Accords. Some were prepared to give Sharon the war he
wanted. Arafat was not. He, therefore, had to find a way of becoming
“relevant” again and in March 2003, Arafat agreed to political reforms and
to share power with Mahmoud Abbas as prime minister. It opened the way for a
“road map” for peace drawn up by the Quartet – the US, UN, EU, and Russia.
But as before, neither Abbas nor Arafat were able to control the Palestinian
militants, much less put an end to suicide bombings: the roadmap was leading
nowhere.


“Bring back the Road Map”

With Arafat imprisoned in the Muqa’ata, the road map deadlocked, and Sharon went
on a rampage and the Palestinian situation escalated further. Arafat needed a
miracle. He had fought countless adversities with enormous courage and
determination, and had always emerged relatively unscathed. But, not this
time. A mystery illness short-changed his life’s work. Perhaps the saddest
moment in his long masterful career for those who watched was to see a frail
old man waving feebly to his people, before being airlifted out of
Palestine. It was too much of a miracle to hope that he would come back to
lead his people again.


leaving Palestine for the last time, November 2004

The wolves were baying a long before and the wolves closed in.
Much will be written and analysed about Arafat and his deeds, but for the
Palestinian people, Arafat will always remain a hero. Certainly, he made
mistakes: he would not have been human otherwise. But he never deserved the
vitriol and bile that have been heaped on him so cavalierly by his enemies
and even Palestinians who comfortably criticise from afar.

He deserved more. This small man who was able to command the world stage for
his beleaguered people, who could excite passions in men who served with him
in the grimmest of battles, and who could to the last, hold together the
Palestinian factions, rivalries and differences inherent in any society,
deserved to see the peace he sought and negotiated. He didn’t. However, he
did see out the terms of nine US presidents and eleven Israeli prime
ministers and came closer to peace and the Palestinian dream than anyone had
ever thought possible. He had tried everything and to the end kept the
olive branch firmly in his grasp. Tragically, for all of us, it fell from
his dying hand and the world lost the real peacemaker in the Middle East.

There will be others who will carry the cause aloft for Palestine, but none
who will ever symbolise the Palestinian struggle with all its pain, its
momentary glory, its dashed hopes, and its eternal resilience, as potently
or enduringly as Arafat. Four years since his untimely death, the
Palestinians are no closer to the vision that Arafat held in 1988 in the
hall of the UN General Assembly in Geneva. But he always had faith - the
stuff of legends, unshakeable and uncompromised. The Palestinians need that
faith more than ever today. This may well be the time to remember Arafat’s
words:

“ Don’t forget Palestine.”




In memoriam, 11 November 2004