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The only thing
wrong with the Ramallah funeral of Yasser Arafat was
that he wasn’t around to enjoy it. Described by Western
media as chaotic and disorganized, Abu Ammar would have
basked in the spontaneous and genuine outpouring of love
from the tens of thousands of Palestinians who struggled
to touch the casket of their adored leader, blowing
kisses to all of them.
Arafat may have
returned to the soil but his legacy will fuel the just
Palestinian cause until he can be reburied in the city
where he longed to dwell Al Quds [Jerusalem].
Controversy still surrounds the actual place of Arafat’s
birth and the cause of his death. Opinions differ on
what that legacy signifies and the value of Arafat’s
achievements but on one point everyone agrees: there is
nobody tall enough or courageous enough to walk in his
shoes.
Uri Avnery, an
Israeli writer and peace movement activist, who felt
perfectly safe among the jostling crowd at the
Palestinian President’s funeral, wrote one of the most
poignant eulogies: “…Very few world leaders evoke such
profound love and admiration among their people as this
man, whom Israelis consider a veritable monster in human
form.
“The
Palestinians trusted him, relied on him, let him make
all the big decisions that demanded courage, derived
from him the strength to defy the intolerable conditions
under a brutal occupation. Now suddenly, incredibly,
they found themselves alone. Like orphaned waifs in a
world changed by the death of a man who left a huge gap
behind him.”
The passion
displayed at that funeral drove Arab-American Ahmed Amr,
the Editor of NileMedia.com to make an apology: “I,
together with many others in the Arab-American
community, took Arafat to task when we should have been
calling for Sharon’s hide.
“We should have
concentrated our efforts on confronting our own callous
political leaders that willingly collaborated with
Sharon. We should have been louder and more insistent
when talking back to the many pro-Israel pundits, who
actively cheered on the slaughter of Arafat’s children.
Right now, all I can do is say ‘I am so sorry, Yasser”.
Mike Odetalla, a
Palestinian-American born in Jerusalem, eloquently
describes how Arafat was inextricably linked to his
Palestinian identity in an article published on the Al-Jazeerah
website.
He writes: “When
the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir arrogantly
announced to the world that ‘there was no such thing as
a Palestinian people’, Yasser Arafat was there,
defiantly proving to her and to the rest of the world
that we exist.”
Odetalla
recounts how as a child in the U.S. a teacher asked him
to fill in a questionnaire, which asked ‘Country of
Origin and Nationality’. Not yet an American, Odetalla
wrote “Palestine” and “Palestinian” in response. The
teacher took one look at it and groaned, before
lecturing the boy on his ‘mistake’.
“She made me
stand up and asked me in front of the whole class what
my nationality was. I said, ‘Palestinian’. She replied,
‘Nonsense. There is no such thing’.
“She then handed
me back my form and told me to correct it. I was
confused. Exactly what was I supposed to write? She
erased the words Palestine and Palestinian and told me
that I had a choice. I could be Lebanese, Syrian or
Jordanian.
“I protested to
her that I was none of those. I was born in Jerusalem.
To no avail she wrote in the words Syria and Syrian on
the form and then scolded me in front of the whole class
as someone who did not know who he was or where he came
from.” Odetalla was then unmercifully teased by his
peers, and especially by Arab-American classmates
anxious to be seen as fitting-in.
Odetalla says he
will be eternally grateful to Arafat for letting the
world know just who the Palestinian people are. “My own
children do not have to go through what I went through
as it pertains to their identity. They can show pride
and the world can never again pretend that we ‘didn’t
exist’.”
Not long
afterwards, in 1974, Arafat strode confidently into the
United Nations New York headquarters and wowed the
assembly with his historic message: “I come carrying an
olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let
this olive branch fall from my hand.”
But Arafat had
his detractors too. A few among his own people have
suggested he was corrupt hording billions in secret bank
accounts for his own use, but when one analyses the type
of person he was, this accusation is nonsensical.
Arafat was a
simple man, who owned only two changes of clothes, both
of them olive-green uniforms and complained when his
wife Suha bought him a new wardrobe for his windowless,
Spartan bedroom, whose centerpiece was a camp bed. He
didn’t require such bourgeois trappings he told the
woman who spent four years during the ongoing second
Intifada living a luxurious lifestyle in Paris, clad in
designer clothes.
He could easily
have joined Suha and his young daughter to escape his
Israeli-imposed imprisonment, the missiles and tank
shells frequently battering his compound, the shortages
of water and electricity and, more importantly, perhaps,
the assaults on his dignity, but this was never an
option for the man who insisted on sharing the
deprivations of his people. Arafat always acknowledged
his billions, but referred to them as belonging to the
Palestinian people, there, as a back-up fund, in case of
the rainiest of days.
Arafat has
further been accused of being a man who never missed an
opportunity to miss an opportunity, particularly over
the Oslo agreement when some 22 per cent of historic
Palestine was ostensibly on offer by former Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak. This offer is still touted by
the U.S. and Israeli governments as being incredibly
generous with Arafat the bad guy for refusing it.
In reality,
there was nothing in writing but according to those
Palestinians who helped negotiate, there was little of
substance about the ‘generous’ settlement terms. Under
the verbal deal, Israel would still have held dominion
over airspace and seas, while most of the swathes of
land on offer were non-contiguous. Furthermore the
largest West Bank Jewish colonies were earmarked to
remain and the sensitive issues of water rights, and the
right of return for Palestinians in the Diaspora were
still not resolved.
Chief
Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat has disclosed the
main sticking point for Arafat was a piece of paper
which he was required to sign acknowledging that the
Haram al-Sharif was the site under which Jewish temples
once lay. This was an impossible hurdle since that paper
could have been used in the future as a pretext for
Israel’s tearing down of the golden-domed Al Aqsa
mosque, one of Islam’s holiest.
Last December,
former U.S. President Jimmy Carter told CNN’s Larry King
that Arabs would, no doubt, have assassinated Arafat in
the event he had accepted Barak’s peace offer. The offer
would have left Israel in control of roads between
Palestinian towns and cities, he said, and Palestinians
would have had to acknowledge Israeli sovereignty over
East Jerusalem even when being permitted to live there.
Arafat had
always maintained that if his partner in what he called
‘the peace of the brave’ Yitzhak Rabin hadn’t been
assassinated, a deal would have been successfully
struck.
In the end
Arafat’s long-held dream of a viable Palestinian state
during his lifetime was thwarted by a complex confluence
of events. Rabin’s death was the first blow. Then,
later, just as negotiations at Taba were looking
positive for the first time, the hawkish Israeli
right-wing nationalist Ariel Sharon ousted Barak from
office, while the insular, pro-Zionist George W. Bush
replaced Bill Clinton. It was then that a new agenda
came into play and not one in the Palestinians’
interests.
Overnight,
Yasser Arafat, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and one of
the most frequent visitors to the Clinton White House
became a pariah as far as the U.S. and Israel were
concerned. He was either ignored or vilified and
following the September 11 attacks on America, termed a
terrorist.
Cheered on by
Bush, Sharon felt free to publicly threaten his life and
even as the Palestinian security apparatus was all but
destroyed and Arafat rendered a prisoner, he was
unreasonably accused of not doing enough “to stop the
terror”.
All of a sudden,
Arafat, the only glue, which could unite all the
Palestinian factions in a common cause, was depicted as
an obstacle to peace, rather than a peace partner. As
long as his old nemesis Arafat survived, Sharon was able
to do his worst by riding roughshod over Palestinian
human rights, refusing to return to the negotiating
table and incinerating Oslo, Mitchell, Tenet and the
‘Roadmap’ to which Bush has paid mere lip service to
date.
Arafat’s legacy
may not be the one he truly wanted but in his own words
it is this: “We have made the Palestinian case the
biggest problem in the world. Look at The Hague ruling
on the Wall. One hundred and thirty countries supported
us at the General Assembly. One hundred and seven years
after the [founding Zionist] Basle Conference, 90 years
after the Sykes-Picot Agreement, Israel has failed to
wipe us out. We are here, in Palestine, facing them.”
Western leaders
and Middle East pundits have gleefully referred to
Arafat’s death as “a window of opportunity” parroting
Israel’s contention that he was the main obstacle to
peace.
Sadly, this is
nothing more than a red herring, a piece of propaganda
put about to divert the public’s thinking from the true
roadblocks: Sharon and Bush. A state constructed under
their watch would be little more than one with the name
without the game. Any future Palestinian leader who fell
for it would not only be guilty of throwing Arafat’s
legacy into the bin but also shamefully selling out his
people. | 
