YASSER  ARAFAT

Time has come for us to understand who Arafat is, what his objectives are and we must rid ourselves of our illusions.

Gideon Saar, Israeli cabinet secretary, March 29, 2002¹

On the so-called West Bank of the Jordan River and in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian people struggle to hold on and reach their national goals. Occupied by the State of Israel since June 1967, the West Bank and Gaza are home to about 1,400,000 Palestinians and over 300,000 Jewish "settlers." To put it mildly, the two peoples are not living peacefully together.

As of March 30, 2002, Yasser Arafat (1929-     ) is the beleaguered president of the Palestinian National Authority, a job he has held since his election in January 1996. As I write, he is besieged in the headquarters building of the Authority in Ramallah (population 150,000) in the Occupied Territories (known as Judea and Samaria by the settlers). Israeli tanks and soldiers have blasted their way inside his compound.

The West Bank Territories (and Gaza) seem to be the nucleus of the (soon-to-exist?) mini-state of Palestine, for the future existence of which the United States of America voted in the Security Council of the United Nations on March 15, 2002.

As the result of recent Palestinian terrorist bombings, the government of Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon (1928-     ) has once again invaded the Palestinian territories to harass and terrorize the inhabitants (excuse me, officially to "hunt down terrorists"). This repeats action taken some weeks ago, but apparently it will be done with greater rigour this time.

In all likelihood the Israeli army (known officially as the IDF, the Israel Defence Forces) will seek out militant Palestinian resisters and guerrillas, and shoot them dead. They will search for bomb factories and weapons dumps. They will search some Palestinian houses, by blowing holes through the walls, and bulldoze some more. A few innocent people will probably be "collateral damage." Others may be shot "punitively" for being visible in or from the streets.²

Then, most probably, the Israel Defence Forces will withdraw (the U.N. Security Council voted 14-0 today asking them to) until the next Palestinian terrorist attack. Then the IDF will repeat the exercise . . . with more vigour.

This appears to be the strategy of the Sharon government for dealing with the recent spate of Palestinian terrorism directed against Israeli citizens.

# # #

We are now in the midst of Intifada II (September 2000-     ), the successor to Intifada I (1987-1993).

The Israeli-Palestinian situation is gradually escalating -- getting worse. Both sides are responding to the other's escalations by further escalation. Recently Palestinians destroyed two Israeli Merkava tanks. This was new. Palestinians had never been able to do that before. Now Israeli soldiers are in danger, not just from the AK-47 assault rifles that abound in the hands of the Palestinians, but even inside Israeli tanks.

What is the provocation for which the Israelis are blasting into Arafat's compound? A horrible bombing two days ago in which a 25-year-old Palestinian woman suicide bomber with an explosives belt blew herself up in an Israeli hotel in the midst of a seder (Passover meal). So far at least 21 Israelis are dead from that incident, and there are well over a hundred wounded.

And this, of course, is just the latest Palestinian suicide bombing. (Oops, I err. Just after the cabinet meeting in which the Sharon government decided to send the IDF into Ramallah, another Palestinian female bomber, 18 years old and attractive, blew herself up killing two Israelis and wounding 20.)

Colourful times we live in, eh?

Is there no end to this violence? Is there any way forward to peace? Any way at all?

Well, yes.

Ultimately the Israeli-Palestinian situation will be settled by negotiations. Therefore negotations should begin at once. These will be long and hard. Many people will die before they are completed. And both sides will have to back down from their rigid positions and, as Canadian prime minister Martin Brian Mulroney (1936-    ) used to say, "drink some water in their wine." Experts agree that the outlines of an ultimate deal are evident (or so I keep reading lately); namely, an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza, and peace and recognition for Israel by the Arab world.

Well, maybe. Maybe after a long period of negotiations during which trust can be increased between the two sides.

My feeling is that negotiations should already have begun, building on the Oslo/Madrid series of accords that began in 1993, but ended when Arafat refused to accept the deal that then-president Bill Clinton of the United States recommended that he sign in September 2000.

This refusal by Arafat to accept the Camp David deal is portrayed by Israel as Arafat's withdrawal from negotiations. The Palestinians deny this. (American linguist and radical political activist Noam Chomsky (1928-    ) agrees.) The Palestinians claim that they have always been willing to negotiate, and that they have done so since in Taba (which I think is an Egyptian-controlled formerly Israeli resort town in the Sinai). According to the Israelis, having failed to get all he wanted at Camp David, Arafat then launched Intifada II. According to the Palestinians, the angry Palestinians populace launched Intifiada II spontaneously when Sharon insisted on provoking them by visiting the Temple Mount.

But negotiations haven't resumed. Why is that?

Prime minister Sharon and his cabinet won't allow it.

Why?

Officially, Sharon and his government don't want to reward Palestinian terrorism with negotiations.

I have some doubts whether this explanation is totally true. I think Sharon wants to hold onto every single settlement the Israelis have made in the West Bank and Gaza, and to build more.

As I see it, Sharon doesn't want negotiations to occur until the Palestinians have been, to a very large extent, subdued, beaten, and cowed. He has said as much.

For years Sharon has wanted this. I think he really doesn't want to exterminate the Palestinians (although this is not unimaginable to him). He also is willing not to "transfer" them to some other country (any more, at least; he used to suggest their proper home was Jordan).

No. Sharon wants to cow the Palestinians, to beat the stuffing out of them. Then to make them accept some kind of deal that he would dictate. This would involve a Palestinian statelet, in many enclaves; the reduction of Palestinian armaments; mutual recognition; and appropriate security arrangements. All, or nearly all, of the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza would remain. The Israeli army would also remain where it is, for a long time, to protect the West Bank Israeli settlements and to watch the Palestinians.

I recently learned (to my surprise) that Sharon -- like many Israelis -- seems to accept the inevitability of a future Palestinian state (of some kind). I think he was willing to cut a deal with Arafat, if the deal were as outlined above. But Sharon hasn't been able to get to negotiations in the proper setting and background, i.e, the Palestinians have not yet been sufficiently battered, beaten, cowed and made tractable.

So Sharon wants to get rid of Arafat, and to work with more docile Palestinians. (Others in Sharon's cabinet want to go much farther than he. They want the Palestinian population to be "transferred," i.e., expelled by force from their homes and camps in the West Bank and Gaza, and deposited somewhere -- anywhere -- else but Israel. Jordan, perhaps? Egypt? Lebanon? No matter.)

The History of "Transfer"

Transfer was used before by the Israelis in 1947-1948³ and in 1967⁴. Post-1967 the Israelis used to expel occasional Palestinian trouble-makers to Jordan.

Transfer was also the solution advocated by the late extremist rabbi Meir Kahane, an American-born rabbi and founder of the American organization the Jewish Defence League. Kahane made aliyah and created the extremist Kach political party. Kahane was assassinated in New York in 1990 by a Palestinian. One of Kahane's followers was Yigal Amir, the assassin of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995.

The Results of "Transfers"

What effect has transfer had so far?

Transfer has created tens of thousands of irredentist Palestinians who so hate the Israelis that they will do anything -- even blow themselves up -- to take down some of their enemies. Transfer is really just another word for "ethnic cleansing" as in Serbia and Bosnia.

So far, we can not say that transfer has solved the "Palestinian problem." Since the creation of Israel, 800,000 or more Palestinians (as we now call them) have been "transferred," yet terroristic retaliation by the Palestinians is increasing.

Time for More "Transfers"

Still, in the past Israel didn't transfer all the Palestinians. So, the argument goes in Sharon's cabinet, it's time to finish the job. Remove all the Palestinians you can. Start with Yasser Arafat. Kill the ones who resist. If absolutely necessary, impose a deal on a frightened remainder small enough to control.

Will transfer happen? My guess is, not immediately. I think other measures will be tried first.

What other measures? Well, terrifying the Palestinians with tank fire and tank rampages, destruction of their homes, roads and businesses and punitive, arbitrary killings. Possibly ending the Palestinian Authority and rounding up all weapons the IDF can find.

So I foresee more bloodshed caused by the Israelis, and more terrorist attacks on them by the Palestinians. It just seems inevitable. Maybe Sharon will break the Palestinian leadership. Maybe he will break the Palestinian people, reduce them to unresisting accomodators like most of the Palestinians within Israel.

Or maybe the Palestinians will just keep resisting.

Eventually, I see negotiations continuing on from the Oslo series of agreements, and a gradual reduction of violence and extremists on both sides. For, probably, both sides will get tired. The way of negotiation will be tried again, as Barak and Rabin tried it.

The Palestinians will have to make most of the concessions. They are the weaker side.

Eventually the situation will reach the level of Northern Ireland in the 1960s, and progress from there.

In 30 years there may be peace, and a deal that both sides will reluctantly accept. But it seems likely to take a long time, longer than I thought during the first Intifada, and cost a few thousand more lives on both sides.

In a way, I think that killing Arafat would not probably work for Israel. According to the National Post, Sharon's plan is to discredit Arafat among the Palestinians. So far, I see no sign that this is happening. Arafat's major problem with the Palestinians, as I see it, is the perception that the Authority is corrupt. Perhaps it is.

All that seems to have happened is that the Palestinians are more united than ever about getting rid of the Israelis.

# # #

What do the Palestinians really want? What does Arafat really want?

Who is Arafat anyway?

Yasser Arafat seems to have been born in Cairo, Egypt.

[To Be Continued and Revised]

Notes

¹ "U.N., U.S. call for Israeli pullout," quoted on msnbc.com March 30, 2002.

² In Hebron in 2001, Israeli soldiers were issued "punitive shooting" orders. Harpers magazine, April 2002 issue, p. 25.

³ Milton Viorst, Sands of Sorrow: Israel's Journey from Independence, pp. 62 and following.

⁴ United Church [of Canada] Observer, edited by A. C. Forrest, 1967 issues. Forrest witnessed the 1967 expulsions. They are also mentioned in The Palestine-Israeli Conflict: A Beginner's Guide by Dan Cohn-Sherbok and Dawoud El-Alami, pg. 58.

Bibliography

Aronson, Geoffrey. Creating Facts: Israel, Palestinians and the West
       Bank.Washington, D.C.: Insitute for Palestine Studies, 1987.

Mishal, Shaul. The PLO Under Arafat: Between Gun and Olive Branch. New        Haven, Connecticut, and London: Yale University Press, 1986.

Rubin. Arafat: A Political Biography. 2003.

Stefoff, Rebecca. Yasir Arafat. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988.

Wallach, Janet and John. Arafat: In the Eyes of the Beholder. Birch Lane Press       (Carol Publishing Group), 1990.

A revised edition of this book was published in 1997.

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