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Cycle of Arafat
With the resignation of Palestinian Prime Minister Abbas, Yassir Arafat reasserts himself -- undermining the key precondition for peace talks.
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has resigned and Yassir Arafat has
hastily nominated his close associate Ahmed Qurei (pronounced ku-RAY-uh)
as Abbas' replacement.
How does this bode for the peace process? The situation may be summed
up best by a pointed
joke making the rounds of Palestinian
politicians:
Mr. Arafat is riding in a car with Mr. Abbas, when he spots an
obstacle. "Abu Mazen, there's a tree in the road!" Mr. Arafat cries,
using Mr. Abbas's nickname. But the car continues on its way. Mr.
Arafat's warnings grow more frantic.
Finally, the car hits the tree, and as the two Palestinian leaders
stumble from the wreckage, battered and bruised, Mr. Arafat turns to
Mr. Abbas and says, "Abu Mazen, I told you there was a tree."
Mr. Abbas replies, miserably, "But you were driving."
In covering Arafat's latest push for power, many media outlets are
demonstrating an remarkable ignorance about what got us into this mess in
the first place. As the
London Daily Telegraph wrote in their Sept. 8
editorial: "In the West, our grasp of the Middle East is afflicted by
a kind of amnesia. For some 30 years, Mr. Arafat's fingerprints have
been found on each failed peace initiative."
Given the media's notoriously poor memory, let's review how
we reached this juncture:
1) In the wake of the horrific 9/11 attacks, a consensus developed in
the West that terrorism is a fundamental threat that must be
eliminated to ensure the very survival of the free world. To that end,
President Bush made the war on terror a cornerstone of American
policy, and he has undertaken to lead this mission.
2) In an effort to solve the Israeli-Palestinian impasse,
President Bush stated unequivocally in June 2002 that any advance
of the peace process is predicated on "a new and different Palestinian
leadership...not compromised by terror" ― an unmistakable call for the replacement of Yassir Arafat.
President Bush's objection to Arafat went beyond the decades of plane
hijackings, schoolyard shootings and Munich murders. Rather, it was
the promise that Arafat undertook in 1993 to foreswear the methodology
of violence and terror. (This week marks the 10th anniversary.) Seven
years later, Arafat proved incorrigible, unable to grasp the truly
historic opportunity to embrace peace and leave the terror behind.
As the Americans recognized, nobody could afford to go down Arafat
Lane again ― not Palestinian citizens who are suffering socially and
economically, not Israelis who are under daily siege, and not the West
in its effort to uproot terror. For the sake of peace, Yassir Arafat
had to be sidelined.
3) Release of the U.S.-backed road map was therefore delayed until a
new Palestinian leader emerged. In April 2003, within hours of Mahmoud
Abbas' assuming the post as Palestinian prime minister, the
official road map was released and diplomatic progress began.
4) It soon became painfully clear that Abbas was not in fact the
Palestinian leader, but rather subordinate to Arafat. As Palestinian
spokesman
Saeb Erekat
stated in May: "There is no one who is
more loyal to Arafat than Abu Mazen and no one who is more loyal to
Abu Mazen than Arafat."
Or as Abbas himself said on July 26, when asked by Newsweek if Arafat
has to approve the prime minister's actions: "All the actions, all the
actions. He is the leader of the Palestinian people."
Arafat's ongoing reign contradicted the sole prerequisite to the new
peace initiative (see point 2 above).
5) Arafat's power grip became most evident in recent weeks when Abbas,
in an effort to implement the road map, asserted more authority than
Arafat was willing to allow. Arafat undermined Abbas, and
Abbas was
given no choice but to announce his resignation, decrying his
Palestinian opponents for their (in his words) "harsh and dangerous"
incitement.
This left Arafat as the lone Palestinian leader, and we're right back
where we started. It's a veritable "cycle of Arafat."
A number of news agencies recognized that Arafat's appointment of
Qurei ― a high-ranking official in Arafat's own Fatah faction ― is
another step backward for the peace process. As stated bluntly in the
Chicago Tribune, "If Palestinian leaders cling to the notion that they
can send out a conciliatory face as prime minister while providing
safe harbor for terrorists such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad, then Qureia will fail, too...It was a good weekend for Yasser Arafat, and
a disaster for the Palestinian people."
Or, in the words of the editorial desk of Denver's
Rocky Mountain
News: "In the long run, friends of peace can only hope that the
Palestinians outgrow their affection for the man who once again,
through his sabotage of Abbas' leadership, has dashed the hopes of
permanent peace."
Yet some news outlets followed the lead of
Reuters, who
reported (editorialized, actually, with no attribution) that Israel's
attempt to completely sideline Arafat is actually to blame, for it
"added to the sense that a battered U.S.-led peace plan may now be
beyond rescue."
Reuters goes on to paint Qurei glowingly: "His credentials as a highly
regarded moderate and an architect of the 1993 interim Oslo peace
accords with Israel could endear him to the United States and help
salvage a U.S.-led peace plan."
Taken together, Reuters' strange editorial line becomes clear: Arafat
and his hand-picked associate Qurei are the ones capable of
"salvaging" the road map ― a peace plan preconditioned on the removal
of Arafat from power and influence.
Comments to Reuters: editor@reuters.com
And while Arafat's political machinations and ongoing support of
terror has tied the peace process in knots, Pat Oliphant ― the most
widely syndicated political cartoonist in the world ― would have us
believe that Israel's been doing the tying. Oliphant's August 26
cartoon shows Uncle Sam doomed to failure in his peace effort, due to
Israeli targeted strikes (the soldier's newspaper is headlined "Hamas
Leader Killed"):
Amazingly, Israeli's insistence on one of the
road map's
primary points ― "confronting all those engaged in terror and
dismantlement of terrorist capabilities and infrastructure" ― is portrayed by
Oliphant as actually ruining the road map!
Comments to Oliphant's distributor, Universal Press Syndicate:
lsalem@amuniversal.com
Thank you for your ongoing involvement in the battle against media
bias.
HonestReporting.com
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