[E-rundbrief] Info 161 - Gush Shalom: After the death of a partner (Yasser Arafat).

[Matthias Reichl]

E-Rundbrief - Info 161 - Gush Shalom (Israel/ Palästina): After the death 
of a partner (Yasser Arafat).

Bad Ischl, 12.11.2004

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

www.begegnungszentrum.at

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AFTER THE DEATH OF A PARTNER

GUSH SHALOM

pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033  www.gush-shalom.org/

November 11. Three months ago, in the beginning of August, a
delegation of Israeli Gush Shalom activists visited Yasser Arafat at the
Presidential Compound in Ramallah, half-ruined in repeated raids by
the Israeli armed forces.

We have maintained this dialogue for over two decades, in changing
circumstances. There was the time before Oslo, when meeting Arafat
(or any PLO official) was illegal under Israeli law and could carry a
maximum of three years' imprisonment. Then a sharp shift to the days
of the flourishing peace process, when meetings with the Palestinian
President had become a commonplace in the Israeli mainstream and
in his waiting room one could frequently encounter senior Israeli
government officials. And from there, again to times of bloodshed and
soaring hatred, when Sharon and Bush (with the voluntary help of
numerous columnists and politicians) were eminently
successful in depicting Arafat as a terrible monster - and meeting him became
once again a highly controversial and taboo-breaking act, sometimes
involving physical danger at times when government ministers spoke
seriously of sending  commandos in, to capture or kill Arafat.

By keeping contact with and even acting on occasion as human shield for
the man venerated by millions of Palestinians as their leader and the 
father of
their nation, we felt that we were serving the long term interests of Israel.
And whatever the outside circumstances, inside the meeting room Arafat
was always the affable, gracious and attentive host, with the old-fashioned
gallantry of handkissing women.

The meeting in August this year was not an exception. Arafat seemed strong
and vigorous when we discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip (at that time
afflicted by a combination of an extensive invasion by the Israeli army and
internal strife between Palestinian factions). We came out with a clear
message from Arafat: a call upon Sharon to resume the peace negotiations
broken off by Barak in 2001, as well as to facilitate the holding of new,
internationally-supervised elections for the Palestinian institutions. Arafat
himself was quite ready to face in the ballot box any contestant for the
presidency. For the longer range, Arafat had set out the vision of a Benelux-
type confederation beween Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and recalled in vivid
detail a discussion on the subject which he had with Prime Minister Rabin
and King Hussein.

There was nothing to indicate that this meeting would be the last. If he
already felt the symptoms of whatever killed him, he concealed them well  -
from us and from others who met him at the time. But then, Arafat just did not
have the option available to an ordinary 75-year old: to declare 
himself  ill and
go to seek the best of medical attention. We will never know if he could have
been saved, had he gone to France earlier. But even if completely cured,
Sharon would surely not have let him come back, and he would have lived
out his remaining days in exile. For Arafat, that was an unacceptable price.
He could only carry on with his daily routine - a paradoxical mixture of being
head of state and being a closely-guarded prisoner, with the accumulated
strain of both roles - until the final collapse.

The Paris hospital refused to divulge details of the exact cause of Arafat's
death, citing "privacy". Yet he had had precious little privacy in these two
final weeks. His dying, like his life, was conducted in the spotlight of
publicity, drama and high tragedy mixing with elements of farce and
burlesque, when Suha Arafat started an unseemly squabble with senior
Palestinian officials - and all too many Israeli politicians and commentators
expressing a disgusting glee and hope for the death of an old ill man.

Two busloads of Israelis, from Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, will go  to the funeral
in Ramallah t the initiative of Gush Shalom - to share in the Palestinians'
mourning for the Father of their Nation and pay the final respect to Israel's
enemy who could have been our partner in building up a peaceful future. We
will also mourn the thousands of Israelis and Palestinians who died - and will
die -  because that chance to make Arafat into Israel's partner was allowed to
slip away (or rather, was deliberately smashed and destroyed).

And now - what? For all that he had conducted a kind of personal vendetta
with Arafat, Sharon may not be entirely happy with the Palestinian leader's
passing - which makes much less plausible the claim that Israel has "no
partner". Now, quite a few mainstream politicians are calling for the
withdrawal from Gaza to be transformed from a unilateral Israeli measure into
a bilateral agreement, the beginning of an overall end of the occupation also
on the West Bank. And on the extreme right, the call is rather facetiously
made "to halt withdrawal from Gaza while watching developments among the
Palestinians". For his part, Sharon is already preparing to prove that even
with "Arafat the monster" gone, Israel still has "no partner".

Meanwhile, the Palestinians confounded the pundits' predictions of "a
bloody succession struggle" by a smooth and orderly passing on and
division of Arafat's powers among a provisional collective leadership. But
Abu Mazen, Abu Ala and the other new leaders have little of the charisma
and public standing which Arafat had. Even if hailed in the Western media as
"moderates" and "pragmatists",  Abu Mazen and Abu Ala will be much less
able than Arafat to confront radical militias head-on or make any
concessions on for example the implementation of the Right of Return. And
some of the leaders who do have a charisma and public standing remotely
comparable to Arafat's - such as Marwan Barguthi - are now incarcerated in
Israeli prisons, from which Sharon shows no inclination to release them.

The key to the situation, in the crucial period immediately ahead, may lie in
the article of Palestinian law which mandates new general elections within
sixty days of the president's death. Obviously, new elections are vitally
necessary in order for any new Palestinian leadership to truly have a
legitimacy and  popular mandate - and having such a leadership is a vital
Israeli need just as much as it is a Palestinian need. But free elections are
hardly compatible with an ongoing harsh occupation and daily fighting: free
elections cannot take place when any Palestinian voter or candidate can at
any moment be "eliminated" by a missile from an Israeli helicopter gunboat or
hauled off in the middle of the night for the tender mercies of the Israeli
Security Service interrogators. In effect, free elections require a
comprehensive cease-fire and an effective reversal of Israel's re-occupation
of the West bank cities, imposed since April 2002.

Sharon, clearly, has not the least inclination in this direction. And  it also
seems too much to hope that  George W. Bush will start taking seriously his
own pronouncements about "the need for a functioning Palestinian
democracy"...

Adam Keller
Gush Shalom spokesperson
+972-3-5565804 / +972-50-6709603

-read this message without linebreaks at:
http://www.geocities.com/keller_adam/gu_no_linebreaks.html

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Matthias Reichl

Begegnungszentrum für aktive Gewaltlosigkeit

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A-4820 Bad Ischl

Tel. +43-6132-24590

e-mail: mareichl at ping.at

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