A
hotel bedroom in Southampton, wakening up after
a night on the booze in the city’s Victory
Bar, sipping the first coffee of the morning. Such
was the backdrop to my finding out from the television
news that the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat had
died in a Paris hospital. It was a strange coincidence.
I was in Southampton with others from Ireland and
further afield to take part in a conference on the
'media and terrorism', and true to form the media
was speculating on the potential for peace now that
an 'obstacle' to it had gone. No mention of the
war criminal Sharon or his backer Bush as being
problems blocking a peaceful and just outcome to
the Middle East's most festering problem.
For
days speculation was rife that the PLO chairman
was brain dead and that switching off the life support
machine was being delayed so as to allow his followers
sufficient time to choose a successor before officially
announcing the death. I suppose for some, if George
Bush could govern America in his state of mind,
it would be eminently reasonable that Arafat could
remain head of state in Palestine despite being
comatose.
Yasser
Arafat was a name many young Belfast people grew
up being exposed to. While not fitting the description
Richard Gott once gave after a 1963 encounter with
Che Guevara - 'he was incredibly beautiful' - his
reputation travelled before him. He was a Che Guevara
of the Middle East. The nuances didn’t matter
– with his head gear and fiery rhetoric he
looked revolutionary at a time when 'impure' forms
of politics won only contempt from the ghettoised
youth.
Initial
exposure to the problems of the Middle East was
based not even on a rudimentary understanding. If
the politics of our own little spot seemed baffling
what chance of understanding those in places we
had never heard of? Paisley’s riot provoking
march to Cromac Square in 1966 and the UVF hate
killings of the same year were more than enough
for minds not yet able to contemplate puberty. The
Six-Day War of 1967 was just something that other
people did in far away places that seemed dangerous
but which would never affect us.
I
had grown up in a household where the Egyptian leader
Gamel Abdel Nasser had horns. St Colman's School
inculcated my mind with little that would challenge
the wisdom of 23 Bagot Street. The notion of an
idea different to the dominant one was alien then.
The teacher seemed very much to be on the side of
Israel. We were still of an age when we took our
cue from authority figures. Besides, Israel was
a Jewish state and, as we all knew, the Jews had
been slaughtered in their millions during the war.
The idea that they might just be the aggressors
never took hold. On top of that, Moshe Dyan had
an eye patch which give his demeanour a touch of
panache. That patch romanticised the conflict in
a way that Arafat's headscarf would do later. When
you are young and impressionable it takes little
to impress and choices are made easily.
These
perceptions all changed three years later although
not because of anything diabolical that the Israelis
were judged to be doing. Golda Meir was the head
of state in Israel at the time and she seemed alright
to a young eye which judged matters on appearances
rather than political discourse. Leila Khaled, however,
was younger and more daring. When she carried out
her aircraft hijacking and Hussein later massacred
the Palestinians on Jordanian territory the die
was cast. There was only one team to support and
its colours were red black and green. A bit like
Glentoran FC which I also supported at the time.
Apart from surface appearances I knew as much about
one as I did the other. Palestinian operations were
like Glentoran goals - something to be cheered.
When Black September arose from the ashes of Dawsons’
field and slaughtered Israeli athletes at the Munich
Olympics in 1972, Palestinian resistance was etched
permanently on our adolescent minds. Why it was
attacking Israeli sportsmen rather than Jordanian
ones was something we never bothered to ask ourselves.
All Palestinian operations, even atrocities, carried
out by their guerrillas could forever be excused
and explained away.
When
our own revolution led us into the cages of Long
Kesh 'the thing to do' was sympathise with the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine – a Marxist
body that possessed a certain chic that lent itself
to our minds. It had earlier been behind the plane
hijackings although Black September originated in
Arafat's Fatah. The real politics escaped most of
us. Whatever was most violent and least capable
of compromise attracted our sympathy. It was a state
of mind that sustained us through years of protest
and hunger strikes. And when Arafat condemned the
IRA for killing Lord Mountbatten, his PLO looked
suspect.
As
the years moved on, and the need to reflect sat
heavily on our minds, the violence lost its pulling
power. Killing Israeli civilians seems every bit
as reprehensible as the murderous actions of the
Israeli military. Nevertheless, Israeli military
strategy leaves little room to dissent from Leila
Khaled's recent assertion that intransigent Jewish
settlers in the West Bank, Israeli army personnel
and key Israeli political figures cannot be afforded
non-combatant status.
Arafat’s
death is unlikely to change any of that. The people
that he led have every right to militarily resist
the illegal Israeli occupation. While his critic,
the late Edward Said readily admitted that the Palestinian
people loved him, he knew that under Arafat’s
leadership, the Palestinian cause never advanced
as much as it could have were it in more capable
hands. The Israeli attitude towards him was often
more contemptuous than hateful. The much heralded
Oslo accord turned out to be nothing other than
an invitation to collaborate: Arafat was being asked
to police the West Bank and Gaza not on behalf of
the Palestinians but Israel. In this sense it was
similar to the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland,
of which Edward Said was so suspicious. Being unable
to lead effectively did little to dissuade Arafat
from remaining at the top. In the words of Robert
Fisk, he:
clung
to power not with authority but with cash, paying
off his gunmen and his cronies, ignoring some of
the PLO's splinter outfits while promising security,
peace, prosperity, statehood and all the other things
Oslo would not give him. His cronyism was part of
his failure. Unwilling to allow younger, educated
Palestinians to run even his public relations network,
he surrounded himself with hopeless, middle-aged
spokesmen ... And in the end, he became like so
many other Arab leaders and - as the Israelis intended
him to be - a little dictator.
To
go through one's life ostensibly struggling for
freedom merely to end it as a dictator sadly devalues
the struggle for which so many others gave their
lives and liberty. If the opposition only ever end
up embracing all they previously opposed, the concept
of an alternative world will seem, for many, not
worth the effort. As much as Arafat promoted Palestine
he also bred cynicism and apathy. Perhaps, as Fisk
claims, he really died many years ago.
