The
Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence
is larger than the late President Yasir Arafat.
The decades-long symbolism that Arafat embodied
should not be underestimated. It is this symbolism
that Palestinians are mourning. The substance of
Arafat’s symbolism has to do with how it has
represented Palestinian nationalism and the five
decade struggle for justice for a people that were
dispossessed in 1948, militarily occupied in 1967,
attacked while in exile in 1970 in Jordan and 1982
in Lebanon, and most recently, battered in their
own homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East
Jerusalem. A wide spectrum of opinions about Arafat,
the man and the leader, will surely outlive the
international flurry of media interest in his death.
However, the world must be aware that the Palestinian
struggle is beyond any single individual.
During
the last decade, Yasir Arafat brought to the table
something that Israel and the United States could
only previously dream about: the single legitimate
source for Palestinian political decisions. Through
his iron-fisted and highly centralized control of
Palestinian decision making bodies, finances and
fighters, Arafat was able to coax his people into
dealing with a new reality, the Oslo Peace Process,
that he hoped would open the door for good faith
from Israel and the United States. Arafat hoped
that this process would ultimately end in a political
solution resulting in two independent states living
side by side, Palestine and Israel. History has
proven that Israel and the United States had other
plans -- the creation of a process that would, in
and of itself, become the means as well as the goal.
It was a process that would serve as the final nail
in the coffin of the legitimate Palestinian demands
that international and humanitarian law be applied
to their case.
Israel
and the United States made a major blunder. They
ignored the fact that the “peace” they
had made was a peace between leaders and not between
peoples. Thus, as the US and Israel unsuccessfully
sought to twist Arafat’s arm in the Camp David
II talks in Year 2000, they began a concerted campaign
discrediting Arafat and pinning the blame of the
breakdown of talks on a single person. Arafat was
truly the shrewder politician. He knew that for
a peace among leaders to be transformed into a peace
among peoples, the real issues of the conflict had
to be justly addressed. Refugees, settlements, Jerusalem,
and statehood were not negotiating cards, but the
essence of the entire effort.
It
is amazing how someone so “irrelevant,”
such as Arafat was deemed by Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon, can attract so much attention even
in his death. The international media that has flooded
the city of Ramallah, Arafat’s last place of
refuge, is poised to analyze every minute aspect
of his death and burial. What they will most likely
miss is the most important part of his legend, which
lies in the fact that the struggle for Palestinian
freedom and independence, which Arafat symbolized,
will not be buried with him.
Once
the tears are wiped away the situation can take
many shapes, the most likely being that the Palestinian
leadership will be able to establish governing legitimacy.
However earning leadership legitimacy will take
some time. Among the complications are that there
are several Palestinian political bodies that must
be addressed, since Arafat led all of them single-handedly.
The
Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will be
the most difficult to address since it is a body
that represents all Palestinians worldwide and is
the formal signatory to the Oslo Peace Accords,
from which the Palestinian Authority was established.
The PLO has not held elections for decades and the
basic issue of who is an eligible member of this
body, as well as where their meetings should be
held, will be internally questioned in the days
to come. Additionally, unlike the Palestinian Authority,
which is a rather new body and has been under tremendous
international scrutiny, the PLO’s inner workings
and finances are a black box to many Palestinians,
leaders as well as masses.
The
Palestinian Authority (PA), being a product of the
Oslo Peace Process, is solely focused on governing
the Palestinians living under occupation. It is
expected that this body, especially given a recently
enacted Basic Law, will make a stable succession
and continue to perform its duties. It is also expected
that the international community will be extremely
interested in continuing to politically and financially
support the PA in order to avoid a social upheaval
in the Occupied Territories that would certainly
turn toward the Israeli occupiers as well. The Palestinian
Authority is where it will be most likely that the
first free and democratic elections would take place
in the post-Arafat era. However, unlike Arafat,
who had a multitude of vantage points, the expected
outcome of PA elections would result in a vision
produced by a people that, for many, know no other
life except that of living under Israeli military
occupation and the death and destruction that the
Oslo process has brought them. Politically, this
will create a more hard-line position toward Israel,
albeit mixed with sober practicality.
The
third body that the Palestinian leadership will
need to address post-Arafat is Arafat’s own
political party, FATAH. This will be a long drawn-out
saga since no one party member is privy to the decision-making
process, finances and grassroots support. The one
FATAH member that has the ability to rally the party
is Palestinian Legislative Council member and FATAH
Secretary Marwan Barghouti, who Israel has imprisoned
along with 7,000 other Palestinians.
In
light of the complex and sensitive situation that
Arafat’s death has created, it would be naïve
for the world, or the new Palestinian leadership
for that matter, to think that a quick political
settlement could be achieved without addressing
the core issues, once and for all. To continue to
force-feed Palestinians with half-cooked initiatives,
such as the Unilateral Disengagement Plan, the Roadmap,
the Tenant Plan, the Mitchell Plan, the Oslo Accords
and such would be yet another wasted opportunity
for the world community to resolve this conflict.
And with every wasted effort more innocent people
will die on both sides of the illegal Separation
Wall that Israel is building on Palestinian lands
and which has turned Palestinian cities into open-air
concentration camps.
Time
will be needed as Palestinians prepare for long
overdue elections, the restructuring of their organizations,
and the bringing to trial of those who have stolen
or misused Palestinian public funds in the past.
An Israel led by Ariel Sharon will surely do all
in her power to make sure that the Palestinians
fail in picking up the pieces after Arafat’s
demise. Thus, it is the responsibility of the international
community to finally step in and play its neglected
role of protecting the militarily occupied Palestinians
and demanding that Israel immediately abide by all
Security Council and General Assembly resolutions,
which call for the real end of military occupation
and not a redeployment ploy such as that being offered
for Gaza in Israel’s Disengagement Plan.
The
United Nations should immediately convene to deploy
multinational troops to provide protection to the
Palestinian people, as stipulated for by the Fourth
Geneva Convention of 1949. Such an international
presence would serve many purposes. On the one hand,
it would protect the Palestinians from the continuing
onslaught by the Israeli military and give them
time to recover from five decades of autocratic
rule. On the other hand, a multinational peace-keeping
force would save Israel from itself, since its continuous
pushing of an occupied people to total despair can
only breed more violence.
Despite
the confusion of the hour, one fact remains clear.
The Palestinian people, collectively, whether in
the Occupied Territories, scattered in squalid refugee
camps around the Middle East, or living in exile,
will never wake up one day and accept the historic
injustice that has been done to them. As long as
Palestinians breathe they will rightfully demand
that law and justice prevail in ending the nightmare
that has haunted them for more than 50 years. It
is in this spirit that one may recall the words
of former United States President John F. Kennedy
when he said, "Those who make peaceful change
impossible make violent change inevitable."
* Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman
living in the Israeli Occupied Palestinian City
of Al-Bireh in the West Bank and can be reached
at sbahour@palnet.com.
