On Nov. 10, 2004, Yasser Arafat – the only leader with enoughfinesse and political swagger to unite the fractious Palestinian people – died. With his death, Arafat left the region and the world an important legacy.
He took the Palestinians from a disenfranchised ethnic group to a nation struggling for a state. He brought them to the world’s stage in 1974, when he addressed the U.N. with his famous words, “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand. I repeat: do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”
The question begs: Did the Israelis make the olive branch fall or did Arafat simply drop it? While Israel’s actions may have blown like a hard wind at times, I do not believe Arafat ever held the olive branch as tightly as he gripped the “freedom fighters gun.” This is because making war is always easier than making peace.
Arafat acted as a great spokesman and played the oppressed guerilla well. His job, however, as head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization was to create a Palestinian state, something he never produced. For Arafat, making unpopular concessions toward peace with Israel proved harder than allowing his cause to float in a stagnant state of illusion.
By rarely reforming his movement for the greater good of the Palestinians, Arafat maintained the dream of the uncompromised struggle, guaranteeing his long-term popularity, and ensuring a state never become a reality.
For the Israelis, he has been the long-distrusted rejectionist, refusing the generous peace proposals of the Israeli left. Notably that offered by Yehud Barak in 2000, in which the Palestinians, in exchange for peace, would have taken the entire Gaza Strip, over 95 percent of the West Bank, East Jerusalem for a capital and limited right of return for the refugees.
Now, four years into the intifada, the situation has worsened for the Palestinians. The Israelis have erected the “security fence,” expanded settlements, demolished homes; and many people on both sides have died.
Yet there is hope for both. Ariel Sharon, the godfather of the Israeli settlement movement, has seen the light and made the unpopular decision – only within his right-of-center Likud party – to “disengage” from Gaza and parts of the West Bank. And while the ideal would be a negotiated settlement, or at least complete withdrawl, his disengagement plan opens many, not just closed, but once locked and bolted doors. Being the only Israeli to attempt dismantling settlements, he sets a precedent for the further deconstruction of the movement, perhaps eventually a total closure of all the settlements in the West Bank in the near future.
And with the passing of Arafat, a new era has begun within the Middle East. Egypt’s President Mubarak has endorsed Sharon as the Palestinians best hope for peace. Abbas, the first Palestinian Prime Minister, will hopefully win the upcoming election for head of the Palestinian Authority Abbas, a pragmatist and denouncer of violence as a means to achieve statehood, can represent the new face of the Palestinians, one which abandons violence and embraces peaceful means of resistance.
Finally, a reformed P.A. can take the difficult steps towards a lasting peace with Israel. Thus placing the needs of the Palestinian people above their own quest for an untarnished heroic immortalization – something Arafat did not do too often in 40 years of leadership.
