It is undeniable that Yasser Arafat is an evil eminence. He is an impediment to the emergence of moderates in the Palestinian Authority. He is backer and prod to the violence against Israelis that is represented by his Fatah faction’s al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the source of numerous suicide bombings and vicious attacks on Jews.
From the start of his radical career of violence, Arafat was the promoter of attacks on Israelis and Israeli institutions as the means of taking back Palestine from the Jews, of undoing Israel altogether. He was the mobster of violence in Jordan, responsible for thousands of Jordanian and Palestinian deaths in the civil war he fomented against King Hussein in 1969-71. And, he was later the center of the terror storm in Lebanon.
As a circular thinker with ideological biases, Arafat is incapable of moving rationally into accommodation with Israel on the issues of Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees.
So why not “off” him, as the majority of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s cabinet have demanded, a call supported by a majority of polled Israelis? Why not forcibly send him into exile or even kill him? Why not make room for a moderate Palestinian president who would come to a better and faster accommodation with Israel and lead an effective attack on Hamas, Islamic Jihad, al-Aqsa, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, and other terrorist groups?
As tempting as it is to believe that removing Arafat from the scene would usher in a period of improved security and prospects for peace, the truth is that just the opposite would result.
After the suicide bombing at Haifa’s Maxim restaurant that killed 20 earlier this month, Sharon spokesman Ra’anan Gissin, said, “We have the full right to take whatever measures we choose to take to defend the lives of our citizens.” Well put. But I would include the following measure: keeping Arafat in place so that any new agreement by the Palestinians on that illusive path to peace will stick.
Reasons to stay
Arafat is far more useful to Israel as an incumbent president of the Palestinian Authority than an exiled or “eliminated” terror capo.
Why? There are three reasons.
First, Arafat is the popular and popularly elected head of the Palestinians. What he says is listened to, and, but for the savage influence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, taken as direction.
Contrarily, the Sharon government’s actions besieging him in Ramallah have propped him up, and, now, with the Security Cabinet’s decision to exile or kill him, have only turned Arafat from a down-and-outer belittled by many Palestinians into a national hero and martyr-to-be.
Second, he’s damaged goods, a man with the blood of hundreds of Jews and thousands of Arabs on his hands. Arafat is a failed leader whose web of corruption and autocratic malfeasance are outsized only by his blatant running of weapons and munitions from Iran on the Karine A.
Precisely because of this black record, Israel will benefit from having Arafat behind the Palestinian negotiating team, as the final endorser of any accommodation or interim peace agreement.
Arafat would be open to criticism by Palestinian moderates, Israel and at least some in the international community, including moderate Arab states, if he held onto an extreme position while his Palestinian negotiating team moved toward accommodation with Israel.
If, on the other hand, Arafat is exiled, killed or imprisoned by Israel, any agreement with Israel by Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, or any other leader, would wholly lack weight. It would be predictably attacked by the Palestinian majority as a sell-out and stab in the back to a deposed leader.
Third, Israel cannot negotiate with the moderates alone. And neither can it nor should it negotiate with terrorists. Arafat then is the key. His value as a steppingstone toward reining in and demilitarizing Hamas and Islamic Jihad is undeniable.
If Arafat can be pressed by Qureia or another prime minister to sign on to a new interim agreement negotiated with Israel, he can also be pressed to leave his own waffling, overly street-conscious mode and sign on as well to disarming Hamas and Islamic Jihad by rebuilt and reequipped Palestinian police-security forces.
There’s no other way to do it. Arafat is a reluctant steppingstone, yes, but the only figure who will have the support of the Palestinian majority in the months to come.
Israel’s armed forces and intelligence have proved an outstanding, but not infallible, defense against terror. The fence Israel is building will prove effective, but not perfectly so. Bullets and barriers are indispensable, but there is no denying that a carefully laid diplomatic strategy, choosing to play Arafat just as one would force a chess opponent’s king into a checkmate position, is an essential parallel strategy.
No matter how despicable that chess piece may be.
Bernard Mann, a resident of Austin, Tex., is a former correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, author of “Rivers in the City” and writer for the Austin Jewish Outlook since 1995. He is also a published poet, chair of the Central Texas Jewish Writers League and a landscape architect and planner.
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