Arafat: Last Rites for a Scapegoat By Mike Whitney

Arafat: Last Rites for a Scapegoat

By Mike Whitney

Al-Jazeerah, November 18, 2004

Arafat’s failure to secure a viable Palestinian state for his people has
featured prominently in the western media. This comes as no great surprise.
The tendency to blame the victim is not deterred by something as trivial as
death. The plot to discredit the Palestinian President goes on even though
he has broken the “mortal coil”. The media has always tried to repudiate
Arafat. That won’t be slowed by his death.

Arafat was an explosive figure; cheerful, steadfast, corrupt,
charismatic. His one unforgivable shortcoming in the eyes of both Israel and
the US was his inability to sell out his people. Instead, he chose to finish
his days in a windowless room in dilapidated hovel where water and
electricity were never a certainty, and where the entire force of the
Israeli war machine was convened on his front doorstep.
He could have spent the winters in Capri and the summers in Aspen like the
other venal American clients who sit atop the Arab world.
Where will Iyad Allawi be vacationing this year? Will the dapper Karzai be
taking in the Fall fashions in NYC?

The price of honor has always been high, but Arafat paid it. He provided
the world with a potent symbol of resistance by living in the shadow of
troops and tanks. An enfeebled man blowing kisses to supporters is a moral
victory for the Palestinian cause and a blow to the occupation. It
demonstrates the unwavering resolve of someone who knows his cause is just.
No one was more emblematic of the Palestinian struggle than Yasir Arafat. As
peace activist, Uri Avnery said, “He is the father of his people, like
George Washington.” Even his miserable quarters, the Muqata’a, has been
elevated to a national shrine; the Arafat burial site, replete with soil
from the Al Aqsa Mosque. Neither the Israeli nor American press has
successfully diminished the astonishing outpouring of emotion for this
stateless firebrand.

Predictably, the Bush administration used the opportunity of Arafat’s
funereal to throw sand in the eyes of the Palestinian people one more time.
A low-level delegation of unemployed diplomats and other losers were trotted
off to Egypt for a perfunctory appearance. Their comical and unwarranted
presence only reinforced the belief that the US can never be an “impartial
broker” for peace.

Sharon saw the funereal as an excuse to beef up security and close down
checkpoints in the Gaza strip so that Palestinian mourners couldn’t attend
the funereal in Ramalla. Even grief has to be carefully monitored in a
police state.

Accolades and criticism have flooded in from all corners, most of them
disparaging Arafat’s “alleged” failure to achieve statehood. Robert Fisk
writes:

“He could not protect his people from Israeli military incursions or air
raids and he could not protect the Israelis when Palestinian suicide bombers
began to hurl themselves into Israel. He could not stop the illegal
settlements for Jews on Arab land and he could not obtain even a sliver of
Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital.

He could not obtain permission for a single Palestinian refugee to return
to live in the home from which their family was driven in 1948. He could not
guard his own national frontiers. He was not allowed to control his own
airport. In the end, he could only leave the wrecked building in which he
lived by starting the long process of dying.”

Fisk is right, of course. Arafat was absolutely powerless to change the
dynamic on the ground. That’s the great disadvantage of not having an army.
Force is always persuasive. But, Fisk also knows that the Israeli leadership
never had any intention of evacuating settlements or allowing a Palestinian
state to exist in the West Bank. The maneuverings during the Oslo
negotiations prove this convincingly. The eight years of Oslo saw a steady
increase of settlement activity, seizing of Palestinian land and attacks on
the symbols Palestinian identity. This transpired under both liberal and
conservative regimes. The determination to colonize the last sliver of
Palestine never changed. Oslo was little more than an Israeli public
relations scheme to divert attention from the 180,000 settlers who were
relocated to the occupied territories during the same period. The goal of
controlling the West Bank and ethnically cleansing as many Palestinians as
possible is the one unalterable fact of the conflict.

The charade at Camp David tarnished Arafat’s image as a world leader. Even
though Israel still refuses to provide maps of the final settlement, the
western press insists on referring to its terms as the “generous offer”.
They use this oblique allusion to savage Arafat and prove that he would
never be a reliable “partner in peace.” In fact, the “generous offer” was an
unacceptable proposal that would have allowed Israel to control Palestinian
air space, borders, water and resources; a plan that would have rendered
sovereignty meaningless. Most of the settlements would have remained in
place and nothing was resolved on the contentious issues of the “right of
return” or the final status of Jerusalem. In other words, the whole thing
was a sham choreographed by a President (Clinton) searching for a legacy and
a Prime Minister (Barak) looking to be reelected. Never the less, the media
persists in the “generous offer” chimera to this day and most Americans
believe it to be true.

Under pressure from Tony Blair, President Bush has reinserted himself into
the Middle East process coughing up the usual platitudes on the “historic
opportunity” that faces the Palestinian people.
"We'll mobilize the international community to help revive the
Palestinian economy, to build up the Palestinian security institutions to
fight terror, to help the Palestinian government fight corruption and to
reform the Palestinian political system and build democratic institutions,"
Bush thundered.

It’s all nonsense, of course, and if Falluja is any indication, Mr. Bush
doesn’t really care if Sharon turns the entire West Bank into a parking lot
for émigrés. He’s already washed his hands of the whole mess except for his
periodic rhetorical flourishes with pal Tony.

Bush’s underlying message is not difficult to decode: Palestinians must
capitulate completely or expect more of the same. Arafat must be replaced
with a Palestinian Allawi who will accept the responsibility of policing his
own people while the business of settlement building goes on. The Bush
directive leaves no hope for peace and ensures continued resistance. His
palavering is compounded by comments from the Defense Dept’s Eliot Abrams
(leading neocon in the Bush White House) who admitted that “there is no
interest in a new approach”. In other words, the Road Map is headed for the
paper-shredder, and Sharon’s unilateralist policies will persist with the
full blessing of Bush administration.

The death of Arafat is probably a greater blow to Israel than it is to the
Palestinians. Already the Likud leadership is huddled together divining ways
of creating another phantom to replace their departed nemesis. The conjuring
up of villains is an arduous process and requires a first rate public
relations team. How else can 37 years of oppression be excused if it isn’t
sloughed off on an undeserving scapegoat? Marwan al Barghuti (now located
in an Israeli prison) looks to be the most likely candidate. He’s already
been fitted with Arafat’s terror-moniker; with a little make-up, he could be
the next Palestinian Bin Laden. How long will it take the combined energies
of the American and Israeli media to paint horns and pointy tail on the
affable Barghuti?

In any event, Arafat can put down his burden and meet his Maker. He’s
carried the load long enough. It’s someone else’s job now.

Earth, a planet hungry for peace

Apartheid Wall


The Israeli Land-Grab Apartheid Wall built inside the Palestinian territories, here separating Abu Dis from occupied East Jerusalem. (IPC, 7/4/04).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python. (Alquds,10/25/03).

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