Arafat and Palestine
Arafat and Palestine
Updated 01:15am (Mla time) Nov 14, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 14, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
PALESTINIAN leader Yasser Arafat exited the world stage the same way he entered it more than three decades ago: as a deeply divisive symbol of the Palestinian cause.
It is not quite accurate to say -- as President Macagapal-Arroyo said in an official statement issued the other day -- that Arafat, who died of a still-undisclosed illness at 75 inside a military hospital in Paris last Thursday, actually "devoted his life to working for peace for his people."
This is not to take away from his life's achievement, but peace for his people was always, and only, secondary. Above all else, Arafat, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the first president of the Palestinian Authority, was a Palestinian nationalist. Creating a Palestinian state was his first and last objective.
When resort to arms was in his view the most effective or indeed the only option, he proved himself a warrior to his people-and a terrorist to others. That was the way he burst into the world scene, as the leader of a group responsible for airplane hijackings. In the early 1990s, when an accommodation with Israel seemed within reach (not least because of unrelenting pressure from the White House), he turned himself into a peacemaker. When Israel took a hard turn to the right, at a time when he was already head of the Palestinian Authority, he sought refuge in the politics of ambiguity, taking part in the continuing peace process but allowing (there is no other convincing explanation for it) the second Palestinian intifada to take root.
(We must add that responsibility for the lack of success in forging a final and comprehensive peace settlement does not rest on his shoulders alone. Israeli and American leaders share that burden, too.)
Arafat's actions over four decades can thus be understood best within the framework of Palestinian statehood, not the quest for peace. And it is because of that first and fundamental role he filled-as the patriarch of a nation-that millions of Palestinians in Israel, in Jordan, and on the West Bank mourn his passing.
Judging by that severe criterion, we can say that Arafat both succeeded and failed in his life's mission. He failed because he died before the state of Palestine could be reborn. He succeeded because, regardless of the inevitable power struggle among the Palestinian leaders he has left behind, he turned Palestinian nationhood into fact.
Arafat and Osama
THE VIGIL in Paris, when Yasser Arafat was lapsing in and out of a coma, and Friday's funeral rites in Cairo, attended by dignitaries from some 60 countries, must have disconcerted not a few intelligence analysts.
The sight of dozens of supporters of the Palestinian cause keeping vigil outside the military hospital where Arafat was confined, or of a "distinguished gathering of presidents and royals" (as the Inquirer photo caption phrased it) attending his funeral, is unsettling for what it may say, not about Arafat's past, but Osama bin Laden's future.
Simply put, some terrorism experts believe that the latest Bin Laden videotape, released the weekend before the US presidential elections, signifies what we can call the Arafat-ization of the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Consider the following analysis by Peter Bergen, the author of "Holy War, Inc." (see www.peterbergen.com). "A key visual message of the tape was how it presented Bin Laden as an elder statesman, rather than as the leader of a paramilitary organization. That message was communicated by the fact that for the first time in one of his videotaped statements there was no weapon by Bin Laden's side. That non-belligerent visual message mirrored what Bin Laden said when he made a direct appeal to the American people, saying that al-Qaeda would suspend its attacks if there was a change in US foreign policy in the Muslim world ... This past year Bin Laden has increasingly tried to present himself as a strategically-minded political leader ..."
We do not have to look far to find his role model. Arafat's transformation (albeit incomplete in the eyes of many) had aligned world public opinion behind the Palestinian cause. Will Bin Laden's ongoing makeover turn his, 40 years from now, into a motherhood statement?
Updated 01:15am (Mla time) Nov 14, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the November 14, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
PALESTINIAN leader Yasser Arafat exited the world stage the same way he entered it more than three decades ago: as a deeply divisive symbol of the Palestinian cause.
It is not quite accurate to say -- as President Macagapal-Arroyo said in an official statement issued the other day -- that Arafat, who died of a still-undisclosed illness at 75 inside a military hospital in Paris last Thursday, actually "devoted his life to working for peace for his people."
This is not to take away from his life's achievement, but peace for his people was always, and only, secondary. Above all else, Arafat, the founder of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the first president of the Palestinian Authority, was a Palestinian nationalist. Creating a Palestinian state was his first and last objective.
When resort to arms was in his view the most effective or indeed the only option, he proved himself a warrior to his people-and a terrorist to others. That was the way he burst into the world scene, as the leader of a group responsible for airplane hijackings. In the early 1990s, when an accommodation with Israel seemed within reach (not least because of unrelenting pressure from the White House), he turned himself into a peacemaker. When Israel took a hard turn to the right, at a time when he was already head of the Palestinian Authority, he sought refuge in the politics of ambiguity, taking part in the continuing peace process but allowing (there is no other convincing explanation for it) the second Palestinian intifada to take root.
(We must add that responsibility for the lack of success in forging a final and comprehensive peace settlement does not rest on his shoulders alone. Israeli and American leaders share that burden, too.)
Arafat's actions over four decades can thus be understood best within the framework of Palestinian statehood, not the quest for peace. And it is because of that first and fundamental role he filled-as the patriarch of a nation-that millions of Palestinians in Israel, in Jordan, and on the West Bank mourn his passing.
Judging by that severe criterion, we can say that Arafat both succeeded and failed in his life's mission. He failed because he died before the state of Palestine could be reborn. He succeeded because, regardless of the inevitable power struggle among the Palestinian leaders he has left behind, he turned Palestinian nationhood into fact.
Arafat and Osama
THE VIGIL in Paris, when Yasser Arafat was lapsing in and out of a coma, and Friday's funeral rites in Cairo, attended by dignitaries from some 60 countries, must have disconcerted not a few intelligence analysts.
The sight of dozens of supporters of the Palestinian cause keeping vigil outside the military hospital where Arafat was confined, or of a "distinguished gathering of presidents and royals" (as the Inquirer photo caption phrased it) attending his funeral, is unsettling for what it may say, not about Arafat's past, but Osama bin Laden's future.
Simply put, some terrorism experts believe that the latest Bin Laden videotape, released the weekend before the US presidential elections, signifies what we can call the Arafat-ization of the leader of the al-Qaida terrorist network.
Consider the following analysis by Peter Bergen, the author of "Holy War, Inc." (see www.peterbergen.com). "A key visual message of the tape was how it presented Bin Laden as an elder statesman, rather than as the leader of a paramilitary organization. That message was communicated by the fact that for the first time in one of his videotaped statements there was no weapon by Bin Laden's side. That non-belligerent visual message mirrored what Bin Laden said when he made a direct appeal to the American people, saying that al-Qaeda would suspend its attacks if there was a change in US foreign policy in the Muslim world ... This past year Bin Laden has increasingly tried to present himself as a strategically-minded political leader ..."
We do not have to look far to find his role model. Arafat's transformation (albeit incomplete in the eyes of many) had aligned world public opinion behind the Palestinian cause. Will Bin Laden's ongoing makeover turn his, 40 years from now, into a motherhood statement?
posted by Dante at 10:09 PM
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