Posted on 05/05/2002 3:00:26 AM PDT by kattracks
Defiantly flashing the V-for-victory sign made famous by Winston Churchill, Yasser Arafat emerged from his month-long house arrest in Ramallah on Thursday to a throng of Palestinians who chanted, "With our blood and our souls, we will redeem you, Abu Ammar" — Arafat's nom de guerre.
Right then and right there, the Palestinian leader had a chance to change course, a chance to use his victory lap to signal that he's finally serious about peace.
If only Arafat had said something like this:
"My friends, I thank you for your solidarity with our cause, but I ask you to call me Arafat. Abu Ammar was my name when we waged war. Now we must wage peace — which we will achieve not by spilling more blood, but by sitting with the Israelis to construct a lasting peace in which everyone can live together, side by side, in two independent states."
Oh well, so much for dreams.
As the Ramallah siege ended, the Church of the Nativity in nearby Bethlehem was enveloped in flames, but instead of using that tragedy to urge an end to the violence — on both sides — Arafat angrily called Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and his soldiers "terrorists, Nazis, racists."
The responsibility for the fire doesn't matter — although the best evidence suggests that the Palestinians inside the church set it themselves, much as the real Nazis staged the Reichstag fire in 1933 to blame it on Hitler's foes. What matters is that Arafat squandered yet another opportunity to use his renewed popularity to calm tensions and revive what passes for the peace process.
For weeks, Arafat's supporters have claimed that their leader wants to end the terror but has been unable to do so because of his isolation.
Now, Arafat is on probation. "I expect him to lead," a frustrated President Bush said again Thursday. "I expect him to step up to his responsibilities."
'Serial Liar'
Well, I suppose it's still possible that Arafat will somehow see the light — that he will rein in the hottest of the hotheads among his followers, but I suppose that only because anything is possible, at least in theory.
The fact is Arafat is a "serial liar," to use the words of Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister who offered Arafat the best deal he could ever hope for at Camp David at the end of 2000 — a deal Arafat rejected. No, Arafat's promises are meaningless and always have been.
Now, in the midst of the mess, Sharon will visit Bush on Tuesday. If the advance notices are accurate, the prime minister will bring a plan for incremental measures — which include constructing a fence to separate Israel from the West Bank Palestinians (along with "proof" that Arafat has himself been intimately involved with the terror). That plan might — but probably can't — lead to a comprehensive peace unless Sharon's offer is a starting point only and unless the Arabs, led by Saudi Arabia, put the wood to Arafat, who needs their financial assistance.
As for putting an equal measure of wood to Sharon, well, Bush has tried that before — most recently when he demanded that Israel withdraw from the West Bank "now." That was a month ago, and Israel's forces are still there.
Hey, Hey, LBJ
In recent days I've wished that President Lyndon Johnson were in office today. I've thought he might apply the famous LBJ treatment, getting up front and personal with Sharon to convince him that baby steps won't cut it, that this is the moment to negotiate a final resolution.
But then I reviewed Johnson's failure to retard Israel's first strike against Egypt at the start of the Six-Day War in 1967. "Israel will not be alone unless it decides to go it alone," LBJ repeated three times (that's right, three times) to Israeli officials in the weeks before the war began.
Israel ignored LBJ, as it has similarly ignored Bush's pleas in recent weeks. So I'm not hopeful that Sharon will come around. He has his own sense of what's required, but because that sense reflects an essentially uncompromising attitude toward the Palestinians — who have legitimate complaints despite the horror of their terrorist tactics — it's hard to see how Sharon's view of the immediate future won't result in more bloodshed.
Something dramatic will be necessary before peace is possible, and the international conference announced for this summer by Secretary of State Powell might help. But it's probably most likely that nothing much will happen until Arafat and Sharon are replaced by leaders who don't reflexively regard their counterparts as implacable enemies.
E-mail: Mkramer@edit.nydailynews.com
Thanks for the link.
I'd say he's made his viewpoint clear. He'd have preferred that Israel were annihilated in 1967 so he wouldn't be inconvenienced by having to deal with this now. What a Clymer!
The after about eight to ten funerals, there will come along a guy who say's maybe we need to sit down and broker a peace deal in all sincerity.
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