Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2005, pages 38-46

In Memoriam

In Memoriam Yasser Arafat (1929-2004)

The Icon of the Palestinian Cause

By The Electronic Intifada

YASSER ARAFAT, chairman of al-Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization and elected president of the Palestinian Authority, died in Paris Nov. 11 from complications stemming from a blood disorder at the age of 75. Born Muhammad Abd al-Ra’uf al-Arafat al-Qudwa, Yasser Arafat was related to the Husseini family and had strong family ties to Gaza and Jerusalem. He first became active in Palestinian politics while an engineering student in Cairo in the early 1950s, where he headed the Union of Palestinian Students at Fu’ad I University (now Cairo University) from 1952 to 1957. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Arafat launched his own contracting firm in Kuwait and quickly prospered. He probably used his personal wealth to launch al-Fatah, the most prominent of a number of exile groups advancing armed struggle as a means of liberating Palestine.

For nearly five decades, Yasser Arafat was a larger-than-life figure for those who admired him as well as those who hated and feared him—or, to be more precise, for those who hated and feared the Palestinian view of history, justice, and politics. Since the late 1960s, Arafat was the icon of the Palestinian cause. Like Che Guevara, Arafat’s image on a poster, a T-shirt, or a television screen could convey rich and complex meanings and sentiments across wide and diverse social landscapes. With his trademark black-and-white checkered keffiyah draped carefully over his shoulder so as to assume the proportions and shape of the map of Palestine, appearances by Arafat were almost always electrifying political events.

Many are the tales of Israeli, European, South African, and North American peace activists and journalists who waited hours to meet “Abu Ammar,” Arafat’s nom de guerre. After being whisked through the darkened streets of Beirut, Damascus, Cairo or Tunis in the wee hours of the morning, many foreigners had a chance to sip coffee in an office or parlor with the jovial, optimistic, and often emotionally explosive Arafat. Although having attained international status as a political leader of a major Third World revolutionary movement, Arafat was a small man, somewhat shy, yet approachable in informal small group meetings and journalistic interviews. He could also be extremely funny and often demonstrated a self-deprecating form of humor. Although he stated for decades that he was married to the cause, he eventually wed in his 60s, taking Suha Tawil, a woman 34 years his junior, as his spouse in 1990. Since 2000, they had been living separately. Later, she commented, she had “married a myth.”

Though pro-Israeli commentators’ exaggerations of Arafat’s viciousness and bloodthirstiness, coupled with Arafat’s poor command of English and a pervasive 5 o’clock shadow, put off many Western interlocutors, no one who followed the man’s life, comments, transformations, and public appearances could deny he possessed charisma and an ability to connect with Palestinians of all classes, religions, and ideological currents, even after a series of miscalculations on his part that damaged his credibility among Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular.

Few modern figures were as controversial as Yasser Arafat. Lionized by some and vilified by others, Arafat was a complicated figure. He was the leader of the PLO since before most Palestinians alive today were born. Even among his most vocal Palestinian critics, Arafat could inspire affection and loyalty in a way no other living Palestinian could. Palestinians, though, were also always his first and most vocal critics, a reality rarely conveyed by the mainstream press. And in the last decade of his life, Arafat received considerable and consistent criticism from Palestinians frustrated by the inevitable disappointments and injustices of the Oslo accords, particularly the accelerated settlement building of this period and the lack of movement on key social justice and political issues. Arafat also received stinging rebukes from former friends and supporters in the Arab world as well as in the West for administrative corruption, mismanagement, favoritism, and a politics of patronage that made a mockery of democratic practice in the Palestinian Authority.

Arafat’s backing of Saddam Hussain following the Iraqi army’s occupation of Kuwait in 1990 was arguably the worst of several major blunders, costing him, his people, and their cause dearly. Gulf states cut off financial and political aid to Arafat and the PLO following this decision, and with the concomitant collapse of the U.S.S.R. and the emergence of the United States as the sole arbiter of Middle Eastern politics, Arafat had little leverage to resist the humiliating requirements of the Oslo peace process. Though his return to Palestine was met with joy, parades, wildly ecstatic crowds and high hopes, the honeymoon was short-lived, largely because of the relentless and continuing Israeli colonization, but partly because of the culture the exiled symbol brought back with him. Arafat did not return alone, but rather was accompanied by security forces, politicians, wheelers and dealers, and other hangers-on whose political styles and personal values frequently clashed with those of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza who had just waged a momentous and largely nonviolent intifada from 1987 to 1993. The end of Arafat’s exile marked the beginning of new political and social class tensions in Palestine and the entrenchment of a political elite that, like Arafat, did not like to share power and cared little for transparency and accountability in administrative matters.

Despite his actual and figurative weakness over the last two years, Arafat was still a potent symbol of evil for Palestinians’ enemies. Even in the recent U.S. election campaign, candidates pandering to Zionist interests routinely flaunted their pro-Israel credentials by attacking and vilifying Arafat, as President Bush did in his second debate with Sen. John Kerry. The Arafat who was routinely scorned by American politicians, talk show hosts, and in thousands of American newspaper editorials for years was not a real human being, but a crude and simplistic caricature that often relied for its power on racist stereotypes about Arabs pervasive in American popular culture. The theme had been entirely conceived to distract from the real issues.

When Arafat appeared to be doing Israel’s bidding, he was elevated to the status of heroic figure and Nobel Peace Prize winner. When he refused to obey Israeli and American diktats, he was demonized as a bloodthirsty terrorist. As Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, wrote in a secret report for pro-Israeli U.S. lobbyists in April 2003, Arafat had been a great asset to Israel because “he looks the part” of a “terrorist.”

Arafat was routinely portrayed as a cunning puppet-master who manipulated all Palestinians, a sly political operator—a Dr. Evil-type super villain—who could single-handedly stymie the peaceful intentions of the world’s greatest powers. In recent years, President Bush, following Ariel Sharon’s cue, ostentatiously sidelined Arafat, and attempted to install a new and more pliable Palestinian leadership. We have no doubt that those who worked hardest to demonize Arafat will be the quickest to celebrate his death. But we also have no doubt that they will be the most disappointed by Arafat’s demise in the long run. No longer will Israel have a convenient scapegoat on which to pin all the blame for the suffering it has caused to its own people and others through its relentless colonization of Palestinian lands and destruction of Palestinian lives and homes.

Arafat’s death will not change any of the essential underpinnings of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There are still 3.5 million Palestinians living under a brutal Israeli military dictatorship in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Israel still keeps tens of thousands of heavily armed troops and hundreds of thousands of settlers in these territories, in violation of international law and U.N. resolutions. Millions of Palestinians still live in enforced exile, deprived of their fundamental human right, encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and U.N. General Assembly Resolution 194, to return to their own country. These stark facts ensure that suffering will continue, and possibly even escalate, until the root causes of a conflict that has taken tens of thousands of Palestinian, Lebanese, and Israeli lives are directly addressed and resolved.

Because caricatures of Arafat have dominated public and policy discourse in the United States and Israel, few Americans and Israelis can truly grasp the lengths to which Arafat and his officials went to try to work for peace in the Oslo era and also end the current intifada, if for no other reason than to preserve their own roles and statuses in the post-Oslo Middle East. Israel may now find that, with Arafat gone, a restraining factor on the ground has departed with the deceased Palestinian leader. This may even suit Ariel Sharon and provide a pretext for ever greater Israeli violence, but it will certainly not bring peace.

For the Israeli “peace camp,” the progenitors of the discredited and disastrous Oslo regime, Arafat’s death will likely represent the disappearance of what they see as a credible partner to try to revive an Oslo-style deal in which Palestinians are given nominal or quasi-statehood within a Greater Israel, in exchange for accepting most of the settlements and relinquishing the refugees’ right of return. All these schemes were meant to secure a Palestinian signature to a status quo that is entirely to Israel’s benefit while resolving none of the basic causes of the conflict. Arafat’s death will be a setback to this discredited “peace camp,” and to such initiatives as the recent “Geneva Accord” because the Palestinian participants in this unworkable plan drew the little authority they had solely from their association with Arafat.

Although the last two years of Arafat’s life were profoundly bleak and lonely, spent under house arrest in the company of loyal courtiers in his bombed-out and isolated Muqata’a headquarters in Ramallah, he had known many moments of triumph and glory in his long and varied political career. His rise to prominence in the PLO, particularly during its period of greatest power in Lebanon (1971-1982), his speech before the U.N. General Assembly in New York City in 1974, as well as his important speech before the U.N. in Geneva in 1988 in which he formally recognized, as the head of the PLO, Israel’s right to exist and the principle of peace in exchange for territorial withdrawal, stand out not only as high points in one man’s life, but also as key landmarks in modern Middle Eastern history. 

Although his political obituary was written again and again, Arafat displayed a legendary tenacity and an amazing ability to pull through at the eleventh hour, usually thanks to his remarkable skill in cobbling together coalitions and allies from very disparate backgrounds. Trapped by Sharon in the rubble of his Ramallah headquarters, though, Yasser Arafat was marginalized politically and virtually powerless militarily since the murderous Israeli attack on Palestinian cities in March-April 2002 that killed over 500 people and destroyed most of the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority. Yet his steadfastness in maintaining dignity and decorum as the Palestinian president in the rubble of al-Muqata’a (tr. “[Ramallah] District Headquarters”) showed much of his true nature: tough, patient, cheerful, and uninterested in comfort, luxuries, and ostentation. Arafat departs the Palestinian and Middle Eastern political stage as a wraith of his former self, with no political heir apparent.

Yasser Arafat is survived by his wife, Suha Tawil, and their daughter, Zahwa.

Ma`a salaameh, yaa Abu ‘Ammar.

This editorial first appeared Nov. 10 on the Electronic Intifada, <http://electronicintifada.net>, under the title “Yasser Arafat, 1929-2004.” Reprinted with permission.

Why I Engaged Arafat Over the Years

By Paul Findley

During my years in Congress, Yasser Arafat’s name was often mentioned in committee meetings and on the floor of the House of Representatives but rarely without an ugly prefix. “Terrorist” Arafat led the “terrorist” PLO consisting of “terrorist” Palestinians. Observers unfamiliar with the Arab-Israeli conflict might have mistakenly assumed that the adjective “terrorist” was actually a proper part of these names.

One evening years ago, during one of my periodic open discussions with citizens in my hometown, Jacksonville, Illinois, the executive director of the Chamber of Commerce  wondered out loud about my willingness to associate with Arafat, a “person widely considered more evil than Genghis Khan.” My answer: “Arafat was a powerful leader in the Middle East, and a major power, like the United States, should have the best possible communication with him. With the U.S. government foolishly refusing direct talks, I tried to fill the gap as best I could.”

While in Congress, I met personally with Arafat twice, both times in his quarters in Damascus. The first was in January 1978 while a member of a congressional group on a tour of the Middle East. After I promised never to mention their names, two other members of Congress joined Mrs. Findley and myself on the unscheduled, unofficial side trip to meet the controversial PLO leader. Both to and from his quarters, our cars were escorted by heavily armed escorts. After a discussion of more than two hours with Arafat, we joined him for a late meal.

I returned alone in November for a long follow-up discussion, during which Arafat authorized me to report to the White House his terms for living at peace with Israel: As chairman of the PLO executive committee, he pledged that the new Palestine would live at peace, have de facto political relations with Israel, and renounce all violent efforts to enlarge the country, provided that Israel accept an independent Palestine consisting of the West Bank and Gaza District, with a connecting corridor.

On both occasions, I found him to be candid and willing to be quoted. His perpetually scruffy beard belied his genial, warm manner. While watching the recent baseball World Series, it occurred to me that Arafat would fit comfortably with the scruffy but genial Red Sox players. Although scrupulously clean, the Palestinian leader always looked like he had climbed out of embattled trenches and seldom had a chance to shave. He was a guerrilla fighter and looked the part.

His broad, ready grin and laughter were engaging. Although his hands were small, his handshake was warm and firm. He spoke English, but occasionally looked to an aide for the right word. He was a good listener, never interrupting. Once, when my tape recorder failed, he produced a substitute. He had a good sense of humor. He looked straight into my eyes as we talked.

If he was corrupt in managing PLO affairs, as critics frequently charged, the corruption was well concealed. At all of my meetings with him over a period of 23 years, I believe he wore the same nearly-threadbare uniform jacket and trousers.

My experience with Arafat began in 1978 when I tried to be a bridge of information between him and the U.S. government, which for many years before and after refused to have any direct contacts with him or his staff. I was never Arafat’s agent in any sense, although twice during the hostage crisis in Iran, at the request of the State Department, I relayed messages requesting Arafat to block PLO plans for showdown votes in the U.N. Security Council. On those occasions, I did not talk personally with Arafat, but communicated through one his aides. On both occasions, Arafat complied with the U.S. request. On another occasion in 1980, I relayed a U.S. request that led to the release of several female U.S. Embassy employee hostages in Tehran. I must note, with regret and resentment, that the U.S. government never acknowledged Arafat’s cooperation on these occasions.

In dealing personally with Arafat, my hope was simply to improve understanding of the U.S. government by Arafat and vice versa. My efforts fell on deaf ears at the White House but evoked harsh, relentless criticism on Capitol Hill and in certain quarters back home.

After leaving Congress, I met Arafat five more times. The first two meetings were in Baghdad, during a period when the U.S. government supported Saddam Hussain in his bloody war with Iran. Both times, we met in a guest quarters the Iraqi government provided Arafat during his frequent, lengthy visits. During one, a loud pop caused all of us, including Arafat, to jump. The pop proved to be caused by a faulty light bulb.

After a dinner program in New York City observing the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, Arafat came to the table where I was seated. To my surprise, he embraced me warmly in a prolonged Arab hug, then led me to his suite where I joined in a discussion of peace prospects and plans at Bethlehem for the 2,000th anniversary of Christ’s birth.

Other meetings were brief. In September 1993, President Clinton hosted a meeting of Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin on the south lawn of the White House for the signing of what was heralded as a peace agreement. After the signing and famous handshake, Arafat invited several people, including former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young and myself, to his hotel suite. It was a jovial, optimistic discussion.

Our last meeting was in dusty, biblical Jericho in 2000, when I accompanied a group of young leaders from many countries on a tour of the occupied territories. I sat next to Arafat as he fielded questions. He remained seated during the entire meeting, his knees and lips trembling uncontrollably. He was a sick man. Unlike all of our other meetings, this one provided no opportunity for private discussion.

In 1980, I sustained a strong challenge in the Republican primary by David Nuessen, then mayor of Quincy and now a good friend. Using full-page newspaper ads, Nuessen focused heavily on my meetings with Arafat. I was represented as “terrorist” Arafat’s best friend in Congress. Except for the word “terrorist,” it was probably an accurate statement, but not one that would elicit support for me on election day.

During the campaign, I received a surprise letter from Arafat in which he wrote: “Your adversary, David Nuessen, tries to defame you because of your relations with us. But God will always be with you, because you are dedicated to a cause of justice….”  My Democratic opponent that November and a different one two years later continued the pounding.

During those years, I found it almost impossible to have a civilized discussion of Yasser Arafat on Capitol Hill or any place else in the United States.

Even today, 23 years after my congressional departure, I find the public perception of Arafat as a terrorist is as strong as ever. On Nov. 4, when Arafat’s illness became critical, a CNN commentator reported that Arafat continued to sponsor terrorism while rejecting constructive Israeli peace proposals. She made no mention of Arafat’s frequent statements disapproving of suicide bombings, or of the fact that no Palestinian leader could be expected to accept the strictures in the Israeli proposals the reporter described as constructive. To millions, no doubt, Arafat remains a terrorist.

Western historians may never accord Yasser Arafat the honor, but I believe he ranks with Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, Jr. as a great champion of human rights. He has made mistakes, of course, but, like the other champions I mention, he persevered against heavy odds with uncompromising singleness of purpose in his quest for the dignity and rights of abused Palestinians. In a fundamental way, Arafat’s tactics differed from Gandhi, Mandela and King. Despite bloody, lethal opposition, the three preached and practiced nonviolent resistance as the route to their historic successes.

Arafat did not. Given local circumstances, perhaps he could not. In fact, from the inception of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO] until his death, Arafat considered himself the commander-in-chief of the ragged, poorly armed, poorly organized military forces of the movement, even during his long exile from Palestinian territory.

To Arafat, the violence he frequently authorized was never terrorism but the lawful right of a people to struggle forcibly to evict an occupying power.

Was he a terrorist? If so, the colonists who rebelled against King George in 1776 deserve the same label.  

Was he a great leader? By any reasonable standard, the answer must be affirmative. He was also a remarkable survivor. Often in the cross-hairs of the assassin, he had at least the proverbial nine lives. Once he survived a violent plane crash in North Africa. Before the crash, his aides tied him up in every blanket and pillow they could find. When the plane crashed, the fuselage broke in two parts. Arafat walked away without serious injury.

He will be remembered with tears and moaning by most Palestinians, although some accused him of corruption and ineptitude. Others long wanted him to turn leadership over to younger hands. But most of the world’s population will remember him with gratitude for his valiant struggle. Even historians in America will be hard put to deny him a bright page in the chapter on freedom fighters.

Did I regret being Arafat’s “best friend in Congress”? Never, not for a fleeting moment, even though this association clearly was a major factor in my defeat in 1982. I consider it a badge of honor to stand with a freedom fighter.

Paul Findley, who served in the House of Representatives as a Republican representative from Illinois for 23 years, is the author of They Dare to Speak Out, Deliberate Deceptions and Silent No More, all available from the AET Book Club.

Our Own Palestinian De Gaulle

By Afif Safieh    

Throughout his political career, Yasser Arafat was the object of relentless campaigns of character assassination—not because of what he was, but because of what he represented: the Palestinian people, whose mere existence was a monumental nuisance for those who coveted Palestine. For me, Yasser Arafat was the Palestinian De Gaulle, the architect of the resurrection of our national movement in the mid-1960s, and its locomotive for almost 40 years.

He had to struggle against foes and friends to maintain the rank and status of Palestine and the Palestinians, undiminished in spite of Israeli military occupation and our dispersion. I first met Yasser Arafat at a student conference in Amman in 1970, when I was 20 and president of the Palestinian students in Belgium. I translated for him during several of his encounters. His message was: we the Palestinians are the victims of the victims of European history. We have become the Jews of the Jews. But we do not want to make them the Palestinians of the Palestinians. We are trying to break the dialectic of oppression, where the previously oppressed becomes the tormentor; hence our proposal of a democratic unitary state in Palestine that is bicultural, multi-confessional and multiethnic.

Yasser Arafat was the first to draw the strategic lessons of the October war in 1973. From then on, he believed there could be no military solution to the conflict, but only a necessary, negotiated solution: the two-state solution. After 1973, he became the leader of the pragmatic school of thought in the annual Arab summits. Throughout those years, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian people were the rejected party and Israel the rejectionist party.

During the PLO’s years in Beirut, I served as a staff member in Arafat’s office, in charge of U.N. institutions and European affairs. After the European Venice declaration of 1980, which for the first time endorsed Palestinian self-determination and the role of the PLO in any quest for peace, I attended with him meetings with successive presidents of the European Council of Ministers. That was the beginning of a European initiative from which he had great expectations.

Beside him, I witnessed the Israeli-Palestinian mini-war in Lebanon in August 1981, and the negotiations for a cease-fire with U.N. commander General Callaghan and American presidential envoy Philip Habib. Arafat respected that cease-fire scrupulously for 11 months, when General Sharon, itching for a war, violated it in June 1982 by invading Lebanon—a war that even Israeli public opinion considered not a war of necessity, but of choice. Many observers sympathetic to Israel considered that since then Israel has lost its “purity of arms.”

In 1980, I was asked to interview Yasser Arafat for the Catholic weekly Témoignage Chrétien. I wanted to finish with a human touch, so I asked him at the end: “Abu Ammar, which was your saddest day?”

He looked surprised, and he was known to be reluctant to answer personal questions. Then, after some meditation, he answered, “I have had many a sad day in my life.” So I asked him, “and which was your happiest day?” to which he answered, “My happiest day? I haven’t lived it yet.”

My final meeting with Yasser Arafat was on Oct. 20, when my wife and I were among his last visitors. He had been already sick for more than a week, but worried that we might catch his flu. Yet for 25 minutes he questioned me with great precision about domestic British politics, Prime Minister Blair and what I thought were the possibilities of a British initiative after the U.S. elections. He instructed me to liaise closely with the government because he was extremely favorable to any serious credible attempt to revitalize the peace process.

There is now a window of opportunity to reactivate the process—and not because Yasser Arafat is out of the picture. It is for objective reasons which are now converging and which would have had his blessing.

First, now that President Bush has secured his place in the White House for a second mandate, he might also want to secure his place in history. Second, there is European and international exasperation with the self-inflicted impotence of the American administration for the last four years, which has resulted in the irresponsible deterioration in Israel-Palestine. And finally, there is a growing awareness in Washington that what is poisoning international relations and creating a rift with the Arab and Muslim worlds is the perceived American complicity with Israeli territorial appetites and the unresolved Palestinian tragedy.

Arafat, an obstacle to peace? I believe that we need an Israeli “obstacle” of a similar kind in order to make further progress in our elusive quest.

Afif Safieh is the Palestinian General Delegate to the UK and the Holy See. This article first appeared in The Guardian, Nov. 12, 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Arafat’s Arrival in Cairo

By Samah Jabr  

During President Yasser Arafat’s hospitalization in France, just before his death, I travelled from Paris to Cairo to spend the end of Ramadan and the Eid holiday in an Islamic environment. While in Paris I witnessed Palestinian and French-Arab expressions of solidarity with the ailing leader—manifested by lighting candles and spending cold and long nights around his pictures outside the hospital—Egyptians expressed deep, subtle and widespread grief when his death was announced and when his body arrived in Cairo, and real concerns about the future of Palestine. In addition to the formal military funeral organized by the Egyptian government in Cairo’s Dar Al-Jalaa military club, there was a grassroots farewell to Arafat organized by the Egyptian Popular Committee in Solidarity with the Palestinian Intifada. Held after Nov. 12 Friday prayers at Masjid al-Azhar, it was discouraged by the government and ignored by the media soon after it began. Had the government allowed popular participation in Arafat’s official service, my guess is that his coffin would have been carried on villagers’ shoulders.

In general, many people, whether or not they knew I was a Palestinian, expressed a message of solidarity and compassion with the daring Palestinian people, struggling for decades against the barbaric aggression of the Israeli occupation. As Ramadan ended, imams presiding over the Eid prayers in different Cairo masjids prayed for the well-being of Palestinians and expressed heartfelt calls to the Palestinian people to unite their forces in that most difficult situation. I noticed worshippers’ eyes reddening in tears when Palestine was mentioned.

After all, for ordinary people in Egypt and around the Arab world, Arafat is the face of the Palestinian nation and the symbol of its foundation. An example is Ali Al-Shawatfi, a 65-year-old villager from Al-Biheira Damanhour. He was visiting his friends in Cairo when we met just before the Ramadan iftar (the meal breaking the day’s fast). Watching the news reports on Arafat, Ali started crying. When I asked why he was so sad for Arafat, Mr. Al-Shawatfi told me he lost a brother, Mohammad, in Palestine in the 1967 war. “He was handsome and very young, and I had just quarrelled with him for borrowing a good sum of money and spending it on his fiancée before he went to war. His friends tell me that he was arrested in Sinai and then put with other prisoners under an Israeli tank and crushed to death. We never received his body or buried him,” he said, “but we got 40 Egyptian Pounds as compensation; 40 EP are hardly enough to buy 1 kilogram of lamb meat these days. But it was a good sum of money in 1967.”

Another listener interrupted, to offer sympathy as well over Arafat’s death. The encounters demonstrated how the death of Arafat cements most people’s relations, reactions and emotions to both their private and their national pain. For Ali, and most simple people like him, Arafat represents Palestine, his brother, and all the martyrs and the pain of his era. The rumors about the possibility that Arafat died as a result of poisoning, and the general feeling that Israel was behind that, feeds into the same instinctive, compassionate reaction to his death.

Egypt’s older generation, in particular, has a special and deep connection with the Palestinian wound. There was a time when almost every home had a martyr killed in war. During the time of President Gamal Abdul-Nasr, the issue of Palestine was part of Egypt’s standard education curriculum. It was removed following the Camp David agreement.

Then, after six years of severe economic and physical sacrifices and the propaganda of an inflated gain after the October 1973 war, the ordinary Egyptian opened his eyes to see the “oil-floating nations,” distant from the reality of war, developing their economies and countries through the labor of the children of “non-oil-floating nations,” including Egypt—something that still represents a serious wound to national pride. Egyptians thought to themselves: "We have paid a tax in blood to protect Arab nationalism, and, as a result, other Arabs look down on us.”

These thoughts, along with promises that a peace agreement would lead to an improved economic status, prepared the Egyptian public, willingly or unwillingly, to put up with Anwar Sadat’s decision to sign the Camp David agreement.

Today, a few ignorant, self-described educated, Egyptians dare to utter such dim-witted remarks as: “What happens in Palestine is in essence the fault of Palestinians, who sold their lands to the Israelis”; “Arafat was the ninth wealthiest person on earth and cared less about the suffering of his people”; “The ‘Israeli Arabs’ are collaborators because they accepted Israeli citizenship”; “It is better to stay away from Palestinians; they bring troubles wherever they go.”

The Arab media is to blame for their lack of interest in correcting such faulty views.

Many compassionate others were simply concerned about the ability of the Palestinian people to produce a worthy successor like Arafat—or the possibility of Palestinians going astray after his death.

There is an element of danger and irrationality in that position, as well. Of course there will not be another Arafat—nor am I sure we need one. It is crucial that Palestinians analyze and criticize Arafat’s policies and management of our resistance over the years and draw the correct lessons from it—one being that neither Arafat nor any other leader can manage our predicament alone. Only a democratically elected parliament, in which all Palestinian political, ethnic and religious minorities are represented, is capable of articulating Palestinians’ needs and concerns at this point. At this critical juncture, elections must not be restricted to the office of president, but should include the Legislative Council as well. Moreover, the political groups participating in elections should not be limited to those established by or allied to Yasser Arafat and his Fatah party.

The only single leader behind which Palestinians should unite is our just cause. Maintaining that justness is the only way forward.

Despite all the political differences and disagreements among Palestinians about Arafat’s status as an historic leader and symbol of the Palestinian people's struggle, there is at least an agreed-upon appreciation for the man—without any illusions about what he represented and will continue to represent for Palestine and Arab nationalism. Unlike most Arab leaders, Arafat was elected at least by some of his people (Palestinians refugees and those in the Diaspora had no vote in the elections). Throughout his life Arafat himself, if not many of the people around him and certain family members, lived modestly. He spent the last few years imprisoned in al-Muqata’a, his bombed-out Ramallah compound, enduring a long siege against him by his enemy.

Arafat was indeed mysterious, ambiguous and a manipulator. He annoyed his friends as much as he annoyed his enemies. He personally embodied the multiple political power of the PLO, Fatah party and Palestinian Authority, and was a battlefield fighter as well as a politician on the world stage. Whether it was representing Palestine at an international peace convention or granting a special request for financial assistance to a medically needy Palestinian, Arafat was in charge of it all. He accepted the Oslo accords, which were rebuffed by the majority of his people, but stood firm when pressured to compromise on Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees’ right of return. He ran the Palestinian plight as a one-man show, as if it were his private affair, and Palestine his own property—which might be proof of his innocence, as well as his guilt.

Whether many Palestinians wished it or not, Arafat played the role of father figure. One can love, argue with or hate one’s father, but there is no way to ignore his looming status in one’s life.

Arafat has died, but Palestine is still alive. His death will be just another day, in a long march, in a difficult struggle, on the way to liberation and decolonization. As he sought to do throughout his life, may his death bring more visibility and enlightenment to the cause of his nation.

Samah Jabr, a native of Jerusalem, is a physician currently studying in Paris.

Eyewitnesses to Arafat’s Funeral

By Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt       

Going to Ramallah through the Bitunya checkpoint gives the clear feeling of entering a prison. We had to go by foot through a complicated system of high walls, barriers and security checks. At least this day we were not refused entry altogether, as we had become used to in the past years.

The soldiers looked at us with a kind of grudging respect as we lined up to sign the legal waiver. (“Knowing the dangers I declare that from my own free will I take all risks upon myself, and give up any claims whatsoever toward the state of Israel, the Ministry of Defense and their employees and soldiers in connection with any bodily damage or death, caused by my presence in the closed area.”) Activist Edith Ohri took the soldiers by surprise by adding “except if I am shot at by the Israeli army” in a handwritten reservation.

We were through but without means of transport—the Gush Shalom bus from Tel Aviv and the bus with Jerusalem activists had to be left behind at the military parking lot. But a phone call to our Palestinian contacts soon brought a convoy of vans, bearing posters of Arafat and the inscription “official delegation” taking us and a group of Arab dignitaries from the Galilee to Ramallah’s city center.

Nearly every passing car sported an Arafat poster, and the small children at the street corners were selling them: Arafat smiling, Arafat saluting, Arafat and the Jerusalem mosques, Arafat with President [Jacques] Chirac and the crossed flags of Palestine and France...

On the radio, we heard reports from Cairo, where diplomats and world leaders were paying homage to Arafat in a rather sterile ceremony. At the gates of the Muqata’a—a place well-known to us from our visits to the beleaguered Arafat—there had already gathered a considerable crowd, though it was still hours before the helicopter could be expected. Our identity as Israelis was manifest from the round two-flag stickers we all wore, and which were very much sought after by the Palestinian youths; we were prepared for that and distributed quite a lot.

We were treated as VIPs, and the Palestinian police made valiant efforts to let us in, through the narrowly opened gate, while keeping the rest of the crowd out. The youths around us would have none of that, and the fact that so many of them wore our stickers made it difficult for the police to distinguish. The crowding became unbearable; some of us had gotten in, others decided to give up the privilege and stay outside. The youngsters, however, were relentless. Some started climbing over the gate itself, others made risky acrobatic feats of clambering via the half-ruined buildings (reminders of Israeli bulldozers). It became a wild mélée between police on the one side and the ever increasing number of Palestinian youngsters trying to get in. Outnumbered and not using other means than their bare hands, the police were eventually unable to prevent the gate from being forced open.

“With our blood and souls we’ll redeem you, Abu Ammar!” chanted the crowd pouring in. Palestinian national flags were waved in enormous profusion, among them a French and a Canadian flag of international volunteers and the banner of an Italian trade union. Women in traditional clothes, who were there, too, were seen crying. Forward we marched through past the multi-story Arafat banners covering all buildings. The grave had been dug at the far end of an open space within the compound—all buildings which had been there having been razed to the ground by the IDF in 2002.

Now this space, the size of several stadiums, was filled to the absolute limit. People were clinging to the tops of trees, and every building all around was covered with swarms of onlookers. Suddenly, fingers were pointing into the blue sky, where some had already discerned approaching black dots: “He is coming! He is coming!” It was a surrealistic moment, the helicopters bringing Arafat’s coffin down from heaven. “Yasser, Yasser,” came the cry from tens of thousands of throats. A lot of shooting in the air, and the smell of cordite. Though not fond of this ritual, we realized its meaning after two years in which the Israeli army adopted the habit of shooting to death any Palestinian seen with a gun.

The people who saw it on live broadcast saw it better than we: the crowds surging to the opening helicopter doors, straining to touch the coffin. But the emotional spontaneity did not become chaos, and sometime later a car with the coffin and green-uniformed exultant police sitting on top passed near where we stood.

Indeed, some of the planned ceremony did not take place, but we have witnessed something much more meaningful: the vitality of the source upon which Arafat’s leadership drew, the love of an oppressed people for the symbol of their struggle to be free. Without grassroots struggle there would never have been the Palestinian Authority, and the people now in charge know that for a new mandate, that is where they have to turn.

Adam Keller and Beate Zilversmidt are members of the Israeli peace group Gush Shalom.

After Arafat

By Katherine Metres Abbadi

Like his origins, Yasser Arafat’s demise is shrouded in mystery. Where did he come from? Why were the details of his illness kept secret? Why did his wife behave so bizarrely during his illness? What caused his death?

Both the official biography and death certificate of Yasser Arafat (“Abu Ammar”) list his birthplace as Jerusalem. Arafat also claimed to be a nephew of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem and leader of the Palestinian nationalist movement in the first part of the 20th century.

In fact, most sources indicate Arafat was born and raised in Cairo, although he lived in Jerusalem with his maternal uncle for four years after his mother died. He is from the Gaza-based, Muslim Qudwa family and part of the Husseini clan not related to the mufti.

Whatever one thinks of Arafat’s origin, strategy or administration, however, one cannot deny his steadfast dedication to the liberation of Palestine. And, like other Palestinians, he endured siege, closure, and threats of assassination by Israel.

Some people believe that Arafat took for himself money intended for the Palestinian people. In August 2002, Israel claimed that Arafat had secret bank accounts in his name where he had stashed away $1.3 billion. In 2003 Forbes magazine asserted that Arafat was one of the world’s richest men, with a fortune of at least $300 million.

A 2003 audit conducted by a team of American accountants hired by the PA Finance Ministry concluded that Arafat had $1 billion in secret investments. “Although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes,” the lead accountant stated, “virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public.”

That Arafat was wily and corrupted others is clear, yet his legendary spartan lifestyle suggests he was not a thief. Mohammed Edwan, sirector of the PA President’s Press Office, gave the Washington Report his personal assurance that Arafat essentially had no money of his own.

Arafat used the money he controlled to help Palestinians who requested help from him, to buy the loyalty of potential rivals, and to finance other secret projects, like supporting resistance fighters in Lebanon or clandestinely importing arms. Secret PLO bank accounts for these revolutionary purposes exist, confirms a source close to the PA, but other PLO leaders have access to them.

Arafat did not marry until his sixties, and his wife, Suha, a Palestinian journalist from a wealthy Christian family, was never accepted by his aides. Arafat’s advisers, jealous of her new place in his life, were further alienated when she bravely spoke out against corruption and nepotism in the inner circle.

Mrs. Arafat created a diplomatic crisis during a November 1999 appearance with First Lady Hillary Clinton by accusing Israel of “daily, intensive use of poison gas” against Palestinians. (There is credible evidence that Israel has used poison gas against demonstrators, but not on a daily basis.) A year later, Suha moved to Paris, ostensibly in order to obtain leukemia treatment for their daughter. However, an informed source says she was sent away by Abu Ammar with orders not to return until he sent for her. She did not even visit Palestine until Arafat fell gravely ill in October.

When the public heard that Mrs. Arafat was coming to Ramallah, the seriousness of Abu Ammar’s condition became immediately apparent. When he departed suffering from an unknown medical condition, no one knew what was wrong, or what would happen if he died.

Abu Ammar went to Paris because Prime Minister Jacques Chirac had once told him to remember in a time of need that he had “a friend in France.” As his wife, Suha was the only person entitled by French law to full disclosure of the president’s medical condition. She quashed attempts by PLO representatives, such as Leila Shahid, to inform the media of Abu Ammar’s deteriorating condition.

Many people suspected that Arafat had been poisoned. Circumstantial evidence supported this thesis: The Israelis had stated their intention to kill him. They had assassinated two other major Palestinian leaders earlier in the year, as well as hundreds of Palestinian activists during the intifada.

Arafat’s symptoms (which were initially diagnosed as influenza) could have been caused by food poisoning. Though his health had clearly declined with age, there was no evidence of cancer, disease, or infection—at least so far as the public has been told. Confined to his demolished Ramallah quarters by the Israeli army, it would have been relatively easy for the Israelis to have arranged the spiking of Arafat’s rations. And in these times of poverty and closure, the Shin Bet might have been able to recruit a collaborator to do the deed. Moreover, a year earlier Arafat had suspected the Israelis were poisoning him.

In 1997 the Mossad failed in its attempt to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshal in Jordan, using a poison they had specially developed. It was only because Meshal was seen to have been injected that his doctors did not simply attribute his all-but-certain death to unknown causes. In order to gain the release of the captured Mossad agents, Israel provided the poison’s antidote to King Hussein and released Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison. Israel waited until March 2004 to assassinate Yassin.

In addition, PFLP military leader Wadi’a Haddad, who died of symptoms similar to Arafat’s in the late 1970s, is believed to have been poisoned by a close aide recruited by the Mossad.

Then came the reports from France: Arafat is dead, reported the Israeli media. He’s in a coma, reported Leila Shadid. He’s brain dead, said Palestinian officials. He’s conscious and smiling at doctors, leaked Suha.

At four o’clock in the morning, when many Palestinians were having their pre-fast meal, Mrs. Arafat called al-Jazeera, claiming that Abu Ammar would recover and calling on the Palestinian people to stop their leaders from going to France “to bury him alive.”

The Palestinian people were alarmed by Mrs. Arafat’s statement—but not in the way she intended. Already believing the worst of her—most thought she had abandoned her husband and homeland rather than being sent away—Palestinians felt that she had embarrassed them on the international level.

PLO Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas and Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei, the objects of her tirade, gracefully told the media Mrs. Arafat was under a great deal of pressure and had been the victim of a misunderstanding. According to a source close to the PA, Mrs. Arafat was panicking that her and their daughter’s reported $100,000 monthly stipend and access to other PLO funds might be at risk.

Upon their arrival in Paris, PA leaders pacified Suha by agreeing to her demand for $20 million and a reported ongoing payment of $1.8 million a month so long as she helped them find all the Palestinian funds.

Meanwhile, Abu Ammar’s doctors concluded that he had a blood platelet condition called disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC), which can be fatal. The condition, however, usually is caused by cancer or an infection, neither of which was found.

Arafat’s personal physician, Ashraf al-Kurdi, called for an autopsy. Recalling his own experience, Meshal accused Israel of assassinating the president. Palestinian leaders requested that the French military hospital release their comprehensive report.

The hospital chose to respect the law and keep mum. But in an attempt to quash rising Palestinian anguish over why Arafat died, treating doctors informed the press they had done sophisticated tests for poisoning and ruled it out. According to press reports, Palestinian officials sent samples of Arafat’s blood to the U.S. and Germany to be triple-checked.

The evidence trail and authoritative leaks suggest that Arafat’s DIC was caused by cirrhosis of the liver. Since cirrhosis is often (but not in this case) caused by alcohol consumption, that could explain the reticence to publicize the cause of the devout Muslim leader’s death.

Even if it did not poison him, however, Israel bears significant responsibility for Arafat’s death. The Palestinian leader’s life was undoubtedly shortened by the stress, lack of exercise, and deprivation of sunlight he experienced while forcibly confined to his compound.

When Arafat was authoritatively declared deceased, the entire political spectrum grieved. His body was sent off with the utmost respect by France, a country now beloved by Palestinians.

Katherine Metres Abbadi, based in Ramallah, Palestine, is a free-lance journalist and international affairs professional specializing in human rights.

Palestine Greater Than Arafat

By Sam Bahour  

The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence is larger than the late President Yasser Arafat. The decades-long symbolism that Arafat embodied should not be underestimated. It is this symbolism that Palestinians are mourning. The substance of Arafat’s symbolism has to do with how it has represented Palestinian nationalism and the five-decade struggle for justice for a people that were dispossessed in 1948, militarily occupied in 1967, attacked while in exile in 1970 in Jordan and 1982 in Lebanon, and most recently, battered in their own homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. A wide spectrum of opinions about Arafat, the man and the leader, will surely outlive the international flurry of media interest in his death. However, the world must be aware that the Palestinian struggle is beyond any single individual.

During the last decade, Yasser Arafat brought to the table something that Israel and the United States could only previously dream about: the single legitimate source for Palestinian political decisions. Through his iron-fisted and highly centralized control of Palestinian decision making bodies, finances and fighters, Arafat was able to coax his people into dealing with a new reality, the Oslo peace process, that he hoped would open the door for good faith from Israel and the United States. Arafat hoped that this process would ultimately end in a political solution resulting in two independent states living side by side, Palestine and Israel. History has proven that Israel and the United States had other plans—the creation of a process that would, in and of itself, become the means as well as the goal. It was a process that would serve as the final nail in the coffin of the legitimate Palestinian demands that international and humanitarian law be applied to their case.

Israel and the United States made a major blunder. They ignored the fact that the “peace” they had made was a peace between leaders and not between peoples. Thus, as the U.S. and Israel unsuccessfully sought to twist Arafat’s arm in the Camp David II talks in 2000, they began a concerted campaign discrediting Arafat and pinning the blame of the breakdown of talks on a single person. Arafat was truly the shrewder politician. He knew that for a peace among leaders to be transformed into a peace among peoples, the real issues of the conflict had to be justly addressed. Refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, and statehood were not negotiating cards, but the essence of the entire effort.

It is amazing how someone so “irrelevant,” such as Arafat was deemed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, can attract so much attention even in his death. The international media that has flooded the city of Ramallah, Arafat’s last place of refuge, is poised to analyze every minute aspect of his death and burial. What they will most likely miss is the most important part of his legend, which lies in the fact that the struggle for Palestinian freedom and independence, which Arafat symbolized, will not be buried with him.

Once the tears are wiped away the situation can take many shapes, the most likely being that the Palestinian leadership will be able to establish governing legitimacy. However earning leadership legitimacy will take some time. Among the complications are that there are several Palestinian political bodies that must be addressed, since Arafat led all of them single-handedly.

The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) will be the most difficult to address since it is a body that represents all Palestinians worldwide and is the formal signatory to the Oslo Peace Accords, from which the Palestinian Authority was established. The PLO has not held elections for decades and the basic issue of who is an eligible member of this body, as well as where their meetings should be held, will be internally questioned in the days to come. Additionally, unlike the Palestinian Authority, which is a rather new body and has been under tremendous international scrutiny, the PLO’s inner workings and finances are a black box to many Palestinians, leaders as well as masses.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), being a product of the Oslo Peace Process, is solely focused on governing the Palestinians living under occupation. It is expected that this body, especially given a recently enacted Basic Law, will make a stable succession and continue to perform its duties. It is also expected that the international community will be extremely interested in continuing to politically and financially support the PA in order to avoid a social upheaval in the Occupied Territories that would certainly turn toward the Israeli occupiers as well. The Palestinian Authority is where it will be most likely that the first free and democratic elections would take place in the post-Arafat era. However, unlike Arafat, who had a multitude of vantage points, the expected outcome of PA elections would result in a vision produced by a people that, for many, know no other life except that of living under Israeli military occupation and the death and destruction that the Oslo process has brought them. Politically, this will create a more hard-line position toward Israel, albeit mixed with sober practicality.

The third body that the Palestinian leadership will need to address post-Arafat is Arafat’s own political party, FATAH. This will be a long drawn-out saga since no one party member is privy to the decision-making process, finances and grassroots support. The one FATAH member that has the ability to rally the party is Palestinian Legislative Council member and FATAH Secretary Marwan Barghouti, who Israel has imprisoned along with 7,000 other Palestinians.

In light of the complex and sensitive situation that Arafat’s death has created, it would be naïve for the world, or the new Palestinian leadership for that matter, to think that a quick political settlement could be achieved without addressing the core issues, once and for all. To continue to force-feed Palestinians with half-cooked initiatives, such as Sharon’s unilateral disengagement plan, the road map, the Tenet plan, the Mitchell plan, the Oslo accords and such would be yet another wasted opportunity for the world community to resolve this conflict. And with every wasted effort more innocent people will die on both sides of the illegal separation wall that Israel is building on Palestinian lands and which has turned Palestinian cities into open-air concentration camps.

Time will be needed as Palestinians prepare for long overdue elections, the restructuring of their organizations, and the bringing to trial of those who have stolen or misused Palestinian public funds in the past. An Israel led by Ariel Sharon will surely do all in its power to make sure that the Palestinians fail in picking up the pieces after Arafat’s demise. Thus, it is the responsibility of the international community to finally step in and play its neglected role of protecting the militarily occupied Palestinians and demanding that Israel immediately abide by all Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, which call for the real end of military occupation and not a redeployment ploy such as that being offered for Gaza in Israel’s disengagement plan.

The United Nations should immediately convene to deploy multinational troops to provide protection to the Palestinian people, as stipulated for by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Such an international presence would serve many purposes. On the one hand, it would protect the Palestinians from the continuing onslaught by the Israeli military and give them time to recover from five decades of autocratic rule. On the other hand, a multinational peacekeeping force would save Israel from itself, since its continuous pushing of an occupied people to total despair can only breed more violence.

Despite the confusion of the hour, one fact remains clear. The Palestinian people, collectively, whether in the occupied territories, scattered in squalid refugee camps around the Middle East, or living in exile, will never wake up one day and accept the historic injustice that has been done to them. As long as Palestinians breathe they will rightfully demand that law and justice prevail in ending the nightmare that has haunted them for more than 50 years. It is in this spirit that one may recall the words of former United States President John F. Kennedy when he said, “Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable.”

Sam Bahour is a Palestinian-American businessman living in the Israeli-occupied Palestinian city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank. He can be reached at <sbahour@palnet.com>. This article first appeared Nov. 11, 2004 on the Electronic Intifada, <www.electronicintifada.net>. Reprinted with permission.