With Arafat as an ‘excuse’ gone, Palestinians will still get nothing

"Gush Shalom, the only Israeli organisation that openly mourned alongside the Palestinian people, decided to send a delegation to the funeral. All of us activists, women and men, wore on our breast a big sticker displaying the Israeli and Palestinian flags. The sheer pressure of the multitude split us up among the crowd. Throughout the hours of the funeral, we felt completely safe, even when thousands of shots were fired around us into the air to express grief and bereavement. We encountered hundreds of expressions of gratitude and friendship from the Palestinians of all ages and stations of life. No Arab leader -- and very few world leaders -- evokes such profound love and admiration among their people as this man, whom Israelis consider a veritable monster in human form.

"The Palestinians trusted him, relied on him, let him make all the big decisions that demanded courage, derived from him the strength to defy the intolerable conditions under a brutal occupation. Now suddenly, incredibly they found themselves alone like orphaned waifs, in a world changed by the death of a man who left a huge gap behind him. What will happen now? Arafat has brought his people from the edge of oblivion to the threshold of independence. But the battle for liberation is far from over. The new leadership will have to face all the problems that confronted Arafat, without the towering authority of Arafat. This could have been a chance for Israel (and the US) to open a new chapter in relations with the Palestinian people. Arafat should have been buried in Jerusalem, according to his wishes. (Israeli) Justice Minister Tommy Lapid reached a new height of vulgarity when he declared that 'Jewish Kings, not Arab terrorists, are buried in Jerusalem.' Well, Menachem Begin, a terrorist who became a 'king' and was buried in Jerusalem could have served as a precedent."

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As to whether Sharon will take time out from assassinating Palestinian leaders and facilitate Palestinian elections to choose Arafat's successor, Avnery is emphatic that he will not: "Ariel Sharon has absolutely no interest in sitting opposite a democratically elected leadership enjoying international legitimacy and respect, perhaps weakening his control over President Bush and obstructing his plan for annexation of most of the West Bank. He will do everything in his power to prevent elections, and, of course, blame the Palestinians."

Blame the Palestinians is exactly what President Bush will do, too, according to November 22 issue of the TIME magazine. The President, who shunned Arafat while he was alive, found it beneath his dignity to even pronounce the Palestinian leader's name after he died. The US president continues to see things in black and white: the Israelis are good, the Palestinians are bad; Christians and Jews are good, Muslims are bad; white is good, black is bad. Perhaps Arafat would have made the grade if he were responsible for the deaths of 100,000 Iraqi civilians! Taking the cue from the president, the American press has been just as uncouth, obnoxious and unfair in lambasting the leader of a people, the Palestinians, who were driven out of their ancestral homelands by a terrorist nation, Israel, which now also controls America.

TIME recalls how Arafat became disillusioned with the Oslo peace accords: "They (Palestinians) were never enthusiastic about the accords because they fell far short of the minimum condition most of them required: a sovereign state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. That was plainly the bait Oslo offered, but it was not guaranteed. First, Palestinians would have to submit to a test, a period of autonomy. It became clear in time, though, that Arafat failed to understand how weak a deal he had made. In an interview with TIME after first Oslo agreement, he boasted that Palestinian "independence" would soon begin in the Gaza Strip and West Bank town of Jericho. When a reporter noted that the agreement provided for limited self-rule, not sovereignty, Arafat shot back, "Who told you that? It has to be under my control. I know what I have signed." Associates confirmed later that Arafat had not actually read the document.

"And the peace process proved harder and harder to sell since even in the early days of relative goodwill between the Israelis and Arafat's Palestinian authority, every expansion of self-rule promised in Oslo was hard won and overdue. To reach an agreement with Israel on a Palestinian state, Arafat knew, would require deep compromises on what have become almost sacred demands among his people: that traditionally Arab East Jerusalem, including Islamic holy sites in the Old City, become part of Palestine and Palestinian refugees of 1948 war that followed Israel's creation be allowed to return to their homes in what is now Israel. At the time of Camp David in 2000, Arafat's 'obsession', an aide said, was that if he made those concessions, he would be remembered by his people as a traitor."

So, what happens now? In short, America will toe the Israeli line even more closely. America will parrot the Israeli demand that the Palestinians demonstrate a thriving democracy in the Israeli-created Bantustan of a Palestine before any negotiations. Reports TIME: "Last June, an official involved tells TIME, (Palestinian leader) Qurei and other top officials met quietly with National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in Berlin to push for progress toward Palestinian statehood. "They said, 'Why can't we jump to final status talks and start negotiating borders?'" says the official. Rice, according to the official, replied, "We're sitting in Germany. Its borders were settled in 1991; by then it was a successful democratic country. That's what you need to think about: building successful institutions of democracy." Who is to tell the Secretary of State-designate that until the merger with West Germany in 1991, East Germany was a communist nation?

As for why Palestine is not a thriving democracy let me educate the former Provost of Stanford University, Dr. Rice, by quoting Uri Avnery again: "My last conversation with Arafat, a few weeks ago (when, by the way, he looked quite healthy) concerned elections. We agreed that they are impracticable while the Israeli army routinely assassinates potential candidates and makes movement between towns and villages impossible. How will candidates -- if they remain alive -- canvass their voters? How will they distribute material, hold meetings and debate policies, with tanks in the background and helicopter gunships hovering overhead?" Of course the secretary-designate knows all these. Her interest is not in solving logistical problems to facilitate Palestinian elections; her aim is to place more obstacles in the way of Palestinian nationhood and to win accolades from the Zionists.

TIME adds: "If the US pushes at all, it will push the Palestinians, not Sharon -- if the cadre of top advisors who have prevailed on most Arab-Israeli issues during Bush's first term has its way. Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the advisors argue that Sharon is the man with the plan, so the best thing the US can do is stay out of his way and support him if he asks for help." I guess the advice stands even if Sharon's "plan" calls for the annexation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem and Haram-al-Sharif, housing Islam's third holiest mosque, the Al-Aqsa, and the Dome of the Rock. TIME concludes: "Sharon does not anticipate a burst of pressure from the Bush administration to change course now. He took Bush's comments last week as a green light to continue his plan to withdraw Israeli settlers from Gaza Strip and parts of West Bank unilaterally rather than enter into new negotiations with the Palestinians. "Palestinian Authority doesn't become an automatic partner just because it's conducting elections."

There is more bad news for the Palestinians. Although several high profile cabinet ministers, such as Colin Powell, have resigned from the second Bush administration, NONE of the Jewish neoconservatives who are masterminding the destruction of the Palestinian people and prosecuting the War on Muslims have resigned. With Zionists like Wolfowitz, Feith, Bolton, Liddy, Pipes, Kristol, Perle and Abrams firmly entrenched in the second Bush administration, the Palestinians and the Muslims can expect far more grief. The only way the Israelis will ever respect the Palestinians and the Muslims is if they are militarily strong.