Yasir Arafat is dead or alive- it is unclear which. Either way he has little if any value to add to the pursuit of peaceful coexistence between Israel and the Palestinian people. President Clinton presented Arafat with the opportunity to forsake violence with an act of peacemaking and statesmanship that would have resulted in an autonomous Palestinian state. At Camp David in 1990, Clinton wrung from Israeli leadership unprecedented concessions on every Palestinian demand save for the right of return, and for a moment it seemed as though peace was within reach of the Holy Land.
Alas, Arafat wanted no compromises. Rather than continuing negotiations, he began the second intifada, gambling that Israel could be bloodied into complete submission. That decision has resulted in death and misery for Jews and Palestinians- disproportionately for the latter. The intifada backfired, failing to produce the totality of concessions that Arafat envisioned, resulting instead in a security wall partitioning Jews and Palestinians and defining borders (even if temporary) less generous than those previously offered.
Arafat’s survival in the aftermath of the disastrous intifada has had only one benefit, preventing open civil war between Palestinians, which is no consolation when one considers that he might well have accomplished a lasting peace with Israel. Arafat uses traditional Arab and Muslim anti-Semitism to direct the focus of Palestinian Islamists including Fatah, Hamas, Hezbollah, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades away from each other and firmly on Israel. While apportioning misery to all around him through divide and conquer schemes, Arafat has amassed a stolen fortune that Forbes Magazine last year estimated at $300 million.
Arafat was the principal roadblock for President Bush’s Roadmap for Peace. With Arafat’s death, the President, newly reelected, with a mandate to wage war on Islamism, will have an opening for change in the Middle East not seen since Menachem Begin and Anwar Sadat asked President Carter to finance what became the Israel Egypt Peace Treaty. Demonstrating American commitment to a Palestinian state in coexistence with Israel through aggressive peacemaking could be the best way to move the hearts and minds of Muslims round the world.
While peace in the Holy Land may be possible as a result of Arafat’s death, the path to peace will be treacherous. In a power vacuum, Palestinian Islamists could divide the focus of their hatred between Israel and each other, and Iran and Syria could use the chaos to engage the ancient feud between Shiites and Sunnis. At the same time, any American progress in brokering peace could result in a new front in the war on terror, as the permanent presence of a Jewish state on land coveted by Islam is a threat to Islamic dogma.
To counter Islamist aversion to peace, the President should engage a statesman on par with James Baker to press an aggressive new roadmap for peace between Israel and the Palestinians. He should throw the weight of America behind free and fair elections based upon the Palestinian Constitution. In the event moderate leadership, committed to peace, emerges from the elections, America and Israel should embrace it.
Most of all, the President should challenge the Islamic world to compare and contrast their circumstances and leadership today with the circumstances and leadership they might hope for in the future. He can demonstrate through American resolve and results in Afghanistan and Iraq that replacing tyranny and corruption with self-rule is the best way for Palestinians, and Muslims, to realize pluralism, democracy, and freedom.
Posted by publius at November 8, 2004 06:40 AM