Yasser Arafat: Twilight of a Warrior

Why do we create hell in this world and crave for peace in the other???

Re:HP#39

I think the real mistake made by the Palestinians under Arafat was to start the second intifada in 2000 after the Camp David talks failed. Even if those talks failed, the Palestinians could have continued negotiations and brought forth fresh proposals to break the impasse. The second intifada was deliberately orchestrated by Arafat (Fatah and Al-Aqsa Martyrs) as a means to pressure Israel. Soon the Hamas joined in and the situation went completely out of control. The intifada backfired on the Palestinians by inadvertently strengthening the right-wing elements in Israel. That is what resulted in Ariel Sharon`s victory.

In any case, the real question is how do the Palestinians move forward? In the current dispensation of Bush and Sharon, they hardly have any options open to them. Firstly they should give up violence as a strategy, because it is totally counterproductive against Israel. Secondly they should setup a democratic Palestinian Authority that is willing to sit down and negotiate with the Israelis to get as much as they can. In fact, they should even consider ditching the two state solution and agree to a one state solution where all Palestinians get Isreali citizenship. Then it is merely a question of time. As there is peace between the two sides and Palestinian population increases, they can slowly take what belongs to them.

amit,

I wish there was an easy answer to these questions. When countries and people get into these negotiations, they have to make decisions based on what their position is at that moment in time. In hindsight many decisions look absurd. Nobody in 2000, after the failure of those talks, thought that this would be the last attempt. It was expected that the negotiations would continue.
Here is something for you to read and see what positions Palestinians had during those talks and why they did not accept, that was offered to them. One point is that Palestinians already conceded 78% of their land in Oslo and any more concessions would have failed popular approval.

“On the question of the boundaries of the future state, the Palestinian position, formally adopted as early as 1988 and frequently reiterated by Palestinian negotiators throughout the talks, was for a Palestinian state based on the June 4, 1967, borders, living alongside Israel. At Camp David (at which one of the present writers was a member of the US administration`s team), Arafat`s negotiators accepted the notion of Israeli annexation of West Bank territory to accommodate settlements, though they insisted on a one-for-one swap of land ``of equal size and value.`` The Palestinians argued that the annexed territory should neither affect the contiguity of their own land nor lead to the incorporation of Palestinians into Israel.
The ideas put forward by President Clinton at Camp David fell well short of those demands. In order to accommodate Israeli settlements, he proposed a deal by which Israel would annex 9 percent of the West Bank in exchange for turning over to the Palestinians parts of pre-1967 Israel equivalent to 1 percent of the West Bank. This proposal would have entailed the incorporation of tens of thousands of additional Palestinians into Israeli territory near the annexed settlements; and it would have meant that territory annexed by Israel would encroach deep inside the Palestinian state. In his December 23, 2000, proposals – called ``parameters`` by all parties – Clinton suggested an Israeli annexation of between 4 and 6 percent of the West Bank in exchange for a land swap of between 1 and 3 percent. The following month in Taba, the Palestinians put their own map on the table which showed roughly 3.1 percent of the West Bank under Israeli sovereignty, with an equivalent land swap in areas abutting the West Bank and Gaza.[*]
On Jerusalem, the Palestinians accepted at Camp David the principle of Israeli sovereignty over the Wailing Wall, the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, and Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem – neighborhoods that were not part of Israel before the 1967 Six-Day War – though the Palestinians clung to the view that all of Arab East Jerusalem should be Palestinian.
In contrast to the issues of territory and Jerusalem, there is no Palestinian position on how the refugee question should be dealt with as a practical matter. Rather, the Palestinians presented a set of principles. First, they insisted on the need to recognize the refugees` right of return, lest the agreement lose all legitimacy with the vast refugee constituency – roughly half the entire Palestinian population. Second, they acknowledged that Israel`s demographic interests had to be recognized and taken into account. Barak draws from this the conclusion that the refugees are the ``main demographic-political tool for subverting the Jewish state.`` The Palestinian leadership`s insistence on a right of return demonstrates, in his account, that their conception of a two-state solution is one state for the Palestinians in Palestine and another in Israel. But the facts suggest that the Palestinians are trying (to date, unsuccessfully) to reconcile these two competing imperatives – the demographic imperative and the right of return. Indeed, in one of his last pre-Camp David meetings with Clinton, Arafat asked him to ``give [him] a reasonable deal [on the refugee question] and then see how to present it as not betraying the right of return.``
Some of the Palestinian negotiators proposed annual caps on the number of returnees (though at numbers far higher than their Israeli counterparts could accept); others wanted to create incentives for refugees to settle elsewhere and disincentives for them to return to the 1948 land. But all acknowledged that there could not be an unlimited, ``massive`` return of Palestinian refugees to Israel. The suggestion made by some that the Camp David summit broke down over the Palestinians` demand for a right of return simply is untrue: the issue was barely discussed between the two sides and President Clinton`s ideas mentioned it only in passing. (In an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times this February Arafat called for ``creative solutions to the right of return while respecting Israel`s demographic concerns.``)
The Palestinians did insist that Israel recognize that it bore responsibility for creating the problem of the refugees. But it is ironic that Barak would choose to convey his categorical rejection of any such Israeli historical responsibility to Benny Morris, an Israeli historian called ``revisionist`` in large part for his account of the origins of the displacement of the Palestinians and for his conclusion that, while there were many reasons why the refugees left, Israeli military attacks and expulsions were the major ones.
The Palestinians can be criticized for not having presented detailed proposals at Camp David; but, as has been shown, it would be inaccurate to say they had no positions. It also is true that Barak broke a number of Israeli taboos and moved considerably from prior positions while the Palestinians believed they had made their historic concessions at Oslo, when they agreed to cede 78 percent of mandatory Palestine to Israel; they did not intend the negotiations to further whittle down what they already regarded as a compromise position. But neither the constancy of the Palestinians` view nor the unprecedented and evolving nature of the Israelis` ought to have any bearing on the question of whether the Palestinian leadership recognized Israel`s right to exist as a Jewish state. It is the substance of the Palestinian positions that should count. “

Re:HP#28

Yasser Arafat could have accepted the deal, setup his Palestinian state and kept his options open for future adjustments. When you cannot militarily overcome the enemy, why go that route? That is a recipe for failure, which is exactly what happened. If he had been smart, he could have created the palestinian state, completely shutdown all violence and kept negotiating for further gains. Clearly the demographics are in Palestinian favor. If there was peace, the Palestinians would have slowly but surely taken over all that they deserved and more. By being foolishly emotional and maximalist in his options, Yasser Arafat played into the hands of the Israeli right-wing and ensured that Palestinians will keep rotting in their hopeless state for the next 50 years.

I read this article in the Sydney Morning Herald, and it was the best I read in the Australian press, one of the few that looked beyond the `terrorist` label. All that I have heard over the last few days is talk of peace now that he is dead. John Howard didn`t have single kind word for him when he died. Unfortunately, even politically aware people in the West seem to see the Palestinians as no more than a nuisance at best and murderers at worst. I have been reading M.J. Akbars work for years and years, and he`s still very good.

Re Nasah
``Palestinians will have thir own state -- now -- a gift from mr. Arafat who paid for it with his life..... ``

Is saadgi pe kaun na mar jaye Asad/Larte hain aur haat mein talwaar bhi nahin

One has to learn from you the art of hiding truth behind such nonsense. The fact is that Chairman Arafat was a murderer, terrorist, extortionist, and a pseudo-revolutionary coward. His antics set the cause he supposedly espoused by a whole generation at least. Not even those who passionately believed in the creation of Fatahland found it easy digest his penchant for killing atheletes, wheel-chair bound tourists, and airline passengers. And then to see him sing the praises of Mahatma Gandhi. His epitaph should be something like the line

Mar gaya mardud, na fateha na durood.

He should be thankful that his death was apparently normal as opposed to the taking outs of Gaza terror king Yassin and his mouthpiece Rantissi.

Well, one less mass murderer, a few dozen more to go. Heck where is the Golani Brigade and Mossad when you need `em....

#34 hamidm

You missed out a very crucial category when you said ``god`s whores are unrepentant and will not rest untill they have spread the clap to all sinners, hypocrites, infidels, unbelievers and innocent children .......... ``

The first ones that this species infects are the true believers, those committed to the idea of a God . . .



Siddiqua Haqnawaa

malik mian,

..... let`s say that most whores, of the ordinary street walking kind, have some principles and will, once in a while, surprise you ............ on the other hand, god`s whores are unrepentant and will not rest untill they have spread the clap to all sinners, hypocrites, infidels, unbelievers and innocent children ..........

........ eid mubarak

hamidm # 32 writes ``hate to sound like a male chauvinist, but it is all about gonads!``

hamidm sahib - coming from you, this talk of gonads sounds a bit out of place. For as long as I have known you on chowk, you come across nothing more than a ``tax-cut whore``. In other words, as long as Bush is giving tax cuts to people like you, it keeps your orifices well lubricated and you really don`t care how badly he uses you and America.

I was going to tell you a bit more about gonads, but then, telling you about gonads would be like having tits on a bull.

................personally, i don`t give a flip about whether arafat missed a historical opportunity, or whether he was a visionary, or whether he managed to make some kind of a flippin fashion statement with that dish-rag on his head ........... i simply admire the man for his gonads ! ........yes sir, gonads!............all i know is that the man had gonads ...... it takes a real man to keep a hopeless cause alive for forty fu*&in years ........... at five foot four he was a giant compared to the pus*&es walking around in brooks brothers suits trying to weasel their way through life ............ hate to sound like a male chauvinist, but it is all about gonads!

M. J. Akbar,

I believe that the essence of your article is paroxysmally sputtering amid these paragraphs from the above text that I have pasted below:

``Or, to put it another way, reality always fell short of the dream, a shortfall that he himself was repeatedly unable to accept. The horizon was always beyond his reach, precisely because he had trained himself to distrust anything that was within reach.

``Arafat, by contrast, persuaded his people that acceptance of anything less than the ideal would be a betrayal of the idea of Palestine, even though in the past six decades that ideal itself has shrunk repeatedly with time and with defeat, both on the formal battlefield and at the diplomatic table.

``Did Arafat lose a nation because he made the 2 percent he could not get as important as the 98 percent he was offered? Were there powerful players in the Middle East who leaned on Arafat to ensure that the agreement was sabotaged?``

Arafat `failed` because he would not settle for anything less than a 100% Palestine. His resolute schtick was to strive for an ideal, a dream to reclaim his home. He was a hero because he stood his ground in the face of maddening, nerve-wrecking adversity. He fell because the current he was up against was just too strong. Nevertheless, he kept standing until the end. He was a winner because what foremost characterizes a winner is not winning, per se, but a diligent and determined perseverance in the cause of the achievement of a dream. His dream was, in the name of God, the attainment of all Palestine for his people.

Peace!

Whatever many may say about Arafat, it`s a historical fact that he was the father of PLO and would be recognized as father of the Palestinian State, if it comes into existence. He was a human being with human tendency to err but he didn`t sell off his own people. He stood with them through thick and thin. Even his political foes would give him credit for that.

Mohammad Gill

hazaaroN saal Nurgis apni benoori pe ro tee hai
kaheeN tub ja ke hota hai chaman meiN deedawar paida

Palestinians will have thir own state -- now -- a gift from mr. Arafat who paid for it with his life.....

I am aghast at temporal #25 consistent attempts to put down Yassar by quoting that ideologue Edward Said. What contribution Said had made for Palestinian cause that makes Said better qualified than Yassar or even makes him an authority on Palestinian ground politics and issues? Quoting a communist writer like Robert Fisk to prove what Said said about Yassar does not mean that Said was 100% accurate or Said did not have his own ax to grind. What Edward Said said needs to be corroborated and there is no evidence from any other author or Palestinian that shows that Yassar even said what Edward has attributed to him (yassar).
Edward Said was an academician who spent a lifetime in the US. It is on record that Edward Said lied about his Palestinian roots and his childhood in Palestine.
How do you compare a person who spent a substantial part of his life in trenches under direct enemy fire with a person who smoked cigars in cushy East coast houses and lectured people on English and Comparative Literature?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Said

He(Said) broke with Yasser Arafat because he believed that the Oslo Accords signed in 1993 sold short the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes in pre-1967 Israel. He also opposed the Oslo formula of creating a Palestinian entity out of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, arguing instead for the elimination of the State of Israel and the creation of one state in the entirety of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and pre-1967 Israel, in which Arabs and Jews would have equal rights (often known as the binational solution).

Said was totally out of touch with ground realities in Palestine. He took a hard line against the Oslo agreement just to despise Yassar and clearly made an attempt to belittle Yassar Arafat and his struggle on behalf of Palestinians.

Recall that Oslo was the last agreement that had some support in Palestinian people and that resulted in Noble peace prize for Yassar. Later on, this was the same Edward Said who was willing to support the Bantustan agreement that Big Dog(Clinton) proposed in 2000.

Said was so vain that he tried to imitate Brezinski’s famous antic of firing a shot towards Afghanistan in 1979 from Pakistan border as the initiation of the US involvement in the Afghan conflict against the Soviet Union.
“In July 2000, he (Said) created a minor controversy in a stone-throwing incident on the Lebanon–Israeli border, where he hurled a stone at an Israeli guardhouse as a gesture of solidarity with the stone-throwing youth of the First Intifada. Many Israelis condemned Said`s symbolic act of resistance as an act of violence intended to incite anti-Israeli emotions.”

But in Aug 2003, Said went on to claim that ``I have spent a great deal of my life during the past 35 years advocating the rights of the Palestinian people to national self- determination, but I have always tried to do that with full attention paid to the reality of the Jewish people and what they suffered by way of persecution and genocide. The paramount thing is that the struggle for equality in Palestine/Israel should be directed toward a humane goal, that is, co-existence, and not further suppression and denial.``

Edward Said, when it comes to Palestinian causes was nothing more than a Monday morning quarterback.

We still have a lot to learn about Edward Said. Who his supporters were, and who sponsored him and whose agenda was he pursuing but we already know all about Yassar Arafat who may have made some mistakes or may have erred sometime but never wavered from his goal of attaining and working towards regaining the Palestinian rights.

Here is a look at 2000 Big Dog offer that Yassar and Palestinians would not accept.

Five Palestinian zones were offered.


• Jewish-only roads and settlements to remain under Israeli control
• International borders and water resources to be under occupation ``until Israel feels safe``
• No entry/exit without Israeli permission
• No East Jerusalem.
• no right of return for refugees.
• All of the above AGAINST UN resolution 242.
90+% territory doesn`t mean shiat. In most large US prisons, the prisoners occupy 99% of the territory.

Some quotes:
“Despite the multiple legitimate reasons for despising Arafat (corruption, ego, unwillingness even to attempt to crack down on terrorist activities against Israeli civilians, etc.), why on earth does everyone in the United States continue to blame him for rejecting such an obviously ludicrous ``offer``?”

“Palestine was invaded in 1967 and has been occupied ever since. The Palestinian people have an inherent right to self-defense. The Israeli Army has no business being there. Just as we all recognize--indeed we celebrate--the French Resistance`s use of violence against the occupying Germans, the Palestinians have a right to use violence against the IDF. Where I would criticize Arafat and the Palestinians is their targeting of civilians and use of terrorism. This has totally played into Israeli hands. There were only two choices for Arafat, use non-violent methods a la MLK or use violent methods similar to those used by Hizbollah, who targeted only the IDF, during its successful campaign to oust the Israel from Southern Lebanon.
Ask yourself this, what would Americans do if a foreign Army invaded, join Hamas or surrender? Most Americans would join Hamas, and former Israeli Prime Minister Barak who also said that if he were Palestinian he would join Hamas publicly seconded this notion.”

Verily we are from Allah and unto Him is our return.

Go to your Lord in peace O` Abu Ammar! O` brave mujahid who never gave in to the blackmailing of the Zionists and the Crusaders. May you look down upon a free Palestine, with al Quds as its capital for ever. Amin!

We will never forget your name O` brave son of this blessed soil.
May Allah bless you, forgive you your sins, and give you a seat in the Highest Paradise alongside the Prophets, Saints, and Martyrs.

We salute you O` Yasser Arafat!

Inna lillaha wa inna raj`ioon.

May you one-day look down upon Palestine, free at last. You will see the children of your nation walking to their schools in the morning, without having to cross the check points, and without getting shot at. May you one day see the smiles on the faces of the women of Palestine. They have been in mourning for far too long. May you see the men of your nation going about their work in industries, in offices, building roads, running their shops, and tending to olive trees. There will no longer be the crackles of gunfires, or the gunship helicopters hovering over their heads. There will be no longer the funerals of the bullet ridden bodies. The sun will shine on Palestine one day. And your ever present smile will become a bit wider.

Palestine will be free. A nation proudly standing amongst the free nations of the world, it will forever be indebted to you. May God bless you. May you rest in peace.