Arafat Must Go

by Tim Hourigan Sat Apr 13, 2002 12:32

A lot of people have been posting comments on the site, as if any criticism of Israeli war crimes is somehow an automatic and unconditional show of support for Yasser Arafat or the suicide bombers.

It has taken up a lot of people's time in replying to correct this view.
At the risk of appearing baited I'd like to say what I saw and heard from most of the people I spoke to at the 2,000 strong demo in Dublin.
I agreed with most people but there were things I didn't agree with also.

What people are really protesting about is the loss of life, not personal support of Arafat or Sharon.
Personally, I would not like to see Arafat martyred by Israel. It would only escalate the violence and further isolate the possibility for rational dialogue.
I'd like to see him peacefully replaced by a more capabale Palestinian leader. I'd like to see Sharon removed by his own people.
Both these men could then be held accountable to the people for what has happened.

Most people view with disgust the deaths of innocent Israelis in these suicide attacks.
Most people are disgusted and distressed when they get reports of innocent Palestinians being killed in cold blood by the Israeli ATTACK Force
in Operation 'Defensive Wall'.
Of course, there's a media blackout in the worst areas so when we get a call from a friend inside telling us of F-16s dropping bombs and piles of corpses being bulldozed, we are outraged that there are no pictures of this on the news.

It's terrible that people were killed in the latest bus bomb in Israel. And it's right that the TV should report it. But the lives of Palestinians are worth just as much, and if they are massacred in Jenin, the world, and the Israeli public in particular have a right to see what is done in their name.
I'm not alone in feeling that it is an extra crime to report only the casualties of your own citizens. This gives the Israeli public a distorted image of what is going on.
If we could see what has been described to me on the phone - atrocities in Bethlehem and Nablus, then more Israeli's would question the tactics used by Sharon.
When Sharon's warriors wipe out families in Jenin and one of the survivors bombs a bus in Israel, there is a very obvious cause and effect.
Both are tragic and wrong. Only one got real coverage and comment in the mainstream media.
I feel sorry for the victims of both those events. Israeli people have a right to sit on a bus without being killed. just as the Palestinians have a right not to be killed in their homes.
But if a trial were possible, one would have to consider the state of mind of the suicide bomber and the Israeli tank commander / F-16 pilot.

Sounding a little harsh and cold, look at the tactics used and how they come about.
If someone wiped out half my family using tanks or planes, I'm not sure I'd still be a sane person. I'd like to think I'd go after the person responsible and not just random people from 'their side'. But I don't have tanks or aircraft of my own to fight back with.
Bombing a bus full of people who had nothing to do with the tank hitting my house is wrong, and evil even when done by someone who may be insane with personal grief. Unfortunately the suicide bomber is dead and cannot be held accountable, or explain her actions.

Tank commanders and F-16 pilots on the other hand operate under orders. They can operate with impugnity, out of the media spotlight and are at very little risk of being killed when they take out a house full of people.
Tank shells and airforce bombs do not discriminate between terrorist and innocent Palestinians. It seems they don't have to when CNN don't get to show dead Palestinian children in the same report as dead Israeli children (lives equally valuable, deaths equally tragic)

When an Israeli family loses a member they have a trained army to respond. An army that is supposed to be able to tell the difference between a 'legitimate target' and a random innocent Palestinian. If the army simply wastes a whole block of Jenin or Ramallah, they do a disservice to their own people too. And they also fuel the cycle of hate that generates even more suicide bombers.

When some of the people inside the Palestinian house survive, it is no surprise that they become hateful of the Israeli state.
I would condemn them for not distinguishing between innocent Israeli commuters (who may even oppose Sharon) and Israeli military.
But I doubt anyone who just had their house and family blown away would listen to that argument.

How could Arafat convince someone like that not to become a suicide bomber when he can't promise that another Israeli tank won't kill more of the bombers family tomorrow?

In the sick twisted logic of bloodletting would this be considered a more 'legitimate war' if the Palestinians had an airforce and tank divisions to fight back with?
Would it make 'glossier' CNN footage? Would Francis Tusla drool over the technical comparisons of the hardware on the SKY NEWSWALL?
GET A GRIP! People are dying left right and centre and some people seem to only care only about Arafat and Sharon.

Israel should stop its offensive against the Palestinians immediately.
They would of course need to step up security at the checkpoints with the extra military, but they would not be generating as many bombers.

Israel should allow the media to report on what is really going on so everyone can see that there is no righteous victor in this conflict and that there is no justice in any of the attacks.
The Israeli people should then hold Ariel Sharon accountable for the loss of life caused by the IDF and the backlash it caused.
The Palestinians should be allowed to hold open and free elections to replace Arafat and hold him accountable for his part in the bloodbath.

Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon have failed the people of the middle east.
While people discuss the merits of these two men, scores more will perish in senselss carnage.
They should resign and let more sane and humane people decide how to deal with this.

by lalric Sun Apr 14, 2002 00:48

Shoron will go when the suicide bombers stop, Arafat is illiminated, exterminated or exiled, preferably one of the first two, and if, but unlikely, a Palestinian leader who believes in negotiation and compromise instead of terror.

Sharon will then not be re-elected for Israel is a real democracy no matter what the luni left believe and the Israeli people want peace but now they want security.

Although Arafat was elected, no sane observer could believe he heads a democratic government. No free press, no opposition point of view heard in their media. Wholesale executions of so called collaboraters without a proper trial, with their fate held by the signiture of Yasser Arafat.

Bottom Line Sharon will go when the voters don't want him. Yasser will only go when he drops dead. For the sake of this sorry world, it could not happen soon enough.

by FranK Russell Sun Apr 14, 2002 02:06

This posting by Spears is absolute rubbish..
Anyone with half a mind to do a little research
will find that Israel has been condemned by every human rights organization on this planet..The fact
remains that Israel is a racist, aparthied regime founded on deceit and terrorism that continues today..Ariel Sharon, the Grand Provocateur, is a certifiable mass murderer and bonified war criminal..
The hugh public relations campaign of the Israelis is crumbling..The occupation of palestine remains in violation of international law. Millions of people are demontrating worldwide against this Zionazi regime.
Absolutly astonishing that this pathetic Mr. Spears is a Pastor.

by Revolutionary Socialist - IST Sun Apr 14, 2002 06:05

YASSER ARAFAT has been the figurehead of the Palestinian struggle for over 30 years. The Israelis demonise him as a terrorist. Yet at times he has been welcomed into the US White House, and the media has hailed him as a peacemaker. Who is Yasser Arafat, and what does he really stand for?

YASSER ARAFAT'S story mirrors that of the Palestinian people. He was born in 1929 into a middle class Palestinian family and spent his early years in Jerusalem which, like the rest of Palestine, was then under British rule. Jews and Arabs had long lived in Palestine, but tensions were increasing as the Zionist movement, which wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine, grew in strength.

Zionists increasingly organised to drive Palestinians out from their jobs and land. As a teenager in Egypt, Arafat was involved in smuggling weapons to Palestinian groups resisting these attempts. In 1947 a United Nations (UN) partition plan gave 55 percent of Palestine to Zionist settlers, who were only 30 percent of the population. This was not enough for the Zionists. Israeli terror groups created panic, and drove hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes.

Many fled to the West Bank, which was grabbed by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip, which Egypt took control of. Israel was founded in May 1948, with 76 percent of the land of Palestine. The Palestinian people have been refugees ever since.

Guerrilla resistance

ARAFAT AND and a group of Palestinian students and businessmen set up the Fatah organisation in 1959. Fatah's aim was to liberate the whole of Palestine, and create a "democratic secular state" of Jews and Arabs.

It was inspired by the national liberation movements in Algeria, China, Cuba and Vietnam which had fought imperialism, and turned to guerrilla resistance to Israel. The situation in the Middle East shifted dramatically when Israel defeated the Arab armies of Syria, Jordan and Egypt in the Six Day War in 1967. Israel grabbed the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem and has ruled these Occupied Territories since.

In the wake of the 1967 war hundreds of Palestinian fighters, including Arafat, entered the Occupied Territories to wage war against Israeli forces. Israeli troops quickly captured most of the guerrillas. Arafat himself was almost captured.

But Palestinian resistance to Israel exploded onto the world stage in 1968, when a group of mainly Fatah members forced Israeli forces to retreat in fighting at Karameh in Jordan. Fatah became heroes overnight, and tens of thousands of Palestinians flocked to join the movement.

By 1969 Fatah's mass support among Palestinians had seen it take control of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO), which Arab regimes had set up a few years earlier.

The PLO's main base was in Jordan. Some 70 percent of the population in Jordan was Palestinian and the ruler, King Hussein, was worried about losing power to the PLO.

So Hussein launched an all-out attack on the Palestinians in September 1970, killing thousands of Palestinians in what became known as "Black September". In the wake of this defeat the PLO moved from Jordan to a new base in Lebanon. But the weakened PLO now became dependent on one or another of the Arab regimes instead of posing any challenge to them.

And, in a desperate shift in strategy, the PLO now sought not to liberate the whole of Palestine, but to negotiate a "mini-state" with Israel and its US backers. In 1974 the PLO accepted a US offer of such a possible "mini-state" in the West Bank and Gaza in return for accepting the Israeli state, though nothing came of the negotiations.

In 1982 Israel, led by then defence minister Ariel Sharon, invaded Lebanon, and Israeli forces oversaw the massacre of 2,000 Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatilla refugee camps. Arafat and his troops decided to leave Lebanon and now go into exile in Tunisia. The Palestinian resistance seemed at its lowest ebb. But events inside the Occupied Territories were to thrust the struggle back to the centre of international politics.

Intifada

ISRAEL HAD brutally repressed the Palestinian people in the Occupied Territories. Resistance to that exploded into open revolt at the end of 1987 with the outbreak of the first Intifada, or uprising. Pictures of young Palestinians throwing stones at Israeli soldiers armed with the latest US-supplied weaponry were shown around the world.

A whole new generation of activists was created throughout the Occupied Territories. But now the PLO was not the only force winning allegiance from Palestinians. The Intifada also saw the growth of Hamas, the radical Islamic group. The Intifada finally forced Israel and the US to negotiate with the PLO, and Arafat signed a "peace deal" in Oslo in 1993.

It seemed to promise a kind of Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Many commentators saw this as satisfying the Palestinians' fight for a homeland, and the end of the Middle East crisis.

Hopes dashed

ARAFAT WON the Nobel peace prize along with Israeli leaders Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin in 1994. He returned to the Gaza Strip to be greeted by masses of joyous people in 1994. The Palestinian Authority was set up the same year.

But the hopes of the mass of people were cruelly dashed. The Oslo "peace process" was about consolidating Israel's control over the Palestinians, not ending it.

The deal meant the Palestinian Authority would control only 17 percent of the West Bank and 60 percent of the Gaza Strip. It would also be broken up into separate areas, and Israel would remain in control of the roads around these areas.

The Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories would remain in place. None of the five million Palestinian refugees would be able to return to their rightful homes in Israel. This was a long way short of what most Palestinians wanted, and as a result Arafat lost much of his popularity among the Palestinians.

As a result his Palestinian Authority allowed little democracy, and its 30,000 police carried out internal repression of anyone who criticised Arafat. While a small minority of Palestinians grew rich under Arafat's rule, the majority continued to suffer in refugee camps. Hamas's popularity grew as the peace process ran into the ground. Arafat was losing his base.

It was that reality, and resistance to the increasing poverty and lack of real change by ordinary Palestinians, which forced him to reject a new deal offered by US and Israeli leaders in 2000. Then, when Ariel Sharon provocatively visited the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem-one of the holiest sites in Islam-in September 2000, the Palestinian people erupted in a new intifada. And Arafat has had to support that intifada to retain his position.

Israel now wants to crush and humiliate the Palestinians. That is why it targeted their leader-forcing him to take shelter in a basement. It wanted to send a message that it can do this to any Palestinian. Israel's attacks on Arafat have seen him regain some credibility amongst the mass of the Palestinians.

But the contradiction that has marked Arafat's life has not gone away. Alongside the image of the heroic leader resisting the Israelis, the coming days could see a quite different image. Arafat will once more be balancing between the desire of the masses for fundamental change, and the pressure from Arab rulers and the West to accept less.