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Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas unveiled a $1.75 million mausoleum for Yasser Arafat on Saturday, in a pomp-filled ceremony that helped him draw on the continued popularity of his iconic predecessor as he headed into peace talks with Israel. — YNet

What does it tell us about the Palestinian point of view that they venerate Arafat?

Let’s leave aside the early Arafat — the swaggering terrorist who tried to destabilize Jordan in 1970, was the immediate cause of the First Lebanon War in 1982, who gave the order to push the aged American Leon Klinghoffer’s wheelchair overboard from the hijacked Achille Lauro in 1985, and who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Israelis in countless terrorist attacks.

Let’s just consider the Arafat who returned triumphantly to Ramallah from exile in Tunis after the signing of the Oslo Accord, which recognized the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. The early ’90’s were a historic opportunity for a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. After the Gulf war, Iraq — one of the primary fomenters of conflict — was temporarily out of the picture, Iran was still weak from the long war with Iraq during most of the 1980’s, and Syria was at least pretending to appease the US.

Arafat, as head of the newly-established Palestinian Authority (PA), immediately went to work. Although paying lip service to the idea of little by little building connections and reducing tensions between Israel and the Palestinians that was the Oslo process, he did exactly the opposite. He turned all PA institutions into agencies of incitement against Israel: the religious establishment, the media, the schools. He established summer camps and youth organizations dedicated to training future soldiers in the war against Israel.

While taking money and weapons from the US and Israel intended to build Palestinian ‘security services’ which would ‘fight terrorism’, he actually paid terrorists (many of whom were members of the ‘security services’) to kill Israelis. He transmitted a message of peace in his speeches in English, and one of jihad when he spoke Arabic.

Arafat got an enormous amount of aid from the US and the EU which was intended to build infrastructure for a Palestinian state, deposited much of it in his personal bank account (estimates of his net worth ranged from $300 million to billions), enriched his hangers-on, purchased huge amounts of arms and financed terrorism.

Nevertheless, Israeli and American negotiators convinced themselves that it was just a matter of getting the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed on a peace agreement. So Ehud Barak made an offer including unprecedented concessions on issues such as borders and Jerusalem at Camp David. As everyone knows, Arafat rejected it in July of 2000, without even making a counteroffer. Still not understanding, Israel sweetened the offer at the Taba negotiations in January 2001, after Arafat had already launched the violent second Intifada against Israel.

It was also rejected, and afterwards Arafat claimed that Israel had only offered the Palestinians “Bantustans” in the West Bank. But this was a lie.

So, what does Yasser Arafat represent? Apart from his tactics of duplicity and terrorism, Arafat consistently rejected the idea of a peaceful Palestinian state alongside Israel and did his best to prevent this from coming about, believing that continued ‘resistance’ would ultimately reverse the war of 1948.

What does this tell us about Mahmoud Abbas and the so-called ‘moderates’ who claim to want exactly this peaceful state? Why do they so greatly admire a man who was personally cruel and corrupt, who caused the Palestinian cause to become synonymous with terrorism throughout the world, who caused several mini-wars and whose legacy may yet cause a major one, and who absolutely rejected the idea of a state alongside Israel?

What part of Arafat don’t they understand?

Technorati Tags: Arafat, Israel, Abbas

Robert Novak’s latest anti-Israel hit piece in the New York Post really encapsulates so much of today’s left-of-center conventional wisdom about the conflict that I thought it would be useful to look at it in detail.

November 5, 2007 — Timing the placement into movie theaters the last two weeks of the new documentary “Jimmy Carter Man From Plains” before the proposed Middle East conference in Annapolis this year was not intentional. But the irony of the former president’s clarity on the Palestinian question contrasts sharply with the refusal by George W. Bush to face harsh reality that casts a pall over hopes to conclude his presidency with a diplomatic triumph.

I don’t know about the relation to Annapolis, but it seems to me that Carter, along with Mearsheimer and Walt and myriad other expressions of the point of view that Novak holds are coordinated, and the intent is to prepare the ground for forcing Israel back to the pre-1967 borders regardless of the consequences. The entire campaign is too pat to be unintentional, and judging by the relationships of some of its leading practitioners, there seems to be a Saudi connection.

In the film, Carter repeatedly and unequivocally states what Palestinian and Israeli peace advocates view as undeniable: To achieve Israeli-Palestinian peace with all its benefits for the world, Israel must end its illegal and oppressive occupation of the West Bank. [my emphasis]

Here Novak alludes to the idea that most of the problems of the Middle East — and even the greatest threat to world peace — spring from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The view is absurd, leaving out radical Islamism, the Iranian attempt to gain control of Gulf oil reserves, Sunni-Shiite conflict, Syrian meddling in Lebanon and Iraq, Arab rejectionism of Israel, Saudi sponsorship of international terrorism, horribly repressive and kleptocratic dictatorships in almost all Arab countries, Pakistani-sponsored nuclear proliferation, Turkish designs on northern Iraq (and PKK terrorism against Turkey) and on, and on. None of these has anything to do with the Palestinians or with Israel’s policies.

(more…)

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) has strongly criticized both Hamas and Fatah over the mini-civil war in the Gaza Strip, citing

…serious violations of the provisions of international law concerning internal armed conflicts, including violations of the right to life and physical integrity perpetrated by the two movements. These violations included extra-judicial and willful killings; disregard for the lives of Palestinian civilians; abduction and torture of persons; attacks against civilian facilities, including houses and apartment buildings; shooting at peaceful demonstrations; attacks against hospitals and medical and civil defense crews; seizure, robbery and destruction of public and private institutions.

The report also criticizes the Palestinian Authority for not establishing a commission of inquiry to investigate these events.

At the time, I commented on the moral outrage and shame expressed by Palestinians, as compared to the lack of similar expressions when Palestinian terrorists have murdered Jews. For example, contrast this

Political analyst Ikrimah Thabet said: “…the bloody events have caused enormous damage to the reputation of the Palestinians, especially in light of the filthy and painful violence that has claimed the lives of children, activists, leaders and innocent civilians.” — Khaled Abu Toameh in the Jerusalem Post

With this

In the current interview [in “Al-Sharq al-Awsat”] as in earlier interviews Abu-Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] has been very consistent on several points. The Intifada is legitimate and is part of the resistance to occupation, and it should continue; he supports attacking soldiers and settlers at any time; he opposes attacks on Israeli civilians inside Israel at this time because it is against Palestinian interests. — Michael Widlanski, Ha’aretz (Hebrew, my tr.) [2004]

This point of view — that terrorism against Jews or Israelis is bad only because it is presently ‘counterproductive’ — apparently characterizes the ‘moderate’ wing of the Palestinian movement and is one of the things that makes them ‘moderate’ (the other is that they do not want to replace all of Israel with an Arab state today, but will accept one in the territories as an intermediate step in the process).

Is it possible to accept the Palestinian narrative in which the current situation represents a denial of Palestinian rights without also justifying (or even ‘understanding’) terrorism? Palestinian-American journalist (and comedian!) Ray Hanania seems to be able to do it:

Once again, Palestinians are faced with a difficult choice. Do they continue to embrace 60-year old principles and demand the impossible – to return to land of the pre-1948 years? Or do they wake up and recognize that their only real chance for peace and a Palestinian state is to accept their own failures? The brutal truth is that Israel’s existence – which Palestinians reject – has much to do with their own failed policies and their own extremist acts.

More importantly, are Palestinians finally willing to stop lying to the Palestinian refugees and to their descendants – to acknowledge the truth that even though the Palestinians may have a legal right under international law to return to their lands taken in 1948, 60 years of continued conflict and failed Arab leadership has made the enforcement of that dream unrealistic?

What is important here is that for once, he places responsibility for the situation of the Palestinians where it belongs — on the policies of the Arab nations, and on their own choice of terrorism as a tactic. We are not going to make a Zionist out of this guy, but possibly we could talk to him.

Unfortunately, he lives in Chicago, not Ramallah.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Palestinians, Abbas, Hanania