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COMMENTARY
September 13, 2003
Removing Arafat
The news is that the Israeli security cabinet has provided Ariel Sharon with a "licence to kill" Yasser Arafat at a time of Mr. Sharon's own choosing. (Their word was "remove" and might also include expulsion isolation or imprisonment.) The mystery is why didn't this happen many years ago? Before reaching their decision -- predictably execrated in capitals around the world -- the security cabinet reviewed recent evidence linking Arafat directly to several of the terrorist hits within Israel's Green Line. To their information he didn't just know about them he ordered them. And he did that not out of any psychopathic desire to see more dead Israelis on TV but rather out of cold political calculation. He decided it was time to rid himself of Mahmoud Abbas a.k.a. Abu Mazen the prime minister he appointed to be the "acceptable face" of Palestinian terror for the Israelis and Americans to negotiate with. It was time to remind both the foreigners and his colleagues who is boss. The new "prime minister" is Ahmed Qureia a.k.a. Abu Ala. His background is almost identical to that of Abu Mazen; another veteran of the Oslo process. The idea that Arafat had been sidelined was one of the more ludicrous of the "pious frauds" circulated by all partners to the "peace process" recently. I 'm sorry to say President Bush invested some of his credibility in this. Arafat was never sidelined and the appointment of Abu Ala to replace Abu Mazen changes nothing. The men of Arafat's diplomatic wing are as interchangeable as the men of his military-terrorist wing it's all one bird. The strategy remains wear Israel down by both terror and diplomacy as opportunities arise and continue wearing her down patiently until eventually she collapses. The domestic propaganda of the PLO -- also under Arafat's control -- has never made any bones about this. Nor has Arafat recently or ever ceased to utter incitements to the Palestinian mob. An occasional contrastingly benign remark in English to the Western media is all he requires to remain semi-respectable to the outside world. Israel is a country as diverse in its opinions as any Western land. It contains more Jews than New York and at least as many "liberals". Israel itself has taken ten years to come to terms with the hopeless situation that was created by the Oslo accord in which a man dedicated to Israel's destruction was given unchallenged dictatorial power over a de facto country as far away as Hull from Ottawa while being internationally accredited as Israel's "peace partner". At several points in her past -- most memorably when she struck first in the Six-Day War of 1967 and when IDF pilots levelled the Osirak reactor in Iraq in 1981 -- Israel became convinced that she must ignore world opinion and do what she must to survive. This is another of those times. It is moreover clear from the polls in Israel that the country demands the removal of Arafat who is their single most deadly and dangerous enemy. The threat he offers has grown larger than that of Osama or Saddam to the U.S. And if the Israeli military have finally been ordered to directly attack Hamas and other terrorist leaders why not remove the queen bee from the hive? The world will wail and undoubtedly the Arab Street will fill. The U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell will utter sombre statements. President Bush himself either has or has not expressed himself to Prime Minister Sharon privately. And the removal of Arafat will be at least in the short term extremely inconvenient to immediate American interests throughout the region. But it will also strike to the heart of the long-term problem as did the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It will compel the Palestinians to form a new leadership and it will communicate the Israeli will to survive to the Arab world at large. No single act since the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq is likely to have a more positive actual effect on regional security -- after the debris has cleared. The verbal threats of retaliation against Israel for anything done to Arafat are now running very shrill. But there is a Baghdad Bob quality about all of them. In practice the actual dangers associated with leaving Arafat in power exceed the likely dangers of removing him. By pre-announcing their decision the Israeli leadership gave themselves the opportunity for sober second thought should any unexpected danger present itself. Their one hesitation is over the reaction of the Bush administration. Would it too be purely verbal? I think the consensus of Israeli politicians is that domestic views in the U.S. will prevent the Bush administration from abandoning Israel after Israel has done precisely what the U.S. did in Afghanistan and Iraq -- "regime change". It would look too much like hypocrisy. They have given Arafat in effect the equivalent to President Bush's last warning to Saddam. They cannot expect it to be heeded. We shall see: but I think under the present circumstances Arafat will actually be removed. The man is the regime as throughout the Middle East; and regime-change is necessarily quite personal. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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