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COMMENTARY
July 10, 2002
End of a line
He may not have drained a swamp but President George W. Bush at least pulled the plug on some very old bathwater with his June 24 policy speech on the Middle East. This becomes increasingly evident as the Israel/Palestine issue disappears from the headlines of the Western media. Yasser Arafat and the terrorist organizations working among the Palestinians within Gaza and the West Bank have lost their purchase on international public opinion. This is because Mr. Bush has succeeded in delegitimizing them. It was a remarkable accomplishment which demands closer examination. But first to appreciate what has been accomplished; almost miraculously. Prior to June 24 with some warning from the U.S. State Department of what might be coming his way Mr. Arafat suddenly declared that he would now be happy to accept the Camp David agreement with former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak; the one that was brokered by President Bill Clinton in the summer of 2000. The one he had utterly rejected at the time and which he had touched off the "Al Aqsa Intifada" to resist. This was the first indication of total desperation. Mr. Arafat may or may not have been personally involved in the big bus bombing in Jerusalem and two other Palestinian terror hits by his own Fatah affiliates which were designed to and which succeeded in delaying the President's speech. If he was involved he must now seriously regret them. They did more than delay the speech as I now understand. Over the weekend of June 22-23 it was entirely rewritten. Vice President Dick Cheney played an important role in that rewrite as did two improbable people Natan Sharansky former Soviet dissident now right-wing Israeli politician and Omar Karsou former Palestinian refugee in Ramallah now banker and "civil society" democracy activist living in exile under death threat in New York. For some obscure reason the effect of the last big blast in Jerusalem was to finally open ears at the top of the Bush administration to what these two "enemies of the Oslo accords" -- one Israeli one Palestinian -- had been arguing for many years. They had been making precisely the same argument: that behind the Oslo accords in the words of one commentator Israel knowingly encouraged a corrupt and murderous regime headed by a secular dictator, in the hope that he would keep Islamic fundamentalism at bay. This basic assumption turned out to be a dangerous illusion. (Mr. Sharansky had almost a decade ago presciently attacked the cynicism with which Shimon Peres and other members of the Israeli Labour party were dealing with known terrorist Yasser Arafat. "What if there are still attacks on Israel from the West Bank and Gaza after the accords are signed?" he was asked. And with his knowing smile Mr. Peres would reply The PLO will handle it far better than we ever could. ) Both Mr. Sharansky and Mr. Karsou from opposite sides argued that only an open democratic constitutional regime in Palestine could guarantee peace for Israel; and by extension peace for the Palestinians. Therefore as hard as it would be to create such a regime and as long as it might take it must be created; for there is no conceivable alternative. The fact that there has never before in history been even one democratic Arab regime must not be allowed to discourage us. Palestine must be made the exception. Curiously enough Ariel Sharon buys into this argument. The difference between the Israeli prime minister and Mr. Sharansky is in the time scale they have in mind Mr. Sharon thinking it will take much longer than Mr. Sharansky thinks. But behind Mr. Sharon's supposedly personal objection to Mr. Arafat has been his sincere belief that one cannot negotiate with despots and terrorists; and especially not with those whose prestige rests on demonizing you. Mirabile dictu the U.S. vice president invited Mr. Karsou to his dinner table at the signal moment. The penny dropped. Mr. Cheney found a receptive Mr. Bush who had been moving slowly and surely towards the same conclusion in all the time since he had become President: that Palestine must be democratized even against its will. Moreover he was very frustrated by the experience of having his efforts to broker peace in the Middle East constantly derailed by fresh Palestinian suicide bombings for which evidence was endlessly accumulating of direct involvement by the Palestinian Authority and Mr. Arafat himself. Over that weekend of June 22-23 a conscious decision was made to give up on Mr. Arafat and all of his cronies as "peace partners" unambiguously once and for all. Now Mr. Arafat who used the Oslo accords in 1993 to get himself back into the middle of things when he and his Palestine Liberation Organization had been effectively exiled and sidelined in Tunis is trying at the ripe old age of 73 to perform the same trick again. He spontaneously declared his support for Mr. Bush's initiative whatever it was; he has been telling every visitor who will listen that the suicide bombers have been trained and sent by the ayatollahs of Iran; that they are financed and supported from Saudi Arabia Yemen Sudan; that something must be done about all those Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon and Syria. In other words ratting on his allies in the hope of switching sides. It is a volte face the most extraordinary ever made even by Yasser Arafat; a wild attempt to get back on speaking terms with the Bush administration. But now even Colin Powell has lost Mr. Arafat's cellphone number. The only receptive visitors he has left are various European leftists. And about the only place you can read Mr. Arafat's recent surreal declarations are in papers such as l'Unita the daily of the Italian Communist party. No one else cares. For all practical purposes the "moderate" Arab leaders have washed their hands of him. So have the "radical" ones whom he is now alienating. The Western media have ceased to hang on his every word. The problem that remains is to get the Palestinian people to similarly wash their hands. From the American and Western point of view there will now be an extended time-out. Israel will build its fence isolating the West Bank and indeed Jordan is blocking the border on the other side. Israel has effectively re-occupied the West Bank and may well decide to re-occupy Gaza (which promises to be a high casualty affair) putting the lid on the pressure cooker. It will take three years or it will take 30 but diplomatic progress on the creation of a Palestinian state now waits upon genuine reform and a post-Arafat leadership. The Palestinian people themselves are left with no other choice and as much time as they will need to make it. And so the focus shifts in the Middle East from Mr. Arafat to the one indisputable friend he still has in the cauldron in which he is simmering: Saddam Hussein of Iraq. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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