The news this morning is that Yasser Arafat has died. While browsing through the news stories being posted as I speak, I am struck by the large number of people talking with regret of his passing. I am also reminded with sadness of how quickly people forget when the issues in question don't actually impact them personally.
My position in no way denies the fact that the Palestinian people need and deserve an urgent solution. But Yasser Arafat was never going to provide the solution.
How could he? Yasser Arafat himself was a terrorist of mega proportions: I cannot understand how anyone who grew up, as I did, in the late 60s, 70s and 80s, can have forgotten the PLO and Fatah atrocities that were committed under Arafat's leadership. Rememeber Munich 1972? Remember the Achille Lauro? Remember the hundreds of terrorist acts, bombings, suicide bombings and other acts of destruction and violence that have devastated Israeli families and life for decades?
This link works as a memory aid. It is an Israeli site, but the link takes you to a bare list of atrocities committed by the PLO/Fatah over the decades.
http://www.angelfire.com/mi4/angelforisrael/israel/victims_index.html
Even after formally denouncing violence and terrorism in 1993, Arafat was either not inclined or unable to stop the violence he had promoted for so long. The Nobel Peace Prize was a naively awarded and precipitous prize that the years since have shown he did not deserve.
His committment to the peace process was a platitudinous smoke screen that succeeded in fooling world leaders into shaking his blood-stained hands, while behind his PLO headdress Arafat continued to encourage, condone or simply fail to condemn effectively the terrorism that continued with ever-increasing barbarity.
Suddenly he became a 'guerrila fighter' rather than a terrorist. Well, the world may approve such convenient overnight whitewashing, but I believe it is wrong to allow terrorists and criminals to re-invent themselves in such an incredible way.
When I posted a comment in a thread a few day about this, I noticed that someone rated my comment as a troll. It saddens me that many people are unable to separate certain political convictions from the people who espouse them. I believe Bush is a terrible President of the US, who has probably cheated his way into a second term, I believe a War Crimes Tribunal should be set up to investigate the culpability of him and his cronies in the Iraq catastrophe, however, just because he says Arafat is an obstacle to peace does not mean I have to automatically disagree with him.
Arafat was a continuing and immutable obstacle to the peace process, even if he did personally and honestly renounce terror, (which is highly debatable). First of all because it is impossible to forget the many many victims of his past. Can anyone on Kos ever imagine an American President shaking hands with Osama Bin Laden? Even if he came out and said, 'From now on, I won't commit any terrorist activities...though my ex-colleague in Al-Qaeda might continue to do so.'? Remember your reaction to 9/11 and then ask yourself if the Israelis are right or wrong to have refused to deal with Arafat.
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a problem the West created, and responsibility for the solution lies firmly on the West's shoulders. However, please let's be realistic about Arafat and his significance to the world, no matter how politically distasteful it may be to have to agree with Bush on this.