Arafat's bitter legacy

Arafat's bitter legacy ...

November 12, 2004

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat will always be an icon to many Palestinians, the embodiment of their hopes for a homeland. But on the things that mattered most to his people, Arafat was a failure.

In late 2000 and early 2001, when the pressure was on, when a final Middle East peace accord was within his grasp, Arafat turned away from what is likely the best deal the Palestinians can hope to get. It was his greatest failure, a failure that betrayed the hopes of his people and the Israelis, for a Palestinian state and a halt to terrorism.

Instead, as he had so many times before, Arafat chose violence. Another intifada began, and he did nothing to stop it. He hoped that the killing of innocents in Israel would exert enough pressure for him to win with terror what he could not achieve through negotiation. It was a grave miscalculation that has spread misery for Palestinians and Israelis alike.

Arafat gained his fame as the terrorist leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1960s and tenaciously held power for decades, turning back challenge after challenge to his authority. He was a masterful politician. He maintained power by controlling Palestinian security forces and the Palestinian purse, which he was accused of looting for untold millions. Arafat and his cronies ran a Palestinian Authority widely derided for its corruption, ineptitude and venality. Meanwhile, the average Palestinian suffered.

Arafat prized the role of statesman and reveled in the attention that the Oslo peace accords gained him in the 1990s. There was a shared Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. He gloried in several visits to the White House. But in the end, he was never able to make the transition from self-described resistance fighter to founder of a nation. In a speech to the UN in 1974, Arafat declared: "Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand."

The branch didn't fall; Arafat dropped it. He helped invent and define modern terrorism. His PLO and other related splinter groups were responsible for hundreds of murders.

In recent years, Arafat had been unmasked not as a peace partner but as the main roadblock to peace. In a recent book, Dennis Ross, the Clinton administration's special envoy to the Middle East throughout the Oslo years, spared no words in laying directly on Arafat the blame for the failure of the peace talks and the resumption of violence in 2000. "Arafat could not do a deal that ended the conflict. ... He could live with a process, but not with a conclusion," Ross wrote.

In the four years of the most recent Palestinian uprising, Israel's economy has been badly bruised. But the Palestinians have been devastated, their economy in ruins, an entire generation lost to soulless terrorists who turn 16-year-olds into suicide bombers, promising them a sure path to heaven. Much of this Arafat could have prevented. But he didn't.

Arafat's death may now trigger a power struggle. It is unlikely that any single leader will be able to quickly amass all the power that Arafat held, as president of the Palestinian Authority, chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, chairman of the PLO Executive Committee, and chairman of the Fatah central committee. But there is some promise in the likely new leadership, as we discuss in the next editorial.

It's ironic that in the same few weeks that Arafat declined and died, his longtime nemesis, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, took a huge stride in the pursuit of peace. Sharon stood up to his own party and the rage of thousands of settlers, and pushed a plan through Israel's parliament to withdraw Jewish settlers from the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank. Sharon decided, in the best interests of Israel, that it must be done. That took vision, something Arafat lacked.

The Palestinians mourn their fallen leader, their icon. But Arafat led them not to a promised land, he led them onto a vast plain of sacrifice and pain. Arafat's legacy should be a cautionary tale for a new generation of Palestinian leaders. His was the wrong way to pursue statehood and peace.