7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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The new resistance
Plans to get rid of Arafat and find Palestinians who can be dealt with more easily have been drawn up in Israel, endorsed by Washington and tacitly acknowledged by the Arabs. Israel's first steps were to effectively arrest Arafat and confine him to his office, depriving him of his right to communicate with other parties or attend conferences. The object is to kill him, morally and politically.
Israel fixed the case of the Karine A to discredit Arafat and as a warning to other Arab leaders, who are frightened that charges of terrorism, however groundless, will be levelled against them. Washington is now implementing Sharon's dictates not to deal with Arafat. In his place, figures like Ahmed Qure'i and Mahmoud Abbas, whom Sharon admitted he had met after initially denying it, have begun to appear. After meeting Sharon, they went to Washington; all this took place with or without Arafat's knowledge or consent.
Then Jordan's King Abdullah appeared on cue, prior to Sharon's visit to Washington. The media duly carried conflicting stories regarding the outcome of his meeting with US Secretary of State Colin Powell, after which an official spokesman announced King Abdullah had agreed that it was necessary to corner Arafat and force him to implement his "commitments." After his meeting with Bush, it was said that the king had endorsed Bush's statement with regard to the "axis of evil" that incorporates Iraq, and conceded that it must be crushed. Jordanian officials quickly denied such statements, insisting that the king had in fact said precisely the opposite about Arafat and Iraq.
Nobody knows for sure what went on in the White House and at the State Department. Is Washington employing its time- honoured policies, using smoke and mirrors to divide and rule? Or is there no smoke without fire?
Edward Walker, a long- time US ambassador in the Arab world and Israel and a deputy secretary of state, once opined that what Arab leaders say in official meetings often completely contradicts the public statements they make in their own countries. This, he added, is why the US administration does not take the extremism apparent in public statements too seriously. Conversely, this suggests that the more committed the Arabs seem in stating their support for Arafat, the more successful Israeli-US plans to get rid of him will be.
The problem with President Arafat is that he has allowed so many poisonous weeds to grow around him that they have blocked out the changes taking place. This is why the Israelis were able to convince Washington that more "pragmatic," flexible Palestinian leaders will be capable of putting an end to terrorist operations and controlling the resistance. Yet Palestinian reality is proof enough that the sacrifices sustained during the Intifada have created a deep rift between the old guard and the roots of the new resistance, which have sprouted in the twin shadows of Israeli state terrorism and the corruption and failure that beset the peace process. Wafaa Idris, whose suicide was driven by intolerable personal suffering, did not belong to any faction. She represents a new generation of young people who, while they may well acknowledge Arafat's authority, will never tolerate the pragmatic leaders Israel chooses.
What this means is that getting rid of Arafat can only give rise to more terror, violence and resistance.
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