Arafat Died Years Ago

From CounterPunch, courtesy of J. Orlin Grabbe, longtime British Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk on the ineffective life of Yasser Arafat:

Those were the days when he promised to return all the refugees of pre-1948 Palestine to their homes, when he deliberately sacrificed thousands of Palestinian lives in the Tel el-Zaatar camp to earn the world's sympathy, when he tolerated aircraft hijacking and talked about "democracy among the guns" and eventually left his people in Beirut to Israel's murderous henchmen in the Phalange.

The Arafat mug was never going to find its way on to university walls like Guevara or even Castro. There was -- and still is -- a kind of seediness about it and maybe that's what the Israelis saw too, a man who could be relied on to police his people in their little Bantustans, another proxy to run the show when occupation became too tiresome. "Can Arafat control his own people?" That's what the Israelis asked and the world obligingly asked the same question without realising the truth: that this was precisely why Arafat had been allowed back to the Occupied Territories -- to "control" his people. The only time he did stand up to his Israeli-American masters -- when he refused to accept 64 per cent of the 22 per cent of Palestine that was left to him -- he returned in triumph to Gaza and allowed the Israelis to claim he was offered 95 per cent but chose war.

When he started negotiating with the Israelis, he had not even seen a Jewish settlement but he put his trust in the Americans -- always a dangerous thing to do in the Middle East -- and when Israel began to renege on the withdrawals, there was no one to help him. Israel broke withdrawal agreements five times.

Then came intifada two and the Palestinian suicide bombings and 11 September 2001, and it was only a matter of time -- about six hours, to be exact -- before Israel said Arafat was linked to Osama bin Laden and that Ariel Sharon, too, was fighting world terror in his battle with the "terrorist" Arafat.

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I have a great deal of sympathy for the plight of the Palestinian people, and a lot of anger toward the Israeli government that oppresses them. However, that doesn't mean I liked Arafat. He purposely took his people down a path of self-destruction, playing into the hands of Israeli hawks again and again. Then Arafat simply became corrupt. Hopefully, but doubtfully, things will improve now that he's gone.

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