Sharon and Arafat: Two Failed Leaders
By
Geoffrey Kemp
From the January 21, 2002 edition of Al-Ittihad
Will the violence between Israel and the Palestinians end anytime soon? According to Israel’s defense minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, the first week of January 2002 was the quietest since the Al Aqsa Intifada began in the fall of 2000. U.S. special envoy retired General Anthony Zinni had expressed similar sentiments when he departed from the region on January 7th. To offset this good news, Israel has seized a merchant ship, the Karine-A, in the Red Sea carrying over 50 tons of arms including rockets and anti tank missiles. It has accused the Palestinian Authority of trying to smuggle arms into the Palestinian controlled areas. The United States believes there is "compelling evidence" Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat knew about the operation. Then, on January 9th, Hamas operatives killed four Israeli soldiers in the worst attacks in nearly four weeks. Once more the chances of progress in resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict seem illusive.
Although Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon continues to generate sympathy in the United States because of suicide attacks against Israeli citizens, his ideas for resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict carry little weight with the Bush administration. There remains empathy for the plight of the Palestinian people and their hope for a viable Palestinian state. However American support for Arafat has reached rock bottom.
Sharon was elected Prime Minister of Israel in February 2001, with the largest majority in Israeli history, primarily because of the policies pursued by Arafat following the breakdown of the Camp David summit in the summer of 2000. The Clinton White House was prepared to go further than any previous American administration in brokering a fair resolution of the conflict. Instead of engaging Clinton with realistic alternative proposals, Arafat chose to exploit pent up Palestinian resentment and anger over the failed promises of the Oslo agreements and preside the Al Aqsa Intifada.
The results have been disastrous. First, the Intifada assured that Ehud Barak would lose the Israeli elections in February to Sharon. Second, the Intifada destroyed support for the Palestinian Authority within the Israeli political left, a critical constituency in the peace process. Third, Arafat’s unwillingness to show flexibility to the Clinton administration’s overtures, made it inevitable that the Bush administration would take a much more jaundiced view of the peace process. Fourth, Arafat has burnt his bridges with the U.S. Congress. Fifth, and most painful, the Palestinians themselves have suffered egregious human and economic losses. Arafat has also incurred the wrath of the European Union which, in an unprecedented break from the past, has explicitly and unequivocally demanded that he clampdown on the terrorist activities perpetrated by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Sharon’s record, though less criticized in the United States than Arafat’s, is, nevertheless, almost as bad. He has gone out of his way to humiliate Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, most recently by denying Arafat permission to attend Christmas services in Bethlehem. He has had made it clear that under no circumstances will he ever agree to a viable Palestinian state. The most that could be expected would be a series of separate Palestinian enclaves within the occupied territories surrounded by Israeli settlements and a massive road infrastructure designed to isolate each Palestinian community. This vision is totally unacceptable to the Palestinians, the Arab world, Europe and the United States. Nevertheless, the right wing in Israel is in the ascendancy thanks, in part, to the violence that Arafat has condoned. Indeed, if Sharon’s coalition breaks apart, the most likely successor will be Benjamin Netanyahu who will preside over a government far to the right of Sharon’s coalition.
It didn’t have to be this way. There are Israelis and Palestinians who understand the need for constructive diplomacy and imaginative compromises. For this reason that the new PLO representative in Jerusalem, Sari Nusseibeh, a distinguished Palestinian academic with impeccable credentials and respected by the Israeli left, arouses much antagonism from hard line circles in both Israel and the Palestinian community. Nusseibeh understands the need to address two critical issues essential if Israel is to support a viable Palestinian state: Israel’s preoccupation with physical security and its historic attachments to Jerusalem. Palestinians who deny the latter, as Arafat has done, assure that there will be no compromise on Jerusalem. The Nusseibeh perspective, which advocates a practical solution to the problems, would be acceptable to many Israelis if the violence ceased.
The fact that the level of violence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority dropped following Arafat’s appeal on December 16 for a cease-fire and his crackdown on militant movements demonstrates that Arafat still has residual power. He could, if he wished, play a more assertive role in bringing about the conditions for a permanent cease-fire. The fear is that he would prefer to die a martyr than compromise his ideology and be assassinated as a traitor. Sharon, likewise, has given no indication he is willing to compromise on final status issues. Thus, with these two leaders in power the best we can hope for is a protracted period of non-belligerency, rather than a final peace settlement.
Geoffrey
Kemp is Director of Regional Strategic Programs at The Nixon Center. He
writes a regular column for Al-Ittihad.
