Will Israel appreciate Arafat when he's gone?

By Uri Avnery | November 5, 2004

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/11/05/will_israel_appreciate_arafat_when_hes_gone/


>>THE ANNOUNCEMENTS fill the media again: "Arafat in critical condition!" "Arafat dead." The man who was officially declared by the Israeli government to be "irrelevant" two years ago is headline news all over the world again this week.

>>For 45 years he has lived in the shadow of death. Plots to kill him were hatched continually somewhere or other. In 1982 I stood on a warehouse roof near Beirut harbor observing the PLO fighters, headed by Yasser Arafat, getting on the ships that took them westward. The next day Israeli newspapers announced. "Arafat is politically a dead horse!" "Thank God, we are rid of him once and for all!"

>>If one does not want peace and prefers a Greater Israel, one does not need Arafat. But if one thinks that peace is essential for Israel to develop and flourish, one needs him very much. He is the only Palestinian leader with the moral authority needed to sign a peace treaty with Israel, but -- even more important -- to carry his people with him. Any peace agreement will demand Palestinian concessions that will tear their hearts, such as giving up the right to unlimited return of the refugees to the territory of Israel. No other Palestinian leader would have the courage to ask his people to do this.

>>Like every leader of a national liberation movement, he had to make the most of the few means at his disposal -- shrewdness, violence, diplomacy, propaganda. He has, of course, made many mistakes, but they pale in comparison to his huge achievement. It was he who created the modern Palestinian national movement when Palestinians had almost vanished from the map, and he has brought them to the threshold of national independence.<<

Someone they need to blame for their own stupidity, which is preferable than engaging in self-criticism. Who are they going to blame next? I sure won't be along the lines of "it's the Occupation, stupid!"