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Yasser Arafat (1929 - 2004)
YASSER Arafat's death in Paris yesterday morning brings to an end the life of a man who, for 40 years, literally and figuratively, embodied the aspirations and the struggle of the Palestinian people for a homeland. His death truly marks the end of an epoch in the Middle East crisis, and a significant moment in the history of the Palestinian people.
As the Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO), Arafat, in the words of the New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman, managed to bring the Palestinians from the "desert of obscurity to a land of prime time". He placed the Palestinian cause on the front burner of world politics. He was for four decades, the giant in the political life of the Palestinians and the shaper and creator of the Palestinian identity. Dedicated to the singular goal of securing a homeland for his people, Arafat failed in his ambition to move them "from prime time to Palestine". That final objective, the creation of an independent Palestinian state, is now the responsibility of his successors.
An aura of mystery and enigma surrounds the persona of Mohammed Abder Rauf Arafat, known to his friends as Yasser Arafat and to his supporters as Abu Amar. While some Palestinians saw him as an object of worship and adoration, others regarded him as a traitor, a corrupt and deceitful ex-revolutionary who has renounced the struggle and connived with the West to accept the existence of the state of Israel in the heart of the Arab world. The subtitle of his biography, In the Eyes of the Beholder, captures the multivariate perceptions which his allies and adversaries had of him.
He appeared charismatic to those who shared his views, and menacing to all those who opposed him. His guerrilla uniform, with the ever present kafeeyah head-dress, which he shaped to "symbolise the jagged map of Palestine" and the ever present pistol, which some in the West saw as the tailor-made image of a terrorist, were to him and others in the Middle East the symbol of the defiance of a people struggling for a homeland of their own. The uniform was "a meaningful symbol for his people, a convenient style for his ascetic, nomadic life." Jacques Chirac, President of France where he spent his last moments in a military hospital in Paris, has described him appropriately as a "man of courage and conviction."
For years, Arafat was a guerrilla on the go, literally living, as he himself put it, on an "airplane more than on the ground." On the ground Arafat was permanently shifting his abode, moving from house to house on the whim, evading skilful intelligence agencies out to kill him by stealthy movement and constant travelling. Like a chameleon Arafat could "shape himself to situations and people and survive the treachery of endless foes." He was a great survivor destined to die not by the sword as his adversaries would have wished but in old age, with his wife by his bedside. He survived numerous attempts to assassinate him, including the episode in Lebanon in the 1970s when an associate tried to slip a deadly poison into his rice meal.
Even his birth was shrouded in ambiguity. Although he claimed to have been born in Jerusalem, others claim with certainty that he was born either in Gaza or Cairo. And there is an Egyptian birth certificate in his name. Raised in Cairo and Jerusalem, young Arafat fought with the Palestinian forces of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, and returned to Cairo following the establishment of Israel in 1948. After graduating in Engineering from the Cairo University in 1956, and training secretly as fedayeen (commando) in the process, he fought with the Egyptian army in the Suez campaign.
From 1957 Arafat, then working as a successful engineer in Kuwait, established a clandestine military organisation, the Palestinian National Liberation Movement whose Arab acronym HATAF, ominously spelt "death". To conceal the organisation's intentions Arafat and his group turned the letters of the acronym around to form the word FATAH, giving the organisation the name by which it became well known, Al Fatah. Al Fatah joined the PLO in 1968 and gained total control of it a year later when Arafat was elected chairman of the PLO Executive Committee. He held on to that position until his death yesterday.
Under Arafat's leadership the history of the PLO has been as turbulent as the life of the chairman himself. The organisation has spawned splinter groups, among them Black September and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, PFLP. Through the actions of these splinter groups, the PLO earned an international reputation as a terrorist organisation. The most spectacular was the blowing-up of three hijacked airliners in Jordan in 1970 and the massacre of eleven Israeli Olympic athletes in Munich in 1972.
The PLO destabilised Jordan when it was based there and almost overthrew the monarchy of King Hussein I. When the Jordanian army forced the PLO to relocate to Lebanon it became a state within a state and precipitated that country's disintegration into civil war in 1975. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 to stem PLO and other attacks across the border. Whereas Arafat had boasted in a radio broadcast that "Beirut will be the Hanoi and Stalingrad of the Israeli army," (a reference to the Soviet defeat at the Battle of Stalingrad during World War II, and the resistance of Hanoi to the U.S. army during the Vietnam War), in reality the invasion gravely weakened the PLO and further intensified its fractionalisation and dispersal. Elements loyal to Arafat were forced to relocate to Tunis.
In 1974 the Arab League recognised the PLO as the sole representative of Palestinian Arabs. Thereafter Arafat intensified his diplomatic effort to win international recognition for the PLO, becoming that year the first representative of a non-governmental body to address a plenary session of the General Assembly of the United Nations in Geneva. In his address he pledged that the PLO "will work to reach a comprehensive peaceful settlement between the sides involved in the Arab-Israeli struggle, including the state of Palestine and Israel...within the framework of an international conference for peace in the Middle East."
That pledge was redeemed in November 1988 during the meeting of the Palestinian National Council in Algiers when Arafat proclaimed an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and also recognised the right of Israel to exist. The Council then voted to accept the United Nations resolutions 242 of 1967 and 338 of 1973 recognising the sovereignty of all the states in the Middle East. It also agreed to use the resolutions, together with acknowledgement of the right of the Palestinian to self-determination as the basis for an international peace conference. In essence, the PLO was renouncing terrorism for political settlement of its territorial dispute with Israel. This fundamental shift in strategy met a pivotal precondition established by the United States for dialogue with the PLO. It laid the framework for the attempts made in the 1990s to negotiate an end to the Middle East conflict. In fact in December 1988 the United States agreed to initiate what it called "direct diplomatic dialogue" with the PLO. By then Arafat had succeeded in transforming his image to that of a statesman, and hence gained official international legitimacy.
On September 13, 1993, after secret negotiations, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin agreed to the signing of an historic peace accord in Washington, D.C. that called for mutual recognition and limited Palestinian self-rule in the Israeli-occupied territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The following year Arafat, Rabin and Shimon Peres were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for replacing "war and hate" with "peace and cooperation" in the Middle East. When Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 Arafat visited Israel for the first time to offer his condolences to his widow. In May 1994 Israeli troops withdrew from Jericho and the Gaza Strip, relinquishing control to a Palestinian National Authority (PNA) with Arafat as President. However, persistent attacks by extremist groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad compelled Israel to maintain its military presence in the occupied territories. In January 1996 Arafat was elected as executive head of the new Palestinian National Council, with over 88 per cent of the votes. In April he secured PLO approval to remove the clauses calling for the destruction of Israel from the Palestinian National Covenant.
The election of Binyamin Netanyahu as Israeli prime minister in May 1996 changed the tone of relations established under Yitzhak Rabin. Arafat had to contend with an increasingly hard Israeli line in negotiations under a government which was unwilling to respect the spirit of the 1993 peace accord. By November 1997 Arafat was threatening to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. However, strong American pressure eventually led to the signing of an interim accord in October 1998. In December Arafat hosted the American president, Bill Clinton, on official visit to Gaza to open a new international airport.
Ehud Barak's election as Israeli prime minister in May 1999 gave a new momentum to the peace process. Barak and Arafat signed the Sharm el-Sheikh Accord in September which allowed the transfer of seven per cent of the West Bank to Palestinian control, thus paving the way for final status talks. Unfortunately a two-week summit hosted by President Clinton at Camp David in July 2000 failed to reconcile competing claims over the status of Jerusalem. Ariel Sharon's provocative visit to the al-Aqsa mosque in September 2000 sparked another intifada and inevitably doomed the Sharm el-Sheik talks between Arafat and Barak in October 2000. Since Sharon's election as Israeli prime minister in February 2001 the Middle East has witnessed an escalation of violence on both sides with little prospect for peace. This is the situation which Arafat left behind.
For years the conflict in the Middle East was framed in Manichean terms, a struggle between good and evil. But who is evil, and who is good? Both the Arabs and the Israelis are trapped by their history and their environment and are therefore left with little choice but to deal with each other. Both sides believe deeply in the righteousness of their cause. The death of Arafat provides a new window of opportunity for all sides to seek more creative ways to resolve the crisis in the Middle East. The two-state solution embodied in the roadmap to peace remains the most viable option. As British Prime Minister Tony Blair said recently, the Middle East conflict is the single most important issue in contemporary international politics. Resolving it will contribute significantly to creating a more peaceful and secure world.
After a military confrontation with Israeli forces, Arafat is reported to have said "If I fall take my place." That statement became the slogan of the PLO. Now that the leader has fallen we hope that the Palestinian people would be allowed to have a say in the choice of his successor. The new leadership needs popular legitimacy and international goodwill, with the active involvement of the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations, to complete the task begun by Arafat four decades ago, and to re-energise the Middle East peace process.`
Happy Eid-el-Fitri`
A`S the Moslem world celebrates this year's Eid-el-Fitri, marking the end of a month-long fasting, it is time to give supplication to Almighty Allah, and reflect further on the lessons and blessings of Ramadan. We join all Moslems, particularly Nigerians in celebrating the eid.
It is important for all Moslems to remind themselves that the essence of Ramadan, the observance of which Allah has made mandatory for all healthy faithful, is to imbibe the lesson of sacrifice and discipline which self-denial of food, drink and other worldly pleasure necessarily entails. It is of course, a time of abundant blessing as well as that of forgiveness of sins by Allah. Correspondingly, Moslems and adherents of other religions are enjoined to forgive those who may have wronged them.
The Eid-el-Fitri is an occasion that emphasises giving, rather than taking. These have deep implications on the larger, national scale, the idea being that society is more likely to be progressive if sacrifice, forgiveness and peace form the bedrock of its values. Nigerians ought to use this occasion to renew or initiate love among themselves, conscious that peace and progress will remain elusive without genuine love among the populace.
Moslems are inclined to point out that the country has in the past one month, enjoyed relative peace and tranquillity. Self-denial goes with patience, and with patience, mistakes are fewer. Even a planned workers strike was put on hold in appreciation that it does not accord with the Ramadan spirit. The challenge therefore is to work for the extension of peace and tranquillity beyond the holy month. Why for instance should workers' strike, suspended during Ramadan, be reactivated afterwards when in fact the period of suspension should have been utilised to find lasting solutions to the grievances that informed the strike intention?
The obvious answer is that there is no love lost between government and the governed. There is no willingness to give, make sacrifices and promote understanding. There is no humility of mind to engage in dialogue with perceived opponents. In particular, the impending gloom portrays government as uncaring and insensitive, and the teeming masses who, without doubt, are at the receiving end, have become cynical.
Failure to prevent the proposed nationwide strike by labour and other civil society groups is only one of the societal challenges begging for resolution through the application of Ramadan's lessons. There are too many other vices plaguing the country. They include corruption, armed robbery, political assassinations, bad leadership, obtaining under false pretext (otherwise known as 419), habitual lying, assault and infliction of bodily harm on fellow citizens, ritual murder and a host of other dastardly acts. These are at variance with the spirit of Eid-el-Fitri.
This occasion requires that citizens should be law-abiding and that they should reflect soberly on their circumstances as individuals and members of a community. Moslem policy makers in and outside government in particular should realise that Eid-el-fitri celebration demands that they formulate policies, not for their personal aggrandisement, but for the progress of the society at large. They are required to avoid greed, corruption, and vanity and project themselves as shining and dignified examples for others. If Moslems can testify that their involvement in vices was low during Ramadan, there is no reason why they should embark on a life of sin.
The Eid-el-Fitri should provide a determination on the part of Nigerian rulers to address hunger, poverty, disease, unemployment, official extravagance, politics of bitterness and hatred, injustice, unfair distribution of wealth and trivialisation of serious national matters. They should realise in the spirit of Eid-el-Fitri that their being in position of power and authority goes with a divine responsibility requiring probity, integrity and accountability. As Moslems celebrate the eid, they must seek to live the rest of their lives in genuine godliness. That is the sure path to national peace and greatness.
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