Soccer Dad

A paean to sharon the centrist

The New York Times editorial today celebrating PM Ariel Sharon's decision to start his own political party reads:

So the moment of truth has arrived. For the past four years, Palestinian leaders, first Yasir Arafat then Mahmoud Abbas have used the very existence of Yasir Arafat to justify their abandonment of the peace process.

Now Mr. Sharon has declared his willingness to trade land for peace, so Mr. Abbas has no more excuses.

Chances like this aren't likely to come again in Mr. Abbas's lifetime. If he wants to avoid Mr. Arafat's fate -- dying as a former hero turned obstacle to his people's progress -- he has to take advantage of it. As the Palestinians' greatest friend, the United States must do everything it can to make that happen. Unfortunately, Bush officials are tap-dancing, spouting the same tired excuses that America can't do anything to enforce Palestinian compliance until Mr. Abbas is strong enough to take on the extremists.

American leadership in this area has never before been more crucial, and Mr. Bush cannot fail again. He should make four simple statements: The Palestinians have Gaza, they must make it work, they must fight Hamas and they must accept Israel's right to exist.

This is the chance for peace that has been approached, then squandered, over and over, as one party or the other lost the necessary nerve. This time, everyone will have the same old opportunities to fail. Israel is bound to continue building in the disputed territories, which will provide Mr. Abbas the pretext to claim that Israel is violating international law and then refuse to take action against terrorist organizations like Hamas that are bent on killing Jews and destroying Israel. Mr. Arafat's successors will be under extraordinary pressure to follow Mr. Arafat's path by talking to the West about peace while allowing the terrorists to dictate actions at home. It will be up to President Bush to ensure that Mr. Abbas doesn't just say the right things but also take the actions necessary to make peace possible.

But Abbas can help shore up the credibility of Mr. Sharon by fighting terror organizations instead of promising to co-opt them, convening the Palestinian Legislative Council to renounce the Palestinian National Charter and create a new one that explicitly calls for Israel's right to exist, granting amnesty to Palestinians who have been accused - often falsely - of helping Israel and stopping the Arab world's diplomatic offensive against Israel. What better way to strengthen Mr. Sharon than by finally taking concrete steps toward reconcilliaition something that Yasir Arafat never did?

Whoops. That wasn't it. Here's what the Times wrote in "Ariel Sharon as the centrist":

The coming national elections will bring many issues into relief. Will the country capitalize on the Gaza withdrawal to forge ahead in peace talks with the Palestinians? Will Israel finally talk seriously about abandoning the settlements in the West Bank, which it must leave for a Palestinian state - and peace - to be a realistic outcome?

Polls say Mr. Sharon has popular good will in Israel today, and without the baggage of Likud he certainly has the credibility to push Israel in the direction it needs to go. Whether he chooses to do so remains to be seen. But one thing is clear. Mr. Sharon couldn't lead Israel toward its national goals as long as he embodied Likud.

In typical fashion the Times places the burden of peacemaking on Israel and ignores any Palestinian obligations.

What was the above "editorial?" It was my edited version of the Time's editorial, "Arafat and the road to peace" from Nov 12, 2004, discussing the possibilities of peace after Arafat. Here are some selected paragraphs:

So the moment of truth has arrived. For the past four years, the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, and President Bush have used the very existence of Yasir Arafat to justify their abandonment of the peace process. The Palestinians, for their part, have used Israel's and America's intractability to continue their own self-destructive policy of intifada, and Mr. Arafat's immovable presence as the all-purpose explanation for everything from internal corruption to suicide bombers.

...

Chances like this aren't likely to come again in Mr. Sharon's lifetime. If he wants to avoid Mr. Arafat's fate -- dying as a former hero turned obstacle to his people's progress -- he has to take advantage of it. As Israel's greatest friend, the United States must do everything it can to make that happen. Unfortunately, Bush officials are tap-dancing, spouting the same tired excuses that America can't do anything to restart the road map to peace until Palestinian extremists end their violence against Israel, and until Palestine has a leader America can trust.

...

American leadership in this area has never before been more crucial, and Mr. Bush cannot fail again. He should make four simple statements: We have an opportunity. We have a plan. We have a goal. Let's talk.

...
But Israel can help shore up the credibility of moderate reformers by beginning a total freeze on settlements and beginning to address their calls to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. What better way to empower moderate leaders than by giving them something that Israel refused to give Yasir Arafat?

Although this is something I wish to address in greater detail, in today's editorial, while rehashing Ariel Sharon's sordid past (UPDATE: sordid in the eyes of the editors) the Times asserts:

In 2000, he detonated the Palestinian intifada when, surrounded by hundreds of policemen and soldiers, he visited the plateau in Jerusalem that the Muslims call the Noble Sanctuary and the Jews call the Temple Mount.

This is false. Arafat used violence because he knew he could away with it and have Israel blamed for it. As David Samuels made clear in "In a ruined country" (The Atlantic, Sept 2005):

Mamduh Nofal is the former military commander of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and the commander of the Palestinian forces during the siege of Beirut. A peculiarly Palestinian amalgam of poet, op-ed writer, and guerrilla fighter, he is an imposing hulk of a man, at once friendly and fierce, like a pirate in a storybook. At the battle of Karamah, in Jordan, in 1968, Nofal was a military leader for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). It was there that he began his relationship with Arafat, he tells me when we meet in his modern office in Ramallah. The sign outside his office identifies him as a high-ranking official of Fatah.

"With the fighters, he lived with them as they lived. He sat with them on the ground. He brought food for them and fed them. This is not propaganda."

Nofal tells me that Arafat's strategic use of violence after Oslo began with permitting Hamas and Islamic Jihad to launch terror attacks. Arafat would then crack down on those same organizations to show that he was in control. Nofal first heard Arafat give orders that led directly to violence, he says, before the riots that erupted over the excavation of the Hasmonean tunnel, near the Haram al-Sharif, in 1996. Nofal says that the impetus for the violence was the statement by the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that he would not speak to Arafat directly. Arafat was furious at the slight.

"I was with him in his office," Nofal recalls. "He got up and walked around the desk. He was very, very angry. Finally he calmed down a bit and he pointed to the phone on his desk. He said, 'I will make Netanyahu call me on this phone.'"

Arafat ordered demonstrators into the streets, and told them to provoke the Israelis. When violence erupted, the Israelis were blamed. "I was sitting with him again when the phone on his desk rang, and he looked at me and said, 'It's Netanyahu.' And it was him."

The second intifada also began with the intention of provoking the Israelis and subjecting them to diplomatic pressure. Only this time Arafat went for broke. As a member of the High Security Council of Fatah, the key decision-making and organizational body that dealt with military questions at the beginning of the intifada, Nofal has first-hand knowledge of Arafat's intentions and decisions during the months before and after Camp David. "He told us, 'Now we are going to the fight, so we must be ready,'" Nofal remembers. Nofal says that when Barak did not prevent Ariel Sharon from making his controversial visit to the plaza in front of al-Aqsa, the mosque that was built oil the site of the ancient Jewish temples, Arafat said, "Okay, it's time to work."

I do hope to go into this in more detail, but for now it's enough to challenge the vicious libel that Ariel Sharon sparked the intifada. (The Times of course has to take this position because of its correspondent's investment in keeping the myth of the moderate Arafat alive. When she left her assignment in Israel. Deborah Sontag wrote "Quest for Mideast Peace: How and Why It Failed" in which she tells of a mythical meeting between Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak. The meeting itself wasn't mythical; it was Arafat's version of it that was. Sontag presented Arafat's version unchallenged in the article.)

UDATE: Thanks to Mediacrity and Meryl Yourish for linking here. I appreciate when Mediacrity writes (very generously):

Again, Soccer Dad proves, in this October 2004 item, that a blog has a better grasp of history than the mighty Times editorialists.

Thank you. The difference between the editorialists and me is that I'm looking for history; they're looking for a narrative.

Technorati Tags: Ariel Sharon, Israel, New York Times, media bias.

Crossposted on Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Posted by SoccerDad at November 22, 2005 7:57 AM | TrackBack