Soccer Dad: Removing splinters

May 31, 2007

Removing splinters

The tragic situation on the West Bank and in Gaza also reflects a total U.S. misunderstanding of the region. The death of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat, a man unable to embrace the role of statesman, offered the White House the last best chance to encourage a two-state solution. It passed up the chance.

Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, and his Palestinian Authority were weak, but Abbas was committed to two states, side by side. Had Gaza been returned to him via peace talks, his Fatah party would have been strengthened - and Hamas undermined. Instead, the United States backed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza. This bolstered Hamas's argument that its violent tactics had driven out the Israelis.

The undercutting of Abbas led to the predictable disintegration of the Palestinian Authority. Even as President Bush was telling Americans that Gaza would morph into a model democracy, its impoverished society was collapsing. Its people, desperate for services, voted in a Hamas government.

Forgetting for a moment whether or not Abbas is truly committed to two states, there is so much wrong with these paragraphs, it's hard to know where to begin. The problems didn't start with Arafat's death. They started with ... Arafat.

Rubin, and others like her, hitched their hopes to an unreformed terrorist. Abbas wasn't weak because the return of Gaza was unilateral. He was weak because he and Fatah were corrupt. They were corrupt because they were treated as indispensable even as they demonstrated their bad faith again and again.

One of the less commented aspects of George Tenet's book has been his assessment of Arafat.

Still, he says that the White House was right not to push for greater diplomacy with the Palestinians once Bush entered office, as it was apparent little could be done with Arafat in power.

"He got what he could from us [through the Oslo process], and from that point on gave little back," Tenet says. "Therefore - and it was a view I supported - there would be no more letting him in the front door." Despite his critique of Arafat, Tenet acknowledges that on a personal level, "I couldn't keep myself from liking him."

(The media anxious to use any stick with which to beat President Bush only use Tenet's book to dispute Bush, not to support him.)

The splinter groups that Rubin laments as being central to the disintegration of the Middle East were pioneered by Fatah. Once Fatah saw that terror worked it served as a model for its many imitators and wannabes. Rubin ought to look in the mirror is she wishes to see who is responsible for the splinter groups.

Arafat learned very quickly that as long as he was considered indispensable for peace it allowed him to accumulate wealth, prestige and power, all in the noble cause of self determination. Those who gave him a free pass are the ones responsible for the predictable failure of the peace process. Once Arafat was free from any responsibility except to say that he wanted peace, he took full advantage. Peace became defined as anything Arafat wanted, and Israel, if it objected became the obstructionist.

Earlier Daled Amos linked to an excellent article analyzing the spell Arafat had over the West.

TERRORISTS CAN WORK through language, as did Richard until he had access to violence, or through violence alone. What makes Arafat's career in terror so remarkable is that when he has had limited access to violence, he has been able to use the very means Richard did to convince his enemies not to run him through.

Arafat has been able to paint himself and the Palestinian people as victims because, lacking a conscience, he could glibly encourage Palestinian children to stand as human shields for his snipers. Fighting such an enemy so pricked the conscience of Israel that many Israelis felt they could not live with themselves--even though they knew that Arafat was manipulating them. This was another reason the Israelis ignored common sense, and decided to give in to the Oslo illusion that Arafat could be trusted.

It is interesting that the person who finally defeats Richard III in Shakespeare's play, Richmond, is the one key character who never talks to Richard or gives him a hearing, and thus never comes under his spell. To talk to Arafat, which is what all pundits say must be done to bring peace to the Middle East, is precisely the wrong move, for there is no dialogue with a man without a conscience. Another wrong move is the game of decriminalizing Arafat. By refusing to punish him for horrendous crimes, as a serious nation would, Israel leaves the world, the Arabs, and itself with the sense that maybe his crimes can be justified, and its own attempts to restrain him from further criminal acts are criminal excesses in themselves. Israel would do better to relentlessly show the world pictures of Arafat's victims, including the American ambassador he assassinated.

Note that Tenet, even while blaming Arafat, found that he liked Arafat personally. Sure, Israel's withdrawal from Gaza (and before it, its withdrawal from Southern Lebanon) didn't help the cause of peace in the Middle East. But the splintering occurred way before then. It occurred when Arafat was legitimized. Those who - like Trudy Rubin - supported the cleansing of the world's leading terrorist are the ones who are guilty of enabling the splintering that she faults the Bush administration for causing.

Diplomacy, offered by Rubin as a possible solution to the problem is splintering, is what caused it in the first place.

Yasser Arafat, Terrorism.