Do Palestinians need a new Arafat?
Published 15 November, 2008, 09:05
Yasser Arafat led the Palestinians through bloody conflict with the dream of creating a nation. But upon his death, no one was able to replace him as a central figure around which the various factions could unite. Arafat's goal of creating a state seems no nearer than it was twenty years ago.
A poor Egyptian boy who grew up to determine the fate of a nation, Arafat led the Palestinian struggle through years of intifada or uprising. His ammunition was children with stones against one of the most powerful armies in the world.
When Yasser Arafat stepped on Palestinian soil at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on July 1, 1994, it marked a turning point in Palestinian history. For the first time in 27 years the Palestinian Liberation Organisation leader returned to his homeland. On that day Arafat showed the world that nothing is impossible.
Qais Abdul-Karim returned to Gaza with Yasser Arafat.
“Six years earlier, with his people defeated in Lebanon and all his leadership in exile far away from his home, the old man, as he was affectionately called, against all odds, made an announcement nobody in the world took seriously. Israeli government believed they would control the Palestinian territories forever,” Abdul-Karim recalls.
Several months after his return, Arafat announced he was ready to make a concession and build a Palestinian state on a part of Palestine. Uri Avneri, Israeli journalist and Arafat’s personal friend, says it was a historic announcement.
“He wanted to convince his own people and the world that Palestinians are ready to have a state in a part of Palestine. Until that moment the official aim of the Palestinian Liberation movement was to have a Palestinian state in all Palestine.”
Uri Avneri was one of the few Israelis who understood that something was wrong. He supported the Palestinian struggle from inside the Jewish state and many times was shunned by his own people. He was the only Israeli journalist who risked his life to go and interview him in Israeli-captured Beirut in 1982.
But Arafat led his people only half the way. When he died, there was no-one to step into his shoes. The Israelis are heading to the polls with a right-wing government expected to be elected. The two-state solution that looked so promising in 1994, could not be further away 14 years later.
Both sides, though, agree on one thing – Palestinian society desperately needs a leader to unite the Palestinians and to cut a deal with Israel.
“Palestinians generally miss him terribly – for national reasons and other reasons as well,” says former Palestinian Ambassador to the United Nations Nasser Qudwi. “But the political situation I think is the main reason”.
When Arafat arrived back in Palestine, the first place he stepped foot on was the Gaza Strip. His message was that Gaza and the West Bank were one country. But last year's street battles between his Fatah soldiers and Hamas militants tore Palestinian society apart. Arafat's dream of a two-state solution looks today more like a three-state nightmare.
