Green is a second-year medical student.
By Jonas Green
Only two years ago the Middle East seemed to be on a promising course toward peace. But renewed violence has upended that peace, with each side failing to see the depravity of the acts it commits in the name of justice. Resolution will require strong leaders, worthy of respect and capable of commanding deference.
Instead, we have two men who are not merely inept as peacemakers, but actually responsible for the bloodshed. Each has antagonized peace; neither has upheld it. They play a high-stakes poker game, using human chips, aimed solely at calling the other’s bluff.
Yasser Arafat’s name sends chills down the spines of innocents whose relatives were blown up in buses, Olympic athletes who survived Munich, and Palestinians who dared speak out against Intifada.
However, it’s not without good reason that Ariel Sharon is reviled by Palestinians. His feigned interest in peace doesn’t fool victims (or students) of his history. He is a ruthless expansionist who gave no thought to disrupting legitimate government attempts to broker negotiations, invaded Lebanon without authorization, and allowed vengeful bandits to slaughter his prisoners.
These men are not qualified to negotiate peace because they are bitter, and their actions bespeak their hunger for revenge. Arafat may have more blood on his hands, but Sharon has no less around his shoes.
Arafat has defined himself by what he fights against, not what he stands for. His organization, Al Fatah, has raided Israel from Jordan for 45 years, masterminded terrorist activities and offered military training to other international terrorist groups.
Although he initially opposed an independent state for Israeli Muslims, Arafat later formed the Palestine Liberation Organization, whose goal is Palestinian independence through terror. They were shunned, even by fellow Muslims, and they moved to Lebanon in 1971 because Jordan evicted them. Most prominent among the PLO’s actions are their role in the 1972 execution of Israeli athletes by the Black September terrorist group at the Munich Olympic Games, and their hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro (also killing wheelchair-bound American passenger Leon Klinghoffer and dumping his body overboard).
Arafat coordinated the first Intifada (“holy war”) because of a car accident in which four Arabs died. He literally organized the violence, specifying violence days. The Intifada involved 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 by hand grenade, 600 with guns or explosives and vile executions for perceived infidelity. More than 1,000 of Arafat’s own people died. His principles are clear – he cares more for objectives than people, even if they’re his followers.
Sharon shows a similar disdain for human life. In 1982, as Minister of Defense, he invaded Lebanon all the way to Beirut without the consent of Prime Minister Menachem Begin. He then turned a blind eye when Lebanese Christian militiamen entered the containment camps at Sabra and Chatila, established for Palestinian civilians, and slaughtered hundreds of Palestinians. Sharon was removed from office for “indirect responsibility,” and that should have ended his career.
However, Sharon reentered the political scene as Housing Minister in the early 1990s just as peace first appeared on the horizon. By endorsing the development and expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza he undermined the conciliatory atmosphere early on.
Then in 2000, as Prime Minister Ehud Barak was making momentous steps toward peace, Sharon interfered to upset the balance. He made a trip to the Temple Mount, a place not only revered by Muslims as the site of two of the world’s most sacred temples, but one that religious Jews normally refuse to visit. (The Rabbinical Council of Judea, Samaria and Gaza proscribed against religious Jews visiting the site until a few days after Sharon’s visit). Moreover Sharon ascended the Mount with an excessive military guard. Palestinian rioting ensued, peace talks were broken off, confidence in Barak’s leadership crumbled – thus begot the present Intifada.
At one point during the mid-1990s, both men projected harmonious images. Unfortunately, in the years since, it has become clear that these masks were donned for political expediency – Sharon needed to be considered peaceful enough to become Prime Minister and Arafat hoped for international support of a Palestinian Authority.
Arafat’s true self was exposed when he walked away from the 2000 Camp David summit without specifying his reasons. Some speculated that control of the Temple Mount or the issue of Palestinian right of return was the cause. More likely, Arafat was scared. When Prime Minister Ehud Barak made significant concessions, he naively overestimated Arafat’s character. Barak’s proposal would have fulfilled Arafat’s purported lifelong goal of a Palestinian state, but with acceptance of this, his career and probably his life would end.
Arafat knows he is not a leader, but a fighter, and without anything to fight against he could no longer lead the Palestinian people. Even if Hamas extremists, dissatisfied with anything less than all of Israel, failed to assassinate him, his life would have lost meaning. Gone would be the wealth, international attention and unification of his people behind a common cause. So he summoned crocodile tears, knocked over his milk and fled the table.
Additionally telling is Arafat’s tacit encouragement of the renewed Intifada while vociferously denying responsibility or the ability to quash it. Whether unwilling or unable to control violent Palestinian insurgents, he is not qualified to negotiate for peace. The question of his will appears to have been answered by his recent purchase from Iran of 50 tons of weaponry which was intercepted by Israel.
Sharon’s role is no less antagonistic. He now hides his vindictive aggression beneath Bush’s global anti-terrorist cloak, but his facade will soon crack. In recent weeks, he has authorized the destruction of Palestinian lodgings, approved the use of live ammunition by riot police, cordoned off Palestinian homelands in a manner redolent of Apartheid South Africa, allowed shelling of Palestinian hospitals and police barracks, broken off contact with the Palestinian authority and ordered Arafat’s headquarters destroyed.
Curiously, while Sharon’s bullheaded insistence on his right to travel freely is what led to the mess, he now confines Arafat to his quarters. All this in the name of peace?
Perhaps Sharon’s position is designed to bring about Arafat’s ouster. If so, his plan is ill-conceived. Arafat came to power by uniting several nationalist anti-Israel Arab factions against a common cause. He is now reassembling this caucus which had otherwise begun to fragment.
One thousand humans have died in this new Intifada, and it has only persisted one-third as long a time as the first. The moment is ripe for change. But both sides need new leaders: individuals more worthy of trust, less outfitted with venom, with fewer crimes on their record and a willingness to forgo animosity in the interest of reconciliation.