Gush Shalom November 9, 2004 By Uri Avnery
Yasser Arafat: a Man and his People
Wherever he may be buried when he passes away, the day will come when his remains will be reinterred by a free Palestinian government in the holy shrines in Jerusalem.
Yasser Arafat is one of the generation of great leaders who arose after World War II.
The stature of a leader is not simply determined by the size of his achievements, but also by the size of the obstacles he had to overcome.
In this respect, Arafat has no competitor in the world: no leader of our generation has been called upon to face such cruel tests and to cope with such adversities as he.
When he appeared on the stage of history, at the end of the 1950s, his people was close to oblivion.
The name Palestine had been eradicated from the map.
Israel, Jordan and Egypt had divided the country between them.
The world had decided that there was no Palestinian national entity, that the Palestinian people had ceased to exist, like the American Indian nations - if, indeed, it had ever existed at all. |
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Within the Arab world the “Palestinian Cause” was still mentioned, but it served only as a ball to be kicked around between the Arab regimes.
Each of them tried to appropriate it for its own selfish interests, while brutally putting down any independent Palestinian initiative.
Almost all Palestinians lived under dictatorships, most of them in humiliating circumstances.
When Yasser Arafat, then a young engineer in Kuwait, founded the “Palestinian Liberation Movement” (whose initials in reverse spell Fatah), he meant first of all liberation from the various Arab leaders, so as to enable the Palestinian people to speak and act for itself.
That was the first revolution of the man who made at least three great revolutions during his life.
It was a dangerous one.
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Fatah had no independent base.
It had to function in the Arab countries, often under merciless persecutions.
One day, for example, the whole leadership of the movement, Arafat included, was thrown into prison by the Syrian dictator of the day, after disobeying his orders.
Only Umm Nidal, the wife of Abu Nidal, remained free and so she assumed the command of the fighters.
Those years were a formative influence on Arafat’s characteristic style.
He had to manoeuver between the Arab leaders, play them off against each other, use tricks, half-truths and double-talk, evade traps and circumvent obstacles.
He became a world-champion of manipulation.
This way he saved the liberation movement from many dangers in the days of its weakness, until it could become a potent force.
Gamal Abd-al-Nasser, the Egyptian ruler who was the hero of the entire Arab world at the time, got worried about the emerging independent Palestinian force. |
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To choke it off in time, he created the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and put at its head a Palestinian political mercenary, Ahmed Shukeiri.
But after the shameful rout of the Arab armies in 1967 and the electrifying victory of the Fatah fighters against the Israeli army in the battle of Karameh (March 1968), Fatah took over the PLO and Arafat became the undisputed leader of the entire Palestinian struggle.
In the mid-1960s, Yasser Arafat started his second revolution: the armed struggle against Israel.
The pretension was almost ludicrous: a handful of poorly-armed guerillas, not very efficient at that, against the might of the Israeli army.
And not in a country of impassable jungles and mountain ranges, but in a small, flat, densely populated stretch of land.
But this struggle put the Palestinian cause on the world agenda.
It must be stated frankly: without the murderous attacks, the world would have paid no attention to the Palestinian call for freedom.
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As a result, the PLO was recognized as the “sole representative of the Palestinian people”, and thirty years ago Yasser Arafat was invited to make his historic speech to the UN General Assembly: “In one hand I carry a gun, in the other an olive branch...”
For Arafat, the armed struggle was simply a means, nothing more.
Not an ideology, not an end in itself.
It was clear to him that this instrument would invigorate the Palestinian people and gain the recognition of the world, but that it would not vanquish Israel.
The October 1973 Yom Kippur war caused another turn in his outlook.
He saw how the armies of Egypt and Syria, after a brilliant initial victory achieved by surprise, were stopped and, in the end, defeated by the Israeli army.
That finally convinced him that Israel could not be overcome by force of arms. |
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Who Murdered Arafat?
The day before yesterday the Haaretz headline screamed: "Doctors: Arafat died of Aids or poisoning".
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by Uri Avnery
Global Research, September 10, 2005 Gush Shalom Aids appeared in first place. For dozens of years, the Israeli media has conducted, with government inspiration, a concentrated campaign against the Palestinian leader (with the sole exception of Haolam Hazeh, the news magazine I edited). Millions of words of hatred and demonization were poured on him, more than on any other person of his generation. If somebody thought that this would end after his death, he was mistaken. This article, signed by Avi Isasharof and Amos Harel, is a direct continuation of this smear campaign. The key word is, of course, "Aids". Throughout the long article there is no trace of proof for this allegation. The reporters quote "sources in the Israeli security establishment". They also quote Israeli doctors "who heard from French doctors" — an original method for medical diagnosis. A respected Israeli professor even found conclusive proof: it was not published that Arafat had undergone an Aids test. True, a Tunisian medical team did test him in Ramallah and the result was negative, but who would believe Arabs? Haaretz knows, of course, how to protect itself. Somewhere in the article, far away from the sensational headline, there appear the nine words: "The possibility that Arafat had Aids is not high". So Haaretz is alright. |
In army parlance, its ass is covered.
By comparison, the New York Times, which published a similar story on the same day, treated the Aids allegation with contempt.
There is a very simple proof for the spuriousness of the allegation: if it had even the most tenuous basis in fact, the huge propaganda apparatus of the Israeli government and the Jewish establishment throughout the world would have trumpeted it from the rooftops, instead of waiting for 10 months.
But, as matter of fact, there is no evidence whatsoever.
More than that, the writers themselves are compelled to admit that Arafat's symptoms are completely incompatible with the picture of Aids.
So what did he die of?
Since taking part in his tumultuous funeral in Ramallah, I have abstained from giving my opinion on the cause of his death.
I am not a doctor, and my dozens of years as editor of an investigative news magazine have taught me not to voice allegations which I am unable to prove in court.
But, since now all dikes have been breached, I am prepared to say what is on my mind: from the first moment, I was sure that Arafat had been poisoned.
Most of the doctors interviewed by Haaretz testified that the symptoms point towards poisoning, and, in fact, are incompatible with any other cause.
The report of the French doctors, who treated Arafat during the last two weeks of his life, states that no known cause for his death was discovered.
True, the tests did not find any traces of poison in his body — but the tests were conducted only for the usual poisons.
It is no secret that many intelligence services in the world have developed poisons that cannot be detected at all, or whose traces disappear in a very short time.
Some years ago, Israeli agents poisoned the Hamas chief Khaled Mash'al with a slight prick in a main street of Amman.
His life was saved only because King Hussein demanded that Israel immediately provide the antidote.
(As a further indemnity, Binyamin Netanyahu agreed to the release from prison of another Hamas chief, Sheik Ahmed Yassin, who was assassinated several years after his return to Gaza by more conventional means — an airborne missile.)
In the absence of symptoms of any known disease, and since clear indications of poisoning were present, the highest probability is that Yasser Arafat was indeed poisoned while having dinner four hours before the first symptoms appeared.
I can testify that the security arrangements around the Ra'is were very lax.
At each of my dozens of meetings with him in different countries I was always amazed at the ease with which a potential assassin could have done his job.
Protection was always casual, especially compared to the way Israeli Prime Ministers are guarded.
He often had his meals in the company of strangers, he embraced his visitors.
Associates report that he frequently accepted sweets from strangers and also took medicines from visitors, swallowing them on the spot.
After surviving dozens of assassination attempts, and even an airplane accident, he had come to adopt a fatalistic attitude, "it's all in the hands of Allah".
I think that in his heart of hearts he really believed that Allah would preserve him until the completion of his historic mission.
If he was poisoned — by whom was he poisoned?
First suspicion falls, of course, on the Israeli security establishment.
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Indeed, Ariel Sharon declared on several occasions that he intended to kill him.
The subject came up in cabinet meetings.
Twice during the last years my friends and I were so convinced that this was imminent, that we went to the Mukata'ah in Ramallah to serve as a 'human shield' for him.
We were convinced that the murder of Arafat would cause much harm to Israel.
In one of his interviews, Sharon stated that our presence there had prevented his liquidation.
Truth is that Sharon abstained from killing Arafat mostly because the Americans forbade it.
They were afraid that the murder would arouse a huge storm in the Arab world and exacerbate anti-American terrorism.
But this interdiction may have applied only to an overt act.
The Mash'al affair proves that the Israeli intelligence services have the means to poison people without leaving any trace.
The poisoning was discovered only because the perpetrators were caught in flagrante.
However, a probability, high as it may be, is not proof.
At the moment, there is no proof that Arafat was indeed poisoned by the Israeli services.
But if not the Israelis, who?
The US intelligence services also have the necessary capabilities.
President Bush never hid his hatred for Arafat, an obstinate leader who did not submit to his dictates.
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The new X-band radar system "permits an intercept soon after launch over enemy instead of friendly territory." (Sen. Joseph Azzolina: Protecting Israel from Iran's missiles Bayshore News, December 26, 2008).
He was quick to embrace Mahmoud Abbas.
Even now, American emissaries who visit the Mukata'ah pointedly abstain from putting wreaths on the grave of the Ra'is in the courtyard.
But American interests, too, do not constitute proof.
One can think of several other suspects, even in the Arab world.
Did Arafat's death benefit Sharon?
On the face of it, no.
As long as Arafat was alive, American support for Israel was unlimited.
But since his death, President Bush has been going out of his way to support his successor.
The dismal American debacle in Iraq compels Bush to look for achievements elsewhere in the 'Broader Middle East'.
He presents Mahmoud Abbas as a symbol of the new winds blowing through the Arab and Muslim world as a result of American policy.
In order to convince the Palestinian public to support Abbas, Bush is putting pressure on Sharon of a new sort.
Wants to break the Palestinian people into pieces
Perhaps Sharon is secretly longing for the good old days of Arafat, when life was simple and an enemy dressed the part.
But a person who wants — as Sharon surely does — to break the Palestinian people into pieces and prevent at any cost the establishment of a viable State of Palestine, can only be happy with the demise of Arafat, who united the entire Palestinian people.
He had the moral authority to impose order, and he enforced it by empathy and force, human wisdom and tricks, threats and seduction.
There are many people in Israel who hoped that without him the Palestinian society would break apart, that anarchy would destroy its very foundations, that armed factions would kill each other and the national leadership.
They are certainly glad that Arafat is dead and pray for the failure of Mahmoud Abbas.
Arafat assured me once that we would both see peace in our lifetime.
He was prevented from seeing the day.
He who caused this — whoever he is — has sinned not only against the Palestinian people, but also against peace, and therefore against Israel. |
Daily Telegraph 23 January 23 2006
Assad says Israel had Arafat killed
The Syrian president Bashar al-Assad has caused outrage by accusing Israel of murdering Yasser Arafat.
He used what was billed as a speech on democratic reform to accuse Israel of a "methodical and organised" killing.
Mr Assad said:
"Of the many assassinations that Israel carried out in a methodical and organised way, the most dangerous thing that Israel did was the assassination of President Yasser Arafat."
He told a conference of Arab lawyers in Damascus:
"This was under the world's gaze and its silence, and not one state dared to issue a statement or stance towards this, as though nothing happened."
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Photo: kawther.info |
| ISRAEL MASS WAR CRIMES The horror of January 2009 Israel massacres — children bullets to the head I watched an Israeli soldier shoot dead my two little girls |
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Gush Shalom November 9, 2004 By Uri Avnery
Yasser Arafat: a Man and his People
Therefore, immediately after that war, Arafat started his third revolution: he decided that the PLO must reach an agreement with Israel and be content with a Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
That confronted him with a historic challenge: to convince the Palestinian people to give up its historic position denying the legitimacy of the State of Israel, and to be satisfied with a mere 22% of the territory of pre-1948 Palestine.
Without being stated explicitly, it was clear that this also entails the giving up of the unlimited return of the refugees to the territory of Israel.
He started to work to this end in his own characteristic way, with persistence, patience and ploys, two steps forwards, one step back.
How immense this revolution was can be seen from a book published by the PLO in 1970 in Beirut, viciously attacking the two-state solution (which it called “the Avnery plan”, because I was its most out-spoken proponent at the time.)
Historic justice demands that it be clearly stated that it was Arafat who envisioned the Oslo agreement at a time when both Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres still stuck to the hopeless “Jordanian Option”, the belief that one could ignore the Palestinian people and give the West Bank back to Jordan.
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Of the three recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, Arafat deserved it most.
From 1974 on, I was an eye-witness to the immense effort invested by Arafat in order to get his people to accept his new approach.
Step by step it was adopted by the Palestinian National Council, the parliament in exile, first by a resolution to set up a Palestinian authority “in every part of Palestine liberated from Israel”, and, in 1988, to set up a Palestinian state next to Israel.
Arafat’s (and our) tragedy was that whenever he came closer to a peaceful solution, the Israeli governments withdrew from it.
His minimum terms were clear and remained unchanged from 1974 on:
A Palestinian state in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Palestinian sovereignty over East Jerusalem (including the Temple Mount but excluding the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter).
Restoration of the pre-1967 border with the possibility of limited and equal exchanges of territory.
Evacuation of all the Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territory and the solution of the refugee problem in agreement with Israel.
For the Palestinians, that is the very minimum, they cannot give up more than that. |
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Gush Shalom November 9, 2004 By Uri Avnery
Yasser Arafat: a Man and his People
Perhaps Yithak Rabin came close to this solution towards the end of his life, when he declared on TV that “Arafat is my partner”.
All his successors rejected it.
They were not prepared to give up the settlements, but, on the contrary, enlarged them incessantly.
They resisted every effort to fix a final border, since their kind of Zionism demands perpetual expansion.
Therefore they saw in Arafat a dangerous enemy and tried to destroy him by all means, including an unprecedented campaign of demonization.
So Golda Meir (“there is no such thing as a Palestinian people”).
So Menachem Begin (“Two-footed animal...the man with hair on his face...the Palestinian Hitler”).
So Binyamin Netanyahu.
So Ehud Barak (“I have torn the mask from his face”).
So Ariel Sharon, who tried to kill him in Beirut and has continued trying ever since.
No liberation fighter in the last half-century has faced such immense obstacles as he.
He was not confronted with a hated colonial power or a despised racist minority, but by a state that arose after the Holocaust and was sustained by the sympathy and guilt-feelings of the world.
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In all military, economic and technological respects, the Israeli society is vastly stronger than the Palestinian.
When he was called upon to set up the Palestinian Authority, he did not take over an existing, functioning state, like Nelson Mandela or Fidel Castro, but disconnected, impoverished pieces of land, whose infrastructure had been destroyed by decades of occupation.
He did not take over a population living on its land, but a people half of which consists of refugees dispersed in many countries and the other half of a society fractured along political, economic and religious lines.
All this while the battle for liberation is going on. |
He was a man
To hold this packet together and to lead it towards its destination under these conditions, step by step, is the historic achievement of Yasser Arafat.
Great men have great faults.
One of Arafat’s is his inclination to make all decisions himself, especially since all his close associates were killed.
As one of his sharpest critics said: “It is not his fault.
It is we who are to blame.
For decades it was our habit to run away from all the hard decision that demanded courage and boldness.
We always said: Let Arafat decide!”
And decide he did.
As a real leader, he went out ahead and drew his people after him.
Thus he confronted the Arab leaders, thus he started the armed struggle, thus he extended his hand to Israel.
Because of this courage, he has earned the trust, admiration and love of his people, whatever the criticism.
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If Arafat passes away, Israel will lose a great enemy, who could have become a great partner and ally.
As the years pass, his stature will grow more and more in historical memory.
As for me: I respected him as a Palestinian patriot.
I admired him for his courage.
I understood the constraints he was working under.
I saw in him the partner for building a new future for our two peoples.
I was his friend.
As Hamlet said about his father: “He was a man, take him for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again.”
The previous article was written from Uri Avnery's point of view — a great friend. It represents one expression, one outpouring of love, one viewpoint for the future. The Palestinian people, in their grief and hope, have many others. |
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ISRAELI MOTHER
BY REGINA HILL
November 11, 2004 Israeli mother do you not see, my baby laying in front of me? Israeli mother my baby is dead, your cowardly solider put a bullet through her head. Israeli mother do you not feel, when you see how many Palestinian children your soldiers can kill? Israeli mother why do you not cry, when you see how many of our babies by your soldiers must die? Israeli mother how long will you condone, the murders of our children by your butcher Sharon? Israeli mother my dreams for my baby have now been abolished, and my home where she played completely demolished. Israeli mother do you not have any emotion, or to human life a feel of devotion? Israeli mother do you feel no shame, because of you Zionism this enormity is to blame? Israeli mother do you understand, this is my home, my Palestinian land? Israeli mother do you not see, my children also have a right to be free? Israeli mother why do you justify the inhumanly deeds, that causes my land to continually bleed? Israeli mother why do you turn your head, have your ears heard a word that I said? Israeli mother never forget I am a mother too, and would rather die than live under your bloody Israeli coup. |
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Atrocities committed by Israel — graphic pictures What CNN nor the BBC ever shows you |
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US Israel attack on Gaza City The Politics of Anti-Semitism 99 US Senators, 350 US House members attend AIPAC meeting |
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Torture Part I
History of CIA Interrogation They started torturing us before they posed any questions |
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Torture Part II
Routine and systematic torture is at the heart of America's war on terror Terror, cruelty, barbarism and extremism |
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