The full meaning of Arafat's funeral and national movement

by Rami G. Khouri

Yasser Arafat's solemn funeral ceremony in Cairo and his more rambunctious burial in Ramallah last Friday were widely covered by the world's media, but their full significance was not accurately grasped or reported. Three particular dimensions of the event stand out: the fascinating array of Arab leaders and international representatives at the Cairo ceremony; the intense, passionate, often frenzied, reaction of the Palestinians who came to bury Arafat in Ramallah; and the global mass media interest in the death of a political leader who had been rather marginalised, ineffective and widely criticised in recent years.

The standard explanations we have heard since last Friday for all three of these phenomena do not make sense. If Arafat was a terrorist, why did the whole world follow his slow death and funeral, live and in real time, for over a week? If he was such a marginal, troublesome figure for other Arab leaders, why did they turn out en masse to pay their last respects? If the Palestinian people's emotional reaction to his burial was defined mainly by chaos and unruly shooting in the air, why did the American president and British prime minister say the next day that we must all work seriously for a Palestinian state? A Palestinian state for whom, for a mob of dishevelled young hoodlums who cannot even stand in line to honour their elected president?

Something else - something more profound and universal - must explain what we witnessed last Friday. For, clearly, this was not only about a chaotic people who revered their terrorist leader. It was not just a personal tribute to the man who died. It was, rather, about the continuing struggle for Palestinian statehood, an epic struggle that started back in the late 19th century and is now perhaps the last anti-colonial struggle taking place in the world. That is why the whole world watched this event with fascination - to honour the man, but mainly to acknowledge the cause he represented.

The prevalent American-Israeli view is that Arafat's death might provide an opening for a resumption of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, if the Palestinians learn the mistakes of Arafat's diplomatic life and change their ways. The rest of the world is less callous, and more able to recognise that Arafat the person was not the main issue. The main issue in the eyes of the world, rather, is how to reconcile two parallel, equal and simultaneous national rights, for the Palestinians and the Israelis. Arafat's lifelong struggle was part of a bigger and older movement; he was the last man alive in the world who led a national movement whose origins can be traced to the age of colonialism in the late 19th century.

The wider contest between Zionist-Jewish and Palestinian-Arab nationalism started in the mid-1890s, when small numbers of European and Russian Jews first started moving to Ottoman-ruled Palestine with the idea of one day establishing a Jewish state there, in order to solve the age-old problem of Jewish persecution and pogroms in Europe. The Jewish national movement succeeded, and modern Israel was born in 1948, following the UN decision in 1947 to partition mandated Palestine. This marks the modern start of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, national reconstitution and independence from Israeli occupation, subjugation and denial. Yet, Palestinians today see themselves as continuing a struggle for their national and communal integrity that started in the 1890s. This is not only the last anti-colonial movement in the world; it is also the longest running one.

The most incongruous part of Arafat's funeral was the group of Arab leaders who attended the Cairo ceremony. Virtually every single Arab leader there was a political foe of Arafat who had clashed with him, feared him, looked down on him, or had wanted to destroy him politically. Yet even in his death, Arafat drew this crowd of Arab presidents, kings and leaders - because he represented a powerful cause that resonated deeply throughout the Arab world, and with their presence at his funeral they could absorb some of that cause's legitimacy.

This is why it is so important to keep in mind the difference between the personalities and the policies at play here. The confrontation between the Jewish Zionist national movement and the Palestinian Arab nationalist movement has been going on now for around 110 years, spanning three centuries. Individuals play important and fleeting roles in this sort of epic struggle, but in the end, individuals come and go, and the nature of the struggle defines the individuals. Arafat led the Palestinian national movement for nearly four decades, died without seeing his people's national goals achieved, and will now be succeeded by other Palestinians who will try to build on his achievements, and to succeed where he failed.

This article was published in the Wednesday, November 17, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It is used here with permission.