Knocking but to no avail

by Saleh Abdel Jawad

During the late President Yasser Arafat's life, no one could imagine Palestinian politics, with all its exceptional complexities and breakneck turn of events, without him. He had sat at the helm of the Palestinian national leadership for four decades. He was a reference and a symbol of the revolution and of liberation, not only in Palestine. He had also, more than any other leader in the world, accumulated all jurisdictions, power and authority in his hands.

When he passed away, most Palestinians felt a strange combination of contradicting emotions: anxiety, grief and relief at the passing of their "patriarchal old man": anxiety and fear of the unknown; grief over the passing of someone dear who had become an integral part of their lives and memories; and relief that the time for change and for ridding themselves of Arafat's burdensome legacy had finally arrived. This would explain the smooth and quiet transition of authority in Palestine from Arafat to his methodical successor Mahmoud Abbas, and how life this year has passed as if Arafat never existed. In addition, the flood and speed of events has not stopped.

The official and popular festivals in Ramallah last Friday on the first anniversary of Arafat's death were, by any standard, ludicrous on a day when Al Jazeera Satellite Channel was broadcasting pictures of the bodies of the young men assassinated by Israeli forces in Nablus and Jenin. Furthermore, the strangulating wall, which is encircling Palestinians like an Amazonian snake, continues to grow in length and height. Settlements continue to expand like a poisonous fungus, devouring our land while young Israelis don metal helmets and fight boredom by humiliating Palestinians at checkpoints. Throughout, Palestinians continue to try to reach Arab Jerusalem, which has turned into a kind of ghost town.

And as if the hardship and difficulties we face from our enemies is not enough, the signs of poverty and internal divisions resulting from the Israeli policy of total destruction of Palestinian society (not merely apartheid but a socio-cide) have begun to interact with factors of corruption and internal disintegration. These have manifested themselves in a number of negative phenomena: multiple authorities, mayhem (which has been coined "security chaos" as if it is something out of our own control); begging and entreating (ordinary and high-class) and the rich and prosperous Ramallah Marie Antoinettes who carry on without regard to the poverty that has overtaken other cities. In such an atmosphere, who can find time to remember Arafat?

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his buddy US President George W. Bush and some Europeans tried to push the delusional idea that Arafat was the only obstacle to peace and that his absence would offer the opportunity for peace and for Sharon to find a partner to work with. However, in spite of Arafat's passing, Abu Mazen (Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas) has knocked on the door to peace to no avail. Abu Mazen's personality, it is true, put Sharon in an awkward position for a short while. However, during this period Sharon created new excuses. In the past, he fought against elections in Palestine "for fear of Arafat's return". Now he is fighting Palestinian elections fearing Islamist victory.

What is even worse, less than a year after Arafat died, the "genius", Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz, reached the conclusion that the problem was no longer Arafat alone as he used to say but the entire present Palestinian generation. Let us hope he doesn't come to the conclusion that this generation must be annihilated similarly to his call to annihilate Arafat in the past.

Nevertheless, in spite of this gloomy picture, a beam of light has appeared at the end of the dark tunnel and has shown itself to those lost under the leadership of Abu Mazen. This sliver of hope should not be missed because it is our last chance for many years to come. In a wonderful surprise, exactly 10 years after Rabin's death, Amir Peretz was elected head of the Labor Party. Peretz, in spite of the difficulties he will face, is the other face of Arafat's "peace of the brave". Like Abu Mazen, Amir Peretz does not go out on his balcony every morning to see which way the wind is blowing, nor does he dance to the tune of public opinion surveys.

Today, Palestine's present and future is Abu Mazen who "cannot and does not want to reproduce a parallel symbolism to that of Arafat". It would be wrong to reproduce this now because this would mean more steadfastness without tangible results. This would also mean a continuation on the path of internal disintegration that took place because Arafat did not understand that achieving national liberation is dependent on a strong internal structure and a sound political system.

Today, Israel's present and future hopes of coexisting with its neighbors in a secure peace are in the hands of a young man of Moroccan descent, whose life in development towns has not prevented him from seeing and understanding the suffering of the Palestinians and understanding that the rights of laborers and the Jewish and Arab poor from the second and third classes will never be achieved except through peace with the Palestinians.

Let us hope and pray that Peretz will win in the upcoming elections and that Abu Mazen's painstakingly slow march will then be endorsed by a joint Palestinian and Israeli effort.

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Published 14/11/2005 - bitterlemons.org. Used here with permission.

Saleh Abdel Jawad is a political scientist at Birzeit University.