Following the loss of Yasser Arafat – for decades, the international face of the Palestinian struggle – the Palestinians need to rethink radically how they defend their cause.

December 2004

Yasser ‘Abu Ammar’ Arafat is dead. The man who personified the Palestinian struggle for statehood has passed away. For millions deprived of a motherland, Arafat was their surrogate father in the Occupied Territories, in refugee camps and in the diaspora.

Despite the obvious and palatable grief Palestinians are experiencing at the loss of such a symbol, they may find that Arafat in death is far more useful to their cause than he was in life – at least in recent years.

This is not to suggest that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s rhetoric that Arafat was the main obstacle on the road to peace is accurate. I am sure the ageing warrior’s hawkish imagination will soon enough spot new impediments littering the path ahead.

People sometimes jest that, for certain artists and political figures, death was the best career choice they ever made. Arafat’s case is no exception. Only days before he was flown to a French hospital, he was an embattled leader under effective house arrest, increasingly marginalised – unable to lead his people and unwilling to hand over the reins. Overnight, he was propelled to the near-mythical status of an anointed political icon. However, important as symbols might be, it is vital that we separate the man from his various legends.

Palestinians, of course, have a lot to be grateful to Arafat for. With his trademark chequered kufiya and his freedom fighter’s dark glasses and stubble, he put the Palestinian struggle on the world’s political radar. He made the international community – particularly the West – realise that the Palestinians were a real people with real needs who had been neglected for too many decades after they’d been ousted from their land.

Some may find the early tactics of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and Arafat’s gun and olive branch approach reprehensible and unforgivable. Although I am a strong supporter of peaceful means and I disapprove of the shedding of innocent blood, I cannot think of a single freedom or national movement that has not involved the loss of innocent life, particularly in its early stages.

To his credit, Arafat was also able to make the difficult transition from rebel to peacemaker. With his recognition of Israel and his willingness to sit down at the negotiating table, Arafat was pivotal in paving the way to a negotiated two-state settlement. Despite this groundbreaking achievement that redefined the terms of the conflict, Arafat failed to realise that, although the enemy was no longer the devil, the devil was still in the detail.

In order to boost his own waning star, he agreed to terms at Oslo that demanded everything of the Palestinians and little of the Israelis. He is notorious for having, on occasion, attended meetings with his Israeli counterparts without even having consulted a map beforehand. Nevertheless, he did make the courageous leap towards a negotiated peace.

In many ways, it is the post-Oslo Arafat that has failed his people the most. Although he was elected democratically for his first term, he put in place an autocratic and corrupt regime that was designed with little more than Israeli security and its own self-propagation in mind.

Arafat and the Palestinian Authority leadership had no coherent strategy to deal with Israeli intransigence, its accelerated settlement building programme, and its constant shifting of the goal posts. In addition, he gave up too many negotiating chips in his desperate bid to create a Palestine, feasible or not. In the end, the only state he managed to acquire was one of perpetual limbo.

Despite his brave decision to live under siege in his Ramallah headquarters, the ailing leader refused to step aside gracefully for a new generation of leaders to rise and bring with them fresh attitudes and fresh approaches – a decision that has cost the Palestinian people dearly.

Capturing the moral high ground

After the customary grieving has come to an end and they have dried away their tears, Palestinians may be able to turn over a new political leaf in Arafat’s wake. The death of Arafat can most usefully be used as the springboard for the birth of a new chapter in the Palestinians’ struggle for self-determination. One important modification would be to change the tactical complexion of their cause.

The first opportunity to turn the tide will present itself with the upcoming elections for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority. Fatah chief Marwan Barghouti, who is serving multiple life sentences in an Israeli jail following a controversial trial, may still decide to run for president. If the 45-year-old, who is the most popular of the young generation of Palestinian leaders and second only to Arafat, decides to go for the top job from his cell, he could well cut a Mandela-like figure.

Barghouti, who has not celebrated his birthday since Israeli tanks rolled into Gaza the day before his eighth birthday, was sentenced on his 45^th birthday to five consecutive life terms, plus an additional 40 years, for allegedly founding the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, a militant group that has carried out attacks against Israeli military and civilian targets.

Barghouti, who refused to acknowledge the court’s legitimacy, nevertheless denied the charges. He did, however, praise attacks against Israeli soldiers and settlers, whom he regards as occupiers and, hence, legitimate targets.

If Barghouti were to be elected as Palestinian president, I would urge him to drop his support of violence of any hue because the present cycle of violence is getting neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis anywhere. Israelis have military muscle while all the Palestinians have is international sympathy – which is being severely eroded by the ongoing cycle of killing. Palestinians, being the far weaker party, cannot ever hope to match Israel militarily. In such a mismatched conflict, the only way the Palestinians can gain ground is to win some moral high ground, and the carnage of suicide bombings does not cut it.

“It makes not only moral sense but it makes practical sense,” Arun Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi’s grandson who runs the Institute for Non-Violence, said during a recent trip to Palestine and Israel. “I don't think Palestine has the economic and military capacity to confront a huge state like Israel which has not only a powerful military arsenal but powerful friends.”

The most powerful symbol of the first intifada was the contrast of stone versus tank. The current intifada needs to shake off the extremists that are blowing themselves, Israelis and prospects for dialogue up. Instead, the uprising needs to move even further down the pacifist road of the first intifada and dispense with violence altogether.

This does not mean that Israel is innocent of having committed its own acts of terror. It engages in the lethal state-sponsored variety that has killed many times more Palestinian lives than Palestinians have killed Israelis. But the Israeli government uses Palestinian acts of terror to justify its repression – both to its own people and internationally.

Many Palestinians will defend the violence by saying it is Israel that began the cycle and argue that they are legitimately resisting an illegal occupation. But, as the violence escalates, the question of who bears original sin becomes a moot one. What we need is to break the cycle. And the Palestinians, being the ones who are suffering the most – economically, socially, politically and militarily – have the greatest incentive to try a fresh approach.

What they seem to lack is a leader with the guts and popular support to redefine the conflict – a politician with the charisma of Nasser, the vision of Mandela and the spirit of Gandhi. Marwan Barghouti, caught in his symbolically potent prison cell, could fit the bill. If he so wishes, he can make the political and cultural case for peaceful resistance – that being a pacifist does not mean that you have been pacified.

If Palestinians succeed in removing the moral ambiguity from their cause, they will undermine the hawks running the Israeli establishment, force the Israeli people to reassess their government’s approach, and galvanise clearer international support for the Palestinian cause.

ã2004 K. Diab. Unless otherwise stated, all the content on this website is the copyright of Khaled Diab.