HOW HE SEES IT Palestinian struggle greater than Arafat

By SAM BAHOUR
SPEPIAL TO THE VINDICATOR
The Palestinian struggle for freedom and independence is larger than the late President Yasser Arafat. Arafat represented Palestinian nationalism and the five-decade struggle for justice for a people who were dispossessed in 1948, militarily occupied in 1967, and most recently, battered in their own homes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. A wide spectrum of opinions about Arafat will surely outlive the international flurry of media interest in his death. However, the world must be aware that the Palestinian struggle is beyond any single individual.
During the last decade, Yasser Arafat brought to the table something that Israel and the United States could only previously dream about: the single legitimate source for Palestinian political decisions. Through his iron-fisted and highly centralized control of Palestinian decision making bodies, finances and fighters, Arafat was able to coax his people into dealing with a new reality, the Oslo Peace Process, that he hoped would open the door for good faith from Israel and the United States. Arafat hoped that this process would ultimately end in a political solution resulting in two independent states living side by side, Palestine and Israel. History has proven that Israel and the United States had other plans -- the creation of a process that would, in and of itself, become the means as well as the goal.
Major blunder
Israel and the United States made a major blunder. They ignored the fact that the "peace" they had made was a peace between leaders and not between peoples. Thus, as the U.S. and Israel unsuccessfully sought to twist Arafat's arm in the Camp David talks in year 2000, they began a concerted campaign discrediting Arafat and pinning the blame of the breakdown of talks on a single person. Arafat was truly the shrewder politician. He knew that for a peace among leaders to be transformed into a peace among peoples, the real issues of the conflict had to be justly addressed. Refugees, settlements, Jerusalem, and statehood were not negotiating cards, but the essence of the entire effort.
Once the tears are wiped away the situation can now take many shapes, the most likely being that the Palestinian leadership will be able to establish governing legitimacy. However, earning leadership legitimacy will take some time. Among the complications are that there are several Palestinian political bodies that must be addressed, since Arafat led all of them single-handedly. Also, some Palestinian leaders are imprisoned by Israel, complicating matters further.
In light of the complex and sensitive situation that Arafat's death has created, it would be na & iuml;ve for the world, or the new Palestinian leadership for that matter, to think that a quick political settlement could be achieved without addressing the core issues, once and for all. To continue to force-feed Palestinians with half-cooked initiatives would be yet another wasted opportunity for the world community to resolve this conflict. And with every wasted effort more innocent people will die on both sides of the illegal separation wall that Israel is building.
Time will be needed as Palestinians prepare for long overdue elections, the restructuring of their organizations, and holding accountable those who have stolen or misused Palestinian public funds in the past. An Israel led by Ariel Sharon will surely do all in her power to make sure that the Palestinians fail in picking up the pieces after Arafat's demise. Thus, it is the responsibility of the international community to finally step in and play its neglected role of protecting the militarily occupied Palestinians and demanding that Israel immediately abide by all U.N. resolutions, which call for the real end of military occupation and not a redeployment ploy such as that being offered for Gaza in Israel's Unilateral Disengagement Plan.
Multinational troops
The United Nations should immediately convene to deploy multinational troops to provide protection to the Palestinian people, as stipulated for by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949. Such an international presence would serve many purposes. On the one hand, it would protect the Palestinians from the continuing onslaught by the Israeli military and give them time to recover from five decades of autocratic rule. On the other hand, a multinational peace-keeping force would save Israel from itself, since its continuous pushing of an occupied people to total despair can only breed more violence as well as eat away at Israel's morality.
As long as Palestinians breathe they will rightfully demand that law and justice prevail in ending the nightmare that has haunted them for more than 50 years. It is in this spirit that one may recall the words of former President John F. Kennedy when he said, "Those who make peaceful change impossible make violent change inevitable."
X Sam Bahour is a Youngstown native and Palestinian-American businessman living in the Israeli Occupied Palestinian city of Al-Bireh in the West Bank.