[Mb-civic] Robert Fisk : Death, Delusion and Democracy

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Robert Fisk : Death, Delusion and Democracy 
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7300.htm
11/16/04 "The Independent" 

So the death of Yasser Arafat is a great new opportunity for the 
Palestinians, is it? The man who personified the Palestinian struggle 
- "Mr Palestine" - is dead. So things can only get better for the 
Palestinians. Death means democracy. Death means statehood. 
That the final demise of the corrupt old guerrilla leader should be a 
sign of optimism demonstrates just how catastrophic the conflict in 
the Middle East has now become. It's a bit like Fallujah. The more 
we destroy it, the crueler we are, the brighter the chances of Iraqi 
democracy. The more successful we are, the worse things are 
going to get. That's what George Bush said on Friday: that violence 
will increase as Iraqi elections grow closer - a total mind warp since 
the more violent Iraq becomes, the less the chances of any election 
ever being held. 

Note how Bush could not even bring himself to mention Arafat's 
name. It's the same old agenda. The Palestinians have to have a 
democracy. They have to prove themselves; they - not the Israelis - 
have to show that they are a worthy "negotiating partner". And any 
new leader - the colorless Ahmad Qureia or the equally colorless 
and undemocratic Abu Mazen - must "control his own people". That 
was what Arafat failed to do even though he thought his job was to 
represent his own people, which is what democracy is supposed to 
be all about. 

It's worth noting how this narrative has been written. The Israelis, 
with their continued occupation, their continued illegal construction 
of colonies for Jews and Jews only on Arab land, their air strikes 
and helicopter executions and live-fire shooting at stone-throwing 
children, are not part of this equation. They are just innocently 
waiting to find a new "negotiating partner" now that Arafat is in his 
grave. Ariel Sharon, held "personally responsible" for the 1982 
Sabra and Shatila massacre by the Kahan commission report, 
remains, in George Bush's words, "a man of peace". No one asks 
whether he can control his own army. Or whether he can control his 
own settlers. He wants to close down the colonies in Gaza - even 
though his spokesman has told us that this will put Palestinian 
statehood into "formaldehyde". 

So let's just take a look back at those tragic years of the Oslo 
accord. In 1993, we are supposed to believe, the Palestinians were 
offered statehood and a capital in Jerusalem if they accepted the 
right of Israel to exist. Oslo said nothing of the kind. It did set down 
a complex system of Israeli withdrawals from occupied Palestinian 
land and a timetable that the Israelis were supposed to meet. We all 
knew that any failure to do so would humiliate Arafat - and make 
him less able to "control" his own people. 

And what happened? It's important, at this supposedly "optimistic" 
moment, to reflect on the facts of the previous "peace process" in 
which Europe as well as the United States spent so much time, 
energy and - in the EU's case - money. Under the Oslo agreement, 
the occupied West Bank would be divided into three zones. Zone A 
would come under exclusive Palestinian control, Zone B under 
Israeli military occupation in participation with the Palestinian 
Authority, and Zone C under total Israeli occupation. In the West 
Bank, Zone A comprised only 1.1 per cent of the land whereas in 
Gaza - overpopulated, rebellious, insurrectionary - almost all the 
territory was to come under Arafat's control. He, after all, was to be 
the policeman of Gaza. Zone C in the West Bank comprised 60 per 
cent of the land, which allowed Israel to continue the rapid 
expansion of settlements on Arab land. 

But a detailed investigation shows that not a single one of these 
withdrawal agreements was honored by the Israelis. And in the 
meantime, the number of settlers illegally living on Palestinians' land 
rose after Oslo from 80,000 to 150,000 - even though the Israelis, 
as well as the Palestinians, were forbidden from taking "unilateral 
steps" under the terms of the agreement. The Palestinians saw this, 
not without reason, as proof of bad faith. 

Since facts are sometimes elusive in the Middle East, let's remind 
ourselves of what happened after Oslo. The Oslo II (Taba) 
agreement, concluded by Yitzhak Rabin in September 1995 - the 
month before he was assassinated - promised three Israeli 
withdrawals: from Zone A (under Palestinian control), Zone B (under 
Israeli military occupation in co-operation with the Palestinians) and 
Zone C (exclusive Israeli occupation). These were to be completed 
by October 1997. Final-status agreement covering Jerusalem, 
refugees, water and settlements were to have been completed by 
October 1999, by which time the occupation was supposed to have 
ended. In January 1997, however, a handful of Jewish settlers were 
granted 20 per cent of Hebron, despite Israel's obligation under 
Oslo to leave all West Bank towns. By October 1998, a year late, 
Israel had not carried out the Taba accords. 

The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, negotiated a new 
agreement at Wye River, dividing the second redeployment 
promised at Taba into two phases - but he only honored the first of 
them. Netanyahu had promised to reduce the percentage of West 
Bank land under exclusively Israeli occupation from 72 per cent to 
59 per cent, transferring 41 per cent of the West Bank to Zones A 
and B. But at Sharm el-Sheikh in 1999, the Israeli prime minister, 
Ehud Barak, reneged on the agreement Netanyahu had made at 
Wye River, fragmenting the latter's two phases into three, the first of 
which would transfer 7 per cent from Zone C to Zone B. All 
implementation of the agreements stopped there. 

When Arafat finally went to Camp David to meet Barak, he was 
allegedly offered 95 per cent of the West Bank and Gaza but turned 
it down and went to war with the second intifada. A study of the 
maps, however, shows that - with the exclusion of Jerusalem and its 
extended boundaries, with the exclusion of existing major Jewish 
colonies and with the inclusion of an Israeli cordon sanitaire, Arafat 
was offered nearer to 64 per cent of the 22 per cent of mandate 
Palestine that was left to him. Then a new explosion of Palestinian 
suicide bombings, usually aimed at Israeli civilians, destroyed 
Israel's patience with Arafat. Sharon, who had provoked the second 
intifada by strolling on to the Temple Mount with a thousand 
policeman, decided that Arafat was a Bin Laden-style "terrorist" and 
all further contact ended. 

This is not to excuse the PLO or Arafat himself. His arrogance and 
corruption, and his little dictatorship - initially encouraged by the 
Israelis and Americans who lent Arafat their CIA boys to "train" the 
Palestinian security services - ensured that no democracy could 
thrive in "Palestine". And I suspect that while he personally 
disapproved of suicide bombings, Arafat cynically realized that they 
had their uses; they proved that Sharon could not provide Israel with 
the security he promised at his election, at least until he built the 
new wall - which is stealing further Palestinian land. But that was 
only one side of the story - and last week Bush and Blair went back 
to the old game of seeing only the other side. The Palestinians - the 
victims of 39 years of occupation - must prove themselves worthy of 
peace with their occupiers. The death of their leader is therefore 
billed as a glorious occasion that provides hope. All this is part of 
the self-delusion of Bush and Blair. The reality is that the outlook in 
the Middle East is bleaker than ever. 

Oh yes, and - since we'd be asking this question today if Sharon 
had gone to meet his maker in an equally mysterious way - just 
what did Arafat die of? 

© 2004 lndependent Newspapers, Ltd.




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