Posted on 06/22/2002 7:35:41 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
On the face of it, Yasser Arafat's remarks published in his interview to Ha'aretz on Friday should make us feel hopeful. The Palestinian leader expressed readiness to accept the peace proposal made by former U.S. president Bill Clinton, came out in support of the advertisement against suicide bombings published by a group of Palestinian intellectuals, and expressed the wish to pay personal condolence calls on the families of Israeli victims of terrorism. However, the lesson that the Israeli public has learned over the past 21 months from Arafat's behavior is that one cannot trust his word, since there is an intolerable gap between what he says and what he does.
The interview appeared on the same day as the reports of the shocking attack on the settlement of Itamar in which five people were murdered, including a mother and her three children. The report followed on the heels of two harsh terrorist attacks in Jerusalem. When the Israeli public weighs Arafat's declaration against the events, it is not difficult to decide which has the decisive impact on the reality of everyday living: Since October 2000, the Palestinians have been waging an indiscriminate war of terror against Israeli civilians. This cruel method of operation has the backing or the tacit approval of Arafat, who considers it a legitimate means of bargaining with Israel over the terms of an agreement. This behavior is a crude and cynical infringement of the Oslo agreements to which Arafat is a signatory.
Even the many Israelis who are harshly critical of their own government for its part in fanning the flames and its lack of readiness to give diplomatic channels a chance, cannot give credit to Arafat for his conciliatory declarations. He has to be judged both by his deeds and his omissions, and these are systematically and unequivocally contradictory to the declarations he made at the week's end.
Moreover, Arafat fails to explain why he rejected the Clinton blueprint in July 2000 and what has supposedly caused him to change his mind now. He is likewise not convincing when he expresses support for the Palestinian intellectuals' initiative against terror attacks. The leader of a nation does not need to add his name to a petition in order to influence public opinion or decision-makers; he has other, much more effective tools at his disposal. His appeals to the terror victims' families can be seen in the same light: Instead of imitating the sincere gesture of King Hussein [who made personal condolence calls on the families of the victims of the Naharayim shooting attack in 1996], he could use his authority and his influence - however limited they may now be - to curb the murderous Palestinian terror attacks, or at least to minimize them.
Arafat will be judged not only by his deeds but also by the gap between those remarks he addresses to the Israeli public and those intended for his own people. In his speeches to the Palestinians, he sanctifies suicide bombers. And even when he supposedly expresses reservations about terror attacks, he slips in hints to the contrary, such as his repeated reference to the agreement between the prophet Mohammed and the Quresh tribe (with whom the prophet made a treaty and whom he later destroyed), as if to say that making a peace treaty with the Jews would be a mere tactic. This is how the Palestinians interpret Arafat's position and this is also how it is interpreted by Israelis who have lived under a concrete threat to their lives over the past 21 months.
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