Posted on 12/13/2001 9:15:42 AM PST by Starmaker
After fifteen months of escalating violence, Yassir Arafat has painted himself into a corner by overplaying the methods that brought him enormous personal wealth, despotic power in the Middle East and influence and cachet as an instrument of big-power geo-politics. As America re-positions its Armed Forces from former Soviet Central Asian Republics to Kuwait and the Persian Gulf, it appears that initiatives to impair the capabilities of Saddam Husseyn (or to remove his regime altogether) may follow rather than precede the replacement of Arafat as Chieftain of Palestinian terror.
About 4:30 Monday afternoon (Israel time), December 10, General Anthony Zinni was on his way to meet with Arafat in Ramallah, in Samaria. About two minutes before the small convoy of American military and diplomatic vehicles passed through the neighborhood of Beluah, a Palestinian truck filled with propane canisters exploded. The General was not amused.
After the meeting, Gen. Zinni told the media, "I have never encountered such lack of trustworthiness in my life... It's a waste of time to try to reach a serious agreement with Arafat." Top officials in Israel and the Beltway have a very slow learning curve but they are learning. Or rather, they are beginning to state publicly what they long have known about "negotiating" with the Palestinians. It means returning to the truth about Arafat that until the 1991 Madrid Conference was official Israeli and American policy: Arafat is an unrepentant terrorist, plain and simple. As Ion Pacepa, former Romanian Intelligence Chief recounted in his book, Red Horizon, "Arafat was the most dishonest person I ever dealt with. He lied in every sentence he spoke. He was sincere about one thing only: his hatred of Jews was in his blood."
Now that the Israelis finally have penned Arafat into Ramallah (a bit like the way they had him surrounded in Beirut in summer 1982), the Palestinian has resumed his appeals to the "world community." When his gangs are not trying to assassinate American Generals, his spin masters clutch at American sentiments by staging "town meetings" for their Fuehrer. "We are not against the peace we have agreed on with the Israelis," Arafat squealed, less than 48 hours after the attempted assassination. "The only way out is the peace of the brave I signed with my late partner" [Yitzhak Rabin].
Alas, Arafat is a bit shy of the truth here. The Oslo Accords he signed with former PM Rabin September 09 and 13, 1993 in Washington committed him to "prevent and punish violence originating in his territory," to "refrain from violence and settle all disputes by negotiation." Though rarely noted, Oslo also stipulated that Israel alone would determine the extent of its future withdrawals from Judea, Samaria and Gaza and that Arafat's "police" force would be limited to 24,000 men armed with side arms. Yet in July 2000, Arafat rejected an Israeli offer of 97% of the disputed territories, plus half of Jerusalem including the Temple Mount. Two months later, his militias, now numbering 85,000 heavily armed men launched the Oslo War ("Al Aksa Intifada" as they call it) they had been threatening since January 1996.
No, Arafat does not believe in any peace with Israel. He never has. But he has become habituated to being rewarded for violence. He neither desires nor knows any other way. As he stated at the end of his "Town Meeting" in the town where Arabs literally tear Jews to pieces, "we will have our Independence Day with holy Jerusalem as our capital and anyone who doesn't like it can drink from the Dead Sea" (WAFA).
This was nothing new. Three days before this performance, and a few hours before the attempted murder of General Zinni, Arafat renewed his "threat to unleash Fatah and his PA security forces for full scale attacks against Israel." This followed a similar threat December 5, and so on.
Two of Arafat's habits are converging to escalate the situation West of the Jordan River. He is used to receiving concessions when he increases violence. Second, he fears, correctly, the Americans are moving to replace him. Because he lives for power and blood (no one will supply him with young boys when he's a loser in exile, or dead. See Red Horizon), he feels he has little to lose.
But now it's too late for him. The American delegation that had arrived to fulfill the pledges of Colon Powell and President Bush for a Palestinian State, already were fuming about the bombings and shootings in Israeli cities that had greeted their arrival. The attempted murder of General Zinni was the last straw. Even the American diplomatic establishment (a longtime hotbed of pro-Arab policy initiatives, greased by Saudi and Gulf State oil) has returned to the exasperation Powell expressed in mid-March. "Arafat has taken leave of his senses," he stated then. "He's not in contact with reality" (see my "Welcome to Fatah-Land, President Bush").
Sheik Ikrama Sabir, Arafat's personal appointee as head of the Muslim 'Religious Trust' (Waqf) has reiterated his call to "stand by the side of suicide bombers. We must not stand in their way. They are justified," Sabir told the international Arab newspaper, Al Hayat (12-09-01). Sabri has contributed to interfaith understanding by telling the media (Die Welt, January 2001) "I am consumed with rage every time I see a Jew. I would never greet one." Ah, merciful Islam, and speaking of mercy, Arafat's appointee to the Chair of Religion at Islamic University in Gaza stated, "kill Jews wherever you find them. Kill them without mercy, and the Americans who are like them" (10-13-00). Bin Laden paid attention.
Arafat probably sealed his fate Wednesday December 12 (6pm Israel time, about noon EST) when his operatives bombed an Israeli bus in Samaria near the town of Emanuel. Eight were murdered and forty wounded and a response is beginning as I write. Regrettably for those who want true stability and lessening of violence in the Middle East, the likeliest State Department (and Sharon-Peres) candidate to replace Arafat is his Chief of Preventive Security for the West Bank, Jibril Rajoub. Rajoub made his name by issuing death threats against Jews traveling or living in Judea and Samaria. He is unlikely to have altered his basic views or goals.
When Arafat falls, he will try to bring the house down around his ears. He will succeed if the Israelis do not act with sufficient swiftness and vigor against his forces. They may not, because of their own leftists and as a result of decades of American diplomatic-military pressures, now internalized by Israel's top politicians.
Nevertheless, the Bush Administration is moving to decisively change the long-festering crisis in the Middle East. One hopes this will be done in a way that removes the "vision" of a Palestinian State west of the Jordan from the agenda along with the Ba'ath regimes in Iraq and Syria. Anything less will not secure peace or reduce terror.
This is a very sloppily written piece. The above is an example. There is no evidence of the above, nor that Arafat tried to murder Zinni. Nothing I have seen pop up here from Toogood has impressed me, and this one certainly doesn't.
First I've seen someout outside the Israeli media reference this - but this piece claims Zinni told the media. Could someone who can read Hebrew check the accounts from the Hebrew-language papers to see if they claim that Zinni was talking to the media when he said this?
Plus, the fact that the United States said today that it will still negotiated with Arafat undercuts the claim that Zinni will be going around Arafat.
This whole thing is strange. Did Zinni go as an envoy of State, or directly from the White House? Zinni may conclude it is a waste of time, and the State Dept may still work with him... and even if he thinks it's a waste of time he may still work with him because those are his orders.
I'm also not convinced that Zinni was targeted for murder. That is pure speculation, and as close calls come, it wasn't a close call at all.
Having said that, I don't see how the Americans can continue to have a dialogue with Arafat. At least not substantively. The very best light Arafat could put on the situation is that he is totally inept at controlling his people. That's not much to build on.
It is proving to be a somewhat interesting object lesson on how information moves about and transmogrifies. Let's see if this pops up anywhere else and with more embellishments or changes.
For myself, I don't think Arafat has any control over Hamas at all, and if he did try to control them, he would be killed. Thus Hamas are not his operatives, in the normal parlance of that term. I hope that helps.
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