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bitterlemons-international.org
Middle East Roundtable /
Edition 39
An Israeli View:
Arafat and Rabin
by Yossi Alpher Yasser Arafat
died a year ago; Yitzhak Rabin ten years ago. Both signed the Oslo accords
and (with Shimon Peres) received the Nobel Prize for Peace. Both died
tragically.
The comparison ends there. The contrasts begin.
Arafat's death seemingly produced little outpouring of grief among
Palestinians or his fellow Arab leaders. While he was charming in person,
Arafat was mainly corrupt and manipulative, too prone to rely on violence,
developed too few strategies for building a viable Palestinian state, and
had a disastrous inclination to fall back on lies and paranoid fantasies not
seen in any successful Arab leader. A year ago, the impression was that much
of the Middle East, not to mention the rest of the world, breathed a sigh of
relief when he died.
From the perspective of a year's distance, Arafat deserves historic credit
for coalescing a scattered people and giving it a cause. But he could not
figure out how to exploit that success. He missed the boat in 1978 when he
turned down the first Camp David offer of autonomy, in territories then
devoid of settlements. Later, his ten-year stint at state-building was a
fiasco; millions are still suffering for his mistakes. Alone among the
twentieth century national liberation movements, his failed. He died
sordidly and inexplicably, and nobody really seems to care. His death
appears to have had nothing to do with whether he succeeded or failed in his
life's mission.
Yitzhak Rabin, on the other hand, knew when and how to change strategies. He
had his faults and drawbacks, but he pointed us in the right direction, and
we are, willy-nilly and with a lot of zigzags, still on that course of
defining ourselves as a Jewish and democratic state and letting the
Palestinians go their own way. While he adamantly refused to present a
detailed vision of a two state solution, Rabin nevertheless made sure
everyone knew in what direction he was heading. In person he was diffident,
ill at ease, not particularly communicative, even (as one of his ministers
once described him to me) "autistic". But he was genuine, authentic and
straightforward. His assassination ten years ago left most Israelis and
others worldwide in shock and heartache; many continue to exhibit their
strong feelings for him to this day, often to the extent (particularly on
the political left) of distorting his legacy. Even most of those who, for
political and ideological reasons, don't ! miss him, nevertheless recognize
the huge setback to Israeli sovereign state-building that his murder
constituted.
Rabin and Arafat first met in that excruciating handshake on the White House
lawn on September 13, 1993. Rabin was not a dissembler, and everything about
his body language told you he knew exactly whom he was dealing with. I
remember at the time asking another retired IDF general, a comrade-in-arms
of Rabin, whether he had watched that ceremony. "I couldn't," he replied. "I
knew what Yitzhak was going through and couldn't bear to see it."
Had he lived, I doubt very much that Rabin would or could have made a
genuine peace with Arafat. But that is merely informed speculation, based
partly on the limitations of Rabin's vision in his day, but mostly on
Arafat's performance in the ensuing years until his death. Still, Rabin's
assassin succeeded in causing real damage to the cause of peace and
coexistence.
Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, is a good man engaged in a dangerous
experiment with Hamas, seemingly without the leadership qualities needed to
tame even violent supporters within his own movement, Fateh. He confronts an
Israeli leader, Ariel Sharon, who subscribes to Rabin's strategy of
separation but not to his formula for a viable relationship with the
Palestinians. And while Rabin and Arafat had the benefit of President Bill
Clinton's stewardship and commitment, we now have President George W. Bush,
mired knee-deep in a disastrous Iraqi adventure and barely able (or ready)
to lend us the services of Secretary of State Rice for a day every few
months.
These days, after the disappointments of Camp David II and the violence of
intifada II, we are almost certainly farther from a peaceful end to the
conflict than we were ten years ago, when Rabin was assassinated. But,
thanks to disengagement and Abu Mazen, we are a little closer than we were a
year ago, when Arafat died. Hopefully we can all, Israelis and Palestinians,
learn something from both the ongoing nostalgia for Rabin as well as the
lack of nostalgia for Arafat.- Published 14/11/2005 © bitterlemons.org
Yossi Alpher is coeditor of the bitterlemons family of internet
publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic
Studies at Tel Aviv University and was a senior adviser to PM Ehud Barak.
Bitterlemons-international.org is an internet
forum for an array of world perspectives on the Middle East and its
specific concerns. It aspires to engender greater understanding about
the Middle East region and open a new common space for world thinkers
and political leaders to present their viewpoints and initiatives on the
region. Editors Ghassan Khatib and Yossi Alpher can be reached at
ghassan@bitterlemons-international.org
and
yossi@bitterlemons-international.org, respectively.
hagalil.com 18-11-2005 |
