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November 05, 2004

RIP Yassir Arafat

I know, he's not dead yet, but he is the lamest of ducks.

All this mystery surrounding exactly what's wrong with this man stinks to the high heavens to me. As they say on CSI, poisoning is usually done by people close to the victim. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the culmination of a Mossad plot, or a Fatah or a Hamas..

But what the death of Arafat will most likely reveal is how much he, as the lightning rod of accusations of foot-dragging, was indeed the stumbling block of peace. His legacy will be an interesting lesson to us all, and it will not be complete until Palestine has a flag, borders and an embassy in London.

Arafat's fate seems emblematic of warlords and pseudo-leaders all over the world. Maybe he was one of a kind, but maybe he was ahead of his time - head of a people in the margins of world opinion, trying to become a nation against the odds. But I think history will judge him harshly and I think that Palestine is doomed to suffer the same fate as Albania. The unwanted millions will languish in a third world land - a country in name only. But what is Palestinian nationalism? How has it become so impossible to achieve?

I think it has become impossible because the militants are not defenders of land, property and the material possessions of the Palestinian people, but because they have been defenders of radical ideas. Their claims have been legitimated by persistence, but are essentially rooted in an insatiable oppositionalism to Israel. It's not enough for Palestinians to have and to hold, they have to hold forth and be heard. Arafat personifies the leader fighting forever for mindshare above all, how else do you turn down land and peace?

I have no special hopes for Israelis nor Palestinians. Their competing claims for Jerusalem will continue until somebody nukes the place. Arafat is gone. Let us see if those who succeed him will follow him.

Posted by mbowen at November 5, 2004 08:45 AM

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Posted by: free palestine at November 11, 2004 11:51 PM