TERRORIST IN A TEA TOWEL?

There was a time when they called him the “terrorist in a tea towel”. The most powerful Muslim in the Middle East.

I am talking about Yasser Arafat who has dominated the Palestinian side of the Israeli flashpoint for decades. He was seen as a supporter of suicide bombers and bloodthirsty groups like the early PLO and Hamas. And then he signed the Camp David Peace Accord -- at the urging of American President Bill Clinton – and shook hands for the television cameras with his Israeli counterpart and even shared the Nobel Peace Prize.

And then it all started to unravel again and suicide bombers from his side slaughtered children on buses and in cafes. And he was again seen by many as a devious man who had the power to stop the revenge killing and didn’t. Maybe even fostered and fomented it from inside his fortress at Ramallah.

The Israelis recklessly, provocatively but perhaps understandably threatened to assassinate him. They didn’t. But they kept him a prisoner in his so-called fortress for the past two and a half years. He remained – and remains – a folk hero to most Palestinians but his sphere of influence appeared, in recent times, to be shrinking.

On the one hand there were hopes that when Arafat finally slipped the mortal coil some moderates who have dealt with the Israelis could again. On the other hand there were the hard men of Hamas who wanted it all – no matter how much blood was spilled on either side.

Arafat is in the news today because he is either dead or clinically dead and being kept alive on life support while the Palestinian hierarchy and the Israelis decide where he can be buried with 24 hours of his death under Muslim custom.

How will his departure help the Middle East peace process? Who knows yet. But Arafat had a lot of blood on his hands. So his demise could help except for those people who believe that the Israeli state should never have been formed in 1948. And thought, even when it was, that it couldn’t last.

With Sharon trying to force his people out of the Gaza Strip the exit of Arafat could be a real chance for peace. But, sadly, bloodily, how many times have we heard that before?

Friday, November 5, 2004

©Copyright Derryn Hinch 2004