A rchive Date
[ 23-02-2002 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Palestine ]
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[http://www.canoe.ca/Columnists/jacobs.html
Palestinians need a leader with courage
By MINDELLE JACOBS -- Edmonton Sun
February 23, 2002
Ever the chameleon, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat put on his peacemaker's face for the West in an op-ed piece in the New York Times earlier this month.
In his statement, Arafat condemned the terrorist attacks against Israelis and pledged to stop them. He also reiterated his commitment to a two-state solution to end the escalating violence that has engulfed Israel and the Palestinian territories for 17 months.
"There are those who claim that I am not a partner in peace," he wrote. Well, yes, just about the entire civilized world has figured out by now that Arafat was never interested in peace in the first place.
"Palestinians are ready to end the conflict," he declared. Oh, really? Surely he can't expect Israel, the U.S. or any other western country that's tried to bring calm to the Middle East over the past few years to believe that old line.
In short, many in the West have come to the conclusion that banking on Arafat to embrace real peace is a losing proposition. Sadly, we've been backing the wrong horse. The Palestinians need a leader with courage.
In hindsight, perhaps Arafat should be stripped of his Nobel Peace Prize. The famous 1993 handshake with then-Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin on the White House lawn celebrating the Oslo peace accord? A sham perpetrated on a hopeful world by terrorist posing as a statesman.
Arafat insists he wants an independent Palestinian state on the land occupied by Israel in 1967.
Yet when former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak offered the Palestinians Gaza, about 90% of the West Bank and a shared Jerusalem, Arafat walked away.
As well as demanding the return of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to Israel, Arafat wanted Palestinian sovereignty over the entire old city of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.
Jews would be allowed to pray at the wall, Palestinian negotiators said. Yeah, right. The Arabs used up their credibility when they banned Jews from the area between 1948 and 1967, using Judaism's most sacred site as a garbage dump.
Despite Islam's purported tolerance for other religions, its practitioners do not have a good track record when it comes to treating people from other faiths with respect. Look at the slaughter of Christians in Pakistan and Indonesia.
It is also tough to believe the Palestinians really want peace when they are constantly repudiating any historical Jewish link to Israel and particularly the Western Wall and the Temple Mount.
According to Muslim lore, the prophet Mohammed tied his horse to the wall when he made his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. It is a short step from that ancient belief to the modern-day Arab denial that a Jewish temple was ever on the site.
The last remaining wall of the Jewish temple is there, but don't let historical facts get in the way of Muslim lore.
"Israel demands control over the Temple Mount based on its claim that its fictitious temple stood there," one Palestinian Authority minister said in July 2000.
And in December, in a speech in Ramallah, Arafat declared: "Oh, brothers, there is a conspiracy to Judaize Jerusalem."
There's a man who's sincere about making peace with the Jews.
If you want to read what the Muslim world says when it's not talking to western ears, check out the Middle East Media and Research Institute: www.memri.org.
It recently translated an excerpt from an Egyptian science magazine, for instance, that described how Jewish tourists infected with AIDS were travelling around Asia and Africa, aiming to spread the disease. And the Muslim world wonders why the West thinks it's backward. But I digress.
Now a Saudi prince is floating the idea that the entire Arab world will make peace with Israel if the Jewish state will return all the land it captured in 1967. How typical of the Arab world. It wants all or nothing. The biggest losers? The long-suffering Palestinians.
Mindelle can be reached by e-mail at mjacobs@edm.sunpub.com Letters to the editor should be sent to letters@edm.sunpub.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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