April 30, 2003
ARAFAT DELENDA EST
Arafat lives (David Warren, 4/30/2003)[P]rospects for peaceful mutual accommodation between Jew and Arab were almost irretrievably set back by the Madrid and Oslo agreements of the early 1990s. From cynical motives on all sides -- including those of Israeli Labour politicians -- the terrorist, Yasser Arafat, was put right at the black heart of the "peace process". He had left nothing but a trail of destruction behind him in Jordan, Lebanon, indeed everywhere he'd been. From the moment he arrived, the West Bank and Gaza began to be transformed into a terror network....
Arafat lives today as the principal impediment to any workable peace agreement. Keeping him sidelined, and gradually disarming his terror brigades, will distract much creative energy from a main task, which itself cannot be easy. It will be like trying to come to some agreement with an Iraq, in which, say, Tariq Aziz were nominally in power, while Saddam Hussein continued to sit glowering beside him at the cabinet table. There is necessarily an element of farce in the spectacle.
Whatever the "roadmap" says, progress will require the imposition on the West Bank and Gaza of an international, probably American force, to replace the Israeli. For there is no conceivable Palestinian civil force that can stand up to Arafat's multiple networks of goons and suicide bombers.
Orrin, as his post below shows, strongly supports the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state. While Orrin's view is reasonable, it seems to me irresponsible to create a Palestinian state in which Arafat remains in control -- whether publicly or behind the scenes. Arafat's long record shows that he is a tyrant over those in his control and a murderer of those out of his control. To establish a Palestinian state with Arafat in a position of power would be as much a betrayal of the Palestinian people as it would have been a betrayal of the Iraqi people had we, in the 1970s, collaborated in Saddam's coup establishing himself as dictator.
An Arafat-controlled state would continue to oppress the Palestinian people, and continue terrorism until its acquisition of WMD led to the destruction of Israel, or, more likely, until Israel conquered and re-occupied Palestine. Neither outcome would count as progress.
David Warren poses another alternative to Orrin's: some outside force, either Israeli or American, attempts a coercive nation-building exercise in Palestine. Again, if Arafat remains in control of his terror networks, the schools, and other civil institutions, the occupying force will be subject to terror and, with Arafat off limits, unable to reply. This would be a recipe for a failure worse than Vietnam.
This is why the road to peace needs to begin with the destruction of Arafat, and preferably his terror network as well. To make the point that terrorism is unacceptable, the United States should seize Arafat, try him publicly with a complete airing of the evidence connecting him to murders, and then punish him appropriately -- preferably by execution. Once that is accomplished, several roads to peace may succeed -- either immediate statehood as Orrin prefers, or a continuing nation-building exercise leading to statehood.