DE-DELUDING THE POST-ZIONISTS:

A Difficult Visionary, a Stubborn Vision (BENNY MORRIS, 11/12/04, NY Times)

Whatever deluded Westerners might believe, Mr. Arafat was no liberal, taking account of others' views and feelings and seeking solutions through conciliation and compromise. In Mr. Arafat's eyes and those of his people, there is only one justice: Palestinian justice. Only what the Palestinians believe and seek is just. That is why, according to Dennis Ross, former chief American negotiator in the Middle East, Mr. Arafat insisted at Camp David in July 2000, to President Bill Clinton's astonishment and chagrin, that there had never been a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The small, walled hillock, called the Noble Sanctuary, with its two mosques, was an Islamic Arab site. That alone. And so there had to be sole Palestinian Arab sovereignty over the site.

Of course, Mr. Arafat was actually making a more comprehensive point - that all of Palestine belonged rightfully to the Palestinians and that Jewish claims lacked any legitimacy. That was why he turned down the peace proposals of Mr. Barak in July 2000 and the proposals from Mr. Clinton the following December. It was not because Mr. Barak had declined to kiss both his cheeks or because the Palestinians wanted an additional sliver of land here or there.

Mr. Arafat said no because he refused to accept any settlement that did not include a mechanism for its future subversion, a loophole that would allow the Palestinians, down the road, to undermine its two-state core - specifically, the "right of return" of the Palestinian refugees to Israeli territory. Such a return would, of course, spell Israel's demise. (Israel currently has a population of about 5 million Jews and almost 1.3 million Arabs; there are some 4 million Palestinians registered as refugees by the United Nations.) In short, Mr. Arafat wanted "Palestine," all of it, not a watered-down 22 percent solution.