Britain's Sunday Telegraph Tells It Like It Is Blame Arafat, not Israel 12 August 2001 EVEN as the dazed Israelis were still collecting the pieces of the 16 people who died in last week's suicide-bomb attack in Jerusalem, it became apparent that among certain sections of the British media Israel itself, and not the Palestinian bomber, was being held to blame. Dore Gold, an adviser to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli Prime Minister, found himself having to justify Israel's loss: had this tragedy not happened, he was asked by the BBC, as a result of his government's own attack upon the militant Islamic leaders of Hamas the previous week? The unmistakeable sub-text was: "Haven't you brought this on yourselves?" There is certainly a place for aggressive political questioning: it is not, however, in the immediate aftermath of a terrorist atrocity. We can imagine how British Government representatives would have responded if, in the dark hours following the Omagh bomb, members of the foreign media had inquired if this was not the predictable result of failing to reach agreement with the Real IRA. As the toll of violence mounts in the Middle East, many people in the West seem tempted to draw a moral equivalence between the Israeli security forces and the fanatical members of groups such as Hamas. That temptation should be resisted. It is perhaps too easy to forget that Israel is the only genuine democracy in the region. Since the beginning of the Middle East "peace process" in 1993 it has largely honoured the agreements which it brokered with the Palestinians. In a dramatic change of policy, it allowed Yasser Arafat both to return from exile, and to set up a Palestinian Authority in Gaza. Mr Arafat - although elected as the authority's leader by the vast majority of voters - has displayed little respect for democracy towards his fellow-Palestinians. Financial corruption in his administration has been rife, and his security forces have silenced opposition leaders and shut down dissenting newspapers. Last year, at the Camp David summit, Ehud Barak - the former Israeli army leader who was then Prime Minister - offered Mr Arafat a handsome package of concessions. It included the return of 90 per cent of Gaza and the West Bank to Palestinian control, and the establishment of a limited Palestinian political presence in East Jerusalem. The Israeli belief that the city is the Jewish state's "eternal and undivided capital" had been voluntarily compromised, and Palestinians were promised control of Muslim holy sites. This may not have delivered Mr Arafat's wish-list in full, but it contained far greater Israeli concessions than he could ever have imagined possible when he was in exile in Tunis. The Palestinian leader, however, chose not only to reject the deal, but to declare war on Israel. As part of his battle strategy he released from prison dozens of Islamic militants for whom every Israeli citizen is deemed a legitimate target for assassination. Mr Arafat's ambiguous attitude to Islamic terrorism is a long- standing and growing impediment to any future rapprochement with Israel. He has recently shown a willingness to form a "unity government" which would include representatives of Hamas and Islamic Jihad - the very people responsible for the recent scenes of carnage on the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. The Palestinian leader appears willing to act decisively against such groups only when they threaten his own political survival, and not the survival of Israeli citizens. Last week, after the Jerusalem bombing, the Israeli police took control of the Palestinian headquarters in East Jerusalem: it was an attempt to show that political concessions to the Palestinians would be rescinded if the threat to Israel's security mounted. The response of those close to Mr Arafat was not to restrain the militants on the Palestinian side, but rather to declare "a battle for Jerusalem". Ahmed Abdel-Rahman, one of Arafat's aides, proclaimed: "The Palestinian people are left with no choice but to escalate resistance and the Intifada to liberate holy Jerusalem." Little lies at the end of such a battle but the increased suffering of ordinary Israelis and Palestinians. The escalation of misery, however, is not something which has greatly troubled Mr Arafat in the past: his leadership of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation in Lebanon was one of the crucial factors in a bloody 15-year civil war. It is fast becoming apparent that Mr Arafat is less a broker of peace than an obstacle in its way. Should the West fail to acknowledge his sizeable share of responsibility for events, it will merely confirm Israel in a stronger sense of defiant isolation. As Mr Gold said, shortly before the Jerusalem bomb: "You can get the best PR in the world but if your people are dying, you haven't gained anything." |
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