Conservative Voice Has Arafat's Time Expired?

Author: Amichai Kilchevski

When the Jewish people were seeking to gain legitimacy for their idea of a state in their ancestral homeland in the Middle East, they began not by attacking their neighbors but by doing the very opposite. The leaders of the Jewish community in Palestine decided that if their dreams of establishing a state were to ever become a reality, they would have to cooperate with the Arabs, not fight them. Jewish police, along with British forces, went through villages under their jurisdiction and rounded up members of the Jewish underground units in an effort to prevent any violence against the Arab population. While these raids were extremely unpopular among the Jewish residents, these actions ultimately culminated in the creation of the Jewish State.

Fifty-five years after Israeli leaders made such courageous moves we still see Arab leadership refusing to take effective but unpopular stances. True leaders like Anwar Sadat and Yitzchak Rabin took unpopular stances that cost them their lives, but in so doing were able to bring hope to the Middle East. Yasser Arafat has repeatedly demonstrated that he is unwilling to make such a sacrifice: Arafat has refused to order any of his 40,000 security personnel to act against militant groups. He continues to encourage militancy through widely broadcast speeches. He continues to harbor terrorists in his Ramallah compound. He has been caught siphoning money away from funds given to the Palestinians for humanitarian causes, forwarding them instead to groups directly responsible for terrorist activities as well as to his own personal bank accounts in Switzerland. And it has been proven that he was directly involved in ordering the passage of a weapons smuggling ship, the Karine A, which was seized by Israel in January 2002 with 50 tons of weapons that were to be used by various terrorist organizations.

For these justifiable reasons, the Israeli government decided after a series of homicide bombings by Palestinian terrorists last week to expel Arafat in "principle." The Israeli cabinet has finally come to the realization that the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority has been given one too many opportunities to participate in a meaningful peace process that would have led to an agreement with Israel: the Oslo Accords, the Wye River Memorandum, the Sharm El Sheik Agreement and now the recent Hudna (ceasefire). Adhering to any one of these agreements would have forced Arafat to abandon military action and use political wisdom and means to build a Palestinian State, something that the career terrorist has repeatedly shown he is incapable of doing.

Upon Israel's warning to expel Arafat, the United Nation's General Assembly passed a resolution demanding that Israel drop the decision to remove Arafat-a resolution that was rightly vetoed by four countries, including the United States, due to its blatantly one-sided nature (the resolution originally did not condemn any of the Palestinian terrorist groups behind the attacks on Israeli civilians). Since the Palestinians began the Intifada, or uprising, three years ago this month, hundreds of terror attacks have taken place within Israel yet the United Nations seems bent on continuing to legitimize a well-known terrorist who has brought nothing but death and despair to both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Then again, this is the same international organization that allows rogue states such as Syria to head the Security Council, Libya to serve as the chair of the Human Rights Commission and Iraq to head up its Disarmament Conference.

The United States has finally made it clear to the Palestinian Authority that it will not support any government controlled by Arafat. Instead, President Bush has insisted that the new Palestinian Prime Minister, Ahmed Qureia, take direct control of the Palestinian security forces currently under Arafat's command. The United States also informed the Palestinians that the new prime minister would not receive American support unless he uses those security forces to reign in the terrorist organizations. Unfortunately, Qureia's predecessor, Mahmoud Abbas, refused to take such action, maintaining that he would not be responsible for causing a civil war. America now realizes that much like the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq, Israel's removal of Arafat would liberate the Palestinian people from someone who has maliciously hijacked their cause and would give them their first real opportunity to take control over their own fate.

The Palestinians are at a fork in the road and must choose their course quickly and carefully. Do they want to follow Arafat's path that has led to nothing but misery for the entire region? Or do they want to embark on the path of peace and prosperity that is possible to follow once they swear off terrorism as a means to an end and begin the process of cooperation?