This morning, 8:00 AM EST Yasser Arafat returned to Ramallah, the former "Chairman's" Jewish enforced home and political headquarters. A crowd estimated at well over a milllion, reflecting a multiplicity of politicized energy, anger and grief surrounded his casket like a human sea, making progress to the gravesite agonizingly slow. Arafat is not going silently into the fading light. Collective Palestinian emotions, held constantly in check by Israeli troops cannot be silenced on this day.
Oceans of humanity, expressing rage and despair against Israel are not unususal in this land. There is obvious political meaning to this event (some of the "grief" obviously staged by savy, media conscious Palestinians); a message and a warning Israelis know well. They are watching this extrordinary scene too, and worry about the political consequenses.
The central issue surrounding Arafat's death is the creation of a Palestinian state. However, there are many questions to answer. Who will lead the Palestinians? Who will reflect the credibility, stature, and charisma necessary to unite various Palestinian terrorist and political splinter groups (something even Arafat rarely did)? Who will be acceptable to Israeli leaders (not to mention their right wing "bitter enders"), the Jordanians (themselves holding six hundred thousand Palestinians in a political, stateless limbo, the Egyptians, Saudis, the West (themselves factionalized), and even the Chinese?
In reality, a quick solution does not exist. Nor can any Palestinian "leader" on the present horizon assume so multivariant a politial role. Even if the Palestininans unite and bring their chips to the bargining table; will the Jews? Will other Islamic nations (with agendas of their own) contribute the necessary capital to build a national infrastructure? Can a nation be built on the cheap? Will Americans support footing the cost? Can America effectively contribute to the creation of a Palestinian state without inviting more terrorism, while it systematically decimates another Islamic country?
No.
Arafat is gone. The worms have him now (and, perhaps Allah). The war in Iraq grinds on, becomming what every thinking person knew it would be, an endless civil war waged by partisans ranging from criminal gangs to Iraqi patriots. The Americans started that war, not Arafat. The Americans risk the destabalization of the entire "Middle East", not Arafat. The Americans invaded a soverign country without proveable provocation, or the legal sanction of the international community; not Arafat.
None of these facts make Arafat a saint. However, they do prove he was a player in a game he understood better than America. At this moment, the "President" of Iraq worries about members of his family. They are hostages to insurgents. His daughter in law is eight months pregneant. Would it not make a powerful video if these animals first decapitated her, then cut the fetus from her belly, holding it before the camera, disproving again, American claims of success? What will occur, regionally, when America follows the elusive, currently Iraqi insurgency into Iran? Will this event increase American influence, or further isolate them from the rest of the world?
What is really going on in Afghanistan? Why is there so little media coverage of our military activity in THAT country? What have we done there? Why are American's kept uninformed?
It is one thing to pursue the enemies of the United States.
It is quite another to delberately waste the lives of American soldiers on an unworkable foreign policy of improvisation.
Comments