Haaretz - The beautiful life without Arafat

[Englander]

Last update - 09:30 09/10/2005

By Gideon Levy

Time flies when you're having fun, as the saying goes. Next month marks one year since the death of Yasser Arafat, and the masses will not fill the squares in Ramallah in memorial assemblies; Bill Clinton and other world leaders will not come to inaugurate a center in his name. However, the anniversary of his death serves as an opportunity to raise questions about Israel's behavior before and after his death.

The year since Arafat's death has not been beautiful as they promised us, and life here without him has not been better than our life with him. Arafat served as an excellent excuse for Israel to continue the occupation and almost the only significant change that has occurred since his passing is the loss of this excuse.

The past year was the year of disengagement. Not a "partitioning of the land" and not anything approaching this. Not even progress toward peace, but merely a year in which a unilateral arrangement was imposed on the Palestinians that completely disregards their needs. There was no letup in the occupation during this year. Gaza remains imprisoned; in the West Bank, the restrictions on Palestinian life continue in their full cruelty, and are even intensifying due to the separation fence. All this, despite the fact that the demonization of Arafat by Israeli leaders in his waning days could have led one to assume that the largest obstacle to peace had disappeared when he died.

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There are not many who long for Arafat. The Palestinians blame him for not doing enough to extricate them from their miserable lives, and in the eyes of Israelis he became Satan long ago. Palestinians and Israelis forget the long path he traveled from non-recognition of Israel to the historic crossing of the Rubicon in establishing relations with it. In a certain sense, it was Israel that missed a chance with Arafat, perhaps the only leader who had the power to reach a compromise with Israel.

History will judge the man both by his success in consolidating the Palestinian people and raising their case to the top of the international agenda, as well as the cruel violence and corruption for which he was responsible. But a year after his death, one can hardly say a new dawn has risen over the Middle East. A civil war threatens the Palestinian people (and this is also bad news for Israel), a war that Arafat did everything to prevent and apparently would not have erupted in his day. And Israel is not doing a thing to conduct negotiations with his successor on a just accord that would ensure an end to violence. It turns out that contrary to the promises, Arafat's death did not bequeath life to anyone.

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