Arafat's aftermath: Peace remains elusive amid political turmoil

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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/12/EDG6O9PI251.DTL

In Arafat's aftermath
Peace remains elusive amid political turmoil

George E. Bisharat

Friday, November 12, 2004


As Yasser Arafat has died, so die the hopes for a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Contrary to the belief held in the United States and Israel, Arafat worked tirelessly toward the "peace of the brave" and the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. It was precisely because Arafat was such a dogged proponent of compromise with Israel that the Israeli government worked so hard to destroy him.

Here are the concrete realities Arafat and his people have faced over the last five decades: In 1948, Israel expelled more than 700,000 Christian and Muslim Palestinians so that Jews would be a majority in the new Jewish state. Hundreds of Palestinian villages were razed so that Jewish-only towns could be established. Israeli forces seized 78 percent of British Mandate Palestine, and with it, Palestinian homes, businesses, and lands, providing the rudiments of the new Israeli economy. Rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes or receive compensation and support for resettlement, reaffirmed annually since 1948 by the United Nations, have been consistently denied by Israel. Palestinian refugees and their offspring now number around 4 million people.

Today, a Jew from anywhere in the world can become an Israeli citizen, while Palestinian refugees who still hold the keys to their stolen homes cannot so much as visit. Palestinians who remained in Israel in 1948, and who now number 1.2 million, face daily discrimination in all walks of life, including housing, education and allocation of government services.

In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 3.5 million Palestinians live under a harsh Israeli military occupation now in its 38th year. With no control over their daily lives, Palestinians have witnessed the emergence of what a recent U.N. report describes as "an apartheid regime" that is "worse than the one that existed in South Africa." Palestinian land is routinely confiscated to allow Jewish-only settlements to grow. Jewish settlers -- whose numbers doubled during the so-called Oslo "peace process" to 430,000 -- enjoy ample water supplies while Palestinian crops parch in the sun. Seven hundred Israeli army checkpoints choke movements of people, separating Palestinian kids from school, pregnant mothers from hospitals and relatives from their families.

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on edit: heading edited slightly to fit.