With his unwillingness to crack down on Islamic extremists and a penchant for brinkmanship that led to last week’s violence in Tel Aviv and several West Bank cities, Yasser Arafat may be making the first installment on his return ticket to Tunis and a life in exile.
The peace process, facing its worst crisis since the 1991 Madrid conference, could collapse if Hamas and other terrorists carry out their threats for more suicide bombings like the one that killed three young mothers and wounded many others at a Tel Aviv cafe.
Arafat, who hopes to become president of a Palestinian state, could find his dreams buried in the rubble unless he wakes up quickly to his responsibilities.
It is apparently difficult for a man who made a career as an international terrorist to reform, but if he wants respectability and statehood for his people, he must do more than issue condolence messages and declare he has reformed and abandoned his old ways.
It is not enough to talk the talk; he’s going to have to walk the walk, to use a phrase popular in Bill Clinton’s part of the country.
Clinton and his administration have let it be known that they have been tough on Arafat in private about his need to prevent terrorism, but that clearly has not been enough.
Maybe Arafat compared the private admonitions he heard with the public criticism the administration levied at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and came to the incorrect conclusion that he is now Netanyahu’s equal in dealings with Washington. Or maybe it’s just that terrorism is so ingrained in the man that it cannot be exorcised.
In any case, the Clinton administration needs to communicate with Arafat with greater clarity. That may require major doses of public pressure to go with the private messages.
The Washington Post reported earlier this week that Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, acting CIA Director George Tenet and others personally admonished Arafat to crack down on the terrorists, but instead he went back to Gaza and did just the opposite. Rather than rearrest recently released militants, as urged by the United States, Arafat freed even more.
The most prominent was Ibrahim Makadmeh, the senior Hamas military leader in custody, who was let out earlier this month. In the name of Hamas’ Issadin el-Kassim military unit, he took credit for the Purim bombing, exhorting hundreds of followers at a Gaza rally that only suicide bombs, not negotiations, would halt the Jewish construction at Har Homa.
Last week while the suicide bomber was plotting his deadly mission, the administration was rejecting Netanyahu’s charge that Arafat had given a green light to the terrorists. After the explosion they changed their minds.
Albright confirmed that the terrorists felt they had a go sign from Arafat, even if only an indirect one; Arafat has done nothing since to suggest otherwise.
Palestinian security officials told Reuters news agency that they have had no orders from Arafat to crack down on Hamas or other extremist groups following the bombing. Instead of going after Makadmeh, Arafat’s police left a message at his home to turn himself in.
Meanwhile, with Nero-esque aplomb, Arafat was nowhere to be found. The peripatetic Palestinian was on an international tour trying to turn up the heat on the embattled Netanyahu government. He stopped at the Islamic Conference in Islamabad, Pakistan, to declare it the “duty” of all Muslims “to rescue Jerusalem…from the danger of Judaism.”
He shrugged off calls to return to Gaza to defuse the crisis and his Gaza security chief not only rejected U.S. and Israeli calls to crack down on the militants, but declared he was cutting off security and intelligence cooperation with Israel.
Netanyahu’s decision to begin construction at the Har Homa neighborhood in East Jerusalem, however ill-advised or badly timed, is no excuse for the Palestinian violence that followed. When prominent Palestinians like Hanan Ashrawi seek to blame Netanyahu’s policies for the violence, they do a great disservice to the cause of peace that they profess.
As Clinton said in Helsinki following the Purim bombing, “Nothing — nothing — justifies a return to the slaughter of innocent civilians.” He called on the Palestinian Authority to “make it clear…that it is unalterably opposed to terror and must take all possible steps…to prevent any terror from occurring.”
Arafat’s absence flies in the face of Clinton’s admonition. Clinton has to find a more emphatic way to send his message to Arafat. He can start by enlisting the Europeans and Arabs who were so quick to join in Arafat’s denunciations of Israel. It’s time they took some responsibility and enlisted in the war against terrorism.
Arafat is famous for trying to have things both ways — play to the passions of the street while trying to appear the statesman to the rest of the world. He cannot raise the heat over Har Homa without suffering responsibility for the consequences. Gone is the time when all that was demanded of him was a denunciation of the terrorism. He must take seriously warnings from Clinton and Netanyahu to arrest and disarm the militants or see the peace process come to a halt.
It is one thing to publicly complain about the Har Homa decision and even to solicit international support, but to protect a peace process he claims to support and have any credibility as a statesman, Arafat — the ex-terrorist — must scrupulously avoid even indirect threats of violence that can ignite an already volatile Palestinian public.
“He has everything to lose if the process fails, and this kind of violence could kill it,” said a veteran American diplomat and negotiator.
“And if that happens, Arafat could find himself on his way back to Tunis.”