Prisoners of Their Pasts: Arafat, Sharon Battle On
Mideast: Hamstrung Palestinian, defiant Israeli show little vision for peace, experts say.
This story still shows the remnants of an artificial equivalence between the two sides: one the hand Sharon, on the other hand Arafat.
It's artificial for several reasons. First, whatever Sharon's limits, it's not impossible to replace him; it's quite easy in fact to cause new elections to happen in the Israeli system. All you need is a swing of popular support to Labor, who would walk out of government and force new elections. Sharon was elected when, as Clinton said, "The Israelis decided to hunker down and go for defense."
On the Palestinian side, Arafat seems immovable except by his death. His multiple catastrophic failures of leadership have certainly not managed it. Nor is there any likelihood of an orderly succession, certainly not a democratic one.
Second, if you believe, as Sharon believes, that Arafat is not now nor ever was a partner for peace (a belief system considerably justified by reading what Arafat has said and done for the last eight years in Arabic), then giving Arafat room or concessions is merely adding folly to folly, without the least likelihood of desirable results. Just look at what Arafat has always done when he has had room -- he trims, he temporizes, he fails to make decisions, he pursues both terrorism and negotiations, he talks out of all sides of his mouth, this to the West, that to the Arabs.
Seen from this light, forcing Arafat's ouster is the only possible path towards improvement, dark as it may be. |
