Great. The problem with that is that Arafat was elected. And there is serious support for him among Palestinians.
Sure Arafat was elected. In one rigged election in 1996, running against an unknown grandmother. His term ran out in 1999. He never bothered with another election.
Saddam Hussein was elected too, you know. To give due credit, Saddam Hussein even holds elections at regular intervals.
The latest poll shows public support for Arafat running about 30% now. But there isn't much the Palestinians can do about Arafat while he retains the money and the guns.
This is just to say that "martyr" does not refer directly to "suicide bombers".
Then I guess it's just pure coincidence that the shahid posters all over the West Bank just happen to be of suicide bombers. What total crap. The PA has spent its years inculcating the notion that blowing up civilians is not only true jihad and martyrdom (never mind Koranic injuctions against killing women and children), but that it is altogether honorable and worthy of glory and monetary reward. In this context, everybody knows what calling on a "million martyrs to march to Jersualem" means.
Besides, consider how normal it is for a nation in occupation, under poverty, daily threat to their lives, and no hope for the future, to be glorifying in death the loved ones they lose to this senseless violence, along with the deliberate attackers to their "oppressor".
The conditions the Palestinians are not the cause of the intifada, but the result of it, brought to them by the decisions of their glorious leader Arafat, who decided that he was not going to do a deal for a two-state solution.
When Arafat's ministers speak in Arabic, they don't hide their intentions. In a recent interview with the Arab-Israeli weekly Kul Al-Arab, Farouq Al-Qaddoumi, head of the PLO political bureau and secretary general of Fatah's Central Committee, expressed support for "resistance" inside and outside the Green Line, said there had never been any real difference in intent between Fatah and Hamas, and said the problem of refugees was more important than a state.
memri.org
The two-state solution is not going to be a solution to anything until the Palestinian side accepts it. |
