You won't read anything like this in the New York Times.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=500556&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y <http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=500556&contrassID=2&subContrassID=1&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y>
w w w . h a a r e t z . c o m Last update - 11/11/2004
Missing Arafat
Uri Avnery is unshaken in his belief that Yasser Arafat was a
giant, and a partner for Israel - its only opportunity, in fact,
which Israel missed. The angry young men in Jenin don't care about
Abu Ala or Abu Mazen. In effect, Sharon and Bush have left the
field to bin Laden.
By Ari Shavit
<mailto:ashavit at haaretz.co.il>Uri Avnery has accomplished quite a lot in his 81 years. He fought for the pre-state underground group Lehi, then in the War of Independence in the "Samson's Foxes" unit, he wrote the most important real-time books about that war ("In the Fields of the Philistines" and "The Other Side of the Coin"), he was the editor of the weekly magazine that changed the face of Israeli journalism (Ha'olam Hazeh), he established the political movement that shaped the face of the Israeli left ("Ha'olam Hazeh - Koah Hadash"), he was one of the leading spokesmen of Arab-Israeli culture. However, above all, Uri Avnery performed one crucial political act: He brought Yasser Arafat into our lives.
In 1974, Avnery became the first Israeli to start conducting talks with Arafat's representatives. In 1982, he was the first Israeli to meet with and interview Arafat. In 1994, he sat at Arafat's side when the Palestinian leader returned to the Gaza Strip. For 30 years, Avnery was the most enthusiastic espouser of the Arafatist political option. Even when others on the left despaired of the chairman and abandoned him, Avnery continued to make pilgrimage to the Muqata, Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah. Even during the most trying times he acted as Arafat's human shield and advocate. Loyally, tenaciously, at risk to his life, the radical Israeli journalist fought the battle of the leader of the Palestinian national movement.
Avnery is an emphatically unemotional person. Rational, cool, precise. Always carefully turned out, always elegant, always that lingering German accent. But on Tuesday night, when the Palestinian leadership admitted the rais [head] was dying, the drama of Arafat's death suddenly gripped him. In the living room of his Tel Aviv home, Avnery looked sadder and more vulnerable than ever. At times it seemed that true human grief was welling up in his metallic-blue eyes.
One great mistake
Uri Avnery, as someone who was close to Arafat, don't you feel that there is something humiliating about the way death came to him?
Avnery: "Regrettably, Suha [Arafat's wife] did not meet the test of history. She was Arafat's great mistake. He married her in a moment of weakness, when he suddenly, after all, wanted to be a family man. But that desire passed very quickly in the light of the opposition the marriage aroused. People couldn't understand why the man who was married to the revolution suddenly got married. And not to a Muslim Arab woman, but to a Christian. To a modern woman, an outsider, a blonde. He realized he had to keep his distance from her and she remained bitter. The result was the end we have just seen, which was not appropriate and which definitely hurts me. Very much so. Arafat deserves something different. But in a few weeks all this will be forgotten; what will remain is a death that carries huge symbolic value.
"In the final analysis, what will enter Palestinian history is that the person who led them for almost 50 years died abroad. Like most of the Palestinian people. And what will be enshrined in the Palestinian and Arab national myth is that the leader of the liberation movement died on the brink of Palestinian independence, but without entering it. That will take on symbolic significance that will intensify from year to year, like the stature of Arafat himself."
What you are saying, then, is that Arafat will be remembered as the Palestinian Moses, nothing less.
"There is a great similarity to the death of Moses, who removed a people from slavery and led its march to freedom for 40 years, almost exactly like Arafat. There is also a similarity in the fact that Arafat too reached the gate of the Promised Land, saw it from afar but did not enter it. I have been thinking about that a great deal in the past few days. The symbolism here is very great, and because of it the dead Arafat will be even stronger than the living Arafat."
Do you really believe that Arafat was a giant historic leader?
"A giant. Yasser Arafat will be remembered as one of the greatest leaders of the second half of the 20th century. He is sometimes compared to Nelson Mandela. But Arafat's task was a thousand times more difficult than that of Mandela, who spent 28 years in prison and so remained totally untainted by external struggles and internal struggles and of any association with terrorism. And in the end, he received an existing state. One day he was the leader of a liberation movement, the next day he was president.
"Arafat, in contrast, received a widely scattered refugee people, all of whom were living under Arab dictatorships. A nation whose leadership was pursued by the secret services of half a dozen countries, including Israel. As a result, Arafat was compelled to lie, sometimes to this Arab leader, sometimes to that one. He had to resort to ambivalence and needed the ability to maneuver. That ability is perhaps one of his most prominent qualities.
"Arafat also had to create a state ex nihilo. To establish a state where there was no infrastructure, no economy, no instruments of government. And he had to bridge the tensions between the veteran leadership from Tunisia and the young local leadership. And between Christians and Muslims. Between woman and men. Between hamulas [clans]. Between refugees and residents of the territories. He had to hold that whole package together, almost on his own, under unbelievable conditions. And he succeeded. He also succeeded in not giving in. He stood up to Clinton and [former Israeli prime minister Ehud] Barak and did not capitulate. So there is no doubt in my mind that he will become one of the major heroes of Arab history. He will enter the pantheon of symbolic Arab heroes, like the Caliph Omar and like Salah a-Din."
[snip]
g. The world without Arafat will not be the same world. Not for Israel and not for me."