|
News
Stories Used in Arafat Word from Commentary Below are the texts of the news stories used in Part 3 of the Word from on Yasser Arafat. We are posting them here as some news sources take down stories after a few days.
U.S. Sees Chance of Peace Hinging on Arafat Successor By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials hope Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s death on Thursday will offer a new chance for Middle East peace but said it depends on who replaces him, how much power they wield and whether they have the legitimacy to strike a deal.
"I think we've got a chance," President Bush (news - web sites) said several hours before the 75-year-old Arafat was declared dead at a French hospital. Afterward, Bush called it "a significant moment" for the Palestinians in their bid for peace and an independent state.
However, U.S. officials played down the idea of any quick, dramatic change in their policy with the demise of the Palestinian leader whom the Bush administration viewed as a corrupt, untrustworthy failure and an obstacle to peace.
Instead, they pointed to the problems that have long stymied efforts to resolve the dispute -- with ending Palestinian violence against Israelis at the top of their list -- and the uncertainty of who will succeed Arafat.
"It really depends on what comes out of this and who's running the show," said one official who asked not to be named. "No matter how creative or how bold you want to be, as long as there continue to be suicide bombers blowing up buses in Israeli cities there's a limit to what can be accomplished."
"If you want to create a Palestinian state, there has got to be a responsible Palestinian partner," added a senior U.S. official who suggested it may be harder for a successor to make peace than for Arafat, whose status as the Palestinian icon might have persuaded his people to accept compromises.
There have been no serious peace negotiations since the collapse of former U.S. President Bill Clinton (news - web sites)'s efforts to broker a deal in 2000, which coincided with the start of the four-year old Palestinian uprising against Israel.
Two years into his presidency, Bush said Arafat had failed his people and decided to boycott him in the hope that new Palestinian leadership would emerge.
With the U.S.-backed "road map" peace plan all but dead, U.S. officials have pinned their hopes on Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (news - web sites)'s plan to withdraw from all settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank to revive peace efforts.
INTERNAL STRIFE
U.S. officials and Middle East analysts fear internecine violence among the Palestinians if there is a power vacuum after his death and believe this could make it harder for Sharon to withdraw from Gaza. In addition, they are bracing for the possibility of increased attacks against Israelis.
The State Department early on Thursday issued an advisory urging U.S. citizens to take precautions because Arafat's death "has the potential to produce demonstrations and unrest throughout the region."
Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) pledged the United States would "do all we can" to help Palestinians achieve peace and urged that calm prevail in the region.
On Wednesday, Powell said "it remains to be seen" whether new Palestinian leaders capable of choking off militant violence against Israel emerge. "If that kind of leadership emerges ... then we stand ready to work with them."
Just when the United States might reengage no one, including Powell, is willing to hazard a guess.
Critics argue Bush has done little to help the Palestinians and that he undermined them by giving Israel assurances in the spring that it could not be expected to give up all West Bank settlements or to accept the return of Palestinian refugees.
Asked how hard the administration would work for peace, one U.S. official said: "I don't know. Frankly, I look at the landscape and I (ask) what's going to fundamentally change?
"The fundamental differences remain: the issue of settlements, of territorial contiguity, of the persistence of terrorist attacks and of a radicalized (Palestinian) movement ... I don't see any of those changing in any material way."
Bush is expected to send a senior American diplomat, Assistant Secretary of State Williams Burns, and possibly others, to Arafat's funeral.
The U.S.-backed peace plan will be a focus of talks on Thursday and Friday with British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), who has been prodding Bush to make Middle East peace a higher priority.
On Wednesday, Bush said his administration may be prepared to offer assistance to shore up Palestinian institutions, but offered no details.
Source
Gloomy Arabs wonder if Israel willing to make peaceReuters News Service
Associated Press An armed member of Yasser Arafat's Fatah movement at the leader's former headquarters in Gaza City reacts to news of Arafat's death in Gaza City today. CAIRO - Arabs across the Middle East saw the death of Yasser Arafat, icon of the Palestinian national struggle, as the end of an era -- and said it was up to Israel to make it a chance for peace.
Palestinians poured onto the streets of Gaza and the West Bank today to mourn their president. Lebanon's refugees met news of his death with wails of grief and volleys of gunfire. The Koran blared from loudspeakers in Jordan's Palestinian camps.
Official Arab government reaction was muted several hours after Arafat's death was announced, though several countries announced three days mourning and praised the work of a leader who fought for a Palestinian state for decades but never achieved it.
"Arafat was the embodiment of the Palestinian question and his absence will certainly be greatly felt," said Hossam Zaki, spokesman of the Arab League in Cairo.
"But to all those who think that his passing away will open all the doors for peace, we say that this is false and that the answers never really lay with the Palestinians as much as with the Israelis."
Israel and the United States long accused Arafat of thwarting peace, but Arab commentators said this was a pretext.
"Israel and its supporters say the obstacle to peace that is Arafat has disappeared. This is untrue and unjust because (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon does not want to grant the Palestinian people their rights," said the daily Al-Khaleej newspaper in the United Arab Emirates.
Egypt, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Tunisia and Yemen declared three days mourning. Some called for Palestinian unity.
Tunisian President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali said: "The values and high virtues that Arafat embodied during his struggle for the Palestinian cause will inspire the Palestinian people." Egypt's presidency said Arafat "led his people with courage."
The Yemeni presidency urged Palestinians "to unite during this difficult time to rob the enemies of Palestine of the chance to stir up differences."
Palestinians across the spectrum grieved and Palestinian officials said they were working for a smooth transfer of power. But some said it would be difficult to repeat Arafat's balancing act between political groups.
"He was the only one who understood the importance of national unity and there will never be a Palestinian leader willing to bear the consequences of saying 'no' to the Americans and Israel," Arafat aide Jibril Rajoub told Al Jazeera television.
Associated Press Yasser Arafat's security guards read a newspaper outside Arafat's compound in the West Bank city of Ramallah today.
Khaldoun al-Naqib, a professor at Kuwait University, said: "The legacy of Arafat is so huge and his administration style is so awkward that you need more than one person to run the show.
Randa Ashmawi, columnist with Egypt's Al-Ahram Hebdo, said a moderate Palestinian leadership could emerge if Israel and the United States revived the peace process, but added: "If there is a deterioration, Hamas will take over."
Saudi newspaper commentator Hussein Shobokshi said: "The new Palestinian leadership will probably be more pragmatic. The only issue will be how they deal with Hamas and Islamic Jihad -- they might have to accommodate them in a government."
Hamas issued a combative statement: "The loss of the great leader will increase our determination and steadfastness to continue Jihad and resistance against the Zionist enemy until victory and liberation is achieved."
Iran -- Muslim but not Arab and long an opponent of the peace process -- urged Palestinians not to let Israel take advantage of a vacuum.
"What is important now is for the Palestinians to stay united and understand the sensitivity of the situation to confront the plots of the Zionist regime, which wants to take as much advantage as it can from Arafat's death," Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said.
Ordinary Arabs wondered whether Israel was willing to make peace, even with a new Palestinian leadership.
"The Israelis said they didn't want to talk peace with Arafat, now they will say the situation is not clear and they have no leader to discuss peace with," said Ibrahim Ezzat, a Cairo taxi driver.
But a few saw new hope. "Arafat's absence may open the door to a new path which could see Palestinians obtaining their rights," said Yemeni teacher Humoud al-Osaimi.
back to top back to Arafat Legacy Word from back to Word from main page home
Life and peace after ArafatSydney Morning Herald
Few revolutionary leaders manage a smooth transition from warrior to statesman. For almost 40 years Yasser Arafat personified the Palestinian cause. He launched the guerilla campaign against Israel and brought his people back from exile to the gates of Jerusalem. Freedom fighter, terrorist, or both, history will not dispute his battlefield nerve, nor his useful charisma and wit. But his legacy is not the proud Palestinian state of his people's aspirations. Like too many warriors, steeped in the urgency, paranoia and violence of armed struggle, he held power too close and was unable to embrace the arduous compromises of peace. For this, history will judge him harshly. Mr Arafat brought his people to the brink of statehood, then watched it slip away.
In 1993 Mr Arafat stood on the lawn of the White House and shook the hand of the then Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin. The Nobel Peace Prize was theirs. Mr Arafat went home to establish the Palestinian Authority and was elected its president, with 83 per cent of the popular vote. But Israel had not promised to stop moving settlers into the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza. This is where the deal collapsed. Mr Arafat's negotiators stumbled through the 1990s, unable to break the new deadlock. Another chance was lost at Camp David in 2000. The lands earmarked for a Palestinian state dwindled and Islamic militancy surged. A new cycle of bloodshed was unleashed, spearheaded by terrorism which Mr Arafat was either unwilling or unable to control.
At the same time the Palestinian Authority was cracking under the twin burdens of incompetence and corruption. Like many of his inner circle, Mr Arafat siphoned off handsome sums to his Swiss bank accounts while too many of his people lived in misery and squalor. Mr Arafat ran the authority like a personal fiefdom. He took all decisions and rotated his officials to ensure they never stayed in one place long enough to build a personal following. Even as the death toll in the new intifada pushed into the thousands, Mr Arafat remained defiant in the rubble of his compound. In reality, the Palestinian cause was so radicalised by dashed hopes - and Israeli military bombardments - that Mr Arafat's effectiveness as a negotiator was fading. He so feared that a compromise would trigger a backlash against his personal authority that he chose chaos instead.
There is, of course, another old warrior in this equation, the former Israeli army brigadier-general and now the country's Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon. Both men shamelessly used each other as an excuse to walk away from the negotiating table. Mr Sharon demonised Mr Arafat as the chief "obstacle to peace". Mr Arafat's death, then, should be used by Washington to renew pressure on Israel to break the impasse. No matter who fills the Palestinian leadership vacuum, there is only one path to peace. That is the creation of a viable Palestinian state, alongside a safe and secure Israel.
Pulling the wool over their eyes
The stunt sheep Lucy was a continuing if not comical presence around political leaders during the federal election campaign, but now the people behind the mascot have dealt a serious blow to Australia's $4 billion-a-year wool industry, already beset by the lowest prices in a year. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has pressured the giant American fashion chain Abercrombie & Fitch to ban Australian wool until mulesing and live exports are stopped. PETA is now poised to target European fashion houses.
Mindful of the impact on the industry, wool growers have responded with kid gloves and the iron fist. First, Australian Wool Innovation has filed claims in the Federal Court to stop PETA from threatening clothing retailers and is seeking an order to force the animal rights organisation to publish corrective advertising. Second, the industry has agreed to phase out mulesing by 2010 and to accelerate research into alternatives. But PETA has not been placated. Instead the extremist organisation, which claims a world membership of 800,000, has vowed to continue its campaign, saying animal welfare is more important than a sustainable wool industry.
Mulesing, the painful practice of removing wool-bearing skin from the sheep's crutch area to stop fly strike, has been widespread in Australia for more than a century. Australian wool growers are the only people in the world to use mulesing. But then Australia is the only country where sheep suffer so much from fly strike. The Australian Veterinary Association and the RSPCA accept it as a necessary evil to prevent a ghastly death by maggot infestation. PETA is well aware that sheep are spared by such a husbandry procedure. But operating under the principle that animals are not to be eaten, worn, experimented upon or used to entertain, it prefers to shelter behind the issue of welfare to achieve long-term goals of stopping the commercial exploitation of domestic animals.
A ban on mulesing could see 3 million sheep succumb to fly strike during a bad year. There lies true animal cruelty. Australia's sheep industry will endure whatever the outcome of PETA's campaign but the lesson for wool growers, and indeed any other sector that comes under attack from such a lopsided opponent, is the need to stick together, rather than allow radical antagonists to win by divide and conquer.
Source
After Arafat, peacemakers or fighters?With no groomed heir, power vacuum to bring uncertain times
By TOD ROBBERSON / The Dallas Morning News
LONDON – Even though Palestinian officials say they have an orderly succession plan to replace leader Yasser Arafat, Arabs and Israelis agree that a power vacuum seems inevitable whenever any four-decade, one-man dynasty suddenly comes to an end.
Many Middle Eastern analysts wonder if it will be a simple political tug-of-war or a confrontation among armed factions who are willing to use violence.
Either way, the analysts warn, Palestinians and Israelis should brace for uncertain and possibly unstable times.
"Arafat has embodied the struggle of the Palestinian people for so many years. ... It is the end of an era" dominated by a single, forceful personality, said Daud Abdullah, senior researcher at the Palestinian Return Center in London.
"It is the nature of things that there will be people jockeying for positions," he added. "There are nationalists, Islamists, Arabists – various elements who want to dominate the political scene" and who must learn to "resolve their differences politically, through dialogue, rather than resort to confrontation."
The easy part will be the immediate succession of leadership in the Palestinian Authority, the government that handles civil affairs in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia, an appointee of Mr. Arafat, will continue to administer governmental affairs as before.
Matters become slightly more complicated as the leadership opens up within the Palestine Liberation Organization and its largest party, Fatah, both of which have been chaired by Mr. Arafat for four decades. For the short term, Mahmoud Abbas, the former prime minister, is in line to take over the executive committee of the PLO, which administers Palestinian affairs internationally.
Elections must be held within 60 days to fill the Palestinian presidency, which Mr. Arafat has held. There are numerous possible contenders from across the political and military spectrum.
The 75-year-old former guerrilla leader would leave behind a Palestinian nation deeply divided among militant and moderate groups, each with its own ideas of how to achieve Palestinian statehood and whether to seek accommodation or confrontation with Israel.
The dangerous extent of those divisions was underscored in late 1983 when Palestinian rebel factions in Tripoli, Lebanon, challenged Mr. Arafat for control of the PLO. A civil war developed that left thousands of casualties and Tripoli in tatters.
Mr. Arafat then moved his headquarters to Tunisia, where he developed a loyal group of deputies – nicknamed by Palestinians as the "outsiders" – who now are vying to succeed him in the leadership. But younger Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have generated their own roster of leaders – dubbed the "insiders" – who are not necessarily willing to step aside.
Accusations
There are mutual accusations of corruption and cronyism between those factions, in part encouraged by Mr. Arafat, said Shmuel Sandler, a political science profession at Bar-Ilan University in Israel.
"Corruption is a part of politics in the Middle East. Arafat, I think, turned it into a system. He probably forced people to be corrupt because he could use it as a weapon to sustain his control," he said.
Added to the mixture today is the Islamic Resistance Movement, or Hamas, a hard-line faction that favors holy war against Israel. For years, Hamas has posed the biggest obstacle to Mr. Arafat's authority, using suicide bombers to attack Israel and foil cooperation with Palestinian moderates.
To compete with Hamas for the hearts and minds of young Palestinian militants, the Fatah group unleashed the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, to carry out similar suicide attacks.
In response, two years ago, Israel – backed by Washington – refused to have any dealings with Mr. Arafat. He has spent his late years a virtual prisoner inside his Ramallah compound, refusing to leave the West Bank for fear that Israel would kill him or refuse to let him return.
When Mr. Arafat is gone, those militant factions remain poised to spoil any deal that a moderate successor might broker with Israel without their consent.
Bring in militants
One option that analysts believe is gaining momentum is to bring the militant leaders into the negotiations so that they can share a stake in a peace deal. It is not clear, though, if the militants would join the talks.
"The Palestinians are highly polarized and militarized," said Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian academic who heads the Institute of Islamic Political Thought in London.
"Frankly, I don't see an end to the current [stalemate] unless the Israelis move and negotiate directly with the militants, with the people close to the guns," he said. "This vacuum that will be created will put the spotlight on Hamas. ... So if you want to stop the violence, you should talk to the people who are capable of generating the violence."
Despite the polarization, Mr. Sandler said he expects Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to encounter significantly less resistance to negotiations now that Mr. Arafat is out of the picture.
"It will be easier now – easier for Sharon," he said. The combined effects of Mr. Arafat's departure and the re-election of President Bush, a staunch supporter of Mr. Sharon, have left the Palestinian leadership few other options than to negotiate peace. Even the militants, he said, have been severely weakened by a recent Israeli military crackdown in Gaza.
Without a strong personality like Mr. Arafat to keep all sides motivated, their will to continue fighting Israel could diminish, he suggested. Or the war against Israel could become sidetracked by an internal Palestinian power struggle.
"It's true, he didn't prepare heirs" to the leadership, Mr. Sandler said. "He had enough people around him" for there to be lots of leadership options. "But the only question is whether there will be a war between all these people, a violent struggle, to see who takes over."
E-mail trobberson@dallasnews.com
back to top
back to Arafat Legacy Word from
back to Word from main page
home By Matthew Tostevin JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Even without the state he hungered for, Yasser Arafat managed to build as tangled a web of power and patronage as any of the region's autocrats.
For a successor to take up all the strands after he was declared dead on Thursday is a recipe for certain confusion and paralysis alongside the decay and division of a fiefdom broken by the past four years of fighting with Israel.
With no obvious inheritor to his mantle as icon of the struggle, the chances of anyone else being able to make big concessions for peace with the Jewish state is also minimal.
"I think people should consider whether he was taking the two-state solution with him to his grave," said Mouin Rabbani, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group thinktank.
"The problem Palestinians will encounter is that there are succession mechanisms but no successors," he said from Amman.
Arafat was declared dead in a French hospital after a swift decline into a coma and total organ failure.
The implications of his death go way beyond the West Bank and Gaza.
Arafat's death could complicate Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to quit occupied Gaza -- an initiative purposely conceived without Arafat that has stirred turmoil in Israel.
And with the fate of the Palestinians a burning issue across the Arab and Muslim world, Arafat's demise will also preoccupy President Bush, who has already spoken of a possible new push for peace with a new leadership.
"What we're talking about is such a revolutionary situation that it is impossible to predict the consequences," said Israeli analyst Yossi Alpher.
CHOSE NO SUCCESSOR
Not only did Arafat never pick a successor, but multiple positions acquired in a successful bid to concentrate power and avoid strong rivals mean that a power struggle -- though not necessarily a violent one -- is a near certainty.
Palestinian leaders have decided that he will be replaced as president of the Palestinian Authority by parliament speaker and constitutional successor Rawhi Fathou for 60 days.
But other powers will be taken by Prime Minister Ahmed Qurie and still more by former premier Mahmoud Abbas, the top official of the over-arching Palestine Liberation Organization.
"That would translate into possible conflict," said Barry Rubin, a not very complimentary Israeli biographer. "He has guaranteed disarray."
None of the likely candidates has stature or popularity to approach that of the short and grizzled former guerrilla.
Few believe that any government by committee and without one clear leader would last long before rivalries tore it apart.
Elections, that should now take place within two months, would be difficult in territories ruined and battered by the conflict with Israel.
FEARS OF VIOLENCE
Meanwhile, fears of violence have grown because of unprecedented unrest over calls for anti-corruption reforms and a shakeup of a plethora of competing security forces.
Particular concern focuses on the Gaza Strip, already showing signs of a bloody tussle for control ahead of an Israeli pullout. But West Bank cities like Jenin and Nablus are also heavily under the sway of gunmen.
Arafat's failure to crack down on militants has long been held up by Israel and the United States to accuse him of being the main obstacle to peace in the Middle East.
Those same groups have also made clear that they now seek greater political sway. The Islamic faction Hamas has led calls for a unified leadership after Arafat in which it would play a part -- a prospect that could horrify Israel.
Detractors say Arafat should have taken an offer in 2000 when he might have got it instead of holding out for traditional demands like a right of return for refugees who fled wars with Israel.
But only the most optimistic predict that any successor would be able to do much more than Arafat without his background, his ability to persuade Palestinians that he knows best, or his cunning.
Israeli officials say tough closures on Palestinian areas might be eased to help a moderate successor to emerge, but in a power struggle to claim Arafat's inheritance it would not benefit any candidate to be seen as an Israeli stooge.
"No matter what people say about Arafat, he maintained the national pride and he didn't make concessions on the main issues," said Palestinian analyst Mahdi Abdul Hadi.
"No successor can go crossing that red line."
back to top back to Arafat Legacy Word from back to Word from main page home |