Monitoring Policy Making at the United Nations |
| ||||||||||||
Arafat Tells Haaretz: “The Wall is Ruining the New Middle East” - UN Security Council - Global Policy Forum Arafat Tells Haaretz:
“The Wall is Ruining the New Middle East”By Danny Rubinstein
Haaretz
August 6, 2003Monday, August 4, was Yasser Arafat's 74th birthday and delegations of children dressed in their best clothes brought flowers to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority. There were times, in the heady days after the signing of the Oslo accords, when many Israelis too would have made a small pilgrimage to Arafat's office to offer him best wishes for his birthday.
But in the last two and a half years the chairman has slipped back into the status he "enjoyed" in the 1970s and 1980s - the most hated man of Israeli public opinion. Asked who among Israelis remains his friend and a friend of the Palestinians, he answers, "Yossi Sarid."
There's a table, a few chairs, and a TV tuned soundlessly to Al Jazeera - and not even a phone on the table. Otherwise, Arafat's little room in the Ramallah Muqata is empty. The ubiquitous photo of Al Aqsa and the Dome of the Rock hangs behind him as he bitterly complains how he doesn't even know his eight-year-old daughter Zahawa.
She's with her mother Suha in Tunis, and Arafat last saw her two and a half years ago during a brief meeting at a Paris airport on his way from Gaza to the U.S.
He looks his age, but the tremble in his lip is nearly gone. It is difficult for him to sit for a long time in his office, practically without moving. Sometimes he goes outside to get a little sun.
He's been advised to take walks in the courtyard to preserve his health and he does, but since he isn't used to walking he's developed blisters on his feet. Characteristically intimate, even with strangers, he shows off the blisters on his bare feet to his visitors.
Splitting Iraq
Not only his blisters, and not only the Israel-Palestinian situation worry the Palestinian leader, but also what's happening throughout the region. Iraq, according to Arafat's analysis, is being turned into three countries, one Shiite, one Kurdish and one Sunni. The Shiites, connected to Iran, are becoming politically important in the northwest of Saudi Arabia, where they are a large part of the population, and in the Gulf states.
"The balance of power in the region that was maintained with Iraq's existence has been disrupted, and that could result in difficult shocks across the Middle East," he says. The tragedy of 900 Palestinian families who lived for decades in Iraq and during the war were thrown out of their homes also bothers him. Those Palestinians are now crowded into two small refugee camps in Iraq and Arafat sends them emergency aid through Jordan.
He regards Israel's release of prisoners this week as an act of fraud and deceit. He has data on the matter he says, and his aide Nabil Abu Rudeineh explains that since the Sharm el Sheikh and Aqaba summits, Israel has arrested more Palestinians than it will release today.
Abu Rudeineh describes the chain of events in the Muqata over the weekend, when Arafat's security detail arrested 18 wanted men who were in the compound, and in Arafat's name an appeal was made to Israel to help move the wanted men to Jericho. "But four days have gone by and we haven't heard any Israeli response," says the Arafat aide.
"West Bank wall"
The separation fence, or the "wall," as he calls it, also bothers Arafat. He describes how it turned Qalqilyah into a city under siege with one gate and how Tul Karm is better off, with three gates planned for the fence around the city.
But the issue is not only the winding route of the fence, which is expropriating land and property from Palestinians. (According to Arafat, of the 21 wells of Qalqilyah, only two remain). No, for Arafat, the issue of the wall is also an issue of principle.
The Palestinian position, which Arafat wholeheartedly supports, is that there should be no need for fences and walls between Israel and the Palestinians. He says that in the days of Oslo, there were dreams of a new Middle East, like Benelux.
Arafat says he and many others wanted to see cooperation and open borders between Israel, Palestine, Jordan and possibly Lebanon, and nobody thought about a separation wall running through the country.
He also supports an idea recently raised by Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, for an American-British-Australian mandate in the West bank and Gaza for an interim period, until a permanent agreement is reached. "I always was in favor of sending international forces to the West Bank and Gaza, under an American umbrella," he says, adding he also spoke about the idea at the Camp David summit.
But despite the developments of the recent years, Arafat says the situation on the ground has not undermined his optimistic outlook. He repeats his childhood anecdotes from Jerusalem, about his uncle's house near the Western Wall where he says he played with Jewish children.
One of his aides returns the elderly leader to the present, handing him a cellular phone. It's some children at a summer camp in Jericho. They want to sing happy birthday to him.
More Information on the "Peace Process"
More Information on Israel, Palestine and the Occupied TerritoriesFAIR USE NOTICE: This page contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Global Policy Forum distributes this material without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. We believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in 17 U.S.C ß 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
