NOVEMBER 2004

When I finish the following words, Arafat will probably no longer be of this world. I knew the man since 1970. Since then I met him on countless occasions(1). I can say he was not only my leader but also a friend. He was then married to Palestine and died married to Palestine. Palestine is a beautiful woman with a just cause. He was proud of her and he gave her all he had, the best way he could. He slaved for her all his life and he died at her service. To the many people of this Palestine he became the tireless symbol of their just struggle and cause. For Palestine he traveled the four corners of the earth singing her song. From Beijing, Moscow, Paris and Washington he stated clear and loud his love for Palestine. He used to say "I would build my home and my state even if it were on one square meter in this beloved Palestine. From that square meter I will continue the struggle for its liberation."

In his way, for Palestine, he played a dangerous game, playing on the contradictions of corrupt Arab governments who chased him from one region to another, who put him in jail and killed his friends and followers. Those regimes until this very moment use Palestine as lip service so they can survive the anger of their people. While doing this, those regimes sunk deep and became slaves to their masters who are the enemies of Palestine. Arafat didn't join them; he fought them as best he could and used them as best as he could to survive.

Arafat met his worst enemies face to face. He didn't clinch. All their powers didn't make him clinch and he continued his fight for Palestine. He succeeded not only to become the symbol of his people but also to put foot in Palestine. This was his dream and he achieved it. Even the mightiest power of his foes didn't succeed in killing him. He died of unknown sickness to which his enemies have contributed. They believe his death will leave the road to Palestine, and their evil designs for Palestine, open. They are wrong. They don't understand Arafat's people and their ways. They never will succeed because Arafat planted the seeds of liberation into the Palestinian mind. He was the symbol of his people and the obstacle to his enemies. He is not alone now; he is millions of people, not only in Palestine but also all over the world. Many so-called intellectuals of this world fell into his enemy's propaganda. What a shame! They didn't realize that he is part of the Palestinian soil and soul. He was born from the ashes of Palestine, of this land and he will become again part of the ashes of the same Palestine. He incarnated the hopes, the laughter, the sadness, the suffering of his land and his people. He will live forever in their memory and his lessons and love will never be forgotten.

Many leaders come and go, but none of them was or ever will be like Arafat. He could make laughter, he could cry, swear and accept his views in just few minutes of talk. Goodbye friend, for I know we shall meet soon and keep the watch over the beautiful bride with the name of Palestine.

(1) The first meeting took place in 1971; we met at least four times a year in Beirut, Damascus, Algeria and the last one in 2002 in Palestine.
Rezeq Faraj

Death of a Martyr

By Israel Shamir

The great leader of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, is dead. This unique man, whose withered body was interned on the Eve of Eid el Fitr in a coffin with the holy soil of Jerusalem in the midst of his ruined fortress, was a symbol of struggle for Palestinian dignity. He will be forever remembered as a young warrior who broke the teeth of Jewish arrogance in the battle of Karameh, in 1968, when his fedayyin resisted the irresistible force of Israel and caused its first ever defeat. He will be remembered as a friend of Leila Haled, the man with a gun who blew up enemy airplanes and spoke at the UN. He will be listed among other warrior-saints of the century next to Che Guevara and Chapaev. He will be remembered also for his last stand, for the last three dreadful years he had spent in besieged Mukata as Sumud personified, as example of unconditional clinging of a native man to his soil.

He did not ran away when Israel bombed and strafed Mukata, he did not ran away when the Jews discussed daily how should they kill him, he did not ran away during the hard years of Intifada – he stayed with his people to the bitter end. Eventually he was granted glorious martyrdom as one of thousands Palestinians martyred in the bloody war, together with Abdelkader el Husseini, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and other leaders and warriors.

Even his errors were errors of a good man. He believed that the enemy will abide by an agreement, he believed that the superpower will enforce the treaty they guaranteed, he believed in a possibility of carving out two states in his beloved Palestine. He submitted to endless humiliations, agreed to endless concessions to the insatiable adversary, but he never surrendered the Noble Sanctuary of Haram al Sharif, never gave up the right of return of his people to Jaffa and Haifa.

His death of a martyr is also death of the Two-states-solution, of a Palestinian-state-alongside-Jewish-state mantra. Now we should concentrate our efforts in the only possible direction – creation of one democratic state for all in the whole of the Holy Land from the River to the Sea.  We call for immediate release of Marwan Barghouthi from the Israeli captivity, together with thousands other prisoners-of-war. We call for general elections with participation of all inhabitants of historic Palestine, native Palestinians and Ashkenazi, Oriental and Russian immigrants, on basis of full equality. We call to inter the mortal remains of Arafat the Martyr in al Aqsa Mosque, next to Abdelkader al Husseini, as a guardian of the Holy Mountain. We shall redeem you, Arafat!

***

My Russian friend and a great modern writer Alexander Prochanov wrote these ringing lines about the great fallen leader a few years ago, when the Intifada just began. They are still suitable today:

Arafat as the Leader of Palestinians and of Russians

By Alexander Prochanov,
Zavtra weekly No: 42(359) Date: 17-10-2000

The great nations whose haughty stalk shook the earth, who changed the world, revolted, populated new continents, conceived new religions, now are staring drowsily at their shepherds, who brought them into the sty of the new world order, drip dross from a table of America into their manger, pour the Circe’s potion of IMF, titillate them by a distant sight of the synthetic heifer of the American dream. A nation that dares to kick and pull the chain is flogged by electronic scourges of CNN; its skin pierced by sharp Tomahawks. The Russians forgot Pushkin’s poems and Stalin’s victories; Latin America does not recollect Bolivar, Sandino and Che Guevara.

But in one spot, a space ray burned through the dead encapsulating shell of the planet. This space ray, as God’s finger, points to the people of Palestine. Wherever the ray reaches the earth, wherever it shines over Gaza, Jerusalem and Hebron, History Alive is re-created before our eyes. As in the days of the prophets, the people of the Holy Land pray, shoot, bleed, sing the songs of struggle, face the Jewish tanks, tear off their steely caterpillars with bare hands, stops up with their bodies the flaming gun mouths, demonstrate to the fuzzy emasculated world the meaning of words Freedom, Country, God.

Israel is doomed. She is disgusting to the Arabs, French, Englishmen, even to herself. Red- hot Intifada is the fiery river, in which another myth of the 20^th century melts and sinks to the bottom — the Zionist idea. According to designs of Herzl and Zhabotinsky, a small geopolitical monstrosity was created on the Arab lands. They have imposed on America and Germany the annual tribute of five billions dollars. They pour napalm on the mosques and transform the whole nations into homeless survivors and refugees. They brainwash the whole world with their ‘ashes of Auschwitz’.

On the place of Israel, the Arabs will plant many fig trees and Lebanese cedars; they will create a National Park called The Jewish National Home: it will be the home of the large and pretty Hebrew-speaking parrot.

Yasser Arafat is the last national leader of the turn-of-the-millennium. The Great Palestinian was reared by his people professing the faith of freedom; he erased the division between Sacred and Mundane together with distinction between Life and Death. God came to His people incarnated as the wise, fearless, tireless, incorruptible leader. He closes eyes to the fallen fedai, embraces the orphan, wipes tears of widow, departs from burning Beirut with his warriors, enters the Beast’s lair in Camp David, reads the incinerated Koran in Sabra and Shatila, kisses the hot earth of his native Palestine, walks with his olive branch and the Kalashnikov gun into the immortality of history.

“Tell me, the branch of Palestine: where did you grow, where you have blossomed...” - asked the poet. It would reply: “I grew in the Garden of Eden of our Lord the God. Of my strong wood, the handgrip and the stock of the machinegun are made. My fiery leaves, like the drops of a Molotov cocktail, fly on the armor of the Israeli tanks. My blossom decorates the bullet-perforated banner of PLO. My fruits are sweet for the heroes and martyrs, sweet as Freedom... "

The Passion of Arafat
Gilad Atzmon

In the last ten days of his life the world held its breath following what appeared to be an everlasting battle between a giant freedom fighter and the angel of death. Many of us were following the news with care, many of us were praying for the president's recovery. Apparently, not all of us: we also had a chance to see some  necrophiliac Israeli ministers who would not let go, for them this was an opportunity to entertain themselves with fatality, an opportunity not to be missed. They tried to convince us for the last time that Arafat was a terrorist, that the notion of him being buried in Jerusalem amongst ‘Jewish Kings’ was inconceivable.  These Israelis leaders insisted on telling us that this great man was an  ‘enemy of peace’. But as it seems, their viciousness didn’t prevail.

By now the world is accustomed to Israeli politicians and their utter lack of manners, not to mention a complete absence of empathic qualities. And yet, Jewish ministers and the Israeli media were dismayed to discover that once again, Jewish sadism had been defeated, if anything it was found to be counter effective. With worldwide extensive coverage on all news networks, Arafat was buried today as an admired world-class leader. Arafat is probably the last popular ‘people’s leader’. A man of the people, who failed to become an American puppet or even an autocrat bureaucrat.

For three years, the old man was encircled in his bombarded compound, occasionally his life was put at a severe risk; the Muqata, the building in which he spent his final year, was torn apart and a threat of collapse was imminent for more than two years. In spite of his age, without electricity or running water, in spite of daily humiliation by the people who colonised his land, the man didn’t surrender. And yet the Israelis never stopped, when they didn’t bomb him they wanted to cleanse him. But the man did not give up. Presenting his people with the greatest form of mighty dignity, he encouraged them to resist and they did.

It was shocking to find out that the Israeli politicians and media outlets were foolish enough to bully the dying man. How blind can you be to the most basic sense of humanity? The old labour Zionists were as sadistic as their right wing successors but at least they were fully engaged in disguising their real motives. They always at least pretended to be peace lovers.  It now appears that the current leading Israelis are far more genuine.  Much like their ancient biblical ancestors, they went for the most banal vulgar populist choice; they provided their crowd with  the most bloody message of vengeance. Israeli identity is obsessed with the search for the notion of ultimate revenge. The sensation of coming down on their defenceless foes like a ton of bricks makes them feel very pleased with themselves. This rather awkward philosophy matured into the Israeli official political and military strategy. The elected Israeli government is there merely to provide the Israelis with Palestinian blood. The Israeli government have very little claim for fame on any other front, neither in economy nor in social security, nor indeed in personal security. They specialise in providing the Israeli public with a high Palestinian death rate. In tactical terms they define it as ‘power of deterrence’ but in practice it is
better articulated as sheer bloodthirstiness.

Very much like their biblical ancestors, the Israelis like to see their enemy beaten to death,whether it is an old dying Arafat or a family annihilated by a gun ship in Gaza. As terrifying as it sounds, the pain of others makes the Israelis cheerful. This is the only explanation for the murderous activities enacted by the Israeli army in occupied territories. This is the only explanation for them bullying the dying Arafat even when it was clear that he was on his last legs. The concept of compassion is completely foreign to them.

It now appears that the emancipation of the Jewish people that led to the birth of Zionism: a racist, colonialist and nationalist state, is now evolving into its very last phase: a sadistic manifestation. Israel is engaged in the daily bullying of the Palestinian people. When bullying gets boring, they go for the kill; when killing gets boring, they humiliate the dying Arafat. The Israelis enjoy their overwhelming power. At the end of the day, it must be quite good fun to threaten the entire region with your colossal
nuclear destructive power.

But then, it is not entirely surprising that the Western world and especially the Europeans are uneasy with the latest manifestation of Zionism. They stand and stare at current events with a sense of familiarity. For Westerners, the passion of Arafat and the via-delerosa of the Palestinian people isn’t a revelation, it is merely a repetition. A repetition of the birth of the entire Western ethos, an ethos that is based upon the denunciation of sadism and the endorsement of empathy. Israel is going the other way, it is the narcissistic embodiment of any possible inhuman sense. It is the celebration of cruelty. History teaches us that when sadistic narcissism reveals its face, the end should be anticipated. Israel's days are numbered; it is just a question of time before they turn against themselves.


http://www.gilad.co.uk

AFTER THE DEATH OF A PARTNER

GUSH SHALOM - pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033  www.gush-shalom.org/


November 11. Three months ago, in the beginning of August, a delegation of Israeli Gush Shalom activists visited Yasser Arafat at the Presidential Compound in Ramallah, half-ruined in repeated raids by the Israeli armed forces. 

We have maintained this dialogue for over two decades, in changing circumstances. There was the time before Oslo, when meeting Arafat (or any PLO official) was illegal under Israeli law and could carry a maximum of three years' imprisonment. Then a sharp shift to the days of the flourishing peace process, when meetings with the Palestinian President had become a commonplace in the Israeli mainstream and in his waiting room one could frequently encounter senior Israeli government officials. And from there, again to times of bloodshed and soaring hatred, when Sharon and Bush (with the voluntary help of numerous columnists and politicians) were eminently successful in depicting Arafat as a terrible monster - and meeting him became once again a highly controversial and taboo-breaking act, sometimes involving physical danger at times when government ministers spoke seriously of sending  commandos in, to capture or kill Arafat.
 
By keeping contact with and even acting on occasion as human shield for the man venerated by millions of Palestinians as their leader and the father of their nation, we felt that we were serving the long term interests of Israel. And whatever the outside circumstances, inside the meeting room Arafat
was always the affable, gracious and attentive host, with the old-fashioned gallantry of handkissing women. 

The meeting in August this year was not an exception. Arafat seemed strong and vigorous when we discussed the situation in the Gaza Strip (at that time afflicted by a combination of an extensive invasion by the Israeli army and internal strife between Palestinian factions). We came out with a clear message from Arafat: a call upon Sharon to resume the peace negotiations broken off by Barak in 2001, as well as to facilitate the holding of new, internationally-supervised elections for the Palestinian institutions. Arafat himself was quite ready to face in the ballot box any contestant for the presidency. For the longer range, Arafat had set out the vision of a Benelux- type confederation beween Israel, Palestine and Jordan, and recalled in vivid detail a discussion on the subject which he had with Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein.

There was nothing to indicate that this meeting would be the last. If he already felt the symptoms of whatever killed him, he concealed them well  - from us and from others who met him at the time. But then, Arafat just did not have the option available to an ordinary 75-year old: to declare himself  ill and go to seek the best of medical attention. We will never know if he could have been saved, had he gone to France earlier. But even if completely cured, Sharon would surely not have let him come back, and he would have lived out his remaining days in exile. For Arafat, that was an unacceptable price. He could only carry on with his daily routine - a paradoxical mixture of being head of state and being a closely-guarded prisoner, with the accumulated strain of both roles - until the final collapse.

The Paris hospital refused to divulge details of the exact cause of Arafat's death, citing "privacy". Yet he had had precious little privacy in these two final weeks. His dying, like his life, was conducted in the spotlight of publicity, drama and high tragedy mixing with elements of farce and burlesque, when Suha Arafat started an unseemly squabble with senior Palestinian officials - and all too many Israeli politicians and commentators expressing a disgusting glee and hope for the death of an old ill man.  

Two busloads of Israelis, from Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, will go  to the funeral in Ramallah at the initiative of Gush Shalom - to share in the Palestinians' mourning for the Father of their Nation and pay the final respect to Israel's enemy who could have been our partner in building up a peaceful future. We will also mourn the thousands of Israelis and Palestinians who died - and will die -  because that chance to make Arafat into Israel's partner was allowed to slip away (or rather, was deliberately smashed and destroyed).  

And now - what? For all that he had conducted a kind of personal vendetta with Arafat, Sharon may not be entirely happy with the Palestinian leader's passing - which makes much less plausible the claim that Israel has "no partner". Now, quite a few mainstream politicians are calling for the withdrawal from Gaza to be transformed from a unilateral Israeli measure into a bilateral agreement, the beginning of an overall end of the occupation also on the West Bank. And on the extreme right, the call is rather facetiously made "to halt withdrawal from Gaza while watching developments among the Palestinians". For his part, Sharon is already preparing to prove that even with "Arafat the monster" gone, Israel still has "no partner". 

Meanwhile, the Palestinians confounded the pundits' predictions of "a bloody succession struggle" by a smooth and orderly passing on and division of Arafat's powers among a provisional collective leadership. But Abu Mazen, Abu Ala and the other new leaders have little of the charisma and public standing which Arafat had. Even if hailed in the Western media as "moderates" and "pragmatists",  Abu Mazen and Abu Ala will be much less able than Arafat to confront radical militias head-on or make any   concessions on for example the implementation of the Right of Return. And some of the leaders who do have a charisma and public standing remotely comparable to Arafat's - such as Marwan Barguthi - are now incarcerated in Israeli prisons, from which Sharon shows no inclination to release them.

The key to the situation, in the crucial period immediately ahead, may lie in the article of Palestinian law which mandates new general elections within sixty days of the president's death. Obviously, new elections are vitally necessary in order for any new Palestinian leadership to truly have a  legitimacy and  popular mandate - and having such a leadership is a vital Israeli need just as much as it is a Palestinian need. But free elections are hardly compatible with an ongoing harsh occupation and daily fighting: free elections cannot take place when any Palestinian voter or candidate can at any moment be "eliminated" by a missile from an Israeli helicopter gunboat or hauled off in the middle of the night for the tender mercies of the Israeli Security Service interrogators. In effect, free elections require a comprehensive cease-fire and an effective reversal of Israel's re-occupation of the West bank cities, imposed since April 2002.

Sharon, clearly, has not the least inclination in this direction. And  it also seems too much to hope that  George W. Bush will start taking seriously his own pronouncements about "the need for a functioning Palestinian democracy"...

Adam Keller
Gush Shalom spokesperson
+972-3-5565804 / +972-50-6709603                                        


Boycott List of Settlement Products (newly updated)

  
Hebrew / òáøéú
http://gush-shalom.org/Boycott/boycheb.htm

English
http://gush-shalom.org/Boycott/boyceng.htm

1. Liste des personnalités qui ont participé aux funérailles du Président Yasser Arafat (Le Caire, vendredi 12 novembre 2004)
- Afghanistan : Hedayat Amin Arsala, vice-président
- Afrique du Sud : Thabo Mbeki, président
- Algérie : Abdelaziz Bouteflika, président
- Allemagne : Joschka Fischer, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Arabie saoudite : Abdallah ben Abdel Aziz, prince héritier
- Bangladesh : Lajuddin Ahmed, président
- Bosnie : Adnan Terzic, Premier ministre
- Brésil : José Dirceu, chef de cabinet du président Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, numéro deux du gouvernement
- Canada : Pierre Pettigrew, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Chine : Hui Liangyu, vice-Premier ministre
- Chypre : Vassos Lyssaridès, ancien président du Parlement
- Croatie : Miomir Zuzul, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Danemark : Per Stig Moeller, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Djibouti : Ismaïl Omar Guelleh, président
- Estonie : Priit Kolbre, secrétaire général du ministère des Affaires étrangères
- Etats-Unis : Williams Burns, secrétaire d'Etat adjoint chargé du PO
- Espagne : Miguel Angel Moratinos, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Finlande : Erkki Tuomioja, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- France : Michel Barnier, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Grèce : Pétros Molyviatis, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Italie : Alfredo Mantica, sous-secrétaire aux Affaires étrangères, le président du Sénat, Marcello Pera, et le ministre de l'Agriculture, Gianni Alemanno
- Inde : Natwar Singh, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Indonésie : Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, président
- Iran : Kamal Kharazi, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Irlande : Dermot Ahern, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Japon : Mme Yoriko Kawaguchi, conseiller spécial du Premier ministre Junichiro Koizumi et ex-ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Jordanie : le roi Abdallah II
- Koweït : Ahmed al-Fahd al-Sabah, ministre de l'Economie
- Lettonie : Andris Vilcans, ambassadeur en Egypte
- Liban : Emile Lahoud, président, Nabih Berri, président du Parlement, Omar Karamé, Premier ministre, Mahmoud Hammoud, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Lituanie : Antanas Valionis, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Malaisie : Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Premier ministre
- Maroc : Moulay Rachid, prince héritier
- Mauritanie : Sghaïr Ould M'Bareck, Premier ministre, Mohamed Vall Ould Bellal, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Nigéria : Aminu Bello Masari, président du parlement
- Norvège : Jan Petersen, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Oman : Youssef ben Alaoui ben Abadallah, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- ONU : Terje Roed-Larsen, représentant spécial de Kofi Annan au PO
- Pays-Bas : Ben Bot, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Pologne : Login Pastusiak, président du Sénat
- Portugal : Antonio Monteiro, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Qatar : cheikh Hamad ben Jassem ben Jabr Al-Thani, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- République tchèque : Cyril Svoboda, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Roumanie : Simona Miculescu, conseillère du président Ion Iliescu
- Royaume-Uni : Jack Straw, secrétaire au Foreign Office
- Russie : Boris Gryzlov, président de la Douma (chambre basse du Parlement), Alexandre Saltanov, vice-ministre des Affaires étrangères, Evgueni Primakov, ancien ministre des A.E
- Sénégal : Abdoulaye Wade, président
- Serbie-Monténégro : Predrag Boskovic, adjoint du ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Slovaquie : Eduard Kukan, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Somalie : Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed, président
- Soudan : Omar al-Béchir, président
- Sri Lanka : Mahinda Rajapakse, Premier ministre
- Suède : Goeran Persson, Premier ministre
- Suisse : Mme Micheline Calmy-Rey, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Syrie : Bachar al-Assad, président
- Tunisie : Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, président
- Turquie : Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Premier ministre, Abdullah Gul, ministre des Affaires étrangères
- Union africaine : Alpha Oumar Konaré, président de la commission de l'UA
- Union européenne : Ben Bot, ministre néerlandais des Affaires étrangères (dont le pays assure la présidence tournante de l'UE), représenterait la Présidence de l'UE, Louis Michel, commissaire européen et ex-ministre belge des Affaires étrangères, représenterait la Commission européenne, Javier Solana, Haut Représentant de l'Union européenne pour la politique étrangère
- Yémen : Ali Abdallah Saleh, président
- Délégation de la direction palestinienne : Mahmoud Abbas, chef de l'OLP, Rawhi Fattouh, président par intérim de l'Autorité palestinienne, Saëb Erakat, ministre chargé des négociations.