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Countdown to
another Palestinian catastrophe By Avi Davis August 14, 2001 As Israeli troops stormed Orient House in East Jerusalem on Friday, those moderate Palestinian Arabs with long memories must have been visited by a deep sense of foreboding. While the Israeli action could be seen by the less sophisticated as a hurried political retaliation to a suicide bombing, those who know the Israelis are viewing it for what it really represents: the beginning of the end. The Israelis did not choose to strike at Palestinian centers of terrorism in Ramallah, Nablus or Gaza City to make their statement. They chose a location that has come to be seen by both the Palestinians and the rest of the world as a de facto Palestinian foreign ministry and a symbol of prospective nationhood. To be sure, the Israeli action did not violate any internationally sanctioned agreements or, let it be said, international law. The Israeli-Palestinian agreements specifically provide that Jerusalem is excluded from Palestinian jurisdiction (Interim Agreement Article XVII.1). Moreover, the Interim Agreement states that all PA offices can only be located in areas under Palestinian territorial jurisdiction in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Interim Agreement Article I.7). Understood in this way, the operation of Orient House as a locus of Palestinian political activity was always implicitly illegal and its sequestration was a legitimate exercise of Israeli sovereignty on property over which it has claimed jurisdiction for 33 years. Yet the action has deep implications for the future of the Palestinian people. The Israelis have husbanded their power for months as their citizens have been picked off on Israel's roads. It is no secret that the Israeli military is well honed for an all out confrontation with the Palestinian militia. Its intelligence services and its army are keyed for a sweep that will result in elimination of the Palestinians' military capacity in less than 72 hours. It is only the risk of international opprobrium and retribution that has stayed the government's hand. But support for that kind of restraint now seems to be quickly eroding. Arafat's continued failure to rein in terror and his surreptitious advocacy of violence has inexorably impelled the conflict to a point of no return. Having sided with terrorists and advocates of violence, he has progressively conceded the moral high ground to the Israelis to such an extent that he often appears to be knowingly plunging the Palestinian cause towards catastrophe. In doing so, Arafat is tragically re-treading the steps of successive Palestinian leaders over the course of a century. In 1939, the Palestinian Arab leaders rejected the British White Paper which advocated the creation of an Arab state in 78% of Palestine. Not only did they reject it, but their subsequent open support for Hitler in the Second World War spurred British alienation, resulting in the U.K.'s support for a less favorable partition plan in 1947. In that year the UN Partition plan advocated the creation of two states with 70% of habitable Palestine allocated to the Arabs. Once again, the Palestinian leaders rejected the plan and then urged a war of elimination for which they we re in all essentials unprepared. It resulted in flight, dispersion and loss of territory that is grieved until this day as their 'Nakba' or disaster. In 1967, an Arab war, egged on by the newly formed P.L.O., resulted in one of the most devastating routs in world history, with Israeli conquests in the West Bank, Gaza and Sinai almost tripling the Jewish state's size. The Israelis, in what was possibly the most magnanimous gesture of any government since, then offered to return that territory for recognition, negotiation and peace. The Arab nations, meeting in Khartoum in August 1967, were unequivocal in their rejection. The three nos became the high water mark of Arab obduracy. It doomed the region to further bloodshed and led to a succession of pointless wars. Many who observed Arafat's peripatetic wanderings from Washington to other foreign capitals in the 90s, were gripped by the illusion that the Palestinians had finally been rewarded with a leader who understood the historic opportunities that lay before him. But those reading translations of his speeches in Arabic knew better. As one of his greatest boosters, former U.S Ambassador Martin Indyk has now attested, Arafat never forswore violence. In fact his Arabic speeches over the past eight years, calling for jihad, differ little in either content or fury from those of his predecessors 70 years ago. The devastating effect that this has had on Israeli trust and confidence cannot be understated. It has turned the clock back 25 years, destroyed the peace movement and left a residue of bitterness that may be indelible. But the true tragedy remains that Arafat's recalcitrance has brought the crushing weight of history down on the Palestinians themselves. Cursed for decades with corrupt, vainglorious and incompetent leadership, they are victims of political chicanery who have once again been brought to the very brink of the abyss.
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