It was bad enough when the Israeli Army chief said on Friday that Israel’s occupation forces were likely to remain for months in the seven West Bank cities they recently reoccupied. But Shaul Mofaz turned bad news even worse when a day later he stated the troops might not leave until Yasser Arafat is removed from office.
Mofaz was of course taking a leaf from the George Bush policy book that says Arafat must be jettisoned by his own people if the United States is to help in the creation of a Palestinian state. Because of the Bush policy statement, there might now not be an Israeli withdrawal from occupied land and certainly no new negotiations to break the deadlock after a weekend Israeli poll suggested the majority of Israelis want Arafat out before any renewed talks can begin.
The effect of the Bush statement is that instead of addressing the impasse, seeing exactly what the problems are, the world is being diverted into a debate on Palestinian succession. Ariel Sharon and his government are responsible for the occupation, yet it is Arafat the US administration seeks to remove. Bush is attempting to reduce the entire crisis to the person of Arafat, as if making him vanish will make the problems disappear along with him.
Arafat’s reshuffling of the hierarchy of his security apparatus this past week was dismissed in Washington as purely cosmetic because the administration seeks an entirely new and different leadership. In the political definition of the Bush administration, this is a leader who would cooperate with the United States, renounce armed resistance against the Israeli occupation and negotiate a settlement acceptable to Sharon. This settlement would include a state not on the 22 percent of the land that Oslo had led the Palestinians to expect, but a mere 42 percent of that original 22 percent, or less than 10 percent of historic Palestine.
Palestinians, then, are being asked to stage a coup against their leader in return for a truncated state which has no weapons, no sovereignty, no autonomous frontiers and no territorial integrity. Just a patchwork of isolated cantons which, if any Palestinian is still interested, is three years down the road.
It is incomprehensible how the US, which preaches democracy day and night, and issues an annual rights report that grades others, refuses not only to recognize the democratically-elected leader of the Palestinians but seeks to dump him, saying so out loud.
When any foreign power urges a people to vote out their duly elected leader as a condition for achieving statehood, this represents a challenge to the very foundations of world order.
If Bush feels able to demand a change in the Palestinian leadership today, what is to prevent him from demanding a change in the leadership of another Arab state tomorrow, a leader whose conduct or thinking perhaps displeases him — and by appealing to the same sets of reasons?
Fortunately, Bush is having a rough ride shoring up support for his policy. The consensus in Washington on Arafat’s removal is not mirrored among Palestinians, in Arab states or Europe. In the G-8 summit, Washington was the odd man out as most participants insisted the Palestinians had the right to elect their own leaders. The G-8 communiqué made no mention of a regime change. Even the usually compliant Tony Blair repeated his view that it’s for the Palestinians to elect the people that they choose to elect.
Bush’s declaration has had only one effect: Boosting Arafat’s popularity. Palestinians are rallying to his side even more following this combined American-Israeli onslaught. The latest Palestinian public opinion polls suggest blanket support; nine out of 10 Palestinians say they will vote for Arafat when presidential elections are held in January.
In the wake of Sept. 11 attacks, a question frequently asked in the US was: Why they hate us? One oft-quoted answer, from one of President Bush’s close advisers was: Because we elect our leaders. Karen Hughes should have added: They hate us because we also elect leaders for other countries.
