Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat’s sudden illness and unexpected departure to France may have commenced the “end of an era” as some rashly noted. Without a doubt, the absence of Arafat, even as a living symbol, is consequential in many ways. However, we must not indulge in misrepresenting the Palestinian struggle and reduce it to the legacy of one man.
It is still too early to assess Arafat’s constructive contributions to the Palestinian march for freedom. It might even take years following his death before such estimations are possible. The imperative at this moment in time, is that his absence, whether in death or incapacitation, does not contribute to the faltering of the Palestinian uprising, a nation’s unmatched ability to stand up to the awesome power of a rouge state with closed fists and unyielding defiance.
There is something so typical and yet so unique about Yasser Arafat, his old age and failing health. For some, he is just another autocratic Arab ruler, clinging to his chair, refusing to share power or to allocate responsibility to anyone other than his cronies, and with nothing new to offer, save the worn out rhetoric about a “light at the end of the tunnel” and the “mountain (that) cannot be shaken by the wind.”
But those who only see this side of Arafat conveniently ignore the political, cultural and even intellectual edifice represented in his person, an intermix of substantial and intangible representations that for long meant different things to different people.
Arafat — whether deliberately or not — managed to associate himself with every hardship that Palestinians carried throughout the years.
For Arab leaders, despite his fall-outs with some on various occasions, Arafat was a Godsend, as his presence justified their absence. True, it was Arafat who insisted on referring to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as the “legitimate and only” representative of the Palestinian people, but Arab regimes passionately embraced the slogan. It was an exoneration of their utter failure to defend the cause of Palestine and its people.
Palestinians of course, see Arafat in a different light, even those who unreservedly oppose his political line and unconditional peace offerings. When a military helicopter hauled him out of his headquarters in Ramallah, ending a three-year-long Israeli siege, Palestinians were silently observing, connecting Arafat’s most recent departure to the great discourse of dispossession of which they’ve all been part.
Arafat’s legacy has been inundated with deeply rooted symbolism, not mere sentimental interpretations, but substantial and meaningful ones. Even though Arafat tried to act as if his journey to France was like any other, Palestinians, and even Israel, must have known that this journey was different.
When Arafat was forced out of Lebanon in 1982, Palestinian fighters proudly fired in the air. Arafat stood defiantly and told his comrades that the path to Jerusalem was becoming closer and that Lebanon was just another stop on their long journey back to the homeland. They believed him, and kept on firing. The distance from Beirut to Tunis seemed of little essence. Arafat’s presence lingered, not only among Lebanon’s refugees, but in Gaza’s refugee camps more than if he was actually there.
As a child I often witnessed Israeli soldiers forcing Palestinian youth to their knees in my refugee camp in Gaza, threatening to beat them senseless if they didn’t spit upon a photo of Yasser Arafat. “Say Arafat is a jackass,” the soldiers would scream. No one I know would exchange his safety for insulting an image of Arafat. They would endure untold pain and injury, but would say nothing.
Of course, it was not the character of Arafat that induced such resilience; it was what the man represented. This explains why all Gazans stood enthralled as “Abu Amar” spoke upon his return following the signing of Oslo.
It seemed as if Arafat’s era was coming to a close after his return to Gaza in the mid 1990s. It was not motivated by his old age or faltering health, nor was it induced by Israel’s truly irrelevant designations of the man, as a peace partner or otherwise. It was to be expected, for the man who promised the moon failed to deliver a desolate refugee camp, the man who promised Jerusalem was in negotiations over the small neighborhood of Abu Deis, the astute leader who spoke of “peace of the brave” had very little to say as the West Bank was being overrun by the Israeli military machine, once more.
It was never easy for Arafat to maintain the image of warrior and bureaucrat. This might be remembered as the primary factor contributing to his demise. Israel wanted him to crack down on those who fought by him and for him. The United States wanted him to “condemn terrorism, not by words but by deeds,” while it was armed resistance that sustained Arafat’s struggle for decades.
When Israel bombed Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah and imprisoned him with the shameful blessing of the US government, it hardly intended to provide the aged leader with a platform to claim a heroic last stand.
Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and physical confinement of Arafat, absolved him from much of his political accountability before his people, while it invigorated his legendary status of the warrior who never surrenders, even in defeat. Even when Fatah ensued its power struggle and as charges of corruption flared, Arafat was still immune.
The head of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades told me during a telephone interview a few months ago: “Arafat is our symbol and our leader and nothing would ever change that.” When the Brigades burned down a Palestinian Authority building in Jenin protesting the PA’s corruption, its fighters salvaged a photo of Arafat from the ruins and protectively carried it away.
Very few people can claim a legacy like that of Arafat or his ability to cater to such competing interests. His departure on that day from Ramallah was a day unlike any other. And even if his demise is postponed for a little while longer, the bottom line is that Arafat era is coming to a close. Palestinians are resilient. They will learn how to deal with life without Arafat and his unparalleled mystique. Their national unity remains and it will strengthen their fight, even in their grief. Warriors, sages and leaders come and go, some linger a bit more than others, but the march for freedom will certainly carry on, for the “mountain cannot be shaken by the wind.”
— Ramzy Baroud is a veteran Arab-American journalist and editor in chief of PalestineChronicle.com and head of Research & Studies Department at Aljazeera.net English.
