Here is an article that appeared at the MSNBC site a few weeks ago.  It is
now cached by Google.  Whereas The New York Times and thus by extension
Wirt, blames Israel for all the woes in the Middle East, this piece is more
balanced.  I always thought that the one constant in all the troubles in the
Middle East was Yasser Arafat.  No matter what deals were offered to him,
the answer from him was always the same.  "NO!"

>From MSNBC's Michael Moran.
NEW YORK, April 30 -  History teaches us that the leaders of national
liberation movements do themselves and their people a great favor by
stepping down once the time for bloodshed is over. Yasser Arafat long ago
demonstrated that he has no grasp of history, and those unfortunate enough
to call him their "leader," as well as those who offered him their hand in
peace, have suffered grievously as a result. But by waiting out Israel's
"quarantine" in Ramallah and the invasion of his stillborn state, the
Palestinian leader has proven once and for all that, above all else, it is
his own hide that matters, not Palestinian lives or liberty.

   LEADERSHIP DEMANDS personal commitment and a willingness to make the
ultimate sacrifice. For all the cynicism that is heaped upon those who seek
and wield power, it should never be forgotten that the greatest leaders of
our time often end up dying for what they believe in. Even those whose own
early struggles might be viewed in retrospect as bloodthirsty or
treasonous - Egypt's Anwar Sadat, the Irish rebel Michael Collins, Israel's
Yitzhak Rabin come to mind.
       Yasser Arafat won his freedom from Israeli captivity this week after
being confined at gunpoint to his Ramallah compound for more than five
months. He achieved this by accepting a deal he could have cut with the
Israelis five months ago if his main concern had been the lives of those he
claims to lead.

       The deal, brokered by the United States, calls for him to turn over
to U.S. and British authorities the suspected assassins of an Israeli
cabinet minister and others who arranged a shipment of arms from Iran that
Israeli gunboats intercepted late least year. Having agreed to those terms,
Arafat is now free to roam the shattered remnants of his realm.

SPREADING THE BLAME
       Many in the world would like to blame the Palestinians' plight solely
on Israel. That is clearly wrong. Certainly, the the disastrous course set
for Israel by its current leadership hastened the two nations' decent into
hell. Since coming to office, Ariel Sharon made no genuine effort to restart
peace talks, even before suicide bombs became a daily occurrence. Sharon is
carving his name into the history books with a bayonet, and like other
hard-liners before him - Likudniks Menachem Begin, Yitzhak Shamir and the
countless dictators of the Arab world - history will repay him by shining a
harsh light on his actions.

 No matter what brutalities Sharon's troops inflicted on the West Bank over
the past month, the fact remains that Israel desperately needs to come to an
accommodation with the Arab world and especially with those Arabs who still
cling to 50-year-old property deeds that "prove" they own land in Haifa,
Jaffa and Jerusalem. If Israel fails to do this, physics and human nature
dictate that someday soon a weapon of mass destruction will render the issue
moot. That, and not the survival of the odd settlement or the construction
of a fence around the West Bank, is Israel's real issue of national
survival.

CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE
       But Israel's mistakes and excesses do not excuse the leadership
vacuum and outright criminality that has characterized Arafat's government,
particularly since the collapse of peace talks in early 2000. Yes, Israel
continually flouted its promises with regard to territorial concessions,
beginning with the very map that came out of the Oslo peace accords. But
Arafat has matched that duplicities lie for lie, ballooning the number of
men under arms to triple or more the level called for in the "Interim
Accords" that governed the peace process; manipulating and inflaming radical
tendencies when it suited his political needs; releasing known terrorists
from prisons as a pressure tactic; denouncing terrorism in English and
praising it in Arabic, and most seriously, allowing his own Tanzim militia
to become intimately involved in the recruitment and planning of attacks by
suicide bombers.


   In effect, Arafat - a man who spent much of the 1990s posing as a
successful revolutionary, has become instead the best excuse Sharon and
other peace opponents in Israel could possibly imagine for not negotiating.

WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN
       It boggles the mind, and pains the heart, to think of the
opportunities this selfish man has passed up. At the top of the list is his
refusal to accept a ground-breaking offer for control of almost all of the
West Bank and Gaza, plus a chunk of East Jerusalem, by the Labor Prime
Minister Ehud Barak. The offer, put forth first at Camp David in the summer
of 1999 and later at Taba just before Barak left office, failed primarily
because it did not deal sufficiently with the issue of Palestinian refugees
living outside the occupied territories. Arafat feared, probably with good
reason, that a deal signed that excluded a "right of return" for the
millions still in refugee camps in Lebanon and scattered throughout the
world might lead to his assassination.
       Principle: "They are my people, too," gave him the out he needed. But
it also marked Arafat as a failed leader.
       These are precisely the kinds of compromises that the greatest
leaders are forced to make. Michael Collins of the 1920's Irish Republican
Army agreed to give up the six northern provinces of Ireland in return for
an independent south. He was murdered by his own dissidents in the civil war
that followed.
       Similarly, zealots murdered Rabin for giving up "Judea and Samaria,"
as the Israeli right likes to call the West Bank. Perhaps most unfair of
all, Sadat was murdered by zealots of another stripe for signing a peace
that actually got Egypt back the Sinai Peninsula.

WHAT STILL CAN BE
       Opportunities for Arafat to correct the perception that power is his
main concern have come and gone. As the violence flared in September 2000,
he could easily have imposed order. He chose to ride the wave, and it came
crashing down, as usual, on his own people.
       During his "captivity" in Ramallah, even, he had the opportunity to
call Israel's bluff by taking a firm, unequivocal stand against the suicide
bombers. When he did finally, reluctantly denounce them in Arabic, he did so
only because his own personal situation had become untenable. Imagine if
Arafat, instead, had defied Israel's quarrantine and walked unarmed toward
their lines. Imagine if he had called upon his legions to do the same. He
might well have died, and he may have ended up in exile. But, to quote
another great leader who died for his cause, Mohandas K. Gandhi, "We must
become the change we want to see in the world."
       It is time for Arafat to step aside. Arafat rightly refused to let
Israel choose the leaders they wanted to deal with from among the
Palestinians. That truly would be a betrayal. But now that he is "free"
again, he should choose one himself. He is a spent force in a steep decline,
and the only place he can lead his people is down with him.




Denys

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