Danny Rubinstein, as usual, provides an astute analysis of the failure of Israeli policy vis-a-vis Arafat.
“The result is a vicious circle: An Israeli prime minister and the ministers of his government are certain that they cannot live with Yasser Arafat, but they cannot get rid of him. He remains, therefore, locked up in the Muqata. He is continuing to control a great deal of the apparatus of the PA, and is maneuvering his colleagues so that they are unable to function without waiting for what he has to say. And, most important of all, in the eyes of the Palestinians, Arafat continues to symbolize the fact that they are humiliated and degraded.”
Israelis in particular have this tendency to be, as the Yiddish goes – “uber chocems” – overly clever. Over and over, Israeli governments and the army (which are pretty much one and the same) pat themselves on the back for finding some extremely clever way to outfox the Palestinians. The thing is, it never seems to work out quite the way they think it will. This is just one more example.
The greater absurdity is that the American administration has bought into this ridiculous policy. Whatever his faults (and there are many), Arafat is the uncontensted symbol of the Palestinian national struggle and the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian Authority. For the Americans to declare they want to work with some other, more “democratic” leader, is disingenous at best, deceitful at worst. Either way, it won’t work, and more people will continue to die.
Sadly, more and more I have to agree with Chomsky that in American (in contrast to English), a “democratic leader” does not mean “a leader chosen by the people.” Rather, it means a leader that can be easily manipulated to promote American interests, as oppossed to the interests of his own people. In the American context, our own “democratic leader” means a leader that can be easily manipulated by corporate interests, as oppossed to the interests of his own people. As such, Bush is a “democratic leader” par excellence. This same terminology also explains what is meant by “Israel as the only democratic regime in the region.”