|
|
|
|
(Brick N.J.): In the beginning of November 2004 I made arrangements to visit Yasser Arafat at his headquarters in Ramallah to conduct an interview. We were as usual to meet first for dinner. The time was set, and I arrived at his headquarters, the Mukata in Ramallah.
As I entered the dining room at the far end of the room from him he immediately motioned for me to come to him. I walked to the head of the table where he always sat and extended my hand, he took my hand in both of his, as he always had when we meet. This time his grip on my hand was weak, slack, not his usual robust grip which was always followed by a vigorous hand shake.
He looked quite different. He looked unnaturally sad, his eyes were dulled, and watery as if he were about to cry. His voice just a whisper as he greeted me. He motioned for me to sit at his side at the head of the table.
The table was the long worn wooden dining/conference table he had used for decades. His friends and cabinet, nearly twenty other men, and one woman, were seated about its length. He returned to his meal. He was bent, nearly hunched, over a bowl of soup. I noticed his hand shook badly as he took a spoonful.
I had dinner with Arafat on far too many occasions to count over the several years since I first met him in Beirut in the summer of 1982. He had been animated on those occasions, jovial and friendly. He was a talkative, energetic man. This night he was frail, listless, detached. The only conversation we had was when he called for me to sit by his side at the table.
The Israeli army had surrounded the building with tanks and troops for months. They shelled the building until it was left a near ruin. Only a third of what was once a long sprawling two block compound was left intact.
I tried to make conversation with him during the meal, but he did not look up from his plate. He was lost, gone somehow. He was there, next to me, but he was not there at all.
The meal ended, for him at least. He turned in his chair knocked once on the door directly behind him once. Someone inside opened the door what was his room revealing his bed, desk, and a few sparse furnishings. He rose a little unsteadily, and again took my hand in his, and said he would see me in the next day. He was he said too tired to talk now.
Somehow I knew he was not going to see me again. I felt that evening that I had probably seen Arafat for the last time. Shortly after our meeting he died. He died on November 11, 2004 in Paris a few days after I returned to the States.
He might have saved himself if he had left the compound earlier, but the Israeli’s warned that if he left Ramallah he would not be allowed back.
Now the French Judicial system might exhume his body to discover if he were poisoned. His wife Suha claims he was murdered. She has filed a suit, and demanded the French authorities conduct a more thorough autopsy.
She’s done this following the discovery by French scientists who found significant traces of the radioactive poison Polonium 210 a rare poison produced in small quantities by nuclear reactors, in Arafat’s clothing and on some of his personal effects. Polonium 210 was the poison used to kill Alexander Lituinenko the former KGB agent and critic of Vladamir Putin.
Arafat was an obstacle to Israel. He had enormous popularity among the Palestinians, and Arafat would not settle for less than a two-state solution. That insistence and his standing among the Palestinians, made it imperative he be eliminated.
If there is to be a peace agreement between Palestine and Israel it would come only as a fiction that Palestine exists as a state. There will be no physical state of Palestine. There is, in any case, nearly nothing left of the Palestinian territory that Israel has not already absorbed or occupied to proclaim as a state.
Palestine will eventually be fully engulfed by Israel. There might be an illusion, a contrivance, of a separate state. The Palestinian’s might be allowed to have a government, but with only the trappings of a state.
We need only look to the Old Testament for the reason.
“On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abraham, saying,“ To your descendants I have given this land, from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates: The very essence of Israel is the promise made to the Hebrews by God. “The Covenant”. Israel would have to abandon the Covenant made with God if they were to agree that the Palestine’s were to have a piece of the Promised Land. There would be no real purpose for Israel if they did this. God said nothing about parceling the land out.
The several vapid agreements, accords, and treaties made by various American Presidents over decades, always announced with great drama, were never taken seriously by the Israeli’s. The agreements were never to be undertaken. Netanyahu has now made this quite clear. The Palestinians he has said, in the absence of a separate state, might simply be absorbed into Israel. That can only come with severely restricted rights for the Palestinians.
The years of negotiations were simply a grand deception by Israel, at incalculable cost, but the price did not matter. Israel is to be what God said it would be, and what Israel decides what God really intended.
(Morgan Strong is former professor of Middle Eastern History, and was a consultant to CBS News 60 Minutes on the Middle East.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
More
Featured Articles |
|
|
|
|
|
Opinion: Libya: Advice to Gaddafi Loyalists - by S.R.H. Hasmi
It is time for Gaddafi loyalists to give up because they are in no position to reverse the progress that has been made in the meantime and their struggle is not for a just cause anyway. By persisting in their terrorist acts, Gaddafi loyalists are only doing great harm to themselves as well as to their near and dear ones. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Opinion: Only Way for Libya Now is Forward – by Muftah Al-Mabrouk
I have often wondered why some people fail to resign themselves to reason and try to make the best of what's there. In Libya, some loyalists of the former dictator Muammar Gaddafi seem to believe that the February 17 Revolution was just a passing phase. They were so lost in the corruption that prevailed, that they believe that their good old days would return. No way! |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Opinion: The Children Are Still Dying: Violence is Not News - by Ramzy Baroud
Somewhere in my home I have a set of photo albums I rarely go near. I fear the flood of cruel memories that might be evoked from looking at the countless photos I took during a trip to Iraq. Many of the pictures are of children who developed rare forms of cancer as a result of exposure to Depleted Uranium (DU), which was used in the US-led war against Iraq over two decades ago. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tags |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|