Loss of the non-partner
By Akiva Eldar
Haaretz, November 12, 2004
It is not certain that the passing of his eternal adversary was met with great celebration in the prime minister's headquarters. Ariel Sharon's bitter struggle against Arafat was charged with deep feelings of hatred, loathing and revenge. Sharon spent more than half of his own life hunting down the man whom he saw as Israel's greatest enemy. Most of all, Sharon successfully made Arafat's face and personality synonymous with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. When then-defense minister Ariel Sharon sent the IDF to clean up Lebanon, the central aspect of the mission, involving the removal of Arafat, was dubbed "Stinking Fish." When the second intifada broke out, the popular wisdom, maintaining that Arafat was, and would remain, an unrehabilitated terrorist, took Sharon from the Temple Mount to the Prime Minister's Office.
Arafat, for his part, often boasted that Israel's most-celebrated hero did not vanquish him on the battlefield. The battle, mainly thanks to Sharon, was replayed in the diplomatic arena. Sharon was the one to expel the PLO from Lebanon to their exile in Tunis. It was there, with his back against the wall, that Arafat adopted the historic decision to recognize the State of Israel and adopt Resolution 242. That same resolution, accepted by a conference of the National Palestinian Council in Algiers in 1988, led to the opening of dialogue between the PLO and the U.S.
A decade later, the masterminds of the Oslo Agreement and Israeli political struggles organized the face-to-face meeting of the cat and mouse at the Wye Accords, under the auspices of then-president Bill Clinton. Former foreign minister Sharon avoided shaking Arafat's hand, but sat with him in the deliberation room, and gave the reigning right-wing prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu the go-ahead to transfer another 13 percent of the West Bank to Palestinian control.
When he returned to Israel, Sharon urged settlers to take over every available mountain top. On the eve of the 2001 elections, after Barak's defeat, Sharon dispatched his son, Omri, to meet with Arafat. But Operation Defensive Shield and the house arrest of Arafat in the Muqata in the spring of 2002 put an end to this abrupt grace period.
Sharon, once again, enlisted the demonization of Arafat, the terrorist, to erase the Oslo Agreement from the political map, and with it, what was commonly known for years as the "peace process." Even while Arafat was labeled "irrelevant," Sharon successfully charged him with responsibility for suicide bombings and Qassam missile attacks. Arafat's lies occasionally provided Sharon with fresh ammunition, as in the case of the Karine-A gunship. The prime minister became an excellent exporter of Arafat's mistakes and scandals. He closed the door time after time to visits by world leaders until the stream of visitors to the Muqata dwindled to a mere trickle.
Last year, Sharon again decided to make use of Arafat's services. This time, the prime minister strove to promote his own program to relieve himself of a million and a half Palestinians in the Gaza Strip as well as international pressure to implement the road map. Sharon cast Arafat in an important role in this new drama. Arafat was to play the part of the non-partner. As long as there was no partner in the region, Sharon could write, direct and produce the play without exchanging a single word with the Palestinians, nonetheless the main characters in the tragedy. Now that Arafat has departed to his final reward, even Uzi Landau wants to talk to them. Perhaps Sharon is telling himself that this is even more proof that one cannot trust Arabs. Just when you need them most, they disappear.
