Besieged Arafat is prepared to become a martyr'
By Said Ghazali in Ramallah
30 March 2002
An Egyptian television correspondent wrapped up an interview yesterday with
Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah headquarters, besieged by Israeli tanks, by
telling the Palestinian leader: "I hope you'll be safe, Mr President."
Mr Arafat snapped back: "No, don't say that. I want to be a martyr."
The rhetoric is familiar enough but now, more than ever, Arab and foreign
observers are taking the threat seriously. They don't expect Mr Arafat to
kill himself, but they believe he has reached the end of his particular road
and that he is reconciled to it.
Yesterday's Israeli offensive on Mr Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah was
ostensibly a retaliation for "the Passover massacre", a Palestinian suicide
bombing on Wednesday night that killed 20 Israelis in the coastal resort of
Netanya.
After the Israeli cabinet declared the Palestinian leader an "enemy" who had
to be "isolated", Israeli troops preceded by about 100 tanks and armoured
personnel carriers advanced on Mr Arafat's Ramallah compound, destroyed its
perimeter fence and engaged in fierce gun battles with his security detail.
Two dozen tanks were deployed inside the sprawling compound. They fired
heavy rounds into the Palestinian intelligence headquarters in the complex,
severely damaging it, and troops stormed a lockup adjacent to Mr Arafat's
three-storey building, the headquarters where he has received world
dignitaries including Bill Clinton. It was the closest Israeli forces have
come to the Palestinian leader in 18 months of fighting. Israel has confined
Mr Arafat to the building for four months, barring him from travelling.
As the fighting raged around him killing one bodyguard and injuring 20
the 72-year-old Palestinian leader huddled with his advisers in a windowless
ground-floor office "in good spirits", according to senior aide Nabil Abu
Rdainah.
With a sub-machine gun placed next to him on a table, he spoke to world
leaders and Arab TV stations by telephone, his papers in front of him lit by
an aide's flashlight.
Although Israeli officials insisted they were not trying to kill him,
Palestinian officials said his life was in danger. Israel's "endgame is to
kill Arafat", said Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat.
"No Palestinian and no one in the Arab nation will surrender or kneel," Mr
Arafat told interviewers. "This brutal aggression is a response to the Arab
summit in Beirut," he told Abu Dhabi television. "This is the Israeli
response to any peace attempt. Because they don't want peace, they don't
want peace."
But while Mr Arafat's tone with Western interviewers was defiant, protesting
that he had offered Israel peace and been turned down, the focus with Arabic
television stations was apocalyptic. He linked his destiny with that of past
and present heroes of the Palestinian liberation struggle.
"God," he begged, "Let me taste martyrdom as you made them taste it."
Speaking to Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite news station viewed
throughout the Arabic-speaking world, Mr Arafat said: "The Israelis want me
as a prisoner, or a fugitive, or dead. But I tell them I want to be a
martyr." Citing the Koran, he added: "'The faithful will enter the mosque as
they did in days gone by.' This is the role of martyrdom. We have chosen
it."
Mr Arafat appealed to Arabs, Muslims and Christians everywhere. The
Palestinians, he contended, were defending the Holy Land for all of them.
"We are defending not only Palestinian rights," he said, "not only Arab and
Islamic rights, but we are defending all the freedom fighters in the world.
This is an order from God."
Nor does Mr Arafat expect to march alone into Paradise. "No single
Palestinian," he vowed, "Will kneel or surrender. We are marching to
Jerusalem as millions of martyrs."
Mahdi Abdel Hadi, president of the Palestinian Academic Society for the
Study of International Affairs, said in Ramallah yesterday: "I see Mr Arafat
as an historical leader accepting the challenge of martyrdom. Ariel Sharon
wants to end him, and he knows it.
"He's telling his own people that he has fulfilled his mission. He's telling
them that he never compromised in his demand for a Palestinian state with
Jerusalem as its capital, on a right of return for the refugees, on the
evacuation of all the Jewish settlements. That's how he wants to be
remembered."
Dr Abdel Hadi suggested that Mr Arafat had prepared the ground for some
time. He has named his two heirs, Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala) and Mahmoud Abbas
(Abu Mazen), to take over the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine
Liberation Organisation after him.
Mr Arafat's martyrdom comments, broadcast by television to Gaza, fuelled
emotion at a rally in which thousands of Palestinians marched to show
support, saying a "river of blood" from suicide attacks would flow if Israel
hurt him.
In Ramallah, Moussa Khouli, a 19-year-old Palestinian fighter carrying an
assault rifle near Manara Square, said: "We want to be martyrs, we want to
fight. We'll fight until martyrdom, we have no fear".
A Palestinian woman who identified herself only as Dalia said she was
against suicide bombing, but "the Israelis are killing us, killing our
children, besieging us".
"For 18 months I have not seen my relatives in Nablus. Most people want to
end the violence, but we don't want to live under Jews. The Jews hate
Arafat, they want to kill him," she added.
Robert Fisk: The lies leaders tell when they want to go to war
The problem with Arafat is that he has a lot in common with Sharon: old,
ruthless and cynical'
30 March 2002
How much longer can Ariel Sharon pretend that he's fighting in the "war
against terror"? How much longer are we supposed to believe this nonsense?
How much longer can the Americans remain so gutlessly silent in the face of
a vicious conflict which is coming close to obscuring the crimes against
humanity of 11 September? Terror, terror, terror. Like a punctuation mark,
the word infects every Israeli speech, every American speech, almost every
newspaper article. When will someone admit the truth: that the Israelis and
Palestinians are engaged in a dirty colonial war which will leave both sides
shamed and humiliated?
Just listen to what Sharon has been saying in the past 24 hours. "Arafat is
an enemy. He decided on a strategy of terror and formed a coalition of
terror." That's pretty much what President Bush said about Osama bin Laden.
But what on earth does it mean? That Arafat is actually sending off the
suicide bombers, choosing the target, the amount of explosives? If he was,
then surely Sharon would have sent his death squads after the Palestinian
leader months ago. After all, his killers have managed to murder dozens of
Palestinian gunmen already, including occasional women and children who get
in the way.
The real problem with Arafat is that he has a lot in common with Sharon:
old, ruthless and cynical; both men have come to despise each other. Sharon
believes that the Palestinians can be broken by military power. He doesn't
realise what the rest of the world learned during Sharon's own 1982 siege of
Beirut: that the Arabs are no longer afraid. Once a people lose their fear,
they cannot be re-inoculated with fear. Once the suicide bomber is loose,
the war cannot be won. And Arafat knows this.
No, of course he doesn't send the bombers off on their wicked missions to
restaurants and supermarkets. But he does know that every suicide bombing
destroys Sharon's credibility and proves that the Israeli leader's promises
of security are false. Arafat is well aware that the ferocious bombers are
serving his purpose however much he may condemn them in public.
But he like Sharon also believes his enemies can be broken by fire. He
thinks that the Israelis can be frightened into withdrawing from the West
Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem. Ultimately, the Israelis probably will
have to give up their occupation. But the Jews of Israel are not going to
run or submit to an endless war of attrition. Even if Sharon is voted out of
power a prospect for which many Israelis pray the next Israeli prime
minister is not going to negotiate out of fear of the suicide bomber.
Thus the rhetoric becomes ever more cruel, ever more revolting. Hamas calls
its Jewish enemies "the sons of pigs and monkeys", while Israeli leaders
have variously bestialised their enemies as "serpents", "crocodiles",
"beasts" and "cockroaches". Now we have an Israeli officer according to
the Israeli daily Ma'ariv advising his men to study the tactics adopted by
the Nazis in the Second World War. "If our job is to seize a densely packed
refugee camp or take over the Nablus casbah, and if this job is given to an
(Israeli) officer to carry out without casualties on both sides, he must
before all else analyse and bring together the lessons of past battles, even
shocking though this might appear to analyse how the German army
operated in the Warsaw ghetto."
Pardon? What on earth does this mean? Does this account for the numbers
marked by the Israelis on the hands and foreheads of Palestinian prisoners
earlier this month? Does this mean that an Israeli soldier is now to regard
the Palestinians as sub-humans which is exactly how the Nazis regarded the
trapped and desperate Jews of the Warsaw ghetto in 1944?
Yet from Washington comes only silence. And silence, in law, gives consent.
Should we be surprised? After all, the US is now making the rules as it goes
along. Prisoners can be called "illegal combatants" and brought to
Guantanamo Bay with their mouths taped for semi-secret trials. The Afghan
war is declared a victory and then suddenly explodes again. Now we are
told there will be other "fronts" in Afghanistan, a spring offensive by
"terrorists". Washington has also said that its intelligence agencies the
heroes who failed to discover the 11 September plot have proof
(undisclosed, of course) that Arafat has "a new alliance" with Iran, which
brings the Palestinians into the "axis of evil."
Is there no one to challenge this stuff? Just over a week ago, CIA director
George Tenet announced that Iraq had links with al-Qa'ida. "Contacts and
linkages", have been established, he told us. And that's what the headlines
said. But then Tenet continued by saying that the mutual antipathy of
al-Qa'ida and Iraq towards America and Saudi Arabia "suggests that tactical
cooperation between them is possible?" "Suggests?" "Possible?" is that what
Mr Tenet calls proof?
But now everyone is cashing in on the "war against terror". When Macedonian
cops gun down seven Arabs, they announce that they are participating in the
global "war on terror". When Russians massacre Chechens, they are now
prosecuting the "war on terror". When Israel fires at Arafat's headquarters,
it says it is participating in the "war on terror". Must we all be hijacked
into America's dangerous self-absorption with the crimes of 11 September?
Must this vile war between Palestinians and Israelis be distorted in so
dishonest a way?
Source: The Independent 0f london:30/3/02
With the very best of good wishes,
Musa Amadu Pembo
Glasgow,
Scotland
UK.
[log in to unmask]
Dawah is to convey the message with wisdom and with good words. We should
give the noble and positive message of Islam. We should try to emphasize
more commonalities and explain the difference without getting into
theological arguments and without claiming the superiority of one position
over the other. There is a great interest among the people to know about
Islam and we should do our best to give the right message.
May Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,guide us all to His Sirat Al-Mustaqim (Righteous
Path).May He protect us from the evils of this life and the hereafter.May
Allah,Subhana Wa Ta'Ala,grant us entrance to paradise .
We ask Allaah the Most High, the All-Powerful, to teach us that which will
benefit us, and to benefit us by that which we learn. May Allaah Subhanahu
Wa Ta'ala grant blessings and peace to our Prophet Muhammad and his family
and
companions..Amen.
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