One runs
the risk of stepping on many corns by attempting an
objective assessment of the place of the late Yasser
Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation
Organization (PLO), in history.
No one can
dispute the fact that he personified the cause of an
independent Palestinian state and that his defiant
struggle until the end of his life against Israel
epitomized the struggle of his people for independence
and to set right the historic wrongs committed against
them by Israel and the international community.
He was a good and warm friend of India and
millions of people in that country mourned his death. Fate was
unjust to him. He died prematurely without having
accomplished his mission, despite the bravery and
self-sacrifice of innumerable Palestinians under his
inspiring leadership. He was a man of vision, courage
and steadfastness and commanded the loyalty and devotion
of his people.
If despite all these qualities
he failed to make an independent Palestine a reality in
his lifetime, one cannot blame his failure only on
the intransigence of Israel and its present prime
minister, Ariel Sharon. The failure was equally due to
his inability to come to terms with the reality that
the Jewish people, who had suffered as much as
the Palestinian people, if not more, cannot be expected
to compromise their security just for the sake of
a peaceful settlement, and that getting back East
Jerusalem from Israel was a dream that was unlikely to
materialize however much the Palestinians deserved to
have it as their capital.
If one were objective,
one's admiration for him would have to be tempered by the
admission that he legitimized the conscious and
systematic use of terrorism for the achievement of a
political objective and blurred the distinction between
terrorism and a freedom struggle. The struggle for
Palestinian freedom, as waged under his leadership,
targeted not only the State of Israel and its perceived
instruments of suppression, but also hundreds of
innocent civilians who had nothing to do with the State
of Israel - Jewish as well as non-Jewish, Israelis as
well as non-Israelis, men as well as defenseless women
and children.
The PLO under his leadership
as well as other organizations that joined the struggle
for an independent Palestinian state waged their struggle
with no holds barred. Spectacular hijackings of
aircraft, many of whose passengers had nothing to do
with Israel, hostage-taking and other forms of criminal
intimidation of innocent civilians, indiscriminate and
targeted killings of civilians in the name of the
struggle for an independent Palestinian state became the
stock in trade of the PLO and other organizations allied
to it.
I joined the intelligence profession shortly
after the fateful day in June 1967 when Israel
launched its preemptive war against Egypt, Syria and
Jordan and occupied Palestinian territory, including
East Jerusalem, after routing the Arab armies. Bombastic
in words and unwise in action - those were the defining
characteristics of the Arab states in those days, and
these led to their humiliating defeat in a short and
swift war.
These characteristics are still
embedded in the psyche of many of them, as one saw from
the experience of Saddam Hussein of Iraq in 1991 and
again in 2003. Whenever any Arab state had been
humiliated - whether it was Egypt, Syria and Jordan in
1967, Libya in 1986 or Iraq in 1991 and 2003 - they
could not escape a major share of the blame for their
plight. They brought the humiliation on themselves.
When the PLO and its allies launched their
spectacular retaliatory attacks in the months and years
thereafter in the form of hijackings of civilian
aircraft, hostage-taking, the Munich Olympics massacre
etc, how we all applauded and watched in admiration. It
serves them (the Israelis) right, we told ourselves,
despite the fact that many of the intimidated or killed
victims had nothing to do with Israel and its occupation
of Palestinian territory.
How excited my
colleagues in the intelligence profession and I were
each time the Palestinians under Arafat's leadership
carried out one spectacular terrorist strike after
another. We had no sympathy for the civilians
intimidated or killed. Arafat and his followers
projected the mayhem they created as a freedom struggle.
We had no hesitation in agreeing with them.
Our excitement at the spectacular terrorist strikes
of the PLO and its allies was short-lived. The
Jammu & Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) hijacked an
aircraft of Indian Airlines to Lahore, Pakistan, in 1971 and blew
it up in the presence of Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, the then
Pakistani foreign minister, and the international media,
after having made the passengers leave the aircraft.
Terrorism, we shouted. Freedom struggle, the JKLF
claimed. After having applauded the hijackings of the
PLO and its allies as a freedom struggle, how could we
denounce that of the JKLF as terrorism and expect the
world to believe it?
The 1970s saw
myriad terrorist organizations and terrorists appear on
the scene all over Western Europe.The Baader-Meinhof and
the Red Army Faction in what was then West Germany, the Red
Brigade in Italy, the Action Directe in France, Carlos
and his boys everywhere after he fled from France in
1975 after killing two officers of the French
counter-terrorism agency etc, etc. They claimed to be
the brothers-in-arms of the wronged Palestinian people
and the benefactors of the poor people of Western
Europe.
What havoc they wrought across Western
Europe. Hijackings, kidnappings, extortions and murder,
placing of explosive devices in public places. All in
emulation of the PLO. All in the name of the Palestinian
people. How we squirmed in our seats as our words of
admiration and support for Arafat and his boys and girls
and our deafening applause for their "brave" freedom
struggle came back to haunt us. But we did not have the
courage to admit our folly.
Then came 1981. A
Sikh named Gajendra Singh, an office-bearer of an
organization called the Dal Khalsa, gave an interview to
the then New York Times correspondent in New Delhi on
the perceived grievances of the Sikhs against the
government of India. He praised the PLO and Arafat and
called on the Sikhs to wage a freedom struggle against
India. "The time has come to emulate the PLO and
Arafat," he said.
We did not take him seriously
until a few days later when he and some other members of
the Dal Khalsa hijacked an Indian Airlines aircraft to
Lahore. Hijackings followed one after the other. The
Kanishka aircraft of Air India was blown up off the
Irish coast in 1985, killing about 300 innocent
civilians. Another aircraft was almost blown up in the
Narita airport of Tokyo. Innocent Hindu men, women and
children were lined up and shot in Punjab. Hundreds of
innocent civilians, who had nothing do with the
government of India, were killed by improvised explosive
devices in Punjab and Delhi.
All in the name of
a so-called Sikh freedom struggle. All in emulation of
Arafat and the PLO. We had nothing else to do but to
continue squirming in our seats. We did not have the
courage to admit that we had committed a monumental
folly in supporting Arafat and his PLO despite their
ruthless use of terrorism.
In 1989 and the years
thereafter jihadi terrorism appeared in a big way in
Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) and other parts of India.
Nearly 20,000 innocent Indian men, women and children
have been killed by jihadi terrorists since then.
Cross-border terrorism, we said. Freedom struggle,
claimed Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf.
Jihadi organizations claiming to emulate the Palestinian
people mushroomed all over J&K and other parts of
India, many of them imported from Pakistan.
We
still lack the courage to call a spade a spade and let
ourselves stew in our own contradictions. We do not have
the courage to make a distinction between the justness
of the Palestinian cause and the brutality of the methods
adopted by them to achieve their objective. By turning a
blind eye to the methods adopted by Arafat and his
followers, we are lifting and throwing a stone on our
own feet.
Terrorism is terrorism. It is an absolute
evil, whatever be the cause. That was the hard-learned
lesson of September 11, 2001. And yet we are
unwilling to apply it in the case of the terrorism of
the most brutal kind resorted to by organizations such
as al-Fatah, al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Hamas, Hezbollah
etc.
After Arafat, what? Will an independent
Palestinian state, which could not come into being because
of his style of leadership and because of his inability
or unwillingness to stop the acts of terrorism of his
minions, become a reality? Will his successors, whoever
they are, be able to rise to the occasion, abandon the
path of terrorism and make the dream of the Palestinians
a reality? One wishes they would, one doubts they will.
The Frankenstein monsters spawned by Arafat and
his methods will, most probably, continue to haunt West
Asia for years to come until they can be vanquished.
There is at least one thing to be said in praise of
Arafat and his leadership. He was a secularist to the
core and kept religious fundamentalism out of his
organization. He kept Osama bin Laden and his jihadi
brutalities fathoms away.
There is a big
question mark as to whether his successors will be able
to assert themselves and put an end to these monsters.
There was considerable anger among the Palestinians
because of the policies of reprisals followed by Sharon.
This anger is likely to be aggravated because of the
shock surrounding the death of Arafat and the suspicious
circumstances around it.
One does not as yet see
on the horizon a Palestinian leader capable of
controlling this anger and turning the Palestinian
people away from the path of terrorism they have
followed for nearly four decades.
If no such
leader emerges, there is a real danger of the
"al-Qaedization" of the Palestinian struggle. Coming
closely on the heels of the "al-Qaedization" of Iraq
consequent on the overthrow of Saddam, it would make
victory in the so-called "war against terrorism" even
more difficult to achieve than it is today.
B Raman is additional secretary
(retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India, New
Delhi, and currently director, Institute for Topical
Studies, Chennai, and distinguished fellow and convenor,
Observer Research Foundation (ORF), Chennai Chapter.
E-mail:corde@vsnl.com.
