11-20-2004, 02:56 AM
By Israel Shamir
The great leader of Palestine, Yasser Arafat, is dead. This unique man, whose withered body was interned on the Eve of Eid el Fitr in a coffin with the holy soil of Jerusalem in the midst of his ruined fortress, was a symbol of struggle for Palestinian dignity. He will be forever remembered as a young warrior who broke the teeth of Jewish arrogance in the battle of Karameh, in 1968, when his fedayyin resisted the irresistible force of Israel and caused its first ever defeat. He will be remembered as a friend of Leila Haled, the man with a gun who blew up enemy airplanes and spoke at the UN. He will be listed among other warrior-saints of the century next to Che Guevara and Chapaev. He will be remembered also for his last stand, for the last three dreadful years he had spent in besieged Mukata as Sumud personified, as example of unconditional clinging of a native man to his soil.
He did not ran away when Israel bombed and strafed Mukata, he did not ran away when the Jews discussed daily how should they kill him, he did not ran away during the hard years of Intifada – he stayed with his people to the bitter end. Eventually he was granted glorious martyrdom as one of thousands Palestinians martyred in the bloody war, together with Abdelkader el Husseini, Sheikh Ahmad Yassin and other leaders and warriors.
Even his errors were errors of a good man. He believed that the enemy will abide by an agreement, he believed that the superpower will enforce the treaty they guaranteed, he believed in a possibility of carving out two states in his beloved Palestine. He submitted to endless humiliations, agreed to endless concessions to the insatiable adversary, but he never surrendered the Noble Sanctuary of Haram al Sharif, never gave up the right of return of his people to Jaffa and Haifa.
His death of a martyr is also death of the Two-states-solution, of a Palestinian-state-alongside-Jewish-state mantra. Now we should concentrate our efforts in the only possible direction – creation of one democratic state for all in the whole of the Holy Land from the River to the Sea. We call for immediate release of Marwan Barghouthi from the Israeli captivity, together with thousands other prisoners-of-war. We call for general elections with participation of all inhabitants of historic Palestine, native Palestinians and Ashkenazi, Oriental and Russian immigrants, on basis of full equality. We call to inter the mortal remains of Arafat the Martyr in al Aqsa Mosque, next to Abdelkader al Husseini, as a guardian of the Holy Mountain. We shall redeem you, Arafat!