Arafat, seen from the other camp
By glazou on Thursday 11 November 2004, 21:53 - General - Permalink
This is a french translation of a text from Shimon Peres, I could not find the original text in english. If you can read french, or can stand a babelfish translation, it's really worth a read. Shimon Peres, as clever as always.
Comments
Quite interesting, of course. Just one point : Peres is not "the other camp" as you wrote, he assumes he is on the side of "how to live together one day". The other camp is Sharon, and that's a pretty big problem.
The original text in english :
www.digitalnpq.org/global...
[Note de Daniel] comment censored , potentially against the French Law [/Note de Daniel]
thanks can you explain that
Daniel,
I was disapointed by the comments on the blog for a dead man. I feel
like we will always stay trapped between two extremisms :
- One politically correct (Sharon) and alike
- One from terrorists and alike
What do they have in common : Religion as a justification for
their behavior. I hate religion, it at the roots of most of the
massacres in the past and today. But you must concede on this
(citation) www.freebarghouti.org/ :
Israelis must abandon the myth that it is possible to have peace
and occupation at the same time. That peacful coexistance is possible
between slave and master.
Asking for terrorism to stop before making peace is just like
"mettre le feu sous une cocote minute et s'etonner qu'il y'a
de la vapeur qui en sort". And this is by no mean an apology
for terrorism. It is an explanation of how the Sharon's policy
is helping terrorism to expand, and that is not in the interest
of israelis nor palestinians.
nab
PS: excuse pour le post d'hier
When I heard at 2am (local time US Eastern) he'd finally, I said, "Finally! Maybe now there can be some progress." He put his own personal welfare and desires above those of "his people" in 2000 by turning down the best deal the Palestinians will ever get. And frankly, why he is being treated as a statesman is beyond me. Daniel, can you maybe explain to an ignorant American why France was paying for his treatment and hospitalization? Or was that an erroneous statement in the US media?
Grey: I doubt that you know anything about the 2000 deal. Is it because you're an 'ignorant american'?
Grey: sure I can
Daniel: Tu as oublié dans ton 3 que nous avons aussi reçu des dictateurs très connu : Georges W. Bush (très peu de temps, mais il faut le signaler), et le présiedent chinois.
Flyounet : Quelques soit les opinions sur leurs politiques respectives, d'un point de vue institutionnel, Arafat et Georges Bush étaient ou sont tous les deux des dirigeant élus.
Grey : "He put his own personal welfare and desires above those of "his people" in 2000 by turning down the best deal the Palestinians will ever get"
You did not read the article carefully enough. Arafat problem was not is own welfare. While rampant corruption was at root of his leadership, it didn't use the money to have some luxury in his life; As Shimon Perès an other said, his problem was his incapacity to make the historical decision to bury some of the decades old revendications of the palestinian people to get a deal, thus splitting the palestinian society and putting his popularity at risk.
Barak was ready to make that decision, but it is often forgotten that the israël people were not. Barak did not loose the elections only because the palestinian did not accept the deal, but also because the majority of his people was not ready at the time for that deal, as polls showed.
The "best deal ever" is a bit overrated, medias reported it was "improved" in few details weeks after Camp David in ultimate attempts to resume the peace process.
Sharon was not ready for that deal at the time, too. And it took him a lot of time to understand that the stategy of confrontation led him and his people to nowhere. The Israel opinion evolved on the issue. It's just sad that the palestinian majority did not evolve on that path too under Arafat rule.
It's sometimes interesting to see how decade old revendications should be burried. It's after all a single generation. Bolivia is still really pissed off over Chile for something that happened a century ago.
France and Germany had their share of wars partly over some territory dispute.
Europe is more or less stable now because territory revendications have more or less being done and acknowledged. Frontiers have stabilized. To think that this is the same in other parts of the world, to think that many countries should mourn and accept the loss of some part of their territorry that happened some time ago, just because we did it here, is pretentious. It's a very very hard process that must most of the time go throught a painful period. You just don't lose an arm and forget about it. What we are seeing now in Middle East is part of that process.
I believe (and that's my belief) that as long as Israel will not try to ease the pain on the Palestinians by reminding them of the occupation that they resent, the mourning will take time to happen. The declarations by Sharon that he will retreat from some of the colonies is I think the first step that will have a tangible effect on the long term of the situation. I applaud him for that. It was time to stop putting oil on fire.
Most people just want to leave in peace. And they will take that opportunity as soon as it comes in a relatively calm period. Let's hope that the leaders on both sides will make concessions. And let's hope that they won't stop at the first action/declaration done by extremists from the other side, because they will be such actions. Because you will never never please everybody.