"The enemy is no longer scary, it just needs mercy," they sang from Sheena a year after those agreements were signed. I don't know who the enemy they envisioned, but it's a distillation of the shock I experienced as a sixth-grader whose capital and bat mitzvah year collided.
Until 1993, Arafat was the scary man shown on television in the tough part of the news. He was the face of evil, and I'm not judging externality here. Every child knew that the man was at the head of the armed struggle against Israel; That he founded Fatah and the PLO, that he concocts terror attacks, orders terrorists and raises funds from all over the world to murder us and make our political entity disappear.
Flowers in the reed. Arafat's grave in Ramallah, December 2004,
Relationship wizard
When I grew older, I discovered that he wasn't the only one with us – the Syrian authorities threw him in prison back in the 60s. Later, when he returned to Jordan, he infiltrated from it to us and found temporary respite in the attempt to blow up the national carrier and other attacks. This terror was carried out even before the Six-Day War, meaning that the territories were not yet occupied. It is strange, then, that the rage and blood affection have not been conquered either.
When he finished this uncontrollable chapter, he and his gang took over the Palestinian National Council of the PLO and began setting the tone there. It so happened that in the early 70s he established a combat and training base not far from Israel, in Jordan. His conduct threatened civil quiet in Jordan and caused many conflicts on the ground. The Palestinians led by Arafat and the Jordanian natives fought each other until King Hussein "achieved" a ceasefire. The new head of the PLO promised him that he would stop the fire, but lo and behold, at the same time he continued to organize terrorist attacks through his proxies.
First handshake. Arafat and Rabin at the White House, Photo: AFP
On September 1, 1970, 23 years before he shook his hand on the White House lawn, he made sure someone pulled the trigger and assassinated King Hussein of Jordan. The experiment failed, the king lived, but the blood-soaked politician who tried to lead the Palestinians did not calm down. The Jordanians are not suckers, and the assassination attempt led to a renewed fighting on their part. The PLO headed by Arafat attacked back, and a civil war ensued that lasted six months. It ended only when the Jordanian government decided to remove the violent Palestinians headed by Arafat. That's right.
The Jordanians expelled those who sabotaged their lives. Just throw it out. One year was enough for them to understand what the man was capable of and imagine what else might happen. They didn't send him for treatment, and they didn't offer him an area with a more elaborate training camp for his fighters. Not even a package of weapons for rehabilitation. They just threw him out without finding the criminal alternative housing, hoping he would fall behind.
What does Miri Belkin say? Enemies don't bring home.
He found refuge in Beirut, and after establishing a new headquarters there, he became aware of his deep hatred of Christians – so he was slaughtered by 600 of them. Unarmed Lebanese Christians.
In the mid-70s, the politician apparently realized that he had no chance of finding peace with his brothers, the leaders of Islamic countries. They picked it up too quickly. Yasser (a pseudonym, by the way, the original will pop up on Google) felt ready to refocus on the Jewish problem. As part of his popular comeback project, he gave a speech at the UN and urged the citizens of Israel to live in peace. The outfit included a belt with a pistol, the kind you can see from a distance. In the enlightened and white world, one is impressed by power, afraid of fear.
Sleep with the enemy
After 15 years, three Arab countries that denounced him, dozens of terror attacks and one declaration of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, Arafat returned to speak at the UN conference held a special papala in his honor in Geneva. In his speech, he elaborated on Israel's guilt in the conflict, prompting the Americans to embrace him warmly for several years in a row, an embrace that lasted until it was clear that the man had returned to his attacks.
During the Gulf War, he supported Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and shortly thereafter Harais received an official invitation to attend the Madrid Conference. From there, the road to the Oslo Accords was short. Jews are a masochistic people. I was right as a child, and the vast majority of Israelis were right to fear evil.
Yasser Arafat, Photo: AP
But no government on the right or left has been brave enough to stop this pattern. The handshake on the White House lawn proves that history repeats itself when you don't learn from it.
Israel insisted on being Yasser Arafat's battered wife, and the more violent and sophisticated he was, the more she bowed to him when he returned to her with flowers the day after he beat her. A rag-woman who gives her violent man the details of her bank account, builds him a house in her lot, buys him a gun for self-defense and appears with him in public will be sent for a psychiatric evaluation, assuming she has lost all will to live and is now endangering both her children and her neighbors. But the nation that survived the Holocaust of Europe is not only afraid of bad people, but compares every reality to the hell it had then. When these are the glasses, we are still doing fine.
At the school I attended in Tel Aviv, the hallways were decorated for the historic handshake. A huge canvas was unfurled in the central courtyard for 700 students and staff to paint their smiling portraits in bright oil colors in precise squares prepared in advance under the inviting title "Come in peace." Photos of the project were published, and a special copy was sent to the leaders of the agreement, the leaders of the country. The newspapers already announced the first murder in Wadi Qelt and another in Al Birah, Kiryat Arba, and Ramle and Hadera. But the happening continues, as does the battered woman's commitment to the Minister of Murderers. I stayed in class. I didn't want to go paint this fear with everyone. My square remains as empty as the list of commitments made by the enemy on the way to the new peace.
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