In a statement following the death of Yasser Arafat, French President Jacques Chirac stressed the solidifying effect that loss can have on a nationalist group. "By remaining united," Chirac said of the Palestinians, "they will continue to be faithful to Yasser Arafat's memory and will uphold the ideal to which he devoted his life."
Indeed, the painfully gradual way in which Arafat passed on this past week gave Palestinian leaders from historically contentious factions the opportunity to put their differences aside and support each other through the loss of the beloved founder of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).
Chirac was deliberately vague, however, in describing the "ideal" to which Arafat was so devoted. This is because Arafat himself has been a figurehead, answerable in political negotiations but ultimately too impotent, or too cowardly, to stop the Islamic Fundamentalist groups that have perpetuated violence in Israel and the territories.
As a Jew who has done work for the Palestinian right of return, I have waited anxiously for the emergence of a charismatic, diplomatic Palestinian leader who was as beloved as Arafat - but who, unlike Arafat, would not be afraid to put himself in the line of violence in order to stand for peace. A Palestinian version of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., if you will. A martyr.
If you simply label as a martyr someone who dies in the act of fighting against his oppressor, then the Palestinians have had plenty of martyrs already. Suicide bombers have exploded on buses; children have run out into the line of Israeli military fire to throw rocks at the soldiers in the way their older brothers did. But these martyrs have not been effective for the nationalist cause. If they were, the Palestinians would have had a nation long ago.
Arafat, who died at a ripe old age of a rare blood disease, was certainly not a martyr in the way these other Palestinians have been. Yet, from the way his death has been received by PLO members, Palestinian refugees, and the world at large, his death seems to have pulled heartstrings more effectively than anything we've seen yet.
One Palestinian refugee woman, old enough to recall the Israeli wars of independence and her own relocation to a camp in Lebanon, was heard crying and praising Arafat as a martyr during the demonstrations that filled her streets this past Thursday.
The ability to move hearts and minds was King's most valuable tool during the Civil Rights Movement. It was accomplished by exemplifying non-violence in the face of violence. Such juxtaposition emphasizes, to media viewers and politicians, the powerlessness and utter humanity of an oppressed people. If Palestinians can rally behind a figure like Arafat, if they can incorporate that sense of pure, victimized humanity into their public image, they will move significantly closer to the hearts and minds of constituencies all over the world. The solidarity that comes of this ideology would encourage world leaders (including President Bush, who may want to start beefing up his r?©sum?©) to facilitate negotiations between Ariel Sharon and the PLO.
So when Chirac speaks of Arafat's "ideal" Palestinian state as if it were the one force driving his work, I note the oversimplification but endorse the sentiment. The importance of the facts died along with Arafat's body. Now, it is more important that his memory be associated with the causes that will bring his people together in a politically productive front. If this national hero dies and the hope of a nation dies with him, then he will, like all those children and suicide bombers, have died for a cause worse than vanity.
Hilary Lustick is a senior majoring in English
