When the Palestinian Authority’s chief terrorist exhibits signs of aging, my stomach aches with a nervous twist. His shaking lips and palsied hands – a sure sign that he is getting old – make my heart pound with anxiety. I don’t want Arafat to die just yet. If my fears seem strange, you have a short memory.
It seems like only yesterday that Arafat saved Israel in dramatic fashion at Camp David. At the time I thought we were finally doomed. There was happy Barak, an Israeli prime minister who never met a terrorist he didn’t want to appease, and Clinton, a disgraced president who dreamed that a peace accord between Arabs and Jews would resurrect his smeared legacy.
It made no difference to either of these desperate-but-excited men that their not-too-ingenious plan would cost the Jewish people countless innocent lives, eternal Jerusalem, ancient Hebron, and the rest of our blood-bought land. Yet there was the reliable Arafat, who never met a leftist to whom he could not say No, turning down Clinton, who had invited the Palestinian leader to his quarters at the White House nearly as often as he had Monica Lewinsky.
Arafat’s surprising decision to turn down Barak’s suicidal offer came as a relief to many people who were desperately scrutinizing these closed-door events. After all, when Barak campaigned against Benjamin Netanyahu for the office of prime minister, he swore to Israeli voters that he would never give away Jerusalem to the Arabs under any circumstances. At the time nobody guessed that he was referring to Jerusalim in the southern Philippines, not Jerusalem in central Israel. Who knew?
Arafat’s rejection of Israel’s reckless offers and gestures marked the culmination of a nightmare that began in Madrid.
In 1991, immediately following Gulf War I, President Bush Sr. and his playmate James Baker III were riding high as a result of their military victory in Kuwait. Neither of them loved Jesus or Israel nearly as much as America’s current President Bush. Together, they brought humiliating pressure on then Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir to participate in an international symposium that was to call on Israel to relinquish every gain it had made in the Six Day War.
Nothing made James Baker more nauseous than Jewish settlements, and nothing would guarantee that these communities would become Jew-free more effectively than the Madrid Conference. There was, however, one individual who would ensure that Madrid, Oslo, and Camp David would fail to make east Jerusalem once again Judenrein: Yasir Arafat.
Make no mistake about it; over the course of the next nine years every Israeli prime minister, with the exception of Ehud Barak, endured gripping American pressure to surrender Jewish sacred land that had been liberated after 19 years of Jordanian occupation. Barak was different. He gleefully entered the “Peace Process” with the enthusiasm of a bar mitzvah boy getting his presents. He needed no prodding from the Americans. He was the most excited person at Camp David.
At the time, everyone I knew was developing a nervous tick. Arafat could have had it all. Jerusalem could once again have become divided, Hebron could once again have been emptied of its Jews, a Palestinian state could have been created in the heartland of Israel, and a launching pad for the destruction of the Jewish state could have been established if only the chief Palestinian terrorist had said Yes. We were that close to self-destruction. But Arafat turned it down without even advancing a counter-offer. In the words of the late Israeli statesman Abba Eban, the Arabs “never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” Camp David was no exception. Thank goodness for Arafat.
Now that the current American administration has won an even more sweeping victory in Gulf War II, lovers of Zion are nervous once again as administration officials insist that Israel cannot alter the well-laid out formula for peace in the Middle East.
The British, who signed the infamous White Paper in 1939 restricting Jewish emigration to Palestine (and thus signed the death certificates of millions of Jews who had nowhere to flee from Hitler’s ovens), are demanding a pound of Jewish flesh. As far as Tony Blair is concerned, the Americans owe him everything Israel has, and Bush knows it. The British, who were one of only two countries that recognized the illegal annexation of Judea and Samaria by Jordan, are demanding that Israel end its “illegal occupation” of these same areas that the Jews have called home for thousands of years. Let’s face it – the British are a boring people who only get excited when Jews are transferred.
Moreover, the most ill-conceived cabal to shape and advance this blueprint for “peace” – Russia, the UN, and the European Union – joined the U.S. in a lovely Quartet to send Israel down this non-negotiable Road to its Destruction.
And just when you thought things couldn’t get worse, PLO terrorist Mahmoud Abbas, the well-groomed Holocaust denier in a suit, is being hailed by the Quartet as a “moderate” and crowned as the new prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.
Abbas is particularly lethal because he is far more pragmatic than Arafat. He has the street smarts to wait before bringing the Jewish state to its knees. Hothead Arafat does not possess this well-honed trait. Hothead Arafat will therefore be the one to somehow sabotage Abbas. Thank goodness for Arafat.
At the end of the day, who is going to say No to the Road to Self-destruction? It’s not going to be Prime Minister Bulldozer. Mark my words: it will be good old reliable Yasir Arafat.
So, my fellow Jews, when you pray for the sick and elderly this coming Shabbat, please think of Arafat. He’s got a reserved seat in hell, but hopefully he won’t go there just yet. At least not until an Israeli prime minister steps forward who can firmly steer his nation clear of the Road to Destruction and say No to the Quartet.
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