Why Arafat Must Go 

By Charles Krauthammer
Friday, February 8, 2002; Page A31 
Washington Post


"Chairman Arafat must . . . choose, once and for all, the option 
of peace over violence," testified Secretary of State Colin Powell 
before Congress on Tuesday. If you had a dollar for every time an 
American official, from the president on down, has said this 
during the past eight years, you could fund the Pentagon.

A few days earlier Powell had called this "a moment of truth for 
Chairman Arafat." Was not the moment of truth supposed to be 
Sept. 13, 1993, when Arafat shook hands with Yitzhak Rabin on 
the White House lawn and solemnly committed the PLO to peace?

Yet, after the bloodiest Palestinian violence in a half-century, 
in the midst of Arafat's now 16-month campaign of calculated 
terror, here we are again, importuning him to promise peace just 
one more time.

This is Lucy and the football. How many moments of truth does a 
liar get?

Arafat has no intention of making peace. He may be talking truce 
now, but only because he is desperate. With the latest wave of 
terror in Israel, followed by the interception of the Karine A 
(the ship carrying 50 tons of Iranian arms to the Palestinian 
Authority), he sits in Ramallah, isolated, surrounded and 
friendless.

So he starts talking peace, precisely as he did in 1993, when, 
after he backed Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War, he sat in Tunis 
isolated, friendless and penniless (Kuwait expelled its 
Palestinians; Saudi Arabia totally cut Arafat off). Arafat's 
expressions of peace were phony then. They are phony now. 
Everyone knows that as soon as he is back on his feet, he will 
be back again at war.

But for the United States, the issue is more than just the 
current violence. It is one thing to tolerate a man whom 
American negotiators privately call a liar and a terrorist, 
so long as the consequence of his lying and his terrorism is 
simply local violence in a faraway place -- a serious problem 
for the United States, but not a strategic threat.

The Karine A, however, demonstrated that the Palestinian 
Authority had developed a military relationship with Iran, 
the country the State Department calls the single worst source 
of terrorism in the world. Hence, the awful outcome of the Oslo 
"peace process" finally becomes clear: not peace, not a 
demilitarized Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel, 
but an Iranian client-state -- a new member of the "axis of evil,"
well-armed, terrorist and violently anti-American -- planted in 
the heart of the Middle East, destabilizing not just Israel but 
Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. That the United States cannot 
tolerate.

The Bush administration has responded to this strategic threat 
by freezing out Arafat. But it is reluctant to cut him off 
completely. He is the devil they know. They are afraid that 
what follows will be worse.

For an administration that has courageously broken new ground 
in confronting strategic threats in the region, this is a rare 
lapse into passivity and complacency.

This is a decisive moment. America's demonstration of strength 
in Afghanistan has changed the entire psychology of the Near 
East. Leaders everywhere are lining up with the Americans, 
having witnessed the cost of being on the wrong side of history.

Not Arafat, however. He remains incorrigible. (His personal 
letter to President Bush claiming no knowledge of the Karine A 
was beyond embarrassing. It was insulting.) What happens if 
Arafat goes? There are two likely outcomes. First, the mantle 
of leadership passes to some of his commanders and associates, 
such as Mohammed Dahlan, Jibril Rajoub, Abu Ala and Abu Mazen. 
Whether out of inclination or out of a realistic reading of 
the new power relations in the region, these men see the 
intifada as going nowhere. They may be willing to end it.

Alternatively, after Arafat there may be no national leadership. 
After all, the Palestinian Authority is an alien exile entity 
superimposed upon the West Bank and Gaza in 1993. It turned out 
to be corrupt, oppressive, economically ruinous and congenitally 
violent. Arafat leaves behind no lasting national institutions 
except for his myriad security forces. These forces, and the 
strongmen who control these private and separate armies, could 
well inherit the kingdom.

In this alternate scenario, the Palestinian polity fractures. 
There will be strongmen running different areas, Dahlan 
running Gaza, Rajoub running parts of the West Bank. Other 
towns will have their rulers. Each will have to make his deal, 
his arrangement, his peace, with Israel.

That will be the interim. And that interim will end when the 
Palestinians decide to produce new national leadership ready 
to make real peace. At which point, Israel (and the United 
States) will welcome a true peace partner.

But none of this can begin to happen until Arafat is gone.