Theme
The death of Yasser Arafat presents an opportunity for the emergence of a democratic, legitimate Palestinian leadership.
Summary
The death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat begins a new era, say politicians, experts and analysts around the world. Most of the hundreds if not thousands of comments published in recent weeks agree that his passing could at least make it possible to reopen the window of opportunity brusquely closed so many times before (some even consider it ‘a great doorway opened wide’). Indeed, the window is open a crack, but instead of the breeze of hope that many predict and desire, the winds of war could well blow again, closing the window for the umpteenth time if the leaders of both sides and the powers involved do not act coherently.
Analysis
Palestinians in the Post-Arafat Era
Acting rationally has never been a salient quality of most politicians in the Middle East. In this part of the world, rational steps are taken only after all the mistakes have been made. Anyone who closely follows the nearly century-long Palestinian-Israeli conflict comes easily to this conclusion.
The Middle East, a region affected since time immemorial by prolonged periods of political, economic, social and religious conflict, and where uncertainty is the general rule, is far from its best moment. The region suffers from serious political, economic and social problems with no end in sight. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is outstanding among those in the region, peaking in violence precisely when a new international initiative seemed to presage a solution acceptable to all parties, falling back into an unstoppable spiral of violence due to the perennial cycle of terrorism and retaliation, and frustrating any search for solutions.
A new peace plan, after so many others, designed by the Quartet for the Middle East (the United States, the European Union, the UN and Russia) and titled the Roadmap, was finally accepted by both parties after hard negotiations and a certain amount of pressure from the Quartet. Its presentation coincided with the speech by President George W. Bush in June 2003, in which he expressed his vision of ‘two States, Israeli and Palestinian, living together peacefully’.
According to its text, this peace initiative is aimed at both parties taking reciprocal steps to advance politically, socio-economically and in the area of security, with the fundamental goal of coming to a final and general agreement to terminate the conflict before the end of 2005, ultimately leading to the creation of a Palestinian State. However, the actions of both parties and the lack of political will on the part of those who inspired it, especially the Bush administration, quickly altered the Roadmap, leaving it directionless. Palestinians and Israelis failed to meet their commitments and strayed from the roadmap set down by the Quartet, entering a complex labyrinth that they have not been able to escape from to date. In the annals of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, no peace plan has been taken to its final consequences. Will this also be the fate of the Roadmap?
Everything changed for the Palestinian-Israeli peace process with the start of the second intifada on September 28, 2000, when Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat decided to use violence as a legitimate instrument to achieve political objectives that could not be obtained at the negotiating table. Instead of trying to convince Palestinians that sending out human bombs is inhuman and intolerable, he once again began to speak repeatedly of the millions of ‘martyrs that will reconquer Jerusalem’. He gave the go-ahead to radical fundamentalist Palestinian organizations such as Islamic Jihad and Hamas to carry out suicide operations against Israeli civilian targets; he freed from prison or did not pursue potential suicide bombers and their sponsors and authorised militias belonging to his own Fatah party, such as Tanzim and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, to participate in anti-Israeli actions. Now over four years old, the Palestinian Intifada has produced a terrible river of blood, more than four thousand deaths and thousands of wounded, and ongoing hardships that make daily life impossible for people living in the Palestinian territories, as well as the destruction of infrastructure. This is the dramatic result of violence that should have become a thing of the past when the parties signed the Oslo Declaration of Principles in September 1993, in which they officially recognised each other, beginning a process for negotiating a just solution to the conflict.
But the first steps taken in Oslo quickly led to a dead-end. The constructive and optimistic atmosphere gave way to antagonism and a deep crisis of confidence that not only greatly hindered negotiations, but in fact derailed them. The process of reconciliation between Palestinians and Israelis suffered a great setback. The romantic vision of a new, peaceful and cooperative Middle East advocated by former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres, in which countries in the region would cooperate to solve serious economic and social problems, faded away, once again to reveal the all-too-well-known spectre of an unstoppable spiral of violence. The Middle East presaged by Peres in his book Battling for Peace (1) –one without wars, enemies, ballistic missiles or nuclear warheads– is for now nothing more than an illusion. Israelis and Palestinians continue to show their inability to learn the lessons of history.
The best summary of the situation may be the editorial in the prestigious Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, which said: ‘As long as Palestinians did not internalise the fact that violence is the problem and not the solution, they will continue to see the end of violence as submission to occupation. As long as the occupation continues, so will the violence. As long as Israelis do not recognise that the occupation is the problem and not the solution, Israelis will continue to consider its end to be a capitulation to violence. The occupation will go on and, with it, the violence.’
To summarise the Palestinian-Israeli political process, I have chosen the simile of light at the end of a tunnel: with the Oslo accords, Israelis and Palestinians saw, for the first time, light at the end of the long, twisting tunnel that leads to peace. But they only ended up in another tunnel, where they could again see light at the end, at the peace negotiations sponsored by President Bill Clinton at the end of his term, held at Camp David in July 2000. Still, the light turned out to be only the reflection of a new firestorm, that of the Intifada that was to break out just two months later. Some time before, an American diplomat who for many years had been involved in mediation between Palestinians and Israelis, had said that there was a new tunnel with clear light at the end –the Roadmap– but that the insoluble problem was to simultaneously get the leaders of both sides, the Israeli Ariel Sharon and the Palestinian Yasser Arafat, into the tunnel. International diplomacy was not able to do this.
The death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat begins a new era, say politicians, experts and analysts around the world. Most of the hundreds, if not thousands, of comments published in recent weeks agree that his passing could at least make it possible to reopen the window of opportunity brusquely closed so many times before (some even consider it ‘a great doorway opened wide’). Indeed, the window is open a crack, but instead of the breeze of hope that many predict and desire, the winds of war could well blow again, closing the window for the umpteenth time if the leaders of both sides and the powers involved do not act coherently.
A New Era on the Palestinian-Israeli Front or a Fleeting New Reality?
Are we then at the threshold of a new era or is this only a new reality that will have no lasting effects on peace, as has been the case in the past? And if so, what may come with this new era that so many are predicting and hoping for? The passing of Arafat, the unquestionable leader and most prominent symbol of the Palestinian cause, left a void that his heirs will find difficult to fill. Since the 1960s, Arafat has been the hero of the Palestinian national cause, the only one capable of unifying his people and leading them in their long struggle after the defeat suffered at the hands of the Israelis in 1948. He globalised his people’s cause to the point that the entire Arab and Muslim world took it on as their own. None of the countless criticisms he received was able to damage his image. He was the founder of the Palestinian nation and his devotion to the cause made it possible to pardon him for the errors he committed, though his people have suffered greatly for many of those errors.
His omnipresent and controversial legacy has left the Palestinians with serious questions that his successors will have great difficultly answering in the foreseeable future. At this point it is impossible to predict the future path of the peace process; in fact, it would be reckless to do so. There is nothing more dangerous for an analyst in this part of the world than to predict the future lightly. The famous British statesman Benjamin Disraeli said more than a century ago that what we anticipate rarely occurs and what we least expect generally happens. The history of the Middle East has proved this over and over again.
One of the greatest difficulties in analysing the Palestinian-Israeli conflict arises from the fact that each of the parties lacks greater understanding of the motivations of the other. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict is essentially a political conflict, but when the seeds of religious hate are sown, as is this case here, storms are harvested. At a time when religion feeds hopes and governs the intensity of human reactions, writes history professor Jean E. Rosenfeld (2), governments must understand how and why religion is an important factor in contemporary politics. When the problems include deep-rooted symbols, emotions and religious feelings, solutions seem extremely difficult to find, especially if religious sentiments are exploited for political purposes, as happens in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. Religious conflicts on holy land have often led to wars in the past. Conflicts of purely nationalistic dimensions are nearly always open to solutions based on compromise. This is why when the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was saddled (by sectors on both sides) with doctrinal interpretation as the source of absolute truth (one’s own, of course), the possibility of any solution decreased, making it more difficult to grant concessions that could bring about compromise and agreement.
Israelis and Palestinians are fighting two superimposed wars. No one describes this better than one of Israel’s most famous writer, Amos Oz, who defines one of the conflicts as Palestine’s war to liberate itself from occupation and for the right to become an independent state; the other conflict is the war waged by fanatical Muslim fundamentalists to destroy Israel and expel the Jews from their homeland. ‘No peace plan will pacify Palestinian radicals who see negotiations as a partial step towards the eradication of Israel’, writes former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger (3).
As I wrote in an article published in the magazine Política Exterior (4), the Palestinians had their biggest success during the first war, when in September 1993, along with the Israelis, they signed the Oslo Declaration of Principles, mutually recognising each other and beginning what was almost universally considered the start of a process that would lead in only a few years to the withdrawal of Israel from Transjordan and Gaza, the creation of a Palestinian State and, finally, to a peace accord between Palestinians and Israelis that would put an end to a conflict that has been going on for nearly a century. There are increasingly fewer Israelis unwilling to recognise the right of the Palestinians to establish a proper State, as long as reasonable cohabitation is possible and Israel’s security requirements are met.
The other war, adds Amos Oz, is that of the radical Palestinian fundamentalist sectors, for whom everything is allowable in the name of Allah and whose deadliest weapon is the human suicide bomber. This holy war will not come to an end even when Israelis and Palestinians eventually sign a peace agreement and establish a Palestinian State. Yasser Arafat’s great mistake was, during the second intifada to ‘adopt’ the war of the Islamic fanatics, superimposing it on the first war, in the erroneous belief that this would serve the cause of his people.
Mexican writer Enrique Krauze (5) asks: Why did the negotiations break down at Camp David and in Taba in 2000? It was Arafat himself who inexplicably derailed the political solution that would have immediately established the Palestinian State. His decision, adds Krauze, prevented a takeover by his radical wing, but necessarily meant a definitive commitment to terrorism by ‘martyrs’. While not wanting to ignore the part played by the Israeli governments in the creation of the current situation (which would be the topic of another analysis), it is obvious that Arafat, by fomenting the use of violence and superimposing the two Palestinian-Israeli wars, not only let an historic opportunity escape him, but took Israelis and Palestinians to the very brink of the abyss. The Palestinian National Authority that he presided never took a clear stance against those who did not hide their plans to sabotage any negotiation with Israel, thereby putting in doubt his people’s hopes for independence in this generation. The only ‘achievement’ of the fundamentalist organisations in Palestine that have made use of terrorism has been to indefinitely postpone the creation of a Palestinian State. But Yasser Arafat did not want to understand this.
The analyst Roger Cohen (6) writes that a decade ago, South African blacks and Palestinians were facing similar situations of political opening, which offered the dignity of sovereignty and freedom after years of suffering, when apartheid broke down in South Africa and the Palestinians signed the Oslo accords. The analogies end here, because their leaders proved to be different kinds of people: Nelson Mandela, after 27 years in prison, chose to live with the enemy instead of trying to destroy him, while Arafat never considered Israel to be a legitimate peacetime partner for his people, making ambiguity the core of his political being. He always said ‘yes’, but his ‘yes’ could mean ‘no’ or ‘perhaps’ or ‘never’, writes Cohen, adding that despite Israel’s provocations and errors, we must not ignore the destructive role played by someone who did not know how to do what Mandela was able to do: abandon revolutionary war and take a realistic stance.
Shimon Peres, in an article published in El País, feels that Arafat betrayed the hopes of many people and lost his own credibility before those who could have done most for his cause (7).
In an article published in the New York Times, one of the greatest Middle East experts, Thomas L. Friedman (8), says he understands how Palestinians revere Arafat for having put the Palestinian national cause on the world map, but in his opinion this was more an end than a means, making his imprint on history ‘as lasting as a footprint in the desert’. Is Friedman right? Only the perspective given by the passing of time will tell. What is clear is that Arafat did not miss practically any opportunity to miss an opportunity.
And Now What? The Challenge Facing the Palestinians
Paradoxically, Yasser Arafat left the scene at the same time that George W. Bush, the hated ally of arch-enemy Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, was re-elected president of the United States. But, above all, his departure coincided with the gradual change that has been seen in the policies of the Israeli prime minister, who has publicly accepted the inevitability of the establishment of a Palestinian State. His plan for disengagement (or ‘desenganche’ [uncoupling], as Spanish Foreign Affairs Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos prefers to call it), if implemented, would lead to total evacuation of the settlements and total withdrawal of Israeli military forces from the Gaza Strip and the north of Transjordan. This plan, in the opinion of politicians and observers, would help reactivate the Palestinian-Israeli peace plan and is considered by the Quartet to be a significant first step toward implementing the Roadmap. It has clearly improved Israel’s international position, as well as sparking an internal political crisis in Israel that left the country’s prime minister without a parliamentary majority and forced him to put together a new government coalition that supports the implementation of his disengagement plan. In the not too distant future this may even lead to a readjustment in its complicated political mechanisms.
Will Arafat’s decease bring about significant changes in the Palestinian and Israeli landscape or will they find new excuses for procrastination? The century-old conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is moving into an uncertain transitional period in which political leaders on both sides will have to make far-reaching decisions if they wish to prevent minority sectors –Palestinian terrorist organizations on one side, and ultra-nationalist Israeli forces on the other (two extremes that clash all too often)– from imposing agendas that block the road to conciliation. If they want to take advantage of the window of opportunity, both parties must make far-reaching strategic decisions: Israel must accept the painful concessions required to reach an agreement with the Palestinians, who in turn, once and for all, must accept the legitimacy of Israel as an independent Jewish State in the Middle East. Henry Kissinger, in the article referred to above, writes that Israel must recognise that demographic and technological trends make procrastination very precarious, while Palestinian leaders must understand that if they reject compromise with Israel, they will only lead their people to another generation of suffering and frustration (9).
Palestinian society is facing serious challenges. One of these, writes Dr. Bishara Khader, professor of the Catholic University of Louvain, in an article published in Vanguardia Dossier (10), involves the Palestinian National Authority’s reactivation of the system that until now has blocked (and, I would add, no small thanks to the misguided handling of Arafat himself) access by new generations to renew the political and social elites. This endangers the aspirations of the Palestinian people to a democracy for which, according to Khader, it is perfectly prepared. This will obviously depend on the course of negotiations with Israel and their impact on Palestinian society in general and on the new Palestinian leadership in particular, especially if profound reforms are successfully carried out in the administrative and security bodies, as the Quartet, Israel and the Palestinians themselves have demanded.
At first sight, the outlook for the Palestinians does not look very promising. So, is there justification for the optimism of those who speak of a new era and new opportunities? The Israeli Gershon Baskin and the Palestinian Jaled Duzdar, who preside the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), in a joint work published by the Center (11) last November 11, say yes. In the opinion of both, there are reasons for optimism on the Palestinian-Israeli front and, since the past four years have given few opportunities for optimism, it is important to ‘grab’ any that present themselves.
One of the main reasons for the optimism of both analysts is that the transition of power to Arafat’s successors is happening, at least as I write this, peacefully and without major incidents, despite the more than justified fears of politicians and observers who anticipated political turbulence, disturbances in the streets and even armed clashes among the various factions of Fatah or between this movement and the Islamic fundamentalist organisations. Also, as shown by recent public opinion surveys, Palestinian support for terrorist attacks against Israel has diminished significantly: last June it stood at 65%, while today only 40% of Palestinians believe that a continuation of the attacks against Israel is the right response to the current situation. Today, 60% of Palestinians are optimistic about the future, compared with 45% in June; 57% of them believe that the solution to the conflict with Israel involves the existence of two States, while 23% prefer a bi-national State in which Palestinians would be the majority within a few years.
Another reason for optimism, say Baskin and Dudzar, are the statements by Hamas leader, Sheik Hasan Yusef, recently released from prison by Israel. He has begun speaking of the possibility of a ten-year Hudna (truce) with Israel, of his movement’s participation in Palestinian politics and of a ‘new generation of Hamas’, involved in negotiations with Israel and coexisting with it. It would seem that although Hamas is boycotting the presidential elections to be held this coming January 9, and its armed groups continue to carry out terrorist actions against Israeli targets, many of its sympathisers are in favour of participating in the elections.
Among other indications that things are moving in a positive direction, we must consider the renewed international involvement, as demonstrated by the intense diplomatic offensive that began with the farewell tour by US Secretary of State Colin Powell and continued with the visits of British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, and his Russian, Spanish and German counterparts, Sergei Lavrov, Miguel Ángel Moratinos and Joschka Fischer. All this is happening as I write these lines. Also expected soon are the new US National Security Council Director, Steven Hadley, the Turkish Foreign Affairs Minister and British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Others will follow them. The Quartet finally awoke from its long hibernation and got together, with Secretary of State Powell, UN Secretary General Kofi Anan, the High Representative of European Union Foreign Policy and Security, Javier Solana, and Foreign Minister Levrov.
The immediate goal of this international campaign is to contribute to guaranteeing the success of the coming presidential elections, which have become a first acid test for the Palestinians and others involved in the peace process: if they follow a normal course and a new leadership arises that can return the Palestinian National Authority to stability, end the current political anarchy in the Palestinian territories and, above all, manage to establish a truce between the Palestinian terrorist organisations and the Israeli military operating in Palestinian territories, the peace process could very well be re-launched.
Another reason for optimism has been the positive gestures on the part of the Israeli government towards the new Palestinian leadership, among them the withdrawal of Israeli forces in the days before and immediately after the elections, as well as authorisation for Palestinian residents in Arab Jerusalem to participate in the elections. Negotiating Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the north of Transjordan –which until now has been considered something that should be a unilateral Israeli decision– is almost certain to be accepted by the Israeli government and this is considered its most significant gesture.
The United States and Europe (and Israel) expect and hope to see the moderate Mahmud Abbas (Abu Mazen) at the head of the Palestinian National Authority after January 9. He is one of the founding fathers of Fatah and probably the highest-profile leader of the old guard, a key person in Palestinian politics. Abbas, who never hid his opinion that the armed Intifada has been a disastrous mistake (something the militant sectors of Fatah never approved and which more than once led to Arafat’s disfavour, which has eroded his popularity in Palestine), is the brightest and most solid new Palestinian leader. However, he lacks popular support, which will initially force him to try to consolidate his power and legitimacy. For the moment, he is seeking to strengthen his position, as well as that of Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala), the moderate prime minister who will possibly be ratified by Abbas after his nomination if, as expected, he wins the election.
Things are moving and, as one Israeli political analyst puts it, Sharon and the new Palestinian leadership are practically on a honeymoon. Not a day goes by without news of meetings between representatives on both sides (the Israeli and Palestinian Ministers of Tourism have even signed an agreement to foment tourism and pilgrimages to the Holy Land; only a few days earlier this would have been unthinkable). Abbas has also said that the PNA ‘will not tolerate the bearing of illegal arms; this power will be reserved exclusively for the security forces’. The Palestinian media and the official television and radio networks have received instruction to stop inciting aggression against Israel.
The fragility of the Palestinian transition is obvious. The most serious and immediate problem will be to prevent the internal struggle among the various factions and generations of Fatah, the main Palestinian party. For the moment, Mahmud Abbas and Ahmed Qurei have assured themselves the support of the top party institutions controlled by the old guard, the generation that returned from exile after the signing of the Oslo accords in 1993 and that is determined to protect its positions and privileges. They also have the confidence of the leaders of the different Palestinian security bodies, crucial factors in the equation, given the considerable power they wield. Some of them are in conflict, in some cases resorting to violence in clashes between members. Also, the withdrawal from the electoral race of Marwan Barghouti, the charismatic leader of the younger generation of Fatah (incarcerated in Israel for his participation in the planning of terrorist acts) and his public support of Abbas will make it likely he will win the presidential election, even though he will have a dozen opponents on the right and left. Barghouti’s withdrawal is the result of an agreement between the two generations to prevent a schism in the party: his support for Abbas has been given in exchange for the a commitment on the part of the old guard that runs the party to call internal elections in Fatah (the first in 16 years); elections that will certainly bring a generational change to Fatah leadership. The young Palestinian guard, born in the years of the Israeli occupation, advocates radical reforms, but above all wants to force out the old guard. These elections could take place in August 2005.
Yasser Arafat’s departure from the Palestinian political scene has raised great expectations but also great uncertainty. While many people expect the window of opportunity to reopen, others believe that the vacuum created by his absence could lead to chaos and anarchy in the Palestinian territories, beginning another unstoppable spiral of violence. Even if this does not happen, the pessimists believe that Arafat’s successors lack his charisma and stature, leaving them without the authority to make the necessary concessions for a compromise with Israel.
Arafat has left the road free of a hurdle that seemed insurmountable. No one thinks it will be easy to put the Palestinian-Israeli peace process back on track; but not everything depends entirely on Palestinians and Israelis. International involvement might play a bigger role. The convergence of the new factors we are witnessing could indeed open the window of opportunity. But this will happen only if, on the one hand, the new-old administration in Washington puts its mind to the task after the electoral sabbatical year taken by its diplomacy and, on the other, the European Union convinces its trans-Atlantic partners to coordinate its policies on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
If the administration of President George W. Bush wants to put the Palestinian-Israeli peace process back on track, it will have to take decisive initiatives and lead a joint international effort to restructure the Palestinian National Authority, rebuild its administration and improve its security services (unifying its nearly twenty bodies in three or four, an action which Arafat always opposed) and synchronise the implementation of the Roadmap with all the parties involved. The peace process will be exposed to the violence of terrorist groups and their sponsors, who will not cease their attempts to derail it; this means the priority of all parties must be to dismantle their infrastructures. Above all, according to Martin Indyk, former US ambassador to Israel and director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy of the Brookings Institution (12), a strategic commitment on the part of President Bush is essential, leaving aside the caution and scepticism that characterised his first term in office and embracing a sustained effort to deliver on his vision of a democratic Palestinian State living in peace with the Jewish State of Israel.
It remains to be seen what real capacity a new, democratic, moderate and conciliatory Palestinian leadership will have to impose its authority, guarantee public order, drastically reform security bodies and modernise an inoperative judicial system. It is clear that it will take time and patience, but it is not an impossible mission. The vacuum left by Arafat is not one of a lack of leaders who can assume leadership, but rather a lack of law, order and legitimacy. None of the politicians who aspire to hold a place in the new Palestinian political regime ignore the fact that a demagogical ‘hard line’ against Israel, inciting and promoting terrorist attacks against Israel (and, of course, the more spectacular the better) will remain the simplest way to win popularity on the streets of Palestine. However, neither do they ignore the fact that terrorist violence is the biggest obstacle to peace and that stopping it is essential if they truly wish to substantially change the tragic situation that their people are immersed in. They are aware that only by putting an end to violence against Israel will they gain the legitimacy that is crucial in the eyes of Israeli public opinion and the recognition of their rights. They also know that the US, the European Union and Egypt (more easily now that Arafat is gone) will continue to put pressure on the new Palestinian leadership not to waste an opportunity that might not come along again for many years, because otherwise the fundamentalist sectors that are enemies of peace will continue to impose their agenda on the Palestinian people.
Conclusions: The process of choosing a successor to Arafat will culminate in the upcoming presidential elections. This topic dominates Palestinian political life these days and these elections are clearly a positive step that could be decisive for the future of the Palestinian people. But no Palestinian leader will be able to advance in the right direction without the help of the international community, whose involvement will be crucial. This will require the US and the EU to coordinate their efforts to overcome their differences and act jointly, in cooperation with the other members of the Quartet. Jointly with Israel, they must do everything possible to first of all guarantee that the elections will be free and democratic and then work to help the new leadership face the inevitable challenges. If a legitimate, democratic leadership is actually achieved, we will be at a new starting point on the road to peace. The alternative is chaos and violence.
Samuel Hadas
First Ambassador of Israel in Spain and before the Holy See, diplomatic analyst, contributor to the daily newspaper La Vanguardia and the magazine Política Exterior, consultant to the Peres Center for Peace, president of the Israel Jewish Council for Inter-religious Relations and consultant to the Jewish World Congress for Inter-religious Relations.
Notes:
(1)Shimon Peres, Battling for Peace, Random House, New York, 1995, p. 309.
(2) Article published in the Los Angeles Times, October 4, 2000.
(3) Article published in the Washington Post, December 3, 2004.
(4) Samuel Hadas, Política Exterior, vol. XVIII, no. 102, November/December 2004, p. 84.
(5) Enrique Krauze, En Defensa de Israel, Libros Certeza, Madrid, 2004, p. 119.
(6) ‘Arafat’s Costly Refusal to Take Mandela’s Path’, International Herald Tribune, November 10, 2004.
(7) ‘Sobre Arafat’, El País, November 12, 2004.
(8) ‘Footprints in the Sand’, New York Times, November 7, 2004.
(9) From the article published in the Washington Post, mentioned in Note 3.
(10)‘Los Palestinos: un pueblo martirizado por la Historia’, Vanguardia Dossier, nr 8, October-November 2003.
(11)IPCRI, http://www.ipcri.org.
(12) ‘Actions Speak Louder than Tours’, International Herald Tribune, December 7, 2004.