By Reuven Koret
September 13, 2003
The decision of Israel's security cabinet to declare Yasser Arafat an "obstacle to peace" and "work to remove him in a manner, and at a time, of its choosing" is unacceptable.
It came after a week in which the last of the most recent victims of Arab terror -- blown up at the Tsrifin bus stop and in a Jerusalem cafe -- were buried. Among them were male and female soldiers, a security guard who gave his life to save others, a father -- revered head of a hospital ER and international expert in coping with the aftermath of terrorism -- and his daughter chatting on the night before her wedding. Instead of attending her wedding, he was buried beside her.
We cannot go on like this. Dramatic steps must be taken.
Sadly, Israel's response to these fifteen murders, other than the cabinet decision above, has been another failed attempt to eliminate a second-rate Hamas leader.
That, too, is unacceptable. Words and half-measures solve nothing and cost more lives.
The world is up in arms at the prospect that Israel may expel Arafat. But expulsion would be counter-productive. Arafat, sequestered two years in his Ramallah headquarters, is dying to leave. He is dying to get the red carpet treatment in Arab and European capitals. He is dying to be interviewed by the world's media.
Israel should be giving him that chance, but not to travel. Arafat should be dying.
Everywhere Arafat goes -- Jordan, Lebanon -- he has come to the same end: he gets expelled. Then he goes somewhere else, causing more trouble, sowing more death.
That vicious cycle needs to end, once and for all. This alley cat has run out of lives.
The world will be upset. The UN will pass a resolution. America will object. At least, now, they will not be surprised.
Still, it is hard to grasp how the American President can justly declare Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein as public enemies to be hunted and taken "dead or alive" and then to say that Israel acting against Arafat, initiator of modern terror, is beyond the pale.
We hear the nuances of the State Department spokesman warning that expelling Arafat would "only serve to give him a broader stage." It would not be helpful "at this time."
We don't expect America to endorse Arafat's execution any more than it has taken responsibility for the various heads of state and terrorist leaders it has assassinated at various times. We hear the U.S. implying that death would be better than deportation.
What, really, is the big deal about offing Arafat? Every day the people of Israel bury victims in a terror war that Arafat started. Each one of these victims has more moral and human worth than the godfather of modern terrorism. What, it's acceptable that the righteous like Dr. David Applebaum and his daughter Nava -- or thousands of others like them, young and old, Jews and Arabs -- are maimed and killed while Arafat lives?
That is obscene. That is unacceptable.
We have tried, and sometimes succeeded, in eliminating Palestinian terror leaders. But they are the low-level scum that carry out the orders, prepare the bombs, and dispatch the bombers. Arafat is the commander in chief of terror. He always has been.
We tried to make him irrelevant, to isolate him, to cultivate relations with an alternative leadership. But it became clear that the surrogate leaders, one Abu after another, were merely marionettes on strings pulled by Abu Amar. And with the arguable exception of the U.S., the rest of the world -- and some Israelis -- went along with the puppet show.
The elimination of Arafat will cause unrest. It will earn condemnation from a hypocritical world. It may even attract some UN sanctions. So did our violation of Ugandan airspace in Entebbe, our violation of Iraqi airspace when we eliminated the Iraqi nuclear reactor.
Arafat is a malignant tumor which must be excised, with the corrupt inner circle that surrounds him. He is the diseased tree who prevents any chance of growth in his society.
The malignancy Arafat created has metastasized to the entire Palestinian body, producing a corrupted and diseased society which teaches its children to revere the murderers of Jews, which rewards the families of killers, which educates an entire generation to hatred.
It wasn't always like this. Before Oslo, before Arafat's return, there was dialogue between Arabs and Jews, there was cooperation on the local level. Israelis visited and shopped in Palestinian areas. Arabs visited and shopped in Israel. There were precious few guns. There were no suicide bombers.
In the decade before Oslo, there were 220 deaths from terrorism. In the decade after Oslo, there were 1110. In the last three years, there have been nearly 900. Needless deaths and injuries, caused because Yasser Arafat clings to his desire to destroy Israel and any chance of coexistence with a Jewish State, of any size, with any borders.
Today a photo was published showing Arafat holding up a terrified child, calling for "martyrs in their millions" to be sacrificed on the march to conquer Jerusalem.
If nothing else, killing him would serve an elemental justice, however overdue. Arafat has long deserved to die, and Israel has long deserved to live in a world without him.
And as we mark 9/11, the act of eliminating the godfather of terrorism would send an unmistakable message that cowards who send terrorists to kill cannot forever escape justice.
Eliminating Arafat from this world can't hurt more than leaving him and his kind inside it.
For the Applebaum family and the thousands of innocent others who have had their lives destroyed by him, it's the very least we can do.
Anything short of this would be obscene. Anything less than this would be unacceptable.
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