After Arafat, Hope

The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: William Safire : "Israelis should remember Arafat's one 'good deed': four years ago, a soon-to-be ousted Israeli prime minister and a Nobel-hungry U.S. president made the Palestinian Authority an incredibly generous and dangerous offer: dividing Jerusalem, handing over almost all of the West Bank, and even partially establishing a 'right of return' for some Palestinians who fled an Arab invasion of the new Jewish state a half-century ago.

Arafat's 'good deed' was to reject this sweeping offer and to launch another wave of suicidal homicide. In a macabre diplomatic sense, his refusal to take 'yes' for an answer was a lucky thing for Israel's image: if those huge concessions had later been presented to Israelis in a promised referendum, Jewish voters would surely have turned down the Clinton-brokered deal. Proof of that was in the avalanche that then ousted the desperate Ehud Barak and elected the determined Ariel Sharon.

Sharon, with no Palestinian empowered to end the violence, then made his historic disengagement move, stunning fellow Jews who saw him as the defender of the Gaza settlers. He insisted the Palestinians take "yes" for an answer and began the painful business of withdrawal (a word he avoids).

Just imagine: this suggests that if there had been no stiff-necked Israel, we would never have had the bombing of Pan Am 103 by Qaddafi, no massacre of 10,000 Sunnis at Hama by Hafez al-Assad, no poison-gassing of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja by Saddam, no continued unpleasantness in Chechnya, or that incident in Lower Manhattan. Just lean on Israel and we'll solve "the most pressing political challenge in the world today."