reply by
Lynette
8/7/2002 (9:16) |
|
It's been a lifelong struggle for Arafat to be sure, but time is running out for him healthwise TAC. If the Israeli's think that the Palestinian people's resistance to occupation will falter, stumble and die, they had better think again. If this guy doesn't fill his shoes after the physical parting of Arafat, another like minded individual will take his place.....
After Arafat: The man who would be leader
Sunday, April 1, 2001
Special report: Fire in the hills
-- RAMALLAH, THE WEST BANK
TERRORIST? PEACEMAKER? Political spinner? Political visionary?
Just who is Marwan Barghouti?
Right now, he's a man with this prediction. 'More casualties,' he says. 'On both sides.'
You may not recognize the name unless you closely follow the intricate political dance of peace and war played by Israeli and Palestinian officials. But Barghouti, general secretary of the West Bank Fatah Movement, is well-known to Israeli authorities who monitor the increasing violence against Jews on the West Bank and in other parts of Israel.
To them, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat may be giving a final seal of approval to the violent uprising known as the Intifada, but Barghouti -- pronounced 'bar-GOO-tee' -- is one of a handful of trusted aides who makes it happen, especially in the important cultural and economic hub of Ramallah, 10 miles north of Jerusalem.
Will there be a 'Day of Rage' by Palestinians? A mass march? More rock-throwing at Israeli soldiers by Palestinian teenagers? More gunfire at night against Jewish settlements?
'Barghouti orchestrates all that,' says Raanan Gissin, one of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's close advisers.
Barghouti doesn't deny this. 'What the Israelis will discover after six months,' said Barghouti, 'is that there will not be any kind of security. The Palestinians will continue the Intifada and the resistance.'
On a recent afternoon in his family's apartment on the outskirts of Ramallah, Barghouti consented to an hour-long interview with The Record -- with no strings attached.
His only aide present was a bodyguard who sat on a sofa, occasionally getting up to fetch coffee, answer the phone, or monitor television news. Two camouflage-clad guards, armed with AK-47 rifles, watched a downstairs parking lot. On the porch, laundry hung on a line.
What is striking about Barghouti is how different he is from Arafat. While Arafat is almost never seen without his military-style green jacket and gray-and-black Palestinian kofia head scarf, Barghouti -- in jeans, a gray polo shirt, and black loafers and no socks -- cut a distinctly Western look.
He seems to bring to the Palestinian movement and its terrorist reputation the same quality Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams brought to violence-prone Irish nationalists of Belfast who were trying to improve their image in the early 1990s -- a softer look in a TV-oriented world.
It doesn't hurt that Barghouti, unlike many Palestinians, speaks English and Hebrew -- as well as Arabic. Only 41, he is seen as among the leaders of the next generation of Palestinians vying for control after the 72-year-old Arafat retires or dies.
Israelis seem to recognize this. As violence on the West Bank increased in recent weeks -- and Israel's military threatened tougher measures -- an army spokesman went out of his way to specifically state that Barghouti was not being targeted for assassination.
Barghouti, meanwhile, made a series of contradictory statements on television that caught the attention of Israeli officials. Indeed, Barghouti's recent coy dance around the question of whether he supports violence or attempts to plan more peaceful protests underscores why Israeli and American negotiators have become so frustrated with Palestinian officials.
After a non-violent protest march by Palestinians and Israeli Arabs near Ramallah, Barghouti was quick to declare that he, too, supported 'peaceful ways' to resist Israeli occupation. A day later, however, Barghouti backtracked, saying that he had not renounced the gun, grenade, and bomb attacks that have increased in the last month.
'We will not replace any activity by others,' said Barghouti. 'You think that Palestinians have to distribute flowers to Israelis?'
Such provocative words are met with scorn by Israeli officials -- and see-I-told-you-so type statements of how Palestinians can't be trusted.
Said Israeli official Raanan Gissin:
'There are always those terrorists who will find their way into the crowd and do the shooting.'
Barghouti chuckled when he was reminded in the interview of how Israelis distrust him.
'I know the Israelis very well,' he says, adding: 'Sometimes the Israelis say, 'You didn't give us security.' But it's crazy to ask the Palestinians to sit down politely like that when the Israelis confiscate the land and build the new settlements.'
What Barghouti refers to is one of the most controversial elements of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process that has now stretched over eight years. When the much-heralded Oslo Peace Accords were signed in 1993 by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Arafat, Barghouti said Palestinians assumed that Israel would block future Jewish migration to what he assumed would be a Palestinian state on the West Bank.
This is a crucial issue, with political and religious angles.
For devout Jews, the West Bank is considered the ancient Jewish homeland. Tel Aviv may be nice, but the West Bank hills of Judea and Samaria are where David, Joshua, Samuel, and the prophets set down the roots of Judaism 4,000 years ago. Since 1993, some 50,000 new Jewish settlers have moved to the West Bank, bringing the total there to 200,000.
The West Bank's 2 million Palestinians, meanwhile, see the area as the site of their future nation.
For violence to end, Barghouti says, the settlements -- and settlers -- have to disappear. Like many Palestinians, he considers the 144 Jewish settlements that dot West Bank hills to be a form of Israeli occupation. Newly elected Israeli Prime Minister Sharon not only vows to keep the settlements but has hinted he may allow them to increase.
Barghouti's response is blunt and threatening: 'The condition for security is an end of the occupation. I'm saying full withdrawal for the Israelis. The settlements are part of that. No settlements.
'The Palestinians understood from the agreement that there would be full Israeli withdrawal,' adds Barghouti.
Israel says withdrawal from all settlements was never agreed to. Indeed, the construction of special Israeli roads linking settlements after the 1993 accords seems to bolster that view. Barghouti says the Israelis could move all settlers from the West Bank 'during six months.'
And if Israel refuses?
'In the short term,' says Barghouti, 'I'm very pessimistic. In the long term, I'm very optimistic. Always, according to our experience, the Israelis take a long time to understand. And it's not easy. The Israelis will understand, but unfortunately after a lot of casualties from both sides, a lot of victims from both sides, that the Israelis will not feel secure, will not feel stability or security or peace.'
Without Israeli settlers or its army on the West Bank -- and with a Palestinian state there -- Barghouti actually envisions friendly relations with Israel. He says the two nations should have 'open borders,' with mutual economic and military ties and open access by Jews to religious sites across the West Bank.
Farther down the line, he says, Palestinians would even be open to a single, combined state of Israel and Palestine -- a nation, fashioned along the lines of the United States, with autonomous states united to form a stronger nation.
'If you ask me,' says Barghouti, 'I prefer one state for the two peoples. Why not? I think we are ready to live in one state, in equal rights, as human beings.'
But first, he adds, 'the Israelis have to liberate themselves from the mentality of the occupation' and that 'separation of the two peoples is a condition for cooperation.'
As he speaks, a television in the next room comes to life with news of a car bombing by a Palestinian militant.
Did Barghouti order the bombing? He doesn't say.
Barghouti rises from the sofa he is seated on, walks around a glass-topped coffee table that covers a white model of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock mosque. He walks into the next room and stands before a television, a remote-control channel-switcher in his right hand.
He pushes one button, then another, watching the newscast in silence. He then steps into the next room to take a call on a cellular phone.
He returns a few minutes later.
'The only thing left from the peace process,' says Barghouti, is the name. There is no real peace now.'
|
|