Arafat and the Holocaust museum again
Palestine, Analysis, 1/20/1998

What if Palestinian President Yasser Arafat rejected the invitation to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington?

This simple question needs to be asked in light of the unanticipated reaction of the museum administration and board of directors showed upon hearing of Arafat's readiness to visit their premises. In fact, there is room to suggest that US Special Envoy Dennis Ross, who extended the invitation to Arafat, either had not done his homework properly and failed to consult with his fellow colleagues on the board of management, or he simply knew what their reaction would be and expected Arafat to reject his offer, making it easy for him and for many other pro-Israeli lobbyists to defame the Palestinian President days before his meeting with President Bill Clinton.

Now that the museum's board of directors decided to reverse its decision and extend a new official invitation to Arafat, things seem to be getting more complicated and it seems too early to decide whether Arafat, hurt and insulted as he is, would accept the invitation now. He might decide to accept it in principle and yet explain that his schedule had been rewritten and that he cannot hold the visit this week.

But had Arafat rejected the invitation from the start, the US media and, needless to say, Israel's as well, would have been filled with anti-Palestinian reports branding the Palestinian leader and the Palestinians in general as deniers of the Holocaust. To say that Arafat is Hitler would not be too far to expect from the Israeli media, when a considerable number of Israelis saw in their former prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, an SS officer of Nazi Germany, during their anti-Labor government demonstrations in 1995, months before Rabin's assassination by extreme right wing activist Yigal Amir.

In his defense of the decision to ban Arafat from visiting the Holocaust Museum, Israel's ambassador to Washington, Elyahu Ben Elissar said it would be "too early" to invite Yasser Arafat to an official visit to the Washington Holocaust Museum, because there still are many Holocaust deniers amongst the Palestinians. In fact this reasoning made by Elissar does not sound very convincing . What really bothered Israel and its supporters in the US is the fact that Arafat would have held his visit to the museum in the capacity of a head of state, a courtesy the Israel lobbyists do not like to see manifested, neither during the present trip to the US nor in the future.

Had Arafat walked into the museum and seen the horrible photos that document one of the worst atrocities in recent history, he would certainly come out and talk to the press. Arafat would have caused a major embarrassment to Israel with his would-be statements about how deeply irritated he was upon seeing those pictures and how angry he is at seeing Israel, that was proclaimed as one of the direct results of worldwide identification with Jewish victims of the Holocaust, is practicing tyranny against the Palestinian people, even if not at the same level of what Nazi Germany did to nations under its occupation.

There is room to assume that such a crisis may not have broke out had somebody else been prime minister in Israel. The present government of Benjamin Netanyahu is obviously pushing the whole region towards a major confrontation. Last week, Israeli military sources hinted that should an open confrontation break out between Palestine and Israel, it is very likely to extend and include Egypt, the strongest supporter of Palestinian demands and rights.

Many can argue, justly though, that it would take a very dire price from Netanyahu to move the peace process forward. The kind of a government that rules in Israel today finds it easier to extend its tenure in times of crisis rather than in an atmosphere of rapprochement. And this might be one of the reasons why many top brass officers in the Israeli army, including the chief of staff, and senior officers in the Shin Bet, Israel's domestic security services, feel worried at the fact that all their warnings to Netanyahu had fallen on deaf ears.

Ironically speaking, heads of Israeli military and intelligence branches maintain closer contacts with their Palestinian counterparts than those they have with Netanyahu. They have warned in the past against the repercussions of decisions taken by the government, but Netanyahu went ahead with his plans regardless of what their messages warned of. He did so in the tunnel decision underneath the Al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem. He took a similar step when he decided to build the new Jewish settlement of Har Homa on Jabal Abu Ghaneim in East Jerusalem. And he is very likely to do more of this in the future, if he is convinced that such decisions are the only recipe for his continued tenure as prime minister. Netanyahu's close association with the right wing coalition members has stripped him of almost all his maneuverability.

Previous Stories:
  Peace ball between Washington and Arabs   (1/20/1998)
  Holocaust Museum to deny Arafat a visit   (1/19/1998)
  Shaath: catastrophe is ahead of us   (1/16/1998)

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