Arafat's Grand Strategy

(Middle East Quarterly) Efraim Karsh - For Arafat and the Palestine Liberation Organization leadership, the Oslo process has always been a strategic means not to a two-state solution - Israel and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza - but to the substitution of a Palestinian state for the State of Israel. Arafat and his PA reinforced their strategy by indoctrinating Palestinians, and especially the youth, against Israel, Jews, and Judaism - all in flagrant violation of their obligations under Oslo. Israel is glaringly absent from Palestinian maps, which portray its territory as part of a "Greater Palestine," from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Had Arafat been genuinely interested in peace, a Palestinian state could have been established in the early 1980s as a corollary to the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty of 1979, or by May 1999, as a part of the Oslo process. The writer is director of the Mediterranean Studies Program at King's College, University of London, and editor of the quarterly journal Israel Affairs.


2004-08-04 00:00:00

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