Newspaper
The Nation
Buenos Aires, Argentina, Friday, November 5th, 2004
Exterior Section – Page 4
Arafat, the man that never gave up (view)
By Suhail Hani
Daher Akel *
To The Nation
For
all us who know President Arafat, his smile reflects his hart offered to the
Palestinian people and his faith. He is a man that fought with life and death.
He never gave up and he never allowed his people to give up. With high moral
he defended the rights of freedom, but never at the expense of other people’s
freedom.
From his speech in the United Nations (UN) in 1974, in which he requested
them not to let the olive’s branch for the peace to fall from his hand,
until his renovated exile in a French hospital last week; during his energetic
condemnation three days ago to the terrorist attack in Tel Aviv and his congratulations
sent the day before yesterday to the American president George W. Bush for
his electoral victory, the olive’s branch remained on high in spite
of the slow death imposed by Sharon.
The hopes of Arafat and his people were renewed in the handshake with Rabin. The emotion of Arafat and our emotion were not hidden in the White House when Israeli and Palestinian children with their flags, shook olive’s branches with their hands together and wearing white T-shirts with the words salam-shalom ("peace" in Arabic and in Hebrew).
What right did they have to assassinate our partner in peace Rabin and to erase the smile of a man committed with the peace of the braves like Arafat, the Nobel Prize of the Peace?
Sharon imposed this situation. In September 2000 he pulverized any alternative of peace, he demonized to the Palestinian leadership and people and he started to make them delight the flavor of the death and the pain that as consequence, hit to the same Israeli people.
It was necessary to destabilize any chance of a Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as capital, next to the State of Israel, as friends and neighbors.
He appealed to the official speech: to fight against the terrorism and for the security and he imposed terrorism of State and insecurity to the defenseless Palestinian people, fencing their president until his departure toward Paris. It was the worst of the confinements in the history of a democratic president.
Apartheid Walls, selective and massive assassinations accompanied, these last years, the agony of a people. The lack of guarantees and the prohibition of the humanitarian elements, deteriorated Arafat’s health. Without assuming responsibilities, in the last hours, Sharon and Israel increased the confusion in order to enjoy another’s death. Not either they respected the ethics that a human being needs when he fights against his own death.
* The author is the Palestinian Ambassador in Argentina