Thread: Yassar Arafat's legacy - Fatahstan and Hamastan

The Torch Passes
Yasser Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994. Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, explained the selection in his presentation speech:

It has been said that the Nobel Committee ought to have waited. But to say that is to disregard what has already been achieved as a result of the Oslo Accords--in all the areas mentioned. Besides, if we had to wait for what Kant in his famous essay called "perpetual peace," we might have to wait a long time. Peace has to be perpetually won. That means that every award must contain an element of entering into a process, a process with a promise of peace. The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded both in recognition of efforts which have been made, and to encourage still further efforts. There can be no doubt that that is also how Alfred Nobel intended the prize to work.

Arafat did not want the peace process to end. In 2000 Israel's then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat most of the disputed territories. Arafat balked and launched a new campaign of terror.
In 2006 parliamentary elections, residents of the Palestinian territories ousted Arafat's Fatah Party in favor of the less corrupt but more fanatical Hamas. Of late Fatah and Hamas have been fighting a civil war, which, in Gaza, Hamas seems to have won. Which brings us back to the Nobel Prize, as the Jerusalem Post reports:

Enraged Fatah leaders on Saturday accused Hamas militiamen of looting the home of former Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat in Gaza City.
"They stole almost everything inside the house, including Arafat's Nobel Peace Prize medal," said Ramallah-based Fatah spokesman Ahmed Abdel Rahman.

Although technically this would be considered an act of theft, there is something fitting about Hamas coming into possession of Arafat's Nobel. As The Wall Street Journal observed in a Saturday editorial:

The deeper lesson here is that a society that has spent the last decade celebrating suicide bombing would inevitably become a victim of its own nihilistic impulses. This is . . . the bitter fruit of the decades of dictatorship and terrorism as statecraft that Yasser Arafat instilled among Palestinians.

Finally, on a personal note, let us just observe that as an American of Swedish extraction (on our mother's side), we are proud that the Nobel Peace Prize is a Norwegian institution.

The legacy of Arafat now comes home to roost. The Hamas party elected into sharing power by the Palestinian people came about because Hamas, a known terrorist organization, LIED about their real intentions to the Palestinian people.

To pay the Palestinian people back for their trust in them, they started a minor civil war in the Gaza Strip and took control of it rather than deal with their grievances it in a legal Democratic way.

To Israel's credit, they pulled out of the Gaza strip unilaterally and turned it over to the Palestine authority. Also to their credit, the attacks on Israel from the Gaza Strip have been met with restrained responses from Israel.

The people of Gaza are getting a lesson in Democracy. Politicians will promise you a lot, but in many cases, they do not honestly represent who they are and what their TRUE intents are.

Does this mean Democracy can't work in the Middle East? That would be an absurd conclusion. What is happening today in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority is a slow progression and learning curve to Democracy. The Palestinians should rightfully be left to their own solution to the problem with the world's (UN's) help.

I agree with this Administrations response in renewing our support of the legitimate President and completely isolating the Hamas faction which, after attempting Democratic legal avenues, have once more resorted to their terrorist ways showing their true colors.

Hamas should be stamped out completely by the Palestinian people as a result of their abuse and lies to the Palestinian people. The people in Gaza must ask themselves if they are now better off than before when Israel controlled the Gaza Strip. I think the answer is a resounding NO.