Palestinians commemorated on Sunday the third anniversary of the death of Yasser Arafat, the leader of their independence struggle. Many mourned his death because Arafat, dubbed “Mr Palestine”, represented his people on the international stage and managed internal scene to prevent internal conflict.

Today, the issue of Palestinian statehood has been put on the back burner and the writ of the fractured Palestinian Authority extends only to Ramallah in the West Bank. Other West Bank cities and towns are ruled by armed gangs loosely associated with Arafat’s  Fateh movement and Gaza is governed by Hamas, the fundamentalist movement Arafat sought to exclude from power.

Condemning Hamas

Arafat’s successor, Mahmud Abbas, who has little credibility with Palestinians and remains in power largely due to the backing of the US and Israel, used the occasion to condemn Hamas rather than to attack Israel for its refusal to withdraw from land where the Palestinians would establish their state.

Arafat died in a Paris hospital of a brain haemorrhage on November 11, 2004, after suffering a mysterious ailment many Palestinians and Arabs, including his Jordanian physician, believe was caused by poison  administered by Israel which had confined Arafat to his Ramallah compound, the Muqataa, for the last three years of his life.

Several days of events were launched by the unveiling of Arafat’s $1.75 million mausoleum complex in the Muqataa. Palestinian leaders and foreign envoys attended the ceremony.
The complex will include a mosque and a museum displaying his personal effects, documents and items from his office.

Arafat’s tomb is a temporary affair as he wished to be buried in Jerusalem once the eastern sector of the city became part of the independent Palestinian state he strove for nearly half a century to bring into being.

Arafat’s standing on the international scene began to decline at the end of July 2000 when he refused to agree to a vague proposal by then Israeli Premier Ehud Barak for a settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Both Barak and then US president Bill Clinton blamed Arafat for the failure of talks held at Camp David, although he simply reiterated his long-standing demand for full Israeli withdrawal from the territory — the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem — it occupied in 1967.

This demand is the minimum the Palestinians — and the Arabs — are prepared to accept and was reinforced by the Arab League summit of March 2002 which endorsed a Saudi proposal for full Arab normalisation with Israel in exchange for full Israeli withdrawal.

Abbas weakly restated Arafat’s line last week in the run-up to the US sponsored conference set to meet on November 26th at Annapolis.

However, neither Israel nor the US, its closest ally, are prepared to concede this demand.
 This means that if he fails to achieve Palestinian requirements at the Annapolis gathering, Abbas could very well lose whatever support he retains and may be compelled to retire to a home he has prepared for this possibility in the Gulf.