Will the US Congress Approve Powell’s Rescue of Arafat?

On the evening of September 11th, Israeli intelligence provided evidence to a special session of the Israeli security cabinet which proved that Arafat has been directly responsible for months of terror activity, in coordination with the Hamas and the Al Aksa brigades of the Fateh. Such confirmed Israeli intelligence reports caused the Israeli government security cabinet to order direct military action against Arafat – to kill him or to deport him back to Tunis.

However, Israel Government’s IBA TV and IBA Radio reported within minutes of the Israeli cabinet decision that US Secretary of State Colin Powell intervened to veto any IDF action against Arafat.

Sources in the Israeli government quoted U.S. State Department sources as describing Arafat as “an American interest which is essential to the peace process and to stability in the region.”

Yet ever since President George W. Bush decided more than a year ago to deepen his involvement in the Middle East quagmire, it had been the policy of the Bush administration to implement a Middle East policy without Yasser Arafat.

Bush went so far as to revoke the frequent flier tickets that Arafat had to the White House under Clinton.

Yes, it had been the adamant Bush policy to do everything possible to ignore Arafat, to weaken Arafat, and to coordinate a policy with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of making Arafat into an “irrelevant” figure in the negotiation process.

And yet every step of the way in which Abu Mazen (remember him?) had been brought into the picture as Prime Minister, Abu Mazen made it quite clear that so long as Arafat is around, he will most certainly be running the PLO ship.

Indeed, when Abu Mazen appeared before the U.S. House International Relations Committee on July 24, 2003, the first question of Middle East Subcommittee Chairperson Ileana Ros-Leighten was very simple:

“What is your relationship to Arafat?” to which Abu Mazen answered in clear, simple terms: “Arafat sent me. I am the representative of Yasser Arafat.”

It was as if Abu Mazen had expressed a Arabic version of Lincoln’s famous adage that “you can fool some of the people some of the time.”

The masquerade of the U.S. foreign policy supposedly ignoring Arafat came to an end after the August 19th Arab terror massacre in Jerusalem, in which 20 Jewish men, women and children were murdered.

Following that massacre, on August 21st, Colin Powell stood next to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and told the UN, “I call on Chairman Arafat to work with Prime Minister Abbas and to make available to Prime Minister Abbas those security elements that are under his control.”

Powell made it a point to use the term “make available” — not “transfer” — and dropped the key precondition of America’s launching of the Road Map, with Arafat seemingly out of the picture and not in control of any armed forces.

In other words, Arafat isn’t out of the picture — and he was never out of the picture.

Yet the pretext for the U.S. resuming the military training of Palestinian security forces were that there were some PA security forces that were not beholden to Arafat.

Well, that illusion is out of the way. Yet the U.S. continues to train Arafat’s militias in Jericho.

And to further pour salt on the wound, Powell also declared to the UN on August 21st that he compared those who opposed a PLO state with those who conducted acts of heinous murder, concluding his remarks by saying:

“The alternative is what? Just more death and destruction? Let the terrorists win? Let those who have no interest in a Palestinian state win? Let those who have no interest but killing innocent people win? No. That is not an acceptable outcome.”

And now that Powell has revived Arafat as the real and present PLO leader who carries all power, this will dash President George W. Bush’s notion of a “new leadership, not compromised by terror” announced in his seminal June 24th policy speech of last year.

You cannot fool all of the people all of the time. Arafat has never left his leadership role and will never voluntarily do so — especially with his renewed U.S. State Department support.

The question remains: Has the U.S. Congress, which advises and consents the Bush Administration in matters of foreign policy, given its consent to keep Arafat in power?

Has the U.S. Congress indeed decided that Arafat is “an American interest which is essential to the peace process and to stability in the region”?

Time will tell on Capitol Hill.

This piece ran on FrontPageMagazine.Com on September 12th, 2003