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Ayoon wa Azan (Letter To Arafat)
Jihad Al Khazen Al-Hayat 2004/05/15
Our dear brother Yasser Arafat,
I suggest that you resign. You have done your best. It is time to give the wheel to younger hands.
The American administration wants you to leave the scene, and Ariel Sharon wants to kill you.
The reasons of both are known. They took a stance from you based on enmity. I came to this conclusion out of love. I am worried about you.
You are not young anymore. You do not have the best of health. Your cause is weaker than you are. It needs a brilliant mind and hands that do not shake.
I ask you to resign because I am your friend. I wish you well-being and I want your cause to live.
You are a democratically elected president. If presidential elections were held in the Palestinian territories tomorrow, you would win again with a sweeping majority. That is why I hope you would leave the presidency in your moment of strength, not weakness. This way, you would always be the father of the revolution and of the homeland.
I know you do not like to listen to someone asking for your resignation. However, I am your friend; and your friend is the one who is sincere with you.
Do you remember how our friendship began in 1967 at the office at Al-Hussein camp in Amman? Perhaps you do not; since you have thousands of friends. However, I remember the stairs that I went up, which led to a large room leading to your office. We came out after a meeting that lasted less than an hour to take photos under a bulb that hung from the ceiling.
Thirty-seven years have passed; I wish them to be 40, even 50 years.
I saw you at the Wahadat camp, then at Al-Fakhani camp. I saw you in London, Washington, Paris, and Davos.
Our friendship did not falter in the face of the revolution mistakes in Jordan and Lebanon. I was in Washington during the Israeli invasion. I saw you leave to Tunisia. I boycotted you to object to the accumulation of mistakes in those five years. Later, I weakened in front of the revolution and its leader, and we resumed our friendship.
Many a time I carried messages to you during the civil war about Camp David I. How many times I spoke to you and of you.
Then, came the Oslo Accords and the handshake in the garden of the White House.
Many dinners and conversations brought us together in Davos; and from Washington to London.
Do you remember when I was with you at the same dinner table next to President Mubarak's table and his wife in Davos, and Benjamin Netanyahu's table was in the corner of the hall.
And the after-dinner meetings with the supporters. They included many peace-supporting Jews. Where are they now?
The last thing that I remember from Davos is your awful speech at the end of January 2001. Who advised you to give that speech? Who wrote it? Why? I did not get a convincing answer when other friends and I blamed you in your hotel suite that evening.
James Wolfensohn, the president of the World Bank, joined us. He is an Australian-American Jew who tries his best to help the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Palestinians. He coordinated with you, while I watched, how to ask for help from Gulf and European countries. Where are those who are like Wolfensohn now?
I remember when we sang Happy Birthday to Afif Safieh, your ambassador to London… It was May 4 at the Claridges Hotel; you were on the verge of declaring the Palestinian State that day, only for you not to be allowed to do so. (President Bush announced his support for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on June 24, two years ago. June 24 is my birthday; and I do not think that it is luckier than Afif's).
Oh my friend. I write this after a sleepless night; thinking about you and your situation.
I am not reviewing the mistakes of Jordan and Lebanon. I am not questioning your position from the occupation of Kuwait, or your relations with Saddam Hussein. I will not list the missed opportunities in the peace process.
What you and we are suffering is enough.
The cause is at a dead end, in which you drove it. This is the truth. You are besieged with the cause.
Do I hear you standing to say: I tried my best, I was right and made mistakes, and I brought back the name of Palestine on the map?
Do I hear you say: I resign, and I move out of the way of a leadership, which could transfer the name from the map to the land of Palestine?
Over 37 years with you, I never doubted your patriotism, and I am not today.
You are molded by the cause. Since this is the case, I cannot see you allowing Yasser Arafat to become the obstacle or barrier in front of the establishment of the Palestinian State.
I do not care what the enemies say. I care about you. However, I care more about the Palestinian cause, which must be more important to you than yourself.
Nevertheless, you did your best for Palestine. It is you right now to relax.
If you resign today, you will leave with your head up high.
A democratically elected Arab president resigns. Democratic elections are rare in our countries; resignation is rarer.
My friend, resign. Enough is enough. Do it and give yourself a chance. Give the cause a chance.
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