Op/Ed - Georgie Ann Geyer
ARAFAT'S DEATH BRIDGES NO GAPS IN POLARIZED PERSPECTIVES
Date: Mon Nov 15
By Georgie Anne Geyer
BRUSSELS, Belgium -- The European and American perspectives of Yasser Arafat (news - web sites)'s death could not be more different.
His broken and failing mortal body was welcomed in Paris hospitals last week, French officials accompanying the dying Palestinian leader at every turn almost in the style that they would honor any head of state. When he died, his coffin was carried to the plane that would take the man on his last journey, to Cairo and then Ramallah, where world leaders would respectfully see him off.
The American response looked quite different. President Bush (news - web sites), who never liked the difficult, indecisive, sclerotic Palestinian leader, was civil in wishing the Palestinians well, but only barely. Speaking in Washington with an ever-worshipful Tony Blair (news - web sites), the American president gave no indication that he would finally fulfill his promise to the British prime minister to use American power to help force an Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Why these extreme differences of policy and perception between America and Europe, and even Great Britain?
First, on the spiritual and existential level, Europe has learned from a series of destructive wars over the centuries that human motivation and behavior are not fixed. Individual human beings for the most part are not inspired by implacable evil but by the worldly situations they find themselves in. Human beings can change according to these conditions -- so the wise man changes the conditions.
Anwar Sadat, who originally supported the Nazis in World War II, eventually became the world's most respected voice of peace; Jomo Kenyatta, the Mau-Mau terrorist in the colonial war against the British, later was accepted by the world as leader of an independent Kenya; the wise Sultan of Oman co-opted the leaders of a Marxist movement fighting him and made them his leading cabinet members.
But there is little understanding in the Bush administration that life is an evolving experience, a moving river that can carry one to different destinations. Rather, the "W" vision is that good and evil are set in man, and the person is doomed to be that forever. That is behind the Bush idea that all insurgents must be destroyed, pure and simple.
Today, the Americans question the Europeans' principles of evolutionary change, of seeing Arafat as the leader, albeit flawed, of the Palestinians, and of working with Iran on its nuclear policy until they find it cheating.
The Europeans, for their part, question the American principles of employing unlimited force to gain suzerainty in Iraq (news - web sites), of seeing other nations as cultureless pieces on a cynical chessboard, and of refusing to distinguish between "good dictators" in Libya, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and "bad dictators" in Syria and Iran.
The European position is that most evil in the world is situational, the result of historical dislocation and injustice. The American position is that some men and women are evil incarnate and thus must be destroyed.
Also, the European position on Israel, far more critical than America's, sees criticism of Israel as simply responsible judgment of an immensely armed nation-state that has, in fact, done considerable harm to the Palestinians. The American position on Israel is that it, as the famous "only democracy in the Middle East," can do no harm in protecting itself and all "give" must come from the Palestinians.
Europe today is a work in progress, fluid and ready for responsible change; America believes it is completing a long democratic experiment that has essentially led to its perfected end.
The Israeli/Palestinian struggle, then, is caught between these two interpretations of man's mind and soul.
These counter ideas and counter convictions on human change also are emerging over Iran. The Europeans do not want to turn Iran into a mortal enemy, even while keeping an eye on their nuclear program. The American policy is, at least rhetorically, leaning toward still another military "solution" there.
So is the death of Yasser Arafat likely to bring forth real change in the ongoing tragedy that haunts the Middle East? Not likely, I would think.
When President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair met this week, the American leader still made no promises to the Brit. Journalists in London were immediately saying, "Hey, Tony, where's the beef?"
There was no answer. And so the Americans continue to hyperventilate that the "road to Jerusalem runs through Baghdad," while the Europeans insist it is the other way around. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, no road seems to be going anywhere.
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