Respect for the legacy of Yasser Arafat.. Is it just a slogan or a practice and an application?

Written by: Attorney Ziyad Abu Ziyad

Two days ago, the Palestinian people commemorated the death of the martyr leader, Yasser Arafat. And I noticed that most, if not all, of those who preached or wrote used the term “Yasser Arafat’s legacy” in their speeches and writings, meaning Yasser Arafat’s Legacy. Whether or not we have indeed preserved this legacy...

I will not dwell on the legacy of Yasser Arafat, but I will stop at some stations to verify what I am about.

I begin by pointing out that Yasser Arafat began his life as a revolutionary fighter, whether with the Egyptian fedayeen fighting against the British in the Suez Canal area, or as one of the founders of the Fatah movement and the pioneer of the Palestinian resistance who did not give up his gun nor his will to fight until the last day of his life. Thus, we must start by saying that the backbone of Yasser Arafat's legacy is the resistance in its various forms. Are we keeping this legacy? ‏

When Yasser Arafat entered the Oslo track, he was insisting on the unity of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. I remember before he came to the homeland that I was at the Palestinian embassy in Amman, waiting for his arrival. When he arrived and I was in the entrance with the late Tayeb Abd al-Rahim, Abu Ammar grabbed my hand and took me to a side room at the entrance. We were alone and he told me: Gaza, Jericho. The focus should be on the connection between Gaza and Jericho. No talk except about Gaza Jericho. Then we went out...
On several subsequent occasions, Abu Ammar would repeat that he had accepted the start of the operation with a small area in the West Bank, but linked to its twin in the Gaza Strip, to emphasize the unity of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Indeed, when the talk was later about the redeployment in the Gaza Strip, Abu Ammar demanded that the redeployment in the Gaza Strip be linked to a similar redeployment in some villages of Jenin, in order to confirm the organic connection between the West Bank and the Strip. So have we preserved this heritage and adhered to the unity of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, or have we failed at the first exam only four years after his departure, in June 2007?
Yasser Arafat was haunted by the dream of a state, and when he entered into negotiations, the Israelis insisted that there be a self-rule council to be elected and composed of twenty-five people, and that it would be the government and the authority authorized to issue legislation that is subject to Israeli oversight and does not contradict with Israeli military orders. Yasser Arafat insisted on rejecting that proposal and demanded the separation of the executive and legislative powers and that there be an elected parliament separate from the government. ‏
And he continued to struggle and argue with Yitzhak Rabin, and on one of the stormy nights in Taba he was able to extract from him an acceptance of the separation of the two powers, then he kept arguing and insisting on increasing the number above twenty-five members until he reached eighty-eight under the pretext that this is the total number of West Bank representatives in parliament Jordanian, in addition to the number of members of the Legislative Council that was present in the Gaza Strip during the era of the Egyptian military rule. Arafat used to tell us about those bitter negotiations to conclude that he did so because he wanted to establish a state and that the state can only be established with three powers: legislative, judicial and executive, while respecting the principle of separation of powers. This was culminated in the election of the first Legislative Council in January 1996, which later proved that he grew up on the ropes and did not abide by the Oslo Accords and did not accept any restrictions on his legislative powers and did not pay any attention to the military orders that the occupation legislated before the establishment of the Authority, but rather canceled many of them De facto. ‏
This is the legacy of Yasser Arafat. Establishment of a state. Establish the presence of three authorities. Applying the principle of separation of powers, respecting the independence of the judiciary. So where are we today? Have we respected and preserved the legacy of Yasser Arafat, or has the legislative authority been abolished and its powers given to the executive authority, opening the door wide for the executive authority to interfere in the affairs of the judiciary, to find the state’s dream losing its basic components and being managed through one authority, not three authorities? Is this the legacy of Arafat?
Arafat was the leader with whom some of those around him might disagree, but they did not disagree with him because he was the common denominator among all and because he was the father of all and the vessel and incubator that contained everyone, and each one found himself within and in its shadow. Is this leadership legacy still governing the relationship between the leaders and cadres of Fatah, and between it and the leaders and cadres of other factions? The answer I leave to the astute reader
These are some examples of Yasser Arafat's legacy, which is one of the elements that made him the leader, the immortal symbol. ‏
I listened with interest to the speech that President Mahmoud Abbas addressed to the masses who gathered in Al-Katiba Square in Gaza to commemorate the late martyr. President Abbas emphasized two things, which are the core of what must be done. The first is the inviolability of division. "Division is forbidden," he said. Then he added that he was ready to pay any price to end the division and restore the geographical, political and administrative unity between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, and this is exactly one of the main pillars of Yasser Arafat's legacy.

Preserving the legacy of Yasser Arafat requires working according to this heritage and not enriching it by chanting glamorous slogans devoid of any content.

Let us hope that this occasion will be the starting point towards respecting the legacy of Yasser Arafat by respecting the unity between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and ending the division and returning to the bosom of Palestinian patriotism. Eliminate and stop the absurd situation and the massacre to which it is exposed. ‏

And let Arafat's legacy be respected by returning to the law of love and fraternity of struggle by restoring unity and harmony and achieving reconciliation within the Fatah House similar to achieving reconciliation and restoring harmony and joint action between the various colors of the Palestinian political spectrum, foremost among which is the Hamas movement. ‏

Let us hope, despite the great despair that frustrates us, that there are still those who respect the legacy of Yasser Arafat in deed, not in words, and that we will not be among those whom God described in His saying in Surah Al-Saff, verse 3: Do you do.”

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