CUMHURIYET- Columnist Orhan Birgit comments on Yaser Arafat’s release after 34 days under siege. A summary of his column is as follows:
Israel yesterday removed the siege around Palestinian President Yaser Arafat and so after 34 days, the world’s strangest arrest came to an end. Arafat enjoyed the sun on Thursday for the first time. I watched his feet touching the open ground on television. Among the crowd watching, there were not only press members from around the world but also peace volunteers. The Israeli Army committed massacres in Ramallah and on the Palestinian land which it entered on the order of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. It arrested hundreds of Palestinians in order to capture a few dozen people whom it accused of murdering Israelis, including their own tourism minister. Sharon turned the Jenin refugee camp upside down to such an extent that he found it necessary to block a UN investigation team from looking into the camp. We need to lift the shameful veil from the things done in a city where a great disaster occurred and where one can find mass graves.
Arafat tried to draw parallels between the Jenin refugee camp and Stalingrad, which was devastated by Hitler during World War II, and to draw a direct line connecting Sharon and the Nazis. After the siege around him was removed, he told the journalists, “Do you know what had happened in Stalingrad?” Then, in an effort to gain the sympathy of as many people as possible, he emphasized that Muslims and Christians alike had been influenced what had happened in the West Bank, bound by a common fate.
He drew parallels between the besieged Church of the Nativity and attacks on the al Aqsa Mosque two years ago, again to assemble a wide strategic front. In his first words to the foreign public, he was quick to thank the US president and secretary of state and the British prime minister, as well as Europe and Russia.
What about Turkey? What about Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit, who draw barbs from Israel, Jewish people worldwide and the many people internationally by using a certain word in one of his speeches? What about Foreign Minister Ismail Cem and his staff who went to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Ramallah together with Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou? What about the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay) which made a journey through many obstacles to bring food and drink to the Palestinian people?
I wonder if Arafat is displaying a conscious forgetfulness and only inflaming those who openly wondered during Arafat’s captivity whether he was concerned about the Turkish public. I don’t care what the people say. While beginning to hug Palestinian people on a joyful Ramallah morning, Arafat is not only defeating Sharon, but also becoming more powerful by making indirect use of the Islamic Jihad and Hamas, two organizations which sometimes organized suicide bomb attacks because they thought Arafat ‘too soft.’ What about tomorrow? Time will show what things tomorrow will bring with the common sense of both parties.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION