Palestinians Exhume Past, Ignore the Future

Whatever the experts conclude, the sight of Arafat’s exhumation provides an apt symbol of the backward-looking obsessions that define the Palestinian condition. Arafat himself was a man who refused a state when it was offered to him by Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak in 2000 — because he was simply incapable of giving up his role of romantic 1960s-era revolutionary in favour of the more modern, mundane business of state-building. In similar fashion, the Palestinian people he once led remain prisoners of their ancient suspicion and hatred of the Jewish state. Rather than exhume the past in hopes of finding another crime to add to the long list of accusations they hurl at Israel, the Palestinians might better direct their energies toward building a better and more peaceful future.