ARAFAT'S SCORCHED EARTH

Arafat's Scorched Earth - Yossi Klein Halevi
For almost all Israeli Jews, Arafat has already taken his place among the most detested villains of Jewish history. That's not only because he re-legitimized the murder of Jews in the post-Holocaust era and delegitimized the existence of the Jewish state; more profoundly, Arafat is detested because he toyed with our deepest longings for peace and betrayed Israel's hopes for normalcy and reconciliation.

In his refusal to abandon the demand for refugee return to the Jewish state, Arafat proved to Israelis that the conflict isn't about the 1967 borders or even the settlements but about the existence of Israel in any borders. Indeed, during the failed Camp David negotiations in July 2000, settlements weren't even among the top five issues dividing the two sides, according to Israel's chief negotiator, Gilad Sher.

More than creating a Palestinian state, Arafat was driven by the obsession to destroy the Jewish state, and by a grandiose vision of his place in history, reflected in murals all over the Palestinian territories depicting him as Saladin, waving a sword and riding a white steed.

Arafat's scorched earth includes thousands of dead and crippled Israelis, but his crimes hardly end there. Arafat destroyed Palestinian souls. He raised a generation of Palestinian children to see in suicide bombers religious and educational role models.

His media taught the Palestinians a culture of denial - denying the most minimal truths of Jewish history, from the biblical narrative of an ancient Jewish presence in the Holy Land to the existence of gas chambers. Indeed, the Palestinian territories, along with much of the Arab world, are the only region on the planet where Holocaust denial has become normative, from intellectual circles to the person on the street.

If the post-Arafat Palestinian leadership somehow manages to undo Arafat's legacy and end terror and the culture of incitement, then the Israeli public will support negotiations. Yet few Israelis really believe that that scenario is possible, at least not in the foreseeable future.