The leaders and people of Israel and Palestine should honour the memories of Yasser Arafat and slain Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by acting practically to achieve the ”peace of the brave”, President Thabo Mbeki said on Friday.
Paying tribute to the late Palestinian president — who died on Thursday — in his weekly newsletter on the African National Congress’s website, ANC Today, Mbeki said it has been claimed Arafat’s defining fault was that he could not bring himself to graduate from being a guerrilla fighter, or ”terrorist”, to become a statesman.
”It has been said that when the chance to achieve a just and honourable peace came, he turned away from an historic moment that would have enabled his people at last to realise their right to self-determination, independent statehood and peace,” he said.
However, even as Arafat spent more than two years in confinement in Ramallah, ”presented as an uncommon criminal, but a criminal nevertheless”, the Palestinian leader spoke about his commitment to the peace of the brave.
”I have listened to him many times as he spoke about the peace of the brave. I have heard him many times speaking about his partner in the struggle to achieve the peace of the brave — the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin,” Mbeki said.
Some heard Arafat’s words about the peace of the brave as mere rhetorical deceit, while others who, for whatever reason, did not want peace, thought the possibility for peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis was so great Rabin had to be murdered.
Arafat lost his partner, and Israel and Palestine lost an historic opportunity to conclude a just and permanent peace.
”In the end, there must and will be peace between Israel and Palestine. There must and will be peace between Israel and the Arab world,” Mbeki said.
The violent days of the death of Palestinians and Israelis, brought about by the lack of courage boldly to take to the peace road — sustained by the belief that statesmanship consisted in a deadly competition about the use of force — would also come to an end.
”It will then be possible for everybody, both friend and foe, to say that Yasser Arafat was correct to speak about the peace of the brave.
”It should be possible even now, as we say farewell to a great human being and fighter for freedom, Yasser Arafat, that the leaders and people of Israel and Palestine should honour the memories of Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin by acting practically to achieve the peace of the brave.
”Like his partner, Yitzhak Rabin, Yasser Arafat understood and accepted that whatever might have happened in the past, Israel and Palestine had no choice but to construct a relationship that would amaze the world.
”This would be a relationship that would amaze the world because it would be based on the fundamental principles of peace, friendship, respect, solidarity and mutually beneficial cooperation between Palestine and Israel.
”To arrive at this outcome, Israelis, Palestinians and all of us in the rest of humanity require the peace of the brave that Yasser Arafat spoke about.
”Time will tell whether the Palestinian and Israeli leaders have the courage it will take to make peace rather than to make war,” Mbeki said. — Sapa