Arafat's Visit Gives Us Pause

Tonight's speech by Yasser Arafat at the Institute of Politics will be a momentous event. It is Arafat's first speech at an American university and it comes at a fragile moment in the Middle East peace process. Last month, Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin signed peace accords that will give Arafat responsibility for significant portions of the West Bank.

We support the Institute of Politics for inviting Arafat and Rabin this semester, thereby creating an extraordinary opportunity for campus dialogue. But we feel nervous about Arafat's leadership. We are doing business with a man who over the course of 35 years has been responsible for the deaths of many Jews. We are anxious for peace, but Arafat must assure the world that he can be trusted. We strongly support the efforts he has taken to curb terrorism.

However, in the past few months we have seen some of the worst terrorist attacks in Israel's history. Arafat must send an unambiguous message to his people that violent means cannot lead to peaceful ends. He must stop calling for "holy war" against Israel and the Jewish people. He must faithfully carry out his promise to eradicate the parts of the Palestinian National Covenant that call for Israel's destruction.

Arafat's visit should give us pause. We stand at a crossroads; we all hope a brighter future awaits the Middle East. But this future will not come about by itself. It will take hard work by leaders like Arafat to undo a legacy of hate that has poisoned relations for the past few decades. We hope that he will work in good faith with Israel and with his people in order to secure a lasting and real peace to a region that so desperately needs it. --Ethan Tucker '97   Chair, Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel   Yuval Segal '97   Dalia Trachtenberg '96   Co-chairs, Harvard   Students for Israel