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The Arafat Paradox

(Jerusalem Post)Dore Gold - The very first time I was sent as an envoy to Yasser Arafat, what seemed most striking to me was the enormous gap between the total unreality of his conspiratorial explanations of political events transpiring around him and the extraordinary skill with which he played his weak political hand in order to advance the hard-line ideological agenda from which he never swerved: the elimination of the State of Israel. As he weaved one conspiracy theory after another and lied in the face of foreign leaders, one wondered how he wasn't thrown out of the chancelleries of Europe, rather than being welcomed on a red carpet. Arafat was at the same time a military commander, head ideologue of the Fatah component of the PLO, the chief financial officer of its terrorist war chest, and its international spokesman at the UN. It is doubtful that any single individual can retain such concentrated powers in the future. The 1993 Oslo Accords gave Arafat the territorial base next to Israel for waging "armed struggle" in accordance with his own "strategy of stages" from 1974. The truth of his Oslo deception became all too clear when he launched his second intifada in September 2000, leading to over 1,000 Israeli fatalities. Arafat's entire strategy had been based on the legitimacy for his terrorist operations granted by the Nonaligned Movement and its Soviet backers at the UN, and in other international forums. He was forgiven in many circles for ordering airplane hijackings and the murder of the U.S. ambassador to Sudan. But after 9/11 he lost his freedom of maneuver. Whether the Palestinians will abandon the legacy he has bequeathed them is the most important question for determining the chances of peace in the future. A realistic assessment might lead one to hope that any new leadership will shake loose from Arafat's terrorist past, but his hard-line political legacy is likely to survive him.
2004-11-12 00:00:00
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