Although they were meticulously observing the ceasefire arranged by the United States in June 1981 and doing everything within their power to avoid a resumption of violence, Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership knew Israel would invade Lebanon the moment Menachem Begin was re-elected, two months after the truce came into effect. However, unlike the rest of the PLO command Arafat believed that the invasion would not be limited in scope. He felt it would be aimed at the total elimination of the Palestinian presence in the country, even if it required the occupation of Beirut.1
Israel had amply demonstrated a determination to use the divisions among the Arabs resulting from Camp David, the Iran–Iraq War and the solidly pro-Israeli policies of the Reagan Administration to intercept Iraq’s armament programme, freeze any moves towards a peace agreement that would include the Palestinians and expand its settlements in Gaza and the West Bank. On 7 June, with Iraq fully engaged in fighting Iran, the Israelis raided the Iraqi nuclear reactor at Ozeirak and destroyed it. Apart from offering Iraq money to rebuild it, the Arab countries did nothing in response. On 13 December that year Israel officially annexed the Golan Heights, and once again there was no concrete Arab response. At the same time, the Reagan Administration turned a blind eye to Israeli plans to expand settlement in the occupied territories and announced that PLO acceptance of United Nations resolutions was not enough to restart a dialogue with the organization – a total, unequivocal renunciation of terrorism was required. Though still without a coherent policy towards the occupied territories, Israel used this opportunity to increase its support for the collaborationists, the Village Leagues under the leadership of one Mustafa Dudeen, and redoubled its settlement efforts.
The only thing that stood in the way of Israel realizing all its aims was the existence of the PLO – the simple fact that an organization purporting to speak in the name of the Palestinians resided in neighbouring Lebanon. The temptation to eliminate this magnet for Palestinian and Arab hopes, a PLO which was recognized by 107 countries2 and which kept the issue of the Palestinian struggle alive while threatening Israel’s long-term supremacy, was too strong to resist. Arafat was right: Menahem Begin and his Defence Minister Ariel Sharon began planning the invasion of Lebanon late in 1981, during a period of unusual quiet along the two countries’ mutual frontier.
Realizing that explicit or tacit American approval was needed, in March 1982 the Israelis sounded out Secretary of State Alexander Haig regarding a full-scale invasion of Lebanon to eradicate the PLO presence. Haig gave them a tentative green light; to him, they were free to invade if the Palestinians violated the truce.3 According to former President Jimmy Carter, this response, initially given to Israeli intelligence, was confirmed by the Secretary of State to Ariel Sharon in May.4 In fact, however conditional Haig’s original green light had been, it amounted to approval of Israel’s plans. Both sides had always experienced difficulty in controlling the behaviour of their soldiers in the field, and the multiplicity of the Palestinian groups involved made some form of violation of the ceasefire likely. Aware of the threat, Arafat tried to obtain US diplomatic assurances against an Israeli attack.5 The double-dealing Haig gave Arafat the assurances he requested, but they proved empty.
On 3 June, gunmen belonging to the Abu Nidal (Sabri Al Banna) terrorist group shot and wounded the Israeli Ambassador to the UK, Shlomo Argov. Although Western intelligence sources absolved the PLO of responsibility (Abu Nidal had been ejected from the organization in the 1970s after trying to assassinate Arafat), this was the pretext Israel needed to put its plans into effect. With the Israeli penchant for misnomers, that unrestrained attack against Lebanon would be called Operation Peace for Galilee.
The following day the Israeli air force attacked Palestinian refugee camps, military positions and PLO offices within Beirut itself. Having tired of waiting for the invasion he had expected, Arafat was in Saudi Arabia to promote another mediation effort to end the Iran–Iraq War and refocus attention on his problems with Israel. On hearing the grim news he flew to Damascus almost immediately and crossed into Lebanon by car, exposing himself to the danger of Israeli air attacks every inch of the way. His chief adversary, Ariel Sharon, away in Romania when Argov was wounded, flew back to Jerusalem to supervise the invasion. By 6 June the two antagonists were in full command of their forces. The biggest Israeli war since October 1973 began at dawn and involved 75,000–80,000 soldiers, 1240 tanks, 1520 armoured personnel carriers, 350 ambulances and 300 buses to carry prisoners.6 Against them stood 15,000 Palestinians under Arafat’s direct command and 3000 followers of other guerrilla organizations. The Israeli air force roamed the skies unopposed, and the antiquated SAM missiles of the PLO forces provided no protection. Hundreds of people, mostly civilians, died during the first day of aerial bombardment. Israel lost no aircraft.
Despite repeated Israeli declarations to the contrary, unlike Karameh, the Israeli attack on Lebanon was a full-fledged military invasion from the start. And, also unlike Karameh, this time the Palestinian forces and the whole Palestinian presence in Lebanon were the creation of Yasser Arafat. Furthermore, this time Arafat stood alone, both militarily and diplomatically. The invasion and its results represented the purest test of what Arafat had achieved during fourteen years of setting up a Palestinian armed resistance and staking a Palestinian claim to international recognition. It was an Israeli–Palestinian war.
Arafat’s return to Beirut to lead his men enlivened them. He alone among the PLO leadership personalized the image of their Palestinianness. Wasting no time, he ordered the withdrawal of the twenty-four old tanks which constituted a mini-armoured corps and which had been deployed in an exposed and vulnerable way. Then, smiling and raising his fingers in a victory sign, he toured his forces, forward positions. The troops excitedly shouted out his noms de guerre, ‘Abu Ammar’ and ‘Brother Abu Ammar’, as he clasped his hands together above his head and urged them on. There were several occasions when he was within yards of the enemy, and at other times areas he visited were occupied by the Israelis only minutes after his departure.
Sadly, this ability to lead and inspire his fighters was not matched by sound military preparations, despite his repeated insistence for almost a year that a major Israeli invasion was on the way. His pre-invasion orders to his Beirut followers to stock ammunition, food, water and other necessities had been obeyed,7 but his field command structure, which he personally had drawn up, collapsed within forty-eight hours of the Israeli onslaught. Though some of his field commanders acquitted themselves admirably, notably Salah Ta’amari in Sidon, most of his senior officers, including his favourites Ghazi Attallah, Haj Ismael and Abu Hajer, fled, alone or with their troops. And there was no plan worth mentioning for where to hold the line or how to effect a retreat. The PLO troops were brave but essentially leaderless, and therefore less effective than they could have been. Arafat’s legendary dependence on unfit sycophants and his lack of method were exacting a heavy price.
The military outcome of the fighting was made worse by problems which were not of his making. In April that year, Arafat’s total conviction that an Israeli invasion was on the way had led him to swallow his pride and meet President Assad of Syria to develop joint contingency plans. The two men agreed to pool their forces to meet any Israeli attack. However, after the Israeli air force had blasted the Syrian SAM missile systems out of existence and downed over forty of their fighters in one day, on 11 June Assad agreed to a unilateral truce with Israel without even consulting Arafat. Three days later the Lebanese President, Elias Sarkis, formed a Committee of National Salvation, essentially an attempt to save Lebanon through meeting the Israeli request to eject Arafat and the PLO from the country.
The Syrian and Lebanese betrayals came on top of total silence from the rest of the Arab, non-aligned and Muslim worlds. Arafat had broadcast impassioned appeals to leaders of these blocs on 9 June, but there was no tangible response. Even the Arab League did not call for a meeting – it finally met after Beirut was surrounded on 29 July, nearly two months after the start of the invasion. In fact, the deteriorating military situation was matched by an incredible lack of diplomatic activity. It was as if all parties concerned had accepted the Israeli premise for starting the war and had joined in a conspiracy of silence to see it succeed. Only the American envoy Philip Habib was there, despatched to the area by a cynical Alexander Haig two days after the start of the fighting. But the Israelis knew better than to listen to Habib. By 14 June he had organized several ceasefire agreements, none of which they observed. The Israelis were following a more telling indicator of American intentions: President Reagan, in Paris to attend a NATO conference, seemed to accept the Israeli justifications for the invasion without reservation.
Except for pockets of resistance by some of Arafat’s courageous fighting units, the PLO forces were in full retreat. Unable to halt or hinder the Israeli advance, Arafat was preoccupied by the possibility that the anti-PLO Christian forces might break out from north of Beirut and link with the Israelis to encircle the city. This did not happen. Despite Israeli attempts to draw the Christians into the conflict, the latter resisted for fear of alienating the Arab world on whose goodwill Lebanon’s economic wellbeing depended. Still, they did conduct a propaganda campaign against Arafat through a radio station they controlled, and on several occasions contributed to the demoralization of his troops by claiming that he had escaped. Arafat responded in character, by making himself visible and through broadcasts, including one which ended with, ‘Here I am, and here I stay’ and another with, ‘Beirut will be the Hanoi and Stalingrad of the Israeli army.’ At one point, unable to resist the pull of his Arabness and hoping for Arab help against fading hope, he declared, ‘We will fight alone, until the rest of the Arabs follow us.’ When nothing happened, the radio station under his control broadcast Koranic verse.
Although Arafat’s heroic performance made a psychological difference it had minimal impact on the military situation, and by the end of June the Israelis had Beirut completely surrounded. The barbarous land, air and sea attacks which followed were made worse by the presence of spies who pointed out Arafat’s whereabouts.8 On occasions Arafat’s hideaways were attacked by Israeli fighter planes, helicopters and artillery several times a day. Sharon wanted the leaders of the PLO killed as a way of eliminating the organization,9 and naturally Arafat was his principal target. Even former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban admits that buildings were marked on the assumption that Arafat was in them,10 and this made it dangerous for anyone to be near him, including news correspondents. An early attempt to terminate Arafat reduced his original headquarters to rubble.11
The worse it got, the more remarkable was his ability to rise to the occasion; it was as if he were made for battle. He slept in the backs of cars, operated from positions too near Israeli forward lines to be believed, moved constantly, misled informers by arranging appointments at which he never showed up, and did anything else he could think of to avoid becoming a sitting target. Since he had no fixed headquarters safe from attack, many of his orders were issued while he was standing in the middle of streets or travelling in cars. The preamble to some of his instructions reflected the situation on the ground: ‘Deliver this or don’t come back.’ Amazingly, the man still managed to give interviews and stay in touch with the outside world, including maintaining contacts with King Fahd of Saudi Arabia and Chairman Brezhnev of the USSR.12
Despite the forced resignation of Alexander Haig on 25 June for reasons of general incompetence, there was no diplomatic activity in the offing. Arafat therefore devoted himself to the internal situation, which was threatening his ability to continue to resist. The PLO leadership was divided between those who wanted to accept the announced Israeli terms and evacuate Beirut, and those who did not. From the start the far-seeing Abu Jihad had been against getting bogged down in a Beirut quagmire. He proposed cooperating with Jordan and working through that country to organize the occupied territories. The Al Hassan brothers, Qaddoumi and others were also for pulling out. But many, including the radical groups and Fatah’s Abu Iyad, wanted to stay and resist to the death. Amazingly, Arafat listened to both sides and temporized. The second problem was a more difficult one. Lebanese leaders and even those citizens who sympathized with the PLO were beginning to accept that the PLO’s departure was the only way out of the city’s predicament. The leaders visited Arafat and began counselling this course of action. The popular demand showed itself in several ways, including appeals to him as he roamed the city from people who had been left homeless or were running short of food and water.
All the elements working against a continued PLO presence in Beirut finally came together and forced a decision on Arafat. Having failed to get the Arab governments to act, he had gone over their heads and on 10 July appealed to the Arab people, but that too did not work. He followed it with a desperate call for UN intervention which claimed, probably rightly, that thirty thousand people had died, ten thousand more were missing and eight hundred thousand had been made homeless. The United States, however, vetoed all UN attempts to order a cessation of hostilities so long as they contained or suggested a condemnation of Israel. Even a mid-battle attempt by Arafat to change the character of the situation – an unpublicized and somewhat vague personal acceptance of all UN resolutions – had no effect. Having exhausted every avenue, he finally bowed to the pressure of the Lebanese politicians, the Palestinian fighters who were despairing because the Arabs had abandoned them,13 and the cries of ordinary Beirutis screaming ‘Enough’ every time they saw Arafat.
On 12 August, after more than two months of fighting and eight days after the heaviest single bombardment of Beirut, which resulted in more than three hundred dead, President Reagan finally telephoned Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, compared what was happening in Beirut to the Holocaust, and demanded that it be stopped.14 A few hours later, the shooting came to an end. Arafat had already told the Lebanese Prime Minister, Shafiq Wazzan, and the former Prime Minister, Saeb Salam, that he would leave15 and confirmed this to the US envoy. The details were to be worked out with Philip Habbib who was still in Beirut, trying to reconcile Israeli demands to disarm the Palestinians completely and Palestinian insistence on keeping their arms and a measure of honour in the manner of their departure.
All sixteen people interviewed by me, twelve of them journalists, who witnessed the battle of Beirut attest to Arafat’s courage and inspiring leadership. ABC correspondent John Cooley, a veteran of the Algerian war of independence and various Middle East wars, describes Beirut as ‘a military and moral battle – despite ending in defeat, his finest hour’.16 My journalist father still wears a look of incredulity when recalling Arafat’s behaviour during the battle and offers, ‘I don’t think he ever slept. He was everywhere – never tired and never showed despair.’17 The Norwegian television journalist Karsten Tveit shakes his head and settles for, ‘He was amazing.’18
Although some PLO insiders thought they could have done better, Arafat’s finest hour and the image he projected transcended his failure to organize and focused attention on what was an uneven confrontation from the start. His manner and personal example triumphed and added to his lustre throughout the world. It was more than personal courage; he was a master of those little things which meant a lot to ordinary fighting men struggling against hopeless odds. Even with parts of Beirut burning and much of it reduced to rubble, his kuffiya was still arranged to resemble a map of Palestine and his shoes were always polished.19 Head high and eyes sparkling, he looked and acted like a leader of men. And despite his legendary short fuse he never lost his equilibrium, nor even his sense of humour. At one point, when a delegation of Lebanese politicians and religious leaders arrived unexpectedly to ask him to leave, he turned to an aide, before they were ushered in, and asked what they wanted. When his adjutant told him that they had come to say goodbye, Arafat smiled and said, ‘Where are they going?’ Everyone around him broke into uncontrollable laughter. Later Arafat repeated the story to his visitors and it produced the same effect.20
Arafat remained steadfast to the end. The French contingent of the international force which was supposed to oversee the PLO’s withdrawal from Beirut arrived on 21 August. It was followed by American and Italian units and a small British one. The withdrawal took place in stages, but Arafat was the last to leave, on 30 August.21 He left in style, with all the pomp and circumstance befitting a hero, after saying goodbye to the Lebanese leadership and some wealthy Palestinians who came to Beirut’s harbour to honour him. As he sailed away on the ship Atlantis he raised his fingers in a victory sign for a long time, then leaned on the deck to watch Beirut fade away. He was on his way to Athens and from there to exile in Tunisia, his new base of operations. In a final gesture of independence and defiance he had refused to go to any Arab country directly involved in the conflict, not even to Syria, where everybody expected him to go. The rest of his ten thousand fighters, whose departure he had personally overseen, were despatched to nine different Arab countries.
What followed the battle of Beirut astonishingly reversed the results of the actual fighting. The day after Arafat’s departure President Reagan announced what has been called the Reagan initiative, a detailed peace plan which, though it did not offer the Palestinians self-determination and leaned towards attaching the occupied territories to Jordan (the Jordanian Option), called for a freeze on Israeli settlement activity. Beirut had sent a message that even the pro-Zionist Reagan could not ignore.
The mere fact that the plan was presented – and immediately rejected by Israeli Premier Begin – amounted to an explicit admission that the Palestinians were an unavoidable component in any plans for a comprehensive Middle East settlement. It was Arafat’s performance in Beirut that had made the USA decide that there would be no peace without the PLO. This American recognition, the belated acceptance of a Palestinian existence by Reagan, happened, ironically, at a time when the PLO was weaker than ever. Beyond the obvious humiliation of a military defeat, leaving Beirut destroyed the PLO’s elaborate political and administrative apparatus22 that, although put together haphazardly, had become an effective enough voice with which to express Palestinian frustration. In Lebanon Arafat had had a pool of talent of over three hundred thousand Palestinians; now that was beyond reach. Reorganizing to maintain control of the leaders of the occupied territories would become a problem. Tunisia was simply too far from Israel.
The lonely, friendless Arafat who arrived in Athens four days after leaving Beirut believed that the Lebanon debacle was the result of an Arab plot to destroy the PLO.23 He wasted no time in responding to his new universe. He did not accept the Reagan Plan but stopped short of rejecting it completely, leaving the door open for negotiating Palestinian demands regarding the right of self-determination and advocating mutual recognition between the PLO and Israel as a first step. He summoned from Beirut several Palestinian businessmen to whom he gave messages for King Hussein and President Husni Mubarak of Egypt – Sadat’s successor, who had himself accepted the Camp David Accord – which confirmed that he had adopted the diplomatic option.
Hussein responded by sending Arafat a delegation made up of his Foreign Minister, Marwan Al Kassem, and the Speaker of the Jordanian Parliament, Ahmad Lousi. They offered him cooperation based on the acceptance of Jordanian leadership of a joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation to discuss the Reagan Plan. Though personally receptive to the idea, Arafat did not give a final answer and used the need to consult the PNC and PLO’s Executive Committee as an excuse. This was a calculated move. He wanted the benefit of working with Jordan without attaching himself irrevocably and giving up on the Steadfastness Front, the group of countries opposed to all UN resolutions and the American peace efforts. Very much like Sadat before him, the PLO leader now accepted that the occupied territories were the exclusive arena for conflict or negotiations.
Arafat knew that the PLO which had survived his withdrawal from Beirut was weak and divided. Throwing in his lot exclusively with Hussein would have been tantamount to admitting defeat, while continuing with the Steadfastness Front and reliance on armed struggle was unrealistic. Survival – playing both camps to avoid being sidelined – became the issue. Everything he did in the international, Arab and Palestinian fields had the sole purpose of keeping the Palestinian flag flying, of giving life to what had prompted Reagan’s belated recognition of the Palestinian people. It was a matter of adapting to a new state of exile without accepting defeat.
Yet however admirable Arafat’s realization of what was needed and the speed with which he moved to meet these needs, it was the Israelis who gave him victory. Over-reacting and overplaying their hand is a reflection of the arrogance which bedevils Israeli politicians of both Right and Left. Suffering from this inherent attitude more than others, Begin and Sharon contributed to the continued survival of Palestinian identity more than all of Arafat’s plans put together. What the two Israelis did, by commission and omission, was to exaggerate Arafat’s threat to such an extent that they could not view it sensibly. In the process, they made the real threat equal to the inflated imagined one. They awarded the Palestinians the sympathy of the world and a considerable measure of understanding of their political point of view.
Among the things Arafat had nobly insisted on in his negotiations with US envoy Habib before leaving Beirut was safeguards for the Palestinians he was leaving behind, the destitute of the refugee camps who had supported him and continued to represent a vulnerable Palestinian presence in Lebanon.24 The guarantees he obtained stipulated that the Israelis were to refrain from entering west Beirut, in effect an acceptance that the inhabitants of this area would be protected by the multinational force despatched to the city to keep peace. In other words, he placed the refugees in Lebanon at the mercy of the USA.25 In a way this resembled US reliance on Arafat for the protection of their citizens during the Lebanese civil war.
On 23 August the Lebanese Parliament had elected the Christian warlord and Israel’s ally Beshir Gemayel President of the country. On 14 September, a few days before he was to be inaugurated, Gemayel and forty of his followers were killed by a remote-control bomb which destroyed the headquarters of his Phalange party. Though the Israelis were still in Beirut, confusion reigned. The Palestinians, Syrians, Lebanese Muslims and competing Christian militias all had an interest in eliminating Gemayel. Even Israel was not above suspicion, because of bitterness over Gemayel’s refusal to meet them halfway during their advance on Beirut and after the fighting was over because he had proved too independent and difficult to manage. Nor was a joint effort to assassinate Gemayel out of the question. But all this did not matter; the Israelis used the incident as an excuse to occupy west Beirut in obvious violation of the various undertakings they had made to American envoy Habib. Shamelessly, the Israelis claimed they had to enter west Beirut to maintain law and order.
On 16 September, with Gemayel still unburied, his Phalangist followers connived with the Israelis26 and moved into west Beirut. Their aim was to punish the Palestinians in camps on the edge of the city, Arafat’s supporters whom, without a shred of proof, they held responsible for Gemayel’s death. What followed was the massacre in cold blood of over two thousand Palestinian inhabitants of the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatilla, in orgy of killing which occupies one of the blackest pages of any confessional conflict this century. Little doubt existed as to who the perpetrators were; in the words of veteran correspondent Robert Fisk writing in The Times: ‘The Christians did it.’
Fisk, the Norwegian journalist Karsten Tveit and Tim Llewellyn of the BBC were among the first foreign correspondents to enter the camps after the massacre, and they established an Israeli share of culpability well before the international outcry which followed. Fisk determined that the camps were unarmed and, with an unerring eye, analysed the positions of the dead and the ways in which they had been killed to prove that there had been no resistance. Tveit and Llewellyn, though they still find it painful to discuss what they saw, confirm Fisk’s analysis and the Israeli involvement through providing the Christians with safe passage through their lines.
Ten other journalists who went into the camps soon afterwards added further confirmation of their colleagues’ interpretation of the atrocity. What happened there did not involve any fighting and was simply a slaughter of civilians. Nor was the entry of the Christians into the camps a secret; they were ushered in by Israeli troops. Furthermore, the killing did not follow an incident of any sort, but was premeditated and unjustified. The operation took over thirty-six hours and required hundreds of Christian fighters; many of them were rotated and crossed Israeli lines repeatedly, armed and in trucks. At some points the Israelis were within 600 yards of the camps27 and therefore able to hear gunfire, if not the shrieks of the victims who included babies, pregnant women and old men. In a ritualistic frenzy crosses were drawn on victims’ bodies, the bayoneting of pregnant women was commonplace, and the names of Christ and the Virgin were scrawled in blood on walls. The butchering did not stop until some of the Israeli army officers tired of hearing the screams and ordered an end to it all.28
The Lebanese were unrepentant. The world’s attempt to reduce the massacre to another madness in a faraway place did not succeed. Having watched the Israeli invasion and countless acts of savagery committed against innocent civilians in Beirut and throughout Lebanon, the international press corps were finally faced with a horrific incident which could not be overlooked and which they could use to tell the world what was happening in that country. With Sabra and Chatilla as a peg, they aired their frustrations about the countless Israeli atrocities they had witnessed. It was Fisk, Tveit, Llewellyn, Robert Suro of Time, Chris Harper of ABC, Stephen Mallory of NBC, David Hirst of the Guardian and the brave Israelis of the Peace Now movement, who demonstrated in the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in tens of thousands, who finally turned the tables on Israel.
Suddenly, in every corner of the world, it became difficult for anyone to ignore the Palestinian problem and no one could discuss it without accepting, implicitly or explicitly, the existence of a grievance which needed to be addressed. The recognition enveloped every Palestinian like a cloak of sadness and pained honour. Even inside the occupied territories, a remarkable solidarity showed itself in everything from increased attendance at mosques to the wearing of black ties, and people spoke of Sabra and Chatilla as if they were next door. Begin and Sharon were defeated; suddenly the loss of Beirut was a strictly military affair. Judged by the worldwide outcry and his masterful response in appearing to want a peaceful settlement, on the diplomatic front Arafat was considerably ahead.
Nevertheless, the PLO was still divided. Arafat’s withdrawal from Beirut, a decision he made himself, split the PLO more seriously than ever before.29 The PFLP, DFLP, Al Saiqa and members of the Fatah command had wanted to fight to the end. Arafat’s ambiguous reaction to the Reagan initiative added to the worries of the hard-liners and their opposition to a course of action which had not been approved by the PNC or PLO Executive Council and had not followed the usual consultations. Beyond that, even with an unfriendly Reagan in the White House Arafat put relations with the USA ahead of those with the Palestinians’ traditional supporter, the USSR. The most telling sign of Arafat’s wish to turn the military disaster of Beirut to diplomatic advantage showed in his abandonment of the Steadfastness Front and his friendly approaches to Egypt and Jordan.
In early 1983, the Executive Committee of the PLO expressed its disquiet over Arafat’s unauthorized actions and tried to reimpose its will on him. This followed his tepid acceptance of the already rejected Fahd Plan during an Arab heads of state conference in Fez, Morocco in November 1982. When he tried to follow this by accepting Hussein’s offer of cooperation and the proposed alliance with Jordan (which called for a joint negotiating position, with the PLO participating as junior partner of a Jordanian delegation to the proposed Geneva conference), he was faced with wide opposition from all quarters – even the loyalists Abu Jihad and Abu Iyad joined other members of the PLO Executive Council in opposing him. The only people who supported Arafat were some leaders from the West Bank, and though this was significant, he was still forced to consider what ignoring the dissenters would do to the PLO. The memories of the Black September civil war were too fresh for most Palestinians to accept operating under the aegis of Jordan. Only a non-ideologue practitioner of the art of the possible like Arafat would consider joining forces with King Hussein, who had caused the Palestinians so much misery and constantly presented himself and Jordan as an alternative to their aspirations of nationhood and statehood. Faced with greater resistance than he had anticipated, Arafat relented.
The opposition to Arafat in the PLO’s open forums was no more than a taste of worse things to come. The open debate concerned the diplomatic activity to be pursued in the wake of the loss of Beirut, but some within the PLO ranks wanted an investigation of the disastrous plans and command structure during the fighting. They demanded an explanation for the poor leadership of the fighters, the conduct of some of Arafat’s pet officers and the corruption of the Beiruti group around him. For months after the evacuation of Beirut this group of critics fumed silently. Then a Syria worried about being sidelined by a potential Jordanian–Arafat alliance provided them with support, at first surreptitiously and later openly. This led to the most serious open rebellion against Arafat’s leadership of the PLO since he had become its chairman.
In January 1983, PLO commanders and Fatah members Abu Salih, Salah Abu Kwayk, Musa Al ‘Amla, Ahmad Qadi and Said Maragha began bombarding the PLO Executive Committee with demands for reform. They objected to autocracy in political, military and financial decision-making, and the concentration of all power in the hands of Arafat. They rejected the Reagan initiative, the peace plan presented at the Fez conference (the revised Fahd Plan) and any cooperation with Jordan. They also insisted on knowing why officers who had shown cowardice during the fighting in Lebanon were awarded with promotions by Arafat, and pointed out specific incidents of corruption and their consequences on morale. Not only was Arafat under attack by loyal Palestinian elements with excellent reputations, his opponents did not mince their words. They blamed him for everything and asked for his resignation.
Arafat’s diplomacy and the corruption surrounding him had been a source of general disaffection, but it was the promotion of Haj Ismael, Ghazi Attallah and Abu Hajer which broke the camel’s back.30 The rebellion grew when Arafat characteristically did not respond to the complaints. He merely continued with his extensive travel schedule to meet Arab leaders and resorted to old tricks by trying to silence the rebels through promoting or bribing their leaders. He made promises to deal with the situation – something he always did under pressure – but they were not acceptable because he never delivered. The rebels reacted to his attempts to circumvent them by setting themselves up as an alternative group to Arafat called the Fatah Revolutionary Council. The PLA commander Tarik Khadra and the Speaker of the PNC Khalid Al Fahoum also objected to Arafat’s haughty attitude and added their voices to those of the original rebels. The revolt began to spread. Everybody believed that the commanders being criticized were inept cowards who had fled their posts during the fighting and that protecting them was a flagrant case of Arafat placing loyalty ahead of competence.31 Naturally, old stories about corruption and dictatorial behaviour were resurrected for added value, but they were too well known to merit debate.
In May 1983 Arafat finally accepted the need to confront the rebels, but only after instructing the Palestinian Wafa’ news agency to call them renegades whose conduct was harmful to ‘the cause’. He travelled to Damascus from Tunisia, summoned them from Lebanon and prepared for a showdown. The Syrians under Assad finally exposed their hand and threw in their lot behind the rebels openly. Angered by Arafat’s antics and refusal to take concrete corrective action, they ordered him to leave their country in twenty–four hours. On 23 June there was an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate him on his way out. On the 27th, thinking they had Arafat on the run, the Syrians assassinated Saad Sayel, a trusted friend of the PLO leader who was in command of the pro-Arafat Palestinian forces which remained in Lebanon.
Meanwhile, emboldened by Syria’s support, the rebels, now numbering over two thousand, tried to assume command of all the Palestinian forces which remained in Lebanon’s Baqa’ valley and the city of Tripoli, the remnants of their massive past presence. Bitter fighting broke out between Palestinians loyal to Arafat and those who followed the rebels, particularly around the refugee camps in Tripoli. Arafat, rightly fearing the worst, decided that the situation required his personal presence and sneaked into Tripoli via Cyprus. He did so under the nose of the Syrians, shaving off his beard for the first time in years and disguising himself further with a smart suit and sunglasses.32 After fighting Israel, Jordan, Syria and the Lebanese, in August 1983 Arafat and his loyalists were fighting fellow Palestinians.
Arafat’s presence among troops loyal to the PLO made a difference and he engaged the Syrian– reinforced Palestinian forces which attacked his followers with his usual determination and courage. But what saved the day for him was something else. Because of open Syrian support, the rebels wore the emblem of Arab hegemony over the Palestinian identity. Despite considerable sympathy for their demands, many Palestinians saw the leaders of the anti-Arafat uprising as puppets of a government which did not represent them and refused to follow or accept them. This showed in the overall Palestinian attitude and, more dramatically and effectively, when the guerrilla organizations opposed to Arafat’s diplomatic manoeuvres, the PFLP and DFLP, refused to join the fight against him for fear of destroying the PLO in the process. Beyond this, all the conservative Arab countries supported Arafat and put pressure on Syria to refrain from changing the structure of the PLO leadership.
On 25 October, in the middle of the Syrian–Arafat confrontation and realignment of Arab positions, three hundred American marines and fifty-eight French paratroops were killed by Shia suicide bombers in Beirut. Though not directly linked to Arafat’s situation, this event shook America and froze all efforts by Secretary of State George Shultz to follow on any American peace plans. The Reagan initiative was now completely dead. In December the various mediation efforts between Arafat and Syria succeeded and there was another exodus of Palestinian fighters from Lebanon. Arafat left Tripoli with four thousand followers, protected by a French fleet after securing US guarantees of Israeli non-interference in his departure.
On 21 December, as the ship carrying him, the Odysseus Elytis, navigated the Suez Canal, Arafat disembarked at the Egyptian port of Ismailia and went on to Cairo for a highly publicized meeting with Husni Mubarak. It was the first meeting between an Arab leader and an Egyptian president in six years. Though the PLO leadership, including Abu Jihad and Abu Iyad, had not been informed and fumed audibly, this was a major concession by Arafat which betrayed a belief that the Palestinians could not continue alone – he needed Arab patronage. His move undermined the Arab states which had accommodated the Palestinians and opposed Egypt over Camp David, and placed Arafat where he had always wanted to be – within the Egyptian sphere of influence. Even at the height of the Arab–Egyptian estrangement he had maintained indirect contact with Anwar Sadat. This meeting in late 1983 was the final act which buried the pretence of a unified Arab stand against Egypt’s policies. Once again his only Palestinian support came from some leaders in the West Bank and Gaza, the new source of moderation which was growing in importance and to whom Arafat was being drawn closer by the day. To other Palestinians, particularly the poor ones in the refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, the shadow of Sadat and Camp David hung over the future like a bad dream.
The meeting with Mubarak was followed by secret personal initiatives towards keeping alive the option of working with King Hussein. With the US government adamant in its refusal to accept an independent PLO as a negotiating partner, Arafat needed an Arab cover – but it could not be Mubarak. The universal Arab condemnation of Camp David which Arafat had violated still precluded an Egyptian cover; the mere act of meeting the Egyptian leader amounted to an open abandonment by the PLO of the Arab insistence that Camp David be abrogated. So instead of using Mubarak Arafat sought to adhere to the general principles of Camp David through attaching himself to Hussein, the one Arab leader who believed in them but who was not ostracized. Joining forces with Jordan gave Arafat considerable room for manoeuvre: because of the Palestinian element in its population the country was more sensitive to PLO pressure than Egypt was. In opting to follow Hussein, Arafat was for the umpteenth time following his own instincts and disregarding the decisions of the PNC and PLO executive committee, in this case the ones taken in 1983.
The problems created by the widening divisions between Arafat and the rest of the PLO, which were a result of Arafat’s dictatorial behaviour, were presented to PNC and PLO executive committee meetings in February 1984. The demands for adherence to the idea of collective leadership were near-unanimous, but in effect it was too late to control Arafat, and as had become his habit the master of drama responded by threatening to resign several times. Everybody knew there would be no PLO without him. The merger between his person and the fate of the Palestinians was so complete that no one would consider accepting his departure. In the end, he prevailed and secured backing for working with Jordan. The following November, in a challenge to hard-line Palestinians, Syria, Libya and the other countries which remained set against a settlement based on UN resolutions and American initiatives, he convened a PNC meeting in Amman at which he invited King Hussein to be the keynote speaker. Hussein asked for a reasonable approach and diplomatic effort, and was explicit in his request for recognition of Israel based on UN resolutions. When members of the PNC showed their reluctance, Arafat once again offered to resign; he absented himself from debate until the delegates gave their final blessing to his and Hussein’s policies.
Arafat was a seasoned performer who knew his role. This was evidenced by his dismissiveness of the various PLO para-parliamentary bodies and command structure, his meeting with Mubarak and negotiations with Hussein. He also forced his opinions on others by threatening to resign and destroy the PLO. Even before the Israelis and Syrians added to his stature by ejecting him from Lebanon, he had used Beirut and the Beirutis to eliminate all alternatives to his personal leadership. And after that he continued to devote as much time to his primacy and to securing his position against internal Palestinian divisions as he did to the overall Palestinian cause.
In February 1983, before the spread of the rebellion against him and his remarkable response to it, Arafat pushed through a measure which merged the guerrilla forces and the hitherto semiautonomous, Arab League-funded Palestine Liberation Army. It looked like an overdue move aimed at a joint command, and Arafat named the combined military force the Palestine National Liberation Army (PNLA). In fact the only real difference it produced was to tie the new organization to the Palestine National Fund. Because he controlled the fund, it put the huge budget of the new military force under his direct personal control.33
The PLO created a Lebanese Committee to oversee the conditions of both civilian Palestinians and fighters in that country. Once again, the financial control of this committee – which hardly ever met – was in Arafat’s hands and the funds allocated to it were deposited in the Chairman’s Fund for Lebanon. These extensions of Arafat’s control of PLO finances were in addition to his direct responsibility for the major contributions from rich Arab states such as Saudi Arabia. As with donations from other oil-rich countries, Arafat exercised full and total control of the Saudi official contribution to the PLO – $30 million annually – and the considerable taxes the Saudis levied from Palestinians working in that country.
The two years following the defeat in Lebanon witnessed the enactment of measures aimed at Arafat’s absolute supervision of all activities, even when these measures were inherently unsound and produced inefficiencies. He deliberately appointed several people to perform the same function and had all of them report directly to him. There were countless special advisers and a cabal of spokespersons. The military command structure was fragmented, producing more chiefs than Indians, and he constantly changed the titles and roles of important functionaries. He wrested control of publicity from loyalists and attempted to undermine others by involving them in efforts unacceptable to the leadership as a whole. This was Arafat’s way of keeping them weak and unable to oppose him.
A typical example of this deliberate policy was his removal of the control of publicity organs from his long-term friend Abu Jihad. Arafat put the editorship of Sawt Ali Bilad (Voice of the Country) under an outsider, the Iraqi Kurd Khalid Salam, also known as Mohammed Rashid, who did not represent a threat because he was not Palestinian. Arafat resented Abu Jihad’s success in building a structure, activist cells and effective charitable organizations in the occupied territories, and he put obstacles in Abu Jihad’s way by controlling even the smallest of expenditures and channelling funds to his own supporters.
Nor did Abu Iyad escape Arafat’s efforts. In 1984 he was ordered to coordinate certain security matters with the CIA’s leading expert in counter– terrorism, Vincent Canistrero, a function which left Abu Iyad unable to oppose Arafat’s conciliatory attitude towards the United States. This cooperation lasted long enough and was extensive enough to represent an information exchange agreement. The PLO provided reports on the organization and structure of all groups capable of undertaking acts of terror against US interests in the Middle East, and the secret reports made by the CIA to the State Department absolved the PLO from any accusations of participating in terrorism.
Arafat’s determination to turn the PLO into a vehicle for his ideas and personal ambitions did not solve the diplomatic logjam which confronted him. Despite constant travel to secure the support of third world and Muslim countries, America’s refusal to accept him and the USSR’s peaceful co-existence policies under Gorbachov left him with no effective international support. He desperately needed something to justify the continued existence of the PLO and its role. A feeble offer to start direct negotiations with Israel late in 1984 was completely rejected by the Israeli Prime Minister Itzhaq Shamir. After some of the Israeli doves began holding meetings with PLO officials, early in 1986 Shamir declared all contacts with the organization illegal. The deadlock proved that Arafat had been following the right policies since Beirut: regardless of the level of opposition to an alliance with Jordan within the PLO, it was the only way for him and the Palestinians to move forward.
On 11 February 1985, after agonizingly long negotiations failed to bridge the differences between Arafat’s position and that of King Hussein, the two signed the vaguest of agreements of cooperation. However inexact the wording of the accord, both leaders committed themselves to a joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation to participate in an international peace conference. Beyond that it was unclear, particularly on PLO acceptance of UN resolutions, the future of the West Bank and Gaza, and whether a Jordanian– Palestinian federation was envisaged as part of a final settlement to the conflict. Hussein had no doubt that Arafat had acceded to Jordanian primacy and accepted the UN resolutions, but Arafat was tarrying, foolishly thinking he could use Jordan as a vehicle for international acceptance of the PLO without ceding anything.
The first sign of doubt regarding the new alliance came immediately after the agreement was announced. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, on a state visit to Washington, refused to discuss with President Reagan what looked like a new moderate PLO line. Fahd had been stung by Arafat’s less than honest behaviour towards his plan in 1983. He knew that the PLO leader was in the habit of promising more than he could deliver and that the PLO executive committee had to approve major shifts in Palestinian policy. The background to Fahd’s reluctance justified it; the PLO leadership had reacted angrily to Arafat’s seeming concessions to Hussein. Characteristically, Arafat responded by telling the agreement’s opponents that it was not final, and delegated Abu Iyad and Abu Mazen to go to Amman to negotiate a change. He knew that it was too late and that Hussein would not listen to them. In fact, Hussein treated Abu Iyad and Abu Mazen with disdain because he saw their presence as nothing more than a ploy on Arafat’s part to stifle opposition. So, believing that he had a mandate to negotiate on behalf of the Palestinians, the King embarked on a heavy schedule of secret and open contacts to promote the deal.
It is impossible to determine whether the 1985 ceding of Palestinian representation in the diplomatic arena to Hussein was real, a reflection of Arafat’s deceit or Jordanian wishful thinking, or a combination. That Arafat did not believe in it completely is attested to by his simultaneous efforts to rekindle the armed resistance. In May that year, Syria responded to PLO attempts to smuggle fighters back into the refugee camps in Lebanon by using the pro-Syrian Amal Shia movement to surround and attack these camps. The residents of Bourj Al Barajana and the depopulated Sabra and Chatilla camps were hit mercilessly and suffered heavy casualties in what became known as the War of the Camps. As usual, Arafat cried foul and appealed to the Arabs to intercede, but they had grown accustomed to hearing from him only when in trouble and refused to respond. The War of the Camps, the result of unmitigated foolishness on the part of Arafat, who should have predicted the Syrian response, was to last two years and result in thousands of unnecessary casualties. Syria’s determination to block any kind of return to Lebanon by the PLO was accompanied by the more serious step of forming an alternative organization to it, the Palestine National Salvation Front. The popular George Habbash was prevailed on to back these efforts.
Meanwhile Hussein was busy trying to sell his interpretation of his agreement with Arafat. In September 1985 Richard Murphy, the leading Middle East specialist in the State Department, tried to move things forward by paving the way for the formation of a joint Jordanian– Palestinian delegation acceptable to the USA. But the different interpretations of the rules governing the mandate of such a delegation by the Jordanians and Palestinians stood in the way of success. Murphy’s attempts to have the Palestinians accept the Jordanian interpretation led the Palestinians to boycott him and, in an attempt to equate his work with the officially rejected Camp David Accord, to label his efforts Camp Murphy. Refusing to accept defeat, Hussein decided to circumvent Palestinian stubbornness by progressing matters through direct negotiations with the Israelis. Late in 1985 he began contacts with the Israeli Foreign Minister, Shimon Peres, in an attempt to obtain Israeli concessions that might induce greater efforts on the part of America.
On the ground, however, developments were forcing things in a different direction. On 25 September a PLO hit squad under the command of Abu Jihad attacked an Israeli yacht moored in the Cypriot port of Larnaca and killed three Israelis. The military justification was simple and correct: Israel was using Cyprus to stop PLO attempts to reinfiltrate Lebanon and to intercept seaborne attacks on facilities in Israel. On 1 October, once again using a plan which had been drawn up well beforehand, the Israelis attacked the PLO headquarters and Arafat’s personal residence in Hammam Al Shat in Tunisia. It was a massive raid which resulted in fifty– eight Palestinian and fourteen Tunisian deaths and left Arafat’s personal office in rubble. In a repeat of Beirut Arafat himself was the target, and the rumours spread by his enemies to the effect that Israel never wanted him dead do not merit consideration.
The PLO leader’s reaction to the raid sounded like an uncontrolled outburst; in hindsight it was a studied one, aimed at pleasing the home crowd. For though he lashed out at the USA and accused it of collusion,34 he took no steps to indicate that he had given up on working with America. His stance consisted of pleasing the Palestinian rank and file while adhering to a belief that the people who were trying to kill him represented the best hope for solving the Palestinian problem. The accusations of collusion did not please the Reagan Administration, while his failure to follow the accusations with anti-US action went down badly with his colleagues. Whatever the local and international reaction, Arafat the publicist devoted more time to promoting the legend of a sixth sense which saves him from such dangers – he miraculously escaped death, he asserted, because he was jogging at the time of the raid. In fact his so-called jogging took the form of fast walks around the PLO compound, and everybody who was in Tunisia at the time of the occurrence greets questions about his story with smiles, head-shaking and snorts of derision.
Matters escalated: on 7 October gunmen of the Palestine Liberation Front hijacked the cruise ship Achille Lauro as it sailed out of the Egyptian port of Alexandria. The four hijackers were only in their late teens and badly trained. Although they demanded the release of PLO prisoners in Israel, their communications with the outside world suggested they had no plan of action. Their inadequacy and nervousness showed itself in a particularly hideous manner when they murdered Leon Klinghoffer, an invalid elderly American Jewish passenger, and threw him overboard. The murder did not become known about until later, but the fate of the 476 passengers and 80 crew members occupied the world, which looked to Arafat for a solution.
Unaware of Klinghoffer’s murder, Arafat rushed to Cairo, assumed responsibility for the hijacking and promised PLO disciplinary action against the perpetrators. The worldwide outcry against the hijacking was loud enough, but Arafat had a problem. The Palestine Liberation Front’s leader, one Mohammed Zeidan or Abul Abbas, was a supporter of Arafat’s who had stood by the leader during the Syrian invasion of Lebanon and the anti-Arafat rebellion in 1983. The pro-Iraqi, uneducated and unworthy Zeidan had been elevated by Arafat to membership of the PLO’s executive committee because of his Iraqi connection and Arafat’s own ability to manipulate him. This made him reluctant to condemn Zeidan, and the failure to punish the Palestine Liberation Front or Zeidan personally exposed Arafat’s penchant for saying one thing to the outside world and another to the Palestinians. It also highlighted his reliance on men of low calibre. Arafat’s inability to place the success of his diplomatic approaches to the USA ahead of loyalty to Zeidan was truly puzzling, and the absence of advisers who should have known better is further confirmation that he surrounded himself with sycophants and incompetents.
On 8 October, Zeidan joined Arafat in trying to end the Achille Lauro affair. On the 9th, the ship docked at Port Said in Egypt and a horrified world learned of Klinghoffer’s murder. Late the same day, as part of a deal with Egypt, Zeidan and the hijackers left Cairo for Tunis aboard an Egyptian Boeing 737. The plane never made it; it was diverted to Sicily by American fighter aircraft, and Zeidan and his fellow conspirators were surrendered to the custody of the Italian authorities. But the Italians, fearing retaliation, allowed Zeidan to slip away to Yugoslavia, and the hijackers were exchanged some time later. However lamentable, these acts of undeserved clemency mattered less than Arafat’s performance during the affair.
Even after the damage done by the hijacking became abundantly clear, Arafat never disowned Zeidan and the Palestine Liberation Front. With his divorce from the doctrinaire movements within the PLO – the PFLP, DFLP and the rest – and because he was uncomfortable in the company of thinking people, Arafat had become increasingly more beholden to the lowest common denominator of the Palestinian resistance movement. This prevented him acting with the courage that the Achille Lauro hijacking required. It was Mubarak, rightly angered by the use of Egypt as a springboard for the hijacking and equally upset by the US act of air piracy, who prevailed on an Arafat committed to laflafa (a term coined by the Lebanese historian Zein Zein to describe the Arab penchant for wrapping things in so many layers of peripheral considerations that the real issue becomes confused) and forced him to see the error of his ways. Threatening to end all Egyptian–Palestinian political cooperation, in early November Mubarak got Arafat to issue a statement renouncing all acts of terrorism outside the borders of Israel; it became known as the Cairo Declaration. In view of Arafat’s open espousal of the diplomatic option, this overdue declaration was to become a term of reference which served Arafat well in the years which followed.
Meanwhile, Hussein’s diplomatic efforts were suffering the consequences of his offer of more concessions than the Palestinians were willing to accept and Arafat’s usual lack of clarity and inclination towards double dealing. Arafat himself was happy to watch Hussein do the diplomatic running while reserving to himself the right to dissent later. Various PLO leaders, however, took to making statements contradicting Jordanian pronouncements that the PLO had accepted the UN resolutions 242 and 338 – which, after Arafat’s renunciation of terrorism, was the US precondition for starting a dialogue with any delegation purporting to represent the Palestinians. When a statement contradicting the Jordanian claim was made during Hussein’s visit to Reagan late in 1985, and was followed by a successful PLO effort to stop the rest of the Arabs from backing him, the King, like Fahd of Saudi Arabia before him, decided that Arafat was playing it both ways and saw no chance of success. A number of communications between the two men followed, culminating on 19 February 1986, one year after his agreement with Arafat, in an angry and bitter television address by Hussein to his nation in which he declared the PLO rapprochement dead and finished.
Hussein followed this move by a crackdown on the PLO presence in Jordan. Abu Jihad, in Amman to oversee activities in the occupied territories, was sent packing and his offices were closed. Pro-PLO journalists were told to control their rhetoric, and the Jordanian government served notice on politicians and groups friendly to the PLO to refrain from deputizing for it. At the same time, Hussein began to move closer to Syria and Arafat’s enemy Hafez Al Assad. The King also increased his contacts with the Israelis, letting them know of his willingness to reach a peace agreement with the help of Palestinians in the occupied territories – but without Arafat and the PLO.
Suddenly, but unsurprisingly, Arafat was without real Arab allies. The War of the Camps in Lebanon was raging and he was losing it. Hussein was dealing with the USA and Israel without him, supporting a movement aimed at producing an alternative leadership to Arafat headed by a former stooge of Arafat’s, the corrupt Attallah Attallah, and trying to buy, with ready cash, the loyalty and support of the people of the occupied territories. Egypt sought to use Arafat to re-enter the Arab arena, but harboured considerable misgivings. The countries of the Steadfastness Front had already suffered so much from Arafat’s double dealing that they simply did not want to be involved with him any more. In April 1987, responding to this isolation by convening another PNC conference in Algiers, he managed to get approval for his leadership and policies from most Palestinian groups, including Habbash’s PFLP which had more or less given up the Palestine National Salvation Front. But his cavalier style and legendary failure to think before acting showed clearly when he tried to appease hard– line Palestinians by condemning Egypt and Camp David. This distanced him further from Mubarak and added to his isolation.
Arafat, though a highly emotional man given to outbursts of bad temper, foul language, and huge swings in mood and thinking, is at his best under pressure. One could say pressure increases his stature. Serious distress seems to calm him, or perhaps it exposes hidden qualities which are normally concealed by his theatricality. It certainly produces examples of a sense of humour and quick-wittedness which most Arabs associate with Egyptians. In Tunisia in 1987, he both shocked and amused an Iraqi academic who politely suggested that many Arab leaders accused him, Arafat, of lying. The academic, with no axe to grind, was suggesting a change of tactics. Staring at the Iraqi with incredulous, extra-bulging eyes he said, ‘Why not? For Palestine, I’d lie all the time.’ Momentarily, his guest was at a loss for words. Then he burst out laughing and Arafat joined him with a broad smile which, according to the Iraqi, lightened his face and made him look like a little boy.
In a way he has always been a little boy given to tantrums until stopped. But undoubtedly there is more to his ability to take adversity easily. In Tunisia he found time to improve his English, ride horses, tell jokes and refine his talents for salesmanship. In the occupied territories, the then Israeli Defence Minister Itzhaq Rabin was following exceptionally harsh and inhumane policies in handling all dissidence, even against the most moderate of Palestinian groups. This policy destroyed any chance of the emergence of a local leadership with whom the Israelis and the world could deal. Rabin’s pyrrhic success was so total that US Secretary of State Shultz could not find any takers for an offer to arrange a dialogue with local leaders in 1987. At the same time Syrian attacks on Palestinian camps in Lebanon kept the diaspora Palestinians behind Arafat.
In fact, the problem for Arafat was not the Palestinians who by choice or because of outside pressure or lack of alternative were behind him, it was the Arabs and the rest of the world. Arab governments’ awareness of Arafat’s lack of dependability had eliminated any new Arab initiatives and all he could do was to try to reach the Americans directly, through individual intermediaries beholden to him personally. The businessman Hasib Sabbagh was still there, his credentials enhanced by the fact that he had worked with George Shultz when the latter headed the Bechtel Corporation. The academic Edward Said, a loyal Palestinian who always placed the cause above personal considerations, was also still there and represented a respected voice of reason within American circles. Another Palestinian academic, Mohammad Rabi’, was also a willing middleman, as was Professor Walid Khalidy, though infrequently. Beyond that, Arafat established a vague connection with the public relations firm of Grey & Co, ostensibly to overcome obstacles in the way of dialogue.35 It actually involved many more people, and I know of at least three Americans who carried messages back to their government on Arafat’s behest. One of them, a Jewish American with Israeli connections, carried a message from Arafat to Ariel Sharon, the man many hold responsible for the Sabra and Chatilla massacres.
However desperate Arafat was to start a dialogue with the USA, he still refused to adopt an intelligible policy stance which truly reflected the Palestinian position. His was a highly personal, personalized approach which afforded him a chance to interpret the US responses selectively and judge them in accordance with what they provided for the Palestinians and, above all, with how they affected his own leadership position. This is why the special committee created for the sole purpose of overseeing negotiations with the United States never met.36 Despite the fact that his heroic past rendered his position secure, personal aggrandizement came ahead of method: Arafat’s primacy took precedence over Palestinian expectations. Many of the intermediaries who worked with him at the time were surprised to find that that their so-called revolutionary leader who complained about lack of Arab financial support was always accompanied by a personal photographer, Murad.37
With the Americans refusing to budge beyond the incessant resort to intermediaries, Arafat’s activity in Tunisia centred around his person and revealed more of the man than ever before. Throughout 1986 and most of 1987 he had little to do, and used his time to meet more rich diaspora Palestinians than had previously been possible. He paid special attention to them, listened attentively and in the process made them feel important. Because most were people who made their money in the oil-rich states and had a vested interest in not alienating the countries which had made them rich, theirs was the point of view of the conservative Arab regimes. Arafat, because of his own inclination and belief in money, found in them kindred spirits. In return they provided him with financial support which went into funds controlled by him personally. For example, the will of the Palestinian construction magnate Kamel Abdel Rahman included a bequest of $70 million to the PLO, but to this day not even the dead man’s family knows what happened to this money. Other smaller bequests and donations also went missing.
In meetings with rich Palestinians and others, Arafat’s Tunis office was run like the diwan of an Arab king. As in the past, even his most important meetings were interrupted by a flow of people who carried small pieces of paper and whispered in his ear to seek approval for whatever they were requesting. At night, he would gather between ten and twenty people around him – being invited to dinner with him was a more accurate measure of one’s importance than title or position. Guests at these occasions, which often lasted until the early hours, were often despatched on ‘special missions’. Some of these were to countries where the PLO had permanent representatives, and the arrival of Arafat’s emissaries to meet local politicians or international organizations undermined the official diplomatic presence.
In London, special adviser Bassam Abu Sharif took over the function of liaising with the British government without deferring to or contacting the PLO legate to the UK, the competent Faisal Awaidah. Naturally, this produced altercations which Arafat the supreme decision-maker resolved. Even more interesting than his divide-and-conquer dealings was his simple manner of handling these situations. In his memoirs, Abu Sharif recalls how, on the telephone, whenever his leader spoke to him Arafat used to repeat his commitment to peace in the hope that the telephone was tapped and his intentions would reach the ears of Western governments.38 His determination to transmit his point of view to the outside world took another form when he sponsored the publication in London of the Arabic-language daily Al Quds Al Arabi. The paper represented the PLO’s point of view and was followed closely by interested parties. But although it met with overall success, it still did not succeed in its task of promoting Arafat’s point of view.
Arafat deliberately sent the peace messages in English. After taking lessons in Tunisia, he was determined to use the language. A major reason for his wish to master English was a desire to speak for himself without translators, but he was also jealous of those who had a good command of the language. His English never progressed beyond an elementary level, but his insistence on using it revealed how the members of his were too afraid to correct him or to advise him against banal phrases and old-fashioned clichés. To this day he is given to using, ‘I will tell you really frankly’, ‘Where there’s a will there’s a way’ and ‘It is a case of to be or not to be.’ None of his aides dares tell him how silly it all sounds.
Because Tunisia did not border Israel, and because the lessons of Beirut and Amman had finally been learnt, the personal behaviour of Arafat’s followers was now considerably better. But corruption and inefficiency were still rife. Most of the people close to Arafat insisted on first-class air travel and when visiting foreign countries stayed at expensive hotels, including the Savoy in London and the George V in Paris. At a time when the PLO was announcing reductions in the salaries of its rank-and-file members one adviser, delegated to attend a relatively unimportant meeting, chartered a plane from Brussels to Paris which cost $15,000. Many of them used their outside contacts to work with SAMED for personal gain. After Lebanon SAMED, now with three thousand employees, concentrated its efforts on Africa. The management of African companies were put in touch with major businessmen in Europe; SAMED charged a fee for the introduction or a commission on the business which followed.
By 1987 Arafat and the PLO were sinking, with little relief in sight. Arafat devoted much of his time to secondary activity, most of which was aimed at protecting his position as leader of the Palestinians. His entourage thrashed away aimlessly, desperate to maintain their leader’s international acceptance or to find a way to move forward. Despite Israel’s strictures, an attempt was made to deal directly with Israel through contacts with moderate politicians there, including a Meretz party member of the Knesset named Dodi Tsoeker. But these efforts never had a chance, and foundered when the two sides could not even agree on holding a conference to announce their joint intentions.39 Seeing that contacts with the USA could not be resurrected on PLO terms, an insider – with Arafat’s personal approval and under his supervision – created a disinformation unit to disseminate news of fictitious PLO successes and build up the image of the leader with foreign journalists. The same adviser developed an idea for a television programme in the USA to advance the PLO viewpoint, but which would avoid the strictures surrounding advocacy programming – programmes aimed at promoting a particular political cause – by having an Arab corporation, a bank or an airline, sponsor it.
Lack of adequate planning, funds and follow-up meant that nothing came of these efforts. His waning fortunes made Arafat more insistent on being the sole voice of the Palestinians, and he began reacting to criticism more intolerantly. In a singularly criminal reaction to dissent, the PLO assassinated the Palestinian cartoonist Naji Al Ali in London in July 1987 because he had dared depict the corruption of the organization. By all accounts it was a case of lunatic followers trying to please the leader without his knowledge, but they were not punished. In November, during an Arab summit conference in Amman, he verbally abused PLO leader Yasser Abed Rabbo for speaking to a correspondent of Agence France Press on his own; Arafat wanted to do all the talking.40 His frustrations and jealousies were exaggerated by Arab leaders’ demoting of the Palestinian issue to a minor position and concentration on the Iran-Iraq War. And while Arafat’s own simple efforts with the Israelis bore no fruit, a secret agreement had been made earlier in the year between King Hussein and the Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres. It had been reached without the knowledge and participation of the PLO and was called ‘the London document’ after the venue of the unpublicized meetings. But relief from an unexpected source was on the way. A month later the intifada began.