How will history weigh and judge Yasser Arafat’s leadership of the Palestinian people? The end game is not yet played out, but there is much to draw from. His life divides into three distinct and equally important parts. The first part concerns his strategic decisions towards attaining the Palestinian ideal of nationhood. The second consists of how he pursued this ideal. Thirdly, there is what he has achieved, the Palestinian National Authority, and his performance as its indisputable leader.
Arafat’s life has been an extension of the strategic decisions he made on behalf of his people and the messianic zeal with which he pursued them and tried to realize them. His personal life, even after marriage, has always been subordinated to his political persona. He has never been a leader whose behaviour was moulded or determined by a desire to amass wealth, establish a dynasty or satisfy hedonistic inclinations. Furthermore, Arafat is at his best as a military commander in the field, a courageous leader of men and sympathetic story-teller.
This is why the flaws in his personality derive from his political behaviour. Even his use of bad language is restricted to frustrations with politics, and personally he is hospitable, generous and very polite. Ironically, his major shortcoming has also been his strength – the belief that he alone is capable of realizing Palestinian ambitions. Because he towered above his contemporaries even during the days of Fatah’s collective leadership, this belief in his invincibility saddles him with responsibility for Fatah’s and the PLO’s strategic decisions and their results.
Arafat’s first strategic decision called for the creation and use of a Palestinian identity to face Israel. This meant replacing the Arab governments as the guardians of the Palestinian people and assuming the responsibility of battling Israel. Impossible as it is to determine what would have happened had the Palestinian problem remained in Arab hands after 1967, all the available evidence supports Arafat’s decision. Among other things, the behaviour of King Hussein of Jordan and President Sadat of Egypt revealed an Arab willingness to subordinate the interests of the Palestinian people to larger Arab interests or to personal aggrandizement. Nor were other Arab leaders, Nasser included, far behind Hussein and Sadat. Arab divisions always threatened to reduce the Palestinian problem to a point of contention between the various Arab leaders.
Arafat’s second strategic decision was the resort to the armed struggle. Here too the evidence is solidly in his favour. The Palestinians were an unknown entity until they expressed themselves through the barrel of a gun. Decades of pleading their cause in international formums had produced less for them than the willingness of their young people to fight and die for it against staggering odds. It was the Palestinian fighter and his kin, the intifada child, who captured the imagination of the world. Their recognition by the world confirmed the existence of a Palestinian people with rights and aspirations. Arafat created the first and guaranteed the survival of the second.
The third strategic decision for which Arafat deserves credit was the pursuit of a peaceful settlement to the Arab–Israeli conflict. He recognized the hopelessness of a total Arab victory earlier than other Palestinian and Arab leaders. From the early 1970s, he stubbornly pursued a peaceful settlement even when this represented a danger to his leadership. The methods he used to obtain his people’s backing for the pursuit of peace were not those of a statesman, but the aim was noble and he was successful. Arafat was the only Palestinian leader capable of this achievement. The Israeli decision to accept the Palestinians and Arafat was the result of his commitment to the armed struggle and his pursuit of peace, the two policies which he brilliantly merged to force the Palestinians on the world.
But the soundness of Arafat’s strategic decisions has always suffered from the methods he used to realize them. To Arafat, the end always justifies the means. This is what lies behind his relationships with rich Palestinians of questionable character and his lack of ideology. It also explains his balancing act in dealing with the various Arab governments. It was this commitment to a goal which produced his courageous stand at Karameh against great odds; he placed the need to create the image of the Palestinian fighter above more immediate military considerations. It guaranteed him the Arab financial support which he desperately needed to keep the flame of Palestinian resistance burning. And it lay behind his remarkable performance in Beirut, his willingness to sacrifice thousands of people so that he might leave the city with honour and not as a flash-in-the-pan guerrilla leader.
Arafat’s unwavering belief in a Palestinian destiny, though it explains much of his behaviour, falls short of justifying other aspects of it. His failure to organize the PLO was total, costly and unjustifiable. He could have done something about this in Tunis, instead of devoting himself to insignificant issues. His institutionalization of corruption is another mistake which cannot be excused. And so is his dependence on cronies and incompetents and his inability to countenance the advice of able men. These three failings contributed to his adoption of dictatorial ways. Those ways led to the elimination of opponents, and soon what prevailed was the maxim of absolute power corrupting absolutely.
Arafat is a throwback to another age – the age of a brave, uneducated, wily Arab chief. He is not a modern leader. It was Arafat the Arab sheikh who viewed the civil disobedience campaign of Beit Sahur as a modern threat to his primacy. The same attitude impelled him to see the Muslim deportees to Lebanon as dispensable. Later his treatment of the Washington negotiators was nothing short of callous, and he could not understand the need to inform them of what his emissaries were doing in Oslo. To Arafat, the complaints of Husseini, Ashrawi and Abdel Shafi were immaterial. Even his acceptance of such an imprecise document as the Oslo Agreement was the work of an Arab chief who believes in the concept that tomorrow will produce something better.
Arafat the strategist who created a Palestinian identity and gained it worldwide recognition, and who doggedly pursued peace against great odds, was a success. But the weaknesses of the corrupt, inefficient PLO he created to achieve his aims, and his merger of Palestinian interests with an outdated personal attitude, eventually determined the kind of peace he concluded. Above all, it was Arafat’s near– exclusive reliance on money as the backbone of the PLO which forced him to settle for Oslo, vagueness and reliance on the goodwill of two countries who have never shown much interest in the welfare of the Palestinians – the USA and Israel. The Palestinian state he so fervently sought to create is not within sight, and his vision of it has been so reduced that it may not be worth having. From the late 1970s and his reliance on the Beiruti cabal the balance tipped in favour of the means determining the end, and what exists today is the result.
Israel is not willing to cede land or control of water, and it is opposed to any compromise over Jerusalem, partial return of refugees or anything which might contribute to the assumption by the Palestinian Authority of the functions of a real government – in other words, what would create a state. Faisal Husseini says, ‘There can be no Palestinian state without Jerusalem.’ Others make similar statements citing the shortage of land and the lack of water, and point out Israel’s settlement policy. Meanwhile, the fate of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and other Arab countries is not even discussed. The neglect of the refugees in Lebanon in particular is shameless; it was their belief in Arafat’s leadership which lay behind their wars with the Lebanese Christians, Syrians, Israelis and fellow Palestinians.
For Arafat to attribute to the death of Rabin his difficulties in negotiating solutions to these problems is nonsensical. He did not get much from Rabin on any of these issues. The agreements he signed are with the state of Israel, and he knowingly left their interpretation to the Israelis as much as to himself. The history of the state of Israel is utterly bereft of examples of generosity towards the Palestinians and an attachment to peace. The Israelis always wanted more than they had, and got it. The Oslo and Oslo II agreements were vehicles for Israel to further its expansionist policies and hegemony through peaceful means.
Meanwhile, Arafat’s belief in the end justifying the means and his descent into dictatorial ways have created a Palestinian Authority which suppresses the Palestinian people and does not represent their aspirations. Surrounded by feckless, corrupt and out-of-touch men, Arafat has reached the end of his rope. His dependence on the United States is as unrealistic as his reliance on Israeli goodwill. All that this dependence can guarantee him is American recognition and some help to stay in power against the wishes of his people. In that he is like the rest of the Arab leaders.
On 18 August 1996, the Observer newspaper reported the imprisonment of several members of the Palestinian security forces who had been involved in an attempted coup against Arafat. Israeli troops were placed on alert to help Arafat quell this attempt. Since then there have been several similar attempts, reflecting the general state of discontent with Arafat and his administration. Jerusalem’s Anglican bishop, Samir Kafity, speaks of ‘a dangerous helplessness’ enveloping the Palestinians. Although he does not mean it, an Arafat loyalist and member of the Consultative Council, Hussam Khader, condemns Arafat by calling ‘for planning for what comes after him’. The Palestinian people are a highly educated lot whose sacrifices made Arafat’s achievements possible. They want a national home and they love freedom. Arafat cannot deliver either. More attempts to overthrow, assassinate or replace him must be on the way.
Western people tend to respond to complaints against friendly dictators by asking who is available to take their place. This is not a good question; dictators do not cultivate successors. Arafat’s occasional reference to Abu Mazen or Abu ’Ala as a successor is no more than an attempt to keep them apart, weak and unable to challenge him.
In the case of the Palestinians, however, the question of succession is an easy one to answer. They are a people rich with talent. My solution for a replacement to Arafat is a simple one: a triumvirate of Heidar Abdel Shafi, Faisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, the old Washington negotiators, as an interim administration. This group would address itself to negotiating a better deal with Israel, while technocrats would replace Arafat’s entourage of corrupt men to run the internal affairs of the territory under Palestinian control.