assessment: Taking stock of people and ideas in the news.

Yasser ArafatMan of inaction.

By David Plotz
Posted Friday, Oct. 20, 2000, at 8:30 PM ET

Yasser Arafat didn't start the riots and marches of the latest intifada, but once they began he lent them his support. Arafat didn't want to attend the Sharm el-Sheik summit, but he allowed himself to be cajoled into participating. Arafat agreed to a cease-fire, but he has barely uttered a public word in support of it. He has been, in short, halfhearted in every way he could be. Arafat's public image is that of a busy, constantly scheming manipulator. But the events of the past few weeks—and the events of the past 30 years—suggest that Arafat is a very different type: the passive-aggressive.

Israelis are often unwilling to recognize this, but during the past few years Arafat has been, by Palestinian standards, a raging moderate. He has been more willing to negotiate with Israel than most of his fellow Palestinians. (In polls, half of Palestinians still favor violence against Israel.) He enthusiastically unleashed his security forces to suppress Hamas and other Palestinian radicals. When the majority of Palestinians favored declaring a Palestinian state in September, Arafat resisted, still hoping for settlement.

But Arafat's moderation has not been guided by any particular vision. Rather, he toggles between his two eternal motivations: longing for international glory and instinct for self-preservation. Since it became clear this summer that he had strayed too far from the Palestinian public, Arafat has raced back to join it. Frustrated Palestinians have become more radicalized than their leader. They are enraged that Israel continues to build settlements on the West Bank and to fragment the occupied territories into cantonments. According to polls by the Center for Palestine Research and Study, between 1997 and early 2000 his approval ratings dropped from 70 percent to less than 40 percent.

Arafat responded to the discontent. He rejected Israel's offers at Camp David because it would have been suicidal for him to accept them. (The American media have not sufficiently acknowledged this: Though Barak's offers are viewed here as astonishingly generous, Palestinians see them as insulting, because they didn't satisfy Palestinian demands for control of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and didn't make adequate provision for refugees' right of return. Palestinians declared publicly that Arafat would be killed as a traitor if he accepted such terms.)

Since then, Arafat has essentially acted by inaction. When Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, Arafat didn't switch on the riots. They were a popular uprising. "He was despised by the majority of the Palestinian people. He had no legitimacy [when the uprising started]," says University of Chicago professor Rashid Khalidi. "The idea that he could be sending tens of thousands of kids into the streets is ludicrous." But once the intifada did erupt, Arafat didn't seek to control it. He went with the flow. He tacitly signaled his Fatah followers to fight, and he released Hamas troublemakers from jail. These half-measures—not quite endorsing the intifada, not condoning it—have been enough to restore his legitimacy.

Such inactivity has been the hallmark of Arafat's career. He had one amazing decade of vigor from the late '50s until the late '60s. During that time, his endless organizing and fierce battles with the Israelis established the Palestinian national identity and made Palestinian liberation a global cause célèbre. But ever since, Arafat's career has been marked by faintheartedness. As long as other Palestinians kowtowed to his leadership, Arafat was content to let events unfold around him. He had no "willingness to adopt a statesmanlike position and think of the long-term consequences rather than his own popularity," writes Said Aburish in his Arafat biography.

Despite his awful reputation in Israel, for example, Arafat was never much of a terrorist. Rival Palestinian factions skyjacked airliners and murdered civilians. Arafat sat by and let it happen. In 1970, Arafat didn't bother to control his fighters as they set up a fief within Jordan. This prompted King Hussein to crack down on the PLO, driving them out of Jordan in "Black September." When Palestinian kids started throwing rocks at Israeli soldiers in 1987, they weren't acting on Arafat's orders. The intifada was homegrown: Arafat then piggybacked on it to push the Israelis into negotiating. And as head of the Palestinian Authority, Arafat has not made an effort to organize a decent, honest government. He has relied on his strong police force to suppress dissent and intimidate rivals but never developed a more ambitious plan for nation-building or democracy. (An Arafat paradox: Despite his penchant for halfhearted action, he is personally hyperactive. It may be that he can't concentrate on any matter long enough to do anything long-lasting about it.)

Arafat's few attempts at boldness have generally been disastrous. In 1990, for example, Arafat sided with Saddam Hussein after his Kuwait invasion, a mistake that virtually bankrupted the PLO. It alienated his sugar daddies in the Gulf States and caused Kuwait to evict the 250,000 middle-class Palestinians working there.

Arafat's passive-aggressiveness helps explain why he has so disappointed both his people and the Israelis and Americans he has been negotiating with. In the eyes of Palestinians, Arafat has been acted upon during the peace negotiations. He has been weak and occasionally groveling for five years, yet still has nothing to show for it. And Israel and the United States are dismayed that he has refused to be Anwar Sadat. Americans and Israelis have been constantly hoping for the grand gesture from Arafat. Sadat made a bold peace, and Arafat is expected to do the same—to bravely accept Barak's Camp David compromises, make a magnificent sacrifice, and persuade his recalcitrant people that all is fair.

But Arafat does not have the temperament for that. Sadat had the courage to drag his people with him, and he died for that courage. Arafat has no interest in dragging Palestinians anywhere, and even less interest in dying for it. (A nation of people who will die for their cause is ruled by a man who most certainly will not.) Arafat doesn't know how to change the Palestine popular will: He only knows how to reflect it. He is the leader of the Palestinians. To Arafat, that means that he must follow them.

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Related in Slate

David Plotz assessed Ariel Sharon, Arafat's bitter Israeli enemy, and the young Arab heads of state, who have a very different worldview than the old-school Arafat. In July, Anne Applebaum advised Barak and Arafat "How To Succeed at Camp David." Evidently they didn't listen. Emily Yoffe details the differences among Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and Fatah in this "Explainer." This 1997 "Gist" contains everything you need to know about the Palestinian Authority.

Related on the Web

Click here for the home page of the Palestinian National Authority, which governs the Palestinian-controlled parts of the territories, and here for the 1968 charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization. Check out the home page of the Center for Palestine Research and Studies.

If you liked this Assessment column, check out Backstabbers, Crazed Geniuses, and Animals We Hate, a collection of our all-time funniest, meanest, sweetest, and weirdest profiles.

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Reader Comments from The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: The comparison with Sadat provoked the most interest, and one reader saw a similarity with Michael Collins, here. Omri Schwarz thought the article let Arafat off too lightly about the riots, which he said were "about as spontaneous as a Cuban May Day rally." Otherwise the posts contained a lot of blame, argument over small details and big issues, and not much optimism.]

While this is one of the better, more rational views on Arafat and Palestinian perception of him, a few glaring omissions/inaccuracies stick out. For example on the release of Hamas prisoners: Arafat did not order their release, rather the Palestinian courts did after finding 500 of them imprisoned without trial, some as long as five years. Further, all prisoners were released, including common criminals, due to legitimate fears that the IDF would blow up additional prisons and other Palestinian government buildings.

As far as comparing Arafat unfavorably to Sadat (or Mandela, as does Anthony Lewis of the New York Times), I would call attention to two very large differences. Begin promised at Camp David a complete withdrawal from the Egyptian Sinai, which was very slow in being implemented, but also to a complete halt in ethnic cleansing/settlement building in the Palestinian occupied territories. The later was a confirmation that Israel would respect international law in this regard. Jimmy Carter in his Memoirs (1982) basically calls Begin a liar for renouncing this aspect of the agreement (By the way, each 'settler' family relocated from the Sinai received $280,000 from the U.S. government).

Sadat's Egypt, while inferior militarily to Israel, at least had some level of negotiating strength. Arafat, under the terms of the 1993 peace accords, was basically made warden of the vast Palestinian prison camp. Israel has refused to halt settlements (this is ethnic cleansing, lets be honest), to release political prisoners, to end torture, to grant international or Palestinian control over Muslim and Christian sites in Jerusalem. The "Peace Agreement" legalizes apartheid, rather than abolishing it. Thus, the unfavorable comparison to Mandela (who, along with Archbishop Tutu is on record deploring Israeli behavior over the last two decades) is inaccurate.

--Paul

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"Not much of a terrorist" is like being "not much of a murderer." During Arafat's "one amazing decade of vigor" he was certainly condoning murder, even if, as you seem to assert, he wasn't a direct participant. Your use of the word "amazing" to modify Arafat's prior actions has the unfortunate effect of making it seem as if you are pining for the days of Arafat's most harmful malfeasances. Finally, whether Arafat is psychologically passive/aggressive or not, he remains agressive/aggressive in incitement speeches to his constituents.

--D.Goldberg

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On the Palestinians in general--are their real interests served by nourishing an eternal sense of victimization and propping up unrealistic hopes? Isn't this what Arafat's whole career has been about? The ratio of Palestinian dead to Israeli is now 10:1. If push comes to shove, it will be a lot worse than that. Isn't it time somebody had the courage to speak the truth to the Palestinians: You can't always get what you want? You might have to settle for 80 or 90 percent, if you want to give your children a chance to grow up? Zionism succeeded because Zionists had patience, determination, wiliness. The Palestinians could learn from this, but they won't as long as their "leaders" encourage them to die uselessly on the barricades.

--Yukon

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[Part of a very interesting exchange, which starts here.]

Plotz writes, "Arafat doesn't know how to change the Palestine popular will: He only knows how to reflect it."

Arafat has never even tried to change the Palestine popular will. He has done nothing to prepare his people for any compromise whatsoever, and, unlike Barak, has not publicly acknowledged the fact that the only alternative to compromise is endless violence. I am sure Arafat's deficiency in this area stems at least in part from the death threats he would be sure to face. But if he is afraid of death, then he's in the wrong job. Israeli and Egyptian leaders died for peace, and Barak certainly faces threats on his life from Israeli extremists who also apparently would choose endless violence over a compromise that might lead to a resolution of the conflict.

If Arafat values his life more than a serious commitment to negotiations that might bring a lasting if uneasy peace, then he should never have entered into peace talks in the first place. As long as he continues to maintain his inconsistent position of peace without compromise, the cycle of violence will continue and the Palestinians will continue to suffer. Arafat needs to fish or cut bait; and if he's not willing to make the choice, then he should step aside for someone who will

--Daniel Simon

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(10/23)