Nov 11th 2004
IN HIS dying, as in his life, Yasser Arafat seemed both dogged and indecisive. To the Palestinians, the people he led for so long, Mr Arafat's flaws of character and leadership had been plain for years, yet were irrelevant. What mattered was that he personified their fight for freedom, kept alive their hopes and defied their enemies.
His career as “Mr Palestine” began in 1953 when, as a student in Egypt, he wrote “Don't Forget Palestine” in blood and presented the petition to General Neguib, Egypt's military leader. Five years later in Kuwait, disenchanted with the Arab world's inability to do anything about Israel's 1948 conquests, he and close comrades formed the Fatah movement, a word that itself meant “conquest”. From that moment he was, in effect, the leader of Palestinian resistance, though it was not until 1969, after the Arabs' 1967 war with Israel, that he formally became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
As leader, he inspired his followers but also failed them. The group at the top of the PLO developed into a corrupt coterie. The Palestinian Authority, which was formed in the early 1990s under Mr Arafat's leadership as the government of the West Bank and Gaza, was not much better. Mr Arafat, vacillating and poor at administration—yet unwilling to delegate—stayed too faithful to some of his old friends. Many of these grew fat on other people's money; others took to brutal tactics.
Under Mr Arafat's early rule, the PLO's terrorist strategy—hijacking aircraft to bring the Palestinian cause to world attention, for instance—was dubious, at best. Based in Jordan, the one Arab country that has been generous to Palestinian refugees, the PLO sought to act independently of the Jordanian authorities and, in 1971, it was bloodily thrown out. It resettled in Lebanon, where the pattern was repeated, though far more painfully. Running a state within the state, the PLO contributed to the Lebanese disaster that culminated in Israel's 1982 invasion. After American intervention on his behalf, Mr Arafat and his troupe were allowed to trail out of Lebanon to seek refuge in Tunisia, where they sat disconsolately. It was a dismal time in Mr Arafat's, and the Palestinians', fortunes—the two, as ever, were conjoined.
But in 1988 Mr Arafat made the move that transformed him from resistance leader to statesman and potential president: he explicitly recognised Israel, renounced terrorism—for the first of many times—and publicly accepted the principle of two states, Israel and Palestine, side by side. The transformation was slow, and not universally believed: Mr Arafat appeared at the United Nations talking of peace, but with a gun in his holster. From then on, however, the question was not whether Israel and Palestine would negotiate their two states, but when and how.
In two minds
The question is still hanging, despite the Oslo accords that in 1993 appeared to point the way—and gave Mr Arafat a Nobel peace prize. It was up to him and to his Israeli interlocutors to hack their path through the Oslo thickets, but both sides failed miserably. The Israelis procrastinated, missing deadlines for withdrawal and ceaselessly building ever-expanding settlements on the land that was destined to be Palestine. Mr Arafat's great weakness was his inability to make up his mind about the use of violence. He knew that, to gain his country's independence, he had to be against it, and indeed stop it. But he also believed that violence might be the only way to get Israel to budge.
His ambivalence was made worse by Palestinian politics. As life on the ground deteriorated, the Islamist militant group, Hamas, grew ever more popular. Mr Arafat had to decide whether to act against Hamas, or to compete with it by letting his own men attack Israeli targets. Again, he could never, it seemed, make up his mind.
The defining moment of his life as a negotiator came at Camp David in 2000, when President Bill Clinton got him and Ehud Barak together to try to resolve the matter. Mr Barak offered, or sort-of offered, a larger share of the West Bank to Mr Arafat than any Israeli leader seems likely to offer again, at least in the foreseeable future. It was a tragedy, of his own making, that Mr Arafat did not grab this, using it as a decent starting-point for an acceptable bargain. True, there would have been fury in Palestine, where his people were convinced that they had already made enough territorial concessions by accepting that Israel should have 78% of the original Palestinian mandate. But if Mr Arafat had led the way, his people would surely have followed.
However, Mr Arafat let the offer slip through his fingers, failing to respond with a reasonable counter-proposal. As usual, he dithered. Mr Clinton despaired of his temporising, and brought the summit to an end. The results are all too well known. A Palestinian uprising broke out, Mr Barak was succeeded by Ariel Sharon, Mr Arafat was incarcerated in his compound in Ramallah, and all hope of a decent solution has vanished, at least for the time being.
So why, if Mr Arafat was so bad at running things, taking his people eventually to catastrophe, was he still so honoured as a leader? The answer is that he, and he alone, stood for the courage and perseverance that the Palestinians show in their long, unfinished war with Israel.
IN HIS dying, as in his life, Yasser Arafat seemed both dogged and indecisive. To the Palestinians, the people he led for so long, Mr Arafat's flaws of character and leadership had been plain for years, yet were irrelevant. What mattered was that he personified their fight for freedom, kept alive their hopes and defied their enemies.
His career as “Mr Palestine” began in 1953 when, as a student in Egypt, he wrote “Don't Forget Palestine” in blood and presented the petition to General Neguib, Egypt's military leader. Five years later in Kuwait, disenchanted with the Arab world's inability to do anything about Israel's 1948 conquests, he and close comrades formed the Fatah movement, a word that itself meant “conquest”. From that moment he was, in effect, the leader of Palestinian resistance, though it was not until 1969, after the Arabs' 1967 war with Israel, that he formally became chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
As leader, he inspired his followers but also failed them. The group at the top of the PLO developed into a corrupt coterie. The Palestinian Authority, which was formed in the early 1990s under Mr Arafat's leadership as the government of the West Bank and Gaza, was not much better. Mr Arafat, vacillating and poor at administration—yet unwilling to delegate—stayed too faithful to some of his old friends. Many of these grew fat on other people's money; others took to brutal tactics.
Under Mr Arafat's early rule, the PLO's terrorist strategy—hijacking aircraft to bring the Palestinian cause to world attention, for instance—was dubious, at best. Based in Jordan, the one Arab country that has been generous to Palestinian refugees, the PLO sought to act independently of the Jordanian authorities and, in 1971, it was bloodily thrown out. It resettled in Lebanon, where the pattern was repeated, though far more painfully. Running a state within the state, the PLO contributed to the Lebanese disaster that culminated in Israel's 1982 invasion. After American intervention on his behalf, Mr Arafat and his troupe were allowed to trail out of Lebanon to seek refuge in Tunisia, where they sat disconsolately. It was a dismal time in Mr Arafat's, and the Palestinians', fortunes—the two, as ever, were conjoined.
But in 1988 Mr Arafat made the move that transformed him from resistance leader to statesman and potential president: he explicitly recognised Israel, renounced terrorism—for the first of many times—and publicly accepted the principle of two states, Israel and Palestine, side by side. The transformation was slow, and not universally believed: Mr Arafat appeared at the United Nations talking of peace, but with a gun in his holster. From then on, however, the question was not whether Israel and Palestine would negotiate their two states, but when and how.
In two minds
The question is still hanging, despite the Oslo accords that in 1993 appeared to point the way—and gave Mr Arafat a Nobel peace prize. It was up to him and to his Israeli interlocutors to hack their path through the Oslo thickets, but both sides failed miserably. The Israelis procrastinated, missing deadlines for withdrawal and ceaselessly building ever-expanding settlements on the land that was destined to be Palestine. Mr Arafat's great weakness was his inability to make up his mind about the use of violence. He knew that, to gain his country's independence, he had to be against it, and indeed stop it. But he also believed that violence might be the only way to get Israel to budge.
His ambivalence was made worse by Palestinian politics. As life on the ground deteriorated, the Islamist militant group, Hamas, grew ever more popular. Mr Arafat had to decide whether to act against Hamas, or to compete with it by letting his own men attack Israeli targets. Again, he could never, it seemed, make up his mind.
The defining moment of his life as a negotiator came at Camp David in 2000, when President Bill Clinton got him and Ehud Barak together to try to resolve the matter. Mr Barak offered, or sort-of offered, a larger share of the West Bank to Mr Arafat than any Israeli leader seems likely to offer again, at least in the foreseeable future. It was a tragedy, of his own making, that Mr Arafat did not grab this, using it as a decent starting-point for an acceptable bargain. True, there would have been fury in Palestine, where his people were convinced that they had already made enough territorial concessions by accepting that Israel should have 78% of the original Palestinian mandate. But if Mr Arafat had led the way, his people would surely have followed.
However, Mr Arafat let the offer slip through his fingers, failing to respond with a reasonable counter-proposal. As usual, he dithered. Mr Clinton despaired of his temporising, and brought the summit to an end. The results are all too well known. A Palestinian uprising broke out, Mr Barak was succeeded by Ariel Sharon, Mr Arafat was incarcerated in his compound in Ramallah, and all hope of a decent solution has vanished, at least for the time being.
So why, if Mr Arafat was so bad at running things, taking his people eventually to catastrophe, was he still so honoured as a leader? The answer is that he, and he alone, stood for the courage and perseverance that the Palestinians show in their long, unfinished war with Israel.
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