Arafat's Long Journey

By Lisa Beyer/Thurmont, MD.

It would be a stretch to call Yasser Arafat confused. But watching him--at home, at Camp David or at other stops on the international stage--has been to see a man in search of an identity. Some days he seems to promise an imminent Palestinian state. Other days, insiders say, he agrees to postpone an announcement of statehood until after the U.S. presidential elections. He can't decide if he's supposed to go through doors before or after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

What is clear is that Arafat is searching for a legacy that will fit his ambitions for himself and for his people. It is that search that brought him to Camp David and to his tense, exacting talks with President Clinton and Barak. "God, it's hard," Clinton confessed of the process. And much of the difficulty could be traced to Arafat, a man whose place in history revolves entirely around the outcome of his eleventh-hour negotiations with Israel.

What has made the talks all the stickier is that Arafat isn't sure which legacy he wants most. Age 70 and ailing, presumably from a nervous disorder--Parkinson's, some say--Arafat is desperate to preside over a newly born, independent Palestinian state. But he has also seized upon a competing priority--preserving his place in history as a steadfast nationalist hero. To reach agreement with Israel on the terms of statehood would require profound compromises on what have long been almost sacred Palestinian demands. Arafat's great fear--his "obsession," says an aide--is that if he makes these concessions, he will be pilloried as a traitor to his people instead of a hero. Says a senior Palestinian official: "Arafat is terrified he'll be remembered as the one who gave away Palestinian rights."

Until the talks at Camp David--and there too at times--Arafat and his delegates held hard to maximalist positions that the Israelis reject out of hand. To end the conflict once and for all, the Palestinians said, Israel would have to relinquish every inch of the Gaza Strip and West Bank. That would include all of East Jerusalem, which would become the capital of Palestine, as well as areas colonized by 175,000 Jewish settlers, who would have to leave. The negotiators also demanded the right of all Palestinian refugees from areas that are within Israel to return to their homes, which Israel fears would eliminate its Jewish majority.

At Camp David, the Israelis presented compromises. They want to keep those parts of the West Bank, perhaps 5% to 10% of the area, where most Jewish settlers live and might offer the Palestinians, as a swap, a portion of uninhabited land within Israel proper. Israel is open to allowing limited numbers of refugees to return, under cover of an existing family-reunification program, with the rest compensated for their property out of an international fund and permanently resettled in their current host countries, in Palestine or elsewhere.

The Palestinian delegates were willing to consider these ideas, but Arafat was having a hard time swallowing them. Says a senior aide: "His inclination is to leave the outstanding issues for another generation to solve. He prefers not to have the compromises on his head." Back home, in a handful of cities last week, Palestinians demonstrated against concessions to Israel. One group in Ramallah marched under a banner that read: HE WHO ABANDONS THE RIGHT OF RETURN IS A TRAITOR. There was no mystery as to who he was. Arafat is said to be haunted by the specter of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's 1981 assassination by Muslim zealots opposed to his peacemaking with Israel. And Egypt, at least, got back 100% of the territory Israel conquered from it in the 1967 war--an outcome the Israelis foreclose to the Palestinians.

Arafat's fear of looking like a dupe, or worse, in any final deal with Israel was accentuated by Israel's offer to Syria, in since-aborted talks, to return 100% of the Golan Heights, the strategic plateau Israel seized in 1967. Then, in May, Israel withdrew from all of south Lebanon, ending an 18-year occupation. Accordingly, Arafat has argued, there is no reason he should settle for less than Israel's total departure from the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The border dispute is most acute along the so-called Green Line where it divides East and West Jerusalem. Citing the centrality of Jerusalem to Judaism, the Israelis insist on maintaining their primacy over all of the city, though they have suggested allowing Arafat limited control over some of the Palestinian neighborhoods in the East and might let him fly a Palestinian flag over the Haram al-Sharif, the third holiest site in Islam, from which, according to legend, the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven.

But Arafat's legacy won't rest solely on issues of territory. It will also depend on the kind of state he builds. It's not only how the Palestinian state is founded, but also how it is run, how it grows, that will be part of his historical record. In the six years that he has governed the Palestinian areas already under self-rule, he has hardly managed to build a thriving, democratic society. His governmental record has been characterized by corruption, mismanagement and a contempt for civil rights. Arafat should be able to count on billions in U.S. and international aid if a peace deal comes through. But he so far hasn't shown much skill in putting any of the more limited resources at his command to work.

Israeli and American negotiators hope Arafat will bend to their will on Jerusalem in the interest of a larger deal including statehood--and the financial perks that will make that statehood work. But these enticements may be insufficient considering that when Arafat thinks of Jerusalem, he ceases to see himself as a politician. Instead he envisions himself emblazoned across the pages of history with the only two Islamic leaders to stride victorious into Jerusalem, securing the holy city for the Muslim faithful. Caliph Omar bin Khattab won the city for Islam in the seventh century. Saladin liberated it from Christian Crusaders 550 years later. The Palestinian leader can compromise on refugees, on territory, even on the parameters of statehood. But Arafat sees Jerusalem as his chance to transcend politics and enter the pantheon of great Islamic heroes, a coup that could wipe away the disdain so often heaped upon him by other Arab leaders.

--With reporting by Matt Rees and Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem

With reporting by Matt Rees and Jamil Hamad/Jerusalem