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May
13, 2003
My Meeting with Arafat
"Isn't
He Irrelevant? Finished?"
By URI AVNERY
"Have you gone mad? Now? He is irrelevant!
He's finished!" These were the reactions of some people
when Israeli TV showed my meeting with Arafat in Ramallah this
week.
Is Arafat "finished"? If so,
he has not heard about it. I found him in splendid shape. At
some of my meetings with him over the last few years he frequently
looked tired, even distant and self-absorbed. This time he was
in good spirits. He talked energetically, reacted rapidly, poked
gentle fun at his assistants and made some biting remarks.
(For example: when we spoke about Sharon's
demand that Abu-Mazen conduct mass arrests, he laughed: "But
the Israelis have destroyed all our prisons, except the one in
Jericho. And if we want to transfer a criminal there, we must
ask the Quartet for a car, so as to be able to pass the Israeli
checkpoints!")
One can understand his lively mood.
For the last year, his life has been hanging on a thread. Sharon
could have sent his men to kill him at any moment. (Several times
this danger seemed so close that my friends and I found it necessary
to rush there as a human shield.) One of the Israeli officers
boasted this week that "only a thin wall separated me from
him." Now this danger has been rendered more remote --even
if Arafat is still confined to his small building, amid surrealistic
ruins.
During the last 45 years, his life has
been in danger many times. Dozens of attempts have been made
on his life. Once his airplane crash landed, killing several
of his entourage. He survived it all. This time, too. His sense
of relief is understandable.
There is also physical relief. Since
he returned to Palestine, his workload has been incredible. As
he insisted on attending to  practically everything himself, big things
and small, he worked inhuman hours, often until the early hours
of the morning. Now he is free of a substantial part of the routine
work, and the results are obvious.
But the main thing is that Arafat's standing
with his own people is now stronger than ever. Curiously enough,
it is the appointment of a Prime Minister that has caused this.
The appointment of Abu-Mazen, which was intended by Sharon and
Bush to "weaken" Arafat and to "push him aside",
has had the opposite effect.
This requires an explanation. For years
now, a continuous and concentrated campaign to demonize Arafat
has been conducted in Israel and the West. In the ten years since
Oslo, millions of words have been spoken and written about him
in the Israeli media, and I don't recall one single word of praise.
He has been systematically described as a terrorist, tyrant,
dictator, corrupt liar, a cheat and what not. In particular he
was represented as the man who said "no" to the unprecedentedly
generous offers of Ehud Barak and President Clinton, which "proves"
that in reality his aim is to destroy Israel.
Those who have been fed with this propaganda
cannot understand why Palestinians adore him. The answer is:
for the very same reasons.
In the eyes of the Palestinians --almost
all of them --Arafat is a fearless leader, who stands firm in
the most difficult circumstances; a man who has the guts to say
"no" to the demands of the mighty of the world to betray
fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. He has confronted
the rulers of the Arab world without flinching; at Camp David
he stood up to immense pressure from Clinton and Barak without
yielding; he held out in the terrible conditions of the siege
of his Ramallah compound without breaking.
Palestinians, like all Arabs, like all
peoples, admire personal courage. Arafat has proven his courage
in conditions that no other leader in the world has had to face.
He has come to symbolize the steadfastness of the whole Palestinian
people. That is the source of his authority, even in the eyes
of his many critics on the right and on the left.
This authority is essential for Abu-Mazen's
political effectiveness. Unlike Arafat, Abu-Mazen is popular
in the West. He radiates moderation and readiness for compromise.
This is the face the West wants to see. The two of them are a
bit like Ben-Gurion and Sharett in the early days of Israel.
Ben-Gurion was the idol of the Israeli public, while Sharett
was popular on the international stage.
Abu-Mazen is accepted by the Palestinian
public. If another person had assumed office under such circumstances,
he would have been suspected of being a collaborator. But Abu-Mazen
is known as a Palestinian patriot, and is respected as one of
the founders of the Fatah movement. Even in extreme demonstrations,
I did not hear shouts of protest against him. However, he is
not a charismatic leader and has no solid political base.
That is why Abu-Mazen needs Arafat. Without
his solid backing, Abu-Mazen will neither be able to make concessions
abroad nor to act forcefully at home. More than ever, Arafat
is essential for progress on the road to peace.
But does Arafat really want peace? Most
Israelis are unable to imagine such a thing. How could they?
Did they ever hear the true story?
From my personal experience, I can recount
this: At the end of the October 1973 war, Arafat concluded that
if the armies of Egypt and Syria were defeated after their unexpected
brilliant initial successes, then there is no military solution
to the conflict. As usual, he decided quickly and decided alone.
He instructed his trusted aide, Sa'id Hamami, to publish an article
in London calling for the attainment of a peace settlement with
Israel by political means. (This induced me to meet with Hamami
in secret, and since then I have followed Arafat's moves closely.)
For the Palestinian national movement,
the proposed change was redical. A political process instead
of the sole reliance on "armed struggle". A peace settlement
with Israel, which had taken possession of 78% of the Palestinian
land and expelled half of the Palestinian people from their homes.
That necessitated a mental and political revolution, and since
1974 Arafat has promoted this revolution cautiously and with
determination, step by step. (I witnessed these steps - first
through Hamami and Issam Sartawi, later in personal contact with
Arafat.) in 1988 the Palestinian National Council at long last
adopted this line explicitly, after a series of ambivalent resolutions.
Abu-Mazen was closely connected with this process right from
the beginning.
Throughout this period, Yitzhaq Rabin
and Shimon Peres actively opposed this development. (On this,
too, I can bear personal witness, since I conveyed several messages
from Arafat to Rabin.) It must be stated clearly for history's
sake: Not Rabin and Peres were the spiritual fathers of Oslo,
but Arafat and Abu-Mazen. The award of the Nobel Peace Prize
to Peres and not to Abu-Mazen was, therefore, a gross injustice.
Sharon, of course, does not want peace
that brings with it a viable Palestinian state in all the occupied
territories and the evacuation of the settlements. But he is
far too shrewd to openly obstruct Abu-Mazen, the protegee of
the West. Therefore he is concentrating all his efforts on breaking
Arafat --knowing that without Arafat, Abu-Mazen would be ineffective.
That is the crux of the matter. Arafat
is essential for the peace effort. That's why I went to visit
him.
Uri Avnery
is an Israeli writer and peace activist with Gush Shalom. He
is one of the writers featured in The
Other Israel: Voices of Dissent and Refusal. He can be
reached at: avnery@counterpunch.org.
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