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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
By the end of the 1970s, despite the vehement opposition of Israel, the PLO was increasingly recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. During this period, Israeli representatives continued to insist that the PLO was a terrorist group pure and simple, dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The PLO did indeed issue contradictory statements about its position. But it was clearly inching toward explicit recognition of Israel's right to exist, although it had not yet arrived at that point. (Rejectionist Palestinian factions killed some Fatah leaders who dared speak of a two-state solution.) The larger Arab world, too, was moving in that direction. In 1981, Saudi Arabia floated the Fahd Plan, which proposed peace in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza. Israel rejected the Saud plan as propaganda.
Meanwhile, Palestinian attacks from Lebanon against northern Israeli settlements continued. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon, now serving as defense minister, were determined to drive the PLO out of southern Lebanon once and for all, restore Christian dominance in Lebanon, and force the removal of Syrian troops from Lebanon. Seeking a pretext to invade Lebanon, they got one when Abu Nidal's group attempted to assassinate Israel's ambassador in London. (Abu Nidal, locked in a mortal struggle with Arafat and the PLO, probably intended the assassination to spur Israel to attack Arafat's organization.) Begin scoffed at the fact that the PLO was not involved: "They're all PLO. Abu Nidal, Abu Schmidal. We have to strike at the PLO." Begin regarded Arafat, "a two-legged beast," as the reincarnation of Hitler, driven by anti-Semitic hatred to seek the extermination of the Jews. When Israel bombed Beirut during the course of the invasion, Begin wrote to President Reagan that the destruction of Arafat's headquarters felt to him like he was destroying Hitler's bunker.
The Israeli invasion drove Arafat and his fighters into Beirut, which was then besieged and heavily attacked by Israeli forces. In the end, Arafat and about 14,000 Syrian and Palestinian fighters were evacuated under the protection of a multinational force, including American troops. The fighters relocated throughout the Arab world; Arafat and the PLO leadership moved to Tunisia, where they were to remain for years, until the Oslo peace talks led to the creation of the Palestinian Authority and his return to the occupied territories.
The most momentous event of the post-Lebanon years, the intifada, or uprising (literally, "shaking off"), took place without Arafat's involvement or backing. In 1987, Palestinians began an organized campaign of resistance throughout the occupied territories. Arafat and the PLO were marginalized by this grass-roots rebellion. The intifada had momentous political consequences. In 1988, trying to take advantage of the international sympathy created by the intifada, with its images of rock-throwing Palestinians fighting Israeli tanks, Arafat and the PLO officially recognized Israel's right to exist and called for a two-state solution. (The collapse of the Soviet Union, long a patron of Arab states and the Palestinians, also drove Arafat and the PLO toward moderation.) That same year, Jordan's King Hussein cut his ties with the West Bank, removing the "Jordanian option" favored by Israeli leaders as a convenient solution to the Palestinian problem. The United States finally extended a measure of diplomatic recognition to the PLO. Further diplomatic attempts failed, however, and the low-level conflict in the occupied territories continued.
The big breakthrough -- or what appeared to a big breakthrough -- came in 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords. Following secret back-channel negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli officials, Israel agreed for the first time to allow a Palestinian government. Areas of Palestinian self-rule were established in the West Bank and Gaza, with plans for step-by-step expansion of Palestinian autonomy later. Arafat made a triumphant return to Gaza in 1994, taking control of the newly established Palestinian Authority. International hopes for a lasting peace ran high.
But the Oslo years proved a bitter disappointment to both sides. Critics like the Palestinian-American professor Edward Said rejected Oslo because it failed to address the explosive final-status issues like settlements, Jerusalem and refugees, relying on a process of building mutual trust. Other Palestinians defended Oslo as a necessary, if flawed, first step. In the event, the lives of ordinary Palestinians failed to improve, Israel continued to build settlements, and the Palestinian Authority functioned more as a patronage machine than a viable government. Arafat and the PLO, which cracked down on Hamas and Islamic Jihad radicals, were also increasingly seen as doing Israel's police work for it while getting nothing in return.
Caught in a characteristic bind, Arafat responded, as always, by equivocating and tacking: giving a red, then a yellow light to terrorists to preserve his standing with Palestinians, while hoping that economic improvements and the cessation of Israeli settlements would build the PLO's status. For many Israelis, the dramatic increase in terror attacks in 1994-96, which Arafat was either unwilling or unable to control, proved that the entire Oslo process had been a terrible mistake. For Palestinians, the culprit was the continued building of Israeli settlements, especially around East Jerusalem, which they regarded as prima facie evidence of Israeli bad faith. One Palestinian leader said the building of settlements had the same effect on Palestinians that bus bombings did on Israelis.
The 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by a Jewish extremist was a severe personal blow to Arafat and had major political consequences in Israel. A series of Hamas terror attacks, and a widespread Israeli conviction that the Oslo years had only brought more terrorism, helped lead to the election of hard-liner Benyamin Netanyahu over the moderate Shimon Peres. Netanyahu was unwilling to continue with the Oslo process, which spelled out trading pieces of West Bank land for peace. Arafat's domestic position was growing weaker, as increasing numbers of Palestinians, angered by Israeli closures that choked their ability to work, and by the incompetence and corruption of the Palestinian Authority, began turning to Hamas. This then intensified Israeli resistance to Oslo, which then created more Palestinian hardliners. It was a vicious circle that no one -- not the Israelis, Arafat or the Americans -- were able to break.
The final chapter of Arafat's saga was at once the most hopeful and the bleakest: The failed Camp David/Taba talks and the Al-Aqsa intifada that broke out afterward. Even the participants at those talks cannot agree on what happened or who bears ultimate responsibility for the collapse of what was the most promising attempt to defuse the world's most dangerous crisis. Whoever was to blame, the Al-Aqsa intifada that followed (which was not instigated by Arafat), and the election of Ariel Sharon, father of the settlement movement, quickly led to a disastrous deterioration on the ground. Unlike the first intifada, which was characterized by civil disobedience and limited violence, Al-Aqsa was a lethal uprising, with Palestinian guns and bombs replacing stones. The 9/11 terror attacks against the United States and the election of the right-wing administration of George W. Bush dealt Arafat and the Palestinian cause a severe blow. Bush and his administration linked the al-Qaida attacks against the U.S. with Palestinian attacks against Israel. Bush refused to deal with Arafat, seeing him as a terrorist, and gave Sharon a free hand to retaliate militarily against the Palestinians while continuing to expand and consolidate Israeli settlements in the occupied territories.
This was the bleak situation at the time of Arafat's death -- one for which the Palestinian leader, along with his Israeli and American counterparts, bore his measure of responsibility. The leader who embodied the dreams of his people, brought them international recognition and achieved many victories for them, is also the leader who repeatedly failed them. Until the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is finally resolved, Arafat's legacy will be a giant question mark, carved in stone.
