Arafat will leave a shameful legacy

Gerald M. Steinberg in Australian Financial Review 1-Nov-2004

In four decades as the unchallenged Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat embodied the use of violence in the service of revolutionary politics.

Under his guidance, Palestinian groups hijacked planes and conducted numerous terrorist attacks, including the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, putting their cause in the headlines and at the top of the diplomatic agenda. The notoriety he gained in the process also brought the PLO leader, with his kaffiya and pistol, into Europe's radical chic salons and the headquarters of the United Nations.

But in the twilight of his life, Arafat's appeal faded, his empire reduced to a few rooms in the ruins of the Palestinian Authority headquarters, and the parade of important visitors stopped.

The 1991 Madrid peace conference and the Oslo framework opened a new era of negotiations, but Arafat went the other way, continuing to wage the "armed struggle", and unable or unwilling to make the transition from revolutionary to statesman. In July 2000, his performance at the Camp David summit destroyed chances for an agreement, and led to four years of brutal violence that rolled back all of the gains achieved under the Oslo process. In this period, Arafat's policies were responsible for the murder of more than 1000 Israelis, for even more Palestinian casualties, and for destroying hopes for a peace agreement in this generation.

In contrast to these substantive failures, the perennial chairman's public relations achievements were unprecedented. After the 1948 Arab invasion failed to defeat Israel, the "Palestinian cause" was overshadowed by the Cold War. Arafat seized the opportunity presented by the 1967 war, and the inertia of the Arab regimes. By terrorising friend and foe, he gained power and attention for himself and for the cause he claimed to represent.

As these and subsequent events showed, Arafat's image as a clever strategist was inflated, and his failures more than offset the achievements.

In 1970, after a failed attempt to take control in Jordan, he fled to Beirut, where the PLO presence helped to trigger the bitter Lebanese civil war. In 1977, he denounced the Egyptians for going to Jerusalem to make peace, and threatened to kill any Arab leader who joined Sadat, leaving the Palestinians out of peace talks for another 15 years. In 1982, terrorist attacks from Lebanon goaded Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his Defence Minister, Ariel Sharon, into launching a full-scale invasion, and the Palestinian leader and his inner circle ran away again, this time to Tunis. But the scale of the attacks and his successful defiance helped to solidify the image of Palestinian victimisation, allowing Arafat to turn a military defeat into a political victory, and accelerating the diplomatic isolation of Israel.

The costs of Arafat's public relations tactics and his faulty judgment were also displayed a decade later. After Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 he rushed to Baghdad and embraced Saddam Hussein, promoting Arafat's inflated self-image as a key player on the international stage. The fact that thousands of Palestinians living in Kuwait were subsequently expelled did little to dampen his sense of achievement. But the political costs were apparent a few months later, after Hussein was defeated and his remaining allies, including Arafat, were isolated throughout the Arab world.

Donations to the PLO, which Arafat funnelled into his personal accounts to ensure the loyalty of Fatah gunmen and warlords, suddenly dried up. As a result, in Gaza, Ramallah, and elsewhere, Palestinians who were not part of the Tunisian circle began to compete for power.

On the ropes again, Arafat sent some of his closest advisers to talk to Israelis eager to reach a peace agreement, and in 1993 these contacts solidified into the Oslo process and the signing ceremony at the White House. A few months later, Arafat's motorcade arrived triumphantly in Gaza, and he took control of the Palestinian Authority.

But instead of building a stable Palestinian state alongside Israel, Arafat's corruption and terrorism remained dominant, while the Oslo process stalled and then collapsed in a spasm of catastrophic violence. During this period, Arafat constantly set the tone for the incitement and rejectionism that fuels terrorist attacks, regularly calling for "a million martyrs to march on Jerusalem".

Arafat's failure to make the expected transition was the result, in large part, of his delusions of grandeur. He saw himself as a modern Saladin and Gamal Abdel-Nasser's successor as the Arab and Islamic world's charismatic leader.

Jet-setting around the world, the Palestinian stage was too inconsequential for him. By choosing "Arafat" (a central site in the haj ceremony in Mecca) as his nom de guerre while a student in Cairo, he associated himself with core Islamic symbols. And although often perceived as the head of a "secular national liberation movement", he was a master in manipulating the symbols of Islam. He led the campaign to rewrite the history of Jerusalem, and to replace its Jewish core with the symbolic status of Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina.

In preparing for the post-Arafat era, there are no clues regarding succession, and he has never had a second-in-command. There are many candidates, and no way of knowing whether one of them will emerge as a new leader, or if Palestinian society will continue to descend into chaos and civil war. While Arafat's performance will not be repeated, a new Palestinian leader will face a formidable challenge in reversing the legacy of terrorism, and moving towards a more hopeful future.

Gerald M. Steinberg in Australian Financial Review 1-Nov