'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Arafat, and other encounters in Palestine/Israel

I got back home to Charlottesville, Virginia, Monday evening, and have been working my rear end off since then writing a long article to a tight deadline. Got up at 4 .a.m. this morning to work on it, no less. That wasn't as bad as it seems, since the time-difference between here and Israel/Palestine allowed me to think of myself as basking lazily in bed till noon.

But now, having met the deadline I was working to, and having taken the faithful pooch Honey for a good long walk, I'm ready to blog here again. Where was I?

I confess I haven't posted anything meaningful here yet about some of the most politically "significant" encounters I had while I was in Palestine/Israel. Like my lunch-party with Yasser Arafat last Friday. Or the content of the good discussions I had on Thursday with former Palestinian Minister of Culture Ziad Abu Amr and PLO Executive Committee Qays Samarrai (Abu Leila). I really didn't see the need to advertise encounters like these to the whole world at a time when I still (on Sunday morning) had to face the prospect of a lengthy interrogation and inspection of all my baggage and notes at the time I would be leaving Ben-Gurion airport.

Are you like the many other people I have talked to since my lunch with Arafat whose first question has been, as always, "How did you find him?"

My previous encounter with the Palestinians' "historic leader" was in May 2002. In this article, which I published soon after that, I described him as "fragile and tired". I also wrote that at times during our 30-minute meeting,

the Palestinian leader's once-renowned memory seemed to flag and his attention wandered. Three of his currently favored advisers were sitting around him. One of them, spokesman Saeb Eraqat, jumped into the conversation frequently, often talking "on behalf of," or over, or even in direct contradiction to "the President." It was an extraordinary performance, a display of lèse-majesté unthinkable until recently in Arafat's tightly-controlled inner circle. Watching Eraqat's behavior gave more credence to rumors about the "sharks"--in particular, the heads of the various security organizations created by Arafat over the years--already circling the waters around a leader with only a tenuous grasp left on political life.

What we did not get from Arafat was any sense of an effectual national leader articulating a convincing strategy for his much-beleaguered people. Instead we heard the usual litany of angry accusations against the Israelis and a plea?aimed mainly at the Americans?for "quick, strong, international pressure."

I have followed Arafat's career pretty closely since I first arrived in Beirut as an eager young cub reporter in 1974. At the time of my May 2002 encounter with him , he seemed to me to be pretty close to being politically (and perhaps also biologically) near his end. But it is true that in both those important spheres of life, he has again and again over the past 40 years shown that he has great endurance and resilience. And thus it has been, also, over the past two years.

Physically, on this occasion, I found him around the same as he seemed in 2002. No small feat, that, considering that throughout the intervening 21 months he has had to withstand being continuously besieged inside the much-diminished muqata building in the heart of Ramallah. At one point during the lunch, he told us that he takes his exercise by walking round and round the 6- foot-by-12-foot table that dominates the room where we were eating. He also uses the same table, sans white table-cloth, for conferences and official gatherings. One of the Palestinians who works with him told me that they attempt to get him to an open window several times a week, to try to use the sunlight to build his reserves of Vitamin D. His Parkinson's seems to be generally under pretty good control: the well-known tremor in his lower lip seemed less evident, I think, than it was back in 2002.

But it is not surprising at all that despite such efforts, still, he does not look well. After all, he's 75 years old, and has had a life in which he has known times of great hardship. Along the way there, he has survived numerous battles and sieges, as well as the mysterious crash of small plane in which he was traveling, in the late 1980s.

The lunch party I went to last Friday was not, I should tell you, being offered primarily on my behalf. I was sort of shoe-horned into it just the evening before by one of my Palestinian friends. Since I'd been so focused until the Thursday evening on getting into Gaza, I hadn't made any proper plans at all for doing anything anywhere else in Palestine or Israel during my seven days there. So it was quite a surprise to me when this friend said, "Oh, and by the way you'll be having lunch with the President tomorrow."

The lunch was being given primarily so that Arafat could have some fairly relaxed down-time with a couple of old friends/colleagues of his from the leadership of South Africa's ANC. Of course, for me, meeting those South Africans was a special kind of treat. One of them was Ronnie Kasrils, who's the present Forestries Minister in South Africa. (""Forestries Minister?" asked one of my Palestinian friends in surprise when I told him. "I didn't know they had many forests in South Africa!" "I'm not sure if they do," I replied. "But they sure have a lot of ministers!") The other was Aziz Pahad, who's now the RSA's Deputy Foreign Minister.

Both these men--and the rest of the delegation that was accompanying them--seemed like jovial people, quite at ease to be back in touch with their old friend Arafat. I found Kasrils particularly interesting. Here was a "White" South African who back in the early 1960s had joined the ANC; and who had indeed served in the officer corps of the ANC's military wing. And actually, not just a "White" South African, but a Jewish, White South African, as well.

Nor was he, by any means, the only one. The commander of the ANC's military wing was, after all, the Jewish (and, therefore, under the apartheid system's system of racial laws, also 'White") South African Joe Slovo. Albie Sachs, whom I met in Cape Town back in May, served with discipline and distinction in the ANC's political wing (and is now a Justice on the country's Constitutinal Court.) Joe Slovo's wife Ruth First, also Jewish, was another leading ANC activist: so "dangerous" to the apartheid bosses that they felt they had to assassinate her, which they did I think with a letter-bomb... All those high-level people in the ANC were White and Jewish. White and (I think) non-Jewish was Steve Manjaro (Steve Korrie), who was another of the ANC's military leaders... Doubtless there were many more Whites in the ANC, as well.

All of which makes for a significant contrast with most of the Palestinian nationalist groups, which do not welcome members of the 'colonizing' community into their ranks, let alone incorporate them into the high levels of their organizations. But then, this is part of a broader failure of the Palestinian nationalist movement, by comparison with the ANC: namely, that it has failed to design or project a compelling vision for the future that is one that actively includes the Jewish Israelis, rather than excluding them...

Anyway, back to the lunch-table. When I entered the room--the same one where I and a group of some seven to eight other people had had our meeting with Arafat back in 2002-- nearly all of the large table inside it had already been fully set up for the lunch. Just one end of the table had been left in "work" mode, with papers piled high around a small lectern there.

On the broad white cloth were placed several large platters heaped with rice and chunks of stewed lamb. Various other dishes were also set out on the table. All the places set around it had been filled with the exception of two. My friend and I squeezed around each end of the table to the two empty places. Mine was exactly to the left of Arafat: I was squeezed between him and one of his currently most powerful advisors, Saeb Eraqat.

As I slipped into my seat, Arafat took my hand and kissed it.

Throughout the meal, he was attentive to his duties as a host, pressing me and the row of South Africans sitting on the other side of the table to eat more and more of the lamb and of other delicacies. "Give them some meat," he urged Eraqat, gesturing towards the guests sitting in a place where he couldn't himself reach to serve them.

His own food, I noticed, was fairly simple. He had a dish of boiled vegetables in front of him, and a few slivers of boiled chicken. He only ate something that looked enjoyable to me when the desserts were served. He tucked into the fruit plate with gusto (after pressing some strawberries on me and his other guests), and then also seemed to enjoy the knafeh (a traditional Palestinian sweet), that he was served.

Most of the lunch party was dominated by a kind of lighthearted joshing that was kept up with the South Africans-- primarily by the ever-gregarious Dr. Eraqat. Eraqat speaks much better English than Arafat. At times on this occasion, as in 2002, he seemed to be crowding Arafat out of the conversation. But the lese-majeste of his performance was somewhat less marked than it had been on that earlier occasion.

In the context of the general lightheartedness--which came, I think, after the two sides had had some pretty intense discussions earlier that morning to coordinate plans for the upcoming case at the World Court on Israel's infamous new "Wall" (or rather, wall system) in the West Bank-- I was only able to slip a couple of questions in to the President.

I asked him what he expected would be the consequences in Gaza if Sharon should proceed with his declared plan of pulling Israel's soldiers and settlers unilaterally out of the area in the not-distant future. "I don't believe Sharon is serious," was the main gist of Arafat's reply to that.

Later, I asked him what he would like to say to President Bush if he should get the chance. "Tell him he should use his influence on Sharon to get him to implement the Road Map," he replied.

It was all a little sad to me, since even as we talked, Sharon was busy continuing to shred the whole "Road Map" approach to peacemaking, replacing it with his own, quite unilateral, "Road-block Map" approach instead.

But what was even sadder-- what has made me increasingly sad ever since that lunch party finished-- is to see the way that Sharon and Bush have, between them, manipulated and plotted against this man, who was elected by the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza to be their leader in fully democratic, US-sponsored elections back in January 1996.

Bush may talk a fine-sounding line about his desire to see "democracy" take hold throughout the Middle east. But here was a man, fairly elected in a democratic election, whom Bush and Sharon have been systematically trying to sideline and undermine throughout the whole of the past two years.

Yes, it is true that Arafat himself has made many, many mistakes. The first big one, imho, was the decision he took soon after "returning" from his long exile to the occupied territories in summer 1994, when he decided, in essence, to counter and dismantle the many civilian-based mass organizations that had sustained the Palestinians' first intifada against Israel from 1987 through 1993... That left the Palestinian fatally weakened as they continued to engage in the many lengthy negotiations that flowed from the original talks in Oslo. It also meant there were few viable alternatives to the use of violence once the hardline Palestinian nationalists had decided, in late 2000, that the negotiations of the previous eight years had led their people nowhere.

Another fatal mistake was, in my view, Arafat's failure to resign outright in June 2002, once Bush-- on whom he had placed, and bizarrely enough still continues to place, so much reliance-- had signaled clearly that he wanted to try to deal with the Palestinian issue without dealing with the Palestinians' duly elected leader.

Had he resigned, on that essential matter of principal, back then, I believe he could have changed the dynamics of the situation considerably for the better. But he didn't. He hung on, for reasons that still seem hard to fathom. The best explanation I can give is that, over the years, he has so deeply intenalized the view of himself as an essential symbol of Palestinian nationhood that he maybe thought that his own resignation would inflict a severe setback to the broader Palestinian cause.

And of course, over the years he has come increasingly to surround himself with sycophants and yes-men who spend a large part of their day reassuring him that yes, indeed, he is a symbol of the Palestinian national cause....

At a broader level, I have always thought that, though he has at times shown himself to be a master of political tactics, Arafat has never had any real grasp of political strategy. There was a time when the PLO and Fateh had strong straegic thinkers in its leadership. But in 1988 and 1991 the top two such men were assassinated: Abu Jihad, in 1988, killed by Israel in Tunis; and Abu Iyad, killed in January 1991 in Tunis, most likely by the Iraqis. For his part Abu Mazen (Mahmoud Abbas) who served a brief but productive four-month term as Palestinian Prime Minister in the middle of last year, was also one of the 'historic' leaders of Fateh who had (has) a fairly sure strategic vision. But Abu Mazen never had the "people skills" enjoyed by those other two leaders, and is still dismissed as a political lightweight by many Palestinians today. (Which is, I think, a real pity.)

Anyway, the sum total of all this is that--even as the portion of the Palestinian people that is still resident within its ancestral homeland is facing a broad defeat and further years of very difficult travail ahead--they are cursed with a particularly ineffective leadership whose weaknesses become more and more aparent each day...

So I thank Mr. Arafat for his kind invitation to lunch, and for the generosity and trust that he showed by inviting and hosting me. And I feel for the terrible impasse he currently finds himself in.

But still, having lunch with Arafat in the Ramallah muqata at a time when the reins of power inside the Palestinian seemed to be visibly slipping out of his hands and into those of the quiet, steadfast men of Hamas felt something like having lunch with Aleksandr Kerensky in the Winter Palace in, say, late September of 1917.

I'm not going to go into any deeper analysis of the situation. (I was writing about that for my piece for a dead-tree publication, for many hours earlier today.) But I just wanted to post something here that could capture something of my sense of the deep tragedy of the current situation of the Palestinian people--and of their long-time leader, Mr. Arafat. In my view, it is definitely not the case that (as he seems to think) he entirely symbolizes the Palestinians' national situation. But it is the case that right now both he, and the Palestinian people more broadly, are in a terrifyingly precarious situation. God help them all-- as well as the Israelis, whose fate is so closely intertwined with that of their Palestinian neighbors.