Al-Ahram Weekly On-line 9 -15 November 2000 Issue No.507
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

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Whither Yasser Arafat?

By Graham Usher

At around 3pm last Thursday, Yasser Arafat and Ehud Barak were due to broadcast identical statements to their peoples calling on "all forces and parties to refrain from violence, incitement and the use of force in order to restore peace and calm." The move had been brought about via the uncanny midwifery of former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres in a meeting with Arafat in Gaza the previous night and under the duress of imminent Israeli strikes on Palestinian residential areas in Ramallah and Hebron. The day before had seen three Israeli soldiers killed and army retaliatory rocket assaults on Al-Khader, Beit Jala, Beit Sahour, Bethlehem, Hebron, Ramallah and Gaza, leaving six Palestinians dead and 140 wounded.

The strikes never came, and neither did the statement. What came was a car bomb explosion in West Jerusalem, killing two Israeli civilians (including the daughter of National Religious Party leader, Yitzhak Levy) and claimed by Islamic Jihad, "as part of our response to the crimes of the Israeli enemy against our defenceless Palestinian people." What then came -- one hour later -- was a separate Palestinian Authority statement calling on Palestinians to "ensure the Intifada [maintains] its popular character and peaceful course." And what came eventually -- on Saturday -- was confirmation that Arafat had accepted an invitation to meet President Clinton in Washington on Thursday, two days after the US presidential elections.

Meanwhile, the National and Islamic Forces, the "field" leadership of the Intifada consisting of all the Palestinian factions, issued three statements calling for a continuation of the uprising with protests up to and beyond the Arafat-Clinton meeting. And, on Saturday, West Bank leader of Arafat's Fatah movement, Marwan Barghouti, averred to Palestinian students at Birzeit University that the aim of the Intifada was not to "return to talks" so that Palestinians can again "become hostages to the Israelis and the Americans." The next stage rather was to extend the Intifada's reach to include "every street and every Jewish settlement."

The roll call of such declarations, all coming within a dizzying four days of each other, throws into stark relief the question that has dogged the Intifada from the moment of its explosion. To what extent is Arafat in control of the Palestinian revolt and to what extent is he captive to it? The answer may become clearer after his meeting with Clinton. Which is why Palestinians are awaiting it every bit as keenly as the Israelis and Americans.

The Intifada remains a spontaneous revolt by Palestinains driven by apartheid realities (photo: Reuters)

For now, the answer is clear, at least among his people. For those hundreds of youths who every day take on the might of the Israeli army at checkpoints and settlements across the West Bank and Gaza it is given in the phrase, "there is no leadership." In other words, the Intifada remains a spontaneous revolt by Palestinians, and driven by the immense frustration caused by the Oslo "peace process" and the apartheid realities that for the last seven years it has imposed on their lives and lands.

But among wiser Palestinian analysts there is not much doubt that Arafat has ridden the storm to extract the maximum diplomatic capital from it, such as the convening of the Arab summit in Cairo last month and the political and financial support it threw behind the Palestinians. "Of course Arafat does not control every incident in the uprising. But the general political direction of the movement is his," says Palestinian analyst Mandour Nofal. The question is whither the "direction"?

"Since about the second week of the uprising, there have been two schools in Palestinian society as to its significance," says Mustafa Barghouti, head of the Palestinian Medical Relief Committees and one of the Palestinians' most articulate spokespersons during the present Intifada. "Some among the leadership saw it as a way to improve their bargaining position in the negotiations. Others, who I think express the sentiment of the vast majority of Palestinians, see it as a moment of truth to change the entire bases of the negotiations."

To which school does Arafat belong? As aired through his tribunes and spokespeople, he would seem to be with the majority. Over the last two weeks PA negotiators and security chiefs have repeatedly stated that there can be no return to old Oslo and Camp David formulas in which the promise of "statehood" is traded for monumental Palestinian concessions on issues like settlements, refugees and Jerusalem. Rather, according to PLO representative for Jerusalem, Faisal Husseini, "we do not want to 'negotiate' UN resolutions 242 and 338. We want Israel to implement them and recognise the 4 June 1967 lines as the borders of Palestinian sovereignty."

Similarly Arafat himself has increasingly called for the "internationalisation" of the diplomatic process. Like the majority of his people, he wants it unshackled from the pro-Israeli bias imposed by the US monopoly of the negotiations and "balanced" by the participation of countries like Russia and Egypt and bodies like the United Nations and European Union. An offshoot of this -- raised by Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in his meetings with US officials in Washington last weekend -- is the call for 2,000 UN soldiers to be sent to the occupied territories to ensure protection for the Palestinian people. According to Erekat, these are the demands Arafat will make when he meets Clinton.

But will he make them? There have been moments during the last four weeks when Arafat has seemed to invoke the Intifada less as a strategic change than as a tactical ploy to improve his position vis-a-vis Israel and the US. On 17 October, he gave his silent blessing to President Clinton's "binding statement" at the Sharm Al-Sheikh summit which called for an "end to the violence" based on PA-Israeli security cooperation and Israel's withdrawal of heavy weaponry from Palestinian areas. This, in Palestinian eyes, was a return to the very signature of the Oslo process, where the resistance of the occupied is equated with the aggression of the occupier.

At his meeting with Peres, he reportedly promised to put these recommendations into practice. And, according to both Israeli and Palestinian sources, in the days since he has issued instructions to his Fatah fighters to stop using guns in the clashes with the Israeli army. Finally, he agreed to meet Clinton, although Israel did not withdraw its tanks from Palestinian cities or lift the internal siege imposed on every Palestinian area in the West Bank and Gaza, and especially East Jerusalem. "He is simply keeping all his options open in a typically Arafat way," comments one Palestinian analyst, who refused to be attributed. "But it's a dangerous game."

The danger lurks in what Clinton -- now unencumbered by electoral constraints -- will offer first to Arafat and then to Barak, in his separate meeting with the Israeli leader next Sunday. Officially, Clinton is supposed to assess whether the occupied territories are now "calm" enough for any future renewal of negotiations. Unofficially, according to the Israeli media, Clinton wants to sound out the two leaders on a US drafted final status agreement based on the "understandings" reached at the Camp David summit in July. These reportedly include the territorial extent of a demilitarised Palestinian state and US "bridging proposals" to resolve final status issues like the refugees, settlements and East Jerusalem.

But the condition, of course, will be for Arafat to reaffirm his commitment to bilateral -- as opposed to international -- negotiations with Israel and to end the "violence" in the occupied territories, which is how Israel and the US describe the Intifada. And this could once more cast Arafat in the role of gendarme against his own people (including, perhaps, his own movement), destroying the national unity between the factions which, in the opinion of Mustafa Barghouti and many others, "has been one of the most important strategic achievements of the uprising."

The alternative is for Arafat to say no to Clinton, yes to the uprising and draw finally the curtain on the Oslo era. This would incur US blame, may provoke European opposition and would certainly elicit Israeli retaliation. It would also destroy or gravely weaken Arafat's relations with all three powers. But it would put him at one with the immense majority of his people, inside the occupied territories and beyond them.

In this sense the Palestinian leader's "moment of truth" may finally have come, delivered not only by the Intifada's enormous human sacrifice but also by what Mustafa Barghouti describes as the new Palestinian "mindset" it has engendered. What he cannot say -- nor can anyone else -- is whether Arafat belongs to the new mind or the old. But the will of his people is clear, says Barghouti: "This basically says that negotiations from now on must be about implementing international legitimacy and ending the occupation in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. That is the only possible peace, the bare minimum of justice and the real compromise. Oslo was an adventure where Palestinians were continually being asked to compromise on the compromise. And you can't compromise on the compromise. If the Intifada is telling us anything, it is telling us that".

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Related stories:
Clinton's unlikely bid
Blaming the victim 2 - 8 November 2000
The Intifada this time 2 - 8 November 2000
See Intifada in focus 26 Oct. - 1 Nov. 2000
Intifada special 19 - 25 October 2000
Palestine pages 12 - 18 October 2000

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