Pragmatic symbols

What will Israel do without Arafat to blame for the most recent bombing, or anything else that goes wrong in their country for that matter, wonders Azmi Bishara

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The relationship between Yasser Arafat and Israelis offers a vast amount of fodder for anyone interested in modern societies, in thrall to the media and the dramatic pace of news to the extent that any difference between reality and its appearance on television becomes a matter of individual taste. Thus it is that populations are reduced to the status of an audience.

Arafat is not well-liked in Israel. Even so the Zionist left managed to stomach him for many years -- he was a bitter pill, the swallowing of which required a great many glasses of water but they were willing to take the medicine because they believed he was the only instrument capable of persuading the Palestinian people to accept a settlement on Israel's terms. So strong was this belief they fished Arafat out of the water after the Gulf War, and following the collapse of the Soviet Union, in order to dictate their conditions to him so he might impose them on the Palestinians. So what if the price was some power, a red carpet at the White House, the Nobel Peace Prize and a concert of classical music?

It was only later they realised that Arafat did not fit the bill. But then many admit to never having understood the man and what he was about to begin with. They did not understand his leadership style, what he said or how he worked. They were baffled by his changing the tune to suit the occasion -- tunes which gave no clue as to his political position -- and by the shifting rules he adopted in the fight for survival. Nor could they fathom the depth of his self-esteem. What they regarded as a gracious favour he saw as a personal victory: he was victorious -- in his opinion -- in Beirut, in Black September and in the first Intifada.

They never developed a feel for his understanding of his role in the Third World and among non-aligned nations in general, nor of his role in creating Palestinian identity. They never grasped the extent to which he became submerged in his role as a symbol of Palestinian identity and the way this affected his reading of historical events and led him to corroborate stories about himself that were invented to flatter him, or affirm the veracity of stories he had himself invented. They wanted to convince him that he was still around thanks to them and thanks to Oslo, so he had better come up with the goods. They had no idea how he saw things. He probably thought they had gone out of their minds.

If Israelis were suspicious of him during Oslo they pinned high hopes on him during subsequent phases and then toned down these hopes to a simple faith in his consummate pragmatism which, again, they misunderstood, or at least misinterpreted, both as to purpose and the workings of its internal logic. Pragmatism is not an ideology, and choosing the optimum means for attaining an end does not morally bind one to the end or to the means. To comprehend Arafat's pragmatism it is not enough to know his aims, for identifying these will not pin him down to any specific means. There are many reasons for choosing a certain means, the aim being only one of them, albeit the first among equals. This, in fact, is one of the first rules of Palestinian democracy: such is the plurality of factors and considerations that the aim goes missing.

Indeed, it often appears as if all those people assembling in meetings, issuing pronouncements, praising some people and lashing out at others, have forgotten what it is all about. It is a rare occasion when someone stands up and shouts, Hold on a minute! What is happening here? What has happened to us? How did we end up like this? And then he reminds us of our original aim.

Such matters are beyond the ken of the Zionist left, let alone the Zionist right. It was thought that Arafat was the father of a project to create a state and that he was the only one capable of making the concessions and compromises needed to put this project into effect, paying for them out of the account of his historical legacy. That may well be true. But, if the Zionist left thought that that was all there was to the matter, they were mistaken.

Other factors were involved, including the fact that the Zionist left was no longer satisfied with just concessions, they wanted to appoint themselves as guardians. They were encouraged in this effrontery, apparently, by the impression that Arafat gives of being someone who can neutralise personal sensitivities and pride, shrugging off the cruelest insults to remain cool in the most embarrassing situations. And yes, there were times when an entire people were embarrassed for him.

The Zionist left took this to mean they could wring from him even more concessions than they had originally demanded. When Arafat expressed surprise and dismay at those extra demands they blamed him for their failure to counter the bloodthirsty propaganda that issued from the Israeli right throughout the entire Oslo period. Suddenly the high hopes they had pinned on Arafat turned to a profound loathing for his person, to the extent that one felt compelled to defend him against their attacks and against their personification of all their shortcomings in his military uniform, his checkered kufiya and his unmistakable features. The collapse of Camp David II opened the floodgates to the venom of the Israeli right, sweeping aside all but a few in Israel who might risk airing a contrary view to the torrent of hatred and invective against Arafat. It was only by dint of various external factors that Israel restrained itself from killing the man outright.

Since the siege on Arafat began, prurience about his personal life has become a habit, aided by those keen to develop friendly relations with the Israeli press. These latter derive their importance from their proximity to Arafat, which they use to advance themselves even at his expense, in spite of the fact that any notoriety they get is only a flash in the pan. But there are Palestinians, inside the Green Line and out, whose sense of self-importance relies on being sought out by the Israeli press, which never tires of publishing anything it can construe as dirt on Arafat's person, his mental health and his way of conducting business.

Not all Palestinian leaders derive their importance from proximity to Arafat, but there are Palestinians who would be swept off the political carpet if they distanced themselves from him. Among these are those whose political position and entire claim to fame stems from their past or present connection to Abu Ammar, and this they use to climb the political ladder even if that entails badmouthing him -- confidentially and off the record of course. It is a sorry state and I know of no other leadership situation like it.

Meanwhile, the Israelis who had him surrounded became pathologically obsessed with prying into his personal life. Now their obsession with his health defies description. Those who are monitoring Arafat's progress have given new meaning to the Arabic maxim: "People who keep watch on others die sad." No sooner this 75-year-old man come down with a cold than word goes out that he is on the brink of death, and Israeli television switches over to special programming with sombre experts on Arab affairs.

Among these are those who will have called up their contacts around the president before going on air and others who extol various Palestinian figures who will have a "great role" to play after Arafat has gone because their relationship with Israel is not bad, or because they are against the militarisation of the Intifada or against the Intifada period, or because they are against corruption... Accuracy here is not what counts. What counts is their perceived ability to update the Israeli public on the state of Arafat and, more importantly, their ability to come across as being fed up with him and his condition and to drive this message home to the Israelis, the Americans, the Europeans and to those Arabs that like to hear this kind of thing -- just so they can quote it, of course, without mentioning names.

So intense is Israelis' hatred and death wish for Arafat that they are driven to recklessness and folly. We will learn the state of Arafat's health soon enough. Yet so established is the practice of boasting of special inside informants and contacts that a caution had to be issued to the Israeli press not to mention people by name. Apparently the officials who issued the caution have forgotten that the average Israeli career journalist also wants to boast of his plethora of contacts, even if that means "burning" some of them.

I will not tax the reader's patience by reiterating the language used to describe Arafat and his departure (in the Israeli press they used the Hebrew for "release") for treatment, or by analysing the discourse of secularist ministers who are openly muttering incantations for his death. More important than all this is that Israel has begun to act as though Arafat has already died. Television and radio programmes exude a funereal air as they enumerate the virtues and flaws of the late Palestinian leader, probing the possible contours of the post-Arafat phase and discussing his successors by name.

This is illness as a media event: medicine is drowned out by the chanting of spells and the smoke of incense as the body is interred, speeches delivered, analyses expounded upon, future scenarios prepared and then elucidated. Just one little detail has been left out: the man is still alive.

What really fuels Israeli hatred is that Arafat refuses to behave as expected. What applied in Camp David applies in matters of illness and death: he is supposed to confirm the predictions of the experts. After all, they have gone to great trouble to build up the expectations of the majority of the Israeli people and democracy requires that he does what the majority says. In this case the majority -- of Israelis of course -- says that Arafat is dead, or almost. In fact, I am surprised they have not yet held a referendum in Israel over Arafat's death, since it is their custom to demand a referendum over anything concerning the fate of the Palestinian people without, of course, asking the Palestinians what they think. Here's what the referendum would look like:

1) Is Arafat dead or alive?

2) If alive, does he deserve to live?

3) If dead, who should succeed him?

In Palestine the situation is no less absurd. People are alarmed and anxious. But if he recovers many who cried as he was taken off to hospital will bemoan his many lives. He was in a plane crash and came out alive, he had cancer that turned out to be something else -- how many brushes with death does it take, they will grumble. Many of those who surround him are truly loyal. But there are those who always pop up, as though not to miss a photo opportunity at his side, to prove how faithful and how close they are.

It is all part of getting their pieces in place for the coming phase, even if that means capitalising on his confinement or his illness. Their opportunism is as boundless as their skill at calculating the camera angle.

Then there are those who aim to belittle others who pose at his side while simultaneously posing as contenders for the succession. This they do by aggrandising Arafat to the extent that no one has the audacity to claim to be able to fill his shoes. Every prophet is the last of the prophets. But then the speaker knows he is misappropriating the term, and everybody knows that everybody else is lying. Arafat has been turned into a tool both to strengthen the position of those around them and to weaken the position of rivals. In both cases all is out of context, hypocrisy abounds and the political situation is mournful.

When Arafat, as he has done in the past, expels someone from his inner circle that person can no longer take part in a negotiating process or any other process in progress. And there is always a process in progress -- as Edward Bernstein said, "the process is everything, the end nothing". In his despondency the man banished from Arafat's side begins to haunt some café or restaurant (the choice of locale depends on the capital the PLO is in at the time) and stares as wistfully into space as one whose lover has deserted him and is waiting for any sign that she still remembers him. At some point, however, gloom turns to anger and the outcast goes over to the opposition, or even turns informant on those who are fortunate to remain under the president's wing. As he works himself up his disparagement of the president becomes as excessive as his praise once was, to the extent that he refutes everything he has said before and any distinction between information and rumour evaporates.

But Arafat is not one to cut off anyone's source of income. So, before long, you find that the man has vanished from the restaurant or café and taken up some post, joined some negotiating team or been attached to some delegation abroad. Thus, everything is reduced to insignificance and truth becomes confusion.

We live in difficult times, among facts turned senile.