John Kerry recently took time out from his busy schedule of Botox injections to clarify his position on Yasser Arafat’s credentials as peacemaker. Obviously hoping to pre-empt Republican allegations that he’s soft on terrorism, the senator from Massachusetts has let us all know that, to his mind, the Palestinian leader is no longer the statesman he once was. No, apparently Yasser “blew it” in 2000 and is now an “outlaw to the peace process”. Kerry is now signed-up to the “dump Arafat” tendency. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that Kerry’s reassessment is motivated by electoral concerns. Rare is the US politician who loses an election for being too pro-Israel. A little bit of Arafat bashing is always good for the poll ratings.
Maybe I’m being unfair though. It could be that, shock horror, John Kerry actually believes what he says. After all, this sort of description of Arafat’s career path is very common in American politics. In Washington circles the terrorist bogeyman of the 1970s and 1980s became the man of peace of the 1990s only to revert to his dark ways in 2000. Some US politicians present this volte-face as evidence of Arafat’s innate nastiness; others attribute it to simple cowardice. Either way, Arafat is back where he started as far as the US establishment is concerned: a non-person.
It’s my belief that Arafat is neither the wise statesman he was painted as in the 1990s, nor the murderer he has been portrayed as before and since. He is a skilled political operator. He should be understood in this light rather than as a warmonger or peacemaker. He is neither.
Arafat’s most outstanding characteristic is his durability. In the course of his long life he has sustained a series of devastating reverses which would have worn out a lesser man. He has somehow survived (physically as well as politically) the disasters of Black September, the Lebanon war and the PLO’s support for Saddam in 1991. Now, old and infirm, he is surrounded by Israeli tanks, unable to leave his compound and described as “irrelevant” by both the men who wish to lead the world’s only superpower. Yet, there he is still, the undisputed leader of the Palestinian people.
Throughout his career he has been guided not by the desire to make peace or to wage war but by the need to survive. He was not a “man of peace” in the 1990s. He was a man in trouble, painted into a corner by his own pro-Saddam stance. He manoeuvred out of this brilliantly, making the daring move of opening talks with the Israelis which eventually led to his return to Palestine at the head of the Palestinian Authority. The deal he struck turned out to be disastrous for the Palestinian people but for Arafat himself, it was a life-saver.
Likewise in 2000, Arafat found himself in a tight spot, unable to sell what was on offer at Camp David to the Palestinian people. Once the intifada began, Arafat got onboard, not because he had reverted to terrorism, but because he had no choice. Arafat hasn’t changed from bad guy to good guy to bad guy; he’s the same as he’s always been – a survivor.
American policymakers must also understand that, such is the significance of Arafat to the Palestinian people, that any attempt to sideline or “outlaw” him will fail. Before he became a major figure on the world stage in the early 1970s, the Palestinians were a forgotten people, lacking a face or a voice. Some, like Golda Meir, even went so far as to claim that the Palestinians didn’t exist, an appalling falsehood to which some Israeli hardliners cling to this day.
Arafat’s prominence on the world stage in the 1970s was tangible proof that the Palestinian people existed as a nation, rather than just as a wretched collection of refugees. People who had grown tired of being told that they didn’t exist, or at least that they didn’t matter, clung to Arafat as tangible evidence that they did.
When I visited Palestine three years ago the depth of this attachment was still apparent. Anytime I asked a Palestinian what they thought of Arafat they would respond with a litany of complaints: Arafat surrendered at Oslo, he has no vision, he won’t lead the intifada, he crawls to the Israelis, his government is corrupt and autocratic etc etc. Once this long list of grievances had been exhausted though, every Palestinian I spoke to would then sigh wistfully and say “but he is my leader”.
There was clearly an extraordinary disconnect between Arafat the politician, bumbling, servile and petty and Arafat the symbol, proud, defiant and reassuring. Even as Palestinians spat out their hatred of the Oslo agreements, they weren't prepared to take the logical next step and call for the ouster of the man who signed them.
Kerry and his ilk should bear these points in mind when they call for a new Palestinian leader. Arafat, having seen this all before, will not go quietly. What’s more, any new leader, lacking Arafat’s extraordinary personal narrative, will not have his unique legitimacy. Just ask Mahmoud Abbas.
In any case, Arafat is the democratically elected leader of the Palestinian people. The US and Israel must come to terms with the fact that the Palestinians choose their own leaders. In spite of his poor record, if elections were held tomorrow, Arafat would win by a landslide. Not because he’s pro-peace or pro-war, not because he’s a good leader (he isn’t) but because he’s the repository of Palestinian dreams.