worth noting:
The scourge of the Middle East
By BRET STEPHENS
Arafat's War: The Man and His Battle for Israeli Conquest
By Efraim Karsh
Grove Press. 296 pp. $25
Yasir Arafat: A Political Biography
By Barry Rubin and Judith Colp Rubin
Oxford University Press. 352 pp. $28
Why won't Israel's conflict with the Palestinians just go away? The world has been working on it for decades: We've had a Rogers Plan and a Reagan Plan, Madrid and the Oslo Accords, the Barcelona Process, Camp David, Taba, Mitchell, Tenet, Zinni, June 24 and the road map, to name the more prominent efforts. The explanation for their respective failures depends on whom you ask, but generally the answers run:
1. Occupation and settlement building
2. Cultural or civilizational frictions
3. Missed diplomatic openings
4. Arab rejection of Israel's right to exist
No doubt there's something to each of these views. But Efraim Karsh, head of the Mediterranean Studies program at King's College, London, and Barry and Judith Colp Rubin, two Israel-based scholars with many books between them, share a different view. The scourge of the Middle East, they would argue, is one man, Yasser Arafat, who singlehandedly has done more than anyone or anything else to put peace out of reach.
Karsh's book may as well have been titled "The Case Against Arafat." He dwells briefly on Arafat's boyhood, his early misadventures, his first murder (the account here, described by an eyewitness, is chilling), his struggle to gain absolute mastery of the Palestinian cause, and his sojourns - both of which ended violently - in Jordan and Lebanon.
Most of the book, however, deals with the Oslo period, and the chapter headings suggest the thrust of the argument: "A Trojan Horse," "A Licence to Hate," "Hate Thy Neighbor," "Terror until Victory," and so on. This may sound tendentious, but Karsh has done his research well. He is particularly adept at capturing every instance of Arafatian doublespeak - the "feigned moderation" for Western audiences, the frank avowals to destroy Israel to Arab ones. Thus, after sharing a peace prize with Peace Now in Stockholm in January 1996, he told an Arab audience:
"We plan to eliminate the State of Israel and establish a purely Palestinian state. We will make life unbearable for Jews by psychological warfare and population explosion.... We Palestinians will take over everything, including all of Jerusalem."
This, when Yitzhak Rabin was barely in the grave, Shimon Peres was prime minister, and neither Binyamin Netanyahu nor Ariel Sharon had come along to "spoil the atmosphere."
In quotation after quotation, Karsh also puts paid to the notion that Arafat's lieutenants are moderates or staying influences on the ra'is, or captain, as Arafat likes to be known.
Thus the late Faisal Husseini: "Though agreeing to declare our state over what is now only 22 percent of Palestine, namely the West Bank and Gaza, our ultimate goal remains the liberation of all of historical Palestine from the river to the sea, even if this means the continuation of the conflict for another thousand years or for many generations."
Or Yasser Abed Rabbo, cosigner with Yossi Beilin of the Geneva Accord: "The Israelis say that beneath the noble sanctuary lies their Temple. Looking at the situation from an archeological standpoint, I am sure there is no Temple."
Or Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala): "With Allah's will the return [of Palestinian refugees to Israel proper] is coming soon."
And so on. As Karsh's narrative unfolds, it becomes abundantly clear that Arafat and the PLO remain what they have always been: dedicated to Israel's destruction. In his 40-year war against Israel, Karsh can detect no sign that Arafat has ever moderated his views, except pragmatically; renounced terrorism, except rhetorically; or accepted Israel, except as a fact of contemporary life.
Karsh's prescription: "The Palestinians deserve profound structural reform that will sweep Arafat and his PA from power, free the 'inside' from the stifling PLO grip, eradicate the endemic violence from Palestinian political and social life, and teach the virtues of peaceful coexistence with their Israeli neighbors."
Karsh has written a polemic, but it is a necessary polemic that cuts through the mystagogy and wishful thinking surrounding Arafat and his movement.
By contrast, Barry and Judith Colp Rubin offer a comprehensive and meticulous portrait of the man, dwelling as much on Arafat's inner life and his core convictions as on his strategy and the historical narrative. What results is a wonderfully rich narrative and a still more devastating indictment.
A great deal of space here is devoted to Arafat's pre-Oslo political life: how he gained mastery of the Palestinian student movement at Cairo University, how he gained mastery of Fatah, how he gained mastery of the PLO. Arafat, the Rubins write, "grasped the importance of the politician as actor."
"Charisma did not come naturally to Arafat, who was short, ungainly and no great actor. Yet he was able to develop personal symbols, which would become world famous, to make up for these deficiencies: the stubble of beard, the kaffiya, and the military uniform among them. He also had a repertoire of behaviors that ranged from intimidating to charming. The result was his embodiment of a combination of roles; fighter, traditional patriarch, and typical Palestinian."
Arafat's success, however, was not a product of appearance alone. He benefited, first of all, from what the authors call "his conservative disinterest" in ideology. Arafat's was a broad tent: His single purpose was to destroy Israel, a task communists, nationalists and fundamentalists could agree, each for his own reasons. His tactics also proved useful for his Arab patrons, who had learned to their cost that Israel's army would not be defeated conventionally, whereas terrorism was a "no-risk strategy." And he benefited from the indulgence of the West, which tended to see him as a man it was best to appease, indulge and engage.
Arafat must also be credited with a kind of indefatigable optimism. He leads his movement from one disaster to the next - his failed early terrorist infiltrations into Israel; the foolish challenge to King Hussein of Jordan, leading to "Black September" in 1970; his failed takeover effort of Lebanon, leading to clashes first with Syria and then with Israel - yet each time he comes out declaring victory. In so doing, he becomes "the most persistent revolutionary" in modern history.
The account of Arafat's road to - and then away from - Oslo squares with and amplifies Karsh's. "It was ironic, and yet profoundly appropriate given Arafat's career, that what could have been his greatest success was the outcome of his consistent failure." In coming to Oslo, Arafat had not made a strategic decision for peace, but rather a reluctant concession to a crisis in PLO finances and patronage. As Arafat regained strength, with the help of the Clinton administration and successive Israeli governments, his commitment to peace waned. By 2000, he was fully prepared for a war that, experience should have told him, he had no way of winning - and yet would not lose.
At the heart of the book is a masterful chapter on "Being Yasser Arafat." It explains how Arafat, whose diplomatic unreliability, military incompetence, cruelty and clownishness have been proved time and again, nevertheless succeeded in persuading everyone that he is the indispensable man.
Arafat, the authors note, "was unique: forever suspended between victory and defeat; able to keep his struggle going but not resolve it. He could break the rules, commit terrorism in the midst of a global war against terrorism, and make statements sounding like those of a madman and still preserve his hold on his people, the Arab world's support, and often even his credibility in the West."
Unlike Karsh, who marshals his evidence to a single purpose, the Rubin book really does bend over backwards to be fair. I wonder if it matters. We have now reached a point where any book written by an Israeli on an Arab subject is likely to be viewed with suspicion. (Unless, of course, it provides a sympathetic account, in which case it will be accepted uncritically.) In a sense, this too is part of Arafat's legacy - the Palestinian appropriation of history and the almost complete delegitimization of Israel's version of events. But readers who still think that fact and truth are related phenomena will find much that is rewarding in these two commendable volumes.
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