WASHINGTON — Yasser Arafat has made a career out of mobilizing world opinion and international political pressure as his reward for failure. In that sense, he has been the Max Bialystock of revolutionaries.
The win-by-losing strategy has worked far better for the Palestinian than it does for Mel Brooks’ scheming character in the movie and now Broadway mega-hit "The Producers." Max ends up in jail. But through the chaos he has helped create across the Middle East, Arafat has fallen upwards.
Until now.
Arafat today is losing by losing. He implicitly acknowledged that by grudgingly ordering his forces to cease fire against Israel last Saturday rather than risk further escalation and greater destruction.
The cease-fire, reciprocated by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon despite extreme provocation, is fragile and could be broken at any moment. But Arafat’s declaration — withheld for seven bloody months and given only under duress — is important as a political barometer, whatever its fate on the battlefield.
It reveals Arafat’s inability to rally world opinion predominantly to his side throughout this crisis, as he did in leaping from the smoldering ruins he helped create in Jordan and Lebanon. He has not been able to reap rewards from an underdog status to an Israeli government headed by the much-feared Sharon.
The lack of any significant evident swing of sympathy in European and American public opinion to the downtrodden and vulnerable Palestinians is what feels different about this crisis. It is the dog that has not been barking — the factor that was significant because it did not happen — and Arafat finally heard that silence.
He had to hear it when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed a score of young Israelis on Friday. Arafat must have realized that this atrocity would negate any significant sympathy for Palestinian casualties in an Israeli retaliation. There was nothing to gain by more bloodshed now.
Sharon then rejected pressure for instant Israeli retaliation. His restraint — a word not usually associated with the gruff warrior — at that critical moment is worthy of note and of respect. It helped keep together diplomatic support and understanding for Israel that has been far from automatic in past crises, and which had begun to fray when Sharon ordered warplanes to attack Palestinians last month.
European and American diplomats have not been arguing over competing peace plans this time. The Russians have been appropriately absent from the scene. Even the Arab regimes that feel obligated to support Arafat — and decry Israel come what may — have refrained from pouring oil on this fire, except of course for Iraq.
The end of the Cold War partly accounts for this surface unity. More important, however, is the political dynamic unlocked by former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s daring and doomed effort to reach a final peace settlement with Arafat a year ago.
The Palestinians have been unable since then to explain successfully to world opinion Arafat’s refusal to grasp the opportunity Barak presented him. There is a Palestinian case about the shortcomings of Barak’s plan, and I have listened to it.
But it is so self-centered and convoluted — and ultimately lacking in any spirit of compromise or sacrifice — that it has been understood by few and accepted by fewer, even among those who have had sympathy for the Palestinians’ plight if not necessarily for their cause.
A psychological turning point has been reached: Governments and publics that previously felt the search for an Israeli-Palestinian peace had become largely a matter of tactics and timing have had their faith severely shaken, if not destroyed.
Instead, the notion takes root that this conflict may after all be irreconcilable — that both sides prefer to fight on into infinity, as measured by human lives, to ceding anything to the other. The nearly eight years of contact and cooperation that the Oslo peace accords mandated changed nothing, in this view.
It is a view that in no way works to Arafat’s favor this time. Weakness — failure — is not a useful weapon when Israel is not widely seen as a brutish Goliath intent on using force to keep its war gains.
Sharon and his commanders can quickly change this equation by overreacting. But Arafat cannot count on that happening this time. The spurning of Barak at Camp David and the terrorist attacks that have followed have drained the global reservoir of sympathy for the Palestinians. His call for a cease-fire suggests that even Arafat finally understands this.
Jim Hoagland can be reached at The Washington Post Writers Group, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, DC 20071-9200 or hoaglandj@washpost.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
