TIME EUROPE
October 23, 2000, Vol. 156 No. 17
The Many Minds of Arafat
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What is clear is that Arafat concluded he couldn't do the deal on the table that day in Maryland. Not when he saw that the "best offer" Barak was making did not give the Palestinians true sovereignty over their whole share of Jerusalem. But Barak felt he was going way beyond his own political brief when he proffered what Israelis considered a dangerously generous proposal.
Arafat had reason to anticipate something more daring. Israeli negotiator Yossi Beilin says that under the informal paper he drew up with Arafat lieutenant Abu Mazen in 1995, both sides would have their capital in greater Jerusalem, residents of East Jerusalem would be Palestinian citizens, and the Temple Mount would be declared by Israel to be "extraterritorial." As Beilin told Time, "we would withdraw our sovereignty over it. Our sovereignty is only on paper anyway, the gesture would be very significant to Palestinians and wouldn't cost us anything."
When Barak proposed so much less, Arafat felt cheated. He said no, but Clinton and Barak thought it was another bout of brinkmanship. But for Arafat, Barak's plan was a deal he could not swallow. What looked impossibly generous to Israelis looked impossibly meager to him. In his mind, insiders say, he was guardian of the Holy City not just for Palestinians but for all Arabs, even all Muslims. He wanted history to rank him with Saladin and Caliph Omar bin Khattab, who centuries before had rescued Jerusalem from infidels. He feared that if he compromised, he would be deemed a traitor to his people, to all Islam. He feared that he might even be killed for it, as Anwar Sadat had been assassinated by embittered Egyptians for his imperfect peace.
Diplomats involved with Arafat have a fistful of theories to explain his Camp David decision. He remains an unreconstructed revolutionary who cannot bring himself to sign a paper saying "It's over." He is a deer caught in the headlights, who gets hysterical and indecisive in the clutch, as earlier negotiations have sometimes shown. More practically, he realized how cut off from the peace process many Palestinians had grown, holding it in horror or contempt or deepest skepticism. Or Arafat may simply have arrived at a chilling truth that day: that Palestinians and Israelis can never reconcile their competing claims to Jerusalem. Symbols as potent as the Holy City could not be fairly divided. Arafat's no was an assertion, says an Israeli official, "that he cannot be associated with these concessions."
If history were written today, Israel and its allies would blame Arafat for missing his best opportunity to found a peaceful Palestinian state. But Palestinians and their Arab brethren would-and
do-say history will praise him for having the dignity and
strength not to sell them out. When he returned from Camp
David, crowds hailed him as "the Saladin of this generation!"
Everything that has happened since reflects these opposite
visions of reality.
Arafat came home bitterly disgruntled. He was cast as the intransigent
spoiler. Clinton publicly lavished praise on Barak for his
flexibility and chided Arafat for his lack of it. Much of
the world embraced the Israeli interpretation that their awesome
generosity had been stupidly spurned. Clinton seriously underestimated
how entrenched Arafat was in his positions before the summit,
and still thought he could budge him afterward. U.S. officials
expected that Arafat would come forward with a counteroffer.
Then Clinton could stage-manage a split-the-difference agreement
giving both sides cover for daring but conflict-settling compromises.
But Arafat never called. He went on a tour of the Arab states, and they
heaped praise on him for his steadfastness, so unlike the
cold shoulder he had suffered for a decade. But when he tried
to translate that into approval for the unilateral declaration
of a state in September, Washington sent its diplomats ahead
to squelch the idea-and Arafat was forced to shelve it.
So the Palestinian leader sat in Gaza brooding on his next move. The U.S. phoned
with an assortment of "bridging" proposals-complicated custodial
arrangements dividing holy-site sovereignty with the U.N.,
with Islamic representatives, even with God. According to
a Palestinian negotiator, Arafat angrily told Clinton, "If
you want to give sovereignty over al-Aqsa to God, then would
you accept that the White House be put under God's sovereignty
too?" Palestinians resented summitry that they found humiliating,
as if the U.S. were ordering them to comply-and anger bubbled
up in the streets. Besieged by political troubles, Barak warned that the window for a peace agreement was quickly shutting in Israel. MORE>>
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