What Are They Thinking?

[Yasser Arafat]

It's fair to assume that there are places Yasser Arafat would rather be than imprisoned in his own compound with Israeli tank commanders as wardens. But it's not by mistake that he wound up there. Even if Arafat didn't anticipate exactly how the situation would unfold, this is a war he wanted.

For some time after the first Oslo peace accord in 1993, Arafat appeared to have genuinely embraced the idea of pursuing his political goal--an independent Palestinian state--through negotiations alone. But something flipped. That became evident two summers ago when, at talks at Camp David, the Israelis offered him their best deal yet on a state. By objective measure, the offer still wasn't good enough, but Arafat didn't merely reject it. He could have asked for more or counter-proposed; instead he left the table, went home and fueled a new uprising, which led to this war.

Why? Arafat is old, ailing and preoccupied with how he'll be remembered when he's gone. The only way for him to be Arafat the dealmaker, founder of Palestine, would be to sell short the Palestinian dream. No Israeli leader will give him a state unless he relinquishes claim to all or most of East Jerusalem, allows Israel to gobble up parts of the West Bank to accommodate the Israelis who have moved there and tells the Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war that they can forget about their U.N.-sanctioned right to go back to homes that are now part of Israel proper. On some level, Arafat may understand that all these compromises must be made before Palestine is born, but they won't happen on his watch. At this point he's much more interested in being a hero than in being a leader.

What to do in the meantime? Arafat can't have failed to notice that his approval ratings go up when his people are battling Israel; when things are relatively calm, they have time to notice what a corrupt, incompetent government he heads. Plus, Arafat figures the violence will demoralize the Israelis and soften their positions at the negotiating table. Violence has worked before. The hijackings of the 1970s kept the Palestinian cause alive in a way that Kurds and Basques can only envy. The first intifadeh, though far less brutal than this one, brought the Palestinians the Oslo peace talks. And, most relevant to Arafat today, Lebanon's Hizballah militia compelled Israel to withdraw unconditionally from south Lebanon two years ago--just before the fateful Camp David talks--by bloodying Israeli troops in the field and Israeli civilians along the border. What Hizballah got, Arafat wants too. He can't fight a conventional war with Israel because he has no real military. And so the suicide bombers are his army.

[Ariel Sharon]

Ariel Sharon isn't all that interested in peace. He would take it if it came his way, but he doesn't actually believe in it. And so he doesn't indulge in dreams of it, isn't inclined to take risks for it on the chance that it might be real.