Two Lions Vying To Prevail

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For someone who has pledged to die a martyr, Yasser Arafat resists intimations of mortality. A year ago, his doctors told TIME that Arafat might have stomach cancer, but the Palestinian leader refused to leave his besieged compound in Ramallah to seek treatment; if he did, Arafat feared, the Israelis might block him from returning. In recent weeks, as his health deteriorated, Arafat's official spokesmen said it was nothing serious. By early last week, Arafat couldn't keep food down; even the cornflakes he ate on Thursday morning had to be pureed. He was unable to move his legs fully and couldn't see from one eye. On Thursday morning, a group of visiting doctors from Egypt, Tunisia and Jordan, along with a Palestinian colleague, went to Arafat's bedroom and told him that he was suffering from a "very serious" deficiency of blood platelets but that they couldn't diagnose the problem properly in Ramallah. One of the doctors told TIME that the blood problem may be the result of "an infection caused by a cancerous growth," most likely in the stomach.

And so, after three years of squalid isolation in Ramallah, Arafat finally won his freedom last Friday morning, aboard a Jordanian military helicopter that ferried him to Amman. From there he boarded a French Embraer jet bound for Paris. Arafat's aides insisted he wouldn't die in exile, but never has his fate seemed more precarious.

In Washington, where Middle East hands have long joked that Arafat would outlive them all, officials say privately that the Palestinians may be about to lose the only leader they have ever known. "It looks like it's very serious," says a senior State Department official, "and he may not make it."

No one was monitoring the health reports out of Ramallah more avidly than Arafat's old foe Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. For perhaps the final time, the two lions of the Middle East conflict find their destinies entwined. Sharon has promised that if Arafat is able to return, Israel won't block him. But just as a potentially seismic shake-up of the Palestinian leadership was developing, there were deep rumblings on the Israeli side as well. Sharon won approval last week in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, for a bill scheduling the withdrawal of Israeli settlers from Gaza to begin next June.

Sharon's aides say the plan, which would involve uprooting 21 settlements in Gaza and four in the West Bank, would make it easier to defend Israelis against terrorist attacks and deflect international pressure on Israel to engage in peace talks. But while 60% of Israelis support the proposed withdrawal, Sharon faces escalating opposition from right-wing Israelis who condemn the plan and from some of his own Cabinet ministers, who have threatened to resign unless Sharon holds a national referendum. It's a sign of the fervor Sharon faces that an increasing number of right-wingers talk about him in terms usually reserved for Arafat. "Ariel Sharon is a dictator," says Elyakim Levanon, an influential settler rabbi. "He is breaking democracy in Israel."

Arafat's failing health poses a dilemma for Sharon. Since he unveiled his disengagement plan late last year, Sharon has successfully sold it to the Israeli public and to the Bush Administration as an alternative to the peace process, allowing him to put off indefinitely negotiations over a final two-state settlement. As Sharon sees it, Arafat is a terrorist, and Israel won't negotiate with him. Israel, the argument continues, should pull out of Gaza and set up a more defensible position in the West Bank while waiting for Arafat to die and be replaced by someone Sharon can trust. Sharon's critics in the Knesset argue that any efforts to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza should be frozen until peace talks can be restarted with a new, more acceptable Palestinian leadership.

Sharon's deputy and chief disengagement proponent, Ehud Olmert, says it's too early to change tack just because Arafat is sick. Sharon will have to wait and see who emerges as Arafat's successor and how strong his position is. "It could take a long time," Olmert says.